Chapter One
I must look a sight, Bentley Hawthorne thought as he stood in the doorway of his family home, adorned in a ragged black suit, slouch hat atop his head, face hidden by a grinning skull mask.
He could just imagine the thoughts racing through his manservant’s mind at the moment.
“I seem to have misplaced my key,” Bentley said as he reached up with a gloved hand and removed the gruesome mask.
“Dear God, sir!” Pym exclaimed, clutching the heavy bathrobe about his throat. “You gave me a fright. I had no idea…”
A sudden wave of overwhelming fatigue caused Bentley to slump against the doorframe, interrupting the butler’s rant.
“You’re hurt,” Pym observed, and quickly reached out to take the young man’s arm. “Come inside, you’ll catch your death.”
“Too late for that,” Bentley muttered, and then chuckled as he was drawn into the warmth of the foyer.
The servant closed the door on the frigid morning rain and turned his full attention on Bentley. “Here, let me look at you,” he said. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yes, but not all of the blood is mine. Some of it’s monkey.”
“Monkey?”
Bentley nodded. “Trained to commit the act of murder. Wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes; furry devils wielding straight razors and…”
“Monkeys—with straight razors?” Pym asked incredulously.
There was that look in the manservant’s eyes. Bentley knew it well; he’d seen it so many times over the many years the two men had been together—first when he’d been horribly sick as a child, and most recently as Pym worried about what strangeness had come over his charge of late.
“Where on earth have you been?” the butler asked, a touch of petulance in his tone. “I thought we retired hours ago.”
The skull mask dropped from where Bentley had held it clutched beneath the arm of his jacket, the visage of death grinning up at them from the marble floor where it landed.
“The ghost of a murdered innocent roused me from the comfort of my bed,” he explained as he reached down for the mask. His black-gloved fingers hooked the eyeholes, but the effort nearly cost him his balance.
Pym rushed closer, placing a supporting grip upon his master’s elbow. “Perhaps we should call the doctor.”
“No need,” Bentley said quickly. “All I require is a warm bath, and then to slip beneath the covers of my bed and into Morpheus’s soothing embrace. I’ll soon be right as rain.” He forced a smile to lighten the mood, but Pym was having none of it.
“Bentley … sir, I don’t understand what—”
“It is my burden alone to bear,” the young man interrupted, placing a comforting hand on his servant’s shoulder. “Yours is the preparation of that bath I’ve been yearning for since I encountered those filthy monkeys. Have I told you how much I despise monkeys, Pym?”
The butler looked as though he might burst, a multitude of questions desperate to come forth, but he held his tongue.
“I’ll draw that bath,” was all he said as he turned away.
A wise decision, the young man thought as he watched Pym head for the stairs.
For to know the world within which Bentley existed was to tempt the touch of madness.
* * *
By the time Bentley had climbed the winding staircase to his suite of rooms on the second floor and sloughed off his wet clothing, Pym had finished filling the tub with steaming-hot water.
It took all that Bentley could muster to scrub his body clean of the grime of conflict. Drying off quickly, he slipped into his robe and padded barefoot from the bath, sidestepping the pile of wet clothes still lying where he’d shed them. He fell upon the bed and barely managed to squirm beneath the heavy blanket before the blackness of sleep engulfed him.
In seconds, he was firmly in the clutches of unconsciousness and began to dream, reliving the evening’s dark endeavors. Once again he faced the bitter scientist driven to madness with the belief that his life’s work had been stolen. With the injection of an experimental hormone believed to increase the intelligence of lesser life, the scientist had orchestrated the murder of the one he believed had wronged him. His engineered instruments of revenge: capuchin monkeys.
Capuchin monkeys taught to murder for a mad scientist’s twisted cause.
Bentley saw them again as he’d seen them earlier that evening, freed from their cages and scampering across the floor of the secret laboratory, knives and straight razors clutched in tiny, long-fingered hands, dark beady eyes filled with intelligence and wild with the promise of bloodshed.
He’d felt a twinge of pity for the things as he had pulled the twin automatics from within the pockets of his coat. But Death had no patience for such emotions, and he’d opened fire upon the murderous simians.
The pistols had made short work of the monkeys, leaving Bentley with only one remaining task: dispensing justice upon the scientist responsible for the gruesome murder of his colleague. The guilty one had tried to escape by fleeing across the rooftops as the storm had raged overhead.
But Death gave chase.
Bentley smiled in his sleep. The villain had believed he could actually escape the inevitable—right up until he was pierced by a lightning rod, thrown like a javelin just as a jagged bolt of lightning zigzagged down from the heavens to strike the alluring shaft of iron—and in a blinding flash, another wrongful death was avenged.
Bentley’s new purpose once again defined.
The young man’s eyes flew open, the scientist’s piercing scream receding into his subconscious. Bentley sat up suddenly, realizing he wasn’t alone; Pym stood before the bed, holding a silver tray.
“I took the liberty of preparing some breakfast,” the man said as he placed the tray on a nearby table.
“How long was I asleep?” Bentley asked, languidly stretching.
“Not long enough for an average person to function,” Pym replied dryly.
“Ah, but Hawthornes are better than average,” Bentley said as he left the comfort of his bed to see what his servant had brought him. He was suddenly famished. “At least that’s what Father always told me.”
He lifted the silver cover to reveal two pieces of lightly toasted white bread, exactly how he preferred it.
“I’m guessing these require laundering?” Pym asked as he reached down to pick up the pile of filthy clothes that were still on the floor.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Bentley answered around a mouthful of toast. “Take the shoes as well; they got a bit scuffed with all the running about.”
An image flashed in his mind of his quarry, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, glancing over his shoulder with eyes growing wider in terror at seeing how close Death was to him.
It had been very close indeed.
“And this?” Pym asked. He was holding the skull mask with two fingers, as if it were contaminated with some wretched disease. “Will this need to be laundered as well?”
Bentley experienced both a sickening wave of dread and a flash of excitement at the sight of the grinning visage dangling from the tips of the butler’s fingers.
“No, that can stay here.”
Was it his imagination, or had the grin upon the skull face grown wider as Pym set it down atop a nearby dresser?
The butler left without another word, and Bentley returned to his breakfast. He ate another slice of toast and poured himself a cup of steaming coffee. Pym had placed a single, freshly cut rose in a small crystal vase at the corner of the tray, and the young man found himself staring at its beauty, but imagining it slowly wilting and dying.
As with all things, death and decay would eventually have their way.
He picked up the folded newspaper on the opposite end of the tray. The headlines still decried the so-called Great Depression and what President Hoover was or wasn’t doing about it. In between bites of toast and sips of coffee, Bentley perused the news of the day.
