The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: More Cases of Mayhem and Mad Science

Mickey Malloy helps his friends and fights the Axis in any way he can, and in ways he doesn’t even realize. Three quick tales of standing up to injustice and the utterly weird.

Until Only Roaches Remain is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

These stories features consulting folklorist Doctor Ladybird Ogden, who first appeared in The Case of the Lizard Man, and Eric Reed, from The Case of an Old Dead Guy.

Content warnings: Mild swearing, violence, torture, death, creeps.

The Case of the Maryland Goatman

SATURDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 12, 1942
ALONGSIDE ROUTE 301
BOWIE, MARYLAND

“There's no way,” Mickey Malloy groaned. He squinted at the strange figure hunched beyond his shattered windshield. A sharp wind carrying snow so cold it burned whipped around inside the wrecked car.

“It's real, I knew it,” Ladybird Ogden whispered. She was watching from the back seat. Glass fell out of her gray braids. She slipped back and tugged at the hatchet embedded deep in the seat next to her. It had come through the windshield like a meteor. She whispered: “The Goatman.”

The creature was leaning on its cane in the icy road, a hunched figure matted with brown fur, caked in frost, and illuminated by Mick's high beams. He studied the wrecked car where it was wrapped around the tree with glassy, golden eyes. His ear flicked at a falling snowflake. Icicles had grown from the knobby horns curling out from either side of his misshapen head. Hot breath billowed from his wide nostrils.

“What in the world happened?” Marge Queen groaned.

The Goatman was why she and Mick were in that car. Officials had been attacked on the roads south of Baltimore four times in as many weeks. Those that survived claimed their attacker was a half man, half goat demon. Mick had thought it was a load of crap, but enough people had gotten hurt that the Inspector General put his best dog catcher on it.

Even after running against a skunk ape, a lizard man, a mind-controlling cat, and more, this one surprised him. He sighed, twisted around, and ripped the Goatman's hatchet out of Birdie's seat. Springs and stuffing came with it.

Mick's door squealed as he shoved it open. He'd hit the steering wheel himself, and his body ached. He knew he was moving slow. The all-white sky was blinding, even without the post-crash stars dancing in his eyes. The cold air rasped at his throat when he tried to breathe, and swirling flakes fell through the woods around him thick as fog. He hated the cold. Get him back to Florida, give him mosquitos and alligators any day.

“You take care of her, I'll take care of this,” Mick told Birdie as he pulled his club out from under the seat. She laid Marge back, trying to keep her neck still.

Mick hated that Birdie'd been bait, but she had to get to Richmond: some Confederate ghost was stealing gold and selling secrets to the Silver Legion and she wanted it shut down. Neither roving monsters, direct orders, nor blizzards could've kept the consulting folklorist off the road. She and Marge would’ve tried to brave the horned fiend themselves if Mick hadn't insisted on riding along.

Mick grunted and pulled his bandana up over his nose to keep out of the cold. He knew what he looked like with the mask on, and what everyone thought he was.

He could play that part. He could be the Billy Club Bastard.

He fell into the old role like he'd never left it, like it had been waiting for him. When he spoke, it wasn't in his own voice:

“Hey, ugly!”

The Bastard lifted the hatchet for the furry thing to see.

“This yours?”

He chunked it into the frozen ground, sticking it upright by its blade.

The Goatman huffed. He was a fur-draped thing heaving with muscle. Fog huffed out of his long snout, drifting around the frosted beard that hung off his chin. A thick mane covered him, neck to knees. Raw leather boots creaked as he shifted his stance. The Bastard tried not to worry about this thing being naked. The Goatman leaned back and brayed at the sky, so loud that snow tumbled from the bare branches above.

“You could still run,” the Bastard warned him as the echoes faded. This thing was either some nut or a new species, and he didn't want to brain him if he didn't have to.

The Goatman steped forward, lifting his walking stick out of the snow. It wasn't a cane but an ax handle topped with an engraved, curving blade, heavy as a sledgehammer and gleaming along its edge.

“Fancy,” the Bastard rumbled. The Goatman moved like it was crushing things underfoot. The Bastard raised his club, letting the Goatman see what awaited him. The echoes of shattered bones coursed through its grains.

The Goatman snorted then charged, faster than the Bastard expected.

