The Adventure of Tamerlane's Vengeance
By Arbogast
“Welcome to Hell, Mr. Midnight.” The short, muscular, and devastatingly ugly man said as Patrick Midnight stepped down from the train. The train ride had been a long one, with Midnight joining the locomotive in New York until its final stop just outside of New Orleans. A nimbus of smoke crowned both men with greasy halos. The weary special agent for the Society of Gentlemen Geographers smirked, while Reverend Blackstone, Midnight’s Puritan ancestor and ancestral ghost, cursed the impudence of the cynical greeting.
“Little wretch,” Blackstone whispered.
“So,” Midnight said with an extended hand, “is River Street as bad as they say?”
“Worse.”
The two men shook hands. The short fellow said that his name was Flynn and that he was a member of the Continental Detective Agency. Midnight used the slim few seconds of silence to recall the Society’s brief dossier on Flynn—Great War veteran, wounded at Cantigny, spent the rest of the war in convalescence, joined the Continental Detective Agency in 1919. Described as an industrious worker and good bloodhound, but reportedly a heavy drinker. Flynn, like Midnight, was on loan to the municipal authorities owing to extreme circumstances.
“I worked with one of your men before. In San Francisco. Several years ago.” Midnight forced Flynn to stop at a small coffee stall in the station. Midnight ordered an extra-large cup of black coffee. “Sorry, but I’ve been on the clock for months now. I need this nectar just to keep my blood flowing.”
“I know the feeling,” Flynn said. “But my tonic is whisky.” The private eye winked at Midnight, who winked in return.
“Drunken cur,” Blackstone groused from deep inside of Midnight. Of late, the possessing spirit had been less combative and more friendly in his disposition towards his young charge. To Midnight, this was a relief. It had been weeks since Blackstone’s last harangue about the necessity of nightly readings from the Good Book. Despite his nonstop traveling on behalf of the Society, Blackstone’s newfound calm translated into several nights of full rest for Midnight.
Now, after a telegram full of frightful language, Midnight found himself headed towards the infamous River Street—a debauched den of cutthroats known the world over. Flynn, his personal Virgil, provided a succinct rundown of recent events while the two men walked on foot towards the city’s foreign quarter.
“River Street has always been a problem for the local authorities. That ain’t news. However, at the start of the summer, the place started getting hotter than the sun.” Flynn pulled out a thick, brown cigar and started blowing large and fat rings of smoke. “The first crime as far as we can tell occurred at Jimmy Chan’s Chophouse. A state health inspector working off an anonymous tip found something worse than rats in the kitchen. Dead bodies, Midnight. Six of them piled on top of each other. The killer or killers had hacked all the workers to pieces. Most likely weapon was a cleaver.”
“A tong war,” Midnight said.
“That’s what the local P.D. thought at first. Not a crazy assumption, either. Hell, they’ve had tong wars in San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Why not here on River Street?”
“Judging by the tone of your voice, I’m guessing that the tong war angle has already been ruled out.”
“You could say that, buster. Sure, the next few crimes after the chophouse murders seemed tong-related too. A known gambling den blown up, a speakeasy riddled with bullets, and a few brothels picked clean of their wares, if you get my meaning. All typical Chinatown turf war stuff. Not pretty, but nothing to lose sleep over. They’re just foreigners, right?
“Well, come July, things took a decidedly weird turn.” Flynn took a long drag to further emphasize the ominous portent of his words. Midnight looked around and started to feel the first pangs of fear run down his aching spine. The city around him was starting to change. The well-maintained homes of Mediterranean design, with black iron railings, prim gardens in the front yard, and colorful shutters, were disappearing. Instead, as the two men got closer to River Street, the homes became ramshackle affairs. Missing or broken windows, boarded up doors, and dilapidated porches became the most common features, while even the river that bisected the city began to appear less blue and more brackish. Midnight noted this to Flynn, who in turn told the special agent to just wait and see.