He had just started to read about the convicted murderer of a circus trapeze artist when he felt a terrible cold that made the short hairs at the nape of his neck bristle. He’d felt similar sensations since his transformation, and braced himself as he turned for what he knew would be looming behind him.
The ghost stood not two feet away.
“Hello,” Bentley said, knowing full well that it would not answer.
The female specter hovered above the floor, this one’s body in even worse condition than the others that had previously appeared to him. The ghosts often came to him adorned with the damage that had claimed their lives: bullet wounds, broken necks, flesh charred black; this one was naked and missing part of an arm and the opposite leg. Pieces of flesh had been removed from her side, exposing the bones of her rib cage.
“Who did such terrible things to you?” Bentley asked, knowing that was what the spirit was waiting for, what they were all waiting for: the invitation to share the horrible fate that had befallen them.
Bentley steeled himself. If there was one thing he had learned since coming to serve his master, it was that the poor souls taken before their time could be very creative. The last had turned his dreams to grisly visions of its murder.
“I’m ready,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Show me how you—”
The ghost came at him in a rush of frigid air, the spectral woman’s mouth open wide in a silent scream. Bentley instinctively recoiled, stumbling back against the table, enveloped in a choking miasma that froze him to the bone. He crumpled to the floor, fighting to breathe, his lungs aching. He could feel the spirit inside him, desperate to share—desperate for him to know.
And then the images came, visions of the fate that had befallen this poor soul who now sought his aid.
For retribution.
He saw the woman, vibrant, alive, until …
Until she wasn’t.
He could not see the person responsible for the woman’s murder, the perpetrator’s features hidden in darkness as they crept up behind her. Bentley felt her terror as cold hands wrapped about her throat, closing off the flow of air, beginning a countdown to the end of her existence. She fought her assailant for as long as she was able, but time ran out, and she could fight no more.
Bentley could feel her life slipping away, writhing curtains of shadow falling down over her bulging eyes. It was the end of the line, but only the beginning of further indignities to be heaped upon her.
The next of the visions came in searing flashes, glimpses of events that followed after the woman’s untimely demise: weeping family members, ineffective law enforcement too stupid or uninterested to find her killer, a roaring oven fire, the flash of a metal blade, and a grinning mouth of razor-sharp teeth stained red with blood.
“Is everything all right, sir?” A familiar voice brought him back from where the spirit had taken him.
Bentley opened his eyes to see Pym, who wore an expression of concern.
“I heard you cry out, and…”
“I’m fine, Pym, thank you,” the young man said. His eyes searched the room for a sign of the ghost, but she had gone.
“Are you certain, sir?” the butler asked.
“I am,” Bentley replied. He was sitting at the table, the newspaper open before him. “Another ghostly visitation has occurred, I’m afraid; another departed soul in need of vindication.”
Under the sway of the specter, he had turned to the death notices. One particular listing had been circled repeatedly. It was only then that he noticed he was holding a pencil in a clawlike grip.
It was the obituary of Constance Dyer, due to be waked at the Hargrove and Sons Funeral Home.
“Was that you, Constance?” he asked the ether, reading further. It wasn’t likely, for Mrs. Dyer was listed as being sixty-five years of age. The apparition couldn’t have been much older than thirty.
But there was a reason the spirit had made him take note of this particular viewing, and Bentley knew he had no choice but to investigate further.
“Pym,” Bentley said, sensing the butler still standing in the doorway, “I’m going to need clothes.”
“Are we going out again this evening, sir?”
“I am.” Bentley closed the newspaper and turned in his chair. “And I’ll be needing a car.”
“And a driver?”
“I am more than capable of driving myself, thank you.”
“Then you haven’t seen the Packard since your last foray into the city.”
Bentley rose from the table, folded the newspaper and put it beneath his arm. He approached the skull mask still sitting atop the dresser.
“Perhaps it’s time for me to become more involved with what you’re doing,” Pym said quietly, watching as Bentley picked up the mask.
An electric charge went through the young man’s fingers. “A part of me would truly welcome the companionship,” Bentley said as he stared into the yawning darkness of the mask’s hollow eyes. “But there’s also a part of me that fears what I might be exposing you to.”
He managed to lift his gaze from the skull’s face to his servant and loyal friend. There was most definitely a tinge of fear on Pym’s stern features, but there was also something else. Resolve.
Bentley waited, praying for the butler’s retraction, but it did not come.
“I’ll go and find another suit,” Pym said instead, turning and leaving Bentley alone.
Though it might have just been the old house settling, Bentley could have sworn he’d heard a chuckle.
And that it had come from the mask in his hand.
* * *
Pym, chauffeur’s hat poised jauntily atop his head, brought the black Packard sedan to a stop in front of an old brownstone. Traffic into the city had been surprisingly light, and he and Bentley had made the drive with little trouble.
“I believe this is it,” he said, putting the gear in park.
Bentley leaned toward the backseat window, gazing out at the brick building. He could read the gold-lettered sign of HARGROVE AND SONS FUNERAL HOME over the door.
“Doesn’t look like much, does it?” he commented, still wondering what the connection to the dismembered ghost might be.
“A family-run business, obviously,” Pym said. “Probably been here for decades.”
“But what is it hiding beneath its inconspicuous facade?”
Pym turned in the driver’s seat to look at Bentley. “Does it have to be hiding anything?”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise,” the young man said, still gazing out the car window. “The dead do not send me to places that have nothing to do with their demise.”
“I suppose,” Pym commented, his skepticism evident.
“Do you doubt me, Pym?”
The butler didn’t answer.
“How about an easier question, then,” Bentley said. “Do you think me mad?”
“Sir, please,” Pym began. “I know you’ve been through some difficult times over these last months, and I’m well aware that—”
“Answer without fear of repercussions,” Bentley instructed him. “Do you think I am insane?”
“Perhaps…” the servant said with a hesitant shrug. “A little.”
Bentley laughed, a short, barking sound of disbelief rather than humor. “Does this honestly look like the face of madness?” he asked the man who had looked out for him nearly since birth.
Again, Pym did not answer.
“Never mind that,” Bentley said. “Let me assure you that I am of sound mind and that I speak nothing but the truth. I must ask you to trust me, as well as my judgment.”
They sat in silence for several minutes.
“So what now?” Pym finally asked. “Have the spirits that communicate with you told you what to do next?”
“The spirits only share so much,” Bentley said, “nudging me in the direction of their retribution.”
“That’s rather inconsiderate,” Pym said. “If you’re going to take the time to avenge them, they should have the common courtesy to tell you more.”
