"The Beast in the Basement"
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dochermes"The Beast In the Basement"
12/28/2019
I.
All of Bane's instincts were screaming at him to watch out. He had seldom been so keyed up, and he tried to figured out what was scaring him. Being tense meant not being able to quickly respond to an attack. A rapid heartbeat and increased adrenaline were not the problem, he expected that on a case, but the faint trembling in his hands was something new. So was the feeling of tightness in his chest.
As he followed Lewis Gottfried down the narrow creaky steps into a basement lit by a single naked light bulb hanging by a cord, the Dire Wolf wondered if he had passed his peak. The past two years, he had been noticing his techniques were not as flawless as before, his nerve not as solid. Several times in a fight, his strikes had fallen below what he had been attempting and even normal Human opponents had been able to tag him although not enough to deal real harm. Yet. Maybe it was time to really retire from the Midnight War once and for all.
"I am glad you arrived so quickly," Gottfried said. Not only did the stink of cigarette smoke cling to his hair and casual clothing, the man's voice grated. "I bought this house sight unseen as part of a real estate changeover. The previous owner was an occultist named Elsa Weiss, you may have heard of her. As soon as I saw what was down here, I thought of you."
"I'm surprised you even know about me," responded Bane. "Or how to reach me. I closed my Dire Wolf Agency years ago."
"Oh, I have been interested in the Midnight War for a long time. Call it a hobby, I have clipped many articles from the papers about you and your KDF. Here we are."
The basement was forty feet to a side, its walls unfinished damp rock. To their left was an oil-burning furnace and a cylindrical water heater, with a few bits of debris on the floor and a chest-high shelf holding some tools. In the center of the basement, the dark opening of a pit stood taking up most of the floor space. Gottfried took a heavy flashlight off the shelf and clicked it on.
The more he studied his host, the more Jeremy Bane's alarm increased. It wasn't the sheer ominous bulk of Gottfried, who stood at least six foot seven, nor the thin white scars on the man's hands and neck. There was something else very wrong. That glossy black hair was too thick and healthy for a man evidently in late middle age. It had to be a wig. Gottfried moved oddly, as if he was much stronger than his size and build would indicate. Bane's Kumundu training automatically gauged the capabilities of everyone he met as a potential opponent. It worried him that he could not reach a conclusion about this man.
Under the bench was a three-legged stool. Gottfried tugged it out and dropped down on the chipped surface with a grunt of relief. "That's better," he admitted in a hoarse voice like that of a lifetime smoker. "Getting old sneaks up on you. What doesn't hurt on your body, doesn't work."
The Dire Wolf stepped closer to the opening. It was not new, its edges had been smoothed by time. After a moment, he said, "The house was built over this pit."
"Eh? Yes, that matches the dates I have been able to learn. So many records were lost in time, either by fire or water damage or simple misplacement. From what I have been able to uncover, my family bought the property in the mid-19th Century and put up the house before 1900." The huge man forced himself up with a faint groan on effort, moving over to stand beside Bane. "Here. Take a look."
In the beam from the flashlight, the bottom of the pit was revealed, eleven feet below them. The surface of the rock was slick and shiny for some reason, and one end was covered with a wooden plank bigger than a door. But what held Bane's attention was the jumble of yellowing bones that lay in a heap, thicker than Human bones. The skull was intact except for the lower jaw, and it resembled that of an immense alligator but with a higher cranium that gave it an actual forehead. In life, the beast would have been more than ten feet long.
Despite all his misgivings, the Dire Wolf dropped his caution as he leaned forward. "Hold that light steady," he said. "Hmm. I would say that's the skeleton of a Dragon. A Garmiri, I think..."
A huge open hand smashed between his shoulder blades with impact that might have killed a normal man. Taken off-guard for once, Bane had been off-balance and he was thrown down into the pit. In the brief split-second that he was falling, the Dire Wolf reached back in an attempt to grasp Gottfried by the arm or by the clothing, but his hand only closed on empty air.
Landing unharmed on his feet and fingertips, Bane instantly wheeled around and leaped straight up. He didn't make the rim. The Dire Wolf dropped back down. From behind his left hip, he whipped out his long-barreled Smith & Wesson .38 but of course Gottfried had stepped back out of sight.
"I have done on a little research on you, my old friend," rasped the man. "The pit is two feet higher than you have been known to jump from a standing start. Knowing your... eh, shall we say unusual physical powers, I thought it best to be prudent."