“We’re nearing the gates now,” he said. Up ahead, underlit by a series of paper lanterns, was a large wooden gate painted a garish red and yellow. On its surface were several Chinese characters. This alone was to be expected, as River Street was originally created as an exclusive enclave for Chinese railroad workers and stevedores. However, thanks to years of disorganized immigration to the port city, wherein almost every new arrival was marooned in the Chinese quarter, River Street had become a polyglot and multi-ethnic stew of bewildering quality. Flynn informed Midnight that the new residents of the quarter were unlike anything that could be found in New York or San Francisco.
“River Street is the home of the world’s wickedest refuse, Mr. Midnight. Other places get hardworking, down-on-their-luck cases from the slums of Italy or the hungry fields of Ireland. River City gets Kurdish devil worshippers, Pashtun assassins fleeing British justice, and members of some godforsaken tribe of Javanese pirates. The place is as evil as Dante’s inferno.”
“I am starting to see your point,” Midnight said after both men set foot into the quarter. The street was a nightmarish jumble of disorganized brick and wooden buildings, some of which leaned towards the street at unnatural angles. Most of them promoted themselves as Chinese restaurants or other eateries of exotic fair. However, above all the restaurants and occupying the second and third floors, were businesses catering to other tastes. Midnight could not read Cantonese, but he could tell by the furtive glances of the customers that these were bordellos, gambling parlors, opium dens, and other illegal ventures.
Moving his eyes back down to the street level, Midnight was taken aback by the dizzying variety of faces. Sun-baked brown skin commingled with ones that were as pale as ivory. Long beards shambled next to luxurious and perfumed mustaches of Persianate design. One turbaned fellow strolled breezily with a curved dagger tucked into his waistband. Midnight perked up his ears and heard a veritable babel of Russian, Cantonese, bastardized French, and several tribal dialects of ancient character.
“Hard to believe that we are still in the United States,” Flynn said. “Imagine how the beat cops feel every day?”
“I’m sure they feel confused,” Midnight responded. “Mr. Flynn, I do believe you were about to tell me something.”
“Ah yes. The weird crimes. The ones that caused the locals to call for reinforcements. Like I said, it began in July. Dead men started showing up around River Street.”
“Dead men? As in murder victims?”
“That’s what the local PD thought at first. But the county coroner nixed that thought when he kept finding that each corpse had died of natural causes. Near the end of the month, a coroner was not even needed, for the bodies that started turning up were old. Very old. As in just bones.”
“So, some party dug up a bunch of graves, is that it?”
“Precisely. The Chinese care a lot about their dead. Ancestor worship, I’m told. Venerating their kin is vital to their religion. And given that all the corpses were Chinese, the crime was meant to harass or outright scare that demographic. Then, in August, the sickness first appeared. Locals, again mostly the Chinese, started dying in the streets with blackened faces and bloody lungs. The disease spread fast, and the city was forced to resort to a hard lockdown. The entirety of River Street was walled off until very recently.”
“Do they know what the disease was?”
“Yeah,” Flynn said as he finished the last of his cigar. “Eggheaded scientists from the state university studied some of the dead and told the governor that it was the bubonic plague. The governor told the press that it was the flu. Didn’t want to cause an undue panic, you understand? Well, during the time when nobody was allowed in or out of River Street, the Chinese population was gutted. They went from being the majority here to a hated minority. They’re not happy about it. Some are organizing.”
“For what?” Midnight asked.
“Race war. We’ve found ourselves in the middle of a race war, Mr. Midnight. The municipal authorities are trying their best to keep everything contained, but the evil is spreading. I’ll be blunt with you: the cops are worked thin just trying to keep a handle on the regular crime. Identifying corpses, pursuing dead-ends, and conducting near-nightly raids have pushed a lot of patrolmen to the edge of quitting. Leave has been cancelled for months, and I don’t think a single man has worked less than a sixteen-hour day since the quarter was opened up. I’ve heard rumors that the governor is close to calling in the National Guard.”
“Not a bad idea,” Midnight added. Blackstone mumbled a similar agreement deep in Midnight’s stomach, which Flynn mistook for hunger pains.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Midnight. We’re getting the final piece of the puzzle here.” Flynn pointed to the storefront of Shan’s Café. The interior was well-lit thanks to electric lighting. It appeared clean too, and when Flynn opened the front door, Midnight’s tension temporarily eased as he smelled the familiar scents of fried beef, onions, and butter. Based on olfactory evidence, Shan’s Café specialized in American food, which, to the residents of River Street, was exotic and foreign.