His ax rose and fell, splitting snowflakes as it descended. The Bastard lurched out of the way. Steel missed his skull by inches.

“I already shaved this morning,” he grunted. He swung his own weapon but only caught air. The hairy thing snorted and hopped away. The Bastard chuckled, adding: “A fresh trim wouldn't hurt you either, buddy.”

The Goatman chuffed and hefted his ax in both hands. Gilded runes flashed in the headlights. The Bastard shouted back to the wreck:

“Can she move?”

“Not yet!” Birdie yelled back. “Look out!”

The Goatman surged forward, swinging his ax like he was trying to fell the whole forest. The Bastard deflected that blade a dozen times in a dozen seconds. He had to be perfect: even a glancing blow would cost him.

“I said, 'back off!'” the Bastard roared. He planted his back foot and struck like a rattler, letting his club bite the Goatman across his exposed knuckles. Bone crunched. The Goatman yelped like he was swearing in an ancient language and stumbled away, clutching his ax with one good hand and tucking crushed fingers under his armpit.

The Goatman bleated. He lifted his ax easily one-handed, but when he swung he overcommitted, letting the Bastard duck inside and land a jab in the middle of his chest. It was like punching an oak, but the Goatman stumbled back, wheezing.

“That enough?” the Bastard yelled. His voice careened off the trees around them, up and down the road, so loud that the snow couldn't muffle it.

“Use this on him,” Birdie said. She pressed a cup of clear liquid into the Bastard's hand then ducked back. He didn't ask or wait, he just splashed it right in the Goatman's hairy face.

“Ah!” the thing shouted, his voice suddenly very human. He dropped the ax and grabbed at his snout like he was trying to pull it off. The Bastard didn't hesitate. He lunged and swung. His club clanged against the Goatman's head.

“Hear that? Is that a helmet?” the Bastard asked. He felt reverberations in his arm. The Goatman stumbled away, wrenching at his face like it was on fire.

“Kjøter!” he howled.

“What is that?” Birdie wondered. “Something Slavic?”

“No idea,” the Bastard grunted.

“What are you?” she demanded.

“Tanngrisnir,” the Goatman bleated.

“Interesting,” Birdie said.

“No, no, nope,” the Bastard said. Just because the Goatman was hurting didn't mean he'd forgotten his ax. He had it pointed directly at the Bastard. Blood dripped from his nostril.

“Okay, pal, whatever you are, you're hurting and I'm pissed,” the Bastard said. He was ready to lay this misbehaving kid down for a nap.

“Don't kill him,” Birdie urged.

“I need you to worry about Marge,” the Bastard said. “If that furball gets by me...”

“Okay,” Birdie assured him. Her graying braids were unraveling and sweat had frozen on her forehead like little diamonds. She tugged the hatchet out of the ground and took up a defensive position by the car.

The Goatman surged ahead like a snowplow. He was two bounds from laying his ax into the Bastard when he skidded to a stop. His golden eyes were locked on something behind the man in black. Orange light blossomed, casting the Bastard's shadow over him.

“Alle-Høyest,” he gasped. Blood oozed from both his nostrils. He dropped his ax, looked to the white sky, and cried out: “Nå er ikke min tid!”

The thing stared for another instant then bolted into the forest, faster than the Bastard could follow. In seconds, the Goatman was lost between the trees.

“So odd! Did you catch what he said?” Birdie asked.

The Bastard pulled his bandana down and took a breath. The frigid air snapped him out of his daze, reminded him who he really was.

“Not a word,” Mick grunted, his own voice unfamiliar. He turned and found Birdie standing defiant, hatchet in hand, a dazed Marge propped against her, their burning car haloing her in gold as snow whipped her silver hair around. She looked like an avenging angel: gorgeous, powerful, radiant.

Mick shook his head and rubbed his bruised chest. Marge groaned. Birdie'd gotten her out of the car right before it went up.

“What was that we splashed him with, acid?” Mick asked her.

“Water, of course,” she said. “Goats hate rain.”

“Oh, yeah, of course, how’d I forget?” Mick muttered.

