The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

by Norman Partridge

  Anastasia broke down, and Hearthstone moved to comfort her. “This… this man,” he said, his voice trembling as he remembered The Shroud. “You must tell me his name.”

  Anastasia managed to collect herself enough to whisper, “His name is Thomas Clancy.”

  A relieved smile twisted the corners of Hearthstone’s lips. Clancy. The busted policeman who had headed up the takeover of Chinatown. ‘You mustn’t worry, my dear,” he said. “I will handle this matter. Personally.”

  Within the hour, the professor was standing outside a dingy saloon which, while located in the same city, was a world away from his Chinatown home. A blood-red scarf was draped around his neck. A target pistol was secreted beneath his camelhair coat. Four masters of wing chun gung fu stood at his side.

  “I’m going in,” he said, his Chinese impeccable. “Alone.” His subordinates knew better than to argue.

  Hearthstone entered the saloon. Yellow light swimming with smoke. The smell of whiskey and beer and the unwashed. A song ringing over loud conversation — the same song he’d heard during the destruction of Sun Lim’s Restaurant many months before.

  When I’m dead and laid out on the counter,

  A voice you will hear from below,

  Sayin’ send down a hogshead of whiskey,

  To drink with old rosin the bow.

  In a dark corner, all alone, sat Thomas Clancy. Hearthstone elbowed his way through the crowd, one gloved hand on his hidden pistol.

  Hearthstone sat down. Clancy grinned. The Irishman held a bowie knife in his left hand, and he was sawing it gently across the top of his right wrist. There were dozens of small cuts there, some scabbed over, some weeping blood.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Clancy whispered, “for a high ‘n’ mighty pris, she was awful lively ‘tween the — ”

  The pistol thundered, time and again, until the chambers were empty.

  Clancy still grinned. His voice came in a purring whisper. “Remember, Jacob Hearthstone, I come for those who are evil… Those who are evil must suffer… They must suffer, and then they must… ”

  Clancy slumped backward. His jaw slackened and a bloody bubble formed on his lips.

  Hands grabbed at Hearthstone’s arms. Someone wrestled the empty pistol from his grip.

  The bloody bubble burst. A scarlet shadow poured from Clancy’s mouth and rippled across the scarred tabletop. It hit the floor and slithered over the professor’s shoes. Hearthstone screamed at the icy feel of the thing. The crowd screamed as well, but their screams were for him, for his blood.

  The professor fought against his subduers, and he saw for the first time that they were policemen. Irishmen like Clancy. A punch thundered into his stomach. Clancy was a busted copper, but there was no such thing as a busted Irishman.

  The professor hit the floor. Filthy sawdust caked his bleeding lip and stained his expensive camelhair coat. He rolled away from his attackers, desperately trying to gain his feet. He didn’t fear kicks or punishment. No, he feared the scarlet shadow that had slipped from Clancy’s mouth, the shadow that had to be The Shroud.

  God. Where were his reinforcements? Where were the wing chun men now that he needed —

  The Irishmen pulled Hearthstone to his feet and towed him into the alley behind the saloon — deeper, deeper — the professor’s eyes watching the street, drinking in the maddening scene with the sardonic humor of a true masochist, an unabashed cynic.

  For in the street, he saw it. The shadowthing that was The Shroud. It expanded like a great net and ensnared the wing chun masters, whose punches and chops proved laughably ineffectual as the thing tightened its grip on their muscular bodies, crushing bones and reducing flesh to bloody pulp.

  Then came the true horror.

  Once more a snake, the scarlet shadow slithered across the bloodslick pavement. Encircled a creamy gold ankle. Coiled around a delicate calf, a perfect knee, and disappeared beneath the skirt of the woman with amber eyes.

  The Doberman advanced, growling, its nails ticking against the tiled kitchen floor.

  “Down, Dempsey… Good boy, Dempsey.” Hearthstone whispered, inching toward the center of the kitchen.

  He glanced at Machii’s corpse. Damn. For the last few months, the yakuza had been feeding Dempsey, and now the dog thought that Machii was its master, thought that Machii was the one who provided teriyaki-marinated filet mignons.

