The Grim Spectre

by Ralph L. Angelo Jr.

Bobby nodded in agreement, “Well yeah, there’s that.”

  “You should consider your next steps in your war with these men. Your situation with Miss Thomas will even itself out.”

  “You’re right, Sensei. But I just don’t know what my next step is at this point.”

  Buraglia smiled and said,” Ah, that part is easy, Robert. It is what I have already said to you. You will go back to where the shipment came in and wait, invisibly for another to arrive. When it does, you will not engage the gangsters you will find there unloading the chemicals. Instead you will follow the trucks to wherever they are hiding their cargo, and you will strike from there.”

  “I got it, Sensei. You know I didn’t tell you this, but there’s one other thing I should consider, Zeus wants me, Bobby, to play at the Olympus room.”

  “Did you tell him yes?”

  “Not yet, I’ve been holding off because of all of this going on. I really didn’t want to work for a mobster,” Bobby said.

  “An admirable position, Robert, but you are an idiot. The man offers you the keys to his inner sanctum and you do not take him up on it? You need to take that job for him and you need to do it immediately. You may be able to infiltrate his entire operation from within and find the evidence you need to have the federal agents arrest him and put him in jail forever. Elliot Ness, yes?” Buraglia grinned and nodded his head.

  “Yes Sensei, Elliot Ness, I guess.”

  “Good. Now go see your pretty little girlfriend, and consider what you have confided in me. Again I tell you that you might want to tell her as well.”

  “It’s just not that easy, Sensei.”

  “If you want to be truthful with her, you will be.”

  “Okay Sensei, and thanks again. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Good, now go,” Bobby had donned the rest of his uniform while they were talking and disappeared. He floated upward invisibly and passed through the ceiling and roof of the dilapidated dojo and into the bright morning sunshine. Arcing away, Bobby flew toward his home, and floated immaterially through the wall of his apartment.

  After a cursory glance about the place to make sure he was alone The Grim Spectre reappeared.

  ‘Bobby,’ he thought to himself. Instantly his Grim Spectre uniform disappeared to be replaced by the clothes he was wearing before he raided the docks. ‘One of these days I have to find where the clothes go when I call for my uniform.’

  Bobby walked over and pulled the shades closed, then made sure his door was locked and bolted. He slipped into his bed, still wearing his magic belt wrapped around his shorts that he slept with.

  ‘I have to let this thing heal me for a few hours and perhaps longer. That knife barely missed an important organ or two according to the Sensei. Lord knows I could use the rest anyway. No gigs tonight, but when I wake up, if there’s enough time, I’ll go see Zeus about his offer and tell him I’m taking him up on it. I still have to see Tammy later on.’

  Bobby fell asleep almost instantly, but his dreams were troubled nightmares of him as The Grim Spectre fighting bizarre and monstrous foes as well as The Grim Spectre fighting Bobby himself.

  He slept restlessly.

  Chapter 39

  The Grim Spectre stood on a warehouse roof above the same dock he encountered the crooked longshoremen on. The hours and then the nights dragged by. On nights that he had gigs booked, Bobby simply went to the docks afterward and stayed hidden atop the warehouse waiting for the crooked dockworkers to appear.

  But they never did, at least not for the first three nights. No shipments came in; no mysterious crew of thugs appeared to unload it.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ thought Bobby, ‘I’ll never find a lead up here. Zeus may be getting ready to bomb the city for all I know, but I keep thinking it’s something far, far worse than that.’

  Then finally Bobby saw a small ship pulling up to the docks in the dead of night. It wasn’t much more than a boat really, but it was enough to hold at least thirty drums of whatever chemicals were now being unloaded.

  ‘Jackpot, at least I think so at this point. That looks like the same group of punks from the other night, and the leader is wearing a sling on his arm. It looks like I found my crew of Zeus’ men. Now I just have to discover what all of this even means.’

  Three trucks were filled with barrels of chemicals. The men handled them gingerly, as if they feared the contents.

  Finally they were given the ‘Roll out’ order by the man with the sling.

  Bobby watched as they rolled out of the docks, then he invisibly flew after them, to land on the roof of the lead vehicle.

