Shadowprey: A Black Foxes Adventure

by Dennis L McKiernan

  “I told you he is bonkers. Quite far ’round the bend. But Thaddeus is a dear and sweet old man.”

  “Regardless as to his mental state, Nurse Tonkins, he did say that you knew all.”

  “Well I know what he told me, but again I say, he’s batty.”

  “Thaddeus lives with us when he’s not here at the asylum, and so perhaps it’ll help us to deal with him if we know those particular fears.”

  Nurse Tonkins shrugged and turned up her hands and said, “I don’t know what good it will do, but all right. It’s quite crazy, you know.”

  As Ky settled back to listen, Tonkins said, “Oh, wait. You and your friends must be the ones he said that I should tell his story to. He was very suspicious that someone would be listening, but when he told me, it was well past midnight, and I was the only one on duty, and so he thought it would be safe. I’m sorry I didn’t think of this sooner, but I was, um, occupied.” Tonkins giggled.

  “May I call my friends to listen?” asked Ky.

  Tonkins frowned, then sighed and said, “If they’ll behave and be nice.”

  Ky stepped from the small room and to the bottom of the stairs, and she whispered, “If you’re listening, Trendel, bring the others.”

  Moments later, Trendel appeared, along with Arik, Kane, and Rith. After each had been introduced to Nurse Tonkins and they had settled in, Tonkins said, “As I was telling Ky, Thaddeus called me into his room well past midnight, let me see, three days ago. And he told me . . .”

  “Tonkins, Tonkins, you must tell my friends. They’ll be here tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Tell them what, Thaddeus?”

  “About the monster, the monster; it is only revealed in darkness or deep shadows, for there its powers wane. Perhaps it has something to do with the sunlight, or bright lights, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  “What monster?” asked Tonkin, sitting in the doorway and watching the hall at Thaddeus’s insistence.

  “I’m certain it’s Stahl himself; he must be revealed, yes, yes, revealed. Perhaps even eliminated.”

  “Oh, Thaddeus,” said Tonkins, her voice falling with regret, “Dr. Stahl is a nice man.”

  “No, he’s not. Not-not. I don’t know where he lives, I don’t know, but you need to tell my friends to track him to his lair. Yes, yes. His lair, or nest, or whatever hideous place he lives. Do you know where he lives?”

  “No, but he has invited me to his place.”

  “Don’t go, no, no. My friends must track him down and deal with him, deal with him, then go to Cold Point and deal with the others. Yes, Cold Point. They’ll know what to do.”

  Tonkins looked at Ky and then the others and said, “Well, about that time James, the very handsome and oh so energetic night watchman, came along and gave me the high sign. Thaddeus shut up tighter than a clam and wouldn’t say anything else, I think because he thought James was ‘one of them,’ but whoever ‘they’ are, I know James is all right. And so I left, promising Thaddeus that I would tell his friends what he told me. But you know what, James drove that right out of my head until just now.” Tonkins giggled and shrugged and said to Ky, “You know how it is.”

  “And that was all, all he said?” asked Arik.

  “That’s it. See, I told you he’s cuckoo, though Dr. Raymond thinks he’s as sane as you or I. And Thaddeus is such a nice old man, I think if he somehow gets discharged, he’ll not harm a fly . . . especially with all of you to watch over him.”

  As Arik frowned and looked at the others, “I have a question,” said Kane.

  Nurse Tonkins gave him a sour glare, but then smiled.

  “This John Doe,” said Kane. “He seemed quite unhinged to me, screaming as he did, yet I hear that Stahl was ready to discharge him.”

  “Doe was homeless, and a charity case. Stahl often treats those who have no family to help them in a time of need, and so the doctor steps in to give them the treatment they require. If he says that John Doe was ready to go out into the world, who am I to question him?”

  “Thank you, Nurse Tonkins,” said Arik. “If you think of anything else, please call.” He handed her a card.

  “Hmm . . .” mused Tonkins, looking at the engraving. “Risk, Limited. What a strange name for a company. What is it you do?”

