Posted by Untold Hallowe’en Tales of the Lair Legion: The Birth of a City First Requires Impregnation: Hallowe'en Two - The Tentacles Sequence on October 31, 2000 at 11:55:38:
Untold Hallowe’en Tales of the Lair Legion: The Birth of a City First Requires Impregnation
Hallowe’en Two: The Tentacles Sequence 31st October 1860: Marie Murcheson was in trouble. The three footpads ranged across the track to block her passage, snickering because it was a long time since they caught a toothsome young woman walking across the common alone in the darkness. “I said, hold its head up properly so we can get a good look at it,” someone told spiffy in an increasingly irritated tone. “HV?” the ferned phenomenon puzzled, disoriented as to why he was suddenly in a gaslit street crouching over a large hairy pelt of some kind of abominable snowman. “There’s the bell,” Leyland Reed noted, barely looking up from his drafting table. “Be a good chap and get it for me would you, Van?” “I’m sorry, sir, but the library has just closed,” the janitor told the late caller. “So you’re saying that you’re not our page boy Hopkins, you’re a traveller from the future where you’re a fern symbiote who happens to be mayor of every city in America,” League President Lance Runner summarised the story of the young man who sat in the parlour of the Parody Mansion. “Right. It’s the Eve of All Hallows 1860, and there’s a big costume party at City Hall that we’re all invited to. You, Miss Murcheson, are going with your fiancée, Leyland Reed here. I’m going as well, but alone because I couldn’t get a date,” Ivan van Risoy summarised in a somewhat bemused manner. “I’m with you so far.” “Wilbur Parody is a dangerous man,” Lucius Faust told Lisa. “Nobody knows where he originally came from, but he has transformed the place we now call Paradiopolis in his honour from a collection of bog-moated villages to a commercial centre to rival Gothametropolis York itself. He’s transformed our civic centre, adding a Cathedral, a railway, an opera house, a library. He’s quite literally put this city on the map.” They found the dead policeman at the edge of the Common, and the second victim piled in a bloody heap a little way from the point where the last of the gaslights ended. Lance Runner took the point, his double-barrelled shotgun already cocked. He had faced ambushes like this before back when his team had been hammering a railroad across the west, and he hadn’t become a millionaire by running away from trouble when it stalked him in the darkness. “I think this is a really bad idea,” ManMan announced as the carriage rattled away as quickly as the coachman could drive his horses. “Herringcarp Asyslum is spooky enough at the end of the twentieth century. It’s even more spooky in the middle of the nineteenth century, and we do sound a bit like loonies with the story we’re here to tell.” Messenger lurked on the cornice overlooking the Paradiopolis City Hall. Long gone in modern times, the old brooding structure was reminiscent of it’s near-twin in Gothametropolis. The gargoyles were sufficiently lifelike to make the small of the postman’s neck tingle. Yet he had felt drawn here. “Marie? Marie, are you alright?” Leyland Reed asked worriedly. He had caught his fiancée as she had begun to collapse in the doorway of the City Hall, and held her up until she was steady on her feet again. Hastings Vernal laid on his side while Lady Circe tried to staunch the bleeding from his wounded arm. “I can’t shift your matter around either,” the Austernal discovered. “What’s wrong with me tonight?” “When I said a padded cell would be nice I wasn’t thinking of one with rats and mould and no light,” ManMan added for the record. As the evening wore on, Visionary became more and more convinced. He watched how Marie went from dance partner to dance partner, always smiling, always making them feel special as they waltzed her round the room. He also noticed how her casual conversation was pumping them for information about this event, its venue, the people present. And next time, in Hallowe’en III: The Bit with the Tentacles, join us as the Lair Legion and houseguests celebrate the Eve of All Hallows, as Wilbur Parody’s plots unfold, as Nats gets a lot of stick, and as Donar and NTU-150 tackle the Blair Witch Project. Also featuring the debut of Asil the Vampire Slayer and an unwelcome guest-villain. Hopefully ready to haunt your dreams by the weekend.
“You’d better stay away from me,” Marie warned them in a voice that didn’t sound as fearless as she’d hoped. “I have important friends. My fiancée knows the Mayor.”
“Den you’ll have lots of cash on you,” one of the bums observed.
“I t’ink we’d better search you for it,” snickered the second.