  ‘Let’s see where this takes me.’

  After about twenty minutes the trucks pulled into a warehouse on the west side of Riverburgh. The Grim Spectre hovered invisibly above the trucks as the drivers turned the engines off.

  The Spectre floated there when he heard a familiar voice that chilled his blood to ice say, “We knew if we waited long enough you would come to us. It seemed our patience has at last paid off.”

  The Grim Spectre turned and his eyes went wide within his mask, “Baron Popadoo!”

  Popadoo smiled, his grotesquely painted face looking all the more terrible, “And I am not alone this time, Spirit.”

  I knife flew through the air and embedded itself in The Grim Spectre’s immaterial form. Immediately he fell to the roof of one of the cargo containers beneath him.

  “Agghh!” The Spectre shouted, ‘That knife, it made me solid again, I have to get it out of here.’

  With a tug he yanked the knife out and threw it over the roofs edge and out of reach. Then he turned, wracked with pain, toward its source-The Priest who stood grinning at The Spectre from the opposite corner of the cargo containers stacked side by side around the trucks.

  The Grim Spectre stood and faced his enemies, “You foolish mortals failed against me before, you will fail again.”

  “False bravado, Ghost. For this time we are not alone and fight as a team,” the Priest said.

  “That’s right, Spook, we’re a team. An’ you’re gonna fall!” A third powerfully built and brutish man emerged from the shadows and tackled the spectral avenger, knocking him to the ground.

  “Soul Crusher?” The Spectre asked incredulously.

  “That’s right Ghost guy. We all met an’ decided what we couldn’t do alone we could do together. These two busted me outta jail ‘cause you might be tough stuff against one of us alone, but against all three, well, my money’s on us.”

  “Very well you idiots, let the games begin,” The Grim Spectre growled.

  Soul Crusher charged him; the big brute of a man threw himself at The Grim Spectre looking to tackle him.

  The Spectre threw himself on to his back, simultaneously stuck his foot into the Soul Crushers gut and grabbed him by the neck. He tossed his enemy over him, sending the ex-wrestler tumbling off of the steel storage crates.

  ‘I’m not that concerned if he got killed when he landed, after all, it’s what he had planned for me. All of these thugs want me dead, even the deranged ex-priest.’ Bobby thought.

  “Fool! If he is dead we shall eviscerate you,” the Priest shouted.

  Moving like lightning the Priest threw two more of his blessed knives at The Grim Spectre, and missed, but before he could launch a third, Bobby shot it out of the Priests hand with one of his .45’s.

  The Priest looked at his hand, still vibrating and numb from the knife being shot out of it, in stunned amazement.

  “Attack him, you fool, do not let up against this ghost. You cannot give him a moment to think,” Baron Popadoo roared.

  The Baron aimed his fingers at The Grim Spectre and moved them about before his own face. At the same time he mumbled something.

  “What is this foolishness?” The Spectre asked.

  In reply he heard a hissing at his feet and looked down as dozens of snakes crawled up the shipping container and began moving toward him.

  “You see,
Grim Spectre, I am not so easily defeated. I control all the Loa. All creatures that slither and crawl. And every one of them in this area aimed at you,” Popadoo laughed. It was quite a sight, his ragged black tuxedo over his gaunt form with the white plume headdress and white face paint. He looked for all the world like some mad lunatic. Who’s to say he wasn’t?

  But The Grim Spectre reacted quickly; he pulled his remaining gun from its holster and began firing them both at the creatures that were slithering and crawling over each other to get to him. Snakes flew in all directions, scattered from the ghoulish avenger by his sharp eye and steady hand upon his guns.

  But within seconds he ran out of bullets and didn’t have the time to reload.

  ‘Have to move quickly, otherwise I’m done for.’

  The Grim Spectre unhooked his whip from his side and snapped it out to scatter the snakes once again; striking several, then he turned and threw the end of the whip out in one fluid motion, wrapping it around the end of a vent pipe sticking out of a nearby rooftop next to the container he was fighting on. With a jump he swung away on the whip to the rooftop, and away from the snakes.