Flynn led Midnight towards a large circular table. Two individuals stood up to the greet the men. One, who introduced himself, as Nurbek Muhammed, was a short, emaciated individual dressed in black suit of an antiquated cut. His oval face and high cheekbones bespoke of his steppe ancestry, but his hazel eyes and light brown hair indicated Russian admixture. Nurbek informed Flynn and Midnight that he was a Kyrgyz native to the far-western provinces of China. He classified himself as a general laborer. After that, he went silent.
The other individual at the table was a beautiful woman. Rose Shan proved to the café’s proprietor despite being barely older than twenty-five. Rose was well-coiffed and dressed in the latest fashions. Her red lipstick, slim green dress, and bob haircut epitomized the flapper look, and yet Rose spoke with the willful determination and visceral anger of a commanding general during wartime.
“Thank you for coming to River Street, Mr. Midnight. We can use all the help we can get.”
“Pleasure is all mine, Ms. Shan. I presume that you already know Mr. Flynn.”
“Yes, I know Mr. Flynn quite well. Several years ago, his company performed some services for my sister Lillian, but the less said about her the better.” Rose sipped her coffee with a grimace, indicating that Lillian was persona non grata in the Shan household. The beautiful young woman continued: “Since that time, I have occasionally employed Mr. Flynn as an operative on my behalf.”
“I’ve guarded this store a lot. Slept right here on the floor during the Halloween riots,” Flynn said.
“That’s right,” Rose continued. “And because of this, I trust Mr. Flynn. Can I trust you, Mr. Midnight?”
“Be wary, lad.” The sepulchral tones of Blackstone echoed in Midnight’s ears. The dour Puritan could sometimes annoy his charge, yet Midnight had experienced enough tribulations to heed Blackstone’s wise counsel.
“Depends, Ms. Shan. What am I being asked to do?”
A steaming plate of chop suey was placed in front of Flynn. Midnight received a New Haven-style hamburger with fried potatoes and a salad. Flynn dug in with gusto.
“I don’t know your tastes, Mr. Midnight, but I presumed that Cantonese food would be unfamiliar to you. Luckily, I was born here and consider myself thoroughly American. I make sure to train all my cooks in the basics of our cuisine.” Rose smiled as another waiter appeared at her elbow with a fresh cup of coffee.
“Looks delicious,” Midnight said. He bit into the hamburger and found that it was indeed delectable. Rose spoke as the two men busied with their meals. Nurbek simply stared at nothing in particular.
“The war is already here, Mr. Midnight. The Chinese are being targeted. The goal is to get them to leave or to kill them off completely. I cannot let that stand. The authorities are trying their best to keep peace, but they have never been able to control River Street in any meaningful way. That’s why I have formed a vigilance committee for the protection of the Chinese Americans of River Street. But self-defense classes and watch squads can only go so far.”
Midnight looked up from his plate. “Guns?”
“Yes. I have many of them. Some are even under your feet. Lillian did do one good thing when she established contact with the Nationalists, who have proven themselves to be adept at smuggling. I have collected enough firepower to destroy River Street twice over, but that is not my goal.”
“You have already admitted to a federal crime, Ms. Shan. I’m surprised that Mr. Flynn hasn’t already informed the authorities.”
“It’s for the greater good,” Flynn said in his defense.
“Yes, the greater good,” Rose added. “And my guns can collect dust forever, so long as my plan proceeds with your help.”
Midnight finished his meal and leaned back in his chair. Blackstone uttered another warning, but Midnight went ahead. “Go on. What’s this plan?”
“For the longest time, I believed that the crimes committed against the River Street Chinese were random and carried out by malicious, but ultimately directionless parties. All the new residents—the ones from every corner of the earth—have plenty of reason to hate the Chinese. We’re more successful than they are, have been here longer, and are capable of intermixing with American society up to a point. They can do none of this, whether because of their religion or because of their primitive cultures.” Rose practically spat the last sentence out. Midnight saw that she was working herself up into a righteous anger.
