Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: P is for PURLOINED PLANS

P is for PURLOINED PLANS

The unremarkable green sedan stopped at the mouth of the alley, then pulled away and drove on, after Agent Q stepped out of the car and headed down the narrow passage, past the overflowing trash cans and rain soaked refuse. He slowed his pace as he approached the angled base of a fire escape, and using the fingers of his right hand, pushed an L-shaped bracket on the side of it as he continued on.

A small section of the brick wall behind the fire escape swung inwards. Q passed through the dark aperture. The wall closed behind him with no trace of a door for any who might’ve followed.

Q moved down a dark hallway, stopping when he reached the single door at the end of it. He fished a keychain out of his pants pocket, and found the small, round-headed silver key that opened it. Flipping on the light, he stepped inside and closed the door behind himself, pausing to hear the locking mechanism click into place.

By all outward appearances it was simply a cramped maintenance room. There was a grubby mop bucket off to the side, some mops and brooms stacked in one corner, a floor drain framed with a lip of concrete about an inch and three-quarters high, and a large water main pipe bulging out of the far wall with a bright red valve wheel on the side. He twisted the valve wheel ten degrees to the right, and waited. He heard the faint his of hydraulics activating, and the room descended.

When the incognito elevator reached its target level, three floors sub-basement, Q stepped off and into another hallway; this one a brightly lit corridor walled with teak paneling and padded with plush alpine green carpeting. There were office doors intermittently spaced on either side, but the one Q wanted was at the end.

“Sit down, Q,” Reginald said. He looked considerably older since the last time Q had met with him face to face. “Another bit of bother that needs clearing up. This time the client is…well…us.”

“Us?” Q said, trying to make himself comfortable in the stiff-backed chair that sat facing the agency director’s desk. It was small and hard and made one feel like they were back in grade school. Q fought the urge to run his hands under the seat to look for waxy blobs of old chewing gum.

“Yes. A madman calling himself The Bronze Panther has stolen a number of dossiers from out intelligence office in Paris and headed back to Ceylon. A great deal of our personnel have been compromised.”

“Including me, sir?”

“Impossible to tell,” Reginald said with a sigh. “The office was a mess. We still don’t have all the pieces put back together, and even when we do, it’ll take some time and lucky guesswork to know exactly what he got away with.”

“And I’m to go to Ceylon and retrieve these documents and tie up any loose ends regarding the spreading of said information.”

“Correct, Agent Q.” Reginald dropped a manila envelope on his desk. “Everything you need is in there. The usual passports, papers, intel we were able to glean on this Bronze Tiger.”

Q grabbed the folder and stood. “Is there a deadline?”

“Success,” Reginald said in a quiet and firm tone.

“Understood.”

With that, Q was gone, back to the top level and the green sedan that would be waiting in the parking lot of a restaurant three blocks west.

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.”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: N is for NIGHT WATCHER

N is for NIGHT WATCHER

He’d been there every night for several weeks now. Some nights she didn’t even go to the window, but she knew if she did, the shape would be there under the streetlight. After she’d been grabbed outside her apartment a few nights back, by that—that thing, she’d made a point to always have Jason, the building’s night door man, wait for her outside the front door, where she could be within his eyesight after stepping off the bus at the corner. If anyone, or thing as it may be, tried to gamble a grab, Jason could be there to intervene.

Every night. Under the streetlight. Staring up at her window from the corner across the street. She’d called the cops, given a report. Of course they thought she was bonkers. At least she thought they thought that. The sergeant who filled out the report came to the conclusion it was some nut in a monster mask, trying to get a fright out of her for a gag, working up the goony voice.

Millie wasn’t so sure.

That face…the face that had been burned into memory and the darkness that waited for when she closed her eyelids…there was something familiar about it. The eyes. She couldn’t place it, but she felt that it might not have been a mask, and maybe, perhaps, even not an attempted attack but a cry for help.

If Jeremy were here, he’d know what to do.

Where was he?

She edged to the window slowly, trying to stay out of the glow from the streetlights and shop signs below. She didn’t want the monster to know if she was home, and if he saw her, who knows? Would it—or he?—come up and try to get in?

And the memory of that hand on her shoulder—those clawed fingers! She had a hunch that maybe Jason wouldn’t be much of an obstacle to contend with. Not for someone like that.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: M is for MANSTER

M is for MANSTER

As she turned the corner, past the circumference of light provided on the sidewalk by the streetlamp, Millie got the gooseflesh premonition that she was being watched. It didn’t mean she was, nor was it uncommon to happen when she was walking alone at night. It was her body’s natural reaction to the dark and the quiet mixed with the setting of the unpopulated city avenue.

