The Adventure of the Peril Gem

by Kevin L. O'Brien

before, but she seemed to recognize the name Caldwell. She seemed certain he had ordered from her at least once. She just couldn't recall the details.

  Since I couldn't handle four hot boxes, plus four six-bottle cartons of beer, all by myself, Michele decided to close up the shop and come with me. We loaded my Dodge four-by-four, and then checked a map of Tamarack to see where we were going. The only place where Elmwood and Charles intersected lay at the east end of Greenwood Cemetery. There were houses along both streets, but the man had not given me a house address, which made Michele suspicious. Yet, he had paid, so we were obligated to try to deliver his order. Even so, Michele decided not to take any chances.

  The drive to Tamarack was quiet enough and took only ten minutes. A major state road runs north and west between the village and Delasalle, allowing quick and easy access to the nearby interstate highway. Just west of the road, before one reaches the village proper, is a suburban area with its inexpensive single family homes, parks, and schools. On the east side is the "wealthy quarter", with its beautiful mansions that could rival the best on the East Coast. Beyond it, stretching north and further east, is Maria's Lament, an area of marsh set aside as a nature preserve.

  Once into the incorporated town itself, however, things change dramatically. Tamarack is not a prosperous town. Though the sister city of Delasalle, it has never been as successful as its sibling. It is nowhere near as decayed and squalid as Seth's Landing to the south, or even as tired and rundown as Stonefort to the north, but it is nonetheless decadent and decrepit. A visitor once described Tamarack as a has-been whore, passed her prime, but still trying to recapture the golden days of her youth with a thick veneer of cheap makeup, all the while deluding herself that there really had been any gold to recapture.

  The central, western, and northern quarters of the village are not too bad, since they cater to students who either cannot afford to live in Delasalle or want to experience an impoverished Bohemian atmosphere, but the eastern section that borders on the marsh is by far the worst part of town. The structures there are all extremely old: none are younger than 150 years and some even date back to the arrival of the first settlers, in the middle nineteenth century. Yet they are in varying states of decay and disrepair, even those still occupied.

  Their residents are little better. They are a proud, resourceful, and arrogant people who, by virtue of their direct descent from the founding families, considered themselves superior to the "outlander tribes", the villagers who are their neighbors to the west. They keep to themselves, tending their gardens and tiny plots of land, trading with each other for their meager needs, even preferring to marry within their own families. Many take daily journeys into the marsh to hunt or gather firewood, and more than a few actually live there. In turn, they are avoided by the villagers, who tell strange stories about these "marsh folk", which tend to discourage idle curiosity. This suits the marsh folk just fine, who would prefer never to see an unfamiliar face.

  Greenwood Cemetery lies at the border of the eastern and central quarters of Tamarack, but the intersection of Elmwood and Charles lies well inside the marsh quarter, and there is no other way of getting to it except through the quarter itself. It took us a half an hour to negotiate the twisting streets, which were badly in need of repair. The houses were all dark. In the beams of my headlights they appeared skull white, with windows black like huge, empty sockets. They looked as if they had been rotted by the acidic soil of that drained bog-land. Occasionally we saw shadows scuttling away from our lights. Like the homes, they appeared tattered and ancient, crippled in form, but swift in their movements. I wondered if the soil could do to people what it did to the buildings. Or maybe it wasn't the soil. There, at night, it seemed easy to believe the stories told by the villagers, that the marsh was filled with a necrosis that saturated soil and atmosphere, putrefying both the homes and their occupants until they bore only the slightest resemblance to the modern town.

  At last we spotted the gates of the cemetery. They stood open, though their quantity of rust suggested that they had not been used in over a hundred years. Beyond them, a thick mist shrouded the graveyard. My headlights bounced off the cloud, making it look like a solid, whitewashed wall; we couldn't even see the nearest headstones. Pulling off to the side of the road, I parked, but left the motor idling. I turned the headlights off so that we could look for our customer, and blackness descended, as if a blanket had been thrown over the jeep.

