Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: I is for INVISIBLE HOOD

I is for INVISIBLE HOOD

Don’t let anyone fool ya ‘bout the nature of the crooked types. They’re all bums. Every one o’ them. I should know, I never been anything but. That load of bilge about that French character Lupin and him being a gentleman thief: it’s all bunkum for kids’ books. Crooks are crooks. People who have no scruples taking what they want when they want it because they feel they’re entitled to it. You gotta be a cold stone to not having feelings about it, but that’s just how some are wired.

All the same, I felt something alright all those months holed up in that rotten attic in that egghead flophouse over on Westdale Avenue. Nobody came knockin’ on that door, and the doc was only too keen to have someone around to talk to who could at least grunt back, unlike all them guinea pigs and rats and the rest of those miserable animals all caged up like they were.

That began to chafe of me, too. At first it was just the stink of the hay and the feces, enough to make a guy want to puke. Then I started to feel sorry for ‘em. Months later, after I seen the doc’s tests turn nasty; the way a rat’s pink toes would kick as it lost its site, began clawing at its eyes until its face was a bloody, pulpy mess. Or the way one of ‘em would shriek and turn on its side like it’d just been sucker-punched and rolled; then lay still. Yeah, it was a rat. But it had been alive, hadn’t it? Never did no harm to nobody. Not like me.

I guess I should’ve seen it coming when I woke up one morning, tied tighter than a ship’s rigging, and my left arm knotted off like some kinda dope fiend.

“Good morning, Luther,” the doc said, all cheery like as if he were setting a plate of waffles down in front of me. Only he didn’t have no waffles. Just a hypodermic needle.

“I don’t see much good about it, doc,” I said. He pricked me without warning. Not that it would have made much difference if he had.

“I think I’ve made the necessary steps to removing the malignancies from the serum,” he said.

I wanted to snap the ropes like the studs in the comic books, but my body and the ropes had different ideas. I wasn’t the Doc Savage type. Nobody was, but yours truly especially.

“The more you struggle,” the doc said, stepping back as if just in case maybe I might be able to free myself, “the faster the serum disseminates through the blood system.”

“I should’ve known there was a catch to the free room and board.”

“Ahh…but if this works, you’ll no longer need to stay here, Luther. You can walk down the street as free as a mailman.”

“You’re batty, doc. Maybe the cops ain’t searchin’ this end of town for me yet, but I can’t just…”

“The police won’t see you, Mr. Preston. No one will.” His voice cut off. I noticed his eyes widen, his jaw sort of hinge down toward his adam’s apple.

“It’s working!” he wailed. “It’s working! Look!”

He grabbed at my left hand. I wadded my fingers in a fist to try and take a swing at him best I could, but then I noticed, as he caught my wrist, that he wasn’t holding anything. I mean, he had my hand, but my hand wasn’t there. Or it was, but I couldn’t see it any.

Soon my whole left arm, that he’d jabbed the silver splinter in, was invisible. The doc backed off and came back with a large mirror on wheels.

“See!” he said. “See! It’s a success!”
            What I could see was my clothes moving around beneath the ropes on the table like they were caught in a draft. More important was what I couldn’t see, which was me. I was there all right, but not so as I could see myself.

“What the hell did you do to me?” I growled. I wanted to beat the smug little sadist to a pulp. Maybe it was worth the jail time just to put this jerk in his place.

“I’ve made a fantastic discovery,” was his reply. “And I’ve improved your situation considerably.”

            He was right. In a sense. If I was invisible, then I could go where I wanted, do what I want, and no one would be the wiser. I’d have to do it starker, which wasn’t my cup o’ coffee, but in my position beggars couldn’t be choosers.

            “Great. You a ghost outta me. What good does that do me wrapped up like a ham on this table?”

            “I’ll let you go, of course. I just needed to make sure you didn’t try to run before I gave you the injection.”

            “And what makes you think that’s a good idea?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate. It wasn’t so smart a move, but then nobody ever accused me of being smart. And color me cynical, but I felt another condition of my release about to come slapping down on me. “What makes you think I don’t wring your neck the second you let me go?”

