Cthulhu's Minions Read online

  Monahan came back into the room; I took the photocopy, I was pleased that it only smelled of copier fluid and split the scene.

  ***

  I was relieved to be back in the squad car and away from the odd Padre. My radio squawked my name. “10-4 dispatch, go ahead,” I answered after grabbing the microphone.

  “One of the boys on the beat spotted your car on Pickman Street. Are you anywhere near there?” the scratchy voice replied.

  “Two blocks away, I’m on it,” I dropped the mike to the floor of the cruiser, not even taking the time to hang it back on its hook and stomped on the accelerator. One nice thing about driving a squad car is that it has a siren. When I switched it on, I scared the crap out of a handful of Nuns at a crosswalk.

  The dispatcher said that my car was last seen on Pickman between Hill Street and West Street. I turned quickly onto West Street knocking over several trash cans on the corner. Seconds later I was doing sixty down Pickman Street. A uniform officer flagged me down. It was Purdy. I guessed that he was pulling double duty too. He jumped on the running board and pointed up the street. When we came to the Hill Street junction, we stopped and looked both ways. There was nothing.

  “Hop in,” I said and using my intuitive cop-sense I went north towards Hangman’s Hill Cemetery.

  “Did you get a look at the guy driving the car?” I asked Purdy as I took the cruiser back up to sixty.

  “Yeah,” was his complete answer.

  “Well, what did he look like?” I asked.

  “I’d rather not say Sir,” Purdy replied. He looked down at his shoes.

  Now, if a uniform refuses to answer a senior detective, the fur will fly. “Answer me, Purdy, that’s an order,” I shouted. “What did the perp look like!”

  “He looked like Detective Buck.”

  I slammed on the breaks and skidded sideways to a stop, blocking the entrance to the Hangman’s Hill Cemetery. I stared at Officer Purdy for several seconds. There were tears in his eyes.

  “Jefferson Buck is dead son,” I said talking slowly hoping it would sink in. I had just left one nut job, and I hoped Purdy wasn’t another. Was the whole town going crazy?

  “I know that sir,” he replied almost choking on his words. “But I saw him as clearly as I see you now. Your car was parked in front of the hardware store. There was a man behind the wheel. He was wearing a hat. He was looking away from me and at the store. The back of his head looked sort of funny.”

  “What do you mean funny,” I said. I stopped yelling and decided to take it easy on the kid.

  “It was this funny color. Kind of white, kind of yellow, all dirty like. Then the passenger side door slammed shut, but I didn’t see anybody get in. I pulled out my nightstick, and that was when he turned and looked at me. I swear to God it was Detective Buck!”

  “What happened next?”

  “Maybe Mr. Buck has a twin brother.”

  “I’ve known Jeff Buck for twenty years; he doesn’t have a brother. What happened next?”

  “Maybe he had a cousin. Cousins can sometimes look alike.”

  “No,” I said raising my voice. “Buck was an orphan. What happened next?”

  He stared off through the windshield of the police cruiser, “those eyes,” he muttered. “They were all red, no white parts, just all red.” He shook for a second like he was cold, and then he snapped out of whatever mental image had taken hold of him. “I heard this noise like pieces of wood rubbing together, and then the car lurched forward as if he was an inexperienced driver. There was this metal ‘clunk’ sound when he went into second.”

  He didn’t wait for me to ask what was next. He turned and looked straight at me, “I am sorry Sir, but I let him go. I was so surprised to see Detective Buck behind the wheel; I guess I froze.”

  “Can it kid, I probably would have fainted,” I hoped my little lie would help give him some chutzpah.

  “There’s one other thing,” he added. “Before you got there the owner of the hardware store told me that a couple of his shovels were missing.”

  I looked to my left at the entrance to the cemetery. A portion of the flower beds and the lawn bordering the driveway displayed the tire tracks of a clumsy driver entering Hangman’s Hill Cemetery. Someone had swerved off the blacktop damaging the landscaping and then back onto the pavement before entering the cemetery. Purdy and I bit by bit turned, and looked at each other. I guess my cop sense was in good working order that day.

