Tales of the Shadowmen 3: Danse Macabre

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  Ardan tossed the spent superfirer away and hefted the projector into position.

  Simultaneously, Rolf uttered incantations–“Iä! Iä! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu fhtagn! Méne!”–and the Eye of Dagon exploded off of Elisabeth’s graceful white neck in a detonation of blood and bluish light.

  The gem bounced on the stone floor and rolled toward Ardan. Before he could seize it, the energy released from the Eye crackled and struck the Radium-X projector, frying and fusing circuits.

  The projector began to heat up and blaze white hot in an uncontrolled reaction. Ardan dropped the projector before it could burn his hands. It bathed the room with sun-like light. Burma, sans goggles, was blinded.

  Elisabeth and Ilona screamed and collapsed, writhing on the floor. “The light! The Sun!”

  “The projector is going to blow. It’ll take out the whole cellar, maybe more. I can’t stop it!” Doc yelled at Rolf. He gestured to Burma. “Help him out of here. I’ll follow you with Adélaïde and these two.”

  Ardan turned toward Adélaïde, but paused at Rolf’s hand on his arm.

  “These women,” Rolf said. “I understand and respect your policy of humane rehabilitation. But these women are gone. You cannot help them.”

  Doc paused a moment further, then nodded and went toward Adélaïde.

  Minutes later, he burst from the front of the Benet mansion. Adélaïde looked like a small child cradled in his massive arms, broken chains trailing from her wrists. He placed her gently in the back seat of the Citroën.

  Roger Noël gunned the engine and floored it, Ardan mounted on the running board, as a violent explosion rocked the Cordon Jaune headquarters.

  Just before sunrise, large boulders shifted and rolled down the piles of rubble in the debris of the Benet mansion. A large vine, now the circumference of a man’s torso, pushed the rocks away. At one tip of the vine was a pod which vaguely resembled a Venus Fly Trap. The vine slithered free, and glided down the Paris streets.

  Anyone who may have observed this singular phenomenon could also have heard, just at the edge of audible range, a tiny whispering voice, barely distinguishable from the slight breeze.

  “Nourrissez-moi ! Nourrissez-moi!”

  The murmurs gradually faded into the morning dawn.

  FROM: Lieutenant Montferrand, Division Protection, Service National d’Information Fonctionnelle, Paris.

  TO: SNIF.

  DATE: August 26, 1946

  SUBJECT: Silver Eye of Dagon

  The Eye of Dagon has been secured and turned over to Doctor Ardan. Jens Rolf has provided Ardan with detailed and specific instructions for its safekeeping.

  There was no sign of Le Chiffre anywhere in the Cordon Jaune headquarters, nor of any of the other women employed in his house of ill-fame. It is presumed they all escaped in the confusion prior to the explosion.

  Burma’s blindness was temporary, and Ardan has given him a clean bill of health. According to Ardan and Rolf, A.L. will suffer no lasting ill effects from her experience.

  When the rubble was cleared from the lower cellar of the Benet mansion, Elisabeth and Ilona Harczy’s bodies were recovered and taken to the morgue. However, the next day, the bodies were inexplicably gone.

  Recommendation: The International Police Commission should be on the lookout for two women matching their descriptions.

  Deep in the Arctic, in a solitary fortress, Doctor Francis Ardan checked on the Eye of Dagon. It was stored safely away from those who would use it for ill purposes. Likewise Doctor Benet’s Radium-X projector.

  He moved silently into the next chamber, a warm room decorated in the fashion of an Adirondack hunting lodge. Then, through the fortress’ insulated walls, he heard the mechanical whine of rocket engines.

  In a huge stone fireplace, embers from a once-crackling fire still glowed. A large bearskin rug in front of the fireplace was askew. A note was pinned on the mantle, near a half-empty bottle of Veuve Clicquot and one champagne flute (Ardan did not drink):

  My Dearest Francis (the note began),

  What a wonderful storehouse of treasures your little hideaway is! I left you the gem this time, although you know, of course, I easily could have taken it. Thank you for refueling the Cirrus X-9 for me. I know you’ll be cross with me for making off with it again, but really, how else can I make certain we’ll see each other once more?

