by Anton Strout
I pulled off the bag and laid it down on an empty desk off to my left along the wall. The bag was decorated with an assortment of stitched-on band names and dozens of tiny safety pins everywhere.
“What do we have here?” the Inspectre said, coming over to it.
“It was at the bottom of the well,” I said. “It belonged to that blond kid George, one of Mason’s students. The professor brought him here against his will. He threw him down into the pit after he got what he needed. Blood. But that’s not all.”
“What else?” the Inspectre asked.
“There was something down there with him,” I said. “Couldn’t see anything. It was too dark down there, but it was like a big fish or a snake. It… it finished him off.”
Connor undid the short tongue holding the bag closed and flipped the flap open. Using caution, he reached in the bag and started pulled out its contents.
“Books,” he said, laying them down one by one.
The Inspectre spun them so he could read them, adjusting his glasses. “Introduction to Modern Cinema, Principles of Editing … The Monster Maker’s Handbook.”
Connor ran his hand over a tear in the outer material of the bag. Something solid and shiny poked through the spot. Connor stuck his hand in the hole and pushed the object out. Its metallic case was crushed in the middle, but there was no mistaking the object. “One laptop,” he said. “Only partially damaged.”
“It must have gotten banged up on the fall,” the Inspectre said.
“No,” I said, “not banged up. Crushed.”
“Crushed?”
“By whatever killed George down there,” I said.
“We need to be talking to living people on this one if we’re going to figure this out,” Connor said. “Think about what we know. The professor was working on a film. What does it take to make a movie?”
The Inspectre’s face lit up. “It takes a village,” he said.
“Exactly,” Connor said. “It takes cast and crew. Lighting, sound, editors …”
“And Professor Mason Redfield certainly had some dedicated students out there,” I said. “Wasn’t he expecting them when he was reborn?”
I started gathering up the contents of the bag, readying them to take back to the Lovecraft Café. The Inspectre looked angry.
“Then it’s time to put the screws to the professor’s living students,” he said. “It’s time to stop wasting our resources and get some real answers. We need to figure out why Mason Redfield did all this and what his plans are.”
“We’ll find out,” Connor said, “even if we have to beat it out of them.”
I reached for the bat at my side, patting it in its holster. “Have bat, will travel.”
23
Connor, the Inspectre, and I stopped back at the Department long enough to visit Allorah Daniels. We found the youngest Enchancellor back in her office-slash-lab, where I was surprised to also find Jane with her. I walked over to the two of them with the tattered shoulder bag held up in my right hand. Jane grabbed for it like a kid hungry for presents on Christmas morning.
“Sorry, doll,” I said. “This is going on our lovely Enchancellor’s dance card.”
Allorah looked up from the pile of books in front of her. She did not look happy. “Oh, is it, now?” she asked. “What about Jane’s health? She keeps wanting to go home and shower, but I convinced her that’s not a good idea right now.”
Jane nodded, then scooped up a large glass from the lab table. “I’ve traded up,” she said. “I’ve switched to drinking water, which helps kill the craving to shower.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“Not really,” Allorah said. “That’s her twenty-eighth glass.”
“Twenty-eighth?” I repeated.
Jane put her hand on my arm. “It’s okay. I feel fine.”
“That’s what worries me,” I said. “That would kill a normal person.”
Jane gave a grim smile. “As the mark indicates, I’m not normal.”
A moment of awkward silence passed, before the Inspectre cleared his throat. I snapped out of my fog and held the shoulder bag out to Allorah. “This is for you,” I said.
“Do I not seem busy enough trying to save your girlfriend’s life here? I would think you’d show some appreciation for that.”
The Inspectre stepped forward into the room. “Please, Allorah. As a personal favor to me.”
Something in the seriousness of his tone softened her in an instant. “Of course, Argyle. For you, anything.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I owe you.”
Allorah waved his words away and rose up from her desk. She took the bag from me and brought it over to her workbench, emptying its contents out onto it. “What are we looking at here?”
“We found this,” I said, “in the same lighthouse that Professor Redfield converted into his impromptu workshop. It belonged to one of his students, but he bled him out to barely living and then fed him to… something. I’m not sure what. There was a sort of disposal-pit-well thingie underneath a hidden room where he had been keeping all this arcane paraphernalia. It was too dark for me to see when I flashed on it.” I stepped over to the workbench. “Let me get one last read off of it now that I’m not at the bottom of a feed pit.”
I pulled off my gloves and slapped my hands down on the bag, pressing my power into it. I feared seeing any of the gory details of Professor Redfield’s actual carving up of George so instead focused my energy on pulling a location on the rest of the students from it. A dorm room at New York University and a slew of classrooms flew by my mind’s eye as I went back in time. Through all the flashes, one location stood out among the more mundane ones. It was a poorly lit section of the university where George skulked along, hoping that no one was following him as he slipped into a room marked 247. When I pressed my vision for further details it blanked out and I was forced to bring myself back to reality.
Hungry from the rush of low blood sugar, I went for the Life Savers in my jacket pocket.
“Anything, kid?” Connor asked, coming over to no doubt make sure I didn’t pass out on anything expensive near the lab equipment.
