Those Who Fight Monsters.
Tales of Occult Detectives.
Edited by Justin Gustainis.
"From ghoulies, and ghosties, and long-leggedity beasties, and things that go b.u.mp in the night, Good Lord deliver us."
- Old Scottish prayer.
"There are things that go b.u.mp in the night... And we are the ones who b.u.mp back."
- Professor Trevor Bruttenholm.
Introduction: "Down These Mean Crypts a (Wo)Man Must Walk"
by Justin Gustainis.
As the subt.i.tle tells you, this book is devoted to stories of occult detectives, a term that I define fairly broadly - to include any fictional character who contends regularly with the supernatural. Thus, although not all occult detectives are monster fighters, all monster fighters are clearly occult detectives.
We decided to go with the present main t.i.tle because Those Who Detect the Occult just didn"t have the same "zing" to it.
The character of the occult detective has been part of our popular culture for more than a century. The most comprehensive listing of supernatural sleuths can be found at G. W. Thomas" "Ghostbreakers" website (occultdetective.tripod.com/all.htm), although it needs updating. Thomas lists 164 occult detective characters - in books, films, comics and television - appearing between the mid-Nineteenth Century and 1999.
From the beginning, (probably J. Sheridan Le Fanu"s Martin Hessilius, in 1872), the occult detective often wasn"t - a detective, that is. He was often a doctor, sometimes a scientist, occasionally (as in the person of Abraham Van Helsing) both.
In modern fiction, the occult detective may be, among other things, a private eye, a police officer (in a universe that recognizes the supernatural), a reporter, a bounty hunter, a priest, a wizard/witch for hire, an antiquarian, an a.s.sa.s.sin - even a waitress.
As this collection shows, the contemporary occult detective takes many forms, and may be male (John Taylor) or female (Jill Kismet), human (Pete Caldicott) or nonhuman (Dan Hendrickson), professional (Marla Mason) or amateur (Kate Connor), a saint (Piers Knight, sort of) or a sinner (Jezebel), gay (Tony Foster) or straight (Quincey Morris), cop (Jessi Hardin) or criminal (Tony Giodone). But each shares at least two traits with the others: specialized knowledge, and the courage to use it. Thus, they have more in common with the hard-boiled private eye than the cla.s.sical sleuth. The occult detective is closer to Philip Marlowe than Hercule Poirot, and today usually appears in stories that are more "hard-boiled" than "cozy."
Cla.s.sical detective stories were all about the puzzle, usually (if ungrammatically) expressed as "who done it?" Once the cerebral investigator solved the mystery, action was usually left up to the authorities ("Inspector, arrest that man!").
But the private eye goes beyond mere deduction. He (or she) may investigate, certainly - examining evidence, interviewing witnesses, consulting experts to interpret what has been uncovered. But, having put the pieces of the puzzle together to form a unified whole, the private eye does something about it. The t.i.tle of Mickey Spillane"s first Mike Hammer novel expresses this point clearly: I, the Jury. And although most fictional private eyes are not brutal vigilantes like Mike Hammer, they usually share his desire to act against the bad guys, once the latter have been uncovered; it is no coincidence that in The Big Sleep Philip Marlowe compares himself to "a knight in dark armor."
This willingness to confront evil on its own terms is also characteristic of the occult detective, who knows that wooden stakes have other uses besides holding up tents, and wolfsbane is not just a pretty flower.
However, the occult detective is more than just a supernatural private eye. In fact, I would argue that he or she embodies some of the central roles found in any society.
The occult detective serves as a doctor, who brings specialized knowledge and skill to bear upon some affliction - someone who can diagnose the illness, treat it effectively, and propose effective preventative measures for the future.
The occult detective takes the role of a shaman, who understands the supernatural world and those who dwell within it. The shaman serves as a communication channel between the two worlds - and sometimes, even travels between them.
The occult detective is a hero, in the cla.s.sical sense - an extraordinary individual who, with strength, skill, and courage, protects the community from those who would do it harm.
Small wonder, then, that the contemporary occult detective has found a home within the fiction genre (or sub-genre) known as "urban fantasy" -a term that usually refers to stories set in a world much like our own, but with the addition of a supernatural element.