  “Crap,” I said as I backed up the squad car a little, put it into first and headed into Hangman’s Hill Cemetery. To make matters worse, the sun was starting to go down and here I was with this uniformed rookie that was still wet behind the ears. At least we were both packing.

  ***

  Hangman’s Hill is a wooded graveyard heavily dotted with hundred-year-old oaks and massive pines. In the days that Jeff Buck and I shared a squad car, we would cruise the ancient cemetery looking for drunks and teenage delinquents. I knew that piece of ground like the back of my hand. When driving through you had to do it slowly because of the many trees. At night, if you weren’t careful, the moon and the trees can marshal together to create a strobe effect for a passing motorist. Driving too fast through the cemetery, the alternating trees, and moon light can exorcize phantoms. Optical illusions are not good for armed cops on the prowl.

  The last blush of daylight was being snuffed out when I spotted an open grave. There were two shovels lying on the ground. I cautioned Purdy to be ready. We pulled our .38’s from our holsters and exited the cruiser. I left the headlights shining on the headstone.

  I walked slowly towards the opened grave half expecting a perp to jump out from behind a tree. Before examining the dig, we scouted the surrounding area for anyone that might be playing hide and seek. We were alone. The grave had only been unearthed at the head exposing a portion of the coffin below. I needed to get a better look. I couldn’t tell if the coffin had been damaged. When I picked up Purdy, he was just getting off a day shift. He did not have his flashlight with him, and I wished he did. Purdy was glad he didn’t.

  The headlights of the cruiser illuminated the headstone well but not the hole. I took out my Zippo and got on my hands and knees over the cavity. “Just great,” I complained, “grass stains and mud on my suit.” Then it started to rain.

  The lid of the coffin was intact. By the light of my Zippo, I could make out fragments resembling shattered pottery and the remnants of a green powder. The majority of the powder had been scooped up by hand. I could see finger marks in the traces of the fine particles. There must have been a container full of the stuff that the grave robbers were after and they broke it when they poked through to the coffin’s head. When we first got to the gravesite, I thought that maybe we had scared the robbers off, but it appeared that they got what they came for and left.

  The rain started to wash the remaining green powder away. I stood up and looked at the inscription on the headstone for the first time. Purdy yelled, “What is it?” when he saw my jaw drop.

  The stone read:

  Joseph Curwen

  February 18, 1662, to April 22, 1771

  AND

  January 31, 1902, to November 3, 1928.

  BY THE GRACE OF GOD

  PERMANENTLY INTERNED.

  I had lived in this town all my life. I knew all the legends, all the spooky stories but this one takes the cake. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Officer Purdy had left the graveside. He was sitting in the squad car wondering why the detective didn’t know enough to come in from the rain.

  I slammed the car door and tried to remove the mud and grass stains from my slacks with my handkerchief. “This is rapidly becoming the worst day of my life,” I protested. “On top of it all, I haven’t slept in two damn days.”

  “What did you see back there?” the kid whined.

  “A damn sight more than I wanted to.”

  “Who was this Joseph Curwen fellow and why does he have two birth and death dates on his tombstone?”

  “He was a nut job that conned a lot of people in his day. People believed, back then, that he was a wizard and that he could call forth people from the dead. Hell, in the 1920’s he had a large circle of idiots believing that it was his second time around.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He died at the end of a rope,” I grimaced.

  “What was that stuff in the hole,” he inquired.

  “His powders probably, some of his followers must have buried it with him. The legend says that he had a formula that he used to call forth the spirits. It was a powdery concoction that he mixed with, mixed with…good God,…he mixed it with holy water!”

  I grabbed Purdy by the lapels and shouted, “Rookie, we have a real psycho on our hands. He kills people, rips their faces off and now he thinks he’s going to raise the dead. We’ve got to get to St. Matthew’s.”

