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Fan Fiction: Short Stories
Chapter 4:
A Shock at the Morgue STEAM rose from the pot sitting atop the stove. Miguel Gustavo stirred a
wooden spoon through the pot's contents then laid it down, removing the pot and
carrying it by it's handles to another table, where a bucket sat. Holding the pot tight, he
tilted it and slowly drained the thick contents into the bucket. It was a yellow
paste-like substance. Finished, he set the pot on the table and picked up the bucket,
then moved for the door. Shrevy glanced up into the rearview mirror as he drove. "Hey, boss, you're pretty quiet tonight. We've been driving around for about thirty minutes." Lamont, the paper folded in the seat beside him, had his elbow on the window sill, resting his chin on his fist, staring out the window at the passing buildings, lost in thought. "Boss?" He looked forward. "Yeah." "I said you've been pretty quiet tonight." "Oh. Sorry. My thoughts have been occupied with that robbery last night. But there's nothing for even The Shadow to go on. The police don't know anything yet." "We've been driving for nearly a half-hour. You want me to take you on home now?" Lamont seemed to think for a moment, then gave a nod. Ten minutes later, he was pushing his bedroom door shut and removing his jacket as he moved across the room, draping it over the back of an armchair. He loosened his tie and undid the top buttons of his shirt as he stepped into the bathroom. He splashed some water on his face. Within moments he had changed into his pajama buttons and a sleeveless sleep shirt, and was climbing into bed. Making himself comfortable beneath the sheets, he stared up at the ceiling, again lost in thought. He had soon come to realize that it wasn't just the robbery witness's description of the assailants that had been on top of his mind. It was something else. Something he couldn't quite identity. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, there was a sense of . . . unease. As if he subconsciously was aware of some form of danger, but didn't know what. He laid there for a long moment, trying to figure out just what it was, to no avail. As he closed his eyes and quickly drifted off, the last thought he had was that something definitely didn't feel right. The Binks armored truck was driving down the street, returning from making it's last pick up of the night. The driver, who's nametag identified him as Howard, put a hand over his mouth as he yawned. "Man, I'll be glad when this night is over." "I know what you mean," came the reply from Larry, sitting in the passenger seat. "It feels like we've been driving around this whole city all day long. I could use a big cup of coffee right about now." Larry's eyes widened as they rounded a corner. "Watch out!" he shouted. "Son of a--" Howard slammed his foot on the brake. The truck skidded to a halt and came to rest just a few feet from a form lying in the road. The two men looked at each other. "What do you suppose that is?" Larry asked. "I don't know. Why don't you go take a look?" His friend looked at him. "You go look," he said. "You're the one who spotted it." Larry took another look out through the windshield, then unbuckled his seatbelt with a sigh and said, "Okay, okay." He climbed out and stood beside the truck for a moment. With one hand he unbuttoned the safety strap on his holster, lifting his revoler an inch and then letting it slide back in. He wanted to make sure it was ready to be drawn incase it was needed. He stepped forward cautiously, moving toward the huddled form bathed in the headlights of the truck. Howard watched. As if as an afterthought, he reached down and did the same, unbuckling his holster's safety strap. Larry approached the object and crouched beside it. Up close, he could see that it was a blanket covering something. From the looks of whatever was underneath, he would have said it looked almost like a person. Maybe a bum had been crossing the street in the dark and had been struck by a fast-moving vehicle, and the driver hadn't bothered to stop. If that was the case, he wasn't sure he wanted to look under the blanket. He glanced over his shoulder at his partner for a moment, then turned back. He swallowed nervously, then reached out slowly with one hand. He grabbed a handful of blanket and pulled it back, turning the object underneath it over. He gasped. It was a mannequin, like the kind found in department store display windows. He stood and turned just in time to see Howard being pulled from the truck by a figure hidden in the darkness. "Howard!" he said, and ran to help, drawing his gun. He fired a shot and hit the figure. It fell back to the ground without a sound. He helped his friend to his feet and said, "Are you okay?" "I'm fine," he replied, catching his breath. They heard a noise, like low moaning, and turned. At