Le FREEZINE due Fantazi und Szienze Fixione

THE DEVIL CAME TO BOSTON:VIII

2011-09-06T12:40:00.003-07:00

by Adam Bolivar

“Really?” I said, trying to sound as casual as I could. “Because if you’re planning to turn yourself into a ghoul, I’d advise against it. It may be immortality of a sort, but it’s a pretty nasty one.”

“Nothing so crude.”

My eyes flicked to the horrible book on his lab bench. For some reason my gaze kept being drawn to it. Dr. Choate noticed and smiled thinly.

“Ah, I see you admire my Necronomicon. It is a vanishingly rare English edition translated by John Dee. Only a handful of them still exist. My ancestor brought it with him from England on the Speedwell. But you are no stranger to forbidden knowledge, are you Jack?”

“And you are no stranger to the sword of Jack the Giant-Killer,” I replied. Ah, so this was the witty repartee I’d heard so much about.

Just then, the Reverend’s disembodied head appeared in thin air behind and unnoticed by Dr. Choate. A finger appeared over the Reverend’s lips and he winked. Then he pulled a hood over his head and disappeared once more. He must have been wearing the cloak of invisibility, which I recalled was one of Jack the Giant-Killer’s magic gifts.

“Quite so,” Dr. Choate riposted. “Once this experiment is completed, I shall enjoy studying it more closely. The blade appears to be made of adamantine, which by all the known physical laws should not exist. But that is why my discoveries have superseded those of other scientists, for I delve into the mystical and the occult as well as the rational.”

He certainly liked the sound of his own voice. I realized it would be a piece of cake getting him to talk about his plans.

“So what do you want with Gretchen?”

“Gretchen? Ah yes, the girl. I should have known you had a romantic attachment to her. Your pupils dilate when you look at her. Alas, she is a sacrificial lamb to my quest for immortality. She will achieve a form of immortality herself, albeit a less desirable one.”

“You’re turning her into a ghoul?” I renewed trying to dislodge the bars of my prison cell, but they held fast. I had to get out of this thing. I had to stop him. Was it already too late?

“I have been studying the process of transformation. I am very close to isolating exactly what causes a ghoul to lose his humanity. Once I do, I will be able to halt it, and create an immortal being as intelligent and cultivated as you or I. Well, I anyway. I shall be the final experiment.”

“But you’ll still be a ghoul, intelligent or not. You’ll still need to feed on human remains.”

“That is a small price to pay for immortality.”

“Pay this price! Tantivy!” Harriet appeared out of nowhere, brandishing the sword.

“How dare you—” began Dr. Choate. Those were the last words he ever spoke. The impossibly sharp blade of the sword sliced through his neck as if it were made of warm butter. Snickt. His head dropped off his body like a rose blossom snipped by shears, and rolled across the stone floor. For a few seconds, his mouth moved silently and his eyes widened with terror. Then Dr. Archimedes Cabot Choate fell into the endless sleep of death that he had worked so hard to avoid. I wish I could say I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t.

Harriet sliced through the lock on my prison door with the sword. Without stopping to thank her, I rushed to Gretchen’s side. The Reverend removed his cloak and materialized next to me.

“I would have come sooner, but the twists and turns of this underground labyrinth are most perplexing.”

“Do something,” I pleaded. “Help her.”

The Reverend yanked the IV out of her arm, and opened her eyelid. A cold lifeless stare lay beneath. I turned to Harriet.

“Can you...do what did you for me? Make her drink your blood?”

“She’s too far gone, Jack,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “That only works before the transformation gets to a certain point.”

“She belongs to me now.”

We all turned. A woman had entered the vault and behind her stood half a dozen ghouls. She herself had the emaciated body and canine features of a ghoul, but she was different somehow. More alert. More intelligent. Piercingly intelligent, in fact. Then I recognized her. The illustration in the book was of her.

“Queen Syraxsya,” Harriet said, completing my thought.

“Stand aside, vampire,” Syraxsya said haughtily. “And allow my subject to join me.”

Gretchen’s eyes shot open. The Reverend had already undone her restraints, and she climbed off the table without looking at us, shuffling toward her Queen.

“Wait, Gretchen!” I cried, trying to reach for her. But the Reverend and Harriet held me back.

“There’s nothing we can do,” the Reverend said. “The transformation is irreversible. Gretchen is one of them now. She will never be as she was.”

Gretchen joined the mass of ghouls behind Syraxsya, and stared forward without a flicker of acknowledgment of me in her eyes.

“I offer a truce,” Syraxsya said. “Now that the blasphemer has been dispatched, I shall take my new subjects with me to the realm of shadow and leave your city undisturbed. But you must go back to the waking world and not return to my domain.”

“That is a most equitable arrangement, Your Majesty,” the Reverend replied, bowing courteously.

Harriet sheathed her sword. It was decided. Syraxya’s ghouls descended upon Dr. Choate’s fresh corpse like a pack of wolves. Gretchen was among them. I looked away. Harriet and the Reverend each took an arm, and firmly guided me out of the chamber. The last thing I heard was the sound of Dr. Choate’s skull being cracked open like a walnut, and then a cry of delight. Was that Gretchen’s voice? I couldn’t be sure...didn’t want to know. As soon as we were out of the vault, I vomited green bile onto the grey stone floor.