Bentley appreciated the butler’s feelings, but who were they to question the way in which his objectives were delivered? There was still much he himself was learning about being an avatar of Death.
“They give me what they are capable of giving,” Bentley tried to explain. “Then it becomes my responsibility to unravel the mystery of their untimely expiration.”
“And how exactly do you do that?” Pym asked. “Do you enter the building wearing your fright mask with your father’s guns blazing?” He stared at Bentley, his gaze hard and accusatory.
“I’ve told you before,” Bentley stated. “I use violence only when it is necessary.” He looked out the backseat window of the Packard at the building again. “When the answers are found and the villains exposed.” He paused, flashes of the insane bloodletting that he had perpetrated—that Death had perpetrated—over the last weeks parading before his mind’s eye.
“And until then?”
“Until then?” Bentley repeated, opening the passenger door and stepping out onto the sidewalk. “Until then, there is an investigation to complete, and purveyors of evil to be routed.”
He told his driver to wait for his return before slamming closed the car door and climbing the steps to the building’s front doors.
Into the lion’s den.
* * *
The thick, sickly smell of flowers was almost palpable as Bentley entered a wood-paneled foyer. A tall, dark-suited, middle-aged man stepped from an office on the right and greeted him with a serene smile.
“Good evening, sir,” said the man with a slight bow. Bentley took note of his voice; he had a sibilance to his speech. “May I first say how sorry I am for your loss. Constance and her mourners are in the Serenity Room. This way, if you please.”
The woman’s name came out as Consssstanssse.
Bentley followed the man down a short hall. They stopped at the doorway to a room on the left.
“Right in here,” the man said, motioning with his hand into the room.
“Thank you,” Bentley said.
The man bowed again, leaving Bentley standing in the entryway. There were chairs on either side of a short aisle, leading to the casket containing the departed in the center of the back of the room. A smattering of black-clad mourners were seated here and there, speaking in whispers so as not to disrespect the dead. Some turned to stare as Bentley entered, and he quickly found a seat in the last row.
He sat and watched as more mourners arrived and approached the casket, where they knelt for a moment, bowing their heads. Then, prayers completed, they would step away, politely offering their condolences to the grieving family before finding a chair and sitting only long enough to avoid seeming rude.
It went on like that for hours, people coming and going, and still Bentley saw nothing out of the ordinary. He was becoming antsy; usually by then the reason for his presence in a particular place would have become evident. Once again he carefully studied the room. His eyes finally settled upon the casket, and he made up his mind as to what he would do.
Bentley rose from his chair and walked toward the deceased.
Constance Dyer lay in her coffin, hands folded atop her ample chest. Her fingers had been wrapped in rosary beads, a silver crucifix dangling at one of her wrists. Bentley knelt upon the cushioned kneeler as if to pray, but instead studied the corpse. There appeared to be nothing wrong; the large woman’s face was heavily adorned in makeup that made her flesh appear waxy in the room’s lighting. She wore a string of pearls around her thick, powdered neck and a flowered dress that made him think of the jungle. He wondered how had she come to meet her end and what form Death had worn when it had taken her hand.
Bentley remembered a beautiful little girl with a beaming smile and curly blond hair the color of the sun, and how she had come for him, but his parents had had other plans—and things had not turned out so well.
Sensing that another mourner had arrived, Bentley stood, his eyes furtively searching one last time for any sign—any clue—as to why the ghost had brought him here.
As if he had somehow summoned her, the ghost appeared to his left, looking even more grotesque in the funeral-home lighting than she had in his bedroom. This time the top of her head had been removed, the inside of her skull fully visible and lacking its gray, cerebral contents. She tipped her head forward to be sure he saw the empty, bloody bowl. Even though she was a phantasm, Bentley reacted, stepping quickly back from the gruesome vision and losing his balance.
To prevent himself from falling, he reached out, grabbing hold of the coffin’s edge. The world began to spin, a spell of vertigo and nausea causing him to sway in an attempt to regain his balance. His gaze fell to the inside of the coffin, and he was surprised to see that Constance was gone, replaced by another.
It is the female spirit’s physical form, but intact from what he can see. The vision shifts. He sees the lid of the casket being slowly lowered, and then the container is wheeled from the viewing room down the hallway to what appears to be an open elevator.
The coffin begins its descent, the elevator door opening into some sort of stone basement. It is like something out of Dante: cold, wet stone, the ceiling lined with rows of iron hooks that sway in the dank, fetid air. He feels the sensation as the woman’s body is roughly hauled from her resting place, her clothes torn away and discarded, exposing her pale, naked flesh. At the end of a stone chamber, in front of a blazing oven, a man works. He is wearing a heavy, crimson-stained apron, his fearsome cleaver coming down with great force upon a wooden cutting board.
A butcher doing as a butcher does.
The woman is being brought to him.
Bentley sees that the man hacks at a thick and bloody piece of flesh, a limb, but he can’t tell whether arm or leg. The meat is expertly trimmed from the bone, then slid aside to be added to a larger pile later, while the clean-picked bone is tossed upon a heap of offal.
The butcher turns toward Bentley, his eyes a solid black in the firelight cast from the great oven. He motions for the woman’s corpse to be brought closer and smiles, exposing jagged teeth like razors, as the body is unceremoniously laid before him upon the bloody, gouged wood. He looks her over, assessing his work before raising the cleaver and bringing it down with a sound like thunder.
The hand that dropped down upon Bentley’s shoulder was firm, drawing him back from the nightmarish vision. He turned to focus upon a concerned face—the face of the butcher, but clean and unspattered with blood.
“Are you all right?” the older man asked. “You look quite pale.”
His teeth were normal, and instead of a bloody apron, he was wearing a fine black suit, with a white shirt and black tie. The middle-aged man who had met him at the door was standing beside him, as was another younger man.
“I’m fine,” Bentley managed to say as he tried to shake off the horrors of the vision. “I always look this way—pale, I mean. I’m just overwhelmed by grief, I suppose.”
The butcher offered an understanding nod. “Constance was a fine woman, and she will most assuredly be missed.”
Bentley was surprised to hear that the butcher had the same speech impediment as the middle-aged man.
“Would you care to sit down?” the butcher asked him kindly. “One of my sons can bring you a glass of water, if you’d like.”
One of my sons? Bentley realized that he was in the presence of the funeral home’s owner. The butcher in his vision was the senior Hargrove.
The eldest son began to walk away to fetch the glass of water.
“No, no that’s quite all right,” Bentley said quickly, stopping him. “I think I’ll just take my leave now. Thank you anyway.” He turned to face the aisle and found other mourners staring from their seats, concern on their faces.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to no one in particular as he marched down the aisle and back into the hallway.