least a dozen other figures were emerging from the darkness on the sidewalk. They looked almost like . . . zombies. The two guards stood with wide eyes, staring in horror. "What the hell . . .?" they both said. Another sudden noise, closer, and they turned to see that more of them had snuck up behind them. Before either of them could get a shot off, the zombies were attacking, wrenching the weapons from them and throwing them away. Despite their appearance, the zombies were strong, and they wrestled the two men to the ground as they screamed and tried their best to fight back. "Mysterious robbers strike again!" the headline of the morning edition read in big bold letters. Lamont Cranston was reading the front-page story over breakfast. The guards had called in the report shortly after it happened, and according to their statement, their assailants moved slowly and had the peculiar smell of rotting fish. The robbers also made off with all the money the armored truck had been carrying. But what he read next made him set his glass of orange juice down and sit up. One of the guards had managed to shoot one of the assailants. The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene and had been taking to the local coroner's office for further examination, given the strange appearance of the individual. That was great news, because Lamont--or, rather, The Shadow--had an agent inside the precinct in which the suspect had been shot. Doctor Sam Morecroft had been having a busy day. He had already examined three bodies, and it wasn't even noon yet. At the moment he was preparing his instruments for the fourth examination, that of one of the robbery suspects he had read about in the paper from the day before. Wearing slacks and a shirt and tie, he pulled his lab coat tighter around him. The examining room, always kept a bit on the chilly side for obvious reasons, was empty, the other doctors and the assistants out for lunch. As he often did, he had already taken his lunch an hour earlier, that way he could work through the normal lunch hour alone while the others were out. The large room was square, with several windows set into the front wall that looked out into the hallway. Beneath the windows were a line of exam tables. Currently there were no other bodies lying on them, but there had been times when the room was packed with corpses awaiting examination. It was very quiet, save for the near-inaudible buzz of the overhead lights and the low hum of the refrigeration unit. He pulled the tray of surgical instruments over and put on his gloves, then swung the shotgun light over the table and clicked it on. That's when the phone began to ring. He sighed, obviously annoyed, stripping his gloves off and tucking them into his coat pocket as he crossed to the phone mounted on the wall. "Doctor Morecroft," he said. Now occupied with the person on the phone, he stepped over to a file cabinet to pull open the top drawer and began searching through the files. Behind him, something went unnoticed. There was a slight movement from underneath the sheet covering the body, a small movement, as if an arm resting on the torso had slipped off. "Yes," Morecroft was saying, looking through a file while cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder. "Yes, that's correct. Okay. You're welcome. Goodbye." He hung up and returned the file to it's appropriate place, slid the drawer shut, and turned. That's when he screamed. The body was sitting up on the exam table, staring at him. The sheet was a puddle on the floor. Morecroft backed up against the wall as it slid off the table and seemed to have a bit of trouble maintaing his balance. It just stood there, less than twenty feet away. It stared at him for a moment longer, then turned and shuffled out of the room. Thirty minutes later, Inspector Joe Cardona asked in disbelief, "What happened again?" He sounded as if he had just heard the most outrageous thing in his life. Morecroft was at his desk. "I was on the phone with another doctor, and when I hung up and turned around, he was just . . . sitting there, on the table. Just sitting there looking at me." "Did he say anything?" "No. He just stared, then got off the table. He looked like he was having trouble keeping his balance, but then he stood straight up and looked at me again for a moment, then turned and left. It was a like a zombie in one of those B-movies or something." "You didn't try to stop him?" "I was too in shock to do much of anything. It's not everyday that a body I'm about to examine gets up and walks out of the room." Cardona glanced around the room. "Well, there has to be an explanation to all of this. I'll keep you informed." He gave Morecroft a nod of thanks, then flipped his notepad shut as he walked away. "So what's going on here?" Commissioner Barth was entering the room. He had never liked visiting the