A Sentence of Death!

 

Today I thought I'd share a tight little noirror tale I came across this morning, while reading a copy of the August 1939 issue of Strange Stories pulp mag. I use the word noirror to describe stories that have both noir and horror elements to them. 

A Sentence Of Death is a short little shocker with a nasty comeuppance for a hired knife-man. 

The Fresh Lobster 1928

Here is an odd little cinematic short from 1928, titled The Fresh Lobster. It's an insane little celluloid nightmare in the vein of Winsor McCay's absurd cartoon strip Dreams Of The Rarebit Fiend. Only in this novel little short, the trigger for the hallucinatory adventure isn't a dinner of melted cheese on bread, but the late night snack of a plate of lobster and a pickle.

The film was supposedly released in theaters in 1928, then re-released twenty years later in 1948, this time with sound. All sources seem to agree that there isn't much known about the production of this oddity, nor the impetus for its creation; perhaps it was McCay's popular newspaper strip. The cinematographer is listed as Harry Forbes, who has camera credits for a number of shorts between 1915 and 1931, and quickie b-westerns and adventure films in the 1930s, before his passing in 1939. The producers credited in the title card are Harvey Pergament and Max Alexander. Pergament seems to have had a limited career in the industry, if his IMDB credits are indicative of his involvement, as he's only listed with one other producer credit, and that's co-producer of a 1954 UK title about South Africa titled Flame Of Africa. Max Alexander has quite the list of production credits to his name, largely b-grade crime and western pictures throughout the 1930s and 40s. 

The star of this piece is Billie Bletcher, who started in vaudeville and worked his way steadily from 1914 through the early 1970s in silent films, shorts, voicing characters in Disney and Looney Tunes cartoons, 1960s television appearances in shows like Get Smart and Dennis The Menace, and even had a bit part in the 1940 Boris Karloff thriller The Ape.

Enjoy!

For Cowards Only

I was fortunate enough to spend a Saturday evening at the Trylon Cinema for a showing of the 1959  William Castle classic House On Haunted Hill, starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Elisha Cook, Richard Long and the sadly ill-fated Carolyn Craig. 

It was presented in a fashion akin to Castle's original "Emergo", where, near the end of the film, when a skeleton appears to rise from an acid pit in the titular house's basement, theaters would loose a plastic skeleton on a pulley system over the audience's heads for a scare. The Trylon's presentation had a staff member running in to the theater at the proper time, waving a glow-in-the-dark skeleton with blinking red light embellishments, and screaming as he made his rounds down the main aisles. 

I didn't get to stick around for the second feature, 1961's Homicidal, but I did get to sign the prefunctory waiver before entering the theater, and I got the FOR COWARDS ONLY novelty certificate ensuring I'd get my money back if I couldn't stomach the feature. At least I didn't have to take a seat in the COWARD'S CORNER in the lobby!

On the subject of Homicidal, I find it interesting that Hitchcock was inspired by House On Haunted Hill to make Psycho, and then Castle was inspired in-turn by Psycho to make Homicidal. It's no secret that Castle was a fan of Hitchcock's, and both were gimmick-meisters extraordinaire and clearly cut from the same cloth, even if one is largely considered comic book kitsch and the other highly-praised classic cinema. 

Trailers for House On Haunted Hill and Homicidal below.

The Bling Of Death

Here's an unflattering scan of an acrylic piece I've been working on. The washed out purple parts – the aura behind the coffin headpiece, the highlights on the folded bat arms and on the left side of the face, etcetera – are supposed to actually be a brilliant bubble gum pink. For some reason my scanner is washing them out, but, to quote The Ramones, "What can you do?" 

Until I get a proper snapshot of the color-correct version, this'll have to do.

**Update**

Here's a picture taken with an iPhone. It's still not great–it looks very orange now from the lighting in the room, and the phone's camera, but it's definitely a better representation of the colors used.

A Glean In Their Eyes

Hello! and Welcome! Thank you for visiting the musty confines of my Secret Basement Laboratory! If you've been here before, then you know the drill–keep your eyes peeled and your hands to yourself. If this is your first visit, then, pull up a stool and don't mess with the test tubes! Ignore the sheet-draped shape on the large table in the corner...come again?...yes, yes it does look curiously like a supinely slumbering giant, doesn't it?

But never mind that!