The Big Apple Bandito

SUNDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 21, 1943
BEHIND THE MASTIFF PUB, HELL'S KITCHEN
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

“This is the N-Y-P-God-damn-D!” Detective Bobby Granton shouted at the shadows. He stuffed the wad of cash into his pocket with one hand and drew his pistol with the other. It was a hot night for February, and it had rained hard less than an hour before. The wet pavement was warm, too, and it boiled the rainwater to a sticky mist that diffused the neon lights of the call-girl hotel and jazz bar down the block into a phantasmal glow. “You picked the wrong night to test me. Show yourself, punk.”

Panicked footfalls echoed down the alley, out towards the street. Granton spun on his heel to see the Irish hop pusher he'd come here to meet hoofing it.

“Brogan, you coward,” he yelled at the running man's back. A trash can tipped over deeper into the alley, clanging against the asphalt and spilling its contents everywhere. Its round lid rolled out of the gloom, losing its balance as it neared Granton. He kicked it aside and leveled his pistol at the shadows. His aim wobbled in his shaking hands.

“Is that you, Perch?” he called into the darkness. “I told you I ain't for sale. Not at your sorry rates, anymore.”

“How much?” a deep voice growled. A man, sounded white, with a Queens accent.

“What's that?” Granton said, adjusting his aim to track the voice.

“How much to kill a man?”

“I'm fixin' to do it for free, pal,” Granton replied.

A boot scuffed the pavement behind him, sending Granton spinning around, searching the blackness for a target.

The detective briefly considered pulling out his whistle, but he'd chosen that particular alley for the hand-off with Brogan precisely because no patrolmen ever set foot there. And that late at night, it wasn't likely that anyone wandering around there would help out a cop, even a protected one.

“I only negotiate deals face to face,” Granton said. “Why don't you show yourself, we can talk.”

“Sure,” the man replied. He stepped out from behind a corner. Granton settled his sights on the man's chest.

“What the hell is this?” Granton stammered.

The absolute nutcase standing in front of him was dressed up like an honest-to-God cowboy. He was decked out in a ten-gallon hat riding low on his brow, a red bandanna masking his nose and mouth, and a long leather duster jacket that swept around his the heels of his cowboy boots.

“I'd ask you to lower that heater, but I hear you don't shoot men in the front,” the man said. Granton could hear the smirk beneath that bandanna.

“I'll ask you to keep your hands where I can see 'em, cowpoke, 'less you're feeling that your head has got one too few holes in it.”

“I'm just here to talk,” the man told him.

“You better have something smart to say real quick.”

“Clarence Reed.”

Granton's eyes went wide. There was only one reason someone could have to skulk after him in the dark while knowing that name. His grip tightened on the pistol and he squeezed the trigger.

The cowboy was faster. He whipped his jacket aside and drew and fired a long-barreled revolver in a fraction of a second. The sound of the shot careened off the walls of the tight alley, so loud that Granton barely heard his own pained yelp.

The bullet struck like summer lightning and Granton's pistol went flying. Blood splattered brick and Granton looked down to find his shooting hand shredded.

“Oh hell,” Granton muttered. He fell to his knees clutching his wrist with his good hand, desperate to staunch the red leaking from his mangled fingers and palm.

“Use your tie,” the stranger suggested. Granton released his wrist long enough to wrestle the tie from around his neck. The instant he let go, red spurted onto the pavement, a little squirt that splattered on asphalt in rhythm with his racing heart. Granton struggled to wrap his tie around his forearm one-handed, but he was able to finally get it.

He twisted around as he pulled the knot tight with his teeth like it wasn't twelve dollars worth of Italian silk. He was looking for someone, anyone, who'd heard the shot. The only place open was a bar half-a-block down that was blaring jazz music so loud that the gun might've gone off on the dance floor and no one would have noticed. He couldn't expect the cat house to make any calls either; the last thing they wanted was anyone from the precinct in their business. He was alone with the maniac.

“Tell me about Clarence Reed,” the man demanded. He was standing over Granton now. His revolver was still in his hand. He had a second one in a leather holster on his other hip, matching Wild West six-shooters with carved grips and engraved scrollwork. Granton filed that detail away; there couldn't be too many antiques like them running around the city. He'd find the bastard in the daylight and kick in his God damn door. He'd wish for a bullet to the hand.

“What did you do this for?” Granton grunted, holding up his bloody hand. His smallest finger was gone, and the two in the middle hung cock-eyed around the hole he was looking at the masked man through. His trigger finger still worked, and that would be enough.

