The junkie shook his head. “Never heard of him. You’re not still going inside lookin’ for him, are you? I told you already, man, you won’t come out alive, not one of you.”
“Because of the monster.” The leader’s voice was flat.
“Right. Just like I said.”
“Gonna kill us. And eat us, too.”
“He’s done it before. Believe me, I know.”
The leader stood looking down at the junkie for a long moment. His fists were clenched now, and his breath started coming faster. His two buddies looked at each other, as if sharing anticipation of a treat.
“You know what pisses me off?” the leader said to the junkie. His voice was tighter now, and louder. “It pisses me off being told what to do, you know that? People tryin’ to order me around, do this, don’t do that, go here, don’t go there, bla-bla-bla, just like my old man. Nobody tells me what to do or where to go anymore, you got that? Nobody!”
He stood directly over the junkie now. “And you know what else burns my ass? Bein’ treated like I’m a moron by some lowlife fuck who ain’t good for nothin’ but sticking a spike in his arm. ‘Don’t go in there— there’s a monster!’” he mocked savagely. “The fuck you think we are, a bunch of kids? Think you’re gonna jerk our chain? Well, jerk this!”
He kicked the junkie hard in the face, driving the back of his head into the wall. The junkie made a sound like “Uh!” and fell sideways, and the leader kicked him again, this time in the side of the head.
Then the others joined in. It wasn’t as much fun as they’d had with other derelicts, since the junkie had lost consciousness almost from the start. But they made the most of it.
After a couple of minutes, the leader stepped back. “All right, all right,” he said to the others. “He’s done.” They stood, breathing heavily, and looked down at what was left of the junkie. His open, dead eyes stared back at them through the blood that covered his face. “Guy was supposed to live forever, huh?” Joey asked through a ratty grin.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Dino said, and they all laughed. Then the leader said, “Check him out, see if he was holdin’. There’s any junk on him, maybe we can sell it.”
The other two went through the junkie’s pockets. “Nothin’ but his works,” Dino reported, holding up a needle and spoon. “Along with a snot rag, matches, and… forty-six cents.”
“Shit,” the leader said. “Well, let’s look inside. Maybe he kept his stash in there.”
“Okay, if you say so,” Joey said as they walked toward the door. “But watch out for the monster, man.” There was more laughter.
They went inside the burnout, leaving nothing behind but a battered and bloody corpse.
But after a minute or so, the dead man began to stir. He moved a finger, a hand, a whole arm. Then the other arm. Then his legs. Slowly, grimacing in pain, the junkie raised himself back to a sitting position. The cuts on his face and scalp were already healing. The pain, he knew, would take longer to leave him.
He was gingerly wiping blood out of his eyes when he heard the first of the screams. It came from within the building, and was soon followed by other sounds of agony and mortal terror that seemed to go on a long time. Something heavy was slammed against the wall from inside, jarring the junkie’s head forward for a second. His face took on an expression that combined anger and disgust.
He was still in the same spot three hours later, as twilight deepened into night. Something… Unspeakable appeared in the doorway of the burnout. Any sane person would have run away screaming, but the junkie barely glanced up as it lumbered toward him.
“You’ve done well,” it said, in a voice out of a nightmare. “They were delicious.”
“I didn’t do anything,” the junkie said wearily. “Except tell them the truth.”
The creature made a rumbling sound that might have been laughter. “Truth can be the most dangerous thing there is, as you well know,” It said. “Well, my hunger is assuaged— for now. And here is some ease for yours.”
It held out something that resembled a hand and dropped three dime bags of heroin into the junkie’s lap.
“Pleasant dreams,” it said, and returned to its lair.
The junkie stared for a long moment at the little plastic bags. Then, hands shaking slightly, he reached for his works.
* * *
Two days later:
“This place might be okay,” one of the girls said. “At least for tonight.”
She looked about fifteen, and her companion appeared to be a little younger. They might have been sisters. Their bulging backpacks and fresh faces marked them as runaways. The faces would not stay fresh for long, the junkie thought.
“I don’t think you two want to go in there,” he said.
They looked at him in surprise, and then with scorn. “Who’re you, the fuckin’ landlord?” the older one asked.
“Nah, I just hang out here,” he told them. The contents of the three dime bags were long since gone, and the need for heroin had his whole body throbbing like a toothache.
“So what do you care where we go, old man?” the girl said. To her, probably anyone past his twenties was old.
“I don’t,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this much: a while back, I saw three badass-lookin’ guys go in there. They ain’t come out yet. So what do you figure’s gonna happen if you get trapped inside with them? You ever hear the expression gang-bang?”
The two girls looked at each other.
“Like I said, don’t matter to me what you do,” the junkie told them. “Hell, maybe they’ll even let me take a turn, once they’re done with you. I can still get it up, you know, especially for fresh young stuff like you.”
The older girl took the other one’s arm and got her turned around. “Come on, let’s go,” she said softly. As they walked away, the older one glanced back at him over her shoulder, her face full of loathing.
The junkie watched them until they turned a corner and disappeared from sight. Craving for the drug was burning his guts like acid, but as he watched the two girls walk away, he did something he had not done for a very long time.