            “Well, it’s quite simple, Luther. I have to create an antidote. If I don’t, you stay invisible forever.  And I can only assume that that would create some problems, even for a criminal like yourself.”

            He had me there. And it occurred to me that the reason I was on the lam in the first place was on account of that creep Don Dibetto, my ex-boss, putting the finger on me for some hatchet job down at the Widow’s Den. Maybe I could use this invisible gimmick to my advantage.

            “You still with us, Luther?” Doc asked.

            “Yeah, doc. I was just thinking is all. Maybe this ain’t so bad, for the time being. I ain’t no fan of being hustled, or tied down when I’m asleep, but I’ll let it ride for now. You get me the cure for this, and I’ll split and call it even. In the meantime, I got things I’d like to take care of, now that I can leave the house without being tagged by a cop.”

            “Fine,” the doc agreed. “But I’ll need to do a vitals check once a day, just to make sure the serum isn’t having any detrimental health effects.”

            “Agreed. Now cut the ropes, doc. I think it’s time I stretched my legs. I need you to give me a lift somewhere.”

            “Where are we going?”

            “I need a drink. Ever been to the Widow’s Den?”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: H is for HAUNTED HOUSE

H is for HAUNTED HOUSE

Stone, wood and mortar. Martin kept repeating the ingredients that made up the old house over to himself in his head. If the old Victorian home wasn’t built with a ghost to begin with, it was added as a garnish afterwards, and most garnishes wound up in the garbage with the steak rinds and the potato skins.

It was a small comfort, however. He was certain the veils of cobweb that draped from all of the ancient wall fixtures, and the heavy talc-like coating of dust that made the parlor look as if it had been situated downwind of a forest fire for the last century, weren’t present when old (then young) Redmond Rafkin carried his blushing bride over the newly-built threshold either.

Still…for all the hubbub about spooks haunting the place, Martin hadn’t seen hide or hair of one over the last three hours. To be honest, it was a bit of a letdown. Here he was, trying to exploit the adventure and romance of being a supernatural investigator, and so far all he’d gotten for his efforts was a cough.  It wasn’t like the movies had portrayed it at all.  The warped old grandfather clock in the hallway hadn’t chimed ominously at midnight; the thing was a junker that had wound down decades ago and would probably cost the city money to have some antique dealer come truck it away. There had been no mysterious voices, no thumping or the rattling of chains from the attic or cellar. Aside from the occasional skitter of an indigent mouse, or the warm summer breath of the July breeze down the old fireplace, there wasn’t a sound to be heard in the old place.

He’d made up his mind. As soon as the sun rose and he sauntered out of the place, he was going to draft up a lawsuit to the estate of James Whale for pushing propaganda. That and he was going to phone up his half-interested contact at the Lake Cove Daily News and give him the whole spiel; obviously bolstering his bravery for undertaking (pun intended) such a dangerous assignment as spending the night in the old Rafkin place, and adding a hint of ambiguity about what exactly he experienced, so as not to so bluntly have to admit it was a dud.

He twisted his wrist towards the moonlight coming through the parlor window. It was quarter-past two. Sunrise still a little over three hours away. Surely he could keep himself amused until then.

Already Martin had wandered around the place; the tracks of his bored pacing were clearly visible on the dust-coated floors of every room. And not a single thing to hold his interest. No creepy dolls, no moody portraits in oils with the eyes cut out, not even a suspiciously sacrilegious book title on the bookshelves in the library. Still, there was an air of creepy about the place, even if it was all psychosomatic.

He exhaled heavily and paced around the parlor some more. Casually his attention flittered from the same dull objects and shadow-basted furniture that he’d come to know by heart.

Would sunrise hurry, already? If only to save him from dying of boredom?

He paced back to the window, looked at the face of his watch.

2:15am.

Surely that wasn’t correct. He put his ear to his watch. Great. Nothing. Not a tick. What a time for the battery to give out. Now he can’t even while away the time listening to the seconds of his life tick away.

Actually, he thought, who’s to know if I sneak out now anyways? He was here of his own volition. There weren’t any ghost groupies camped out on the front lawn, there were no cops standing around at the front gate in case he started wailing for help. He could, theoretically, just step out the back door, maybe find some food and a magazine, and make his way back for whoever might be around to see him leave properly through the front door first thing after sunup.