“Seemed right,” the man replied. His bandanna was high and his hat low, leaving only a set of malice-filled eyes that drilled right through Granton's own. “You're lucky that's all I did.”

“Yeah, lucky,” Granton said.

“Flap your gums, then I let you know how lucky you are. Tell me about Reed.”

“That was years ago. We mourned the kid, got the guy that did him, and moved on.”

“Tell me about him.”

“I don't remember. It was - !” Granton grunted, only to have the masked man cut him off.

“Nine years ago. They found him face down in an alley, two bullets in his back. A fellow cop.”

“I didn't know him.”

“Detective Granton,” the man sighed. He sounded exhausted. He took a deep breath and collected himself, then spoke through a clenched jaw: “Please don't think I'd shoot you on a whim. I did the legwork. You investigated Clarence Reed's murder, you killed a man for it. Tell me again that you didn't know him.”

Granton looked around again. The man standing over him wasn't in a rush; he'd let Granton keep bleeding. He would leave another cop dead in an alley if he didn't hear what he wanted to hear.

“Reed was a nobody flatfoot who tried to jump in the deep end,” Granton snapped. “Some hick who thought he could cut it in the big city. It ate him alive after he fed himself to it. Jesus, look at my God damn hand.”

“The deep end. Is that why you shot him?”

“I shot him? The wop that shot Reed is dead, I killed him myself. Justice, vengeance, whatever you're looking for, it's done, I did it.”

“I know who you shot, detective. Marcelo Episcopo, a soldier for the Five Families. Did you know that he had an alibi the night of Clarence Reed's murder?”

“Bullshit. Besides, Episcopo pulled the same gun that did Reed on me when I went to question him.”

“Marcelo was drunk in his underwear listening to Flash Gordon with his kids when you shot him. He wasn't the person who killed Clarence Reed.”

“The hell would you know? You're some kook done up for Halloween,” Granton snapped. He drew his wounded hand in close and hugged it against his chest.

“I know what the little birdies chirp to me, and I know Episcopo was in Brooklyn that night.”

“Whoever sold you that load of crap got you good, you rube.”

“The night of Reed's murder, Marcelo Episcopo had Patricio Anastasio tied to a pool table in the basement of Pipefitters' Local Two-Forty-Four and cut on him for three days. Mister Anastasio was very eager to tell me what Episcopo had done to him.”

Patricio Anastasio was, in fact, not a very talkative source. He hadn't broken when Episcopo whittled him on that felt, and he hadn't been especially forthcoming when politely questioned, either. Still, when he'd heard the truth, he was reasonable and he confirmed Episcopo's bloody alibi.

“You're taking the word of some scumbag wop? From his own story, he had as much reason to off Episcopo as anyone else.” Granton spat.

“He might have had one reason, but you had five hundred and one,” the masked man replied.

Whatever color was left in Granton's face drained away.

“I got ahold of your deposit tickets, detective,” the stranger continued. “Back then you were depositing a large amount of cash when there wasn't much cash to go around.”

“I moonlight,” Granton said.

“There aren't enough hours in the night to moonlight that much. You were depositing half-a-grand at a pop.”

“Aren't you the nosey one,” Granton said.

“You have no idea. Watch that hand.” Granton was starting to feel woozy. He took the stranger's advise and brought his leg up to squeeze his hand between his thigh and his chest. “I compared the dates of your deposits to homicides connected to the Five Families. What do yo think I found?”

“Whatever you think you got, you got shit,” Granton snapped.

“Looks like you always made that deposit about three days after a body shows up. That is consistency, and I can appreciate that.”

“That's what you got? You're embarrassing yourself. You know what happens to cranks that mess with cops in this town. And for what? You're getting yourself killed for decade-old nothing.”

The masked man ignored him and continued:

“I didn't find any record of a deposit after Reed died. Which means that you shot a fellow cop for free. Not on orders, or for money. You made the decision to kill him all on your own, and only for you. I want to know why.”

“You're talking like I did this. What you got is a question for Marcelo Episcopo.”

“Conveniently dead. And you wind up with a wad of cash after you killed him. So what was that? Two birds, one stone? Somebody hired you to take care of Episcopo, and you figure you can slam shut Reed's case all at once. Nobody questions if a cop killer ends up dead instead of locked up.”