Occult detectives predate the category "urban fantasy," but then so does urban fantasy itself. The literature came first, the label sometime later. Applying the generally accepted definition, Stoker"s Dracula was urban fantasy - at the time it was published. The story depicts the actual Victorian world its readers lived in - with the interesting addition, however, of the undead.
The movie Ghostbusters (1984) also appeared before the common use of "urban fantasy," but clearly falls within that category. The film takes place in a New York City much like the real one, except that ghosts and other supernatural creatures exist, posing varying degrees of danger to the populace - from slimy annoyance to the potential End of the World as We Know It.
The film"s opening theme asks, "Who you gonna call? And by the time the marshmallow man is toast, we all know the answer.
More than twenty-five years have pa.s.sed since Venkman and the boys first strapped on their gear, but the essential question remains unchanged. Even in the 21st century, whenever demons walk the earth, werewolves prowl the countryside, or vampires ride the night winds in search of innocents" blood...
Who you gonna call?
In the pages that follow, courtesy of some of today"s best writers of urban fantasy, you will find fourteen delightful, disturbing, and downright creepy answers to that question.
I hope you enjoy them.
- J. G.
Little Better than a Beast: A Marla Mason Story.
by T. A. Pratt.
"This is for you, Miss Mason." Granger, the idiot hereditary magician of Fludd Park, handed a crumpled envelope across her desk.
Marla took the envelope, which was smudged from Granger"s mud-streaked hands, and hefted it. It was age-browned and soft, made of some heavy paper with a lot of cloth mixed into the fibers. "And what"s this?"
"It"s been in our house underneath the trees," Granger said, smiling affably, face as broad and unsubtle as a snowplow blade. "In the safe, with a note, that said, give to the chief sorcerer of Felport on such and such a date."
Marla frowned. There was nothing written on the envelope, and it was sealed with several blobby hunks of wax. She could make out the barest shape of an impression in the central blob, maybe some kind of bird, a hawk or a crow, as if a signet ring had been pressed into the wax when it was soft, a million years ago. "This has been in your family, like for safekeeping? For how long?"
Granger looked at the ceiling and hummed and drummed his blunt fingers on the desk, which was how you could tell he was thinking. Marla didn"t have much use for nature magicians in general, and inbred nature magicians with an inviolate hereditary line of succession and a seat on her highest councils were even worse. "A long time. As many springs as there are days in a year, maybe much more."
Three-hundred-sixty-five years or so, then? That would date this letter from the earliest days of Felport"s founding in the 17th century, back when it was nothing but a few settlers clinging to life. In those days Granger"s great-great-great-great-whatever-grandfather was just the sorcerer in charge of keeping the town commons and farmland healthy and green, long before the village became a thriving shipping and industrial center, and even longer before its recent rusty decline, an economic slowdown Marla was doing her best to reverse in her capacity as chief sorcerer and protector of the city. None of the city"s population of ordinaries, oblivious to the magic in their midst, would know the new biotech companies and urban renewal projects were Marla"s doing, but that was okay; she wasn"t in this job for the glory. She just loved her city, and wanted it to thrive.
"Any idea what the letter says?" Marla didn"t particularly want to open the thing. She"d had a bad winter, combating a plague of nightmares, along with the interdimensional invaders old Tom O"Bedbug still insisted were fairies from Faeryland, and she"d been hoping for a quiet spring. She didn"t think a letter from the early days of the city would be likely to contain good news.
"No ma"am, we were told to hold it, not read it, just keep it until such and such a date." His beaming face suddenly closed down, smile gone like the sun slipping behind a mountain. "But I got distracted, spring is coming and times are so busy in the park, so such and such a date accidentally pa.s.sed, some days ago, only as many days as I have fingers, about, not so many as could be, not too late, right?"
Marla picked up a letter opener shaped like the grim reaper"s scythe. "So I was supposed to get this a week or ten days ago?"
"Thereabouts," Granger said, head bobbing, happy they were in agreement.
If I could fire him, or have him committed... But Granger was a powerful magician, in his way, and even if he wasn"t much use to the city"s secret shadow government of sorcerers, he mostly stayed out of the way in the park, and his elementals had been formidable warriors in last winter"s battle against the nightmare-things. She considered reprimanding him for not bringing the letter on time, but it would be like hitting a puppy fifteen minutes after it p.i.s.sed on the carpet - the poor thing wouldn"t even understand what it was being disciplined for.