Marty my boy, he said to himself, you are a clever devil.

Moving carefully so as to avoid jamming his hipbone or shins into any countertops or furniture in the darkness, Martin made his way through the parlor, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. He pulled the filthy, sun-faded curtain away from the window on the back door, and threw a glance around the back yard, making sure no one was keeping tabs on him or waiting to shout “a-ha!” should he abandon his post.

The coast looked clear. As clear as it could look in the inky blackness of two-fifteen…er…whatever-time-it-was a.m.

He twisted the brass door knob to exit. It stuck.

“Well, of all the dumb…” He tried again. The door wouldn’t move. Not just that, but the knob wouldn’t twist.

“Twisted earlier,” he muttered to the cockroaches.

There was a cellar door, the old sloped storm door type. But those were chained up from the outside, and he didn’t have the key for the padlock. Well, he decided, might as well use the front door. Nobody was likely to see him, he mused, and if they did, he could say he was just stepping out between bouts with old man Rafkin’s specter. Really dramatize the whole thing.

Marty jogged to the front door, got a grip on the handle, and pulled.

Door wouldn’t budge.

“Well hold on now,” he drawled, irritation piquing his tone. “I came in through this door. The door was never locked after I came in. So why the heck won’t the handle even budge for me now?”

“Can’t leave ya know?”

It was as if he’d been punched, his guts wadded themselves up in his chest. His throat seemed corked tight.

Martin spun and found himself faced with an elderly man in a suit that had been strictly for stage plays and costume parties for nigh on eighty years now.

“Door won’t work for ya, son. Not the windows, not the chimney, not even the hole in the shingles up in the attic.”

“Wha-why not? Who the hell’re you?”

“Suppose I should ask the same of yourself, you bein’ in my home and all.”

Ah, here it was. The wind up, the pitch, and he was supposed to swing for the fences. Some con this was.

“I­–uh–I suppose you’re supposed to be Redmond Rafkin. Amiright?”

“No supposin’ about it, sir. I am he. Or was he. Just as you were you. Suppose you still are, in a sense.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Martin balked.

“Why don’t ya come into the kitchen, we’ll talk all about it.”

Martin hadn’t noticed before, but the old man was standing right inside the kitchen doorway. He hadn’t been in there just a moment ago, Martin was sure of it.

“Why the kitchen?” Better to draw this out so he could think.

“Can’t really move beyond it for another half hour or so. Then, well…then my time is limited before I go away and then wind up back here in the kitchen again. Best to make use of the time.”

Martin fidgeted with the doorknob behind his back. “I don’t understand.”

“The missus, she poisoned me back some…oh…I don’t even know to think of it. Cleveland was president then. I wake up in the kitchen at three am every morning, the time she slipped me the poison in my bourbon. Got sick of my drinking, she did. In retrospect I can’t blame her. Only she gets to rest in peace. I got to hang around for the half hour it took me to die on the kitchen table. Then I’m free to wander. Then, at some point, I kind of go to sleep you might say. Wake up again the next morning at three, in the kitchen, do it all again.”

Martin’s head was swimming. Someone had taken a mallet to his bearings, and things were slow in recalibrating. “Hold on, you said I can’t use the doors anymore. Why not?”

“Dead too. I tried. Thought maybe I could walk out, find my grave and crawl inside my bones and that would be that. Not so. Unable to leave my home for as long as it stands, for all I know. Who knows, maybe even longer.”

“Well, it’s been fun, whoever the hell you are, but you’ve spun a yarn bigger than you can sew. I’m not dead. I’ve been here all night...”
            “And you got stabbed in the basement shortly after two o’clock I believe. There’s a feller who has been shacking up down there. Not a nice man. I stayed clear of him myself, didn’t want anything to do with him; way he keeps doping himself and coming back with other folks’ wallets and handbags. You’ll find yourself lying on the floor down there. He must’ve hid when he heard you come in, then cut you and fled. You’ll know soon enough. You’ll be seeing a lot of the cellar. Best get friendly with each other, ‘cause we’ll be seeing a lot of each other as well. Whether you like it or not.”