“Who gives two rat turds about Episcopo? You already know, he was a low life, a torturer for even worse scum,” Granton said.

“This isn't about him.”

“Yeah, Reed. Reed the little crusader. Came in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, thinking he could make a difference in this town. You either ride the rapids here or you get sucked under. Reed was just another nosey kid that got himself drowned. Pissed off the wrong people.”

“You didn't get paid to off him or frame Episcopo, so those people were you.”

“Nobody likes a Nosey Ned,” Granton growled.

“He caught you moonlighting and you killed him for it.”

Granton's eyes drooped and his body went loose. The cop let the pressure off his hand, and a fresh gush of blood oozed out of his wound.

“Hey!” the stranger barked. He kicked Granton in the calf with his cowboy boot. The cop jolted awake and squeezed his wrist again, groaning at the pain. “Perk up, Bobby. What did Reed see?”

“I'm going to kill you. Let's see how you feel bleeding out in a pile of trash. You, Reed, Episcopo, all the rest. Trash, all of you.” Granton was ranting. “Rats and wops. Nobody'll miss you.”

“What did he see?” the stranger pressed.

“He saw how we do things here and thought he knew better,” Granton snapped. “I showed him what thinking gets you.”

“Two bullets in the back?” The masked man's voice creaked like a closet door with ten tons of mess shoved in behind it, ready to snap off at the hinges and spill everything everywhere. Granton knew the sound of a man fixing to use his gun and winced, waiting for the shot. Instead, the man sighed and said: “I hope you used whatever time that decision granted you wisely.”

Granton's eyes went wide.

“You think you're better than me? I am cleaning up this city,” the cop muttered. “This place would be a hellhole if it didn't have folks like me regulating it. I got standards. Unlike you, hiding behind some mask like a pervert, acting holier than me.”

“First off, I wouldn't shoot a good cop,” the man said.

“Could've fooled me,” Granton spat, waving his mutilated hand in the air.

“Haven't shot one yet. And if you reach for that snubnose at your ankle, I'll make both hands match.”

“So you been watching me, then? Getting your rocks off following me around, watching me strap my guns on, spying on me at my apartment?”

“Pretty nice place you got, for a public servant.”

“That's what playing by the rules gets you.”

“By the Acerbos' rules.”

“Your information is dated, slick, the Acerbos are long gone, dead or locked up, every one of 'em.”

“They were wiped out, and their dogs didn't even bark. You just rode it out and waited for the next pay day, the next leash.”

“Buddy, if you're so concerned about the mob, go after them. They're the ones Reed was nosing after when he got popped. I am not the root of the problem.”

“You got to cut down a tree before you can pull the stump out,” the stranger told him. Granton was suddenly tired of the back and forth.

“You know, when my boys come for you, they won't be taking you alive.”

“So you're saying I have a death sentence whether I kill you or not?”

Granton's face somehow went another shade paler.

“No, no, just walk away,” Granton stammered.

“I got all the dirt I need to bury you up to your slimy neck,” the stranger said. “You know I've been following you. Want to know what I saw? A dirty cop, wallowing. One that got cocky, and lazy. You think folks don't see what you're up to, or that they don't care. But they do. I have a file on you, Robert Beverly Granton. Bank records, telegrams, eyewitness accounts, photographs. It's as thick as the book they're going to throw at you. And I've made copies.”

“So call it in, lock me up,” Granton groaned.

“That won't exactly work, will it?”

“Put me in front of a judge.”

“Which one would you prefer? They got their fingers in the same pies you do.”

“Call the papers.”

“They don't think your story is fit to print. But what you and I are going to do is give them one they can't ignore.”

The man reached into his coat and pulled out a coiled rope. He'd knotted an ominous loop in its end. Noose or lariat, Granton could imagine its braid tightening around his neck.

“Oh, hell no,” he grunted. He pushed himself off the ground and bolted for the street. He hadn't made it ten yards before he felt his ankle rip out from under him. Granton hit the asphalt hard, splitting his chin open.