This time, however, her intuition had grounds for concern.

She didn’t see it approach. First there was the empty metallic clunk of a kicked stray soup can. It was trash day, so there was loose garbage all over the place, blown out of the back of the garbage truck as the bins were being unloaded. Not that there wasn’t trash strewn all over all of the time anyways. This was Saint Paul, after all; street trash was to the capitol city in the way that rain was emblematic for Seattle, or jazz was to New Orleans.

Millie spun, focused on the blackness behind her. Nothing. Maybe it was just a stray cat looking for dinner.

She kept on.

Then she heard another sound—the syncopated tread of footsteps. They were moving at an odd time signature. One short step, then a thudding drag. She started walking faster, the steps to her apartment building a block ahead.

There was a moan—a formless gasp that sounded like it was produced by a mouth unsure how to properly produce the syllables.

“Mee-leee.”

Her heart jumped up into her ears, pounding like timpani.

Don’t turn around, she ordered herself. Whomever or whatever it is will give you a start, and that will cost you valuable seconds you could be bustling your backside towards the door. Jason the doorman should be on duty by now. He’ll know what to do with—

Her train of though was interrupted by the clamp of a heavy hand on her left shoulder, forcing her to a stop. A quick sideways glance at the hand showed a set of green, scabby fingers, each ending in a long talon-like nail.

“Mee-lee. Izz Jay-wuh-mee.”

She turned, and found herself face to face with a hideous creature, a flat green face coated in scaly lesions, baring shark-toothed fangs in its gaping mouth. The man—the monster!—was dressed in a baggy black trench coat and a wide-brimmed  slouch hat, like The Shadow wore.

“Mee-leee!” the creature repeated. “Izz Jay-wuh-mee…”

Millie fell backwards, pulling away with all of her might. A piercing scream burst forth from her lips. Without looking back, she made a beeline for the door of her apartment building.

The creature—this Manster—did not give chase. Rather he sighed, raised the collar of his trench coat, tilted the front of his slouch hat down further, and walked off into the night. Had his face been visible in the getup, one could’ve seen the streetlight on the corner highlight the small tears racing down his swollen cheeks like small glass beetles. He had to find the man who did this to him and get him to change him back.

And if not…then, the world was soon to be down one scientist, he thought. There would be no middle ground.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: L is for LURID NIGHTCLUB

L is for LURID NIGHTCLUB

The strip was active all right, it was a veritable midway alley of hard liquor and games of chance. Every garish neon sign, animated and not, beaming its licentious potential to every broken heart, frayed morality or simply life-weary individual who dared to take a gander.

The Widow’s Den, The Voodoo Room, The Ticklish Tiki, The Puce Platypus; each housed their own brand of debauchery and a devoted clientele of hoodlums, chumps and holster hounds waiting for the next job offer or cheap thrill

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: K is for KISS OF DEATH

K is for KISS OF DEATH

“You sure you got your facts straight?” Peabody asked. “I mean, how could one woman kill twelve men in seven years and not see the inside of a slammer?” He shook his head dumbfounded. “It just doesn’t reckon. I mean, she’d be a regular Bluebe—say, what would you even call her?”

“I’d call her deranged and dangerous,” Detective Smothers cut in. She was becoming irritated with the newspaperman’s insipid blathering. “And don’t go thinking because she isn’t some mug with a face like Boris Karloff with a dirty picture tattooed on his arm, that she can’t be the killer, neither.”

She’d followed the leads, and they all led to the same cul-de-sac: Marjorie Fritzell. One-time nurse, one-time burlesque dancer, twelve-time killer. All wealthy men; tough guys, too. All of them oblivious to the fact that a member of the so-called fairer sex might be the death of them. It was laughably ironic, she mused. Here she was­–a dame private eye in a business that she was repeatedly told, oh-so-condescendingly, was a man’s business. You needed strength, you needed speed, you needed a five o’clock shadow and a baggy trench coat. You had to be ready to rumble and make good with the tough talk, and of course a woman who stood five-five on her tippy-toes couldn’t ever hoe a proverbial row in that field. She’d heard it all a million times. Not always in words, but the smug smirks on the faces of the cops and perps and clients she dealt with, when they realized that who they were dealing with was a P.I., and a she at that. And here she was hunting down a black widow that had been able to rack up kills, had been allowed to succeed in continuing her craft, because she wasn’t a man. Because the very same reasons she couldn’t be a detective according to the world of men, were the reasons Marjorie Fritzell, the dazzling blonde socialite with a tabloid figure and a face for magazines, couldn’t be a serial killer.

“I’ve done my legwork, Peabody. You don’t like my conclusions, get out of my office and let me do my job. There’s a new ice cream parlor opening up on Division. It’s late in the day, but if you hurry you might be able to get a scoop.”

