"Here Rest the Dead"
May. 28th, 2022 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Here Rest the Dead"
3/14-3/15/1978
I.
The Xeroxed flyer HAVE YOU SEEN ME? was stapled to the telephone pole just outside the 7-11. As Bane finished paying inside for the full tank of gas, Katherine walked over and studied the photo on the flyer. It showed a cheerful, moderately attractive young woman with frizzy blonde hair and round-lensed glasses grinning for the camera. Margaret Anne Schuler, age nineteen, last seen walking home from class on February 11. That was not quite a month ago. The typewritten note described what she had been wearing and gave a phone number to call.
Katherine Wheatley stared at the flyer with an unexpected twinge. She was nineteen herself. Suddenly the reality of a missing person sank in to her awareness as more than just an assignment that Kenneth Dred had sent her and Jeremy Bane to look in. Katherine was of average height, slim and pretty with straight glossy black hair and blue eyes. She was wearing black canvas sneakers, jeans and button-front dark green blouse with the cuffs rolled back on this unseasonably warm day. The young telepath gave a start as Bane emerged from the 7-11 and came over to stand beside her. She was getting used to his presence, but he was still a bit too intense for her to be comfortable near.
The Dire Wolf, he was called in the Midnight War. Not quite twenty-one, tall and lean to the point of looking gaunt, Bane had a shock of black hair over a narrow feral face and a pair of clear grey eyes that regarded the world with innate suspicion. As always, he wore the same all-black outfit of slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket and even in the mild afternoon sunlight, there was something ominous about him. Bane stood at her shoulder and read the flyer silently.
"She's not the girl Mr Dred sent us to find," Katherine said quietly. "So there are at least two missing now."
"Seems like it," answered Bane without visible concern. "Maybe more. This is a college town, so I expect a lot of kids drift in and out." He started toward their car. "Let's go talk with Mr Dred's friend and see what help she can give us."
Katherine followed him meekly enough. It was beginning to get on her nerves that Bane treated her with such disinterest. She knew objectively she was good-looking and she was used to getting a certain amount of attention from young men, but Bane always seemed distracted. Dire Wolf indeed, she thought, Lone Wolf is more like it. She opened the passenger door of the dark green Chevy Malibu and buckled her seat belt as Bane got behind the wheel. He glanced both ways and pulled out onto the main street of Cobleskill, heading out of town.
They were a four hour ride north of Manhattan, in the middle farm country with apple orchards and fields of placid cows and rows of corn. The town of Cobleskill itself looked pleasant enough, clean and safe and unremarkable except for having three bars almost adjoining each other on the main strip. Bane got on Route 145 and swung west, with the Cobleskill Creek sparkling to one side of the road. He drove well over the speed limit as usual, with that unshakeable confidence in his abilities that annoyed Katherine the longer she worked with him.
"I feel a bit peckish," she told him, more to break the silence than from hunger. "Couldn't you stand a bite?"
"Sure," he said and left it at that.
"We're not much for small talk, are we?" she muttered. "Have you ever been up here before?"
"No," he answered simply. Then he caught that she wanted conversation and continued, "I've been in the city all my life. Manhattan. Before I started working for Mr Dred, I never got further away than Jersey. You like this type of area?"
"Oh very much so," Katherine said. "I don't think you Americans realize just how big your country is. If we got a hundred miles from London, it was considered quite a journey. We've been driving all day and we're not even out of New York State yet. It's amazing."
"I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. The US is like fifty countries joined together. Here's a road house, we'll give it a shot." He swung off Route 145 onto a gravel parking lot where a dark wooden building had three cars already parked in a row. A hand-painted sign read McGILLICUDY'S, FINE FOOD SINCE 1923. Across the front of the building ran a porch with a few round wrought-iron tables and chairs but no one in sight. Bane got out and glanced around as suspiciously as if expecting an ambush. Katherine had gotten used to this. He wasn't being merely eccentric, he had lived in a violent secret world all his life and was still alive because he stayed wary. In just a few months of working with him, she had seen glimpses of that Midnight War, enough to change her worldview forever.
At one end of the building, facing the road was a billboard VISIT HOWE CAVERNS, showing a dramatic painting of vast underground pillars of stone. "Oh, I say that looks interesting," she ventured. "A tour of caves hundreds of feet below the surface?"
Bane glanced over at the billboard. "Yeah. This area is full of caves and tunnels and stuff. Maybe when we're done with the case, if you want to check it out. I'm not much for tourist traps." He strode up to the screen door of the roadhouse without waiting to see if she was behind him. Katherine had given up on any hope of him holding doors for her, the lad just had no courtesy. She moved up quickly and followed him into a cool dark interior that smelled faintly of beer and cigarettes, with Country and Western music on a jukebox.
They took a table and ordered. Bane wanted a hot roast beef sandwich with French Fries and iced tea, and she took the same but with hot tea ("proper tea," she thought to herself). She used the restroom while they were waiting and thought over the situation as she took time to adjust her minimal make-up. Her hair wanted brushing, she thought, but she had left her bag in the car. That showed how rattled she was. When she had agreed to come live in Kenneth Dred's house in NYC, it had been so the elderly occultist could help her gain control over the telepathy that she had recently manifested. In exchange, she would act as an assistant to Dred, who was frail enough that he never left the building on E. 38th Street. But then, she had learned about the Midnight War, the unending series of desperate battles with the creatures of the night.