I nodded as I stuffed my mouth full of rainbow-colored salvation. “I think I’ve got an address.”
“Excellent,” the Inspectre said. “We should get moving.”
I held up a finger. “In a minute,” I said. I turned to Jane. “You might want to take a look through his computer as well.”
“Me?” she said, surprised. “What for exactly?”
“We found this in the water below the lighthouse,” I said. “That place may be connected to that she-bitch. It might help out with your… situation.”
Jane’s face was a little sad, but she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Can I consider that a prezzie from you, then?”
I kissed her on the cheek, then joined the Inspectre and Connor by the door leading out of Allorah’s office.
“Be careful,” Jane called out.
“Why start now?” Connor darkly added.
“Don’t be so pessimistic,” the Inspectre said, twirling his sword cane around in his hand with a bit of a flourish. “Not everyone gets to spend field time with a member of the old guard.”
“No offense, boss,” Connor said, heading out the door, “but I’m going to stick with my pessimism. It’s served me well.”
Connor walked out the door, leaving the two of us standing there. I looked over at the Inspectre and he looked hurt. Even his mustache seemed a little sadder.
“Don’t worry, sir,” I said, gesturing him politely to go next. “Beating up some college students should improve his mood.”
I was weirdly glad to see that my powers were still keeping us on track and that the greater traumas of people dying seemed to suppress any flare-ups of the tattooist’s emotion. It was a shame that it took panicked flashes of someone dying to trump my other issues, but at least my powers were focused on the case at hand now.
I found t
he old hallways of the unused theater space in one of the New York University buildings along the east side of Washington Square. Room 247 was exactly as I had seen it, with the exception that it had been closed off by copious amounts of yellow caution tape.
I reached for the door with one hand while unhooking my bat from its holster with the other.
Connor stopped the hand I was reaching with and used his other to point at the strip of yellow NYU caution tape across the door. It was split where the door met its frame.
“Guess they probably aren’t expecting company,” he whispered.
I pulled out my bat, extending it. “Too bad for them,” I said.
My blood was up after what we had found earlier. On a silent count of three, Connor kicked the door in. I ran in first, bat at the ready. We were in a dark, cluttered space filled with stored bits of classrooms past. The only light in the room came from far off in the middle of it through a maze of desks, chairs, and old-style chalkboards. Three of Professor Redfield’s favorite students—Elyse, Darryl, and Heavy Mike—were sitting around a circle of desks, each with a laptop open in front of them. All three heads popped up from their screens and turned our way.
“Freeze!” I shouted, waving my bat as I started working my way through the jumbled accumulation in the room.
The girl with the short shock of blond hair, Elyse, slammed her laptop shut. “Crap,” she said, jumping up. She looked across the circle of desks at the tall guy with the gauged ears sitting across from her. “Darryl, I told you we should have booby-trapped the door.”
Darryl stood up as well, cradling his laptop in his arms, still typing at it with one hand. Between him and the girl was the chunkier guy, Mike, who was already cramming books and notebooks into a large duffel bag.
“What part of ‘freeze’ did they not teach you at this institute of higher learning?” I shouted.
Connor and the Inspectre began picking their way through the jumble of furniture, but the going was slow. We’d never catch them at this rate. I leapt up and took to the tops of the desks in front of me and ran across them as fast as I could, hoping my precarious path held up under my feet as I went.
Heavy Mike kept stuffing his bag, looking over to the tall one. “Is it ready?” he called out.
“Almost,” Darryl said, still typing away at the keyboard. “Get the hell out of here.”
Heavy Mike didn’t need to be told twice. He snatched up his bag, threw it over his shoulder, and disappeared into the shadows that stretched out behind him. The sounds of stuff falling over left and right rang out as he ran off. I looked around the room, searching for the blond girl again, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. Then I spied her shock of blond hair lowered down inside the center of circled desks. She was knelt down in the middle of them with a sizable curved blade in her hand, and she was not alone. The other freshman from Eccentric Circles, Trent, was tied in place on the floor with several computer cables draped across his body. The open ends of them were frayed with the other ends running up to several of the laptops.
“Go for the tall one,” I shouted over to Connor. My partner course-corrected through all the storage, heading for Darryl. I leapt down into the open circle in the middle of the desks, swinging my bat to disarm Elyse. I wasn’t one for going full force with human foes, which threw my timing off, and Elyse ducked under my swings, nicking the prone freshman with her knife before lunging at me. It slammed into my satchel with the scrape of metal on metal ringing out—it hit against my Ghostbusters lunch box.
“Nice lunge,” I said, pissed, but thankful I had avoided a wound.
“Thanks,” she said with a wicked smile and a wild panic in her eyes. “The college provides excellent facilities that come in handy beyond the acting program. Helps to keep me a triple threat.”
“It’s not going to do you very much good with a broken arm,” I said, swinging to disarm her.
Elyse feinted back and dodged the blow. “Darryl!” she called out. “Ready?”
“I think so,” he said, “but the footage isn’t cued up.”
“Then use the office piece,” she said, taking a moment to look down at the bound boy on the floor. “Anything!”