He smiled.
* * * * *
The Last Sorcerer
Washington, D.C.
February 9, 1942
The demon came for President Roosevelt precisely at 6:00 p.m. Not coincidentally, that meant it was midnight in Berlin, capital of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
They call it the “witching hour” for a reason. Tradition holds that midnight is the moment when the powers of darkness are strongest and the forces of light are at their ebb — although why that should be so, no one knows for certain. There was a wizard in medieval Vienna named Karzstein who claimed to have discovered the answer, but he was burned at the stake before having a chance to write it down for posterity.
Tradition counts for a great deal in the arcane arts — sometimes, there is nothing else to go on. So, those who wish to summon a minion of Hell to do their bidding usually choose midnight to send it forth, if they know what they are doing — and the wizard who sought FDR’s death knew that much, at least.
“I don’t normally entertain visitors in the family quarters,” Franklin Roosevelt told his guest. “But Eleanor’s off giving a speech in Kansas City, so we won’t be disturbing her. And, besides, it’s better we don’t meet in the Oval Office, for reasons I’m sure you can appreciate.”
“I understand completely,” his guest said. “If word got around, there are plenty of people who would be quick to assume this was an official visit, instead of a couple of old chums from Harvard getting together to catch up.”
“True, unfortunately. The Baptists in Congress, of whom there are far too many, in my opinion, would throw a fit. Very big on church-state separation, those fellows, unless the state is doing something for their church.” Roosevel
t turned his wheelchair toward a nearby sideboard. He could have had a valet in attendance, but he hated being treated like an invalid, the polio notwithstanding. For the same reason, Secret Service agents were forbidden from entering the family quarters, except under specific invitation.
“Now, what will you drink, John? Still a bourbon man, are you?”
John Cardinal Carroll laughed with delight. “Never forget a thing, do you?”
“Harry Hopkins taught me that, years ago. ‘Always remember what they drink and how they take their coffee,’ he used to say, and I can’t fault the wisdom of his advice. I sometimes think it got me elected governor, the first time.”
Moving deftly, as always, Roosevelt poured generous measures of Old Granddad into two glasses. Then, turning the wheelchair expertly with one hand, he moved it forward a few feet. “Here you go, my friend. Bourbon, neat as a banker’s conscience.”
The two men toasted each other’s health and took their first sips. Carroll then leaded back in his chair and studied his old roommate. “You’re looking well, Franklin. All things considered, I mean.”
Roosevelt snorted. “‘All things’ including the fact that we’re engaged in a war which we’re woefully unprepared to fight?” He shook his head in disgust. “I’ve been saying for the last two years that we ought to beef up our defense spending, Depression or no Depression. But the bonehead isolationists in Congress just wouldn’t hear of it.”
He fitted a cigarette into his holder and lit it with a nearby table lighter. “Well, at least that nonsense is over with now. Isolationism in this country is as dead as Kelsey’s nuts, has been ever since Pearl Harbor. And good riddance to it.”
Carroll nodded, causing the light from a nearby lamp to flicker in the thick lenses of his eyeglasses. “‘Would that it had died hereafter,’” he said, knowing that his old friend was fond of Shakespeare. “And speaking of Pearl Harbor, I thought your speech the day afterward was one of the most masterful— Sweet Jesus, what the hell is that?”
Twenty feet behind Roosevelt’s wheelchair, the air had started to shimmer and coruscate, like water that is being stirred up from below the surface. The room was suddenly infused with a heavy, sulfurous odor that set the two men to coughing.
The smell, so associative of brimstone, had raised a horrible suspicion in the back of Cardinal Carroll’s mind about what he was being confronted with.
Then the demon began to appear in the midst of the roiled air, and he was certain.
Talk about something with the body of a bull alligator that could somehow stand upright, give it the head of a hydrocephalic dwarf, the teeth of a Great White shark, and the claws of a leopard— and you would be about half way to describing the leering monstrosity that rapidly took form in the center of the room.
An ordinary man would have been paralyzed with terror at the sight of the unholy creature. Even Roosevelt, who was by no stretch ordinary, seemed frozen in place, whether by fear or incredulity, or both.
But Carroll had seen this kind of thing once before, as a young priest doing missionary work in India, and he hesitated not at all.
Reaching into a pocket of his black suit, he grasped an object that he took with him whenever he traveled. To those who knew about it, he sometimes jokingly described it as “the Catholic equivalent of a good luck charm,” but it was far more than that.
The crucifix was about six inches long and heavy, the way real gold always is. Made in 1521 by a master craftsman in Dublin, it had resided in an Irish monastery until 1924, when the crumbling structure was condemned as unsafe for further habitation. It had been given to Carroll by the Archbishop of Dublin.
That cross had been revered and protected and prayed over by holy men and women for more than three centuries.
And it was now being wielded by a Prince of the Church, whose own faith had been tested many times and survived each trial stronger than before.
Holding the sacred crucifix before him, Carroll advanced on the apparition. His pulse was pounding in his ears so loudly that he could barely hear the sounds the creature was making.