“But,” she continued, “Nurbek here enlightened me to the reality of the situation. Everything—all the murders, grave desecrations, and provocations—have been the work of one man.” Rose reached underneath the table and produced a crude handbill. Midnight took the paper in his hands. The handbill showed a stern-faced individual in repose. The man had cruel eyes that were almond-shaped. His hawk-like nose rested above thin lips encircled by a sharp goatee. His furrowed brows sat below a completely bald cranium. The name underneath the picture read: SULTAN TIMUR GUR-AL-KHANUM. Underneath this was a series of sentences written in Russian Cyrillic, as well as Arabic script.
“Who is this fellow?” Midnight asked.
“Officially? A charlatan. A hack fortune teller and stage magician who arrived in River Street last year. Unofficially? A bloodthirsty warlord who claims to be the direct descendant of Tamerlane. Poe and Coleridge romanticized the man, but Tamerlane was one of the cruel beasts of history. His sack of the Delhi Sultanate alone killed millions. No one, not even fellow Muslims, were safe from his wrath. Persia, the Levant, and Anatolia fell to his swords. Only China under the Ming Dynasty managed to survive his onslaught. When Tamerlane died, his successors attempted to keep the march of victory progressing forward but kept failing where their ancestor had succeeded. Now, one insane man believes that it is his mission to wipe the Han from the face of the Earth, and he has already started here on River Street.”
Midnight whistled. Flynn patted him on the shoulder. “That was my reaction when I first heard the news, too. But I’ve seen enough evidence to know she’s telling the truth.”
“And what are we to do about this wannabe warlord?” Midnight asked.
Rose pointed at the handbill. “The show is scheduled for tonight. You and Mr. Flynn are to attend the Sultan’s performance. Make sure he stays there, as it is a guarantee that many of his men, all of whom will be armed, will be there as security. I cannot go for obvious reasons, but two white men will not be accosted. Even the spirit of Tamerlane does not want to unnecessarily upset the state government or the Continental Detective Agency.”
Flynn produced a flask and gave a hearty cheer. He offered a sip to Midnight, who declined.
“As for me,” Rose continued, “I will be with my compatriots. Tonight is the night when we rid River Street of this invasion once and for all. My methods will be sanguine. You both need to know that. I promise that no innocents will be hurt. Likewise, you need to promise me that when the authorities appear in the aftermath, that you will provide cover for me.”
“I agree,” Flynn said.
Midnight hesitated for a second. He stared deeply into Rose Shan’s eyes. He saw in them anger, but an anger encircled by beauty. He studied her flawless skin and perfectly shaped face. He saw himself kissing that face. He liked the image. Blackstone, on the other hand, bellowed up from below.
“You are being bewitched, lad. Hear me and heed me: Do not unduly trust this Celestial.”
“I agree,” Midnight said. Blackstone cried loud enough that the others heard him. When they asked about the noise, Midnight explained that he suffered from a mild stomach ailment that sometimes became audible. Rose blushed, Nurbek didn’t say a thing, and Flynn laughed under the misconception that Midnight had passed gas.
***
Hours later, and Midnight and Flynn found themselves seated in a down-at-the-hells auditorium in the heart of River Street. The entire theater housed about one hundred souls and was located underneath a wholesale market that emitted the absolute foulest odors. Flynn and Midnight made sure to sit off to the side where they would have a clear view of the doors. Midnight studied the faces around him in the semi-darkness. Many of the patrons were mere skin and bones—hungry, emaciated ghosts just happy to get in from the cold. Others were sweaty and sported fat, porcine beasts. These men passed the time before the show by swallowing handfuls of pungent noodles. When Midnight asked about the dish, Flynn informed him that it was a specialty of the Dungan Muslims of Central Asia.
Music and dancing girls performed on the stage before the Sultan appeared. Midnight found the music as unpleasant as the audience. The reedy pipes and undulating drums sounded discordant to his ears. The dancing girls were a different matter. Their voluminous black hair and rosy complexions appealed to the secret agent, who also found himself entranced by their gyrating hips.