  “We deal with risks,” said Arik.

  Back in the car, Arik said, “Trendel, do you remember what Stahl looked like?”

  “I do.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Trendel said a word, then frowned in puzzlement. “The spell failed.”

  “Failed?”

  “Failed.”

  “Damn.”

  “He was with John Doe,” said Kane.

  “Right,” said Trendel, and he said another seer word. “Two and a half miles north.”

  Ky unfolded a map, and after a moment said, “I think that would be on the road to Innsmouth.”

  “But Stahl was supposed to be taking Doe for a walkabout in town,” said Kane. “What the blue blazes is he doing up there?”

  “Let’s find out,” said Arik, starting the Pierce Arrow.

  “Everybody armed?” asked Arik.

  They exited the car parked outside a wall surrounding the estate grounds of a large manor. According to Trendel, somewhere inside was John Doe, in dreadful agony and in the process of dying.

  Each was armed with .45 automatics. Kane additionally carried a double-barreled sawed-off 12-gauge. Ky had a Thompson submachine gun as well as her black sword. As usual, Rith had donned her throwing knives in bandoliers crisscrossing her chest.

  Arik glanced at the sun and judged that some ninety minutes would pass before it would set. “We can’t wait for Lyssa. Let’s go.”

  Over the wall they went in complete silence, thanks to Rith. Since it was yet daylight, Ky’s shadow mastery was of no use in crossing the unkempt yard, but they went unchallenged. They made a swift circuit of the manor, ignoring the barnlike structure out back. “We’ll look at that later,” said Arik.

  At the rear of the house, Rith jumped upon a large propane tank and peered through a window. “Kitchen,” she said, her voice directed only to the others. “Empty.”

  They continued the circuit, and reached the front, where columns held up a wide portico.

  The entry door was standing slightly ajar.

  “Me first,” said Kane and, cocking the double-barrel, in he slipped, the others right behind.

  They had come into a large welcoming hall, and in the dimness at the foot of a sweeping stairway leading to the level above stood Nurse Gröber, silent and unmoving.

  To right and left archways opened into other chambers, other rooms, where sheets were draped over the furniture within, like ghosts haunting remembered halls.

  A scream echoed from somewhere, yet Gröber stood stock still, not reacting at all.

  Swiftly, with a .45 in one hand and a knife in the other, Rith moved to where Gröber stood. The nurse made no sound, no motion, but simply remained, as if somehow stunned or paralyzed. Rith moved ’round back of Gröber. “Oh, jeepers! Arik, there’s a silver-dollar sized hole at the base of her skull.”

  In the dimness, something scuttled across the floor and up Gröber’s leg.

  “What th—?” cried Ky. “A bug?”

  Nearly too fast for sight to follow, the insectoid scrambled under Gröber’s dress only to almost instantly reappear at her neck and dart into her skull, and suddenly the nurse came to life. And she screamed and rushed at the four in front of her.

  Behind—Shkk!—Rith’s knife thucked into the back of Gröber’s neck, yet she came on. B-boom! Kane let fly with both barrels, and he nearly blew Gröber in half, yet still she charged, intestines spilling forth.

  Pow! Arik shot her right between the eyes, and her skull exploded, brain matter splattering up and out, and Gröber fell facedown at their feet.

  The insectlike thing scuttled swiftly away from the ruin of her head, and through an open door at the back of the
entry hall.

  And another scream came from that direction.

  “John Doe!” cried Trendel, and he charged after the bug, his feet splatting through blood and guts and brain matter, Arik, Kane, Ky, and Rith on his heels.

  Down into a basement they went, and the place reeked of decay, as of animals left too long in the sun, the remains to burst apart from stench and bloat. Corpses, human corpses, were piled atop one another, slime and pus oozing down from the newer to the older.

  As Kane reloaded both barrels of the 12 gauge, again a scream sounded, this one cut short, as if the screamer had lost life. It came from the far end of the basement, where another door yawned wide.

  They rushed toward it to find a stair leading down into blackness, from which a sucking, slurping sounded.