The third just drew a bowie knife from his waistband.
There was no warning as the black-cloaked figure moved out of the darkness and pounded into them. His first attack sent the knife-carrying hobo to the floor with a painful sounding snap. Then he wheeled round, swinging a weighted satchel into the face of the second rogue. The third had pulled a billy club but was too slow to deflect a silver-tipped rectangle of metal hurled right into his throat.
Of the three assailants only the second was still moving. He crawled to his knees, but this only positioned his head for a perfect drop kick from Marie’s rescuer. Then the scene went quiet except for the moaning of the one with the shattered ribcage.
Then Marie fainted.
Messenger went over and checked she was alright. Then he checked himself – except he wasn’t himself.
Messenger looked down at hands that weren’t his through eyes that weren’t his either. He was a tall lean male in excellent shape, clad in a dark grey uniform beneath a black pilgrim cloak. Beneath one lapel he found a small silver badge in the shape of a greyhound, the symbol of an unassailable Imperial Courier of the British Empire. He carried a satchel containing a series of maps, some documents, and a dozen primitive but effective razor-letters.
He had no idea where he was or how he got there.
Practically, he checked the lady’s purse and found a letter there with a Paradiopolis address (he noted the older version of the city’s name) on it. He hoisted her over his shoulder and walked away over the common to find civilisation.
A few minutes later he spotted the Paradopolis Cathedral and knew he was a long way from home.
“That’s Mister Vernal to you, young Hopkins,” the gentleman in the brown box-coat scowled. “Now show me the thing’s face. As I thought, one of the Abhumans’ mutations.”
“You know what this thing was, Vernal?” a young man across the road asked as he reloaded his shotgun.
“I have my suspicions, Colonel,” HV frowned. “And it means the Devil Doctor has been back at his old tricks again. What do you think, Lady Circe?”
Lady Circe d’Aeaea came and stared at the fallen monster. “It’d make a decent coat,” she suggested.
“About whether it’s been created using Abhuman mutation methods.” Hastings Vernal persisted.
Circe gently brushed her finger along the hairy behometh’s cheek. “Oh that. Yes. This used to be that Pinkerton’s man sent by Mr Drury all right, and he was on the trail of that opium connection, wasn’t he?”
“Excuse me,” spiffy interrupted. “But what the hell is going on here? Is that you, Sersi? What’s happening?”
“I say,” Colonel Blanchford Betram, the gun-toter, worried, “You didn’t get a thump on the head while we were bagging this beastie did you, young Hoskins?”
spiffy looked around him at the League of Improbable Gentlemen. “I hope so,” he admitted.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
The architect pointed to the hallway with his compasses. “The door? It’ll be Marie, come to collect us for the party. Tell her she’ll have to wait while I get into costume.”
“Oh,” I. van Risoy answered. “Right-o. I’ll just go answer that then. OK.” Visionary wondered when he’d been hit on the skull this time. Still, he found his way into the hallway and opened the door.
A tall, dark figure held an unconscious woman in his arms.
“Hello,” Visionary said.
“Are you Leyland Reed?” the Greyhound asked him.
“Possibly,” Vizh replied. “I’ll just go check.” He retreated back into Reed’s study. “Excuse me, but there’s a tall man in a cloak holding a limp woman at the door asking for Leyland Reed.”
Reed was out in the hall in an instant. The Greyhound was through the door now and was laying Marie Murcheson down on a divan. “Marie!” Leyland called. “What happened?”
“She’s only fainted,” the Greyhound answered. “She was attacked out in Off-Central Park.”
“Where?” Reed puzzled.
“The common,” Messenger corrected himself. “Three lowlifes went for her. They won’t be doing it again.”
“Fainting,” Visionary considered. “Good idea.”
“Don’t just stand there, Van Risoy. Get her some water.”
“Fainting,” agreed Vizh again, and did.
“I’m here to see the Senior Librarian Emeritus,” Dr Waltz told the custodian. “He’ll want to see me.” The winning smile and the banknote won the medical man entry into the darkened new Municipal Library. From there the doctor picked his way down through the shadow-haunted stack in the basement and finally found the door of Dr Lucius Faust.
“Come in Miss Waltz,” the master of the mystic crafts bade her Dr Waltz was about to knock at the door.