“Circassians,” Flynn whispered. “They’re worth more than gold in certain parts of the Levant and Central Asia. Most of the Turkish sultans had them for mothers.”
“I can see why,” Midnight said.
“Gird thyself against sins of the flesh,” Blackstone screamed.
“I hope you can keep your stomach under control tonight,” Flynn elbowed Midnight and emitted a chuckle. Midnight made to respond, but the complete extinguishing of the lights silenced him.
From somewhere in the darkness, a voice spoke. The words were in Russian, which neither Midnight nor Flynn knew. The voice had the familiar cadence of a radio announcer, and once completed, the lights reappeared with a strong spotlight focused on the man onstage. The man was dressed in a black frock coat, with a black bowtie and a crimson red fez. He was taller than six feet, and although lithe, his movements bespoke of a muscular physique underneath the evening clothes. The man introduced himself as the Sultan.
“That’s our man,” Flynn said softly in Midnight’s ear.
“And it’s a safe bet that half of this crowd are his henchmen.”
“Half?” Flynn said incredulously. “All of them are.”
Midnight tried his best to relax during the performance, which proved to be surprisingly pedestrian. Although performed entirely in Russian—the lingua franca of the still-mysterious and untamed Central Asian steppe—Midnight could guess each new trick before they were performed. The Sultan pulled several objects, including a rabbit, from his top hat. Next, after calling one of the Circassian dancing girls on stage, he placed her in a mock coffin, which was then sawn in half. Flynn had to stifle multiple yawns as the Sultan hypnotized carefully selected audience members and set playing cards on fire. Midnight shared Flynn’s boredom. The crowd, however, was captivated by the Sultan. Like children awaiting presents on Christmas Day, they hung on the Sultan’s every move and pronouncement with wide, expressive eyes. To Midnight, the crowd seemed caught in the throes of religious ecstasy. To them, the stage magician really was the reincarnated Tamerlane—devastator of India, terror of Persia, and destroyer of the last remnants of pure Mongol civilization in Central Asia. What should have been a joke—an emperor more dreaded than Genghis Khan reduced to performing harmless stage tricks—only managed to fill Midnight with dread. Flynn felt the same way, as the secret agent noticed that the Continental operative frequently squirmed in his seat.
“Вот! Наши друзья!” The Sultan shouted to wild acclaim. The magician reached into a dark velvet bag and produced a rat. The creature was corpulent and had oversized fangs. Its tiny feet danced in terror as its captor paraded it around the stage. The audience whooped and hollered to show their appreciation.
“И таким образом Чинки!” With that, the Sultan lifted the rat by its tail and flung it with force into the audience. Hordes of men pounced on the frightened rodent, which went from emitting cries to being deathly silent in seconds. Midnight and Flynn looked on in horror as the audience began flinging parts of the dead rat back towards the stage. The poor creature’s head made a bloody imprint on the Sultan’s white shirt after being turned into a morbid projectile. The conjurer smiled like a shark; the audience mimicked this all the while beginning to chant several variations of a war cry.
“Takbir!” Shouted a single voice.
“Allahu Akbar,” the mass responded.
This call and response repeated several times, thus sending the crowd into a maddening frenzy. They only stopped when the Sultan threw up his hands and ordered them to silence.
“Brothers! We have in our midst interlopers,” the Sultan said in perfect and clear English. “A brother has informed me that these men are in league with our enemies. The Ming rats thought that they could use these men to tie us down while they rape and pilfer our stores, and our houses. Fools! Their plots fail before the holy swords of Timur-Beg!” Midnight and Flynn stood up and tried to reach the exit. The Sultan did not have to say their names or point in their direction; the entire audience knew that they were the enemies of their lord. The blood-frenzied crowd moved en-masse towards the two men. Hands with blackened and cracked nails reached out for their throats. Flynn and Midnight both reached into their jackets; Flynn produced a .38 Colt revolver, while Midnight held in his hand his trusted .25 automatic.