We emerged from the door of a tomb into the upper world. I never knew air could smell so sweet. Copp’s Hill commanded an excellent view of Boston Harbor, and I knew that any minute the first blushes of dawn would be appearing over the sea. Harriet knew it too, and was anxious to find shelter.

“Can I crash at your house, Jack?” she asked.

“You can have it,” I said. “I’m not going back.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. I’m done. Finito. I don’t care about the Thursbane, or serving Mother Goose. I quit.”

I took the feather out of my hat and dropped it on the ground. I turned my back on them and started walking away.

“Wait,” the Reverend said. I stopped in my tracks, hesitating. He pressed the feather back into my hand.

“Keep this. No matter what happens, you’re still Jack. Farewell, my friend. May the blessings of Fríg be on your brow, and the wind of the Weird at your back.”

Harriet gave me a long hug, which made me shiver with cold, but I didn’t care. She gave me a frosty kiss on the cheek. “Take care, my love.”

I put the feather back in my hat and made my way down to the highway, where I stuck out my thumb.

Travelling Jack never looked back.

~ the end ~

THE DEVIL CAME TO BOSTON:VII

2011-09-06T12:40:00.001-07:00

by Adam Bolivar

“So everyone keeps telling me.” I automatically touched my chest and felt the silver key hanging by a cord around my neck. Most of the time I forgot it was there, like a distant dream. I had first used the key to open a dream gate beneath Copp’s Hill and I couldn't help but wonder if there was a connection between that event and what was happening now. Had I allowed ghouls an opening to enter the waking world and prey upon the innocent denizens of Boston?

The Volkswagen bus pulled up alongside the venerable burying ground, and one-by-one, we emerged into the misty night. I felt like we were some kind of supernatural posse. In a way, I suppose that’s just what we were. The clock tower in Old North Church chimed twelve times, reinforcing the feeling that this was an Old West shootout. Only instead of a high noon on the frontier, it was darkest midnight in the one of the oldest cemeteries in America. Tombstone, Massachusetts.

It occurred to me that I should have called Detective Striker. But it was too late now, and I doubted there was anything he could have done to help. Bullets had no effect on ghouls. It would have just led to a lot of cops getting killed—or worse. We were the authorities here. We were the Thursbane, all of us together. The guardians of the waking world.

Gretchen and I scaled the wrought-iron fence easily. But it was evident that the Reverend was going to need some extra help. Harriet gave him a piggyback ride as she bounded over the fence as easily as stepping over a threshold.

“Show off,” I said.

“Hey, somebody’s got to demonstrate a little physical prowess in this flabby bunch.”

We walked towards the center of the cemetery, which was literally as quiet as the grave. The silence was so deep I could hear myself breathing. But the moon provided ample light, filling the ancient boneyard with an eerie silver glow.

“So where are the ghouls?” Gretchen asked. “Not that I’m eager to find any.”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Something’s not right. Harriet, can you hear anything with those vampire ears of yours?” There was no reply. I wheeled around. “Harriet?” She had vanished. I turned back to Gretchen, but she was gone too.

“Gretchen? Reverend?”

Something very blunt and very hard struck the back of my head.

Then, darkness.

I awoke inside a dank, fetid-smelling prison cell the size of a closet. My head pounded in protest at the abuse that had been inflicted upon it. I rattled the cold iron bars of my cage to no avail.

“Harriet?” I cried. “Gretchen?”

“Your friends cannot hear you,” replied a voice as devoid of feeling as a machine. I forced my eyes to focus. Standing outside my cell was a slight tall man with thinning blond hair and owlish, wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing an old-fashioned white lab coat with buttons along the side. His calculating pale blue eyes appraised me like a butcher inspecting a choice cut of meat.

“How... how did you...?” I asked haltingly. I could barely string a sentence together, my head hurt so much. I felt as if I might puke at any moment.

“How did I overcome the vampire?” the man completed for me. He had the quasi-English accent of a Boston Brahmin, dripping with condescension for those less cultured than he. “It was quite simple. The old legend about vampires shrinking from a cross is not entirely without merit. Of course it has nothing to do with the power of some impotent deity. Any sufficiently charged sigil will do.”

I was able to focus enough to get a layout at the chamber outside my cell. It was some kind of underground vault, no doubt somewhere in catacombs that lay beneath Copp’s Hill and perhaps much of the old part of Boston. It looked as if some sort of laboratory had been set up down here. The chamber was filled with a peculiar hodge-podge of the scientific and the occult. The scientific equipment looked as if it dated from the 1920s and 30s: bubbling beakers on Bunsen burners, crackling Tesla coils and a warbling oscilloscope. And interspersed amongst them was an assortment of occult paraphernalia: a chalice, a ceremonial dagger, black candles, a human skull and an ancient tome bound in a most peculiar leather.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” my captor said. “My name is Dr. Archimedes Cabot Choate.” With a name like that, the man was probably cousin to every family on Beacon Hill several times over. But why wasn’t he at a lobster social at the Mayflower Club? What was he doing here in this charnel house reeking of putrefaction?

