It has been customary to launch novels of Justin Robinson’s noir monsterverse on Halloween. However, in a change of pace (and protagonist) A Stitch in Crime will appear on the Ides of March 2020. To keep avid fans from feeling deprived and maintain the Halloween tradition, here’s a bonus story whose spirit is very congruent with All Hallows Eve. And if you haven’t yet delved into Justin’s inspired noir/pulp monster mash, City of Devils, Fifty Feet of Trouble, and Wolfman Confidential are with us!
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Tombstone Math
by Justin Robinson
– a City of Devils Series Companion Story-
He had regulars, the pathways to them deeply worn furrows in his mind. They had to be. Between was dark, and Lurkimer couldn’t really see in the dark. How was that for irony? Light killed but dark blinded. He might have complained, but frankly, he was having too much fun.
His regulars were always monsters. Had to be. Humans were smart enough to put a teddy bear wherever a bogeyman could sneak in. Even the stray thought of one of those fuzzy abominations zapped a shudder up his spine like lightning up the twin antennae of a mad scientist’s latest gadget. Monsters, though…monsters were squeamish. Didn’t want to use the fears. As soon as that lock was picked, it wouldn’t be safe for anybody anywhere. So Lurkimer stalked monsters.
Some of the regulars, well, didn’t take much to understand why he’d picked them. Pilar O’Heaven for one. Fifty feet of blonde bathing beauty, her. Now that she’d broken it off with the boss, Lurkimer didn’t feel any more guilt watching her get dressed in the morning. Well, it hadn’t been guilt precisely. Lurkimer stopping having those kinds of feelings long ago; now they were as faded as an old comic book. It was more like a bone-deep knowledge that old Kublai Kong would find out and send Lurkimer out to the lido deck for a final suntan. But now that they were splitsville, Pilar and her mountainous curves were fair game.
She wasn’t the only one, either. Lurkimer knew the way to the boudoirs of a half-dozen of Hollywood’s tenderest ingenues and spiciest dames. From the pictures, from the magazines, from the pictures in the catalogues. He stalked those dark, winding pathways, the ground sometimes wet under his scaly feet. He could find them in his dreams.
Others, he wasn’t sure why he liked ’em so much. There was a mobbed-up goblin, a headless bus driver, a phantom crooner, a zombie dentist, a vampire film agent. A list of monsters that had no real connection to one another and very little in common. But something about each of them had caught Lurkimer’s eye. So now he watched.
If he had a free night, some time where Kong didn’t need him around or he wasn’t tied up tormenting a specific meatstick who thought he was some kind of detective, Lurkimer would start the rounds. The order might have looked random, but it wasn’t, really. There was a reason behind the sequence, but it lived in a part of Lurkimer’s mind he didn’t like to go. Any part that wasn’t right here doing whatever he wanted to do in the moment, he didn’t have much use for. There might as well have been light there, a way to see who he was, and Lurkimer was a creature of the dark. So he followed the path, not asking too many questions, and cycled through his regulars until he found something he wanted to watch. Like tuning a radio, hunting for a song he could almost hear but couldn’t quite name.
Lurkimer wasn’t sure why he stopped to watch this particular couple on this particular evening. Wasn’t what they got up to in the marital bed, that’s for sure. Lurkimer was pretty sure Carmilla hadn’t given Aser more than a dirty look in a year or more.
They were a mixed marriage, and Lurkimer didn’t have anything against that in principle. Wasn’t that he was one of those crusaders, it was just that marriage was always a sham. If a wolfman wanted to shack up with a sea hag or a headless horseman wanted to spend the rest of his immortality with a zombie, that was as fine as any other damnfool idea. Didn’t hurt Lurkimer, and occasionally answered a few of his more puerile questions. In this case, it was a mummy and a vampire. And neither one was happy about it.
Only they weren’t doing anything. No screaming fights. No harsh recriminations. No whining about spending an eternity with a drip. All of those petty issues had been on the menu for a couple months now, all barreling toward a date in front of a judge.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, they were just kind of there. In the house. Together. Not close or anything. Not so that Lurkimer could believe anything fun was going to happen. Aser stared at a newspaper unfolded on his lap; Carmilla picked through this month’s Look. The worst of all possible worlds. So why was he sticking around? He wasn’t sure, and the answer was in one of those sticky, light-drenched parts of his psyche he liked to ignore. So he didn’t prod. He just watched them from the coat closet in their living room, couches in front of him laid out before a silent television.
Aser III was a mummy, and in a bout of tragedy for his kind, wasn’t even elected into public office. He’d tried a couple times but had since given up, something his wife never let him live down. Like most mummies, he was little more than a man-shaped pile of old bandages with some rotting face sticking out. A pair of glowing peepers gave him a little clout, but even Lurkimer could tell they didn’t glow like they used to.
His wife, Carmilla—now she was a looker. Lurkimer had yet to see a vampire who wasn’t worth at least a whistle or two. She dressed the part of the hausfrau but anybody with eyes could see she was a real dish of the nocturnal variety. She had put on a mask with Aser, one that said she didn’t go out after dark and despoil virgins, and she was just beginning to cotton to the fact that virtue didn’t pay.
“I’m going to get something from the kitchen,” Carmilla said after glancing at the clock.
Maybe that was it, the little glance at the clock. That was why Lurkimer had hung around when by all rights he should be lining up with all the other bogeymen seeing what Jayne Doe was getting up to. Or out of. Now there was a real tomato, and she could look like whatever she had a mind to. In-house model at Twilight Visitor magazine, a periodical Lurkimer liked both for its astute criticism of the local jazz scene and the pictures of sexy babes in compromising positions. That sneaky little look at the clock—it kept Lurkimer standing still, wondering. What was she waiting for?
