"The Wind Between the Gravestones"

"The Wind Between the Gravestones"


8/2019

I.

At ten after four, the doorbell rang. Timothy Limbo put down his half-eaten superthick BLT on its plate, then decided to hide it in as drawer of Sable's desk before hurrying from the office. No visitors were expected that day. He was wearing his usual outfit of biker boots, jeans and a well-worn leather jacket over a plain white T-shirt.

At the inner front door, Tim pressed the button that opened the street door and admitted people into the tiny foyer. Through the intercom, he said, "Please come in, I'll be with you in a second." Then he slid open a wooden panel on the wall at face level to reveal a monitor screen and control panel. Buzzes and clicks sounded as the Trom sensors analyzed the visitor to microscopic detail far better than any MRI available to Human tech could match. No ID came back from NYPD, FBI, Mandate or CIA files which the KDF accessed quite without authorization. In another second, the DMV records came through, matching the man's appearance with a New York driver's license. Foster J. Whitcomb, born 1/22/1993. Six feet tall, one hundred and eighty pounds, brown hair and eyes.

The most important fact of course was that Whitcomb was not carrying any guns or knives or other signficant weapons. Chemical signature
showed no poisons or explosives. Glancing at the man visually on the monitor, Timothy saw a rather friendly-looking fellow with a pleasant face under shaggy light brown hair. Whtcomb was solidly built, a little soft around the thick middle, wearing a basic dark maeoon polo shirt and black jeans. He was looking curiously at the oil painting of Kenneth Dred that hung in the foyer.

Timothy instinctively liked the visitor on sight. He opened the inner door and said, "Hi there. Can I help you?"

"Oh, I hope so," replied a mellow voice with a faint Midewest accent. "You're with the Kenneth Dred Foundation? You investigate paranormal sightings, ghosts, Bigfoot, that sort of thing?"

"Yep, among other things."

Whitcomb extended his hand and Timothy took it in a warm dry handshake. "My name is Foster Whitcomb, I've run a blogcast for the past few years, THE WIND BETWEEN THE GRAVESTONES. Mostly spooky real-life stories people send in, some interviews with guests, a few trips to haunted location like the stone tower outside Salem."

"Oh, sure," Tim replied. "I've seen quite a few espisodes. No wonder you looked familiar. I liked your Halloweeen show where you talekd to people who had seen Gator Joe."

"I think my podcast stands out because we're skeptical. We don't play up sightings for more than they're worth and also we're right to the point. I'm a debunker by nature, which makes my experience so surprising."

"Come on in and tell me about it." Timothy stepped to one side and ushered his visitor into the office across the hall to their left. This was a comfortable uncluttered room marked most notably by the solid oak desk against one wall under a hand-painted map of the world as it had been in 1937. Timothy gestured for Waruck to have a seat on the brown leather couch. He himself pulled over a plain straightbacked wooden chair to face his guest.

"I've heard a lot of wild stories about your Foundation, the KDF. Very little in newspapers or TV, though, almost all word of mouth. The famous Dire Wolf himself, Jeremy Bane, was the founder. Lots of tales of chasing Skinwalkers and Trolls, even vampires and werewolves, over the past forty years."

"We've had some interesting cases," Timothy said. "But, to be honest, we're like you in that nearly everything we look into turns out to be nothing provable. What's this experience that happened to you?"

Whitcomb leaned forward, clasping his hands on his knees, and looked direcrtly into Tim's eyes. "I've seen, well, a ghost. Three times. A small girl about ten years old, wearing an old-fashioned white nightshirt. She's soaking wet. Water drips off her. She never says anything, just raises a finger side to side in a warning gesture and then she disappears."

"Oh, that's interesting. In all our years, the KDF hasn't found a verifiable ghost appearance yet. Any physical evidence?"

"There was a damp spot on the floor, not nearly what you'd expect from the way she wadripping. And I kept my phone ready to record after the first sighting. She didn't show up at all."