And she had met Jeremy Bane. Strange young fellow, the Dire Wolf. He was Dred's protege and agent, and his principal purpose seemed to be to act as an investigator into unexplained murders and sightings of bizarre creatures and other unsettling matters. Dred sometimes sent the two of them out together on assignments with the confidence they would work well as a team. She had grave reservations about that.
Here she was. Somewhere in the wilderness of America, thousands of miles away from what was left of her family, riding around with this odd Dire Wolf character and deliberately looking for danger. The surprising aspect was that it didn't feel unreal at all. It felt more real and more natural than normal life. Part of her realized she enjoyed the tension and uncertainty, the adrenalin of staring the Unknown right in its ugly face. Katherine unexpectedly grinned at herself in the bathroom mirror and hurried back out to the dining room.
II.
Only fifteen miles out of town, the road ended at a gravel parking lot and a white-board church at least one hundred and fifty years old, with a belfrey and an equally ancient elm shading it. Almost within reach of the rear of the church was a hill that rose up steeply and was covered with dense foliage. A cemetery packed with old, eroded gravestones stood nearby. Forest surrounded the lot and the church. In the early afternoon sunlight, it looked almost too idealized.
As Bane pulled up and shut the engine off, Katherine shaded her eyes with the flat of her hand. "Oh I say, Jeremy, it's a painting come to life. A Norman Rockwell cover."
The young Dire Wolf made no comment. He seemed to simply not hear any remark which didn't relate to what he was doing at the moment and she was giving up on changing him. He got out of the big car and studied the area carefully, as if expecting an attack at any moment. Finally, he visibly relaxed a bit and turned to the telepath. "No cars. No sign of anyone here."
Katherine stepped toward the cemetery, checking out the split-log fence which ran around it at waist-level. On a post by the open gate was a white sign reading, HERE REST THE DEAD OF CLEMENTS. She leaned over and studied the worn, barely legible inscriptions on the gravestones. "1808 to 1863. These are quite old. Why does it say Clements, I thought we were in Cobleskill?"
"I guess there was a separate town called Clements that got absorbed into Cobleskill as it expanded," Bane said absently. He looked over her shoulder at the cemetery, frowned and said, "The dirt looks like it's been disturbed in a few spots. Not the graves, between them."
"That's odd. Do you fancy a quick walk-" Her voice faded away as she stared at the hill behind the church.
"What's the matter with you?" Bane demanded bluntly. "Your face turned all white all of a sudden."
She backed up and almost bumped into him. "Wait. It's awful. There are a dozen minds near us, evil hateful minds. They want to... eat us!" Katherine spun to face the Dire Wolf, who was staring down at her blankly. "Jeremy, we're in real danger. Right here, right now."
Bane put a firm hand on her shoulder. "Listen, Katherine. If anyone intends to harm you, THEY'RE the ones in real danger. They'd have to get through me first. Where are these people?"
"I can't tell. They're near but I can't locate them. Oh my God, they are vile! Barely human." She gripped the sleeve of his jacket tighter than she realized. "We're being watched."
"Let them watch," the Dire Wolf muttered. "Come on, let's look around." Holding her arm, he started striding angrily toward the church, glaring in all directions as if daring anyone to attack. Katherine was immensely comforted by his sheer confidence. He acted as if he wasn't afraid of anything that lived. They circled the church, inspecting it without quite knowing what they were looking for.
"Mr Dred didn't have any specific information, did he?" she asked as they stood before the small fuel oil on the side of the building.
"No. He told me only that he had heard a rumor about this place. The Clements Lutheran Church. I guess someone he knows was suspicious about the minister here or something. I don't see anything funny." He moved around toward the back, where only a few feet seperated the rear door from the side of the hill.
"We're still being watched," she told him under her breath. "Whatever they are, they're agitated."
"Let them try something," grumbled Bane as he peered in the small window beside the door. "Looks like living quarters. I see a couch and a sink." Fishing in an inside pocket of his black jacket, he dropped to his knees and began trying keys from a massive ring. "Looks like an old Schlage, I know I have one that fits..."
Katherine was still watching her surroundings, eyes moving without resting too long anywhere. "A few minutes ago, I thought this was a charming scene," she told him. "Now it feels like a trap about to close."
"Got it." Bane stood up and opened the door outwards. "Doesn't smell too fresh in there. I'm going to dig for clues, you stay close by."
"As if you have to tell me..." she whispered, standing in the doorway as Bane entered. It was a single ten foot by ten foot room. Along one wall was a couch with pillows and blankets. Behind a folding screen was a dingy toilet and sink. A radio sat on a shelf next to a stack of newsmagazines. The odd item was a horizontal white freezer that took up most of one wall, its lid padlocked shut.
"Now, this has possibilities," Bane said as he started working on the lock. "Yeah, new lock, stiff and shiny. What is the minister hiding in here?"
Watching him unfasten the lock, Katherine Wheatley glanced back over her shoulder again. Something about the base of the hill, where loose rocks were piled, disturbed her more intensely. Nothing moved there, but her mind was picking up murderous thoughts close at hand. She stared and waited. How could there be anyone there, wouldn't she see them?