Today I've concocted a post about something as old as time and equally as dependable. Thievery is the ugly but honest noun it goes by, but there are other, slightly-less inflammatory synonyms that could be applied, like: appropriation, purloining, infringing, borrowing...just to list a few. 

from Captain Marvel Adventures #150
(Fawcett Comics, 1953)

When someone does something that strikes a chord with an audience, big or small, there are bound to be imitators who'll strike while the proverbial iron is hot, hoping to hammer out a bit of success for themselves as well. Or, perhaps, when someone is inspired by a musician, painter, writer, what-have-you, it fails to germinate inspiration in originality beyond aping the thing that inspired them in the first place. The final tine of the purloiner's pitchfork is built for those who see something interesting but obscure, and do a pastiche in hopes that the overlooked source material won't be discovered and compared to their own.

There is, of course, the infamous twelve year lawsuit between Fawcett Comics and DC Comics (at the time National Comics Publications) claiming that Captain Marvel was an illegal infringement of Superman, that eventually led to the dissolving of Fawcett (ouch!) and DC ultimately purchasing the rights to continue to use the Fawcett characters (double ouch!). And there's the story of William Gaines's use of several of Ray Bradbury's stories for his EC Comics titles like Weird Science, Weird Fantasy and The Haunt Of Fear, among others, without crediting the author and cleverly changing the titles of the tales. For example Bradbury's tale "The Handler", from his short story collection Dark Carnival, was used as fodder for the tale "A Strange Undertaking" in the sixth issue of The Haunt Of Fear (Feb. 9th, 1951). The story was credited as being co-scripted by editor Gaines and artist/writer Al Feldstein. Of course Bradbury eventually caught on and sent the company a very tactfully worded note stating that the publisher had failed to send him remuneration for the secondary rights to his work and was sure "...this was probably overlooked in the general confusion of office work, and I look forward to your payment in the near future." 

Of course, once things were legitimized, EC began touting their Bradbury connection, reprinting the story with the proper credits. 

The original uncredited splash page for
"A Strange Undertaking" in issue 6 of The
Haunt Of Fear.

The re-titled and credited reprint of Bradbury's
"The Handler", illustrated by Graham Ingels.

From the Oct. 1951 issue of
Mysterious Adventures. Art by Palette.

The horror comic point is a salient one, as I finally dust off and polish the actual point of this post. I was recently re-reading issue thirty-one of the excellent pre-code horror comics reprint title Haunted Horror, put out as a joint venture between Craig Yoe's Yoe Comics and publisher IDW. It somehow escaped my notice on the first read, but there was a very obvious (and hardly ignorant inclusion I have to assume) infringement in the issue of a tale from an October 1951 issue of Mysterious Adventures, titled "If The Coffin Fits...Get In!". This tale from Story Comics features two brothers–Johnny and Bill Norris–who are driving home from a funeral in a storm, when they pass a mysterious woman walking in the rain. They give her a lift, presumably just coming from the funeral herself. Her name is Helen and she lives above a curio shop with some interesting items in it, like two little novelty coffins which Johnny and Bill are inspired to purchase. Bill becomes infatuated with the strange and beautiful woman, but Johnny has his reservations. For one thing, the little novelty coffins they'd purchased seem to be growing in size each day. Bill thinks the whole thing is nonsense, but, eventually the coffins sprout silver nameplates that have their names on them, and Johnny realizes that the coffins are for them, and the mysterious Helen is actually Death!

The brothers flee town, there's a car accident, Bill finds himself at a strange shack outside of town where...you may have guessed it...Helen is waiting with the coffins.

From the April - May 1952 issue of
Dark Mysteries. Art by Tony Tallarico.

This brings us to the second tale, taken from Master Comics title Dark Mysteries, issue number six, published in April–May of the following year. The story "If The Noose Fits – Wear It!" is (almost) the exact same story! Two friends, Harry and Tod, visit a waxworks. Harry becomes intrigued by a figure of a noose-bound witch, while Tod becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman in the museum crowd. We're told the story of a woman wrongfully accused of witchcraft and subsequently hung. The noose surrounding the figure in the museum is of course the original used on the poor lady, and as a bonus, there are tiny novelty nooses for sale in the museum gift shop for collectors–made from the fibers of the original, of course!

Tod and Harry buy themselves some nooses and Tod gets friendly with Mara, the mysterious and beautiful woman he met at the waxworks. Well, as you might have guessed, the nooses begin to grow each day, sprouting tags with their names on them. Tod and Harry freak out and flee town. There's a car accident, and Tod finds himself at a shack outside of town where Mara is waiting with the nooses. Turns out Mara is actually Death!