The Dire Wolf held his revolver up, ready to fire if Gottfried showed himself. "Okay, I admit you suckered me. But 'old friend?' I think I'd remember if we had met before."
The voice changed. It became smooth and polished, like that of a classic BBC announcer. "Heh heh, I do not look quite the same as you remember me."
Bane could not hide the shock at hearing those mellow tones. "QUILT...!"
II.
More than a hundred years earlier, a Darthan warlock had joined together limbs and torso and head of seven different corpses, then given the resulting monstrosity a semblance of life. Filled with a psychotic hatred of people, the creature had wandered the Earth on a decades-long rampage of murder and torture. It became known as Quilt, the Patchwork Zombie. Whether organizing gangs of hired Human gunmen or gathering other creatures of the night, the monster had claimed hundred of victims. He had poisoned reservoirs, caused train crashes, started wildfires.
Bane had clashed with Quilt five times, and although he thought he had destroyed the monster more than once, the Undead always returned as vile as ever.
"Oh, I have undergone a lot of surgery in the past few years," Quilt called down. "When you don't feel pain and your body regenerates quickly, being reconstructed is no ordeal. I had all my teeth pulled and dentures made in a single day. There is a titanium extension below my right hip so that both my legs are the same length. Perhaps I'm still not conventionally handsome, ha ha."
"Well, you fooled me," the Dire Wolf replied, still hoping for a chance to snap off a shot. "The wig is obvious, though."
"I should have done this long ago. Truth be told, I enjoyed terrifying my prey with my very appearance. But it was worth all the operations to finally dispose of you."
"Why don't you come down here and we can slug it out?" Bane asked. "You know you want to."
"Very droll. I can sense you still wear those silver daggers on your forearms. Even from here, they sting me." Quilt's voice was moving alongside the length of the pit, he was remaining out of sight. A second later, the rope fastened to the plank at the far end tightened and swung it upward like a trap door. A hiss escaped the blackness revealed.
Bane swung around. From the opening in the wall, a leathery form scuttled out on short legs that extended out from a long armor-plated body that ended in a tail which whipped from side to side. The jaws gaped open to reveal rows of vicious fangs. The Dragon was one of the Garmiri breed, not as intelligent as other types and without flame but still fast and aggressive.
Oddly, the Dire Wolf holstered his gun instead of trying to shoot the Dragon. Taking two quick steps toward the beast, Bane hopped up onto its back and leaped straight up. With the added height from being on the Dragon, he barely managed to get both hands to the rim of the pit and haul himself up to kneel next to Quilt. Everything happened in a split-second. Quilt spun, growling deep in that barrel chest, and lunged at the living being he hated most. Bane grabbed the Patchwork Zombie's lower leg and rose up himself, flinging the monster down into the pit. That was not enough. He knew that the powerful Undead might be able to fight the Garmiri with success. Bane leaned over and blasted five bullets into his enemy's head. Blood splattered from the exit wounds even as the Dragon began tearing great chunks of unliving flesh.
Quilt had survived wounds like those many times before. The Darthan magic which animated him would eventually seal his carcass together and bring it back to unlife, but the Garmiri was ripping him apart. As Bane watched, the Dragon raised its muzzle and gulped down a hand without chewing.
After a moment, Bane realized he was sitting up on the cold basement floor. He hadn't realized that his knees had given way. His hands were shaking and he clasped them together. They stopped trembling immediately, but it still annoyed him to react like this. He had always gone through horrific ordeals without being affected at all. Maybe all the trauma of the Midnight War was finally catching up to him. Getting up on his hands and knees, Bane picked up the flashlight which Quilt had dropped and looked down into the pit.
Parts of the Patchwork Zombie were scattered about and the Dragon was eating as much as it could. Bane shuddered so strongly he was surprised at the reaction. There was no way Quilt could survive this, or was there? That brute had recovered from everything from being hit by a train to being trapped in a building which had burned to the ground. He could not dare take chances. Carrying the stool to the pit, Bane lowered himself and reloaded with cartridges from a box in his jacket pocket. He decided he would wait and watch.
If Quilt was being digested, if the monster somehow did not start to emerge from within that gullet, then Bane would kill the Dragon after an hour or so. There was a shovel and pick-axe in one corner of the basement. He could start breaking up the edges of the pit and filling it in. If need be, he would go outside and bring down buckets of rocks and dirt to finally bury something that should have remained buried a century ago.