  Hearthstone almost laughed. If only his bride hadn’t loved the dog so much. If she hadn’t spoiled the animal, and if he hadn’t gone along with the spoiling… If only he’d complained about the price of filet mignon in the Japanese markets, then maybe Dempsey wouldn’t care a damn about the dead man on the floor… If only…

  If only he hadn’t been crazy enough to think that Machii was The Shroud returned.

  Hearthstone toed the expensive dish and slid it toward Dempsey. Slowly, slowly…

  “Good boy. Good doggy.”

  The dog began to pant.

  Sniffed at the teriyaki-drenched finger that floated in the dish.

  Parted its lips… and grinned.

  After three months in the hands of incompetent prison doctors, Hearthstone was happy to join the general population in the penitentiary. His ribs had healed nicely, his back bothered him only when the weather was bad, and he soon accustomed himself to eating solid food despite the absence of several teeth which he’d left behind in a San Francisco alley.

  Silly, really. The whole idea. Heal a man in order to fry him whole and hearty in the electric chair.

  Though most death row inmates were not allowed to work or even move among the general population, an exception was made in Hearthstone’s case. After all, the warden had never before had the services of a full professor at his disposal.

  So, Jacob Hearthstone, prisoner number 37965, was allowed to present lectures to his fellow convicts. These lectures took place in the prison library, and before long Hearthstone had insinuated himself among the library staff. In a few short months he was a member of that staff, charged with the delivery of books and magazines to the prisoners in their cells. This duty gave him a feeling of freedom and took his mind off the execution date which drew closer with each passing day.

  Hearthstone wanted to move among the general population for one reason: he wanted to determine if he was a madman. His visits from the demon known as The Shroud seemed increasingly fantastic as time passed, and he often wondered if he had imagined the monster, conjured it up, as it were, out of thin air. As he moved from cell to cell he listened for any mention of the mysterious creature, and sometimes he ventured a question or two with inmates he knew and trusted.

  In Hearthstone’s seventh month of incarceration a new prisoner appeared on death row, a transfer from a federal pen on the east coast. Hearthstone struck up a conversation with the man soon after, explaining that he was a pipeline to the library and could obtain materials that would help the new fish pass the time.

  “Sure.” The man smiled at the suggestion. “Bring me anything you got on electricity, and bring me anything you got on the human soul.”

  Hearthstone thought the requests odd, but he didn’t say anything, for he had learned that questioning a prisoner’s taste in even the most unimportant matters could be a fatal mistake. He’d seen a con killed with a sharpened spoon for daring to denigrate his cell mate’s preference for a certain brand of cigarette.

  And apart from all questions of jailhouse etiquette, Hearthstone didn’t trust this man’s eyes. They were dark green and always moist, almost as if brimming with tears, two fathomless pools that swam on the con’s chalky, stretched visage. The eyes were part of the new fish’s mystery, and their peculiar cast made Hearthstone all the more eager to investigate him.

  So he brought the man a stack of books. Books by Edison and books by Kant. And then he brought more. William James, Descartes. The new fish read them all. And soon they were talking.

  Hearthstone called his new friend The Electric Man.

&n
bsp; Before long, The Electric Man exhausted the prison library’s meager resources. “Just let me talk to you, Jake,” he said. “You’re a professor. You should know all the answers.”

  Ignoring the vulgar familiarity, Hearthstone said that he was happy to indulge such a request.

  “Okay, Professor. I been reading all this stuff, and it just don’t tell me what I need to know. I mean, I know about electricity. That stuff I can figure. The stuff about the soul is tougher, but some of it makes sense, too. But what I don’t get, what I don’t know anything about, is the two things together. Get me?”

  “Go on… I’ll try to follow.”

  “That’s jake. Now I’m gonna lay it out flat, and if you don’t want to believe me, you just say the word and I’ll never look at you again. But what would you think if I told you that the screws strapped me into the electric chair back east two years ago, and one of ‘em pulled the switch and gave me a real good ride, and nothing happened to me at all?”

  Hearthstone thought of his fast-approaching execution date. “I’d ask you how you managed the trick.”

  The Electric Man grinned. “Oh, it’s an easy one, y’see. All you got to do is get someone to come inside you, swim around in your blood, and steal your soul.”