Coincidence? I find it hard to believe. Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot of information out there (or perhaps I've been digging in the wrong dirt?) about the comics companies. Story Comics operated from 1951 through 1955, with horror, romance, war and crime comics. Master Comics published two titles: Mysterious Comics (1951-1955) and Romantic Hearts (1953-1955) which reprinted tales from the Story Comics title of the same name, so perhaps they were two publishing titles operated by the same publisher, which would explain the cannibalism. There's clearly a more-than-slightly-similar plot to the stories, with a bit about witchcraft thrown in the latter, for it to be entirely fortuitous. The design of the Helen and Mara characters are practically cookie cutter, there's a theme of floating (though differently illustrated) skulls around the margins of the panels in each, and, of course, the growing death objects seal the deal. It's hard to say what brought on the appropriation of the earlier story. It's hard to believe "If The Noose Fits..." was created out of the overwhelming popularity of the original. Perhaps Tony Tallarico (or the uncredited writer) needed ideas to meet a deadline and grabbed one of many in a then-glutted stream of horror comics and found an interesting story that he could tweak a little for his own purposes. The world may never know.

Definitely worth adding to your pull list.

Whatever the case may be, the stories are great examples of amazing pre-code horror comics and I highly recommend you seek out the issue of Haunted Horror, or, go to the wonderful The Horrors Of It All blogsite, where Mr. Karswell, the host and co-editor of Haunted Horror (and it's sister title Weird Love) posts pre-code horror comics for your enjoyment; including the two tales discussed! 

You can read "If The Noose Fits–Wear It!" here, and "If The Coffin Fits...Get In!" here!

Enjoy.

Minnesota Noirror

Minnesota: Land Of 10,000 Lakes, if you believe the official license plate tagline. Actually there are more than 10,000; I don't have an actual hard total, that isn't really the point I'm going for. When you sate your need for fantastic fiction on the kinds of material Otto Penzler compiles into his wondrously weighty tomes, you find a lot of crime fiction taking place on the misty streets of San Francisco or the cloistered concrete jungle of New York, a lot of horror and supernatural shenaniganery going on in the old attics and alleys of New England or the swamps of the Deep South, but you very rarely get any kind of action here in the Midwest. 

Particularly Minnesota.

Not a popular setting for pulp adventure or b-movie madness. If it weren't for Fredric Brown or Ray Bradbury, we wouldn't have any representation whatsoever. Of course there's always Chicago, popping up as the backdrop for a crime story or a horror tale, and I'm sure some human encyclopedia on film noir and pulp magazine minutiae could take me to task and point out some obscure so-and-so who appeared for a forgotten string of stories somewhere that was North Star State-based. Usually you get some vague, fictional small college town with a mad professor on staff at the local university  that you can kind of relate to yours in its generalities. I understand the point of great escapist material is to transport us to foreign settings that pricey plane tickets likely will not, but every once in a while it's nice to see your environment depicted as the "scene of the crime" as it were.

I honestly can't say whether the 1951 Red Scare drama The Whip Hand takes place in Minnesota or not. A cursory search online gives both Wisconsin and Minnesota as the setting, though I guess initially it was supposed to take place in New England, and feature Nazis instead of communists. The only geographical reference we have in the film itself to the location of the fictional small town of Winnoga, is about an hour in, when our intrepid New York reporter protagonist gets word out to his publisher that the place is actually running as a front for Nazi scientist Wilhelm Bucholtz and his bacteriological experiments, and the publisher in question walks over to a large wall-sized map of the United States, pokes a finger into a non-specific spot in the Upper Midwest and says "Winnoga...Winnoga...ah here it is. That puts Bucholtz and Corbin within a couple of hours drive of our Duluth office." 

Carla Balenda as Janet Keller, hostage of Bucholtz
in The Whip Hand.

The story is a fine little suspense yarn that could have easily been an episode of the Boris Karloff-hosted NBC series Thriller. Matt Corbin, a magazine reporter, is on a fishing trip in the scenic but empty town of Winnoga. A storm breaks out, reporter slips and gashes his head on a rock in the stream while wading to safety, and tries to get medical attention. The first sign of civilization he comes across is a gated driveway to a hidden estate, and is turned away by the surly gatekeeper. He then heads to the town proper to see the local doctor and finds Raymond Burr (talking in a register two steps above Perry Mason and with a talcum-grayed wig on) holding court as a hotel operator and ringleader to a bunch of unfriendly, tight-lipped locals who don't care much for nosey interlopers. Of course the young man finds out what is really going on–that the empty town is a facade run by commies servicing a Nazi scientist working on deadly bacterial agents that will wipe out the population of the United States–and tries to get word to the outside world with the help of the attractive and naive sister of the town sawbones. 