“Here comes the deluge, lad.” Blackstone made ready to exit Midnight’s stomach and become a semi-solid shade in order to join the fray. However, the old Puritan held back when three men, including the stern Nurbek, placed restraining hands on the Americans.
“On stage!” Nurbek barked.
“Traitor,” Flynn grumbled.
“No. No traitor to the khan,” Nurbek said. He and the two other men forcibly pushed Midnight and Flynn through the braying crowd after disarming them. Several in the teeming mass had to be forcibly restrained from stabbing or tearing out an eye. Midnight managed to reach the stage with only a bloody scratch on his cheek. Flynn, on the other hand, suffered a fractured nose thanks to being assaulted by someone’s boot.
“Welcome to Hell, gentlemen,” the Sultan purred. Up close, Midnight saw that the Sultan wore a mask. A small and thin line near his jawbone indicated that the mask was held tight to his skin by unseen wires or strings. Midnight also noted that the fiend had long, talon-like nails that appeared razor-sharp. The Sultan used these fingers to snap his soldiers into place. Midnight and Flynn were forced to stand still as a strange device was wheeled onstage.
The device looked like a steam-powered piston, with several spinning gears and a small exhaust. In the center of the device was a raised platform with a headrest. Above the headrest was a blade that gleamed under the lights. While Midnight contemplated the execution device, which looked like nothing short of a mechanized guillotine, Nurbek came from behind him and forced a small capsule into his mouth. The Kyrgyz pinched the special agent’s nose to ensure that he swallowed.
The Sultan stepped forward and stared into Midnight’s eyes. “Soon your skin will start to fester over with boils. Your tongue will turn black. But before all that, the oxygen in your lungs will be flooded into irrelevancy by mucus and bile and vomit. Your brain will melt from the heat of multiple fevers. In short, Mr. Midnight, you will experience the black death as if you were an unlucky Genoese inside the walls of Caffa.”
“Bastard!” Flynn screamed as he tried to tear loose from his captors. The former soldier made a good showing, but he was ultimately pinned down on the floor by a large Turco-Mongol who used the detective’s own revolver to blow apart one of Flynn’s fingers. The Continental operative howled in pain. With his mouth open and screaming, Flynn was administered a capsule. He too now carried the bubonic plague.
“What’s the point of all of this?” Midnight asked.
“Pain is the point, Mr. Midnight. Pain and suffering and death. You and your friend stand in the way of complete Han annihilation, and thus must be sacrificed.” The Sultan bent down and grabbed the bloodied Flynn by the wrist. He pulled the wounded hand forward and inserted it into the guillotine. With the flick of a simple switch, Flynn’s entire right hand was removed. The mutilated man collapsed from the pain and shock.
“I do believe that means it’s your turn, Mr. Midnight.” Nurbek grabbed the special agent by the back of his neck and hoisted him up like a kitten. In his peripheral, Midnight saw the crowd surge forward. They had the faces of ravenous dogs. Some drooled at their mouths over the prospect of seeing him decapitated. Nurbek pinned Midnight’s arm to his back in a hammerlock, while the other arm was fed into the machine. The Sultan leaned down and smiled at the special agent. He uttered something that was not in English or Russian or Arabic. The language he spoke did not even sound human, and indeed sounded older than humanity itself.
The auditorium went completely black before the Sultan could activate the killing switch. The confusion allowed Midnight to escape Nurbek’s grasp and crawl towards the unconscious Flynn. Midnight tried to smack the detective awake to no avail. The stump of his right arm continued to bleed, thus putting the operative in danger of death-by-exsanguination. With no option left, Midnight cried out for Blackstone.
“Hark! Let the angel of divine wrath sing!” At the top of the auditorium, with his semi-solid back to the doors, Reverend Blackstone stood in his full glory. The black capotain obscured his eyes, but Midnight could sense that they burned with divine justice.
“Meet thy end, heathens!” The ghost leaped into the maelstrom of the crowd and began cutting them down with his rapier. Despite being a phantom, Blackstone was imbued with enough power that he could kill the living. His sharp blade tore through more than one throat, causing claret to stain the already filthy floor. The crowd began to disperse after four of their number died at the Puritan’s hands. The Sultan tried desperately to organize his followers into a formidable counterattack, but blind fear drove them back out into the night. Soon enough, the Sultan was left alone on the stage, with only Nurbek as an accomplice.