He felt like he was watching the man drag him backward, reeling him in like a trout, rather than experiencing it firsthand. Before he could gather himself enough to pull his backup gun out of his ankle holster, the man upon him. The rope wormed its way around Granton's wrists. A thick-heeled boot pressed into the small of his back, and the rope made its way around his feet. One more rough tug and more quick rope work ended with the detective's hands and feet lashed behind his back like a hog ready for slaughter.

“I got friends you can't imagine, you freak,” Granton stammered.

“I know you do, detective. And they've kept you safe. But they only do it to cover their own asses. What we got to do is put you somewhere they can't hide you anymore.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

The man reeled back with his pistol and brought its handle down on Granton's skull. Everything went white, then black.

MONDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 22, 1943
NEW YORK CITY HALL, MANHATTAN
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

When the world went white again, it took Bobby Granton a minute to realize it was sunlight he has seeing, the red-orange sunlight of too early in the morning. He felt a strain dragging down on his shoulders and hips, and the world seemed to sway around him in a way that threatened to empty his stomach. A dull roar, a thousand excited voices, seemed to be babbling at him at once. He opened his eyes all the way to find himself twenty feet in the air, shirtless and hog-tied, shivering and trussed up like a side of beef.

“What the hell,” he muttered.

“Hold still, detective, we'll have you down soon,” a voice told him. He looked to his right to see a fireman atop of a ladder, sawing at his ropes with a knife.

“Who did this?” one of the thousand voices asked. A mass of people were mobbing the beleaguered line of patrol officers.

“Are these photos real?” another wondered. A thousand other questions followed.

Granton recognized the plaza before him, the white stone steps, the column he'd been hung from, bare-chested and belly down. City Hall. The people gathered below were reporters and photographers, parasites eager for a spectacle.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” someone was shouting over them. Granton, bloodied and bleary, knew the voice. The district attorney, someone who owed Granton as much as the gangsters he moonlighted for. The DA glared up at him before speaking. Granton knew the look: 'Don't say a single word.'

“Detective Granton will be taken into custody and treated for his injuries, but rest assured that a full investigation into his assault and the allegations brought against him will be undertaken. I have no further comments regarding this active investigation.”

Granton stank. Even with the circus going on around him, he smelled like burned meat. He twisted his battered body to find a wound on his side, a deep disfiguring burn in the shape of three letters: 'C-A-R,' Clarence Albert Reed. The brand had melted through the skin and gone into the muscle and fat. It had burned so deep that it didn't hurt.

Despite the DA's insistence on silence, the crowd of reporters went wild. They were holding up thick manilla envelopes stuffed with notes and photos and page after typed page. Every envelope was emblazoned with the letters 'C-A-R.'

“Was Marcelo Episcolo innocent?” a writer from the Times asked.

“Does Detective Granton have links to organized crime?” the Tribune guy shouted.

“Is he going to be charged in the murder of Officer Reed?” a tall blonde reporter shouted from the back of the crowd. His voice carried, quieting everyone else in a way that neither the line of cops nor the DA could.

“I received the same packets you did, but there is a system,” the DA answered, choosing his words carefully. “We do not circumvent due process because some bandito assaults a police officer. This is the Big Apple, we do things the right way here. Detective Robert Granton is a decorated member of the New York Police Department. He will be charged with whatever crimes the evidence can prove.”

The crowd roared again, clamoring for the DA to answer more questions.

Granton's stomach dropped. He was going to be their scapegoat, and he'd have to take it, quietly. It was that, or a cellblock shiv, loudly. He'd play the game, he knew the rules, and his people would come for him. They had to.

“Almost got it,” the fireman with the knife grunted.

“Ready!” a chorus of firemen called from the ground. They were holding a white safety net beneath him.

The last strands separated, and Bobby Granton fell.

The Case of the Confederate Ghosts

MONDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 14, 1942
SOUTH FIELD, HACKETT PROPERTY
PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA

The man on stage in the half-converted barn whirled around, flapping his white cape like a wet goose. Its silver inner lining caught the lights. Mickey Malloy snorted. It was all he could do to keep from bursting a blood vessel or guffawing. Doctor Ladybird Ogden elbowed him in the bicep, hard.

“Hush,” she hissed.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mick grunted. If anyone but the towering folklorist had hit him that hard, he would’ve had more to say about it. He let her have that one.