  Able to see in darkness, Ky charged ahead, and “Damn!” cursed Kane, and he followed her down.

  “Here we go,” said Trendel in discovery, and he flipped a switch, and a hanging light at the foot of the steps bloomed on, just as Kane’s brow clanged into its metal shade.

  Cursing, Kane batted it aside, and the light swung wildly to and fro, as down the stairs the others clattered.

  And at the distant end of this deeper basement, something like a giant cockroach with a proboscis driven deeply into John Doe’s body stood and sucked upon the man hanging limply by his wrists. All over John Doe, a swarm of the hideous small versions of the giant roach sucked at him as well.

  As the light swung two and fro, illuminating and shading the reaches, the great cockroachlike thing alternately became Dr. Stahl in the light and then the dreadful creature in dimness.

  Ky cut loose with the Thompson, and she blew the thing to shreds, John Doe as well, blood and guts and pieces of bone and fragments of chitin and yellowish snotlike slime and clinging strings of mucous flying wide to stick to and dangle from whatever they hit. The small swift bugs dropped away and, trailing thin streams of fluid sucked from John Doe, they scuttled into cracks and nooks and holes. Kane let fly both barrels, and Rith and Trendel and Arik emptied their .45s, but there were too many of the fleet insects, and most got away.

  “Oh, crap,” said Ky. “I should have used a shadowbolt. I would have pared their numbers considerably.”

  “Oh, God, let’s get out of here,” groaned Rith. “I’m about to puke up my guts.”

  “What’ll we do about those little bastards that got away?” asked Kane. “They’re likely to grow up to be big ones.”

  “Burn ’em,” said Arik. That’s what we’ll do is burn them.”

  “We’ll have to take the whole house down,” said Trendel.

  “Right,” replied Arik.

  They found a tractor in the barn, and cans of gasoline there as well.

  They soaked the first and second basements as well as the first floor. And they set the interior afire, and when it was burning brightly, they crossed the wall, and, using Ky’s Tommy gun, Arik riddled the propane tank. And when the released propane met the fire—Badoom!—the tank went up like a bomb and blew half the house into flinders.

  They piled into the Pierce Arrow and drove back into town, getting there just in time to see the fire trucks and police cars and ambulances heading north.

  Night fell, and the sky above glowed red.

  Lyssa, sated by the population of Arkham, appeared as they pulled up in front of the asylum.

  She looked about and said,

  Lyssa looked on in consternation as her companions nearly fell down laughing.

  52

  Courthouse

  (Greyson)

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in the testimony you are about to give, so help you God?”

  Dressed in his monk’s robes, John Greyson glared at Charlotte Dupree and Finster Coburn and said, “I do.”

  As Greyson sat down, Melissa French stood and approached the witness box. “Dr. Greyson, would you tell us what expertise you brought to the Avery project?”

  “I have a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford, a doctorate in theology from Yale, and a doctorate in morals and ethics from Harvard.”

  Melissa turned toward the panel of experts and said, “That’s quite an impressive résumé, Dr. Greyson.”

  Greyson shrugged.

  “And what was your contribution to the care and feeding of Avery?”

  “I taught him ethics and morality, and, along with others, I helped with the design of his programmed emotions, including the limits placed thereon.”

  “And yet it seems these limits failed, Dr. Greyson.”

  “They did, for the lightning strike severely damaged his programming, or so we believe.”

  “Dr. Greyson, there has been much testimony here about consciousness, mentality, and souls. Without going too deeply into the metaphysics and philosophy, would you explain the differences between those three concepts?”

  “Well, the first two are rather straightforward: Consciousness is more or less a sense of one’s personal identity, especially the complex of attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual.

  “Mentality, on the other hand, is defined as the totality of a person’s intellectual capabilities, the endowment of them.

  “Of course there can be both a group consciousness and a group mentality—group-think, if you will, but I believe we are talking of individuals here.

