(You can read more horror-tinged detective fiction by Howard (with revisions by Miller) in NUELOW Games's Names in the Black Book. Click here to see a preview, or to purchase and download a copy.)
THE DEVIL IN THE DARK: A CASE FOR STEVE HARRISON
By Robert E. Howard & Steve Miller
(Copyright ©2012 Steve Miller. All Rights Reserved.)
(Copyright ©2012 Steve Miller. All Rights Reserved.)
Part One: The Death of Jim Hong
There’s
no blackness this side of Hell’s abyss as absolute as this, Detective Steve
Harrison thought, as he groped along the narrow trail that wound through the
densely timbered pinelands.
The trail Harrison followed was but a
half-guessed trace winding between the walls of solid ebony. He went as
hurriedly as he dared, with his ears whetted to knife-edge alertness. But there
was stealth mingled with his haste, because he had reason to be wary beyond
figments of his imagination. He listened for the snap of a twig under a great,
splay foot, for any sound that would presage murder striking from the black
shadows. The creature he was hunting, and which he feared might be hunting him,
was more to be dreaded than any phantom.
Earlier that day, Ku Chang, a Tong enforcer
had chosen to fight rather than surrender to the law, leaving a ghastly toll of
dead behind him. Every available officer and detective of the River Street
District and neighboring preceincts had turned Chinatown upside down hunting
for him, and all leads soon indicated that he had fled the city for the woody hills
beyond.
Down along the river, bloodhounds were baying
through the brush and hard-eyed men with rifles were beating up the thickets. Harrison
glanced toward the bobbing shafts of light that pierced the darkness while
keeping his own electric torch turned off. The chief of police had directed the
officers to focus their search on the river with the assumption that Chang
would doubleback and follow the waterway to the sea and steal away on a boat.
But Harrison was certain Ku Chang had a
different goal in mind, because he was more familiar with the people of the
River Street District than most of his fellow officers. So while the hunt
flowed away in another direction, he plunged into the black forest alone, on a
mission that was as much one of warning as of hunting.
Six months ago, an elderly herbalist and
rumored mystic named Kai Shen had quit Chinatown to move to a cabin within mazy
pine labyrinth. Shen was reported to create exceptionally powerful good luck
charms and Harrison knew that Chang was deeply superstitious like many other of
the city’s Chinese. Given the manhunt he was trying to escapes, Chang was sure
to seek one of Shen’s charms—and Harrison was certain that he would get get it
over Shen’s dead body. If Harrison didn’t intercept Chang in the woods, he was
hoping that he would beat him to Shen’s cottage and save the old man from death
while putting six slugs in a vicious murderer.
Harrison stopped dead, all thoughts of what
might happen banished in favor of the immediate by sudden shriek that was edged
with agony and terror. It came from somewhere ahead of him. Silence followed
that cry, a silence in which the forest seemed to hold its breath and the
darkness shut in more blackly still. Again the scream was repeated, this time
closer. Then he heard the pound of feet along the trail, and a form hurled
itself at him out of the darkness.
He brought up his revolver as he flicked on
the flashlight. He squinted against the harsh light and the only thing that
kept him from pulling the trigger was the sounds the object was making—gasping,
sobbing noises of fear and pain. It was a man, and direly stricken. He
blundered full into Harrison, shrieked again, and fell sprawling, slobbering
and yammering.
The form cried out in Mandarin: “Oh, my God,
save me! Oh, God have mercy on me!”
In the pool of light Harrison stared down at
blood-splashed body of a burly Chinaman. The hair stirred on Harrison’s scalp
at the poignant agony in the gibbering voice and the terrible wounds on the
man’s body. Blood jetted from torn veins and arteries in breast, shoulder and
neck, and the wounds were ghastly to see, great ragged tears, that were never
made by bullet or knife. One ear had been torn from his head, and hung loose,
with a great piece of flesh from the angle of his jaw and neck, as if some
gigantic beast had ripped it out with its fangs. He was dying, and only abnormal
energy rising from frenzied panic could have enabled him to run as far as he
had.
“What in God’s name did this?” Harrison
exclaimed. “A bear?”