As if in answer to my silent question, Dr. Choate pulled back a curtain to reveal an operating table. Gretchen was on top of it, unconscious, and bound by leather straps that must have dated to the Victorian era. An IV was inserted into her arm, and a sickly dark green liquid was oozing down a long transparent tube to trickle into her bloodstream. I wanted to call out to her, but I restrained myself. It would be pointless, and besides, I needed to keep my cool with this madman.

“I am on the brink of unlocking the mystery to eternal life, sought by alchemists since the time of Hermes Trismegistus. The key to immortality lies in death itself.”

Concludes Tomorrow

with Part VIII

THE DEVIL CAME TO BOSTON: VI

2011-09-06T12:37:00.005-07:00

by Adam Bolivar

The language was thick with archaisms, but their meaning was clear. Like the pointer of a Ouija board, my hand moved of its own accord and flipped through the decaying parchment pages until they settled on a well-worn passage.

Such things owt not be seen by ye eyes of mortal Man or hys verie soul lyeth in jeopardie. Amongst ye Kindred of Ghule that feasteth on human remaynes by dead of nyght, there is a Queene. Her nayme must not be speak’d aloude. It is Syraxya. All ye Ghules do serve her pleasure as bees in a hyve. And where so ever ye may find them, then Queene Syraxya is not far awaye. Yet take ye heede, for she is moste cunnyng and lycentious, and taketh joye in colde crueltie, for Ghules be a colde and cruel race.

Across from the passage was a ghastly woodcut illustration of Syraxya herself, grinning and emaciated, and yet strangely beautiful. She was crouched over a fresh corpse, a look of delight on her face at the delicious rapture of feasting to come. The picture made me feel strangely hungry. Ravenous. Quickly regaining control of myself, I snapped the book shut, and set it down on the coffee table in front of me. Gretchen offered me a cigarette, which I snatched and lit in one fell swoop, gratefully inhaling the calming fumes. My hands were trembling.

“So now you know what we’re up against.”

Harriet walked through the cloud of cigarette smoke engulfing the room. Very dramatic of her. She was really embracing this vampire thing.

“You come and go as you please,” Gretchen remarked.

“Can you cut out this bullshit?” Harriet snapped. “You’re Jack’s girlfriend, all right? I’m just a friend.”

“A friend who likes to suck his blood.”

“Excuse me. Vampire. And if I hadn’t last night, Jack would be a walking undead creature right now.”

“Yeah. Thanks for that. You’re right, I shouldn’t be such a bitch.”

“Happens to the best of us, kid.”

“Who are you calling kid? What are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

“Actually, I just turned ninety-nine a few days ago.”

“What?” I said. “How can that be?”

“Vampire, remember?”

“Yeah, but...you just turned into a vampire last year.”

“From your point of view. I’ve been travelling in the Dreamlands. Time moves differently there.”

Gretchen and I stared at each other openmouthed. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, I got served a weird sandwich with extra weird sauce.

“You can pick your jaws up off the floor now,” Harriet said. “I’ve learned a lot since we last met. I’ve visited the fabled onyx libraries of Gandermoon and read the forbidden texts. I’ve journeyed to benighted Kadath, where no mortal may enter. But I am no mortal. Nyarlathotep himself served me tea made from demon hearts steeped in the tears of angels. And I have sailed on a black ship to the red planet of Nergal, where I sampled drugs that let you see time as a whole. It was then that I knew my weird was the return to the waking world, and serve the Thursbane.”

“The Thursbane?”

“From the Anglo-Saxon thurs,” a warbling old man’s voice answered me. It was Gretchen’s professor, the Reverend Ezekiel Whitlock. I was hosting an unexpected party. “Which means giant, or more precisely, an evil of gigantic proportion. And bane, which means killer, of course.”

“Reverend?” Gretchen said. “What are you doing here?”

“Harriet persuaded me that the circumstances were dire enough to warrant coming out of retirement. I hear you are having a problem with ghouls.”

The Reverend was wearing a long black duster that reached nearly to the floor and a wide-brimmed black preacher’s hat.

I nodded. “They’ve been raiding cemeteries all over town. But it looks like their lair is in Copp’s Hill.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” the Reverend said. “Let’s go kick some bony ghoul arse!”

- III -

The Ghoul Maker

A familiar Volkswagen bus was parked in front of the house on the hill. It was the same bus Harriet had driven me to Fiddle Creak in a year ago. A year ago my time, eighty years ago hers. We piled inside. Harriet took the driver’s seat. I took the passenger seat. The Reverend and Gretchen sat in the back. Harriet started the ignition and the Volkswagen bus sputtered to life.

“I have some fond memories of this bus,” the Reverend said. “Your grandparents and I had such fantastical adventures in her.”

“So I’ve heard,” Harriet replied, as she deftly zigzagged through traffic from Centre Street onto Perkins then onto Jamaica Way. Vampires made the best drivers.

“Why, I rode in this bus the very day I met Jack and Sunshine. It seems like so very long ago now.”

“Well, time is relative isn’t it?”

“Especially when the Dreamlands are involved.”

The Reverend and Harriet laughed at their private joke. Gretchen looked at me, hoping for some commiseration. But I had entered the Dreamlands myself more than once now, although not as deeply as they had.

Gretchen’s sympathy came from the Reverend. “Of course this must sound dreadfully confusing, my dear.”

“I’m trying to catch up,” she said. “I’m not a complete novice. Jack and I went to the land of the dead.”