4/2/2020
12/28/2019
I.
All of Bane's instincts were screaming at him to watch out. He had seldom been so keyed up, and he tried to figured out what was scaring him. Being tense meant not being able to quickly respond to an attack. A rapid heartbeat and increased adrenaline were not the problem, he expected that on a case, but the faint trembling in his hands was something new. So was the feeling of tightness in his chest.
As he followed Lewis Gottfried down the narrow creaky steps into a basement lit by a single naked light bulb hanging by a cord, the Dire Wolf wondered if he had passed his peak. The past two years, he had been noticing his techniques were not as flawless as before, his nerve not as solid. Several times in a fight, his strikes had fallen below what he had been attempting and even normal Human opponents had been able to tag him although not enough to deal real harm. Yet. Maybe it was time to really retire from the Midnight War once and for all.
"I am glad you arrived so quickly," Gottfried said. Not only did the stink of cigarette smoke cling to his hair and casual clothing, the man's voice grated. "I bought this house sight unseen as part of a real estate changeover. The previous owner was an occultist named Elsa Weiss, you may have heard of her. As soon as I saw what was down here, I thought of you."
"I'm surprised you even know about me," responded Bane. "Or how to reach me. I closed my Dire Wolf Agency years ago."
"Oh, I have been interested in the Midnight War for a long time. Call it a hobby, I have clipped many articles from the papers about you and your KDF. Here we are."
The basement was forty feet to a side, its walls unfinished damp rock. To their left was an oil-burning furnace and a cylindrical water heater, with a few bits of debris on the floor and a chest-high shelf holding some tools. In the center of the basement, the dark opening of a pit stood taking up most of the floor space. Gottfried took a heavy flashlight off the shelf and clicked it on.
The more he studied his host, the more Jeremy Bane's alarm increased. It wasn't the sheer ominous bulk of Gottfried, who stood at least six foot seven, nor the thin white scars on the man's hands and neck. There was something else very wrong. That glossy black hair was too thick and healthy for a man evidently in late middle age. It had to be a wig. Gottfried moved oddly, as if he was much stronger than his size and build would indicate. Bane's Kumundu training automatically gauged the capabilities of everyone he met as a potential opponent. It worried him that he could not reach a conclusion about this man.
Under the bench was a three-legged stool. Gottfried tugged it out and dropped down on the chipped surface with a grunt of relief. "That's better," he admitted in a hoarse voice like that of a lifetime smoker. "Getting old sneaks up on you. What doesn't hurt on your body, doesn't work."
The Dire Wolf stepped closer to the opening. It was not new, its edges had been smoothed by time. After a moment, he said, "The house was built over this pit."
"Eh? Yes, that matches the dates I have been able to learn. So many records were lost in time, either by fire or water damage or simple misplacement. From what I have been able to uncover, my family bought the property in the mid-19th Century and put up the house before 1900." The huge man forced himself up with a faint groan on effort, moving over to stand beside Bane. "Here. Take a look."
In the beam from the flashlight, the bottom of the pit was revealed, eleven feet below them. The surface of the rock was slick and shiny for some reason, and one end was covered with a wooden plank bigger than a door. But what held Bane's attention was the jumble of yellowing bones that lay in a heap, thicker than Human bones. The skull was intact except for the lower jaw, and it resembled that of an immense alligator but with a higher cranium that gave it an actual forehead. In life, the beast would have been more than ten feet long.
Despite all his misgivings, the Dire Wolf dropped his caution as he leaned forward. "Hold that light steady," he said. "Hmm. I would say that's the skeleton of a Dragon. A Garmiri, I think..."
A huge open hand smashed between his shoulder blades with impact that might have killed a normal man. Taken off-guard for once, Bane had been off-balance and he was thrown down into the pit. In the brief split-second that he was falling, the Dire Wolf reached back in an attempt to grasp Gottfried by the arm or by the clothing, but his hand only closed on empty air.
Landing unharmed on his feet and fingertips, Bane instantly wheeled around and leaped straight up. He didn't make the rim. The Dire Wolf dropped back down. From behind his left hip, he whipped out his long-barreled Smith & Wesson .38 but of course Gottfried had stepped back out of sight.
"I have done on a little research on you, my old friend," rasped the man. "The pit is two feet higher than you have been known to jump from a standing start. Knowing your... eh, shall we say unusual physical powers, I thought it best to be prudent."