  “You cannot escape the lord of voodoo that easily, Ghost-man. I will have you,” Baron Popadoo said.

  ‘C’mon, Magic belt, help me out here,’ Bobby begged beneath his mask.

  But there was still nothing. The belt was not responding at all.

  ‘The Priest and Popadoo did a job on this thing. It’s really dead, and I don’t know if it’ll come back, ever. I have to get away from this voodoo bastard; otherwise I’m dead, for real.’

  He leaped and began running across the rooftop. Behind him Baron Popadoo shouted, “I am coming for you, Grim Spectre, and I will have you doing my bidding before this night is through.”

  In reply, The Grim Spectre turned and hurled a knife from within the folds of his cape at Popadoo. But the voodoo master smacked it out of the air disdainfully.

  The Grim Spectre ran to the rooftops end quickly and grasped a drain pipe. Quickly he slid down it, his bright silver cape flowing behind him.

  He hit the ground, rolled to his feet and took off in a run.

  Behind him, the voodoo man stood on the edge of the roof and shouted, “You will not escape me so easily, Grim Spectre. I will destroy you.”

  The Priest stood next to Baron Popadoo now, having finally caught up and was still nursing his damaged hand, “The fool should have shot me when he had the chance.”

  Baron Popadoo looked at his erstwhile partner and guffawed, “You are right, Priest, I would have in his position.”

  The Priest began to snarl back an answer when a groan from beneath both men turned their attentions to the ground at their feet.

  Popadoo and then The Priest shimmied down the same drain pipe The Grim Spectre had used.

  “He still lives,” Baron Popadoo said.

  “His head must be hard as a rock,” the Priest answered.

  “Both of you should shut up,” Soul Crusher said.

  He unsteadily got to his feet and looked at his two partners. He bled from a cut on his forehead, and moved in obvious pain. He rubbed both his bloody knees and grimaced.

  “Where is he?” Soul Crusher asked.

  “He got away, but he is wounded and almost helpless. He ran off that way,” Popadoo said, pointing toward the woods in the distance outside the edge of the docks.

  “Then what are you two waiting for? Let’s get him,” Soul Crusher said.

  “Oh we are, and we will. But we need not dirty our own hands with this. I have others who will aid us,” Popadoo said. He knelt down and touched the tarmac.

  Instantly the howls of wild dogs permeated the night.

  This was not lost on The Grim Spectre. He stood in the fog shrouded forest behind the docks and reloaded his guns.

  ‘This is going to be bad. I have to make sure my extra magazines are loaded too. Those dogs howling in the distance-they could be coming after me, of that I have no doubt. If Popadoo could send snakes after me, then he could send wild dogs too, and there’s still nothing from my magic belt,’ he thought silently.

  The dogs howled again, only now they were closer.

  He began to run, praying every step of the way that his magic belt would work again.

  The Grim Spectre sprinted through the forest bordering Riverburgh. Behind him the dogs growls grew louder and louder.

  ‘I’ll have to stop and make a stand; if I don’t I’m dead,’ he thought.

  The dogs were close now; he could hear their growls and the thunder of their paws growing ever nearer.

  Still, he turned and with a continued show of bravado he roared, “Come and face me, dogs, come to your doom!”

  The dogs ran over a slight rise in front of The Grim Spectre and leapt through the air at him. The moonlight was bright in the forest illuminating the perilous scene in an unearthly glow.

  The Grim Spectre’s guns barked death! Each shot found its mark as the first of the savagely snarling dogs fell to his bullets in mid-leap.

  The others hesitated as if some bizarre animal instinct was telling them that he was not some easy prey.

  Quickly he swapped magazines on the 1911’s. Dropping the empties into hidden pockets within his cape and placing full ones back into his guns.

  But now the dogs were cautious, as if receiving orders through the air.

  ‘Popadoo’s making the dogs pull back now,’ The Grim Spectre thought, ‘That means he’s getting close.’