“By the Goose, I didn’t mean to imply that you were. Your importance is not to be underestimated. You are the spell-caster.”

“Okay, you’ve lost me again.”

Harriet deftly rolled a cigarette with one hand while driving with the other. When she lit it, familiar purple smoke rose. It was weirdwort. She passed me the pouch, and I eagerly rolled my own cigarette from it.

“Jack doesn’t protect the earth from the Old Ones on his own,” Harriet said. “There is a sword-wielder and a spell-caster. You are the spell-caster. Jack usually wields the sword, but he has forsaken it. So I am the sword-wielder in his stead.”

“But if you’re the sword-wielder, then what am I?”

“You are Jack,” the Reverend replied. “Usually Jack is the sword-wielder...but sometimes he’s not. It doesn’t matter. Jack is Jack. You are the key to it all.”

Continues Tomorrow

with Part VII

THE DEVIL CAME TO BOSTON: V

2011-09-06T12:37:00.003-07:00

by Adam Bolivar

I walked through a garden of white roses at night, beneath a silver moon that illumined the roses in a pale glow like a vampire’s skin. The garden was a labyrinth where all paths led to the middle. At the heart of the labyrinth was a woman sitting on a silver throne. She had hair the color of night and eyes as black and deep as a million midnights. I had met her before—she was known variously as Lily, the Queen of Night and the Dark Mother of Dreams. And I learned a new name tonight. A man dressed in a black suit and a scarlet tie was speaking to her. It was the same man I had met at the pub, the one who had given me the box containing a glass syringe and bottle of hypnosium. Pitt.

“At your will, Morrigan,” Pitt said, bowing deeply to his Queen. He tipped his black fedora to me. “Jack.” Then he strode purposely down one of the paths of the garden and vanished from sight. I was alone with the Queen of Night.

“Well, Jack,” she said. “Once more, you enter my realm. I begin to think you may be a child of night yourself.”

“I understand I am bound to Fríg for seven years.”

“I have saved you more than once now. But you owe me no debt. You are welcome in my realm anytime and are equally welcome to leave. Go and finish your servitude to my sister then. A man cannot have two Queens. But should you wish to become a Jack of Spades, the Night holds many pleasures the Day cannot offer. Think on it.”

And then I awoke. The birds were chirping the coming of dawn. Harriet had fled. Of the ghoulish wound on my leg, there was no sign. I slowly opened my blinds, then just as quickly closed them again. The sunlight burned like scalding hot water on my flesh. I looked at my hand, which appeared even paler than usual. My god, was I turning into a vampire?

No, I wasn’t a vampire. Not yet. From the way I had observed Harriet behave, I gathered that sunlight killed vampires, not merely hurt them. I remembered drinking Harriet’s blood to heal the wound from the ghoul’s bite. That must explain my sensitivity to the sun. I knew she wouldn’t turn me into a vampire without my consent. Even with the curtains drawn, the light of day filtering into the bedroom was unpleasant. Hopefully this condition would pass. In the meantime, it didn’t seem like I’d be able to function during the day. So I pulled the covers over my head and allowed my body to do what it longed to: sleep.

I was dragged from my deep and dreamless slumber by a persistent prodding.

“Are you still sleeping, Jack?” Gretchen said. “For fuck’s sake, it’s six o’clock.” She whipped the blanket off me.

My eyes fluttered open. A thin trickle of daylight penetrated the blinds. This time I was able to stand it without pain. Either it was late and the sunlight wasn’t direct enough to affect me, or my vampiric condition had passed. Or maybe some of both.

“I’ve had a rough night. How did your test go?”

“I aced it of course. But never mind that. I went to visit the Reverend. He knows what we’re up against.”

“Ghouls,” I finished for her.

“You sure know how to steal a girl’s thunder.”

“I had a run-in with them last night. Almost got killed.”

“Hey, what’s that on your neck?”

I put my hand over my neck. Of course. The bite marks.

“It was her, wasn’t it? You’ve been seeing her again.”

She started backing away from me.

“Gretchen, wait. It’s not like that.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can handle this.”

Gretchen walked out my bedroom. Think fast, Jack. I put my pants on in record time and dashed after her before she reached the front door.

“I just need some time alone,” she said, as I put my hand on her arm.

“It’s not like that, Gretchen,” I said. “The ghouls were about to kill me. One of them had already bitten me. Harriet rescued me. And she had to bite me to heal me. Something about drinking her blood healed the infection or whatever it was. If it weren’t for her, I’d be dead now. Or...worse.”

Gretchen paused. “You promise there’s nothing between you and her?”

“I promise.” As soon as I’d said it, I knew it was a half-truth. Half would have to do for now.

A trace of a smile flickered across her face. “Well, I wouldn’t want you dead, I suppose.”

“I should hope not.” A hint of my grandmother’s Cornish burr peeked through. I knew Gretchen liked that. I played it up a little. “Why don’t I make us some tea and you can tell me what the Reverend said.”

“He did more than say. He gave me a book.”

Gretchen opened up her backpack and extracted a weighty tome that looked as if it might have once belonged to King Solomon’s library. She put it in my hands. I lifted the cover and recoiled with horror at the gruesome illustration on the frontispiece. It was a hideous creature devouring a corpse from an open coffin. Uncannily, the creature in the illustration stared at me from the page, its eyes looking directly into mine. I didn’t need a book to tell me what the creature was. I sank into the nearest chair. All thoughts of making tea had vanished like the light trace of sunlight beneath the horizon.