Crouching over the freezer, Bane swung the lid open and frozen motionless. He had thought he was tough and hardened, but he realized in that moment he could still be shocked. Piled in that freezer, wrapped in clear film, were human arms and legs, hearts and livers and kidneys. Tucked almost out of sight in one corner was the head of a young woman with frizzy hair, her eyes staring blankly with white pupils.
The Dire Wolf lowered the lid and locked it just as Katherine turned back toward him.
"Well, what's in there?" she asked.
"Evidence," he said. As he spoke, someone lunged up and seized Katherine from behind, growling like an animal. The intruder seemed to be a naked man with dead-grey skin and a hairless head. He grasped her by the arm and waist with taloned hands that sank painfully deep into her flesh. The stranger immediately lost his grip and went flying backwards as a tight fist exploded squarely in the center of his face. Bane shoved the telepath out of the way and stalked toward the man.
The Ghoul rose to his feet. Out in the sunlight, he was a disturbing sight, scrawny and leathery and completely haireless, with only a filthy rag tied around his middle. His skin was unhealthy and leprous, his arms and legs long and gaunt. The protruding muzzle showed wide chisel-shaped teeth as he grinned. As soon as Bane stepped forward, the Ghoul rushed at him only to be spun to one side by a blurringly fast left hook that cracked as loud as a gunshot. The monster fell hard, flopped around for a moment and finally started to get up again.
"I'm not playing with you," Bane said quietly. As soon as the Ghoul was standing again, the Dire Wolf hopped forward and blasted a straight side kick to the chest that flung the monster back almost in a reverse somersault. This time he would not be getting up without help. Bane stood glowering down at the creature with clenched fists, then spun to face Katherine. The ferocity in his pale grey eyes made her flinch. An instant later, he eased up and exhaled sharply. "Mr Dred was right when he said he thought something from the Midnight War was up here. We're going to clean this nest out."
"Jeremy, what IS he?"
"A Ghoul. Mr Dred briefed me. They start as normal Humans but a few decades of eating people makes them like this. They can live for centuries, if you call this living. I guess it's kind of similar to vampires feeding on blood. Necrohagy, if I'm saying it right. This cutie has been eating Humans for a long time, judging by the way he's changed." The Dire Wolf knelt warily over the creature. "Yeah, he's dead. Sternum broken. Just as well." Seizing the corpse under its rubbery arms, Bane dragged it behind some bushes and made sure it was out of sight. "Now we know what you were picking up on, Katherine. I guess this proves we can trust your telepathy."
"He wasn't the only one..." Katherine broke in mid-word as her mind picked up on the proximity of another hostile consciousness. Both she and Bane had been so distracted by the brief fight with the Ghoul that neither had heard a car pull up or the man approach. Now, standing just beyond reach, a thin somber figure in black preacher vestments pointed a 12-gauge shotgun at them and regarded them with furious deepset eyes.
III.
Bane kept his open hands plainly visible. "You must be Leslie Taggert."
"Reverend Taggert to you, sir," came a rumbling bass voice. Behind a prominent nose, those dark eyes watched the two of them with a disturbing eagerness. "I notice the lock to my door has been opened."
"Yes it has. We've been sent here from Manhattan to look into the missing girls in this area." Bane lowered one arm a few inches. "I can show you credentials if you like."
"You're.. with the police? FBI?"
"No. We're private investigators called in by the State Troopers. If you want, you can call the Governor's office." Bane took one step forward as he spoke, ignoring the shotgun.
"Perhaps I will. Perhaps I will. What possible reason could you have for breaking into a House of God?" As he spoke, Reverend Taggert revealing abnormally wide and gleaming teeth. "Speak quickly."
"We're following a few leads," Bane said as calmly as if he was not being covered at point-blank range. As he raised an accusing finger, he took another step closer and barked, "Your teeth didn't always look like that, did they?"
Taggert raised the shotgun to face level, but Bane lunged forward faster than any Olympic fencer and seized the weapon to slam its barrels brutally hard against the minister's temple. That made Taggert sag to his knees with a groan. The Dire Wolf yanked the shotgun away and handed it to Katherine, who took it with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. As Tagger struggled to rise, Bane seized him by the lapels of his jacket and hauled him up to his feet.
"Never get that close with a gun," Bane said quietly. "Honestly. I thought everyone knew that." He shook the man violently and then threw him back down on the group. "Those teeth are a giveaway. Your fingertips are getting spatulate, you're getting that forehead ridge. You're one of them, Taggert. When was the first time you ate your special meat?"
Not answering, the minister shot to his feet and threw a wide looping roundhouse blow. He was hopelessly outmatched. Bane redirected that punch harmlessly past him and smashed a backfist with the same arm that cracked hard against Taggert's mouth. The man fell back into a seated position on the ground and swayed, too dazed to be aware of the situation.
Bane glanced over at Katherine, who was holding the shotgun as if it might bite her. "He's a Ghoul. He isn't as far along as the one I fought, he still can pass for normal. He acts as the go-between for the real Ghouls." He glanced over at the cemetery. "Now I have to wonder. How many of the coffins over there would be empty if we dig them up?"
"You're not... joking? No, I can tell you're not. Oh dear Lord, this is hideous. How can such things exist in the world?" Katherine handed him the shotgun and wrapped her arms tightly across her chest as if seeking comfort. "I knew I would be seeing strange things working for Mr Dred, but this..."