“So you know about me and what’s happening,” the first lady of the Lair Legion began as she slid into the crowded little office. “I was worried that I’d just turned into a Victorian man for no apparent reason. Now I know what spiffy felt like when he became a little girl for no apparent reason.”
“Yes. I imagine it must be most disconcerting to suddenly find yourself with a few unfamiliar parts,” Faust observed.
“Well, not that unfamiliar,” conceded Lisa. “But from what I can gather I’m in the year 1860 and I’m my great great great grandfather. I met him once in the realm of Death. Nice guy.”
“And you were hoping I could tell you what was going on,” Faust replied. “Bloody Paradox Stranger. But I’ll settle him once and for all one of these days.”
“What are you talking about?” Lisa demanded.
“This could take a while,” the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse sighed. “Take a seat.”
“Not all America,” spiffy explained. “All except Paradopolis.”
“Liar!” Runner accused him, landing him a thump on the ear. “Do you really think that’s a believable story?”
“Idiot!” added Blanchford Bertram, catching him a ding on the other ear.
“Ow!” complained spiffy. “Look, you’ve got to believe me. Something very weird is going on here and it’s to do with the mansion ghost, the one who haunts this very building.”
“I’d know if this place is haunted,” Hastings Vernal insisted. “It’s not. At least not by a ghost.”
“Liar!” Lance Runner replied again, thumping the page once more.
“Buffoon!” added Bertram, matching Runner’s smack with one of his own.
“Will you stop doing that! I’m warning you that something really weird is going on here! You’ve got to help me find out what it is before it goes too far!”
Runner hit him across the ear again. “Tie him up. We’ll get to the bottom of this one way or another.”
Hastings Vernal was looking at the League’s page boy with a curious frown. “Yes. I think this bears more investigation,” he admitted.
“I’ll, er, I’ll stay here to keep an eye on the boy,” Bertram offered. He boxed spiffy on the ear again. “Cretin!” he added.
“We won’t be long,” HV promised. “I just want to take Runner and Circe over to the common. I’ve got an idea that something rather strange might be happening out there.”
Bertram waited until the League had departed before untying spiffy again. “I thought they’d never leave,” he told the confused fern-wielder (currently non-wielder).
“Um…” spiffy offered.
“It’s me, spiff. ManMan. I dunno how we got here, but I’m here too.”
“ManMan!” spiffy puzzled. “Then why didn’t you say something? Why did you keep hitting me?”
“I didn’t want to end up tied next to you,” the man in Blanchford Bertram’s body pointed out. “Besides, it was kind of fun.”
Reed slipped him a baffled glance before turning back to his fiancée. “What I don’t understand is what you were doing on the common alone in the dark tonight anyway, Marie. Surely Dr Waltz didn’t know you were going there.”
“My guardian thought I was coming straight here,” the dark-haired socialite answered. “I just… got lost.”
“How could you get lost in a carriage and end up wandering the common in the fog?” Reed persisted.
“It’s amazing how easy it is to get lost, or get your tie stuck in the refrigerator, or forget to do up your trousers when you go to dinner with your in-laws,” Visionary added helpfully.
“Never mind,” Reed scowled at his friend. “We don’t have time for this. Mayor Parody doesn’t like people being late to his galas. Let’s get ourselves ready as quickly as possible and be off shall we? I hardly want the most powerful man in Paradiopolis mad at me.”
“Mayor Parody?” Visionary spotted the name. “Wilbur Parody? Uh-oh.”
“I’ve met Wilbur,” Lisa admitted. “Well, not yet, but I will do in about twenty years time, back in my past when I was time travelling to your future, but…”
“I understand,” Faust told her. He actually did, which was why he was the master of the mystic crafts.
“Parody had some kind of cult going when we met him in the 1880’s,” the amorous advocatrix remembered. “There was some kind of loathsome elder creature nesting under the city…”
“That would be the Groper out of Grossness, dread Shabba’dhabba’dhu,” suggested. Faust. “It mostly sleeps, but Parody has been setting up a network of mystically-aligned building to channel some of its powers. All the main civic edifices are part of that occult topography, and the binding must be more or less complete. I imagine that’s why you’re here now, Miss Waltz. Someone has to prevent Parody from tapping the power of an Elder God and becoming omnipotent.”