"Hmm," Timothy said non-commitedly. "What does drowning mean to you? Did you ever have a close call, even a child? Do you have a boat or canoe or something?"

"No, nothing like that. I've done some swimming at Big Deep, but never got in trouble. I think it's a warning. Tonight, I have tickets for a Hudson River Cruise. It's a two hour trip from Kingston to Hyde Park and back."

Timothy sat up straigher. His mop of yellow hair had grown long enough to get in his eyes and he had to brush it back with his fingers. "Cruise along the Hudson River, huh? And this ghost girl might be warning you not to go?"

"Could be. If this sightings happened to someone else, I'd investigate without any hesitation but I'm kind of freaked out by my own involvement."

"Yeah, I can see that. I know the area, by the way. I'm from Tilson, New York, not far from Kingston. For whatever reason, there's a lot of Midnight War activity in that part of the Hudson Valley. Woodstock in particular. I'm taking this seriously, Foster. I think it deserves to be looked into."

"Oh, I'm so relieved. You guys are genuine experts, I'm sort of a poser dabbling. Listen. I intend to go on that cruise tonight. I have two tickets but my roommate bailed on me, he's working a part time job after his regular job. How would you feel about coming with me to keep an eye out for ghosts?"

Timothy didn't have to think it over. He felt so comfortable with this guy, it was as if they had known each other for years. "Sounds good, Foster. A slow cruise up and down the Hudson, great scenery, lighthouses and mansions. A couple of beers."

"Did I mention they have a 1950s band? They do the Breakers, Rex Royal, some Peter Coebett..."

"Oh, now I'm going no matter what. I was born to be a JD 50s greaser. What time do we leave?"

"Hmm. It's four-thirty now, say a little over two hours drive. We'd have time to eat. There's some nice Italian restaurants on the Strand."

"This gets better and better. It sounds the best agenda I could set up if I was taking a date."

Foster laughed unselfconsciously. "It's our date then. My SUV is parked three blocks away on Lexington. I'm dressing casually, what you have on is fine."

"Good to know. I do want to grab my travel knapsack, there's some KDF gear stowed away in there. Oh, and I should leave a message for my captain. Sable likes to know our general whereabouts." Tim plucked a flat metal device from his belt and spoke briefly into it.

"Dude, what kind of phone is that? It's so thin you could slide it under a door. Japanese?"

Tim shrugged instead of answering. "We don't get paid much but the KDF does give us somr great toys. I'll be back in a second. Maybe you want to check out our fish tank. A starfish with a single red eye isn't something you see every day."

Racing down to the basement and along the walkway to the garage, Timothy felt a little surprised he was so excited about this excursion. Had he been that bored at being stuck at headquarters on semi-monitor duty until Sable came back in a few hours? Whatever. He snatched up the sturdy knapsack from the row of travel bags all the KDF members kept ready. Personal items like shampoo, toothbrushes and washclothes were a small percentage of the contents. Tim's anesthetic dart gun was in there, along with a couple thousand in tens and twentys, a medical kit, various miniature smoke bombs, oxygen membranes, a silk climbing cord and other specialized gear.

Emerging back into the office, he found Foster engrossed in the strange creatures from Ulgor who populated the fish tank. The podcaster turned with both eyebrows raised. "Am I imagining it or have this hermit crabs built a tunnel in the sand between their two coral castles?"

"They're funny little creatures, all right," Timothy said as he shrugged into the straps of the knapsack. "Ready when you are."

"Great. It's a beautiful day for a drive up the Taconic Parkway."

( the rest of the story )

"Seven Nooses In Seven Weeks"

"Seven Nooses In Seven Weeks"

A Trom Girl/Unicorn Team-Up

5/11/2009

I.

Sunday morning at ten to seven, Archie McAllister was bent over the huge stack of the NEW YORK TIMES, the one newspaper he read each week. Sitting at the little round breakfast table by the kitchen window, he nibbled on the last piece of wheat toast with honey and tried to decide whether making fresh coffee was worth it. Archie was a big friendly bear of a man, comfortable in baggy T-shirt, dark blue jockey shorts and white cotton socks. He had skipped shaving the day before and had no intention of making up for it on his day off. The warm June sunlight slanting in through the window made him smile at the contrast as he struggled through an article about cod fishing in the frigid North Atlantic, a subject that he was not even vaguely interested in.