"Hey! Snap out of it!" he told her. "No time for that. Listen, we are going to settle this. Before it gets dark, this nest of Ghouls will be gone and people in this county will be safe. I think I figured out where these flesh-eaters are hiding." From the back of his belt, Bane took a regulation pair of handcuffs and secured the Reverend's right wrist to the pipe leading from the fuel oil tank into the church. "There. He's not going anywhere."
"Wait, just what exactly are you planning on doing? Shouldn't we call the police? The Army?" she asked uncertainly.
"When it's over. Mr Dred gave me a number to phone and the code word 'diadem.' We'll get a squad of special FBI agents to take over. They'll clean up everything. I imagine Taggert there will end up under observation in some facility. Department 21 Black studies the occult." Bane took a powerful pencil flashlight from an inside pocket and checked that it was working. "Right now, you stay here and keep hold of that 12 gauge. One or two Ghouls might get past me."
As Katherine gingerly picked up the shotgun again, she stared at Bane in alarm. "You're not seriously going after them? You're not going to tackle a dozen of those creatures!"
The faintest of smiles flickered across the Dire Wolf's narrow face. "Just watch me. And stay alert. If you see a Ghoul coming at you, let him have both barrels." He turned away and started poking around the base of the hill. "You know, this whole county is full of caves and tunnels. Howe Caverns is just the most famous. No wonder these flesh-eaters picked this area... Here. I knew it." He had pulled aside some brush to expose an opening in the side of the hill wide enough for a man to crawl through. Drawing his long-barreled Smith & Wesson with his left hand and holding the flashlight with his right, Bane crawled into the darkness without any perceptible hesitation.
Left behind, still clutching the shotgun, Katherine Wheatley sank down to sit on the ground with her back against the church. The longest afternoon of her life had begun.
IV.
When she thought an hour had passed, she checked her wristwatch and found it had been eleven minutes. Katherine sighed. She was not meant for the stress of a life like this. How did Jeremy bear it? He seemed to absolutely thrive on being in deadly danger, as if it were nourishment. Maybe there was something wrong with him. The lad certainly had no manners, maybe he did not have enough sense to be afraid when he should be.
She had withdrawn her mind into itself. The seething swirl of anger and bloodlust inside that hill was too hard to take. Now, taking a deep breath, Katherine extended her awareness outward. There, inside the earth, in tunnels that never saw daylight, a dozen Ghouls scrambled through the dark with murder in their thoughts. They were absolutely eager for fresh meat, a feast from a man they had just killed rather than a dry tasteless body days or weeks old. Katherine shuddered in revulsion.
To her, the Ghouls registered as hot red presences, burning with rage. And coming to meet them in the dark was a single cold silver fireball that rushed forward eagerly. Bane. Katherine closed her mind off again and leaned back against the church. This was torture, she knew she could follow what was going on but she didn't feel like she could bear to experience it. If Jeremy was killed...
Over by the fuel oil tank, the Reverend Taggert had cleared his head and was staring at her. "Your friend doesn't have a chance. The Children of Damozar are strong and hard to damage, they live in the darkness and a surface-man will be easy prey for them."
"Oh, DO shut up," she said wearily.
"Then my brethren will emerge to free me," Taggert chuckled. "Oh, they will be happy to see you. A young juicy girl like you. I will claim the best parts for myself, of course. Do you know which part of you I will lightly broil tonight? Perhaps you should guess, it's above the waist..."
He was cut off as Katherine came over and stood staring down at him. His left hand and his legs were free, so she was careful not to come within reach. "I suggest you stop talking," she whispered.
"Or what! You're not going to shoot me, missy, you don't have it in you. That's some pretty hair you have, maybe I'll save it for my collection. You should see my scrapbooks-URK!" Leslie Taggert convulsed as if having a seizure, back arching wildly and his eyes rolling up in his head. He slumped limply to the cold ground. Katherine watched him to make sure he was still alive. This was a trick Kenneth Dred had taught for self-defense. By sending conflicting messages into a person's brain, she could make them react by getting confused and disoriented. Or, if doing more forcefully, they had what resembled an epilectic episode and passed into unconsciousness.
"You're not eating anyone, least of all me!" The young telepath slumped. She felt so tired from all the emotional stress but this nightmare was not over yet. Slowly, reluctantly, she turned her thoughts back to the hill behind her. That was odd, but encouraging. There were fewer of the lurid red blurs. Three of them were right on top of the silver fireball she visualized. Katherine trembled and broke off connection again. She resumed leaning back against the church, sitting on the chill dirt and waiting. After a long time, her head dropped forward and she jerked back awake again. Then she really did fall asleep.
Then someone was looming over her, almost touching her. Katherine screamed and swung the shotgun around only to have it effortlessly taken away from her. She realized who it was now. Jeremy Bane stood before her in the late afternoon March sunlight. His clothes were ripped and caked with mud, his hands and face were scratched. Blood was caked on the left side of his face beside his eye, and that eye was swollen. But he was alive and looking down at her with the same detached calm he always seemed to show.
Leaping up, Katherine tackled him so hard they both almost fell. She had never hugged anyone so tightly. "You made it. You're alive." She wasn't crying, but her face was suddenly wet. "You made it."
"Well, sure," he said in some bewilderment. "What did you expect?"