He pushed through the front door, but as he headed down the stairs, he could suddenly feel eyes upon him, and turned to see Hargrove and his two sons watching him go. There was something in their gazes, something that chilled him to the core and stirred him to action.
Now he knew why he’d been sent.
* * *
Bentley slipped into the backseat of his car, startling Pym, who had fallen asleep.
“So?” the butler asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he turned to address Bentley.
“It was as I feared,” he said. “Behind the veneer of a family-run business something incredibly dark and evil thrives.”
Pym sighed, his shoulders slumping in the driver’s seat. “And that means what, exactly?”
“It means that I am now forced to act,” Bentley explained. “It was why I was summoned here.”
“What do you intend to do?”
Bentley stared out the side window at the building. “I wait until the innocent have departed.”
He reached down below the seat and retrieved the two guns he had placed there earlier. Taking one in hand, he chambered a round.
“Then I make evil pay.”
* * *
Bentley Hawthorne had no idea why he had been chosen. He knew that it had something to do with his parents, and the lengths they had gone to to keep him alive, even though they had been told by many a medical expert that his demise was inevitable.
They had attempted to ignore the laws of life, and death, and had paid a terrible price.
A price Bentley continued to pay.
* * *
“Do you have to wear that?” Pym asked with distaste.
Bentley glanced up through the eyeholes of the skull mask and saw the butler staring at him through the rearview mirror.
“I do,” he said. “When I wear it, I’m somebody else—something else—with an important job to do.”
“I mean no disrespect, sir, truly, but do you realize how insane this all sounds?” Pym turned in the driver’s seat to face him. “Ghosts sending you out in the middle of the night to God knows where, dressed in black, wearing a skull mask and carrying two automatic pistols. If I were to inform the proper authorities, you would be locked away in an asylum for certain.”
Bentley reached up with a gloved hand to remove the mask. He found it easier to talk to his friend this way.
“But you would never do that.”
Pym’s look softened, and he sighed. “You’re right. A long time ago, I made a promise to your parents. I promised that I would always look after you.”
“And you’ve done that quite well,” Bentley told him.
“But it hasn’t been easy,” Pym retorted, “especially of late.”
“Things have changed, my friend.” Bentley slowly returned the yellowish-white mask to his face. “I have been given a job,” he said, his voice taking on a more menacing tone.
A voice he barely recognized.
* * *
The lights inside the funeral home finally went dark. The last of the mourners had filed through the front door a little more than an hour before, leaving only the owners of the establishment inside.
“It’s time that I get to it,” Bentley said. “The Grim Death has work to do.”
He slid across the backseat and opened the door, allowing a rush of chilling air to enter.
“Is that what you actually call yourself when you’re like this?” Pym asked. “Grim Death?”
“It is the death I deliver to those deserving of it … It seemed appropriate,” he said, half in and half out of the car. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” Pym said.
“Why?” Bentley asked again, only more firmly, and came farther back into the car.
“It seems silly,” Pym said bluntly.
“Silly. Well, let me tell you it’s not that, I assure you. I’m the kind of death they deserve, you see.”
“Yes,” Pym said with a little nod.
“I’m not a happy death,” Bentley continued to explain. “These people I’m visiting … they’ve done horrible things. I’m the one who will remind them of their terrible actions and make them pay the price.”
“I see. Yes,” Pym said.
“Do you?” Bentley asked him. “Not so silly now, correct?”
Pym just shook his head no, ever so slowly.
Not entirely sure he believed the butler, and no longer having the patience to argue, Bentley slunk from the car, pushing the door silently closed behind him.
He darted to the nearest shadows thrown by the buildings on the street, using the darkness to conceal his movements. There was an alley between buildings, and he went down it, pressing close to the wall until it opened onto a large lot and the service entrance to the funeral home.
Bentley tried the heavy door but was not surprised to find it locked. He looked around, searching for some other way to gain entrance. His eyes fell on a rectangular basement window that he might have been able to break, but he paused when he heard the sound of a truck engine drawing closer. A closed gate at the far end of the lot was suddenly illuminated by headlights, and he quickly ran for cover.
A truck stopped in front of the gate, and the driver got out to push it open. Then he climbed back into the truck and drove into the lot, parking near the back door to the funeral home.
From his hiding place, Bentley could see the sign on the side of the truck—SALVY’S FLORIST, obviously making a delivery for the next day’s services. He watched as the driver again left the cab, this time walking to the door. The man fished inside one of the pockets of his baggy pants and produced a key, then unlocked the door and let it swing open into darkness.
Bentley saw his opportunity as the man turned from the open door and went around to the back of the truck, pulling open its double doors and climbing inside to retrieve his delivery. Stealthily, he raced from the shadows and plunged through the open door, just as he heard the delivery truck’s doors slam closed. He managed to slip behind a large brick support before the man came through the door carrying two large floral arrangements, carefully stepping down the three steps into the basement. He walked past where the masked Bentley had secreted himself and placed the flowers just outside another door at the far end of the room. Finished, the driver quickly left the basement, whistling a Gilbert and Sullivan tune as he closed the door and locked it behind him.
Bentley listened as the truck engine started up and then faded off as the florist drove away. He waited a few moments in the silence of the funeral home basement to be sure there would be no further interruptions before he cautiously emerged from behind the pillar. The basement was dark, but his eyes quickly adjusted. He could see the shapes of multiple caskets across from him. Even in the semidarkness he could make out the high quality of some, with ornate carving and silver and gold detailing, in sharp contrast to others that appeared to be little more than pine boxes.
He was surprised by how large the basement seemed to be, and as he prowled about he noticed several other doors, some closed, some open. He peered through one open doorway to find some sort of workroom, the wall covered in shelving littered with bottles of chemicals. A long metal table, which could only have been used for the preparation of the deceased for burial, sat ominously in the room’s center.
He also noticed that there were children’s toys—a tricycle, a doll, and a striped ball—just outside the workroom’s door, and thought how odd it was to see items such as these in a space where—
The silence was suddenly interrupted by the grinding of gears and the hum of machinery. Bentley scanned the shadows of the basement until his eyes fell upon a larger metal door with a heavy accordion gate across it. Ducking into a patch of concealing shadow, he watched as the door drew sideways, and a hand reached out from within to unlatch the gate and slide it aside. A casket resting atop a wheeled cart was pushed from the elevator, followed by the middle-aged undertaker who had greeted Bentley earlier that evening.