Through the open curtains to his right, Archie spotted a silver Accord skid to a halt not three inches behind the rear bumper of Megan's beloved cherry-red Jeep Cherokee. From behind the wheel, a petite blonde with shiny platinum-white hair leaped out and stood talking on her phone in the driveway. She was wearing all white as usual... ankle boots, jeans and long-sleeved crewneck pullover, and in the bright May sunlight she almost glowed.

"Megan? Here comes trouble!" he called out.

From the adjoining room, the normally controlled, subdued voice of Megan Salenger grumbled, "Not Unicorn!"

"You got it," he answered with a grin. A second later, Megan entered the kitchen in her gold-colored terrycloth robe and fuzzy slippers. Her mop of thick black hair was still damp from the shower. The Trom Girl was just over thirty years old, alert and energetic even caught unawares at this hour. She had been a Human orphan raised by the Trom to be a liaison between the two Races. Her romance with Archie had strengthened into a solid relationship that had surprised both her Trom superiors and her friends with the KDF. No one had expected her to fall in love, least of all herself.

Leaning over the breakfast table to peer out the window, despite her grumpinesss Megan still could not repress a smile as she watched the little blonde gallop up to their front door. She had never shared Ashley's enthusiasm for excitement and she sometimes wistfully envied it. Even as the doorbell rang, the Trom Girl had her hand on the inner handle and was opening the door.

"Hi, Megan, Megan!" blurted Ashley. "Something's UP!"

"Good morning, Unicorn. What did we agree about phoning first, especially early in the morning?"

"Oh. Right. Sorry," Ashley Whitaker said, even though she barged past Megan as if she had been invited in. "But I'm onto something important here. Three murders already and I am sure there are four more planned. Hey there, Archie!" she called with a cheerful wave.

"Hi, Ashley," replied the big man, going back to his newspaper placidly.

"Listen," said the blonde, seizing Megan by both arms. "Sable has the team in Signarm for something dumb, some conference between the barons there. It's up to us. The thief will be killed next."

The Trom Girl gave up on understanding or resisting. "Well, I am on reserve duty but I do remain on call. Give me some little scrap of data so I know what you are talking about."

"This is one of those serial killers who act out a set pattern. You know, like how Samhain murdered some astronomers using weapons based on the names of planets? Or how Sepulchre killed five women named after months? I just figured it out. The thief is next!"

Giving Archie a shrug which he returned, Megan said, "Let me change, okay?" She hurried out of the kitchen.

Left behind, Ashley plopped down into the chair next to Archie and used a voice that could have been poured on French Toast. "You don't mind if I borrow your girlfriend for the day, DOOO you Archibald?"

"You're wasting the charm on me, honey," he said. "We didn't have any plans for today other than cleaning up around the house. If Megan decides to go on a mystery with you, I'd be okay with napping on the couch and watching TV."

"Eating nachos and drinking beer, maybe?" she asked.

"Somebody's got to do it," Archie said. "Whatever happened to you and that boy, Cory whatever?"

"Cory Adams," she said. "We're getting serious. We decided to try and do some babymaking. My mom always craved grandchildren, and me and Cory both like the idea. I'm an only child. Mom always said one of me was more than enough."

"Maybe it'll be a little girl to take over as the third Unicorn when you get old," Megan offered from the doorway. She had changed into sneakers, blue jeans and a black T-shirt with an open denim vest. In one hand, she clutched a travel bag containing her field suit and equipment.

"Worth a try," Ashley grinned. "Come on, come on, we have to get up to Lake George today. Let's use your Jeep, I'm sure it's already stocked up, with a full gas tank and the tires all checked and like that. Let's go."

Megan Salenger gave in. She went over and kissed Archie. "Sorry, my love, you see what I'm dealing with? How can I refuse this fireball?"