  ***

  St. Matthew’s is a magnificent old church. In its day the Cathedral must have been very expensive to build. At one time its Gothic revival style architecture was a status symbol for all churches along the eastern seaboard. When we arrived the shining example of its past had been marred by my orange billboard. The perps had run the car into the front porch. The bumper was hung up on the third step, the engine was still running and the head lights angled up illuminating a stone carving of Saint Matthew over the entrance. The driver’s side door was wide open.

  At that moment I realized that there was another nice thing about being in possession of a squad car. There was a 12 gauge Remington pump action shotgun clipped to the top of the dashboard. I grabbed it, Officer Purdy un-holstered his .38 and we approached the orange sedan.

  We drew near the car, me advancing toward the opened driver’s door, and Purdy closing in on the passenger side. Purdy acted first. With a free hand, he gripped the car door handle and gave it a hard pull. The door wouldn’t budge. It had been jammed from the collision. Pumping a shell into the Remington’s chamber, I stuck its barrel through the driver’s side door opening. I was in a lousy mood. If anyone moved in there, I was prepared to make Swiss cheese out of him. The vehicle was empty. Two things caught my eye. Things that were so uncommon and out of place that they made my blood run cold. I have run down bank robbers, drug dealers and drunken teenagers going for a joy ride in Daddy’s car. I have come across everything you could think of in those vehicles, drugs, money, booze and once a naked broad on the back seat of a Lincoln but this was both new and unsettling.

  Lying across the front seat was a couple of narrow lattice type frames cobbled together out of two-inch by two-inch lumber. Each was about six inches in width and a few feet long with leather straps hanging from one end and on the other end, twelve inch long pieces of two by fours were nailed. They reminded me of a marionette’s feet. The moment that I made that connection, I knew what I was looking at. They were a pair of crudely made stilt, some bizarre driving aid? If they were, the driver must have been three feet tall. If that indeed is what they were then that would explain the “wood rubbing wood sound” that Purdy had heard.

  However, the wacky contraptions were not what unnerved me. Lying on one of the Chevy’s floor mats was a face looking up at me. It was a mask made out of human flesh. Holes, where the eyes used to be, glared at me; and two pieces of silk ribbon, had been threaded through the ear canals to allow the wearer to tie it on. It was the face of Jefferson Buck.

  Purdy came up from behind me, and I slammed the car door shut.

  “What’s in there?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, “it’s empty.”

  “Why would someone want to steal a police detective’s car?” he wondered out loud.

  “Maybe they’re color blind.”

  ***

  All the lights were on in the church. When we entered, I smelled the sweet metallic pungency of blood.

  We walked up the wide center aisle side by side, me with my shotgun in an offensive position sweeping to my left and Officer Purdy clutching his .38 Police Special arcing to his right. Below a big wooden carving of Jesus on the cross we found Father Monahan. The left side of his face had been partially torn away. His throat was badly cut. He was still breathing. I knelt down beside him and tried to slow the flow of blood with my hand.

  “Don’t…let…them…get…the…holy water,” he pleaded.

  Behind him was a holy water reservoir, a large basin made of highly polished bronze with an ornate cross on the front. It probably held ten gallons.

  “Who are they, Father?” I asked.

  As if in answer to my question I was startled when Purdy discharged his weapon. The acoustics in the cathedral echoed the report so greatly that it resounded like a small explosion. I jumped to my feet in time to see something move so fast in Purdy’s direction that I could barely detect its blur. Purdy fired again, and the thing skittered across the hardwood floor and disappeared behind the confessional. Slugs from his sidearm kicked up splinters that sprayed the small enclosed booth. Whatever it was it couldn’t have been more than a few feet in length. The only other features I made out, during the excitement, were its pale dirty flesh and patches of fur.

  I looked over to where Father Monahan laid. He was barely breathing. Then I noticed something over by the holy water reservoir. Was it an infant? It was still. I walked over to it.

  It was revolting. It was an ugly little creature, a hideous dwarf with no legs. The legless torso ended in a small taper, and its dirty white skin had tufts of fur on its elbows and the back of its hands. The fingers on its hands resembled claws because they ended with long sharp talons. The arms were muscular. The thing was no more than three feet long.