The undertaker left the coffin, disappearing for a moment somewhere in the basement, only to return with a wheeled stretcher. With growing fascination, Bentley watched as the man opened the lid of the coffin, roughly hauled the stiffened corpse of Constance Dyer from her resting place, and laid her body upon the stretcher.
Making certain the body was stable and would not tumble off, the undertaker left again, only to return with what appeared to Grim Death’s eyes to be multiple sandbags, which he then proceeded to lay inside the now empty casket. Satisfied with his work, the man then closed the lid.
They don’t intend to bury the body, Bentley realized. The sandbags were intended to give the impression of weight—the impression that Constance was inside.
But what of the body? he pondered. What is to be done with it? He recalled the horrific visions he’d experienced at the woman’s wake and hoped his suspicions were wrong, but …
Death roiled within him, already sure that it knew what was happening here, eager to make those responsible pay.
Bentley watched as the door where the delivery man had left the flower arrangements came open, and the youngest of the Hargrove sons appeared.
“The casket is ready to be sealed,” the older brother told his sibling. “When you’re finished, take it back upstairs and load it into the hearse. Burial is tomorrow morning at eight sharp.”
The older then got behind the cart that held Constance’s remains and pushed it toward where the youngest had just exited. “And bring these flowers upstairs while you’re at it.”
The youngest grunted something in response, getting behind the sandbag-filled casket and pushing it back onto the elevator. The older Hargrove got the other door opened and maneuvered the stretcher carrying Constance through the passage and into the area beyond; the door slammed closed when he was through.
Bentley knew thatwas where he needed to go—where Grim Death needed to be—observing the young man as he did as he had been told and returned for the flowers. The youth bent to pick up both arrangements. As Grim Death leaned farther out to observe, he unknowingly stepped upon a child’s toy and unleashed an ear-piercing squeak into the quiet of the room.
If the situation had not been so dire, he would almost have found it comical.
Almost.
His clumsiness had alerted the youngest Hargrove to his presence.
The youth charged across the basement with a feral growl. Bentley met his lunge, resisting the temptation to reach inside his coat pocket and draw one of his guns. That would have been the most efficient way of dealing with the situation, but he didn’t want to risk alerting anybody else to his presence. This needed to be handled as quickly and quietly as possible.
The young man was strong. Hitting Bentley like a bull, the younger Hargrove drove him back against a brick column, knocking the wind from his lungs in an explosive rush. Bentley had never been the greatest physical specimen, weighing no more than 125 pounds soaking wet, but since being inducted into Death’s service, he’d found that when needed he could tap into some reserve of preternatural strength.
A gift to him, perhaps, in case of dire situations such as this.
Bentley felt his limbs flush with power and he lashed out, kicking the youngest Hargrove away with great force. His attacker flew backward across the basement, landing just before the elevator. He was climbing to his feet as Bentley hurled himself at his prey, coat splayed out like bat wings as he collided with the youth. The impact carried them both back into the elevator, crashing up against the bodyless casket, their furious struggles tipping it onto its side.
Young Hargrove managed to crawl atop Bentley within the cramped space, raised fists preparing to fall. The casket’s contents had spilled out onto the elevator floor, and Bentley grabbed one of the sandbags, using it first to absorb the young man’s wild blows and then as a weapon, slapping the heavy sack across the young man’s face. Something flew from the undertaker’s mouth as he fell out of the elevator. Bentley quickly climbed to his feet, ready to continue the fight, but found that his opponent was unconscious. Catching his breath, he looked to the floor to see what appeared to be a row of teeth lying next to the young man’s head—false teeth, by the looks of them. Kneeling beside the unconscious Hargrove, Bentley reached down, pulling open his bloody lips and gasping at what was revealed. There were still teeth within the youth’s mouth, but they were unnatural. Jagged and sharp, filed to points, they called to mind the disturbing visions he’d experienced earlier in the evening. He retrieved the row of artificial teeth: they were hollow, designed to be worn over the man’s real teeth. A disguise.
He recalled the speech impediment he’d heard in both Hargrove and his eldest, and wondered.
After some searching, Bentley found a length of old rope and bound the man’s hands and feet. He shoved a rag into his mouth and dragged him into the elevator, closing the heavy door and accordion gate.
Turning toward the closed door where he’d seen the middle-aged Hargrove wheel the woman’s body, Bentley experienced an icy chill down the length of his spine. He reached into his pockets, feeling for the reassurance of his guns.
Death impatiently urged him on.
Carefully, he opened the door and found himself looking into a long corridor that descended at a precarious slant. He guessed there was an entire other sublevel below the cellar.
Abandon hope all ye who enter, he thought as he proceeded into the corridor. The first thing he noticed was the smell, a thick, coppery miasma of blood and decay. The Bentley he had been would have turned tail and run for the closest exit.
But now, as Grim Death, he plunged deeper, drawn to what awaited him like metal filings to a magnet.
Thunk.
He stopped at the sound, reaching into his coat for one of his guns.
Thunk.
Bentley listened, cocking his head to discern from where the sound originated.
Thunk.
It was close, and he began walking again, pistol clenched in his gloved hand.
Thunk.
There was no mistaking the sound of chopping. His mind flashed back to his childhood, and one of the many cooks they’d had—he believed her name was Ida—busily working in the kitchen, cutting up a whole chicken for his parents’ supper.
Thunk.
He was close now, just about able to make out an opening at the left of the corridor.
Thunk.
Bentley slowly approached, eyes darting about, searching for any potential threats. He noticed that the temperature had become much warmer the closer he got to the room. His eyes fell upon an enormous metal stove that seemed to take up one side of a stone wall, its two doors hanging wide open, a roaring wood fire blazing within.
Thunk.
Now standing just inside the room, Bentley saw where he was, and for a moment believed he had somehow found his way into one of the lower levels of Hell.
It was a kitchen of a sort, but one that could have belonged to some kind of demonic chef. It was dark, the stone walls sweating with moisture. Huge hooks at the ends of chains hung from a large portion of the wood-planked ceiling.
And from the ends of the hooks dangled …
Thunk.
He found the source of the sound in the corner of the room. A lone figure, his back to Bentley, dressed in a heavy apron, stood before a huge butcher’s table, his heavy cleaver coming down upon the pieces of meat that he was cutting.
Thunk.
Pieces of meat that had until very recently been parts of Constance Dyer.
The sound of scuffling feet from behind alerted him, and Bentley spun around, gun raised in defense. The eldest of the Hargrove sons swung a meat hook, knocking the pistol from Bentley’s hand. Bentley jumped back, going for his other weapon, but he slipped on an overly saturated pile of sawdust and lost his balance. The eldest Hargrove son came at him hard, lashing out with the hook, its tip easily piercing Bentley’s clothing and burying itself in the meat of his shoulder. The young man behind the mask cried out as he did all he could to dislodge the foreign object, but it was already too late—he was set upon by his foe and beaten to the floor, the son’s powerful blows nearly sending him into unconsciousness.