Archie rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. "It's fine with me. You haven't been on a case in quite a while, come to think of it. And you may not admit it, but I think you love the suspense and danger as much as Unicorn does."

As the two women headed out the front door and Archie got up to brew more coffee, he heard Ashley chirping excitedly, "There's this absolute nut calling himself Mr Gallows..."

( the rest of the story )

"Slaughterman"

"Slaughterman"

3/22/2009

I.

From the floor in the corner of the living room, Bane watched the crooks as they stood near the windows. He had not really expected them to let any of the hostages go when he had surrendered himself. Half-sitting up, he tested his bonds. He was tied with wet clothesline, both wrists bound together behind him painfully tight. They had yanked off his jacket, removed his pistol and patted him down before tying him up, then forgotten about him.

As soon as their attention was elsewhere, the Dire Wolf carefully got his fingertips at the top of one boot. Years ago, he had started to order his boots handmade, with steel caps on toes and heels, as well as one more item. A ridge at the top of each boot was actually the raised back of a razor blade concealed in a slit. Without moving more than his fingers, Bane drew the blade out and cut through the clothesline. Long hours of practice let him do this without more than a nick or two. The bonds came loose.

One of the bank robbers turned to look at him suspiciously. He had lowered his Glock and held it loosely in one hand. The other one, the more dangerous one with the uneasy eyes, was peering out the window at the police car. There were only two officers and a plainclothesman out there. The robber shifted his grip on the shotgun.

Without any preliminary movements, Bane snapped up off the floor and plunged six feet at the robbers in a split-second. The one with the pistol took a full power backfist that twisted his head around until he looked down past his own shoulder, spinning him to crash to the floor. Sensing the motion behind him, the other robber swiveled, raising his shotgun but it was yanked away from him with a roughness that broke his trigger finger. In the same movement, Bane spun the shotgun in a vertical arc that hammered its barrel to the side of the man's face. That one also fell to the floor like a sack of wet laundry.

Bane put the shotgun far to one side, then lunged to pick up the Glock and also place it far out of reach. The Dire Wolf looked back over one shoulder where the Rourke family huddled terrified on their own couch. "It's all right!" he called loudly to them, speaking slowly to make his point. "They are both knocked out. I took their guns away. It's all over."

Very uncertainly, the father stood up. He was a soft, balding man in shorts and a white polo shirt. "I never saw anything like that. You just... you just rushed them before they could blink." He held out his hand to help his wife up, and the granddaughter had already jumped to her feet. "Who ARE you?"

"I'm nobody special," said Bane. Picking up a cell phone one of the crooks had dropped, he called the number of the plainclothes detective outside. "Lt Montez, it's all over. I'm opening the door. I will be dragging these losers out, tell the officers to hold their fire."

"Gotcha, Bane. Good work," came the gruff voice.

The Dire Wolf paused to retrieve his own pistol from the younger robber before grabbing the man under the arms and hauling him through the doorway. Outside, bright early spring sunlight struck him after being inside the dimly lit home. One cop handcuffed the prisoner, while the other officer came in to help Bane carry the other one outside as well.

"This guy has a dislocated jaw!" one officer said. "Man, they are both out for the count. What did you hit them with?"

"Oh, you know, just training and experience," Bane said, going back in. He retrieved his black sport jacket and tugged it on. "You folks all right?"

Mr Rourke came to shake hands vigorously. "I need to thank you. Anything I have is yours. When those bastards broke in here and held us at gunpoint, I thought we didn't have a chance. We were as good as dead. Then you came in, and they tied you up, and I thought you were a goner, too." He wouldn't let go of Bane's hand. "How can I repay you?"

Embarrassed, Bane disentangled himself. "It's my job," he said. "I don't need any reward." For once, the Dire Wolf decided against asking this man to join his network of observers. He headed out to where the bulk of Lt Joseph Montez loomed over the unconscious robbers. "You read them their rights yet?"