Marla used the letter opener to pry up the wax blobs, then unfolded the envelope, which wasn"t an envelope at all, but just a sheet of paper folded in on itself. The message wasn"t very long, but it said everything it needed to.
She came around the desk, shouting "Rondeau! I need you!" and clutching her dagger of office. This was going to be a b.l.o.o.d.y afternoon.
"Is everything okay?" Granger said, bewildered by her sudden action.
"Everything"s just beastly," Marla said.
"The mother-effing beast of Felport," Rondeau said, long strides matching Marla"s own as they hurried along the sidewalk toward the center of the old city, north of the river. This was a neighborhood of cobblestone streets and quaint crammed-together shops (many spelled "shoppe" on the signs, with the odd "ye olde" as a modifier), a touristy district where you could buy hunks of fudge as big as pillows and stay in a bed-and-breakfast where an early president had slept, once, allegedly.
"That"s what the letter says." Marla frowned at the compa.s.s-charm in her hand, ducking into an alleyway that led, she hoped, to the tiny square that was the site of Felport"s founding. There was a fancier, more obvious Founder"s Square a few blocks away, with a monument, but she was dealing with magical rather than the munic.i.p.al history. She wanted the spot where Felport"s first chief sorcerer, Everett Malkin, spoke the spells of binding that tied each successive chief sorcerer to the city, ritually entangling the strengths, weaknesses, and interests of Felport itself with its protectors.
"So, uh, what exactly is the beast of Felport? Werewolf, demon, undead mutant water buffalo? My grasp of local history is a little shaky." Rondeau shifted the heavy shoulder bag Marla"d given him to carry, and things inside clinked together.
"Probably because you never went to school," Marla said. Rondeau was her closest friend and business a.s.sociate - he owned the nightclub where she kept her office, and they"d saved one another"s lives far more often than they"d endangered them - but he"d had a non-traditional childhood and never saw the inside of a cla.s.sroom. "n.o.body seems to know exactly what the beast was. In the early 17th century, Felport was just a trading post with a nice bit of coastline, good for loading up and emptying boats. People kept trying to settle here in greater numbers ... and something kept killing them, even worse than the usual New World problems of murderous natives and disease and bad winters and starvation. Bodies would be found chewed up, missing certain necessary organs, like that, killed by something worse than bears, n.o.body knew what - some kind of beast. People started calling the place *the fell port" - *fell" as in dangerous, bad, scary - which is where the city got its name. Eventually a sorcerer named Everett Malkin came along, really liked the location, and convinced some settlers to join him, despite the region"s nasty reputation. He said he"d keep the beast of Felport, whatever it was, away. And he did. He was the city"s first chief sorcerer."
Rondeau yawned. "I"m glad I missed school. That story was boring, except for the bit about dead bodies. So if Everett whatever killed the beast hundreds of years ago, how is it supposed to bother us today?"
"I didn"t say he killed it - he drove it off." Marla stopped walking, looked at her compa.s.s charm, which was spinning wildly, and nodded. "This is the spot." They were in a tiny cobblestoned courtyard, a pocket of forgotten s.p.a.ce with only one alley leading in and out, surrounded by the windowless portions of various old brick buildings. A droopy tree grew in an unfenced square of grayish dirt, and a storm drain waited patiently to collect the next spring thunderstorm"s rain, but otherwise the courtyard was bare.
"So what now?" Rondeau said, flipping open his b.u.t.terfly knife.
Marla shaded her eyes and looked at the square of sky above. Very nearly noon. "Well, if I"d gotten the letter a week ago like I was supposed to, I"d have this place surrounded with containment teams and every contingency plan imaginable, and I"d feel pretty well prepared after spending a few days reading Malkin"s old enciphered journals, and researching every conceivable theory on the beast of Felport. But, since Granger is an idiot and I had no advance notice, we wait for midday, and if something appears, we beat the s.h.i.t out of it."