  Hearthstone grinned. “Where do I sign up?”

  “It ain’t funny, Jake,” The Electric Man said. “You ever hear of something called The Shroud?”

  “As it happens, I’ve met the fellow.”

  “Uh-huh. I thought you had the look. Well, I’m the world’s greatest expert on the son of a bitch. I’ve had him in my head, and it wasn’t what you’d call a barrel of laughs.” The Electric Man shivered at the memory. “And ever since then I been tryin’ to figure it all out. Figure him out. But I just can’t do it. I got too many questions. And now I’m startin’ to think that it ain’t a thing you can answer. It ain’t like a puzzle where all the pieces fit.

  “Look, Professor, I only want to know one thing: if that devil made off with my soul, and if they strapped me in the chair and it didn’t do nothin’ but curl my hair, do you think I’m ever gonna be able to die?”

  Hearthstone said, “Before I can answer that question, you must tell me what you know of The Shroud.”

  Hearthstone readied his pistol.

  The dog’s grin gaped into a yawn, and then the animal dipped its huge head and sniffed at the food that the professor had pushed its way.

  Hearthstone smiled. “Oh my, you’re jumping at shadows, old boy, jumping at every damn stimulus that fires those very old synapses… ”

  Dempsey began to eat.

  Hearthstone relaxed. Remembered.

  The Electric Man’s voice: He came after me, y’see. Doesn’t matter what I did, doesn’t matter that other guys did worse… he just came after me. Told me I was gonna suffer, then die. Oh, he kept his word about that sufferin’ part. My wife, well, the first night he came around she seen him, and she got so damn scared she went into convulsions and almost bit her tongue clean off. Right on the livin’ room rug. Yeah, that was sufferin’ all right, and I ain’t even sure the bastard meant for that to happen. Then things got worse. He started stealin’ money from me — it’d just disappear right out of my pockets — and I couldn’t pay off my boys, and soon they was huntin for me.

  The sounds of Dempsey licking meat, chewing, swallowing.

  Yeah, came for me in the morning, he did. I was shavin’, looked up and seen him behind me. Well, the razor slipped and I cut myself. Bam! He was on me like a wild animal or somethin’ and then he wasn’t there at all — outside of me, that is — but I could feel him swimmin’ around in my blood, squirmin’ in my guts. The devil was inside of me!

  The filet mignon was gone. Tentatively, Dempsey licked at the severed finger.

  He makes me get all duded up — straw hat, corsage… everything. Makes me get my Tommy gun, y’see. Walks me out to a Cadillac, a Sport Phaeton, and there’s a dame sittin’ behind the wheel. Brown eyes that was almost gold, pretty, a dancer from one of my speakeasies. She don’t say nothin’ just smiles and drives me over to my boys’ digs and drops me off But that devil’s still inside me, seel He trots me upstairs. Makes me open up on my own boys. God, I seen some things… but this was awful. These was my friends. And I got mad — crazy mad — thinkin’ about what he’d made me do, thinkin’ about how he d hurt my wife.

  The dog took the severed digit in its teeth. Flicked its head. Bit.

  I started to fight the bastard then and there. I stuck my hand in front of the gun barrel and blasted a few rounds right through it, through my wrist, too— see the scars here? Anyway, I was screamin’ — my hand spewin’ blood all over me and all over the room and my boys, the awful stink swimmin’ in my head — screamin’ for the bastard to get the hell out of me. Willin’ him to get out of me!

  Dempsey swallowed. Panted.

  And then came the worst part. It was bad enough back home, lookin’ at my eyes in the mirror, lookin’ at the little cut on my neck, knowin’ that thing was inside of me. But it was even worse seein’ it wash out of me in all that blood. God, it was scrambled all over the floor like rotted guts from a slaughterhouse, and it pulled itself together… just came together like somethin’ out of a nutty cartoon. The damn thing crawled over the bodies of my boys and I started to let it have it with the gun… wracked the thing pretty good, wracked up my boys’ dead bodies, too, but I didn’t even care no more… and then it spun around when it got to the window, stood up, holdin’ out something black in its hand, a bloody thing that looked like a baby. And it said in that voice it has, ‘You live without it, dead man. You just try living without your soul…’”

  Dempsey ducked his head against Hearthstone’s shoes and whined, begging for another finger.