This is insane! There was an obvious play to end this whole affair, just simply go look in the cellar and point out to this madman that there was no other, more corporeal version of himself lying down there. But then again, maybe this was the junkie, hopped up and luring him downstairs for the actual kill. Or maybe this was all a big joke, and some photographer was waiting to snap a photo as soon as he stepped down into the basement, and make a laughing stock of him. One burst of a flashbulb and poof!, adios career. Not that it was much of one to begin with.

Maybe his grandfather was right. He should’ve studied business.

“And if I don’t go down and play this through?” Martin asked.

“No skin off my nose, son. You’ll wind up down there either way. Again and again and again…”

“Yeah, so you’ve said,” Martin snapped. “I think I’ll just stay here for a while. Until the sun comes up and all of those people who will be here for my exit show up and knock this door down and you’ll be arrested and…”

The old man just nodded and made a genial, resigned gesture. “Very well. I’m just going to sit quietly in here until I blink away. I won’t bother you none. See you in the morning, son.” With that he tottered to the kitchen table, withdrew a chair and sat down.

Martin tried the front door a few more times, but, sensing the futility, gave up and slid to the floor, the door against his back. He just sat and watched the old man at the kitchen table, waiting for him to move. Waiting for the need to defend himself.

It never came. He must’ve dozed off. The thought filled him with dread, but a sense of relief washed over him when, after a quick inspection, he deemed himself to be ok.

But where was he? He was no longer propped against the front door in the parlor. He stood slowly, feeling around the darkness for something to orient himself to. Wooden crates, something metal, a sheet or blanket of some kind. There was a shoestring dangling from a light fixture in the ceiling. He gave it a tug.

The planet began to speed up its rotation beneath him. At his feet, on the concrete floor of the cellar of the Rafkin house, was a thick white outline of a figure, with a large red splotch just above what would be the waist.

No. No! This was a trick! He’d been drugged, moved to the cellar. The old freak at the table and some others, taking this sick joke far too far.

“The police were here earlier. Took you away.” It was the old man. The alleged Redmond Rafkin. He was standing in the kitchen, at the top of the cellar steps. “You’ll get a sense of things like that in time: knowing things that happen here, even when you’re not.

“Why don’t you come on up, son,” he said, gesturing kindly. “We’ll talk it over.”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: G is for GHOSTLY AVENGER

G is for GHOSTLY AVENGER

He hurried into his home and locked the doors. He paused for a second, back to the door as if worried someone might try and burst through, and he listened for the sound of footsteps that would indicate he had in fact been followed.

There was nothing. Just his own heightened breathing and the susurration of crickets outside.

Already three members of The Huntsmen Club were dead, and the rumor of the thing hunting them, the figure in the black cloak with the death’s head, had started to play at his nerves. Roland Winterburn wasn’t a man who frightened. He was a man who pulled strings; he was a man who drank pretentious bourbons that cost more per bottle than most of his employees made in a week; he was a man who owned a yacht which traveled the waterways of the world, in search of new game, new thrills, new depravities.

But Roland Winterburn was terrified. He scurried down the dark hall, into his study. He dared not turn the lights on in case someone was after him. Even if they had followed him home, it was best not to alert them of his whereabouts. With the lights on, the windows became opaque black panels from within, and he would become instantly visible. Keeping the lights off he could easily stay obscured in shadow while easily seeing anyone creeping around outside.

In his panic, Roland ambled through the dark, bashing his left knee against the scalloped corner of his large desk. The stuffed owl that sat on the edge, forever staring blankly from a tiny perch of balsam branch, toppled and landed on his foot. His heart jumped violently.

“Get a grip!” he chastised himself.

Trying to steady his nerves, he made his way around the desk by trailing hand-over-hand along the edge of the desktop. He fumbled with the top drawer, noisily sliding it out and extracting a revolver. If The Huntsmen were being hunted, so be it. But he wasn’t going to be meek prey for some specter. He was a Huntsman, for crying out loud. He had his dignity!

“Rooooooooolaaaaaand Wiiiiinterbuuuuurn!” It came in an echoing whisper that flooded the room like smoke.

Winterburn squeezed the revolver compulsively. His hand was slick with sweat.