Rondeau put down the shoulder bag and Marla sorted through it, taking out charmed stones, knives crackling with imbued energies, and even an aluminum baseball bat ensorcelled with inertial magic to give it an extra bone-shattering wallop. Finally, she removed her white cloak lined inside with purple, her most potent and dangerous magic, which exacted a terrible price every time she used it. She put on the cloak, fastening it at the throat with a silver pin in the shape of a stag beetle, telling herself she probably wouldn"t need its power. After all, how bad could the beast be? It was a beast. Sure, the stories said it was all kinds of unstoppable, but tales tended to grow in the telling, and four hundred years offered lots of time for embellishment.
After hefting the bat, Rondeau flipped his knife closed and put it away, choosing the blunt object over the razor"s edge. "Okay, you got a letter from Everett whatever saying he sent the beast of Felport umpty-hundred years into the future, and you might want to keep your eyes out for it. This raises a couple of questions for me."
"Oh, good. I love your questions. They"re always so insightful." Marla did a few stretches, her joints popping, then checked the knives up her sleeves.
"Number one: I thought time travel was impossible?"
"Traveling backwards in time is. Or, at least, no sorcerer I"ve heard of has ever cracked it. Some adepts say they figured out how to move forward in time, though it"s more like putting yourself off to the side in an extra-dimensional stasis, set to re-enter normal s.p.a.ce-time at a later date, unaffected by the pa.s.sing time. But not many try to do it, since there"s no way you can go back again after seeing the wondrous future." She took a leather pouch over to the alleyway and emptied it, dumping a dozen thumbtacks and pushpins - all augmented with charms of snaring and paralysis - across the courtyard"s only exit, just in case.
"Seems like it could be a good trick for waiting out the statute of limitations," Rondeau said, in the tone of voice that meant he was contemplating casino robberies.
Marla snorted. "Any sorcerer capable of going forward in time would have more elegant ways to avoid being arrested for something, Rondeau. It"s bigtime mojo. I couldn"t do it, and I can do d.a.m.n near anything I set my mind to."
"Too bad. It"d be nice to skip the occasional boring weekend. Okay, so my second question: isn"t sending the beast of Felport to the future kind of a d.i.c.k move? Getting rid of your current problems and leaving it for your descendants to deal with?"
"Yep," Marla said. "Everett Malkin was, by most accounts, a nasty piece of work. A bada.s.s sorcerer with a knack for violence and the interpersonal warmth of a komodo dragon-"
"Doesn"t sound like anybody I know," Rondeau murmured.
"-but, to be fair, the guy was in kind of a bind. The story goes he used charms and protective circles and various kinds of exorcism and banishment and eventually even tried appeas.e.m.e.nt, by which I mean human sacrifice, to keep the beast of Felport at bay, but it was all just temporary. The thing kept coming back. He couldn"t kill it, couldn"t drive it away, just failed and failed, and his little settlement was on the verge of permanent disintegration. So one day he sucked it up, gave his dagger of office to his apprentice and chosen successor, and went out into the woods to finish things once and for all. And, apparently, he left this letter explaining his plan to send the beast into the future, to be delivered to whatever poor sucker happened to be in charge four centuries later." Marla shrugged. "Malkin never came back, but the beast never troubled anyone again, and now we"re waiting for ... whatever."
"Maybe he didn"t send the beast into the future at all," Rondeau said. "Maybe they just, like, killed each other."
"We can hope," Marla said, but the words had barely been uttered when the courtyard suddenly got a lot more crowded.
A hard wind blew, making Marla squint, and a brown hairy thing the size of two gorillas fighting over a tractor tire appeared about three feet in the air, then slammed to the ground hard enough to crack the stones. There was an impression of tusks, snout, and hard black eyes, but it was hunched and crouched and twisting and moving too fast for her mind to encompa.s.s it. It stank like the sewers under a slaughterhouse. Marla began speaking words of binding and tossed a handful of charmed stones, but the rocks just bounced off the thing"s matted hide - disappointing, since they should have respectively burned, frozen, and turned it to stone - and then an arm swung out, long as an extension ladder, and smashed Marla against a brick wall. Rondeau went in manfully, baseball bat c.o.c.ked, but the thing swatted him aside like an annoying fly.