“So, what do we have here?” asked a familiar voice, hissing speech impediment and all.
Bentley looked up blearily through the eyeholes of the mask into the blood-spattered face of the butcher—and owner of the funeral home.
“Caught him watching you prepare the meat,” the eldest son said to his father. He squatted down, then reached out with filthy hands, taking hold of the mask and ripping it from Bentley’s face. “Look familiar, Da?”
“In fact he does,” Hargrove said. “It’s the little fella that took a spell while viewing Mrs. Dyer. Thought we were going to need to fetch a doctor for him.”
The older man dropped down on his haunches beside his son.
“So, what brings you down here dressed like that, my boy?” the undertaker asked. “And don’t you wish now that you’d minded your business?”
Bentley said nothing as he glared up at the man, his silence inspiring the son to yank and twist the meat hook that was still embedded in his shoulder.
“My father asked you a question,” the eldest said as Bentley hissed in pain.
Pushing past the burning agony, he answered.
“The act of murder has brought me here,” Bentley said.
Hargrove shook his head. “Harsh words,” the older man said. “But what else can we expect from one who does not understand. Ancestry has shaped us into something rare upon this world, but murderers we are not.”
Hargrove rose, his knees cracking noisily as he stood erect.
Bentley glanced over at the cutting board, and the chains hanging down, and the remnants of those who had once been whole, reduced now to little more than butchered meat.
“I’m having a difficult time seeing anything but.”
The eldest son reached for the hook again, to punish him for his flippancy, but the older man stopped him.
“We are hunters, sir,” Hargrove said indignantly. “I want you to know that.”
He then glanced off to where Bentley had been looking, toward the dangling body parts, toward the meat. By the serene expression upon Hargrove’s face, Bentley could tell he was seeing something other than a monstrous act of savagery.
“My grandfather wanted what was best for his family when he emigrated from eastern Europe. He and others continued to chase that dream, embarking on a journey to California.”
The older man grew misty-eyed, reverence obvious in the tone of his voice.
“The wagon train set out in the late spring of 1846, but a series of mishaps caused their progress to suffer, eventually stranding the pioneers in the Sierra Nevada, where the harsh winter took its toll and their food resources grew low.”
Mr. Hargrove paused, looking down at the bloodstained meat cleaver that he still held in hand.
“They began to die, to grow sicker and sicker with the brutal cold. It was my grandfather who determined how they could survive, but it was a decision he knew would change them forever.”
“They became cannibals,” Bentley said with obvious disdain.
Hargrove’s son lashed out, pulling savagely on the meat hook stuck in his shoulder. Bentley cried out, falling over onto his side. He could feel the blood flowing from the wound, soaking through his shirt and into the sleeve of his coat. It looked as though yet another suit would find its way to the rag pile.
Mr. Hargrove went on with his story as Bentley lay there bleeding.
“The others refused to partake, even though it meant their imminent demise. Some even attempted to prevent my grandfather from doing what had to be done to survive … but he wouldn’t let them stop him.”
Bentley listened, trying to keep the metal point of the hook from grinding against the bone in his shoulder. As Hargrove continued to speak, Bentley focused his eyes on the mask—the face that he wore in service to a higher power—its empty eyes telling him that he had wasted too much time, that it was time for him to act.
Now.
Bentley made a show of going for the hook, to pull it from his flesh. As he’d hoped would happen, the son reacted.
“There’ll be none of that,” the elder son said as he swatted Bentley’s hand away, taking hold of the hook once more. Bentley used the distraction to dig down into his coat pocket with his other hand for the second gun.
As the undertaker’s son gleefully tugged on the hook, Bentley rolled onto his back, revealing the pistol in his hand. The son’s eyes went wide as he saw what was about to happen.
“Death has a message,” Bentley said.
The gun roared within the subbasement enclosure, the .45-caliber bullet punching the man in the stomach and throwing him backward into his father.
“Elijah!” Mr. Hargrove cried out, as he caught his son and lowered him to the ground, cradling him on the blood- and sawdust-covered floor.
Gun clutched tightly in hand, Bentley climbed painfully to his feet. He switched his weapon to the other hand so he could remove the hook from his flesh, and tossed it to the floor with a resounding clatter.
The undertaker glared at Bentley as he held his dying boy.
“Grandfather could never understand their unwillingness to accept how he provided his family with a means to survive the harshest of winters, so he silenced those who opposed him.”
“He murdered them,” Bentley said as he looked for his mask. “He murdered them, and then he and his family ate them.”
“He saw it as a form of sacrifice in order for them all to live.”
Bentley slipped the mask over his face, covering his scowl as he once again assumed the guise of Grim Death.
“How long?” Bentley demanded, his voice changed with the mask. “How long has your bloodline fed upon the innocents of this city?”
He watched the old man’s expression gradually change with the realization that he was now in the presence of something more than human.
Bentley could feel Death struggle at his core to be set loose, but he held it at bay, curious to know the rest of the story.
“We had no choice,” the old man went on. “The act of consumption changed us … Normal sustenance could no longer sustain us. The forbidden meat was the only way. After all my grandfather and his children had been through, they had to find yet another way to survive…”
“A funeral home,” Bentley said, impressed with yet disgusted by the concept.
“We would do no harm … We became carrion eaters,” Mr. Hargrove explained as he continued to hold his son close. “It was an acceptable life, until…”
Bentley gripped the pistol tightly, and kept his hold upon an impatient Death even as the pain in his shoulder throbbed unmercifully. Hargrove looked at his son and saw that he was no longer moving, and his tear-filled eyes grew dark as he recognized that his boy was gone.
“Before he died, Grandfather always cautioned his sons and their wives and their own children about the temptation of the fresh kill.”
Hargrove let his son’s still body slide from his arms as he got to his feet, picking up his cleaver.
“‘Feed upon the naturally dead,’ he’d always say, ‘keep our ways secret—or be damned for all eternity.’”
The old man sighed as he hefted the heavy metal tool. “I’d suspected that they might be partaking … hunting the living. I warned them that it wasn’t smart to hunt so close to home.” He shook his head sadly.
“But they didn’t listen,” Bentley said, aiming his gun.
“No,” Hargrove said. “They didn’t, and neither did I. It was just too damn tempting.”