“What do you want?” he begged, ashamed at the weakness in his tone.

“Your time has come,” the voice returned. There was such finality in the way it was said.

Roland couldn’t pinpoint where the voice was coming from. He fired, blindly. A flash of the muzzle and the bullet went into the corner, near the bookcase. The room filled with laughter—a deafening cackle that sent an icy shockwave through his bloated body.

He fired again, aiming at random, squeezing the trigger rapidly until the gun clicked empty.

A white skull seemed to float out of the darkness of the fireplace. “Death to the death dealers,” the skull said through its tight ivory rictus. Beneath the skull appeared a shard of moonlight, the glint of a steel knife. It shot out, plunging hilt-deep into Roland Winterburn’s chest.

As Winterburn fell, his hands futilely played at the handle of the knife, trying to extricate it from his chest. The skull watched as his victim’s mouth made its last silent motions, uselessly pantomiming a call for help like a fish out of water gasping for life. Before the life had fully dissipated from the magnate, the skull kneeled down near his supine face and produced a small photograph, holding it in front of Winterburn’s eyes.

“A death for a death,” said the skull. Satisfied by the brief flicker of recognition in the waning Winterburn’s eyes, the realization of who his killer was, the skull rose and left the house.

There were still two members of The Huntsmen who awaited punishment, and the night would not stay dark forever.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: F is for FETISH

F is for FETISH

DiBetto’s face darkened at the very mention of the name. “Whattaya mean you saw Slinky Malone?” he barked. “Malone’s dead. I saw the body myself!

“Hell,” he snapped, “I made the body myself!”

“Look, boss,” his trigger man pleaded, “I’m just tellin’ ya what I saw. When Sidecar and me went into the Widow’s Den to get the dough, we went into the office and found McGinley dead. And the one what was bolting out of there, looked a hell of a lot like Slinky Malone!”

“Well it wasn’t!” snapped Don DiBetto. “Slinky Malone is a charbroiled corpse somewhere in the municipal dump.”

Knuckles Duster, DiBetto’s current right-hand stooge, took a step back and fidgeted with his tie. When DiBetto got mad, things got broken. Occasionally the people who worked for him fell into that category as well.

“So this goomba you thought you saw,” DiBetto said, trying to return to his usual cool demeanor, “what did you do when you saw him? Don’t tell me you let him get away after he plugged our business partner.”

Knuckles swallowed hard.

“Well, it was…it was weird, boss.”

“How ya mean?”

“Well, Sidecar and me, we went into the office and closed the door. Slin—this guy—he was trying to make like a jackrabbit out the office window, onto the fire escape. Sidecar goes and grabs the guy’s leg to drag him back into the office, and this guy pulls a hatpin from somewhere and jabs it into Sidecar’s hand.”

“Then what?”

“Well, Sidecar lets go and this guy slips out. I drew my piece to put a plug in the guy, but when I stuck my head outta the window, he had vanished!”

DiBetto’s brow furrowed as he took all this in.

* * *

In a shabby rooming house across town, Slinky Malone sat cross-legged in his room. In front of his pretzeled legs stood a tallow candle, its wick lit and dancing with flame. Slinky took a wad of tissues from his pants pocket and unbundled the wad, removing a hatpin from its folds. The prick of the pin was still slick with blood.

He began chanting a rhythmic string of strange syllables, waving the needle over the flame as if he were using it to stir the contents of a witch’s cauldron only he could see. Chanting done, he turned and reached under his bed, retrieving a small mahogany box. He raised the lid of the box and lifted a small burlap figure from inside. It was a fetish doll, bound with a piece of twine that held a random assortment of objects to it: a feather, a chicken’s foot, a gem stone. Slowly, Slinky positioned the doll over the flame. He muttered some more arcane phrases, and jabbed the needle stiffly into the eye of the face childishly drawn on the doll’s head. A thin smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He withdrew the pin and jabbed the other eye.

* * *

“There’s no way it was Slinky Malone,” DiBetto pressed. “Get that through yer thick head right now. When I last saw Slinky, he was a smoldering briquette. He wasn’t going to be going nowhere, let alone hopping out of windows.”