Ye CULTE OF GHULES

A Historie of Ynutterable Abomynation

Render’d into English

by Frauncis Pickman

London

A.D. 1603

Continues Tomorrow

with Part VI

THE DEVIL CAME TO BOSTON: IV

2011-09-06T12:37:00.001-07:00

by Adam Bolivar

When I awoke it was eleven o’clock at night and Gretchen was gone. I dragged myself out of bed and donned my black jeans, black T-shirt, leather jacket and porkpie hat. It was time to go to work. I made my way down the hill to the Stony Brook T station. There was still enough time to catch a train to the North End, but I had no idea how I’d get back. The T would have stopped running by the time I was through with my grisly business. Oh well, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

Late night on the MBTA on Tuesday was pretty grim. Instead of attractive young people on their way to and from parties and nightclubs, the crowd consisted mainly of sad-eyed middle-aged bachelors on their way home from the bar. But who am I to judge? At least they weren’t on their way to sneak into a graveyard hunting for depraved cannibals.

It wasn’t far from North Station to Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. Just a hop, skip and a jump. But there was no Rampant Hare to guide me this time. The cemetery gate was chained shut for the night, but that was no obstacle to me. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. I hopped that fence like a candlestick.

The hushed antiquity of the venerable gravesite was amplified by the still of night. As always, I felt somewhat in awe of names and dates lovingly carved in grey slate. 1824...1791...1745... 1692...1664... There was one gravestone on the far end of the cemetery pockmarked with holes. Apparently, it belonged to an early rebel against the Crown, whose burial marker was used for target practice by scornful redcoats.

But the thing in the burying ground I gravitated to most was an obelisk-topped tomb that two vampires and I had once desecrated. There was a flight of stairs inside the tomb that had led to a dream gate deep beneath the hill. But that is another story. The tomb was sealed tonight, and I couldn’t find the mechanism that opened it. If it had ever been open. That experience seemed like a dream and I wondered if it had ever happened at all. My musings were cut short by the sound of moaning, somewhere in the shadows.

I crouched down instinctively, and hid behind the tomb. Oh shit. What had I gotten into? What if the corpse-eaters were here in the cemetery with me? What would I do? I didn’t have any weapons, not even a pocketknife. But I was Jack. I had a hat with a goose feather stuck in the ribbon. Somehow I’d be all right. I just had to do go for it. Tantivy!

Mustering my resolve, I crept towards the moaning sounds. There was more than one voice doing it. There were several. A real cacophony of “unnnnnnnnhhhhh.” I concealed myself as best I could behind a gravestone (thanks INCREASE MATHER) and peered over the top.

Oh my fucking god! There were five, six, seven...things... walking corpses...I don’t know...wearing nothing but tatters, bent over an open grave munching on a dead body like an all-you-can-eat buffet. One of them sniffed the air and looked in my direction. I ducked down beneath the gravestone, but it was too late. He had seen me. The zombie...ghoul...whatever he was started walking towards me. His friends dropped the hunks of rotting flesh they were munching and followed him.

There was no point in hiding anymore, so I started to back away. Then I turned and booked it for the fence. But the creature in the lead—the one who had spotted me first—was too fast. It pounced on me like a lion and knocked me to the ground. To my horror, the thing bit a chunk out of my shin. I saw his grinning emaciated face, a huge gobbet of my bloody flesh between his teeth. Was I going to die in a scene from a cheap horror movie? How cliché. At least I could take comfort from the fact that this wasn’t just any old cemetery. This was Copp’s Fucking Hill Burial Ground, one of the oldest Colonial graveyards in Boston.

“Begone! Scat!”

The thing eating my flesh abruptly dropped my leg and fled into the shadows like a scared cat. A deathly pale girl wearing a black hoodie stood over me. She had dyed-purple dreadlocks and held a sword in one hand, its silver blade glinting in the moonlight.

“Harriet?” I croaked. “You’re looking very goth.”

“Oh, Jack,” she said. “What am I going to do with you?”

Then I passed out.

I awoke naked in my own bed. My leg screamed with pain. Forcing myself to look, I saw a sickening chunk missing from my calf. Strangely, it wasn’t bleeding. The edges of the wound were a sickly greenish color, which seemed to spread slowly before my very eyes.

“Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit.” Harriet’s fangs sank into my neck with familiar needle pricks. A rush of ecstasy spread through my body, quelling even the pain from my leg. Then, unexpectedly, Harriet pulled her fangs out of my neck. She had never done that before, not so soon. She bit the inside of her own arm and a crimson rivulet of blood trickled from the puncture. Harriet pressed her arm to my lips and instinctively I began to drink. It was like the finest, most complicated wine. Her blood was ambrosia, the food of the gods. I dreamt.

Continues Tomorrow

with Part V

THE DEVIL CAME TO BOSTON:III

2011-09-06T12:36:00.002-07:00

by Adam Bolivar

Mark’s police-issue Crown Victoria was parked in front of my house, and we all piled in, me in the front passenger seat and Gretchen in the back. The car had no official police markings on it, yet somehow cars veered out of our way as we drove up behind them. I guess a Crown Vic just screamed fuzz, even when it was painted basic black. There was a flashing police light on the dashboard that I wish Mark would use, but he didn’t. He didn’t need it. Our destination was only about five minutes up the road: Forest Hills Cemetery.