12/25/2014
3/14-3/15/1978
I.
The Xeroxed flyer HAVE YOU SEEN ME? was stapled to the telephone pole just outside the 7-11. As Bane finished paying inside for the full tank of gas, Katherine walked over and studied the photo on the flyer. It showed a cheerful, moderately attractive young woman with frizzy blonde hair and round-lensed glasses grinning for the camera. Margaret Anne Schuler, age nineteen, last seen walking home from class on February 11. That was not quite a month ago. The typewritten note described what she had been wearing and gave a phone number to call.
Katherine Wheatley stared at the flyer with an unexpected twinge. She was nineteen herself. Suddenly the reality of a missing person sank in to her awareness as more than just an assignment that Kenneth Dred had sent her and Jeremy Bane to look in. Katherine was of average height, slim and pretty with straight glossy black hair and blue eyes. She was wearing black canvas sneakers, jeans and button-front dark green blouse with the cuffs rolled back on this unseasonably warm day. The young telepath gave a start as Bane emerged from the 7-11 and came over to stand beside her. She was getting used to his presence, but he was still a bit too intense for her to be comfortable near.
The Dire Wolf, he was called in the Midnight War. Not quite twenty-one, tall and lean to the point of looking gaunt, Bane had a shock of black hair over a narrow feral face and a pair of clear grey eyes that regarded the world with innate suspicion. As always, he wore the same all-black outfit of slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket and even in the mild afternoon sunlight, there was something ominous about him. Bane stood at her shoulder and read the flyer silently.
"She's not the girl Mr Dred sent us to find," Katherine said quietly. "So there are at least two missing now."
"Seems like it," answered Bane without visible concern. "Maybe more. This is a college town, so I expect a lot of kids drift in and out." He started toward their car. "Let's go talk with Mr Dred's friend and see what help she can give us."
Katherine followed him meekly enough. It was beginning to get on her nerves that Bane treated her with such disinterest. She knew objectively she was good-looking and she was used to getting a certain amount of attention from young men, but Bane always seemed distracted. Dire Wolf indeed, she thought, Lone Wolf is more like it. She opened the passenger door of the dark green Chevy Malibu and buckled her seat belt as Bane got behind the wheel. He glanced both ways and pulled out onto the main street of Cobleskill, heading out of town.
They were a four hour ride north of Manhattan, in the middle farm country with apple orchards and fields of placid cows and rows of corn. The town of Cobleskill itself looked pleasant enough, clean and safe and unremarkable except for having three bars almost adjoining each other on the main strip. Bane got on Route 145 and swung west, with the Cobleskill Creek sparkling to one side of the road. He drove well over the speed limit as usual, with that unshakeable confidence in his abilities that annoyed Katherine the longer she worked with him.
"I feel a bit peckish," she told him, more to break the silence than from hunger. "Couldn't you stand a bite?"
"Sure," he said and left it at that.
"We're not much for small talk, are we?" she muttered. "Have you ever been up here before?"
"No," he answered simply. Then he caught that she wanted conversation and continued, "I've been in the city all my life. Manhattan. Before I started working for Mr Dred, I never got further away than Jersey. You like this type of area?"
"Oh very much so," Katherine said. "I don't think you Americans realize just how big your country is. If we got a hundred miles from London, it was considered quite a journey. We've been driving all day and we're not even out of New York State yet. It's amazing."
"I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. The US is like fifty countries joined together. Here's a road house, we'll give it a shot." He swung off Route 145 onto a gravel parking lot where a dark wooden building had three cars already parked in a row. A hand-painted sign read McGILLICUDY'S, FINE FOOD SINCE 1923. Across the front of the building ran a porch with a few round wrought-iron tables and chairs but no one in sight. Bane got out and glanced around as suspiciously as if expecting an ambush. Katherine had gotten used to this. He wasn't being merely eccentric, he had lived in a violent secret world all his life and was still alive because he stayed wary. In just a few months of working with him, she had seen glimpses of that Midnight War, enough to change her worldview forever.
At one end of the building, facing the road was a billboard VISIT HOWE CAVERNS, showing a dramatic painting of vast underground pillars of stone. "Oh, I say that looks interesting," she ventured. "A tour of caves hundreds of feet below the surface?"
Bane glanced over at the billboard. "Yeah. This area is full of caves and tunnels and stuff. Maybe when we're done with the case, if you want to check it out. I'm not much for tourist traps." He strode up to the screen door of the roadhouse without waiting to see if she was behind him. Katherine had given up on any hope of him holding doors for her, the lad just had no courtesy. She moved up quickly and followed him into a cool dark interior that smelled faintly of beer and cigarettes, with Country and Western music on a jukebox.
They took a table and ordered. Bane wanted a hot roast beef sandwich with French Fries and iced tea, and she took the same but with hot tea ("proper tea," she thought to herself). She used the restroom while they were waiting and thought over the situation as she took time to adjust her minimal make-up. Her hair wanted brushing, she thought, but she had left her bag in the car. That showed how rattled she was. When she had agreed to come live in Kenneth Dred's house in NYC, it had been so the elderly occultist could help her gain control over the telepathy that she had recently manifested. In exchange, she would act as an assistant to Dred, who was frail enough that he never left the building on E. 38th Street. But then, she had learned about the Midnight War, the unending series of desperate battles with the creatures of the night.