“Oh good,” breathed Lisa.
Behind him Circe D’Aeoea changed the shade of her outfit so that it wouldn’t clash with his blood if he got murdered.
Hastings Vernal brought up the rear with a pistol in each hand.
“We should have brought the Colonel,” Runner complained. “He’s the tracker.”
“No,” HV considered. “I think we were best leaving him with young Hopkins. There’s more to this than meets the eye.”
“I should hope so,” Circe complained. “Just taking on a case as simple as stalking a foggy marsh looking for beasties that rip up policemen and dog-walkers is so passé.”
The sound of pounding feet over wet turf alerted them to trouble. A man in a ragged dinner jacket leaped over a thicket and raced towards them. “Run!” he warned. “They’re right behind me.”
Then his pursuers came into view. There were four of them, and they were humanoid only in that their pale naked bodies included spindly arms and legs and heads with wide googly eyes. The dozen or so long black tentacles which broke out from beneath their bleeding flesh and snaked about with lives of their own were far from human.
Circe D’Aeoea gestured and concentrated, then staggered back a little. “They aren’t made of matter,” she gasped. “Not anymore.”
The four creatures circled the League and the bleeding man they had been hunting. The evidence of their last meal - the muggers that Messenger had left on the Common - still dripped from their jaws.
“What are they?” Runner asked as one of them shook off both barrels of his buffalo rifle.
“If they had less tentacles I’d classify them as part of the Morshlock subrace who dwell beneath the Earth in blind darkness worshipping formless things from the dawn of time.” HV considered. “As it is, I’d have to suggest that they’re Morshlocks who have been possessed by fragmentary essences of one of the said formless things and transformed into these shambling horrors we see before us.”
“Always good to know what’s going to eat us,” the ragged man who had been the beasts’ quarry panted. “Do they have an off button?”
Then the horrors pounced.
“The Hooded Hood is the only person I know of who can get to this time zone and get us home,” spiffy insisted. “And he’s my dad. He wouldn’t do anything bad to us.”
ManMan rapped his knuckles on the fern-wielder’s head. “Hello? Have you been awake these past two years? He does nothing but bad things to us. And I don’t think he even likes me.”
“He wants to breed my sister with you, doesn’t he?”
“I think he’s just saying that to take all the fun out of me and Troia, and to see how much it takes to snap a spear carrying Amazon into carving up her boyfriend.”
“Not much,” spiffy judged. They stood before the massive oak gates of the sanatorium in the driving rain. “Shall I ring?”
“I wish I had Knifey to help me,” worried ManMan. “I know Bertram carried him for a long time, but I guess he hasn’t discovered him yet. It’d be nice to have somebody around who knows what they’re doing.”
“I am omni-mayor of the US, you know,” spiffy objected.
“And your point would be?” Joe Pepper challenged.
“Do I ring this bell or do we stay out in the pouring rain on this blasted heath with nowhere to shelter and no way of getting back to town?”
“Sure, ring” ManMan sighed. “A nice safe padded cell would be kind of nice right now.”
“Hello, Messenger,” Lisa bade him cheerfully; except that she said it with the deep voice of Christopher Waltz and Messenger had no idea who he was.
Lucius Faust gestured and the razor letter melted into oblivion before it ever reached them. “Good reflexes,” he admired. “Important survival trait in your line of work.”
“Who are you?” the man in Greyhound’s body demanded.
“Well, I’m Lisa, believe it or not, and I summonsed you here with my vestigial summonsing power, although all it could do was make you want to be here and meet me. This is the guy who trained Xander, or will do in about a hundred years.”
“Lisa? Isn’t you telling this Faust guy about what he’ll do in the future a huge paradox?”
“No,” Faust snarled. “It was a huge Paradox that got us into this mess. I’m just cleaning house. Or rather, setting things up for you to do it.”
“What’s going on?” the postman demanded.
Lisa settled on a ledge. This could take some time. “Well, seven of us heroes from the year 2000 got zapped back at Finny’s accidental request into the bodies of our counterparts in 1860, to learn what happened that affected our present. We started out investigating a ghost called Marie who was murdered tonight…
“Marie?” Messenger interrupted. “I saved a woman called Marie Murcheson earlier tonight. She’s safe with her fiancée now.”