  Popadoo’s voice echoed all about The Grim Spectre now, “All your weapons, your guns and knives and whatever else you have hidden in your cape will not help you here, Grim Spectre. Tonight I will destroy you, and not for any man who rules this city, but for myself, for what you did to me. The embarrassment you caused. The indignity I suffered at your terrible fingertips. For that I will make you pay Grim Spectre, and pay for all eternity.”

  “Then come to me, Popadoo, come and meet your doom,” the Spectre shouted in reply.

  The dogs were holding still, frothing at the mouths, barking more now as if begging to be allowed to attack The Grim Spectre, to be set free from invisible leashes and to rend his flesh from his limbs.

  Then the unheard order was given, as one the half dozen remaining dogs attacked, and swarmed toward the avenger of Riverburgh.

  “It won’t be so easy, dogs!” The Grim Spectre shouted.

  His guns barked death loudly across the dark night, their echoes reaching far and wide.

  A low growl met The Grim Spectre’s ears from the opposite direction. Quickly between pin point accurate gunshots he turned and stared at the source of the strange moans.

  Within his chest his heart skipped a beat and his eyes went wide within his mask.

  ‘This can’t be,’ he thought.

  He looked beyond what was slowly, horrifically crawling and shambling toward him and saw the source of this new threat. A cemetery, old and in ill repair, and out of the dead earth stretched the limbs of long dead souls. Bodies rotted and ravaged by years in the coffin. Sightless, and in most cases skinless cadavers, were walking toward him with outstretched hands. The walking dead, Zombies, whatever you would call them, and they were all walking toward The Grim Spectre.

  ‘If I ever needed you to come back on and help me, Magic Belt, it’s now,’ The Spectre intoned.

  But there was no reply from the wide gold belt wrapped about his waist.

  ‘Somehow Popadoo and that mad priest shut my magic belt down, and it may be gone forever.’

  The Grim Spectre aimed his guns and fired, blowing the rotted skulls off of long dead bodies. Each head shot dropped a shambling, stinking cadaver. Each bullet downed another mystically animated corpse.

  ‘I’m almost out of bullets; I can’t last much longer, and if the magic belt doesn’t turn back on or whatever it does, then I’ll be done for.’

  The onslaught continued, as countless undead monsters seemed to roll toward him like a wave on the ocean. The Grim
Spectre fired his guns again and again, punching holes through rotted skulls. The stench was incredible as they neared him; the stink of rotting flesh assailed his senses, making him involuntarily gag beneath his mask.

  He aimed his gun once more and pulled the trigger, only to be greeted by an empty click. Quickly he brought its twin to bear and was once again greeted by the same sound that would herald his impending doom.

  Pulling knives from within his cloak he threw himself at the shambling things, stabbing the closest to him through the eyes, impaling their long dead brains.

  His fists worked like pistons, again and again driving the deadly weapons points through the corpse’s brains with feverish intensity.

  But now bereft of his magic belts abilities, he was just a man. A man fighting a seemingly endless wave of horrors, and like any man, he began to tire.

  His blows became slower, less precise as the crawling; dragging horrors began to overwhelm him and sought to drive him to the ground.

  “Get away from me, you ghouls!” he shouted.

  He hacked and slashed and kicked, but in the end he was forced down to the hard packed dirt and even there he continued to fight, but within seconds he was covered by an army of the dead.

  Standing on a slight hill nearby, The Triumvirate of Terror, Baron Popadoo, The Priest and the Soul Crusher all watched in grim fascination as their foe disappeared from sight.

  Chapter 40

  The Triumvirate of Terror silently continued to watch for any signs of The Grim Spectre’s escape from beneath the pile of ravenous undead creatures, but there was none coming.

  “He’s not moving,” Soul Crusher announced.

  “As we can all see,” said The Priest. He adjusted the wide brimmed black hat he had on and smiled.

  “He should be finished by now,” Popadoo said. He began to walk down the slight hill, the tails of his raggedy tuxedo flowing behind him. The headdress he wore merely made the terrible scene all the more unnerving.

  The Priest and Soul Crusher merely looked at each other, and then at their erstwhile leader and began following him down the hill toward the pile of zombies crawling about the spot The Grim Spectre had disappeared under.