  I couldn’t make out its face though. It was covered in pinkish ooze, the creature’s blood that earlier reminded me of veal. The fighting Irishman that he was, Father Monahan had been a valiant defender of St. Matthew’s because the evidence was very clear. Wielding a foot long golden Crucifix like a dagger the Padre had driven its end into the skull of the thing. It was most definitely dead.

  I walked back over to Father Monahan. He had stopped breathing, bending down I placed a hand on his neck. There was no pulse. His skin felt cold. I silently apologized to the old Priest for believing he was crazy.

  Standing up, the room suddenly felt cold. There was an emptiness in St. Matthew’s that I hadn’t sensed before. The pews rattled with a thunderous force, and so did the confessional and one of the side altars. A couple of the pews were flung into the air, and Purdy started firing his gun in several directions.

  From a shadow of an alcove harboring a statue of St. Matthew, another one appeared and leaped directly at me. I snapped the barrel of the Remington in its direction and fired. It exploded into a mass of pulp.

  More of the little bastards appeared. They seemed to be everywhere suddenly. They moved surprisingly fast, propelling themselves with their powerfully built arms.

  One tried to crawl up my pants leg; its talons went into my thigh. I broke its neck with the butt of the shotgun. Four more moved lightly and quickly, up the center aisle toward me. I shot them all in rapid succession with the 12 gauge. The Remington was empty. I threw it down and drew my .38 in time to see Purdy fighting off one of the legless gnomes with his nightstick. He was out of ammo. The creature, a mouthful of fangs and a hideous grin, grabbed Purdy’s nightstick with one hand. Pulling itself up to the uniform officer’s eye level it decapitated Purdy with one swift movement of its other clawed hand. Officer Purdy’s head bounced off of several pews and came to rest in a side aisle. His blue clad body stood motionless for a second, did a pirouette to the left and collapsed heavily to the floor.

  Rage overcame me. I ran screaming down the center aisle firing my gat at the little murderous demon. I fired six rounds emptying my Smith & Wesson. All must have hit the target because what was left of the little bastard was a pile of ooze and flesh that had been masticated by the lead slugs.

  An eerie silence fell over the cathedral. I could hear the creaks and pops of the antique structure as it gave under the slow but relentless pressures of time. I wept for my fallen comrade. He was just a kid, but I liked him. He was scared silly most of the time, but that didn’t stop him from entering the fight. He was a true hero.

  We must have annihilated all of the little bastards, or some of them had vamoosed. I was thoroughly exhausted. I wanted to lay down and sleep, but I had one more thing to do.

  Father Monahan’s brass holy water sprinkler lay on the floor next to him. I picked it up and filled it from the spigot on the holy water reservoir. The sprinkler had a pocket clip on it. I put it in the inside pocket of my suit jacket. Mustering up the courage for my next distasteful task, I removed the lid from the reservoir and dumped its contents on the floor.

  “Forgive me, Father,” I said under my breath. I figured that if there were any of those little bastards left they would have to come to me to get their holy water.

  There was no phone in the church. I went outside to the squad car and radioed the precinct for assistance. After a brief interrogation from dispatch, I went back inside.

  I dragged my sorry butt up the center aisle once more and sat in a front row pew. I was on the verge of collapse. Just when I was seriously contemplating closing my eyes so I could slip off to lullaby land, I saw that the legless dwarf by the Holy Water reservoir was missing. I sat straight up with a start. The four midget perps I nailed with the shotgun were also gone. So were the other two I killed.

  They had been dead all right. I had blown them to bits. They couldn’t have gotten up and crawled away. Someone or something had taken their little bodies away. I reloaded my revolver and stood next to the altar. I’d wait for reinforcements. I knew then and there that the Joseph Curwen nonsense wasn’t baloney after all. Father Monahan had warned me, something about the coming of the Dark Ones and that they had sent their children to prepare the way and I had the only holy water left in town needed to complete their insane ritual.