“Cowards! Utter cowards!” The Sultan angrily beat his fists on the hardwood floor in a pathetic show of defeat. Midnight, with the recovered .25 automatic in his hand, let a single bullet loose. The round struck Nurbek through the mouth, killing him instantly. Midnight turned his cold eyes to the Sultan.
“Where are the rest of the capsules? I figure you made more than just two. That’s part of the plan, right? You were going to rid River Street of the Chinese, then take your plague pills international?”
The Sultan said nothing. He glowered at the American. Rather than answer directly, he moved slowly forward. Midnight fired. He aimed for the Sultan’s heart. He used the entirety of the magazine, with each round finding its way into the Sultan’s chest, and yet the man kept moving forward. It began to dawn on Midnight that his opponent was something other than mortal.
A thunderous blast from Flynn’s .38 struck the Sultan in the face. The shooter was none other than the grievously wounded operative, who stared up at his enemy through a single open eye.
“Die, you bastard.” He took aim and fired again. The shot connected. Rather than fall to the floor, the Sultan doubled over and clutched his wounded face in his hands. Muffled squeals of pain were heard, but the Sultan showed no signs of imminent death.
“See how it does not bleed,” Blackstone said. The shade stood beside his young charge with his rapier outstretched. Midnight looked and confirmed that his ancestor was correct—the Sultan was wounded but did not bleed. When the creature dropped his hands, Midnight learned why.
Flynn’s bullets had cracked the Sultan’s carefully crafted mask. Now that it was gone, the Sultan’s true face was revealed. A skull with patches of an ebony shroud on its boney surface stood before Midnight. Its hollow eye sockets and exposed nasal cavity spoke to its eldritch age. The infernal smell also indicated that the walking corpse had spent many centuries below the ground.
Black magic allowed the Sultan to speak again in the unnamable language, this time without aid of lips or a working jaw. Midnight stood transfixed until a pair of boney hands reached for his throat.
“Flip him, lad,” Blackstone screamed as he pushed the Sultan from behind. Midnight did as instructed and grabbed the Sultan by the lapels of his frock coat. Then, with his foot wedged in the creature’s ribs, he lifted and then threw the walking corpse into the mobile guillotine. The move, which Midnight had practiced hundreds of times before as a judo student at the Society’s training gym in New York City, sent the Sultan tumbling headfirst into the execution device. Blackstone flipped the switch, and the blade detached the skull from its torso.
The body continued to move, however. The hands balled into fists in preparation for more combat. Scrambling, Midnight grabbed the creature once again and pinned it down so that Blackstone could systematically dismember it until it was rendered a jumble of disordered bones and fabric. Still, even in this state, the remnants of the Sultan squirmed on the floor.
“I don’t think we can properly kill this…whatever it is,” Midnight said.
“Pick up one of the bones, lad.” Blackstone intoned. “After that, get Mr. Flynn out of the auditorium.” Midnight did as ordered. He removed a random bit of bone from the hardwood floor and put it into his breast pocket. The bone shifted a little, thus indicating its continued re-animation, yet Midnight was never in danger of harm. As for Flynn, the bloodied operative had turned whiter than pale, and was on the precipice of death. Midnight hoisted him by the armpits before squatting down and lifting the man onto his shoulders. With Flynn in place, Midnight lurched towards the exit. He did not see, but rather smelled Blackstone’s plan. The Puritan meant to set fire to the entire edifice.
Midnight eventually managed to reach River Street. Somehow, the world outside of the auditorium was even more incredible. Midnight found the foreign quarter a cacophony of screams. The dead and drained bodies of Uyghur, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek men littered the street to the point where Midnight had a hard time walking without stepping on a corpse or bloodied fez. Up above, leaning out of second- and third-floor windows, faces, most of them Chinese, looked on in horror as River Street became an unquenchable holocaust.