  Au revoir, mon sauvage.

  Mon amour,

  Adélaïde

  He shook his head ruefully and smiled faintly. He just couldn’t seem to hang on to those damn rocket packs.

  But he didn’t really care.

  After his impressive and monumental two-parter,“The Werewolf of Rutherford Grange,” which appeared in the first two volumes of Tales of the Shadowmen, G.L. Gick chose here to pen a shorter story featuring the character of Doctor Omega, that mysterious traveler in space and time, last encountered in Matthew Baugh’s opening tale. Gick uses Doctor Omega to revisit a genuine monument of French science fiction and does so with considerable skill and a wonderful economy of words. This tale is bound to bring a smile to our readers’ faces when they realize on whose planet Doctor Omega has landed…

  G.L. Gick: Beware the Beasts

  Planet Soror, the Future

  It really was a lovely afternoon for tea. The brief summer shower had passed, filling the air with the pleasant tang of wet earth and grass. In the garden behind Jinn’s villa, songbirds twittered from tree to tree, while a red squirrel, looking for nuts, paused inquisitively upon a branch to gaze down at the strange party, then dash back into the leaves, tail twitching furiously.

  “Another cup, perhaps?” Jinn asked his honored guest.

  Doctor Omega leaned back in his chair and abstained, contentment practically pouring out of him.

  “Oh, heavens, certainly not. I couldn’t eat another bite.”

  “More jam, Tiziraou?”

  Phyllis, Jinn’s lovely wife, proffered a dish to the little creature sitting next to her.

  “Thank you, please,” the tiny, macroencephalic Martian chirped in its high-pitched voice, pushing its plate forward, perhaps more eagerly than necessary. Unable to chew most solid foods, the small alien was often forced to make do with more liquified sustenance. As a result, he had become practically addicted to the melange of sweet jams and jellies his planet had never produced, but that were so easily obtainable in far-off Normandy.

  The Doctor tut-tutted, but otherwise said nothing. After nearly dying in his heroic attempt to help save this world, he figured that Tiziraou was entitled to a bit of gluttony.

  At the edge of the pond, a swan-like creature dipped its long, elegant neck deep into the water, looking for food. Along all sides of the villa, Phyllis’ beloved flowers were in full bloom, attracting the pleasant buzzing of honeybees.

  “I still don’t know how to thank you, Doctor,” Jinn stated. “If not for you and Tiziraou, Soror would have ceased to exist, in the blink of an eye. How could we possibly repay you? We owe you everything.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say ‘everything,’ my boy.” The Doctor casually waved off the compliment, but his face was a blazing display of self-satisfaction. “I’m hardly responsible. Indeed, we wouldn’t even have known of the whole affair if we hadn’t encountered that lost spaceman during our travels, would we, Tiziraou? Too bad he refuses to leave my Cosmos to join us, but I’m not going to force him.”

  Steepling his fingers together, he gazed into the sky and harrumphed. “The mere effrontery of it all. This Q creature... Deciding he doesn’t like the way a planet is shaping up, so he takes it upon himself to create a variant, to change things to see if he likes it better another way... Still, we certainly placed a spanner into his works, didn’t we, hmm? Perhaps he’ll think twice next time before playing with the timelines again.”

  “I certainly hope so, Doctor,” said Jinn.

  “You know what you have to do now, hmm?” said Doctor Omega, looking at them sternly.

  Phylli
s put in quietly. “I still cannot get over the notion...”

  “I know what you’re going to say, my dear. But you have no choice.”

  “Do we?” Jinn’s voice was raised in protest, but he refused to raise his eyes to meet the Doctor’s. “What can we do? We’re merely two people. Yet you ask us to alter hundreds of years of hatred and...”

  “Entire worlds have turned on the actions of just one person, Jinn. Believe me. I know. And it has to begin somewhere.”

  “But–but you don’t understand!” Phyllis cried. “From our very childhood, we are taught to hate and fear the beasts. Of all creatures, only they hunt and kill for the sheer pleasure of it; only they slaughter for the sake of slaughter. Even their own kind, they kill. The beasts are monsters, Doctor. How can you ask us to put all that aside?”