  “But the third thing, the soul, namely, is quite complex, and is defined as the animating and vital principle in humans, and though some believe that only humans have souls, I am not among them, for I think various animals, perhaps all of them, have consciousnesses and mentalities and souls as well. Regardless as to my personal beliefs, in the definition of the soul, it is credited with the faculties of thought and action and emotion and is an immaterial entity. It is the spiritual nature of human beings. It is immortal, and separable from the body at death, and perhaps susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state. The definition also includes the soul being the disembodied spirit of a dead person or, as I would have it, an animal; therefore the soul is a ghost, a shade, a specter.

  “As you can see, the definition of the soul embraces both consciousness and mentality.”

  Melissa nodded and said, “And just how did the idea of the soul come about?”

  Greyson pondered a moment, then said, “As to just how and when and where this concept arose, though it is quite universal, no one can say. However, some think that belief in the soul is driven by the fear of death, and the desire to continue in some fashion after death has taken one away from this mortal coil, perhaps to an idyllic existence or an existence one has made for himself in the afterlife. Thus, souls go to heaven; souls go to hell; souls are reborn; and so on. On the other hand, many believe that when we die, when we are dead, that’s it. We have no such thing as a soul, a spirit that lives on after. Therefore, there is no heaven; there is no hell; there is no reincarnation. Some believe there is only heaven and no hell, and of course vice versa. Some think heaven and hell are concepts born out of two needs: first, so that the leaders of the faith, whatever that faith might be, so that those leaders can maintain power over their flocks through the promise of rewards and punishments in the afterlife; and, second, the concepts of heaven and hell are used to further the teachings of morals and ethics, i.e., do good and go to heaven, do bad and go to hell.

  “But I believe that neither heaven nor hell is needed to teach ethics and morals, for these at base are not religious concepts but are born out of the needs of society.”

  Wound up in the subject, Greyson took a deep breath, preparing to go on, but Melissa said, “Thank you, Dr. Greyson for such a succinct summing up. But let me ask you this: in your opinion, does Avery have a soul?”

  “I used to think not,” replied Greyson. “But upon pondering it, I now believe he might, since he has consciousness
and mentality. Still, were he to be completely powered down and the memory wiped out, which would be murder, by the way”—Greyson cast another glare at Charlotte and Finster—“I am not certain that Avery would have a disembodied spirit.”

  “Well, then, what about Arthur Coburn? In your opinion, does he have a soul?”

  “Yes. He does. I’ve seen it.”

  Melissa’s eyes widened in apparent credulity. “Oh, what did it look like?”

  “Well, as Avery displays it, it is a silvery and glittering spheroid about so big.” Greyson held his spread-fingered but cupped hands apart as if to hold an oblate sphere measuring about seven or eight inches from end to end.

  “And why do you believe that this is Arthur’s soul?”

  “Because it is his disembodied mentality, consciousness, and spirit. The definition of a soul. And because Avery has labeled it so.”

  “Is it disembodied if it is in Avery?”

  “Now, there is a good question, but in my opinion, yes. I believe that Avery has somehow captured it, captured Arthur’s soul.”

  “And if he were to be wiped out . . . ?”

  “As I say,” gritted Greyson, “it would be murder.”

  Melissa turned to Mark Perry, and on her way back to her table said, “Your witness.”

  “I have no questions of this witness,” said Mark.

  Judge Marshall turned to Greyson and said, “Thank you for your testimony, Doctor. You are dismissed.”

  As Greyson moved to the courtroom audience and took a seat next to Toni Adkins, Mark Perry said, “In rebuttal, I call Dr. Henry Stein to the stand.”

  Outside the courthouse, Frankie Roberts waited until Steve gave her the go-ahead sign. She looked into the holocam and asked, “Do you believe in souls? And do you think a soul can be trapped inside a diabolical machine? Dr. John Greyson certainly does. But Mark Perry has called Dr. Henry Stein as a rebuttal witness. If you accept as true such things as souls exist, will Stein shatter your belief in them? Or instead has Dr. Greyson’s testimony turned nonbelievers into believers. Whether you are atheists, agnostics, deists, or theists, I have faith that each of you will make up your own mind.