  After a moment, our eyes adjusted to the change, though little more than the gate and the nearer houses could be seen. Unfortunately, there appeared to be no one around to greet us and neither Michele nor I wanted to get out and start knocking on doors. Yet we were not willing to immediately leave. So we simply sat there, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Coming in March.

  From "Youthful Indiscretion"

  As soon as the block fully reassembled itself, the tolling stopped. Apprehension crept over Henry; he knew something was about to happen, he just didn't know what. Then the room began to grow dark. He looked around at the lights. They didn't appear to grow dim; in fact, they seemed as bright as ever. Rather, the areas over which they cast their luminance shrank as the borders became more distinct and sharp. Beyond them, the room fell into shadow like it would at twilight when the sun had set but the sky was still bright.

  In that moment They appeared in his room. It wasn't like how Vlad emerged from shadow, or the affect of Dr. Mabuse's transporter machine. Quite literally one moment the room was empty, and next five beings stood in its center. The thing he noted first was the stench. Though not overpowering, it was enough to turn his stomach, and yet overlaid was the scent of vanilla, which partially mitigated but could not completely cover their foul, rotten odor. At almost the same time he spotted the blue phosphorescent glow that surrounded them like a mist.

  Their most horrific feature, however, was that each was deformed or mutilated in some hideous fashion. One was morbidly obese, with its face so swollen with fat that the wrinkles distorted and obscured its features. Another had a flap of skin covering its eyes while its disfigured mouth had the lips pulled back well away from its mouth and the teeth clattered together endlessly like it was chattering. The third was the size of child about his same age, but its flesh had been seared as if in a barbecue while its eyes stared out from their sockets without blinking. Number four looked like a teenage girl, and while bald was otherwise unmarked, except for a gaping wound in her throat held open by small hooks. They all wore clothing that looked like a combination of religious vestments and butchery garments, except they were made from black leather and vinyl. The robes exposed areas of skin on their chests and stomachs, and it was pierced and sliced and coated with fine powder, like talcum, or...ash? The garments themselves were sewn or hooked into the skin, as if that was needed to hold them in place, in the manner of buttons or zippers.

  But the fifth and foremost, whom he took to be the leader, was the most compelling. He was hairless, with dead-white skin, and his face and scalp was etched in a grid of lines. At each intersection a large pin or small nail had been driven into the bone below. Unlike the others, who looked vacant or mindless, he seemed intelligent and aware. He stared at him with a sardonic half-smile, as if he alone knew a secret others would give their lives to know. It sent chills down his back even as he felt ill. Yet despite how repulsive they appeared, there was something about them that he found fascinating, even provocative. Even as he feared he would vomit at any moment, he felt enchanted by their presence, even a little bewitched.

  But then the nail-headed one frowned, like he realized something was wrong. His companions moved towards the bed, he assumed with the intent to take him, but as they tried to go around their leader, he held up a hand.

  "No, he did not summon us."

  Summon!? He stared down at the block in horror. That's why it was in the vault! How could I be so stupid!

  Vlad appeared in an explosion of shadow, in front of the bed betwe
en him and the monsters. "Run, Little Master!"

  Whatever spell, psychological or psychic, that held him in that room broke, and his terror galvanized him. He ran for the door to the nurse's room, pulled it open, and made for the opposite side, which led into the nursery. From there he could access the secret stairwell and make his way down to his mother's office. She would protect him.

  As he reached the other door, he heard the one to his bedroom slam shut.

  Vlad moved to block the door to keep the Cenobites from following his Master's son, but he felt the one called Pinhead extend his power to push it closed.

  "Vlad Tepes Drakulya." Pinhead regarded him with what appeared to be an arrogant expression. "Have you finally decided to surrender yourself to us?"

  "No. My current existence still satisfies me."

  "Then why do you interfere with our actions?"

  "I defend the Van Helsing Bloodline. So long as I draw breath, no harm will come to those who possess it."

  Pinhead sported a bored expression. "So be it." Even as he spoke, iron hooks at the end of heavy chains flew out of the walls, ceiling, and floor. The chains wrapped around Vlad's body, ensnaring him,