Montez snorted. He had been putting on weight again as trips to the gym had start becoming less frequent and boxes of donuts more so. "They won't be in any condition to listen. You hit them any harder and we would be calling for the coroner, Bane."

"It takes some judgement," Bane admitted. "Well, I guess I will be going about my business. I can come down to 20th Street and file a statement later?"

"No," Montez said. "I need to talk to you. The officers can watch these goons until the ambulance gets here. But even before you turned up, I had something you might be interested in."

"Something weird and gruesome, I expect?"

"Yep. Right up Dire Wolf territory. Listen. Earlier this morning, all LE agencies got a news flash. Up near Cayudoga Lake upstate. Richard Moore Dorsett escaped custody. That's right, Slaughterman."

Bane turned and looked at Montez with a new alertness. "Well. I didn't think I would hear that name again. Last I knew, he was in Federal custody and so-called experts were studying him."

"Cutting him up and watching him heal in seconds, more like it. I got rumors. Dorsett is a freak of some kind. You put a bullet in his chest, it pops out again an hour later. He got run over by a freaking Dodge pick-up and he sat up and started chasing it. I heard of people with good healing but that's crazy. And... I thought maybe you had some inside dope."

"Oh yes." Bane got closer and lowered his voice, which made Montez uneasy. "I tangled with Slaughterman twice, back in the old days. He regenerates, all right. By now, his powers must be weakening, though."

"You can tell me, Bane, How does it work? How can he heal up bullet holes and grow new skin after being set on fire?"

The Dire Wolf took a deep breath. "This is one of the things I know that you will find hard to believe, lieutenant. All the biologists they call in will never figure out Slaughterman, because he doesn't work by the laws of nature. He runs on gralic magick, based on a Darthan spell. That's right, when he kills somebody, he sucks in some of their lifefore and uses it to keep himself going. In a way, he's a vampire."

"Goddam. I used to laugh at stuff like that. But you know, I keep seeing things and learning things. Instead of drinking blood, he takes what? Vitality?"

"Exactly," Bane said. "It's been years since he has been in custody. His lifeforce must be getting low. My bet is that he made this break because it's his last chance."

"And you... you're going after him?"

"I am," said Bane emphatically. "Right away."

"Let me give you a lift. You heading back to your office?"

"Yes. Thank you." The two men walked over to Montez' unmarked car. "You remember Samhain?" asked Bane.

"Oh Christ protect us, how could I forget that devil? You brought in him a few times, too, didn't ya."

"And Seneca. They all had that same healing factor, based on stolen lifeforce. Samhain was the worst because he was intelligent and cunning. He would have been a serial killer even without his powers. Seneca, on the other hand, was just a beast. He didn't know why he was killing, he just did it."

As he navigated traffic with the ease of long practice, Lt Montez said, "Klein was right about you. Just before he retired, he told me you was like a guard dog protecting a bunch of sheep from predators they didn't even know about."

The faintest of smiles turned up the corners of Bane's thin lips. "Good old Harold Klein. He didn't trust me at first, even tried running me in a few times. It took years before he agreed we should work together."

"Same here. I'll tell you the truth, the boys at NYPD all say to never mention this in public, that it's all unofficial and off the records, but they told me when I transferred here that you should be called in for crimes too bizarre or unexplainable for the regular force to handle."

"It's what I do. It's my nature, can't change." At a red light, Bane opened the door. "I'll get out here, lieutenant. Thanks. I'll report as soon as things are settled." With that, the Dire Wolf stepped out and hopped up on the curb. 58th Street. He began moving fast, crossing over a few blocks. There was his bank. Going in, Bane asked to see his safe deposit box. A chunky young woman in a black and white striped dress let him into the vault and opened the compartment where he kept a wide flat metal box. She left him alone in a tiny cubicle. Bane spun two combination dials on the metal box and opened it. Some interesting items were in here. A tiny gold skull, a stone arrowhead, two green stars made of soft stone, a chamois bag full of cyrinkyl, some legal papers, a few keys. There was a bundle of fifty and twenty dollar bills. And the Eldar travel crystal.