The old man looked at him, and then removed his false teeth, flashing a smile that showcased razor-sharp teeth. “I’ve always feared someone like you,” he said, no longer emphasizing the S. “Someone who would come and take away everything we’ve worked so hard to achieve. Someone who would mete out punishment for what we have done.”
Blossoms of color had started to expand in front of Bentley’s eyes as the blood continued to flow down his arm. It was taking all that he had not to swoon.
“The innocents you and your family have murdered and defiled cannot truly rest until you are punished,” he declared.
Hargrove stepped back, nodding slowly as if accepting his fate.
“Grandfather warned that the road of the fresh kill would lead to all sorts of trouble,” the old man explained. “He never got too specific … but there was something in his eyes when he talked about it, like something really bad would happen.”
Hargrove lifted the cleaver, and Bentley reacted, his finger tightening on the pistol’s trigger. The gun spat fire as the undertaker cried out, falling back against the doorframe.
Bentley experienced a wave of vertigo that threatened to bring him to his knees; he swayed drunkenly, grabbing one of the dangling chains to keep himself upright.
The old man had not been brought down with the shot. Through unfocused eyes Bentley watched as Hargrove proceeded to whack the side of the metal cleaver repeatedly against the damp stone wall, the noise resounding throughout the subbasement.
“He should have told us what the fresh kill would do to our bloodline,” Hargrove said. “He should have told us the price the mothers would pay … what it would do to the children.”
Children?
And then Bentley remembered the toys in the basement.
He heard them before he saw them—skittering, scratching sounds from all around him.
They came out of hiding, crawling from shadows and squeezing out from behind spaces that appeared too small for anything with a skeleton to fit.
At first glance they seemed as though they might have some human ancestry, but the more he studied their pale, malformed bodies, the less he was sure. They watched him with eyes like black marbles. Twin vertical slits in their flat, pasty faces, which he guessed served the function of noses, twitched nervously as they leaked milky liquid into open mouths where mottled pink-and-black gums were lined with rows of saw-blade teeth.
The creatures kept their distance, looking nervously from him to Hargrove, chattering in some strange, guttural tongue.
Chattering to their grandfather.
“You’re right,” the old man said to the children in a soft, grandfatherly tone. “He doesn’t belong here … He’s a bad man.”
The things immediately responded to the man’s words, turning in Bentley’s direction, their malformed faces twisting into guises of animalistic savagery.
“And what do we do to bad men?” Hargrove asked them.
The monstrous children reacted with bloodcurdling screams, giving Bentley their full attention.
Hargrove made a move for the doorway, and Bentley fired his pistol once more, but the shot went wild, missing the man as he escaped into the corridor.
“Damn it,” Bentley hissed, wanting to give pursuit. But he had other matters to attend to now as the children, transformed by the sin of cannibalism, stalked toward him. Some had picked up implements, mostly knives of various sizes, from around the room. Some even brandished jagged pieces of dried bone. He backed up as they came closer. Noticing the pistol he had dropped earlier, Bentley snatched it from the ground. Now fully armed, he aimed with both weapons but found that he could not bring himself to fire.
Even though they were hideous, twisted things, created from murder and the consumption of human meat, they were still children, and he could not squeeze the triggers.
Sensing his hesitation, one of the misshapen youths charged forward ahead of his brethren, thrusting the tines of a filthy, gore-encrusted fork into Bentley’s calf with an inhuman wail.
Bentley cried out, gazing down into the malicious grin of something seemingly void of humanity, and as the Death that resided within him took control, he suddenly found he no longer had any qualms about firing a bullet into the distorted face.
In fact, it was the proper thing to do.
The Colt.45 boomed its retort. Grim Death’s diminutive foe flipped backward to the cellar floor with a pathetic squawk, to lie there perfectly still. The others stopped their advance, gathering around their newly deceased brother, staring in wide-eyed awe at his fate. Grim Death wondered if they were capable of understanding that he meant business, that they could share their brethren’s fate or choose to live, returning to their hiding places in the shadows of the nightmarish slaughterhouse.
One by one they looked up from their fallen brother to stare at Bentley with eyes glistening black.
“Children of nightmare, choose your fate,” Grim Death warned, his thumbs pulling back the guns’ hammers with an audible click.
One after the other they began to whoop their war cries, coming at him all at once in a tidal wave of enraged deformity, and Grim Death, twin pistols at the ready and with no further compunction, began to fire. He had given them a choice, and they had chosen death.
The abominations screamed. Some managed to avoid being struck, while others were savaged by the .45-caliber bullets that tore unmercifully through their twisted bodies.
Death temporarily satisfied, Bentley saw his opportunity and dashed toward the exit, turning as he ran to see a few survivors emerge from hiding places to resume their pursuit. Running low on bullets and feeling the heat upon his back, he turned his gaze to the large oven, still burning with a blistering intensity, and formulated an idea.
Bentley found a wrought-iron shovel and leaned into the oppressive heat. He drove the shovel into the burning matter inside the great stove and was horrified to see a blackened skull staring back at him from a pile of ash and bones.
He scooped a white-hot mound onto the shovel and spun toward his attackers, throwing the burning remains into their path.
The advancing monster children were driven back by the blazing vestiges, some of the rolling bones igniting drying puddles of grease and oily rags into hungry pyres.
From the doorway he watched as the twisted products of cannibalism reacted to the flames, their futile attempts at extinguishing the fire causing the voracious conflagration to spread.
That particular threat temporarily contained, Bentley rushed down the corridor to the funeral home’s basement, the smoke from the fire growing thicker as it followed him into the main building. From out of the writhing smoke the youngest Hargrove leapt, colliding with him and sending them both sprawling to the floor. The youngest, having escaped his bonds and internment in the casket elevator, was savage in his attack. Bentley worked his forearm beneath the young man’s throat as they struggled, driving him back and preventing the youth from biting him with snapping, knife-sharp teeth. Having no further patience for fisticuffs, Bentley brought one of his pistols up and jammed the barrel against the youth’s chest, firing a single shot through his black heart. The youngest Hargrove went down, but still showed signs of life. At Death’s urging, Bentley fired another slug into the young man’s skull to make certain he would not be getting up.
The Death inside him grew anxious, urging him to find the patriarch of the cannibal clan. The cellar was now filled with smoke, and Bentley carefully made his way through the choking fog in search of the undertaker. From somewhere in the haze there came a terrible screaming, like the tormented cries of suffering animals.
“What have you done to them?” asked a voice much closer to him than expected. “What have you done to the children?”