  So, there was a weakness in the fabric of The Shroud, a weakness that gave Professor Hearthstone hope. Perhaps it was simple fear, and perhaps it was something more complex — something that could not be named. Still, Hearthstone knew that if the riddle of The Shroud could be solved, death might not be inevitable.

  Hearthstone considered all the possibilities as his execution date drew nearer. He thought of The Electric Man’s state of mind during The Shroud’s invasion of his body and decided that the gangster’s own fear had allowed The Shroud to control him. And then he remembered how The Electric Man’s own anger had grown - anger at what had happened to his wife, anger at what The Shroud had forced him to do to his fellows — boiling to a hateful rage that was pure and possibly quite insane.

  When he finished his examination of The Shroud’s battle with The Electric Man, Hearthstone was confident that he could form a plan of attack should the demon reappear. He prayed that such a creature as The Shroud could not glory in silent victory. He concentrated on hate, and he was pleased to find that insanity was a prize well within his grasp. And on the night before his execution, the thing came, a nightmarish red-black pudding that sluiced through the bars of his cell and puddled on the brick wall, oozing a great, ugly grin.

  “I have supped on your suffering, Jacob Hearthstone,” The Shroud said. “And now, as I promised, you will die.”

  The professor’s only reply was a smile. He thought of Anastasia White. He closed his eyes and saw her. Straightened and heard his ruined back pop and complain. Gritted his remaining teeth and pictured bloody molars dotting the slimy cobblestones of a San Francisco alley.

  “Tomorrow when you sit in the electric chair, I will be there,” The Shroud said. “I will be inside the man who wears the hood. Mine will be the hand that pulls the switch.”

  Hearthstone wasn’t listening. He was deep inside his own head. He saw Thomas Clancy sitting before him, a bloody bubble on his lips. Saw the bowie knife clenched in Clancy’s left hand, the thin cuts on the Irishman’s wrist.

  Suddenly Hearthstone stood and stepped close to the wall, confronting the scarlet grin, sucking the fetid breath that boiled from The Shroud’s mouth as if it were the finest perfume in all the wo
rld. He removed his glasses, slipped the cover from one of the ear pieces, and drew the rough metal across the back of his right hand. A trickle of blood seeped from the wound.

  Hearthstone challenged The Shroud. “Come in, you bastard. If you dare… if you are not frightened.”

  The scarlet thing was breathing fast now. It slid away, toward the ceiling, but the smell of blood was too great a lure. The shadow sprang from the wall, poured over Hearthstone’s hand, and burrowed inside his wound.

  I know you, Hearthstone began. I know your amber-eyed bitch.

  Great whistling gasps wracked the professor’s lungs. He felt claws scrabbling over his heart, fighting for purchase.

  Nothing there, devil. No fear to hold onto. Only hatred, strong and pure.

  The Shroud twisted in his guts. Hearthstone doubled over.

  Oh, you’re good. But not that good. Because I remember. I met a man who fought you to a draw, and I learned well the lessons that he taught me.

  Teeth ripped at his brain. A fist clenched his heart.

  Hearthstone’s insanity pushed them away. I’ve had your bitch. I’ve pressed my lips to hers. Felt that creamy skin under my fingertips. And now I have you.

  The Shroud slipped across the condemned man’s shoulderblades and down the bones of his arm. Hearthstone pressed his left hand over the wound on his right. Not so fast, he thought. Don’t leave me just yet…

  The Shroud coiled inside Hearthstone’s forearm. The professor felt the thing shiver. Felt it shrink.

  Hearthstone laughed. Your Irishmen were tougher than this. Your bitch had more backbone.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor. A guard on bed-check duty.

  “Now comes the real test,” Hearthstone whispered. “Let’s see who’s in control.”

  Hearthstone parted his fingers. He willed The Shroud to extend itself in a thin coil that snaked between the bars, and then he unleashed the full power of his insanity, creating a dark monster in his mind, commanding it to grow in the shadow-choked corridor.