One of the last living followers of the Sultan stumbled out of an alleyway just as Midnight neared the River Street gate. The wounded man reached for the special agent’s leg and ejaculated panicked pleas in Russian. Midnight turned and made to say something to the scared man, but stopped when he saw two figures emerge from the darkness. Two pale figures, both dressed in dark blue Manchu robes, with red and gold inscriptions nailed to their foreheads, hopped towards Midnight. As they got closer, Midnight saw that their mouths were coated in gore, and that sharp canine-like teeth split their lips in half. He looked beyond these two figures and saw many more like them on the loose all across the foreign quarter. The Sultan’s River Street empire was gone, but the inheritors of his fallen kingdom still belonged to the same tribe of the living dead. Rather than risk injury or worse, Midnight continued until he and Flynn were clear of River Street.
***
Thereafter, Midnight spent several weeks in a New Orleans hospital. Due to his diagnosis, the hospital quarantined him alone in a separate and isolated wing. He was denied all visitors until the dreaded disease was either gone or no longer contagious. Midnight was never alone; however, as Blackstone remained by his side the whole time. The ghost comforted the feverish Midnight with tales of his days as a militia captain during King Philip’s War. He helped his young charge sleep by singing songs from the old country or recounting entire passages from the Good Book. In life, Blackstone had been acclaimed as a great orator and preacher of the Psalms. He proved his mettle again, as he brought himself and Midnight to tears over King David’s many loves, triumphs, and defeats.
Halfway through the second week, Midnight found that he could breathe freely. Still, despite a battery of tests, all of which showed signs of improvement, Midnight remained under quarantine. By that Friday, he made peace with the fact that he would spend the remainder of his life in a hospital bed.
A cool breeze roused him from slumber during the early morning hours of Saturday. There, standing by the open window, was the alluring figure of Rose Shan.
“You will live, Mr. Midnight,” she said as she came closer to his bed. The moonlight illuminated her face enough to remind Midnight of her singular beauty. She placed a delicate hand on the special agent’s arm. A warm sensation coursed through the sick man’s veins.
“Flynn will live, but he can never work again. Hopefully, the Continental Detective Agency takes care of their own. I would hate to see that brave man reduced to homelessness.”
“Don’t worry, Rose; I will see that he is either taken care of or lands a job with my organization.”
“Yes, I have met a member of your organization. He came to River Street with the National Guard and state police. You wouldn’t believe how different the place looks now. It’s clean, and I see families and smiling children outside all the time now. It’s wonderful, and you must promise to visit me.”
“I promise,” Midnight said.
“As for your man, he asked me several questions about that night. I tried hard to keep things secret, but that proved pointless. He already knew about our grandfathers—the ones we turned into jiangshi—so I couldn’t hide anything from him. He did not care, or at least made a convincing show of not caring about our Wu and his sorcery. I believe that he and your organization do in fact care about Chinese black magic, but for now, I am not under surveillance.”
“And the Sultan?”
“They found his laboratory behind the walls of an abandoned apartment. He told me that it was full of capsules, canisters, and even homemade grenades, all of which contained the black death. I shudder just thinking about that devil’s plans. Oh, they also found this.” Rose placed a leatherbound book on Midnight’s chest. “It’s called the Black Book of Erlik Khan.”
“Never heard of it,” Midnight moaned.
“A book of the dead that is better off burnt,” Rose said. “But your organization wants you to take it back to New York. There’s also this.” Rose produced a small letter and read it aloud. “Dear, Agent Midnight. Our scientists have thoroughly examined the bone fragment that members of the River Street patrol found on your person. The object belongs to an individual of Asian extraction who died sometime in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century A.D. Please return to headquarters with more samples if possible.”
“Tamerlane,” Midnight said. “My God, the Sultan was…”
Rose placed her hand on Midnight’s forehead and spoke to him like a mother to her child. “Rest now, Patrick. There will be time enough for more adventures. For now, sleep well. You earned it. My people thank you for your aid. More importantly, I thank you.”
Rose leaned over the bed and kissed Midnight on the lips. The kiss was long and deep, and before long, Patrick Midnight, special agent for the Society of Gentlemen Geographers, was sound asleep.
THE END