Bentley threw himself back, barely evading the looming shape that came at him from out of the roiling vapor. The blade of Hargrove’s ax came down upon the concrete floor in an explosion of sparks. Reacting before Hargrove could raise the weapon again, Bentley lashed out with one of his pistols, slapping the cold steel across the man’s jaw. Hargrove lurched back with a pained grunt as Bentley took aim with the other gun, but the smoke was now too thick, and the undertaker was gone.
Again came the disturbing, pain-racked cries, only this time they were closer. Bentley prowled the hidden landscape of the funeral home basement, through the shifting smoke, every sense attuned to possible danger. The ghost of the woman who had brought him here suddenly appeared, her damaged body taking form in the smoke. Her mouth was open in a pleading wail, her one untouched arm raised to point behind him. Trusting that the spirit had his best interests in mind, Bentley spun and fired into the curtain of obscuring gray.
There came a grunt, and the clatter of something heavy falling to the floor. Bentley advanced toward the sound and found the discarded ax and a serpentine trail of blood leading off farther into the labyrinthine basement.
He followed the crimson trail to the workroom he’d seen earlier, filled with the chemicals and tools of the undertaking trade. Hargrove lay upon the floor, blood leaking from two bullet wounds in his chest into a circular drain in the floor.
“I see you now,” Hargrove began, eyes fixed upon the specter of Death standing in the doorway, “see you for what you truly are.”
The older man attempted to stand, grabbing the wooden shelving for support—shelves that held dusty bottles of formaldehyde. The shelves creaked in protest, then tipped forward onto the injured man, the bottles of chemicals exploding at they hit the concrete. Hargrove lay there covered in glass and embalming fluid, the heavy wooden shelving pinning him to the floor. The drifting smoke and fumes from the spilled chemicals were nearly overwhelming, and Bentley found himself bringing a hand to his mask to filter out some of the choking vapors.
“Please,” Hargrove begged weakly, bloody hands reaching out to Death’s emissary. “Haven’t I served you well?”
The Death inside him stirred excitedly, sensing an end to the moment, and Bentley found himself beginning to raise one of his guns.
And then there came the screams again, and through the thickening smoke he saw a glow—a glow that was coming closer and closer.
“Please!” Hargrove begged again as Bentley moved from the doorway into a shadowed corner of the supply room.
The surviving Hargrove grandchildren swarmed into the room, their bodies aflame, screaming in agony, driven to madness by their pain. They were looking for somebody to help them—somebody to take away their torment.
They fell upon their trapped grandfather, all their emotions pouring out as they hugged, bit, and clawed at him with spindly arms burnt practically to blackened sticks.
And Hargrove, too, began to burn, the formaldehyde on his clothing and collected upon the floor beneath him igniting in a rush. The flames spread voraciously about the room as the Hargrove clan screamed for far longer than Bentley would have thought imaginable.
It was only a matter of time before the entire building would be engulfed. Bentley found his way back to the door from which he’d originally gained entrance and pushed it open; a rush of cool early morning air fed the fire behind him.
Bentley collapsed to his knees just outside the entrance, choking on purifying gulps of oxygen.
“Bentley?” he heard a familiar voice call out, and looked up through watering eyes to see Pym coming toward him. He continued to cough and gasp as the butler helped him stand, supporting him as they went down the alley between buildings to where the sedan was still parked.
“Perhaps if you removed the damned mask,” the man growled, reaching up to rip away his other face.
“Ah,” Bentley wheezed. “That’s better.”
It was still early enough that the streets were free of life as Bentley and Pym emerged from the alley and made their way to the car.
“I think it wise that we leave here at once,” Pym said, opening the rear passenger door before quickly going around to the driver’s side.
Bentley chanced a look at the funeral home before climbing in. The windows were illuminated with a ghostly orange light, and smoke was beginning to seep from beneath the sills and doors.
And then he saw them. There had to be at least a hundred, maybe more: the ghosts of all those who had been fed upon by the Hargrove cannibals. They were standing before the building, watching as it burned.
“Are we done here?” Pym called out from inside the car, revving the engine.
“Yes,” Bentley said as he practically fell onto the seat. His shoulder, his whole body, throbbed painfully, and he barely managed to reach out to grab hold of the door handle and pull it closed. “Yes, I think we are.”
Bentley slumped down in the backseat, helplessly weak, as the car screeched away from the curb. The Death that resided within him sighed contentedly, satisfied—
For now.
* * *
Bentley slipped in and out of consciousness through the long drive home, the sun having climbed higher in the morning sky each time he opened his eyes. By the time they returned to Hawthorne House, it would be a particularly lovely fall day—not that he would see any of it.
As soon as Pym parked the sedan, he helped Bentley out and into the mansion, where the butler assumed another of his seemingly endless responsibilities: cleaning and dressing Bentley’s wounds.
Painfully sore, and stinking of formaldehyde and cooked meat, Bentley slowly climbed the stairs to his room, while Pym did what he did to keep the great house in order. There was a part of him that would have loved another bath, but at the moment his body needed sleep far more than cleanliness.
Bentley entered his bedchambers, shucking off his stinking clothes. As he kicked off his trousers, he saw that his breakfast tray from the previous day was still sitting upon the table, reminding him that it had been close to twenty-four hours since he’d last eaten. Some of his breakfast still remained, a single piece of cold toast lying upon a plate. Bentley picked up the bread and brought it to his mouth, too tired to do anything but nibble on the crust. When he felt that he’d had enough to temporarily sustain him, he dropped the toast’s remains to the table and turned languidly toward the bed.
Another ghost had appeared, blocking his way.
Bentley didn’t want to see it, closing his eyes hard before opening them again. The little boy still stood there, large eyes piercing and beckoning to him. And that was when he noticed the ornate dagger protruding from the center of the child’s chest, phantasmal blood leaking out from the wound to form a halo of crimson around his small head. Bentley looked away, trying to get to his bed, but the small spirit continued to drift to block his way, his pale hands reaching out—beckoning.
“I have to sleep, little boy,” he told the child. “I’m so very tired. When I awaken I will…”
Bentley felt the odd stirring at his core telling him that the power he served had again awakened. It wanted him to act.
At once.
The ghost mouthed the word please, and Bentley felt his resolve collapse.
“Pym,” he called out in his loudest voice, “I have need of you.”
The door to his suite came open.
“What is it, sir?” the butler asked.
“I’m going to need another suit,” he told the man, his fatigue forgotten as he watched the expression on the ghost’s face turn from sadness to joy.
“But I thought you were exhausted?” Pym asked.
“I’m fine,” he told his friend, his heart beginning to race. “We have work to do.”
Death had no time for weariness.
Copyright © 2017 by Mike Mignola and Thomas E. Sniegoski