The film was based on a treatment by Roy Hamilton, who, while not having a lengthy career in Hollywood, did write a few episodes of The Adventures Of Superman and an episode of Dick Tracy, as well as contributing to the screenplay for the 1953 schlock classic Cat-Women of the Moon.  

Carla Balenda c.1955

Our protagonist was radio drama superstar and impressionist Elliott Reid (who was apparently asked to do his Kennedy for J.F.K, an impression that garnered the President's stamp of approval), who appeared in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a slew of television shows, and co-starred with Fred MacMurray in some mid-60s Disney films (Son of Flubber and The Absent-Minded Professor). Of course we're all familiar with Godzilla-hunting, Hamilton Burger-thwarting Raymond Burr. Incidentally, if you've not seen his bonkers Bride Of The Gorilla of the same year, I highly recommend you do, because it's amazing. At least if you have tastes similar to my own. And the connection between Bride Of The Gorilla and The Whip Hand go beyond a mere set of production dates! The Whip Hand featured uncredited screenwriting work by Curt Siodmak, the writer of films like The Wolf Man (1941), The Invisible Man Returns (1940), Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) and...you guessed it!...Bride Of The Gorilla, which he also directed!  Our leading lady, Carla Balenda (born with the burlesque dancer-ready name Sally Bliss), doesn't have a lot of credits to her name, aside from being probably best known for her short stints as Mickey Rooney's girlfriend in the short-lived The Mickey Rooney Show (1954-55), and as little Timmy's teacher Miss Hazlit on Lassie (1958-1963).

William Cameron Menzies

The film has two director credits: William Cameron Menzies, the man who created the term "production designer" and director who directed Invaders From Mars and won the Academy Award for his production design on Gone With The Wind; and Stuart Gilmore, a noted editor who worked on films like Hatari!, The Alamo and The Andromeda Strain. Presumably Gilmore did the re-shoots that replaced the Nazis with surly Communist yokels. 

The film is available on Warner Bros. Archive Collection series, meaning you can order it and they'll burn an on-demand, professionally produced DVD-R copy of the film for you. The Archive Collection is actually pretty ingenious; it allows film buffs to get their hands on older, more obscure films that wouldn't necessarily be lucratively marketable in mass production. The films I've ordered from the collection (The Great Gildersleeve movie set, the Hollywood Legends of Horror collection) have all arrived in slick professional cases with full-color labels and production and remastering that rival any of the more mainstream releases. 

Otto Waldis as Bucholtz behind bulletproof glass, scoffing at the Feds
before being struck down by his own human guinea pigs.

Grotesque Design: Adrien Barrére's Poster Art for the Grand Guignol

Adrien Barrére

The Pigalle district of Paris, the area known today for its licentious tourist gawk-fodder, was once home to an institution that catered to the darker facets of human nature: Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, or "The Theatre of the Great Puppet". Founded in 1897 by French playwright Oscar Méténier, to present "naturalist" plays about the caste of French society shunned by the aristocracy and all but ignored in much of the art of the time: the prostitues, the Apaches and the poorer blue collar peoples seen as the distasteful side of Parisian life. The theater's direction soon turned, however, to splatter-driven voyeurism with over-the-top torture porn story lines when playwright Max Maurey took over directing duties in 1898.

A nightly show at the Grand-Guignol would consist of five or six short plays; short productions with wafer-thin plots to service the vicious butchery and ghoulish charlatanry that the audience craved. And they did indeed crave it. The theater remained open until 1962, when the doors closed due to steadily declining attendance; this is generally attributed to the intervening actual horrors of World War II.

Double poster display for Grand-Guignol shows Les Pervertis (The Perverted) and
Le Sorcier (The Sorcerer) by Adrien Barrére.

Adrien Barrére poster for La Marque De La Bête
(The Mark of the Beast), for Théâtre Du Grand-Guignol.

To say "something like that couldn't exist today" is a preposterous notion. In fact, the very avenue you had to stroll down to get to this blog, by which I mean the Internet, seems less the information-sharing, scientific research propagation database that Tim Berners-Lee envisioned, than an earth bed where malignant toadstoods like reddit and 4chan are cultivated.

Proselytizing my views on web culture aside, there's very little about the actual performances of the Grand-Guignol, or the sociology involved with its popularity with the public, that actually interest me. For a great article on the history of the actual theater and its productions, read here (NSFW).