“Begone, spawn of Satan!” Carroll cried. “Depart this dwelling and return to your place of torment, in the name of Christ our Lord!”
The demon looked at Carroll with loathing. “Stand aside, shaman!” Its voice was something out of a nightmare. “I am not come for thee, but for thy companion. Now give way, and leave me do as I am bidden!”
“You will do nothing, and you will harm no one! The will of the one who sent you is as nothing before the power of Almighty God, in whose name I now cast you out utterly! Begone from this place, and return never again! The power of Christ compels you!”
Carroll advanced on the demon, the crucifix extended before him, like a character out of Bram Stoker. Having seen the play Dracula on Broadway years ago, as well as Tod Browning’s film of the same story, he would have felt faintly ridiculous if he were not terrified within an inch of his life.
But badly frightened or not, Carroll continued forward. Just before the cross would have come into contact with the demon’s face, the thing gave vent to a howl of rage and frustration, then vanished entirely. A moment later, nothing remained but the lingering small of brimstone, which began to fade rapidly.
In his wheelchair, Franklin Roosevelt had the stupefied look of someone who has been hit between the eyes with a hammer. He had confronted many enemies in his time, from political opponents, to polio, to a Nazi dictator and Japanese warlords, but this was something he had never imagined in his worst nightmares.
“John, for pity’s sake,” he managed after a while. “What in the name of God was that?”
Carroll staggered back to his chair and collapsed into it. He picked up his glass with shaking hands and downed the remaining bourbon with a gulp.
“It is well you should invoke the Lord’s name, Franklin,” he said unsteadily, “for it was His power that saved your ass. And my ass too, for that matter.”
Roosevelt shook his head in amazement. Then, after a few moments, his practical nature reasserted itself. “I heard you tell that, that — thing — never to come back. Is it fair to assume I’ll be safe from now on?”
“I would say so, yes.” Carroll was reaching for the bottle of Old Granddad when a thought struck him. “Unless….”
Roosevelt looked at him sharply. “Unless what?”
“Unless whoever it was summoned that creature from the pits of Hell,” Carroll said bleakly, “decides to send another one.”
* * *
Berlin
February 13, 1942
Sebastian Krause sat cooling his heels in the luxuriously appointed anteroom, waiting for the Chicken Farmer to finish talking on the telephone.
At least that’s what the primly dressed fraulein (blonde hair, blue eyes, big tits— the perfect Aryan maiden) behind the immense desk had said the man was doing in there, inside his sanctum sanctorum. He had been doing it, by Krause’s calculation, for the last seventeen minutes, at least.
Of course, this could simply be another of the Chicken Farmer’s little games, to demonstrate his superiority to Krause— and to everyone else in the Reich, with one notable exception. The man was full of petty tricks like that, especially when dealing with people who, in another life, would have been his obvious social superiors.
Despite everything he had achieved in so short a time, the Chicken Farmer was at heart still as insecure as an adolescent boy at one of the Frei Korpur Kultur nude beaches that used to be common before the Party took power — constantly comparing himself to other men, chronically finding himself lacking, compulsively overcompensating with childish routines like the one he was presently engaged in: making important visitors wait, just because he could.
Krause himself had come up through academe— his SS rank of Obersturmbannfuehrer was purely honorary, although a useful thing to have in these t
imes. His Ph.D. research at Heidelberg, focusing on some of the more obscure Germanic legends, had led him into an examination of some of the darker aspects of the occult. That had made Krause a perfect candidate for the Ahnenerbe, the Chicken Farmer’s Racial Research Bureau.
But proving the innate superiority of the Aryan race was only a small part of the Ahnenerbe’s mission. It was like a mining operation, in some ways. There was the mundane activity carried out on the surface, and then there was underground, where the real work of the enterprise got done. And it was like mining in another way, Krause thought— the further you got from the surface, the darker and more dangerous the work became.
Despite his professioral background, Krause had good, strong nerves. And for Project Mjolnir (named after Thor’s hammer), he had needed them. God, he had never imagined that such things could really be….
One of the three telephones on the Aryan maiden’s desk buzzed softly. She murmured into the receiver for a moment, then looked up and told Krause, “The Reichsfuehrer will see you now.”
Krause stood, gave his black uniform tunic a quick tug to smooth the wrinkles, and walked briskly into Heinrich Himmler’s private office.
* * *
At least Himmler had not made him stand at attention while giving his report. Krause had been invited to sit, and even offered a glass of schnapps, which he had accepted gratefully.
“I regret to say that we still do not know for certain what went wrong,” Krause said. “Admiral Canaris tells me that the Abwehr’s agents in America are still unable to penetrate the White House itself. They’ve studied the press reports, of course, but have found no mention of anything unusual taking place around Roosevelt on the evening in question. Certainly nothing that would explain the… failure of the experiment.”
Himmler grimaced. “A waste of effort, reading their newspapers for information. Journalists write what they are told to write, and no more.”
“That is true in the Reich, of course,” Krause said, “and quite properly so. But the Americans have quaint notions about these things. Their press is largely unfettered by government control, even during wartime.”
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