This may sound creepy, but I’ve always found Forest Hills Cemetery to be one of the perks of living in Jamaica Plain. Although I preferred Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge just a tad more, the antique and morbid splendor of Forest Hills was nothing to sneeze at. We parked at the end of Tower Street and strode in through the spidery wrought-iron gate at the side entrance.

It was the height of May and the lilacs were in full bloom, a peculiar juxtaposition to our macabre errand. I tried to appear suitably serious, but it was hard not to feel ebullient in the sunshine and warm-scented breeze after suffering for months under the frigid yoke of a New England winter. Gretchen held my hand and I could see that she was having similar feelings, that we should be out enjoying a stroll in the merry month of May, not stalking some supernatural menace in a graveyard. Only Mark looked genuinely grim, for he had already witnessed the foulness that we were about to discover.

Mark led us down a succession of narrow paths that wound between stooping elms, stone angels and endless slabs of grey slate. Their drabness stood in stark relief against the vibrant green of the grass and leaves, the lavender lilacs, and the white and red dogwood. Death and life co-mingled here in the garden of eternity. In the end was the beginning, and in the beginning was the end.

We arrived at a grand family crypt, surmounted with a familial crest and the surname PEABODY. I recognized the name immediately. One of the oldest families in Boston. The iron gate to the crypt was ajar. Someone had destroyed the Victorian-era padlock, the elegant mechanisms within desecrated by brute force. Mark pushed the gate wide open and motioned for us to follow. Gretchen and I looked at each other and smiled. We had dared the very halls of Hades himself. What could a little tomb in Forest Hills Cemetery contain that could shock us?

Mark withdrew a handheld flashlight and shone a beacon of truth onto the crypt’s darkened interior. The stone coffins within had been plundered. Some were empty, their contents spirited away for heavens knew what blasphemous purpose. But two contained remnants of bodies, any trace of flesh stripped from them. As I knelt down to examine the bones, I saw that they were marked with dozens of nicks. Could they be...?

“Teeth marks,” Mark confirmed, holding a white handkerchief to his mouth. I wish I had one too. Between the gnawed-on human bones and the charnel stench, I felt like I was going to hurl.

“Let’s get out of here,” Gretchen said, pulling on my arm. I looked at Mark and he nodded his agreement. We emerged in the fresh air once more, shuddering to our souls. Mark swung the gate shut, although he had to leave it ajar.

“This isn’t the only one,” he said. “Tombs all over the city are being ransacked. Someone is...eating the bodies. Sometimes they take the bodies to go, and sometimes they dine in. All the graves have been old so far. None less than a hundred years old. But this is the furthest afield they’ve come. Most of the robberies have been downtown.”

“Any in Copp’s Hill?” I asked.

Mark perked up. “As a matter of fact, yes. Most of the earliest ones were there. We had to work fast to cover them up. Tourists love that place. How did you know that?”

“Just a hunch,” I said.

“If you know anything about this...”

I held up my hands. “I don’t. I swear. But I have an idea how to find out about it. Give me a couple days and I’ll let you know.”

Mark looked at me suspiciously, then handed me his card. I guess cops were just suspicious by nature. “Forty-eight hours. If you find out anything at all, let me know. Can I give you a lift back home?”

“Actually, it’s such a nice day, I think I’ll walk. Care to join me, Gretch?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Arm-in-arm, we strode up Centre Street like two young lovers on a spring day, not at all like two people who had just seen the inside of a pillaged tomb. There are some things the brain just can’t process all at once. I’m sure the images would resurface in my dreams that night.

We stopped at the Store 24 and bought a pack of American Spirits each to satisfy our shared addiction. After we had stepped back into the sunshine and ceremonially tamped down our packs, I lit the cigarette that appeared like magic between Gretchen’s lips before lighting my own. I took a deep drag, long overdue after seeing open caskets, rotting flesh and gnawed-upon bones.

“So I guess you’re like some kind of detective now,” Gretchen said. “Jack, P.I.”

“And you’re my trusty partner-in-crime.”

“All we need are a few more and we can have our own Scooby gang.”

“I get to be Shaggy,” I said.

“Zoiks!” Gretchen replied. “Can I be Scooby then?”

“Only if you share your Scooby snacks.”

“I guess I’m really more of a Velma type. Although I suspect she was a lesbian.”

“I can see you as Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” I suggested.

“She was a lesbian too.”

“Interesting,” I said smiling. I knew Gretchen most certainly was not a lesbian. Bisexual, perhaps, but not a lesbian.

“I’m going to have to go back to Mousehole this evening to study. I have a big exam tomorrow morning.”

“That’s okay. I should probably do the investigation on my own anyway.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Dollars to donuts, Copp’s Hill Cemetery has something to do with all this. I’ll go down there tonight and poke a few sticks in some holes. See what surfaces.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Well, I am Jack the Giant-Killer. Danger is my middle name.”

“I thought your middle name was ‘the’.”

I tickled Gretchen in the ribs, almost making her drop her cigarette. “Wise ass.”