Early Barrére poster for Pathé, depicting two of the
four Pathé Bros, who founded the French media
empire and were responsible for creating the newsreel
that prefaced most films in theaters between 1908 and the 1960s.

The only aspect of the whole affair that really strikes my fancy is the brilliantly bizarre poster art created for the various vignettes. Not the in-your-face gore depictions that look like they were scribbled in some adolescent's school notebook as inspiration for some dumb metal band, but the more artistically inspired pieces from the early 20th century; specifically the lithographs created by French poster artist extraordinaire Adrien Barrére (1874-1931).

While the more garish elements are still present in Barrére's work, there is a definite and obvious cinematic skill to his posters that draw viewers in. The cropping, composition, perspective and use of shadow and lighting make his pieces look more like scenes pulled from films than lurid titillation. Sadly I don't have much information on Adrien Barrére aside from the fact that he spent his whole life in Paris, studied medicine and law before deciding to pursue the life of a poster artist, and was ultimately the poster artist du jour, so the speak, for Pathé. The quality of his craftsmanship and brilliance, however, speaks for itself.

Adrien Barrére poster for Grand-Guignol show 
Le Labroatoire Des Hallucinations (The Laboratory Of Hallucinations).

Barrére poster for Les 3 Masques (The 3 Masks).

Les Pantins Du Vice (The Puppets Of Vice"
Adrien Barrére.

L'Etreinte (The Embrace) by Adrien Barrére

A. Barrére poster for Le Baiser de Sang (The Kiss of Blood).

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: Z is for ZOMBIE JAMBOREE

Z is for ZOMBIE JAMBOREE

I was walking one night

Around Lake Winona

When I met a lady

Who knelt on the shore there

She was using a bone

That she held in her hand

To carve a shape into the wet sand

I said to the lady “Miss, what you doing?”

“I’m calling a loa” she answered while moving

She writhed in the moonlight

And chanted some words

And into the shape

She threw feathers from birds

I asked her why she

Would call on this thing

She said she could hear the

Night voices sing

The wind on the water

The wind in the trees

The caw of the crow

And the knock of my knees

And it would be selfish

She explained to me

To not celebrate

The music with a party

She pointed ‘cross the water

To Woodlawn Cemetery

And said she was raisin’ the dead

For a zombie jamboree.

Jump through the fire

And twice ‘round the stones

Hear the night wind

Playing on the xylabones

She held out her hand

And said “Come dance with me

And the living dead at

The Zombie Jamboree.”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: XX DOUBLE FEATURE XTRAVAGANZA

X is for XYLABONES

The music of the night: the wind whistling through headstones in an abandoned graveyard; the skitter of dry leaves, windblown, raking across dry concrete; the galloping beat of a frightened heart pumping in one’s ears. The melody of mystery! The harmony of horror!

X is for X-RATED SPECS

“I assure you, sir, that it is on the up-and-up!” The short, bearded man leaned over his booth and produced a slip of yellow paper.

X-RATED SPECS – ADULT AMUSEMENT FOR PERSONAL PLEASURE

CERTIFIED GENUINE OR MONEY BACK

PFSR. RANDY GADGET.

“It’s not really in our line of stock,” Chad said, trying to brush off the little man and continue his tour around the auditorium. He and his sales associate Sandra Bellows were looking for new acquisitions for their client, THE POPNECKER NOVELTY CO., purveyors of fine junk to be advertised in pulp magazines, comic books and the like.

This was hardly something that could be peddled to the general public. Hell, it would get Popnecker Novelty blacklisted from the trade, and he would be out of a job.

“What do we have here?” Sandra asked, stepping up to the booth. Chad hadn’t heard her approach. She grabbed at one of the pairs of cheap-looking black-plastic-framed glasses and unfolded the bows.

“Uh, Sandy I don’ think you should…”

“Someone finally perfect a set of X-ray Specs? Hope it’s better than the old make-you-see-double kind that produce—“

Sandy was staring at Chad, and her mouth was agape, her face fire hydrant-red.

“These…these aren’t…”

“X-Rated Specs!” Professor Gadget piped, pride in his voice. “First of their kind! Guaranteed to work!”

Sandy didn’t say anything, just continued to stare.
“Uh, yeah…”

She took the specs off and slapped them back on the table.

Chad was unsure how to proceed. The entire situation was beyond awkward. “You ok, Sandy?”  