  “Because you must, child. Because for all the just, equitable society you have tried to create here on Soror, it still amounts to nothing if even one sentient creature cannot participate in it. You say the beasts are monsters? You’re right; they are. I know that better than anyone. They’re killers. Murderers. But they are also so much more.” Once again, he glanced to the sky, as if gathering his thoughts. “I have seen the destinies of countless races throughout this universe, my friends. I have seen entire civilizations born, grow and die, either slowly or quickly, all too often by their own hands. But rarely have I seen one with so much potential, so much ability to turn their ways to either good or evil. It would be a crime against the universe if you did not allow them that chance.” Pushing his cup aside, he leaned forward expectantly. “And remember, to them, you are the beasts. You are the ones who hunt them without cause; who seem to hate them for the mere sake of hating them.”

  Doctor Omega pointed a finger up to the alien sun above. “Finally, also remember that your planet originally had no existence. You’re a slice of time brought into existence by Q. Your civilization, for all its greatness and wonder, exists only because of a whim. Once his experiment was done, he would have destroyed you, if we hadn’t happened along... You say you owe me? Then repay me by letting the beasts into your society. It can be done. If you want to.”

  Slowly, Jinn and Phyllis looked at each other. Then, slowly, they bowed their heads in acceptance.

  “Good,” said the Doctor, smiling. “I knew you’d agree. As I said, you are a just society. You, too, deserve to be part of the universe. And I’m certain you’ll make it.”

  Reaching into his frock coat, he pulled a large gold watch. “Time we got back to the Cosmos, eh, Tiziraou? We’ve still got to get that astronaut back to his own time and space. Come along!”

  He stood, then wagged one finger warningly. “If you ever doubt the rightness of letting the beasts into your society,” he said, “think on how they treat your own people on their world.”

  Gravely, he shook hands with his hosts. Tiziraou bowed comically. Then, with a promise to return one day, the two travelers sauntered off deeper into the garden, where they had left their ship.

  Phyllis settled in next to her beloved Jinn.

  “Could it be true, darling?” she asked. “Could we really civilize those creatures and let them into our society as equals?”

  Frowning, the chimpanzee shook his head. “I don’t know, my love. Man is such a peculiar beast...”

  There is something about prehistoric fiction that truly thrills our senses. Almost the only thing people remember from Jules Verne’s seminal Journey to the Center of the Earth is the all-too brief description of a humanoid creature–“his height was above twelve feet. His head, as big as the head of a buffalo, was lost in a mane of matted hair. It was indeed a huge mane, like those which belonged to the elephants of the earlier ages of the world”–watching over a herd of mastodons. Micah Harris, a new contributor to Tales of the Shadowmen, revisits Verne’s vision, adding to it an extended cast of equally famous protagonists…

  Micah Harris: The Ape Gigans

  London, Skull Island, 1843

  Benjamin Disraeli looked up from the file that lay open on his desk and peered intently over his reading spectacles at the beautiful woman who sat before him. Her white frock with the quaint Empire waist suggested an innocence belied by the fox-face and reddish-blond hair visible beneath her bonnet.

  “Well, Miss Sharp,” he said dryly as he shuffled the papers to their proper order and returned them to their folder, “for an insurgent who has survived a failed coup d’état and, consequently, spent the better part of 1842 fleeing for your life across the African wilds”–here he caught his breath–“I must say, you look most... refreshed.”

  Becky Sharp sat rigidly upright, hands on her lap, and successfully resisted the urge to squirm under the unyielding gaze of her austere superior. She had, after all, mastered long ago the ability of not shrinking under a withering glare, when, as a waif of 16, she seemed to regularly displease the head mistress of the finishing school where she had taught French in return for board and picked-over meals.

  Maintaining her own cool gaze, she said, “Sir, do you mean to hold me responsible for the failure of the Kor Affair? Do I have to remind you that I was but a pawn? That I was to be your puppet queen? And as for my being ‘refreshed’... well, that is your doing as well.”

  “Is that accusation in your tone, Miss Sharp?” Disraeli asked stringently.