After her laughter subsided, Gretchen suddenly became serious. “Be careful, Jack. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“I will be.”

“While I’m at Mousehole, I’ll ask the Reverend if he knows anything that might be helpful. I’ll call you and let you know.”

I dropped my third cigarette into the gutter. We had arrived at the house on the hill.

“Do you have to leave now?” I said.

“I can stick around for a little while. What did you have in mind?”

“Afternoon delight? We need to put those lesbian rumors to bed.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Continues Tomorrow

with Part IV

THE DEVIL CAME TO BOSTON: II

2011-09-06T12:36:00.001-07:00

by Adam Bolivar

“I meant to bring you the jewel,” I stammered. “But...”

“You thought that Fríg could absorb your debt? You think such obligations can be bought and sold like carrots at the marketplace?”

“What do you want from me?” I asked, although I regretted it as soon as the words had crossed my lips. Oleandra smiled wickedly.

“Oh, I want so many things, Jack. But knowing you are my puppet is pleasing enough for now. I shall twitch your strings and make you dance for me. In some ways, I’m glad you are still beholden to me. Having a Jack in my thrall is a treat. Such games I shall play. Now be gone from my sight, until I have need of you again.”

My limbs moved of their own accord. One leg jerked upward awkwardly and then the other. My arms flopped like someone in the throes of a seizure. I lurched back through the dream door into the closet across from the nook under the stairs. And there among all my winter coats I vomited the pint of Guinness that Pitt had bought for me, right there on the floor of the closet. I barely made it back to my bedroom before I collapsed into a dreamless sleep, boots and all.

- II -

The Tomb

“Good morning, Jack!”

My eyes fluttered opened to Gretchen pulling open the drapes and admitting a dangerous amount of sunlight.

“I’m a night-owl too, but sometimes you have to come out in the day.”

Sez you, I thought with luciferian defiance. She whipped off my covers to reveal a pale, bony, and altogether naked body. She didn’t look away. Why should she? She’d seen it several times before.

“Get decent. You have a visitor.”

My sleepy haze immediately dissipated, and I pulled on my habitual black T-shirt and black jeans. When was the last time I’d washed those jeans?

“What visitor?” I asked, gazing into the mirror on my wall and trying with my fingers—unsuccessfully—to make my hair appear less insane. Gretchen took pity on me and handed me a comb.

“You remember me telling you about my cousin the police inspector?” I nearly jumped out the window. What if he found my box with the glass syringe and the vial of strange black ink?

“Don’t worry, Jack, he’s not going to arrest you. He wants to consult with you.”

“Consult with me? About what?” Now my curiosity was piqued, although I still had a mad urge to jump out the window and run as far and as fast as I could. I wasn’t fond of authority figures.

“Well, I’ll let him tell you about it. Apparently there’s been some strange heebie-jeebie stuff happening around town. Right out of the X-Files. The cops can’t investigate formally, but I told my cousin that you might be able to help him. Unofficially, of course.

I smiled. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Don’t make me punch you, giant-killer. You look marvellous. Let’s go meet Mark.”

I followed Gretchen from my bedroom down the hall to the living room. Or should I say, the parlor? Will you step into my parlor, Mr. Police Detective? More like I was stepping into his parlor. Since when did I become a supernatural consultant for the police? Since I became Jack the fucking Giant-Killer, that’s when!

Gretchen's cousin was very good-looking, in a scruffy, emo sort of way. If he wasn’t her cousin, I’d be jealous. Well, maybe I should be jealous anyway. He had sideburns and hair that was gelled to stick straight up from his head. He was wearing a vintage blue, pinstriped suit, with a red tie and the shirt collar fashionably open. He was hot. If I were gay, I would have done him. The fashion-plate police detective held out his hand and I shook it. It was firm and reassuring.

“Detective Mark Striker,” he said. “You must be Jack.”

“That I am,” I said. “What can I do for you, Detective Mark Striker?”

Striker looked at Gretchen imploringly.

“Go ahead,” she said. “You can tell him. Trust me, he’ll believe you.”

“Someone is digging up people from graveyards and...bringing them back to life.”

“Ah,” I said. Sadly, I did believe him. But I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do about it. And I said as much.

“Sounds like a pretty...grave problem.” Groan. “So...uh...what do you want me to do about it?”

“Well, er, Gretchen told me that...oh shit. I can’t believe I’m really saying this.”

“It’s true, Mark,” Gretchen said. “I sweah.” I noticed that around her cousin, Gretchen’s Boston accent came to the fore.

“Gretchen said that you’re like...the reincarnation of Jack the Giant-Killer. And you can help. I hope to God it’s true, because I tell you...the force is going nuts with this. We know it’s happening, but we can’t tell anybody or we’d all get carted off to the loony bin. And we don’t know what to do.”

Gretchen looked at me expectantly. She fluttered her eyes with suggestions of things to come. Oh fuck, Gretchen. You know I can’t refuse you anything when you look at me that way.

“I reckon it’s true. I’m Jack all right.” Just as Gretchen’s accent had become more Boston, mine had become more Appalachian. The last Jack had hailed from Fiddle Creak, North Carolina, and sometimes I drew on his persona for strength. In some ways, we were the same person, although we weren’t. Don’t ask me to explain it. You have to be a Jack to understand.