“I don’t think these are for us,” Sandy simply replied. “Chad, I saw some new, improved hand-buzzers over on the other side of aisle B, next to the fake vomit vendor. I think it might be a marketable product.”

Apparently Sandy had been unfazed, or hid it well.

“I’ll meet you over there,” Chad said, eager to walk away and relieve some of the tension that seemed to surround the booth like invisible gelatin.

After Chad had vanished from eyesight, Sandy turned back to the small, bearded Professor Gadget.

“I’ll take two pair,” she said, fishing her wallet from her purse.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: O is for OMINOUS TOTEM

O is for OMINOUS TOTEM

The Seer was inwardly amused at the sergeant’s irritation at having to lower himself to consorting with a “press-hungry public shamster” as he’d put it, but kept the amusement to himself. No need to test the limits of sergeant Zucco’s irascibility.

Zucco cleared as throat with gusto. “You’ve doubtless heard about the string of murders in the Bryn Mawr area of town?”

“Indeed I have. I get the paper, sergeant, just like everybody else.”

Zucco replied,  “Looking for your own picture, no doubt.”

“No,” the Seer said, sitting down at the table and raising his coffee cup, “I only subscribe for the comics.”

To his surprise, this elicited a curt snicker from the callous cop.

“We’ve hit a wall,” Zucco continued. “I don’t like it, but I’ve been ordered to see if there’s anything you can add to flesh out the details on this nonsense.”

“What could I do to help?” The Seer asked. “I’m simply a, what was it? A public shamster?”

“Probably, but you seem to have a lot of useless trivia in that turbaned skull of yours about stuff like this, so here you go.” With that the sergeant put a small paper bag on the table in front of The Seer.  The kind you might bring home donuts in, or a small liquor bottle.

Cautiously, The Seer separated the edges of the mouth of the bag, and found a smooth, oddly shaped object with his fingers.

“What the devil?” What he produced from the bag was ghastly, and like nothing he’d ever seen before. It was a small figure, kneeling on all fours and grasping a skull in the primitively carved fingers of its right hand. It had a square-ish head with a series of rings carved around its neck, and a ghoulish open maw filled with tiny needle-prick teeth. Titling it towards the light hanging over the table caused the two eye cavities to glare a blood-colored reflection. Deeply set within the sockets were two red gemstones of some type.

“What is this?” The Seer begged urgently.

“What I came to you for, smart guy.”

“Where was this?”

“On the back of the body of the latest victim. And there’s been one exactly like it on the bodies of each of the last six.”

It was odd to say the least. It had the patina of aged wood or bronze, it’s ochre-hued form marred with splotches of green and brown. It resembled highly polished sandstone, but it didn’t feel like rock at all. Or wood or metal for that matter.

The Seer clasped the object between both of his hands, bowed his head until his chin was balanced in the center of his clavicle, and touched the seeing stone on his turban to the totem.

His mind exploded with a firework show of images; of natives slogging through fields of tall grass and palm trees under the crack of a whip, of a chair like no other he’d ever seen, hewn from a rock that matched the tiny chips of red that made up the statue’s eyes. There was a collage of pain, of sacrifices and blood, and at the perimeter of it all, a figure. The Seer couldn’t quite make out the form’s features, but there was a malevolent aura as hot as red steel radiating off it.

His head jerked up, his eyes flashing to the sergeant. He set the totem down on the table.

“Sergeant, I have to ask what will sound like a very silly question, but I want you to answer it honestly.”

“Whatizit?”

“Are you sure that there were individual totems on each body? Is it possible that it was simply the same totem—this totem—every time?”

“’s impossible,” Zucco spat. “Other ones were all tucked away behind lock and key in the evidence room.”

“Call and make sure, there’s a phone behind you.”

Zucco sighed, rolled his eyes beneath a heavily furrowed brow, and turned to the phone.

“Yeah, Zucco. Hey, go open the evidence lock-up and check on those figurines we found with the bodies in Bryn Mawr.”

There was a pause.

“Yeah? Y—wait a minute, how the hell could…” The surly sergeant turned to The Seer, the color flushed from his face. “What’s the deal here you Ouija board bandit?”

The Seer motioned towards the statue, not wishing to touch it again, ever. “This thing is alive, sergeant. It isn’t the killer, but it’s what the killer is killing for. Not to steal, but because this thing needs the blood of the victims.”

“You’re nutty. Why?”

“I don’t know. But I can assure you unless we find this psychopath, and soon, there’ll be something far worse than a madman with a knife running loose in the city.”