coroner's office, but the details of this incident that he had been informed of were so strange he decided he had to see for himself. "Cardona," he said as the inspector approached him, "what's going on? I heard something about a body was taken from here?" Cardona returned the pad and pencil to his shirt pocket. "Not quite, Commissioner," he said, and quickly explained the situation. "How in the hell does a body just get up and walk out of a room?" came the reply Cardona was expecting. "That's what I intend to find out, sir." Barth made a gesture at the room around them. "Spending too much time under all these lights and around the chemicals they use in here, somebody probably started seeing things when the body was taken out on a gurney." Cardona didn't bother trying to go any further with the conversation and just said, "I'll keep you informed, Commissioner," and he left. "Yeah, you do that," Barth said, and gave the room another glance over. "Understood," Lamont Cranston said, and shut off the communication rig, closing the iris viewer on a fading black-and-white image of Burbank. A report had come from agent Joe Cardona, just as he had expected. He was already on his way to The Sanctum when his ring had began to glow, and within moments he was receiving word from Burbank of Joe Cardona's report. He sat back in the chair, rubbing a finger across his bottom lip, lost in thought. First the report of the "foul smell of fish" had been hovering over him, a peculiar description for a robbery suspect indeed. But now came Joe Cardona's report that Dr. Sam Morecroft had said the body--and the way it moved--reminded him of a zombie. Just a few years ago, Lamont would have been the first to laugh off such an accusation. But after the things he had encountered in the past, he was willing to accept anything. Pushing up from his chair, he went to a large map pinned to a wall and stood before it. He quickly identified the locations of the two incidents, the bank and the armored truck, hoping to possibly see the beginning of a pattern. But if there was one, he didn't see it. Perhaps it was too early to tell. And there was no apparent connection between the two, other than the fact both the bank and the truck had plenty of money to make a robbery attempt worthwhile. As if suddenly thinking of something, Lamont crossed the room to The Sanctum's floor-to-ceiling bookcases and began running a finger over the spines of the books. Morecroft's entire description of the events, as given to agent Cardona, certainly had all the makings of a zombie movie. Scanning the sides of dozens of books devoted to criminology, the exact sciences, crytography, the occult, law, anagrams, and stage magic, he finally located the one he was looking for and pulled it from the shelf. He took it into The Sanctum's secondary room and sat in the armchair beside the dark fireplace, placing his feet on the footrest. He began flipping through the pages of the thick book, scanning pages and pages of text with fast-moving eyes and a constantly moving index finger underline specific lines. A few more pages, and he found what he was looking for. A story he had once read years ago, and had all but forgotten since, lost in the vast knowledge his mind held. The article, by anthropologist Prof. Raymond Vicenti, told about a little-known report of "zombies." According to the article, a man in 1920's Haiti walked into a village one day, approached a woman, and identified himself as her brother. He used a childhood nickname and facts that only their family would know, proving he was who he said he was. Eighteen years earlier, the man was believed to have died. Upon his return, he recalled that the night he was buried, he was raised from his grave by a voodoo priest and carried off to a sugar plantation, where he was forced into slave labor with several other zombies, also people who had been risen from their graves. Only after the slave master died where they able to escape and return to their homes. After he was pronounced dead in a hospital eighteen years before, he remembered hearing the doctor pronounce him dead while his sister cried at his bedside. He also claimed the scar on the left side of his cheek was made from a nail that was driven into the coffin lid. The article continued for another page or two documenting other "zombie sightings," but that was the story Lamont had been looking for. He closed the book and set it on his lap, rested his elbows on the armrests, touching his fingertips together, thinking. The way he saw it, things were definitely becoming similar to that article. |
© copyright 2003 - Present
The Shadow: Master of Darkness
The Shadow is copyrighted by Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc. Disclaimer
The Shadow: Master of Darkness
The Shadow is copyrighted by Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc. Disclaimer