“Maybe it would be easier if I showed you,” Mark said.

“Tantivy!” I said, donning my leather jacket and porkpie hat. There was a goose feather stuck in the hat’s ribbon.

“Huh?”

“He means, let’s go,” Gretchen translated. “Arriba! Presto!”

The game was afoot.

Continues Tomorrow

with Part III

THE DEVIL CAME TO BOSTON: I

2011-09-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

by Adam Bolivar

- I -

Strings

I am Jack. Jack the Giant-Killer. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack and Jill went up the hill. Little Jack Horner sat in a corner. You get the idea. There have been Jacks all throughout time. We protect the waking world from the Things Outside, slimy creepy things with tentacles that ruled the earth before humans. They’re locked away in another dimension now. Trust me, you don’t want to know much about them.

I had an adventure in the Dreamlands and won a bag of gold coins, which I brought back to the waking world. It’s a lot harder to spend gold coins than you might think. Everyone wants to know where you got them. Fortunately, Gretchen’s uncle works in the jewelry business and helped me sell them, no questions asked. Gretchen is my girlfriend and she’s pretty cool. With the money I made from selling the gold coins, I bought a house on a hill in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Gretchen stayed there some of the time. She also had an apartment in Mousehole, Massachusetts, where she was going to university.

Most of the time, I was alone in my house. That suited me just fine. I was a loner by nature. I spent most of my days wandering up and down the creaking stair, or sitting hunched over an Underwood typewriter. A-ratta-tat-tat. Ratta-tat-tattick.

It was only when night was ascendant and the moon reigned over the sky that I stole from my solitary endeavors and made my way to the bottom the hill. There the James Joyce pub awaited me like an eager lover. One Friday night, as I perched like a crow on my stool draining a pint of Guinness to the dregs, a second crow sat down next to me and offered to buy me another.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said in a silky, sonorous voice. “Pitt is my name. Sammy Pitt.” He was an older man, with slicked-back black hair. He wore a perfectly tailored black suit with a crisp white shirt and a scarlet tie, neatly topped by an immaculate black overcoat and black fedora. Something about him made me shudder, but I didn’t turn down the beer he bought me. He bought one for himself too. We clinked glasses.

“I’m Jack,” I said. I tipped my battered porkpie. Pitt smiled sardonically.

“I know who you are. I’ve come here on business, Jack, regarding a certain black jewel.”

I almost dropped my pint glass. “I thought that was done with. I gave it to the Shadow King. Mother Goose is taking on my debt in return for seven years of bondage.”

Saying it out loud made it sound pretty absurd, not to mention kinky. I suppressed a smile at the thought of being chained up by an old lady dressed in a cape and a conical hat, who whipped me while reciting “Little Miss Muffet.”

“I’m afraid my client doesn’t view it that way.”

“Your client?”

“Lady Oleandra, the Duchess of the Small Hours. I believe you have met.”

I remembered the deal I had struck with her. In return for opening the dream gate to begin my quest for the White Cup, I agreed to give her the black jewel. I thought I was free of that deal, but it seemed not.

Sammy Pitt produced a wooden box from the pocket of his overcoat and handed it to me. “Take this and perform the ritual at midnight. Lady Oleandra would have words with you.”

I looked down at the box and saw the symbol of a lotus flower carved into the top. When I looked up, Pitt was gone. I glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to twelve. There was about a quarter of a glass of Guinness left. I drained it in one go, and left the bar, taking my strange gift with me.

The wind whipped up whirligigs of freshly fallen flower petals as I made my way up the hill to the crooked house where I lived. I locked the door behind me, and flopped down on my bed, opening the box with the lotus flower carved in it. Inside, on a bed of blood-red velvet, was a glass syringe and a bottle filled with a mercurial black ink. Hypnosium. I was being summoned.

I should have closed the box. Buried it in the ground. Thrown it in the pond. Tossed it in the fire. Anything but what I did. I started the Ritual.

I tapped out a drop of the black ink into a silver spoon and sucked it up into the needle-sharp tip of the syringe. Rolling back my sleeve, I teased out a sturdy blue leviathan of a vein. It throbbed mightily, aching to be harpooned like a whale. And I did it. I plunged the needle into the vein and thrust that silky black hypnosium into my bloodstream. The effect was instantaneous. I lay back into my pillow and nodded for seconds...minutes...hours...

Finally, I rose from my torpor, a dream Jack now, and wandered into the hall.

This is the mahogany hall
that led to the stairs
in the house that Jack built.

This is the nook under the stairs
at the end of the mahogany hall
in the house that Jack built.

This is the closet
across from the nook under the stairs
at the end of the mahogany hall
in the house that Jack built.

This is the dream door
inside the closet
across from the nook under the stairs
at the end of the mahogany hall
in the house that Jack built

This is the silver key
that opens the dream door
inside the closet
across the nook under the stairs
at the end of the mahogany hall
in the house that Jack built.

I turned the silver key in the dream door—click—and the dream door opened.

I walked across the threshold into a chamber filled with gauzy red silk and cold black stone. A milk-skinned woman with hair as white as ivory awaited me there.

It was Oleandra, the Duchess of the Small Hours.

“You have broken our bargain, Jack,” she said, her thin white lips pursing in a pout. “I am most displeased.”

Continues Tomorrow

with Part II