But even as he spoke, he knew that there had
not been a bear in these woods for more than 30 years.
The mauled man clawled weakly at Harrison’s
knees and stared up at him, recognition dawning on his blood-smeared, contorted
face. He moaned something in Mandarin.
“Speak English, damn you!” Harrison growled,
kneeling next to him.
“Officer Harrison, keep him away! He kill my
body, and now he wants my soul! It’s me— Jim Hong. Don’ let him get me!”
Jim Hong?! The blood and grimace of pain had obscured the man's features, but Harrison recognized him now. He was a small-time crook who hung around the waterfront looking for
drunks to roll and sailors to scam. He had occasionally helped Harrison by relaying information from
within the insular Chinese community that he needed to put away more dangerous criminals.
Harrison barked, “What are you doing out here?! What happened to you?!”
“He did it!” Jim mumbled thickly, his hands
twitching weaking in the flashlight’s harsh glare. “The white man come to me on
the dock. He ask for guide to Master Shen’s house. He say he have tooth-ache,
so he has head bandaged; but bandages slipped and I see his face—he killed me
for seeing his face.”
“He set dogs on you?” Harrison demanded, for
as he looked closer the wounds reminded him of a case last year where a man had
killed his wife in just that fashion—by trapping her with vicious junkyard dogs.
“No, sir,” whimpered the ebbing voice. “He
done it hisself— heeeaaggghhh!”
The mumble broke in a shriek as Jim twisted
his head, barely visible in the gloom, and stared back the way he had come.
Death struck him in the midst of that scream, for it broke short at the highest
note. He flopped convulsively once, and then lay still.
Harrison checked to see if life had indeed
left the prostrate form—but then he caught movement at the edge of the
flashlight’s radiance. He brought the light up, but has he did, its light died
with a sharp and sudden pop. He was plunged into an immediate darkness that
seemed even more eternal than before. The silence was also complete; he
couldn’t even hear the baying dogs down by the river.
He was certain that he had seen a vague shape
on the trail some yards away as the light went out. In his mind’s eye, he could
still see it standing there—erect and tall like a man. He aimed his gun into
the darkness, trying to sight along the barrel he could barely see at a target
he could only envision. He opened his mouth to shout a challenge to the unknown
person, but no sound came.
A chill unlike anything he had ever
experienced flowed over him, freezing his tongue to his palate and emptying his
mind of all thought. It was fear, primitive and unreasoning, and as the longest
seconds of his life passed, Harrison stood paralyzed. Years of police training,
experience, and his naturally curious intellect brought a small degree of
reason back to him, but it was an almost hysterical thought that did nothing to
dispel his dread—what sort of devil had
he half-glimpsed that should rouse such instinctive terror?!
Almost without warning, whoever—or
whatever—was upon him. The figure had closed soundlessly and it was only the ferocious
snarl it uttered as it flung itself against Harrison that gave him a chance to
react at all. He pulled the trigger on his gun—once, twice—almost involuntarily
and without aim, and its flash dazzled his eyes, obscuring rather than
revealing the tall man-like figure that struck at him.
Then with a crashing rush through the trees, Harrison’s assailant was gone.
The detective staggered to his feet and
whirled to face the diminishing sound of breaking branches. He raised his gun
to fire after the man—his analytical mind now once again in full force—but that’s
when he became aware of the pain in his shoulder and the warm wetness on his
chest.
Harrison moved to a tree by the trail and
squatted. He holstered his weapon and touched his chest and shoulder—his shirt
was soaked through and his suit coat was quickly becoming so as well. He swore
with anger and surpised pain as he
touched his wound through the shredded shoulder padding of his coat. He fumbled
and eventually found a match in his vest pocket. He struck it and examined his
injury in the frail light.
It wasn’t as bad as it had seemed in the
dark—another shirt and suit coat were ruined, but his shoulder wound was little
more a couple of parallel scratches. But their arrangement caused another chill
to sweep down his spine. The thing he had glimpsed, the thing that roused
nameless fear in my mind, was the same thing that had killed poor Jim Hong and
it had left its mark on Harrison as well.