And she had met Jeremy Bane. Strange young fellow, the Dire Wolf. He was Dred's protege and agent, and his principal purpose seemed to be to act as an investigator into unexplained murders and sightings of bizarre creatures and other unsettling matters. Dred sometimes sent the two of them out together on assignments with the confidence they would work well as a team. She had grave reservations about that.
Here she was. Somewhere in the wilderness of America, thousands of miles away from what was left of her family, riding around with this odd Dire Wolf character and deliberately looking for danger. The surprising aspect was that it didn't feel unreal at all. It felt more real and more natural than normal life. Part of her realized she enjoyed the tension and uncertainty, the adrenalin of staring the Unknown right in its ugly face. Katherine unexpectedly grinned at herself in the bathroom mirror and hurried back out to the dining room.
II.
Only fifteen miles out of town, the road ended at a gravel parking lot and a white-board church at least one hundred and fifty years old, with a belfrey and an equally ancient elm shading it. Almost within reach of the rear of the church was a hill that rose up steeply and was covered with dense foliage. A cemetery packed with old, eroded gravestones stood nearby. Forest surrounded the lot and the church. In the early afternoon sunlight, it looked almost too idealized.
As Bane pulled up and shut the engine off, Katherine shaded her eyes with the flat of her hand. "Oh I say, Jeremy, it's a painting come to life. A Norman Rockwell cover."
The young Dire Wolf made no comment. He seemed to simply not hear any remark which didn't relate to what he was doing at the moment and she was giving up on changing him. He got out of the big car and studied the area carefully, as if expecting an attack at any moment. Finally, he visibly relaxed a bit and turned to the telepath. "No cars. No sign of anyone here."
Katherine stepped toward the cemetery, checking out the split-log fence which ran around it at waist-level. On a post by the open gate was a white sign reading, HERE REST THE DEAD OF CLEMENTS. She leaned over and studied the worn, barely legible inscriptions on the gravestones. "1808 to 1863. These are quite old. Why does it say Clements, I thought we were in Cobleskill?"
"I guess there was a separate town called Clements that got absorbed into Cobleskill as it expanded," Bane said absently. He looked over her shoulder at the cemetery, frowned and said, "The dirt looks like it's been disturbed in a few spots. Not the graves, between them."
"That's odd. Do you fancy a quick walk-" Her voice faded away as she stared at the hill behind the church.
"What's the matter with you?" Bane demanded bluntly. "Your face turned all white all of a sudden."
She backed up and almost bumped into him. "Wait. It's awful. There are a dozen minds near us, evil hateful minds. They want to... eat us!" Katherine spun to face the Dire Wolf, who was staring down at her blankly. "Jeremy, we're in real danger. Right here, right now."
Bane put a firm hand on her shoulder. "Listen, Katherine. If anyone intends to harm you, THEY'RE the ones in real danger. They'd have to get through me first. Where are these people?"
"I can't tell. They're near but I can't locate them. Oh my God, they are vile! Barely human." She gripped the sleeve of his jacket tighter than she realized. "We're being watched."
"Let them watch," the Dire Wolf muttered. "Come on, let's look around." Holding her arm, he started striding angrily toward the church, glaring in all directions as if daring anyone to attack. Katherine was immensely comforted by his sheer confidence. He acted as if he wasn't afraid of anything that lived. They circled the church, inspecting it without quite knowing what they were looking for.
"Mr Dred didn't have any specific information, did he?" she asked as they stood before the small fuel oil on the side of the building.
"No. He told me only that he had heard a rumor about this place. The Clements Lutheran Church. I guess someone he knows was suspicious about the minister here or something. I don't see anything funny." He moved around toward the back, where only a few feet seperated the rear door from the side of the hill.
"We're still being watched," she told him under her breath. "Whatever they are, they're agitated."
"Let them try something," grumbled Bane as he peered in the small window beside the door. "Looks like living quarters. I see a couch and a sink." Fishing in an inside pocket of his black jacket, he dropped to his knees and began trying keys from a massive ring. "Looks like an old Schlage, I know I have one that fits..."
Katherine was still watching her surroundings, eyes moving without resting too long anywhere. "A few minutes ago, I thought this was a charming scene," she told him. "Now it feels like a trap about to close."
"Got it." Bane stood up and opened the door outwards. "Doesn't smell too fresh in there. I'm going to dig for clues, you stay close by."
"As if you have to tell me..." she whispered, standing in the doorway as Bane entered. It was a single ten foot by ten foot room. Along one wall was a couch with pillows and blankets. Behind a folding screen was a dingy toilet and sink. A radio sat on a shelf next to a stack of newsmagazines. The odd item was a horizontal white freezer that took up most of one wall, its lid padlocked shut.
"Now, this has possibilities," Bane said as he started working on the lock. "Yeah, new lock, stiff and shiny. What is the minister hiding in here?"
Watching him unfasten the lock, Katherine Wheatley glanced back over her shoulder again. Something about the base of the hill, where loose rocks were piled, disturbed her more intensely. Nothing moved there, but her mind was picking up murderous thoughts close at hand. She stared and waited. How could there be anyone there, wouldn't she see them?