“Her fiancée who is taking her to Wilbur Parody’s little Hallowe’en gathering,” Lucius Faust pointed out. He gestured down to the pavement where the rich elite of Paradiopolis were disembarking from their coaches and entering the Mayor’s exclusive soiree. Messenger could clearly see Miss Murcheson entering in the company of two tailcoated gentlemen.
“She’s still in danger?” Messenger noted.
“And not very well equipped to deal with it, I’m afraid,” Faust observed. “Mind you, that is about to change.”
“Perhaps she isn’t recovered from her wander on the Common?” Ivan van Risoy worried. It occurred to Visionary that they never had discovered why she was out on the heath alone in the darkness.
“Are you alright, Marie?” Leyland persisted.
“Is something the matter with Miss Murcheson?” Mr Odran, the Mayor’s assistant asked solicitously.
“I’m fine,” Marie answered. “Just a little confused for a moment.”
“Good,” Odran smiled thinly. “We’d hate for anything to happen to you before the party begins.”
Visionary couldn’t help but note that as Marie accompanied her escorts into the ball and selected a mask for herself she moved a little differently, with more grace and assurance. He began to harbour a sneaky suspicion that he wasn’t yet ready to test.
“Too many things that man was not meant to know, I’m afraid,” HV replied, gritting his teeth valiantly. “I’ll live. Besides, you’re not supposed to use your powers outside the Austernal City, are you?”
“Oh poo,” Circe shrugged. “I didn’t notice you complaining when I made the ground rise up and splat those thingies into paste. Anyway, I’d better check on the others.”
“Your friend’s going to be alright,” the man they had rescued assured her. He was bent over Lance Runner and was checking the nasty bruise on the League president’s skull. “He’s had a nasty knock but…”
“Blows to the head only improve our Mr Runner,” Circe assured him. “Let him sleep for a while. He’s less annoying that way. Now tell me who you are and why you were running around on this common for elder beasties to come and chase you.”
“Well that’s a kind of complicated question,” the man replied. “See, my wallet says my name is William Reed, and I am Bill Reed, but not this Bill Reed. I’m from the future, or at least my mind is, and I think this William Reed was on the moor trying to meet someone to give them some kind of warning. This girl. See, he’s carrying a photo of her in this heart-shaped locket. I think he wanted to tell her something really important. I think… uh, you don’t believe me about the future thing, do you?”
“Of course I do,” Circe d’Aeoea smiled. “It starts to make some sense of what our page boy was muttering. It seems we owe young Hopkins an apology.”
“Hopkins? You mean… spiffy? He’s here?”
“I imagine he’ll have escaped with the help of whoever’s in Colonel Bertram by now,” HV contributed.
“But that’s not important,” insisted Circe. “You’re from the future. So, tell me what the hemlines are like…”
“Well you were the one who had to try and explain superheroes to him,” spiffy objected. “The asylum doctor was listening to us until you tried to explain Dark Knight’s origin and Finny’s genitalia.”
“Well you were the one who said we’d find the Hooded Hood here, even though it’s over a century before he came on the scene and made this his base,” shot back ManMan.
“Well you were the one who advised me to ring the bell,” spiffy argued in response.
Both of them were so busy bickering that they didn’t notice the two green eyes lighting up the darkness of the cell.
“Good evening,” bade the Hooded Hood.
In the end it was his turn to escort Marie round the floor. “Enjoying the dance?” he asked her, trying not to trip over his feet as he did so.
His partner compensated for his clumsiness with a grace that made them both look good. “It’s very interesting,” she answered honestly.
“It is isn’t it,” Vizh agreed, “Dancer.”
Across the room, Leyland Reed had a drink with Mr Odran and Wilbur Parody herself. “As pretty as a picture,” the Mayor mused as he watched Marie whirl around the floor. “What a lovely bride she’ll make.”
“We haven’t set a date yet,” Leyland told his patron. “Her guardian thinks she’s too young. I think he’d have preferred her wedded to my brother William. They used to be close, but Marie loves me.”
“I think she’s the perfect age,” Wilbur Parody answered. “I think we’ll be able to arrange a wedding for Miss Murcheson sooner than you imagine, Leyland.”
Oh yes,” whispered Mr Odran. “Indeed.”