Bane regarded it somberly. This was a relic of his earlier career with the KDF. It was a pale blue faceted gem, just small enough to fit within one hand, set in a pale gold frame. There were only eleven of these in the real world, as far as he knew, and he had seldom used this one since he had stepped down as KDF Director and re-opened his own PI agency. With a barely audible sigh, he closed off memories and slipped the crystal into the side pocket of his jacket. He locked the box and had the bank officer return it to its compartment, then went back on the street. Walking briskly, he got to 44th Street and 3rd Avenue quicker than he would have done in a car. Here was the small yellow brick building. He hurried through the lobby, down the short hall that ended in an EXIT ONLY alarmed door, and unlocked the plain wooden door that had a brass plate reading DIRE WOLF AGENCY.

Thumbing on the overhead lights, Bane went through the tiny waiting room to his office. At his desk, he checked for messages. Quite a few but nothing urgent. So far, he had managed to keep his office from getting too cluttered. There was the big oak desk with its reading lamp, a few plain wooden chairs scattered in front of it. To his right, facing 3rd Avenue, a leather sofa sat under the wide window with opaque curtains. There was a short endtable with a lamp at each end of the couch; the lamps did not quite match, but he had never gotten around to replacing them. In the far left corner, a door opened to a tiny compartment with a toilet and sink but no shower.

Bane had added a three shelf bookcase on the wall facing his desk, now starting to fill up with newspapers, clippings, general debris he threw there. The Dire Wolf unlocked hidden wheels on the bookcase and spun it away to reveal a compartment sunk into the ground. When he left this office, he expected he would have to pay a hefty fine for some of the unauthorized changes he had made, including this hiding place. Bane tugged up a trunk, carried it over and dropped it in the center of the room. Sudden excitement made his heart beat faster. He hadn't used this gear in too long a time.

Bane stripped off his outer clothes. He was already wearing a bodysuit of flexible grey metal which looked like wet silk with a faint sheen. He seldom went anywhere without this armor. The Trom-metal was not invincible but it gave good protection up to high-power rifle slugs. He drew on tough black pants with a number of flap pockets, then a black crewneck shirt of the same durable material. Under the sleeves, he fastened the sheaths of the silver-bladed daggers he had used his entire career. They had been a gift from Kenneth Dred, and Bane would have held on to them no matter what else he had to give up in life. He fixed straps to the ensalir setting on the Eldar travel crystal and tied it securely high on his back, between his shoulder blades. Then came a black waist-length jacket of a tough leathery material, also fitted with several flap pouches and inner pockets.

Digging through the trunk, Bane began stowing odd equipment in various pockets. Some was conventional, like a small first aid kit in a plastic box or a multiple-bladed tool knife, but most had been handcrafted for his use years ago. From a padded setting in the trunk, he took out an air gun with an extended barrel. For decades, he had used anesthetic darts in this to take enemies alive, but now he slid a clip of resonance caps in and clicked it shut. He buckled the gunbelt so the holster would be behind his left hip, hidden by the jacket.

Finally, Bane raised what looked like a black motorcycle helmet and lowered it over his head. It connected to the high collar of the jacket. He lowered the visor and saw the read-outs start on the heads-up display. Perfect. He knew Leonard Slade had guaranteed the Trom power source had an active usefulness longer than Bane's own life would be, but it was reassuring to check. The Dire Wolf slid up the visor again to its track inside the helmet. He felt good wearing the field suit. It brought back many memories and wearing it gave him a thrill of anticipation. Moving quicker than ever, he returned the trunk to its hiding place and swiveled the bookcase over it.

Now to see if he could see use the Eldar crystal. With it fastened to his back, since he was already in contact and did not need to place his fingers on it. Bane half-closed his eyes and visualized where he wanted to be. It was not enough to half-heartedly wish to gate, you had to put full-out will power into the effort. Bane concentrated hard. There came a silent flare of pale blue light and, when it faded, the office was empty.

( the rest of the story )