Marla stood up, about to reverse her cloak, to make the soothing white exterior switch places with the bruise-purple lining and unleash her most deadly battle magic - when the beast flung something slightly larger than Marla herself through the air, straight at her.
That"s a person, Marla realized, and then about two hundred pounds of human body - dead or alive, she wasn"t sure yet - hit her square in the chest and knocked her flat. She grunted, shoved the guy off her body, and struggled to her feet, all the wind knocked out of her.
The beast of Felport took a moment to consider its handiwork, and Marla thought, Run for the alley, f.u.c.ker, get caught in my bear traps, and then the beast crouched, leapt about fifteen feet in the air, grabbed a jutting chunk of brick wall, and went up the side of a building and over the rooftop, like a gecko climbing a garden wall.
"That"s bad," Rondeau said, picking himself up and taking out his cell phone. "Guess I should call the Chamberlain."
"It"s her neighborhood," Marla said, "and I sent her a message before we left telling her there might be some s.h.i.t hitting her fan this afternoon. d.a.m.n it."
Rondeau looked toward the roof where the beast had escaped. "Yeah. Who knew anything so big could jump like that?"
"I did," said the body the beast had thrown at Marla, sitting up and rubbing his head. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with a nose like a cowcatcher and bushy eyebrows, dressed in the filthy ragged remains of what might once have been nice old-fashioned clothes. He rose and stalked toward Rondeau. "And so would you if you had read the journals I left behind, detailing everything I knew about the beast! You came here utterly unprepared. What kind of chief sorcerer are you?"
"He"s no kind of chief sorcerer at all," Marla said, already seeing where this was going. "I"m the chief sorcerer here."
The man whirled to face her, frowning. "You?" He gestured to Rondeau. "This one is a swarthy immigrant of some kind, that is troubling enough, but you - you are a woman."
"Yes," Marla said. "Very perceptive. And you"re Everett Malkin, I presume."
"Incredible," Malkin said, staring at the cars going past.
"Yup," Marla said. "I guess it would be." The three of them sat on a bus stop bench, waiting for the Chamberlain"s limo to arrive.
"The city itself, though I"m pleased to see its growth, has changed but little. I have spent time in the capitals of Europe, after all."
Wait until you see the skysc.r.a.pers in the Financial District, Marla thought. Or the clubs and quickie check-cashing joints and bars in my neighborhood. They were still in the old city, where an attempt was made to keep a certain vintage feel, but culture shock would hit him eventually.
"You plan to call together the whole council?" Malkin asked. He gnawed at an apple Marla"d bought for him. Rondeau"s joke about how he must be hungry, seeing as how he hadn"t eaten in 400 years, had fallen flat, though, and Rondeau had been quiet and sulky ever since.
"Just the Chamberlain for now. This is her neighborhood, and from what you said, the beast won"t go too far. If it"s in her bailiwick, the Chamberlain will find it."
Malkin grunted. "Another *her." You are the chief sorcerer, or so you tell me - should not the heart of the city be your *neighborhood," as you say?"
Marla snorted. "This? This is toy-town. A tourist trap. Old-fashioned stuff for history buffs and tourists scared to stay in the real city. The heart of the city nowadays, where the action is, that"s south of the river. That"s where I live."
Malkin mulled that over, and finally said, "You have told me of the Chamberlain, and the current Granger - sad it is to hear his lineage has decayed. I would not have entrusted him with the letter had I known his offspring would be ruined - but who are the other sorcerers of note? In my day it was only myself, Granger, and my apprentice, Corbin."
"There"s a chaos magician named Nicolette, she looks after the financial district. The Bay Witch watches the water and the port. A sympathetic magician named Hamil over by the university. Viscarro, who lives in catacombs beneath the city. A junkyard wizard named Ernesto out in the industrial section. That"s about it for the council, but there are lots of talented apprentices and freelancers in town, too - a mad-scientist technomancer type named Langford, an order-magician named Mr. Beadle - not to mention the usual wannabes and alley wizards."
"I will need to meet all of them as soon as they can be gathered," Malkin said.
"Oh, yeah?" It was rare for all the sorcerers to get together - they usually only had councils when some dire threat menaced the city, something Marla couldn"t handle herself, and she wasn"t sure yet the beast of Felport qualified. "Why"s that?"