I glanced down as well. The tiny river of blood from where she had nicked Trent had flowed down over the boy’s arm, pooling at the inside of his elbow joint where it touched a fray of the exposed wires from the network cable.
“Launch it!” Elyse shouted, backing to the edge of the circle.
Just as my partner arrived at Darryl’s side, the tall guy fumbled his machine away from Connor’s grasp. He held the laptop out of reach and then flipped it around until the screen of it was facing away from him.
At my feet, a spark rose from where wires mingled with the boy’s blood, causing him to howl out in pain through the gag in his mouth. That distraction was all it took for Elyse to make a break for it. She threw herself back onto one of the surrounding desks, lifted herself into a back walk-over, and landed on her feet.
“Guess that makes me a quadruple threat,” she said. “Looks like all those years of auditioning for roles as an Olympic gymnast paid off.” Already Elyse was backing away across the desks.
I started after her, but stopped in my tracks by the sounds of chaos coming from Connor and Darryl struggling against each other. The laptop in Darryl’s hands was sparking the same way the frayed network cable had when it touched the freshman’s blood. Its screen was taken up by a full video displaying the professor’s office that we had broken into the other night. The camera swept across the professor’s shelves, the ones that were covered with his massive collection of movie monster miniatures, which I was upset to see were coming to life. They flew, ran, and crawled their way toward the camera, the first of them—a tiny Harpy with a considerable wingspan—flying out of the laptop screen itself. Tiny skeletal hands clawed their way along the edge of the laptop screen as bony, undead Sinbad pirates pulled their bodies out and dropped to the floor. Within seconds, dozens of foot-high creatures were swirling through the air or dashing across the floor of the unused classroom. The room quickly filled with enough of them that I started to worry about them as a real threat.
I spun back around toward Elyse. She was putting a greater distance between us with each passing second. I leapt up onto the desk to give chase but something was at my leg. I looked down at one of the Harpies dangling around my ankle, its claws tearing into the edge of my jeans as its wings flapped wildly about. I brought my bat down on it without a second thought and was happy to see it break into a mangled twist of clay and a metal skeleton underneath. What didn’t make me happy was seeing it fall onto the bound freshman, who had several monsters of his own to contend with.
The bound student was being swarmed by a battalion of pirate skeletons, some of which brandished curved cutlasses. I doubted if they could even do any real damage with those, but the boy was prone and I couldn’t just leave the poor bastard there to play pincushion, especially considering he was already bleeding.
“Dammit,” I said and jumped back down into the circle. The tiny skeleton pirates shifted their focus from their helpless victim to me. “Back to the boneyard for you, me hearties!” I swung at the closest one and sent it flying off into the darkness where it landed with a shattering sound. “Who’s next?”
The answer, apparently, was all of them. Before I could pick my next target, the entire group rushed me. The miniature horde was like a track-and-field team as they bolted for me, several of them leaping into the air, climbing up my pant legs. The pokes of tiny swords dug at me along the back of my jacket, but for now they weren’t even piercing the fabric.
I grabbed one of the skeletons climbing up my right thigh and tore it off my body. A piece of my jeans went with it, but I didn’t care. The little monster writhed in my hand, but I didn’t give it time to act. I threw it up into the air like I was coaching little league kids how to play outfield, and then swung at it. The skeleton shattered into tiny pieces, its structure
proving to be even more fragile than the Harpies. That gave me hope.
The sensation of the others scrabbling their way up my back started wigging me out. I threw myself backward onto the desk behind me. A mashing crunch sounded as my body slammed down onto the desktops. A few of the broken pieces dug into my back, but compared to the thought of their tiny blades poking at me, I was fine with it.
Prone, my legs dangled over the edges of two of the desks and a skeleton head rose up over the crest of my left knee. I kicked my leg straight out as if a doctor had been testing my reflexes, sending the pirate figure up into the air above me. I flashed my bat out at it and it exploded into dust and fragments of wire.
Jumping up to my feet, I was feeling pretty good with the way things were going. I grabbed another one on my leg, swinging it by its head until there was an audible popping sound and its body separated, sailing off with a distant crash.
My moment of triumph was cut short when I looked down at the center of the circle. Two of my pirate attackers had been smart enough to stay clear of me, and had instead taken position by the bound student’s head. Their swords were poised over the frantic movement of his widening eyes.
“No!” I shouted, diving for them, but they were already lowering their blades. I wasn’t going to make it. I hit the floor hard, skidding into the student with a harsh “oof” as I drove into him.
Connor’s feet shot past my head, one landing on the floor next to the student’s own head and the other lashing out at the two skeletons. They shattered as his foot connected, their pieces raining down on the student’s tightly shut eyes.
“Jesus, Simon,” Connor said, “I thought you were trying to save him, not add to his injuries.”
I scrambled up to my knees and began untying the poor kid. “What happened to the Harpies?” I asked Connor.
Connor lifted up his hand, displaying a fistful of tornoff Harpy wings.
“Nice,” I said. “Remind me never to buy you a bird as a gift.”
Connor tossed them to the floor. “As long as it’s not an evil bird,” he said.