“The spirits of our honored dead are calling from the fields of Elysium!” the cloaked performer called out. The shadows beneath his deep hood swallowed his face. The crowd seated in the barn gasped. “Who has a question that I, Manann the Psychopomp, might tender to the men in gray walking the mists beyond the veil?”

“I do!” a bluehair called from the front row. She struggled to her feet, leaning on her chair for support, really playing it up.

“Yes, dear woman!” Manann cried. The woman tottered to the edge of the stage and hooked her cane on its lip. Manann dropped to his knees, cape billowing around him, to be face-to-face with her. “The honored dead tread the shores of Purgatory, the ferryman Michael’s due unpaid. What do you offer to help them rest?”

It was Ladybird’s turn to snort.

“He’s blending about six mythologies,” she whispered.

“Hush,” Mick hissed with a grin.

“Two gold coins,” she said. Her hand was shaking as she placed them on the edge of the stage. They thunked down, heavy and thick. Manann’s cape whisked over them, and they were gone.

“The ferryman’s due,” Manann said. “What is your name, my dear?”

“Marjorie,” she replied. Her voice creaked.

Mick winced. Marge wasn’t supposed to use her real name.

“What may I ask of the passing spirits?” Manann asked over her head, working the crowd. Folks had started lining up behind Marge, tears already twinkling in their eyes, gold twinkling in their hands.

“Does my son, Harold, walk among them?” Marge asked. Mick’s breath caught in his chest. She couldn’t have bought into that horseshit. But still, there she was, trembling and waiting for the huckster’s response.

“Let go,” Birdie hissed. He hadn’t realized he’d grabbed her hand, much less started crushing it. She pulled away to massage her knuckles.

Before them, Manann stood, twirled, and disappeared into the yawning doorway behind the stage and the infinite black within.

“Harold is…” his voice echoed out from the darkness, “Passed on, good mother, and is at peace. He misses you, and will be waiting for you when your time comes.”

Manann sashayed back out, his hood thrown back. He was white, with slicked gray hair and an emerald mask covering his face, sculpted into a demonic grimace with a leering third eye wide on his forehead.

The rubes gasped.

Marge leaned heavily against the stage, like someone had just let her air out. Mick wanted to jump out of his seat, but Birdie held him in place.

He’d known she wasn’t up for this, that it would be too much. She’d insisted on going, calling it a ‘vacation.’ She’d already been attacked by a walking goat with an ax to grind, then she’d gone and bought this medium act hook, line, and sinker. A sorry excuse for R-and-R if ever there was one.

“I thought this shit went out with Houdini,” Mick muttered.

The broad-shouldered lunk that had been standing in line behind Marge steadied her and helped her to her seat. She patted his arm and thanked him quietly, then he stepped up to the stage.

He placed two fat stacks of cash on the stage. The amateur stage lights were making him sweat. Mick could see beads forming on the man’s buzzed scalp. The cash disappeared into the folds of Manann’s cloak as quickly as Marge’s coins had.

“What word do you require from the kingdom beyond, brother?” Manann asked, his voice carrying to all corners of the barn.

“My brother, Louis, is aboard the USS Skicoak. Has he made it to Europe safely?”

“You brother, Louis, a soldier of this great nation, has taken a journey across the seas, to the Old World?” Manann called out, whirling his cape. If he hadn’t had his mask on he’d’ve been chewing the deck boards holding the stage aloft. “The honored patriots who gave their lives in these trenches, defending the capitol of a wondrous nation, know who walks in this world, and who is in the next.”

Manann spun again, and disappeared off-stage into the darkness beyond.

Mick had cased the joint before the show had started. He knew that the maw containing the voices of Manann’s honored dead was nothing more than an old grain silo, half-collapsed and leaning against the barn.

“Your brother yet lives!” Manann cried. The silo echoed and magnified his trembling voice. “The Skicoak found safe harbor in England just two days past.”

“Thank you, sir,” the thug said. He bowed his head and made for the door.

“Okay, that’s classified,” Mick grunted. If the krauts knew where a particular ship was, they’d know who was on it and where they were headed. That kind of intel could get a lot of people killed. He stood up in his seat, waving his arms around: “Everyone stay where you are!”

The lunk took off at a run, but he hadn’t been anticipating the consulting folklorist. The fact that Birdie’d already broken her arm once that year didn’t slow her a step. She bolted after him, her legs long enough to catch up in four strides and tackle him to the ground.