“Yeah, boss,” Knuckled acquiesced. “Fine. I got it, I really do,”

The tension was suddenly broken by the sound of a car horn blaring from outside.

“Must be Sidecar,” Knuckles said.

“Well what’s he honking the damn horn for?” DiBetto wailed, irritated. “Go tell him to shut up!”

Knuckles left the office and hurried outside. Something was wrong. Sidecar was slumped over the wheel and the car horn continued to go off without end. Knuckles hustled to the driver’s side door.

“Hey!” he snapped in a tense but muted voice, “what’s the matter with you? Car gone funny? You want to draw attention to us or something?”

Knuckles yanked the car door open, a gasp escaping his lips as he saw what waited inside. It was Sidecar. He was dead. Knuckles tried not to vomit despite the sudden swell of bile and saliva in his mouth. Sidecar wasn’t just dead, he’d been mutilated! Both of his eyes were gone; just empty sockets with blood trailing thick and wet down his face and painting the steering wheel and floorboard beneath it. His neck was twisted, his mouth agape.

Knuckles forced Sidecar back off the horn and slammed the door shut, running back inside.

“Boss,” Knuckles gasped, bursting through the door.

“The dum-dum fall asleep or someth–“

“He’s dead!” Knuckles gasped. “It…it isn’t normal dead.”

DiBetto fidgeted as he saw the chalky pallor of his hood’s face. “What do you mean ‘isn’t normal dead’?”

Knuckles replied, “His eyes! His eyes are gone! And his neck is all twisted up!”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: E is for ERLENMEYER FLASK

E is for ERLENMEYER FLASK

“The fools! They scoff at me?!” the scientist bellowed. There was no one in the room to hear, save maybe the rats and spiders that had taken up residence in the secret basement laboratory of the dilapidated old house. Behind him, a Jacob’s ladder crackled with jagged threads of energy. Gauges danced as the needles throbbed with the surge in power, increased through a pattern of flipped switches, twisted knobs and dials.

“Soon,” he sneered, his face aglow with the brilliant blue of the formula bubbling in the Erlenmeyer flask on the Bunsen burner before him, “they will know the genius that they labeled madness! Soon they will regret their narrow concepts of science!”

With a gloved hand, the warped little man grasped the bubbling beaker and held it aloft, to marvel in its existence. He pronounced, “My formula for the revival of the dead!” Outdoors a lightning bolt jagged across the sky, followed by a crack of thunder, as if in response to the arrival of this god-like power discovered and distilled and now in the possession of this twisted misanthrope who longed only for vengeance!

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: D is for DASTARDLY DIALER

D is for DASTARDLY DIALER

She let the phone ring three more times. It was him again…if it was a him. It was hard to tell. He always let the phone ring and ring and ring, until someone answered it. Until she answered it, that is, because she was the only one left. Richard had died three years ago, and that was what made the calls so damned unnerving. The voice—the sickly cackle, so inhumanly warped and pitched—kept saying the same thing.

It continued to ring. She could feel her last nerve starting to chafe. She could call the police of course, but what if they couldn’t trace it? There were always strange calls, solicitors and scam artists and perverts, and these days they could funnel them through blocked numbers and route them through foreign service lines and things.

Finally, anxious and unable to listen to the damn thing ring any longer, she grabbed the receiver and pulled it to her head.

“Tensley residence.”

There was a pause. Then a click, like a break in the line.

Then, as always: “Hello, Margery. Are you lonely tonight, Margery? Don’t be lonely. I’ve got a message for you from Richard.”

The voice…that hideous voice! It would sound so cartoonish if not in this context.

“Who is this?” she screamed. “What the hell do you want?”

“…Margery. Are you lonely tonight, Margery?” it repeated in its mocking tone. “Don’t be lonely. I’ve got a message for you from Richard.”

“Richard is dead!” she screamed and slammed the receiver back into the cradle. She traced the phone cord to the wall and yanked it from the outlet. She couldn’t call the police. She’d have to go in person.

As Margery grabbed her purse, fishing within for her car keys, she stopped at the door to the garage. A trickle of cold dropped into her stomach and dispersed through her veins.