He was glad he’d stuck around to find out.
Carmilla swept from the room, then returned, her heels almost silent on the piled carpet. She carried the wind with her, or that’s what it sounded like.
“Aser,” said Carmilla, with the tone of someone setting a long-simmering argument to boil, “what do you think of this office?”
Lurkimer cowered from the sudden, brilliant light. He wasn’t fast enough: a shaft speared his foot, flash-boiling the skin. He nearly howled, but he was back in the salving darkness soon enough. Aser was just as slow. He had turned halfway by the time she touched it to the back of the frayed bandages, and they caught.
It being a burning copy of Look magazine.
When you got right down to it, mummies were just kindling with political ambitions. Aser went up like a campfire nursed by pyromaniac Boy Scouts. He didn’t even manage to stand. He just made a long, low, sepulchral sound, almost like a moan but sadder, and went limp, crackling and popping. The flames continued to devour, but even they lost interest when Aser was dead.
Carmilla stared at her husband, porcelain complexion burnished gold in the consuming light. Lurkimer could see it in her eyes: she’d done a little tombstone math and found that the numbers didn’t add up. Not until she subtracted one.
A knock sounded from the front door. Carmilla’s head snapped around, her body poised like a cocked gun. Lurkimer briefly considered trying to find the closet in the foyer so he could get a front row seat to the new arrival, but sometimes things were laid out strangely in Between. Just because a door was right over there in their world didn’t mean it was for a bogeyman. He didn’t want to get lost. Not when things were getting good.
Carmilla left his field of vision, and he heard the door open and some muffled talking. It got closer quickly, resolving into “…show you.”
Carmilla led a pretty young phantom in. She looked like she was dressed for the stage, but then, they always did. She had too many teeth for her mouth and too little eyelid for her eyes. Her skin was pale as a dead man’s belly, thinner than deli capicola, but smelled like Chanel. They were holding hands.
“You did it,” said the phantom.
“I told you I would,” Carmilla purred, and she turned her back on the smoldering corpse of her late husband to caress the phantom’s cheek. Yeah, things were definitely getting good.
“We can be together,” said the phantom and they kissed. Considering how many teeth they had between them, this was a far more complex and dangerous task than it might first appear.
Lurkimer thought now would be the time his presence could cause maximum distress. He cleared his throat with as much gusto as any bogeyman had ever mustered, and delighted in the bolt of prey panic flashing in the eyes of both ladies. Both got out half a confused exclamation, but Lurkimer didn’t need them to talk.
“I’ll save you some time,” the bogeyman said calmly from his nice, dark hidey-hole. “I saw everything.”
“Everything,” echoed Carmilla, and Lurkimer relished her stark look of fear, crumpled up into resignation.
“Bad move, bogey,” said the phantom, stepping in front of the vampire, as though that were a threat.
Phantoms were trouble. Always had some kind of cockamamie death trap for their enemies, and if Lurkimer was in her flop, he might have been worried. But he knew this house. Knew it pretty damn well, as a matter of fact, and Carmilla didn’t even own a dog.
“Yeah?” Lurkimer asked. “I don’t see any flashlights out there. Just a burning mummy.”
The way their eyes futilely groped for a weapon against him told the tale. Nothing they could do. Nothing to brandish against him.
Lurkimer decided to rub it in anyway. Once he got going, it was difficult to stop. “And all I have to do is take a step back and I’m gone. Then where do you think I’m heading? They got closets in police stations too, doll, and I know where they all are.”
Carmilla swallowed. “What do you want?
“What does anybody want? Money, honey!” Lurkimer cackled. He didn’t need the money. Truth was, he didn’t want for anything. Got to live out on Catalina Island, translate for a giant ape. It wasn’t quite the American dream, but it was neighbors.
“We pay you and you keep your trap shut?” Carmilla asked, desperation echoing through her silky voice.
“You bet. I’ll keep mum and the wolves never have to know that you decided to cook your better half.”
Carmilla nodded, but her phantom dish grabbed her arm, hissing, “What are you doing? You think you can trust this closet masher? He’ll squeeze you until there’s nothing left.”
That wasn’t true. Sure, Lurkimer was going to use them for as long as he could. Savor having these two dames under his claws. But he wasn’t going to drive them out of house and home. Not so long as he owned them. He did want them to know it, though. Know he was the boss. So he laughed. A good, mocking laugh that every bogeyman kept in their throat. The sound of a monster who had you right where he wanted you.
The phantom shuddered. The vampire, though, she had another reaction entirely.
He saw what was happening in the way the light bloomed in Carmilla’s eyes and then died. A decision made. She did a little more tombstone math. Added up the costs and decided she didn’t like the bill. Lurkimer was almost impressed. That’s what he told himself, because he was lost in her eyes. They were the same color he remembered the sky being right after a hard rain. He was stuck in place. A statue.
Carmilla moved like a snake hooked to a car battery. She grabbed her phantom doll, whose eyes bugged at the sudden violence. Well, bugged more. Carmilla thrust the woman into the smoldering corpse of her husband. The flame was hungry. It was always hungry for phantoms, same as it wanted mummies. The girl’s face disappeared in a wailing sheet of orange. The howl she hit was a high C, clear as a church bell. Even in death, a phantom wouldn’t miss a note.
With a shove, Carmilla sent the flaming phantom staggering into the closet, blazing incandescently, right into Lurkimer’s arms. The fire burned, but not like the light. The last thing Lurkimer saw before the light ate him up was Carmilla’s face, tinged with a faint regret.
Then she shrugged and shut the closet door.
Image: Monster, by Kelcey Hurst for Noun Project