The Dire Wolf held his revolver up, ready to fire if Gottfried showed himself. "Okay, I admit you suckered me. But 'old friend?' I think I'd remember if we had met before."
The voice changed. It became smooth and polished, like that of a classic BBC announcer. "Heh heh, I do not look quite the same as you remember me."
Bane could not hide the shock at hearing those mellow tones. "QUILT...!"
II.
More than a hundred years earlier, a Darthan warlock had joined together limbs and torso and head of seven different corpses, then given the resulting monstrosity a semblance of life. Filled with a psychotic hatred of people, the creature had wandered the Earth on a decades-long rampage of murder and torture. It became known as Quilt, the Patchwork Zombie. Whether organizing gangs of hired Human gunmen or gathering other creatures of the night, the monster had claimed hundred of victims. He had poisoned reservoirs, caused train crashes, started wildfires.
Bane had clashed with Quilt five times, and although he thought he had destroyed the monster more than once, the Undead always returned as vile as ever.
"Oh, I have undergone a lot of surgery in the past few years," Quilt called down. "When you don't feel pain and your body regenerates quickly, being reconstructed is no ordeal. I had all my teeth pulled and dentures made in a single day. There is a titanium extension below my right hip so that both my legs are the same length. Perhaps I'm still not conventionally handsome, ha ha."
"Well, you fooled me," the Dire Wolf replied, still hoping for a chance to snap off a shot. "The wig is obvious, though."
"I should have done this long ago. Truth be told, I enjoyed terrifying my prey with my very appearance. But it was worth all the operations to finally dispose of you."
"Why don't you come down here and we can slug it out?" Bane asked. "You know you want to."
"Very droll. I can sense you still wear those silver daggers on your forearms. Even from here, they sting me." Quilt's voice was moving alongside the length of the pit, he was remaining out of sight. A second later, the rope fastened to the plank at the far end tightened and swung it upward like a trap door. A hiss escaped the blackness revealed.
Bane swung around. From the opening in the wall, a leathery form scuttled out on short legs that extended out from a long armor-plated body that ended in a tail which whipped from side to side. The jaws gaped open to reveal rows of vicious fangs. The Dragon was one of the Garmiri breed, not as intelligent as other types and without flame but still fast and aggressive.
Oddly, the Dire Wolf holstered his gun instead of trying to shoot the Dragon. Taking two quick steps toward the beast, Bane hopped up onto its back and leaped straight up. With the added height from being on the Dragon, he barely managed to get both hands to the rim of the pit and haul himself up to kneel next to Quilt. Everything happened in a split-second. Quilt spun, growling deep in that barrel chest, and lunged at the living being he hated most. Bane grabbed the Patchwork Zombie's lower leg and rose up himself, flinging the monster down into the pit. That was not enough. He knew that the powerful Undead might be able to fight the Garmiri with success. Bane leaned over and blasted five bullets into his enemy's head. Blood splattered from the exit wounds even as the Dragon began tearing great chunks of unliving flesh.
Quilt had survived wounds like those many times before. The Darthan magic which animated him would eventually seal his carcass together and bring it back to unlife, but the Garmiri was ripping him apart. As Bane watched, the Dragon raised its muzzle and gulped down a hand without chewing.
After a moment, Bane realized he was sitting up on the cold basement floor. He hadn't realized that his knees had given way. His hands were shaking and he clasped them together. They stopped trembling immediately, but it still annoyed him to react like this. He had always gone through horrific ordeals without being affected at all. Maybe all the trauma of the Midnight War was finally catching up to him. Getting up on his hands and knees, Bane picked up the flashlight which Quilt had dropped and looked down into the pit.
Parts of the Patchwork Zombie were scattered about and the Dragon was eating as much as it could. Bane shuddered so strongly he was surprised at the reaction. There was no way Quilt could survive this, or was there? That brute had recovered from everything from being hit by a train to being trapped in a building which had burned to the ground. He could not dare take chances. Carrying the stool to the pit, Bane lowered himself and reloaded with cartridges from a box in his jacket pocket. He decided he would wait and watch.
If Quilt was being digested, if the monster somehow did not start to emerge from within that gullet, then Bane would kill the Dragon after an hour or so. There was a shovel and pick-axe in one corner of the basement. He could start breaking up the edges of the pit and filling it in. If need be, he would go outside and bring down buckets of rocks and dirt to finally bury something that should have remained buried a century ago.
4/2/2020