If this caller, this sick monster, knew her phone number, did he—they? it?—know her address as well? Her eyes turned to the window in the living room. Was someone outside, waiting? What about her car? She didn’t have much cause to go out these days, but someone could have done something to the car. If they had, she’d hardly notice until whatever it was had accomplished its goal…

Secret Basement Lab: C is for CREEPING CLAW

C is for CREEPING CLAW

The room was silent except for the crackle of the fireplace and the thumping drag of the wind outside the windows. The members of the little gathering in the plush study were all but frozen, rapt and trancelike as the stiff-collared lawyer straightened the pages of the will against the top of the old mahogany desk.

“Frankly,” the lawyer said, turning his attention to the pages in his hand, as if embarrassed or unable to face any of the people sitting in front of him, “I think it’s damned silly, and if I were you, I’d forget the money. There’s no evidence—at least none in my possession—that Silas Garner actually had any fortune to squirrel away. By the end he’d disconnected the phones, shut off the plumbing, and was living by fireplace and well alone. He was an eccentric old goat who liked to get the mental upper-hand on others by giving them the willies.”

“But—“one of the party interjected, a middle-aged woman wearing a green dress that clashed with her russet bouffant, “—according to his will, there is a treasure somewhere in this place, hiding amongst the junk and cobwebs?”

The lawyer tossed the papers into his briefcase and clasped it loudly. He hefted his heavy overcoat from the chair behind the desk, and started towards the door. “Madame,” he said, pausing to address the woman, Old Garner’s estranged youngest sister, “it wouldn’t have shocked me to learn there was a codicil in your brother’s will that any money he might have had should be given to the first family member to colonize Mars. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s getting late and the storm’s starting to worsen. I’m leaving. And, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, if you’re smart you’ll all do the same.”

With that he was gone: Newton Crawley, prominent lawyer in Collier’s Cove; a man who’d done much of the soliciting for most of the small coastal nook’s inhabitants for over thirty-three years. Unfortunately, as far as Crawley was concerned, that roster included warped old crackpot Silas Garner, a one-time millionaire who had retreated into seclusion after the death of his wife. He’d reportedly lost his money about the time he’d lost his mind, throwing it at private investigators and lawyers, including Crawley, to try and prove that his wife’s death was anything but accidental, and that the man she’d been with when it had happened had had a role in it outside of adultery.

Newton stopped in the foyer to put his coat on. Before passing through the ornately carved door into the storm outside, he turned to give the Garner estate one last look before he dusted his hands of it forever. The long hall back to the study where Garner’s family was waiting, deliberating their next avaricious step towards claiming their mad relative’s money, was festooned with thick ropes of cobweb and lined with paintings that dust had rendered indiscernible. Candelabras flickered at even intervals down the corridor, casting dancing shadows across the dirty walls.

Newton shook his head; not so much in disgust as in registering his inability to comprehend the madness that built such a place and then let it go to ruin. After he left, the door to the study creaked open and the inhabitants filed out.

“It’s agreed then,” said an elderly man, very businesslike in nature. He was Silas Garner’s brother, Gilbert. “We’ll retire to our rooms and clean up as best as we can. Silas lived like a hermit in these abominable conditions, but we’ll have to make do. We’ll meet for a simple supper in the kitchen in a half hour, then start devising a plan to search this house for what’s rightfully now ours.”

The members of the group agreed and dispersed to their allocated corners of the reclusive mansion. As the crowd scattered, one of the dust-matted paintings hanging in the hallway moved ever so slightly. The picture angled forward from the bottom, and from the shadowy aperture in the wall behind the picture, stretched a thin arm ending in a handful of chicken bone fingers, each with a talon-like nail jutting from its tip. The claw-like hand caressed the air mere millimeters from one of the party member’s shirt collars.

Carl Garner, Silas’s teenage nephew, spun quickly at the sensation something was playing at his neck. All he saw was the wall and a painting of what might have been some gloomy landscape, now fuzzed with dust. A few errant strings of cobweb dangled from a flickering candelabrum. That must have been it, he surmised, the strands of web must’ve floated out and tickled the nape of his neck.
            There was indeed a surprise waiting for the estranged relatives of Silas Belmont Garner, waiting to be found haunting the shadows and secret places that filled the mansion. It was not, however, the fortune they sought.