The superstitious folks who’d come to learn about their dead relations began shouting.

“What is the meaning of this?” Manann the Psychopomp shouted over all of them.

“That man is an enemy agent, and you just sold him classified information!” Mick shouted. He help up his fake FBI badge, high enough that the con artist could see it.

Manann’s eyes went wide behind the mask. He spun and took off himself, only to trip and land flat on his face onstage. His mask thunked against the boards.

“Shame on you,” Marge said. She grunted and unhooked her prop cane from Manann’s ankle. The medium groaned, but Mick was on top of him before he could move, dragging him to his feet.

“Let’s go talk to your spirits,” Mick grunted. Manann babbled excuses, nonsense, and occasional threats, but he was powerless in Mick’s grip. The two of them entered the dark maw behind the stage.

The empty silo stretched above them, a black void that extended into outer space.

A short woman was seated on milk crate on the far side, her ear against a glass that she pressed to the silo’s metal wall. Her hair was wild and the bright kind of red that ain’t supplied by nature. She had a notepad in her hand to scratch down whatever she was hearing. The pile of journals next to her were stacked near as tall as she was.

“Who’s that?” Mick demanded. He shook Manann a little for good measure.

“My wife,” the medium stammered. He yelled for her. “Peety!”

Peety didn’t look up.

“Peety!” he shouted again, stomping his foot. She popped up with a jolt and came in hot.

“Roger, what the hell!” she yelled, then saw all six-two of Mick, twisting Roger’s arm behind his back. “Who the hell is this?”

“The feds,” Roger grunted. “Don’t say a word.”

“I know not to say a God damn word, Roger,” she snapped. “You don’t say a God damn word.”

Mick twisted the green mask off Roger’s face and threw it aside. It clanked agains the metal floor. Roger gasped in shock. He was in his sixties and had the look of a man who’d once been a smooth operator.

“Tell you what, Peety, why don’t you and Roger sit quietly for a second,” Mick suggested.

The little old lady walked up and put her finger right under his oft-broken nose.

“Are we under arrest?” she snapped. Mick tried to get a word in, but she cut him off: “What are we under arrest for?”

“Nothing yet,” Mick said.

“Then you better let my husband go or our lawyer is going to crawl so far up your behind that he’ll be wearing you like a wetsuit,” Peety hissed. Mick dropped Roger, who slunk to his wife’s side, holding his sore shoulder. She murmured something to him, petting his head.

“Jesus, lady,” Mick muttered. “Well, just don’t go anywhere.”

He left Peety and Roger consoling each other by the door and made his way to her work station. He picked up the glass, placed it against his ear, and pressed it against the bare metal.

He heard voices.

“Well shit,” he said to himself.

“What is it?” Birdie asked from the door.

“I can hear people,” Mick asked. “It wasn’t all a scam. Well, the ‘talking to dead people’ part is. This silo is acting like an antenna, picking up military radio transmissions.”

“Interesting,” she said. She brushed dirt off her knees. “Our buddy out there is a literal card-carrying Silver Legionnaire. He had his membership in his wallet, along with a few pamphlets to hand out.”

“They’re getting dumber and dumber,” Mick said, shaking his head.

“No, bolder,” Birdie replied. She looked at the sneering couple of scam artists and asked: “Did you know you were selling military secrets to traitors?”

“They paid the best,” Roger replied with a shrug.

“Don’t say another word, Roger, or I’ll knock you out myself,” Peety hissed.

“Yeah, let’s get them on out of here,” Mick replied. Birdie escorted the old couple out to the barn while Mick gathered their notes. He watched Marge march up and smack Roger straight across the face.

Served him right.

Peety had something to say about that so Marge laid one on her, too.

Mick smiled and got to work. There must have been fifty notebooks in all, transcribed with every transmission they had heard over the last few months. He carried them out stacked so high that he held them together with his chin.

“So here’s the deal, folks: we’re going to analyze these. If I find a single Allied death linked any of the secrets you sold, you’re both going away.”

He set the books down on the first row of seats and pulled a drum grenade out of his coat pocket. The silo would be more use as scrap.

“Peety, my dear,” Roger muttered, “Maybe we should have stayed with the circus.”

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Bruce Connors.