Crouching over the freezer, Bane swung the lid open and frozen motionless. He had thought he was tough and hardened, but he realized in that moment he could still be shocked. Piled in that freezer, wrapped in clear film, were human arms and legs, hearts and livers and kidneys. Tucked almost out of sight in one corner was the head of a young woman with frizzy hair, her eyes staring blankly with white pupils.
The Dire Wolf lowered the lid and locked it just as Katherine turned back toward him.
"Well, what's in there?" she asked.
"Evidence," he said. As he spoke, someone lunged up and seized Katherine from behind, growling like an animal. The intruder seemed to be a naked man with dead-grey skin and a hairless head. He grasped her by the arm and waist with taloned hands that sank painfully deep into her flesh. The stranger immediately lost his grip and went flying backwards as a tight fist exploded squarely in the center of his face. Bane shoved the telepath out of the way and stalked toward the man.
The Ghoul rose to his feet. Out in the sunlight, he was a disturbing sight, scrawny and leathery and completely haireless, with only a filthy rag tied around his middle. His skin was unhealthy and leprous, his arms and legs long and gaunt. The protruding muzzle showed wide chisel-shaped teeth as he grinned. As soon as Bane stepped forward, the Ghoul rushed at him only to be spun to one side by a blurringly fast left hook that cracked as loud as a gunshot. The monster fell hard, flopped around for a moment and finally started to get up again.
"I'm not playing with you," Bane said quietly. As soon as the Ghoul was standing again, the Dire Wolf hopped forward and blasted a straight side kick to the chest that flung the monster back almost in a reverse somersault. This time he would not be getting up without help. Bane stood glowering down at the creature with clenched fists, then spun to face Katherine. The ferocity in his pale grey eyes made her flinch. An instant later, he eased up and exhaled sharply. "Mr Dred was right when he said he thought something from the Midnight War was up here. We're going to clean this nest out."
"Jeremy, what IS he?"
"A Ghoul. Mr Dred briefed me. They start as normal Humans but a few decades of eating people makes them like this. They can live for centuries, if you call this living. I guess it's kind of similar to vampires feeding on blood. Necrohagy, if I'm saying it right. This cutie has been eating Humans for a long time, judging by the way he's changed." The Dire Wolf knelt warily over the creature. "Yeah, he's dead. Sternum broken. Just as well." Seizing the corpse under its rubbery arms, Bane dragged it behind some bushes and made sure it was out of sight. "Now we know what you were picking up on, Katherine. I guess this proves we can trust your telepathy."
"He wasn't the only one..." Katherine broke in mid-word as her mind picked up on the proximity of another hostile consciousness. Both she and Bane had been so distracted by the brief fight with the Ghoul that neither had heard a car pull up or the man approach. Now, standing just beyond reach, a thin somber figure in black preacher vestments pointed a 12-gauge shotgun at them and regarded them with furious deepset eyes.
III.
Bane kept his open hands plainly visible. "You must be Leslie Taggert."
"Reverend Taggert to you, sir," came a rumbling bass voice. Behind a prominent nose, those dark eyes watched the two of them with a disturbing eagerness. "I notice the lock to my door has been opened."
"Yes it has. We've been sent here from Manhattan to look into the missing girls in this area." Bane lowered one arm a few inches. "I can show you credentials if you like."
"You're.. with the police? FBI?"
"No. We're private investigators called in by the State Troopers. If you want, you can call the Governor's office." Bane took one step forward as he spoke, ignoring the shotgun.
"Perhaps I will. Perhaps I will. What possible reason could you have for breaking into a House of God?" As he spoke, Reverend Taggert revealing abnormally wide and gleaming teeth. "Speak quickly."
"We're following a few leads," Bane said as calmly as if he was not being covered at point-blank range. As he raised an accusing finger, he took another step closer and barked, "Your teeth didn't always look like that, did they?"
Taggert raised the shotgun to face level, but Bane lunged forward faster than any Olympic fencer and seized the weapon to slam its barrels brutally hard against the minister's temple. That made Taggert sag to his knees with a groan. The Dire Wolf yanked the shotgun away and handed it to Katherine, who took it with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. As Tagger struggled to rise, Bane seized him by the lapels of his jacket and hauled him up to his feet.
"Never get that close with a gun," Bane said quietly. "Honestly. I thought everyone knew that." He shook the man violently and then threw him back down on the group. "Those teeth are a giveaway. Your fingertips are getting spatulate, you're getting that forehead ridge. You're one of them, Taggert. When was the first time you ate your special meat?"
Not answering, the minister shot to his feet and threw a wide looping roundhouse blow. He was hopelessly outmatched. Bane redirected that punch harmlessly past him and smashed a backfist with the same arm that cracked hard against Taggert's mouth. The man fell back into a seated position on the ground and swayed, too dazed to be aware of the situation.
Bane glanced over at Katherine, who was holding the shotgun as if it might bite her. "He's a Ghoul. He isn't as far along as the one I fought, he still can pass for normal. He acts as the go-between for the real Ghouls." He glanced over at the cemetery. "Now I have to wonder. How many of the coffins over there would be empty if we dig them up?"
"You're not... joking? No, I can tell you're not. Oh dear Lord, this is hideous. How can such things exist in the world?" Katherine handed him the shotgun and wrapped her arms tightly across her chest as if seeking comfort. "I knew I would be seeing strange things working for Mr Dred, but this..."