  “Indeed it is, sir! Do you deny your men were under orders to toss me into that column of fire? Was it not your plan that that flame endow me with the same preternatural qualities it had given the queen I was to supplant? And the entire scheme was hatched and enacted without my knowledge or consent! I only knew we were looking for a rare, natural resource in the environs of lost Kor.” Here, Becky affected a shiver, tucked her head and brought a clinched handkerchief to her mouth. “I thought I would burn horribly.”

  “Frailty thy name is woman,” Disraeli said caustically, leaning back and steepling his fingers before him.

  Becky’s hand with the handkerchief dropped into her lap, and she raised her cool gaze to meet Disraeli’s again. “You owe me an apology, sir!”

  Disraeli laughed. “Your country owes you no more than a hangman’s noose, Miss Sharp!”

  Becky scowled in silence, for she could not deny it: she had first come to his attention–and that of this secret organization he served, the Meonia–when she attempted to sell to insurgents in India certain military secrets which she had acquired from her last victim, one Colonel Joseph Sedley.

  Disraeli was in charge of the British Special Branch which had arrested her. Recognizing in her the amoral nature which made for an apt special agent, the Meonia had given her a choice: come into the fold or hang.

  “So, what happens now?” Becky asked Disraeli.

  He picked up the closed file and slapped it back down to the desk. “If we can trust your report, that this ‘She–Who–Must–Be–Obeyed’ possesses a mystical means of surveillance–well, she’ll be more vigilant than ever now, shall she not? Thus, there seems to be nothing we can do on that front. Our mission is hopelessly botched; we both stand in the displeasure of my superiors. But fear not, Miss Sharp. There is a way we may both disentangle ourselves from this untoward affair.”

  “Go on,” Becky said.

  Disraeli patted the folder containing her report. “You mention in your notes that the flame in the caves of Kor issued up from somewhere far deeper in the subterranean realms. The source of the flame, then, lies elsewhere, and if we could find that source, then we need no longer be concerned about our failure to take the throne of this ‘She–Who–Must–Be–Obeyed.’ ”

  “That all hangs on a rather enormous ‘if,’ sir. First, one would have to find appropriate ingress into the Inner Earth...”

  “Yes, well, it appears ‘one’ has. The Meonia is secretly backing an expedition to Antarctica to locate a polar entrance into our allegedly hollow world. It is to be led by a prodigious German youth named Lidenbrock and his assistant Miss Fatima Talisa.”

  “He
has a female colleague?”

  “Yes. A most taciturn young lady in public, but Lidenbrock’s looks toward her during our preparatory meetings indicate she has much to say to him in private. Frankly, Miss Sharp, there is something unsavory about the whole business. We of the Meonia sense it, yet none of us attempts to stop it. But we have determined to manipulate the manipulator.

  “Your mission, then, is to enter the underworld through the South Pole with the Lidenbrock expedition. Secretly, you will search for the wellspring of the flame of Kor. You will have one other associate in the expedition who shares this intelligence, Mr. Lemuel Beesley.

  “You should, of course, seduce Lidenbrock so that you may replace Miss Talisa in his regard. Your agenda may, at times, be at odds with hers. In which case, your interests–by which I mean ‘ours’–must prevail.

  “I suspect you will have a worthy rival in Miss Talisa, Miss Sharp, one whom you must supplant, perhaps even crush.” Here he smiled, leaned back, and templed his fingers again. “How I wish I could be there to watch you at work. Keep an account of it all, will you?”

  From the Journal of Becky Sharp

  February 16, 1843

  I have met the sphinx Talisa.

  And Disraeli was correct: she does have some hold over young Lidenbrock. The looks they exchange are the same that have passed between myself and Joseph Sedley before he met his untimely demise. Lidenbrock fears her.

  All the others on the expedition, all men, sense he is cowed by that female and regard Lidenbrock with contempt. They do not know what such a woman is capable of. I do. I am such a woman.

  Talisa senses this. Indeed, she tries, as much as is possible on a ship in middle of the ocean, to avoid me. Unfortunately, the same limited confines make it difficult to get Lidenbrock alone.