Peabody sneered at the joke, grabbed his hat and pad and headed towards the door. “If you’re so sure this Fritzell gal is responsible for all of this, why ain’t the police on her like white on rice?”

“I’m sure some of them would like to be. Truth is she’s a looker. And she’s got a pocketbook of aliases and phony papers about as thick as a phone book. She’s been good at covering her tracks: changing her hairstyle, laying low, moving around a lot. But that amount of moving leaves dirt on your shoes, and at least one or two footprints lying around somewhere to have traced back to you. I followed her trail from California to New York, to Arizona, to Minnesota and now Wisconsin. Sometimes I could confirm it with pictures in the local papers—engagement announcements, etcetera. Someone with money and brass gets a girl like Marj, he’s going to flash her around like winning lottery ticket. Other times, in the smaller towns, places where she skipped when someone got too close to pinning her for who she really was, I had to flash a photo, but the identification was always dead certain.

“So whattaya figure? Is this new dope she’s with, that banker who was in the paper you asked for, is he going to be unlucky thirteen?”

“I don’t know,” Peabody said. “But I have to believe it. I’m sure she’s waiting for old moneybags somewhere right now, watching for his car out the window and applying some poisoned lipstick or something.”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: J is for JUNGLE DAMES

J is for JUNGLE DAMES

Adventure Journal / June 15^th, 1957

It was a breathtaking sight, my first morning in the jungle; the mist rising off the jungle floor, the surface of the lake east of my campsite, floating up from the within the limbs of the marula trees that surrounded me. It was as if the very fabric of reality had begun to pill and needed a trim. The sun rose sharply and lit the suspended veils of water droplets into floating clouds of gold. 

It was, regrettably, some time before I noticed Jameson, my guide, was missing. It doesn’t paint me in a particularly favorable or intelligent light, I know. I didn’t see him when I awoke, and assuming he was still asleep in his tent, I continued on with my morning activities—breakfast, washing my face, going over the maps for the day’s travel—and let him sleep on.

Well, two hours had passed, and when I noticed my wristwatch read nine o’clock, and I noticed Jameson was still nowhere to be seen, I went to try and wake him. Only he wasn’t in.

His things were still there. Even his boots, so I knew he couldn’t have walked off. Not far. He wasn’t at the edge of the lake, sketching the secretarybirds like he had been the day before.

I started to try and think through the other places he could have wandered off to, when I was startled by the sound of a disturbance in the brush behind Jameson’s tent.

That’s when I saw them. They appeared at the edge of the clearing we were camped in.

“Lookin’ for your friend, daddy-o?” one of them sneered. She, like the other three, was dressed in what looked like a turtleneck sweater and leggings fashioned from animal skins, and wore a necklace of some sort of animal’s teeth. They were all young females, no more than teenagers I would imagine.

“Hey!” she snapped, “I’m talkin’ ta ya, picture frame!”

“P-picture frame?”

“Yeah,” she retorted, a mocking smile curling her lips. “A real square.”

“You’ve seen Jameson?” I asked, unsure who these young women were, or why they were prowling around the African jungle speaking with the parlance of Greenwich Village hipsters.

“Your pal stumbled into our camp during our bongo bash last night,” she said.

“Yeah,” cut in one of the other girls. “He got some real nowhere ideas about gettin’ fresh. Had the Hemingway on his breath, ya dig me?”

“Um…no…no I’m afraid…”

“Well we’re not!” proclaimed a third girl. “We ain’t scared of no one or no thing. You read me pops?” She produced what looked like a small segment of bamboo from beneath the collar of her turtleneck, and with a snap of her wrist, demonstrated how she could flick a thin blade of stone, hinged and hidden within, erect, and pushed it towards my face.

“And we don’t enjoy outsiders trying to smooth our groove. That happens, we start cutting grooves of our own. You dig?”

The girl who’d not yet spoken removed a small leather satchel from her shoulder and began to rifle around inside. Finding what she was looking for, she yanked it out and tossed it at me. I grabbed at it clumsily, unsure what it was at first, but when my senses caught up with me, it was all I could do not to scream.

It was a tiny human head, olive in pallor and shrunken and shriveled like a rotten apple. And I’ll be damned if the grotesque visage staring back at me from my hands, its eyes and mouth stitched shut with thin strips of leather, bore an uncanny resemblance to Jameson.

The girls began to snicker and walked back into the jungle. The one with the primitive switchblade turned and jabbed at the space between us with the still-extended blade.

“You hear the drums tonight,” she warned, “you don’t come a-knockin’. Not without a proper invite.”

And with that they were gone.