"Hey! Snap out of it!" he told her. "No time for that. Listen, we are going to settle this. Before it gets dark, this nest of Ghouls will be gone and people in this county will be safe. I think I figured out where these flesh-eaters are hiding." From the back of his belt, Bane took a regulation pair of handcuffs and secured the Reverend's right wrist to the pipe leading from the fuel oil tank into the church. "There. He's not going anywhere."
"Wait, just what exactly are you planning on doing? Shouldn't we call the police? The Army?" she asked uncertainly.
"When it's over. Mr Dred gave me a number to phone and the code word 'diadem.' We'll get a squad of special FBI agents to take over. They'll clean up everything. I imagine Taggert there will end up under observation in some facility. Department 21 Black studies the occult." Bane took a powerful pencil flashlight from an inside pocket and checked that it was working. "Right now, you stay here and keep hold of that 12 gauge. One or two Ghouls might get past me."
As Katherine gingerly picked up the shotgun again, she stared at Bane in alarm. "You're not seriously going after them? You're not going to tackle a dozen of those creatures!"
The faintest of smiles flickered across the Dire Wolf's narrow face. "Just watch me. And stay alert. If you see a Ghoul coming at you, let him have both barrels." He turned away and started poking around the base of the hill. "You know, this whole county is full of caves and tunnels. Howe Caverns is just the most famous. No wonder these flesh-eaters picked this area... Here. I knew it." He had pulled aside some brush to expose an opening in the side of the hill wide enough for a man to crawl through. Drawing his long-barreled Smith & Wesson with his left hand and holding the flashlight with his right, Bane crawled into the darkness without any perceptible hesitation.
Left behind, still clutching the shotgun, Katherine Wheatley sank down to sit on the ground with her back against the church. The longest afternoon of her life had begun.
IV.
When she thought an hour had passed, she checked her wristwatch and found it had been eleven minutes. Katherine sighed. She was not meant for the stress of a life like this. How did Jeremy bear it? He seemed to absolutely thrive on being in deadly danger, as if it were nourishment. Maybe there was something wrong with him. The lad certainly had no manners, maybe he did not have enough sense to be afraid when he should be.
She had withdrawn her mind into itself. The seething swirl of anger and bloodlust inside that hill was too hard to take. Now, taking a deep breath, Katherine extended her awareness outward. There, inside the earth, in tunnels that never saw daylight, a dozen Ghouls scrambled through the dark with murder in their thoughts. They were absolutely eager for fresh meat, a feast from a man they had just killed rather than a dry tasteless body days or weeks old. Katherine shuddered in revulsion.
To her, the Ghouls registered as hot red presences, burning with rage. And coming to meet them in the dark was a single cold silver fireball that rushed forward eagerly. Bane. Katherine closed her mind off again and leaned back against the church. This was torture, she knew she could follow what was going on but she didn't feel like she could bear to experience it. If Jeremy was killed...
Over by the fuel oil tank, the Reverend Taggert had cleared his head and was staring at her. "Your friend doesn't have a chance. The Children of Damozar are strong and hard to damage, they live in the darkness and a surface-man will be easy prey for them."
"Oh, DO shut up," she said wearily.
"Then my brethren will emerge to free me," Taggert chuckled. "Oh, they will be happy to see you. A young juicy girl like you. I will claim the best parts for myself, of course. Do you know which part of you I will lightly broil tonight? Perhaps you should guess, it's above the waist..."
He was cut off as Katherine came over and stood staring down at him. His left hand and his legs were free, so she was careful not to come within reach. "I suggest you stop talking," she whispered.
"Or what! You're not going to shoot me, missy, you don't have it in you. That's some pretty hair you have, maybe I'll save it for my collection. You should see my scrapbooks-URK!" Leslie Taggert convulsed as if having a seizure, back arching wildly and his eyes rolling up in his head. He slumped limply to the cold ground. Katherine watched him to make sure he was still alive. This was a trick Kenneth Dred had taught for self-defense. By sending conflicting messages into a person's brain, she could make them react by getting confused and disoriented. Or, if doing more forcefully, they had what resembled an epilectic episode and passed into unconsciousness.
"You're not eating anyone, least of all me!" The young telepath slumped. She felt so tired from all the emotional stress but this nightmare was not over yet. Slowly, reluctantly, she turned her thoughts back to the hill behind her. That was odd, but encouraging. There were fewer of the lurid red blurs. Three of them were right on top of the silver fireball she visualized. Katherine trembled and broke off connection again. She resumed leaning back against the church, sitting on the chill dirt and waiting. After a long time, her head dropped forward and she jerked back awake again. Then she really did fall asleep.
Then someone was looming over her, almost touching her. Katherine screamed and swung the shotgun around only to have it effortlessly taken away from her. She realized who it was now. Jeremy Bane stood before her in the late afternoon March sunlight. His clothes were ripped and caked with mud, his hands and face were scratched. Blood was caked on the left side of his face beside his eye, and that eye was swollen. But he was alive and looking down at her with the same detached calm he always seemed to show.
Leaping up, Katherine tackled him so hard they both almost fell. She had never hugged anyone so tightly. "You made it. You're alive." She wasn't crying, but her face was suddenly wet. "You made it."
"Well, sure," he said in some bewilderment. "What did you expect?"
12/25/2014
