Pete Chambers 03: The Haunted Shotgun

By Mark Slade

~1~

I was face to face with a floating shotgun, mesmerized by a voice asking me to solve a riddle…..

~ 2 ~

A man with long braided hair and an even longer braided beard was lying on the floor of his apartment with his face blown off. A pool of blood that had formed under his head also had sprayed the walls around his desk, turning it into a Rorschach drawing.

I stood over top of the body of Alan Munroe and it immediately struck me he had been wearing a Mickey Mouse tee-shirt too small for his fifty-five-year-old body. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Detective Swanson commented to everyone in the room, “Why can’t the famous fucker buy some nicer clothes? He had more money than anyone in this room.”

Munroe made a name for himself by writing comic books. I never read any of them, but I did try to read one of his novels and it was just too gruesome for me.

If you deal with demons on a regular basis as your job, you don’t want to read about the crap as fiction. From what I understand, Munroe, along with Donald Franks, changed Comic books forever by writing about superheroes as real people with real everyday problems.

Bleak stuff, I heard.

Now he’s dead. And he won’t be writing bleak stories for anyone unless it’s in the afterlife. I saw the forensics guy pick up the sawed-off Winchester shotgun and it shook in his hands. I couldn’t yell at him not to touch it in time. The other cops in the room dropped to the floor and hid. The forensics officer tried to let go of the handle, instead, he turned the barrel on himself.

Both barrels went off. The poor fool fell to the floor, the shotgun hung in the air a second, then fell beside him. The right side of his face was like one long deep pocket on a pair of pants.

~ 3 ~

I approached cautiously, took in some air. I heard voices from the next room screaming. The voices belonged to Police chief Hemlock and Detective Lt. Ragdale. They were screaming my name. Well, cursing it.

Hemlock entered the room, kicking books on the floor out of his path. “The fuck’s goin’ on in here?”

He looked down at the forensics officer. He prayed to God under his breath. He turned to me. “Every time people stand next to you, Chambers, they die. You understand that?!”

“Might not want to stand too close to me then, Hemlock. A lot of people will start cheering.” I grinned in his face.

Ragdale was right behind hemlock, like the weasel he was. I dislike him almost as much as he does me. Only I wouldn’t sell my mother’s soul just to get even with him. Hell, he’d sell his mother on the street for a candy bar.

“Another fuck up, Chambers?” He chewed his cigar, smiled impertinently.

“Like your old man did. Why you were conceived, Ragdale.”

“Shut up, both of you, Hemlock rubbed between closed eyes. “What you make of this, Chambers. This fucking shotgun.”

“Deadly weapon,” I said.

“He knows that!” Ragdale stuck his chest out.

“Just spill it, will you Chambers.” Hemlock began pacing.

“It’s the Danforth shotgun. I think you all know the story of this unusual cursed object.”

They all looked at me dumbfounded. The train had left the station with these guys when it came to anything they term as unbelievable. Even when proof of existence was shoved in their faces. I told them the story of how Jack Danforth, premiere gun maker, scripted a verse from the Thorne bridge spell caster for his spirit to live on. Thorn bridge spell caster is the bible of all black magic books. Helen Thorn Bridge was burned at the stake in 1669. As she was being fried, she reciting all spells from memory. When the ashes of her body were cleared with the debris, the spell caster book was found, the book cover still simmering.

“C’mon, Ragdale, “I said. “When your wife was in the kitchen stirring the cauldron she never told this story?”

“She ain’t no witch, Chambers.” That was the best he could do without burning up more brain cells.

I saw an emblem on the stock of that shotgun. A circle with a slash across it. It seemed familiar. I was trying to rack my brains when I noticed it was also a tattoo on Munroe’s wrist as they placed him inside a body bag.

It was time to gather some information from my favorite Newspaper boy. But first I had to meet Maggie for lunch. I was living in the guest house owned by her husband. It was an unspoken rule that I would also look after Maggie. I don’t know if it was his intention for us to become close, but that’s just what happened. He was out rolling through parts unknown searching for bizarre antiques with questionable backgrounds and religious artifacts with ungodly alliances.

~4~

I rolled out of Maggie’s bed and headed for the bathroom. She sat up in bed, fixed the strap to her slip, covering her breasts. She folded her arms around her legs, watched for me to come out. She had a sullen look on her face.

“Don’t you ever get tired of this spooky shit?” She said. I detected a hint of sarcasm in her words.

“Just say you don’t want me to leave right now.” I put on my pants and fixed the tie around my neck.

“I don’t care what you do,” She threw the covers off her and sprung out of bed. She stomped past me. I grabbed by the arm. She smacked me hard across the cheek. Was it a reaction or planned? “Don’t grab me! You don’t own me.”

I didn’t let go. Instead, I pulled her to me, crushed her lips with mine. She bit my lower lip, pulled away, and licked the blood from my lip from her teeth. I touched my bottom lip with a finger. I was smiling. I couldn’t help it. It just pissed her off even more.

She rushed to the bathroom and shut it. I heard the lock click. I finished dressing, went to the door. “I love you,” I said.

In a muffled voice, I heard her say, ”Fuck you.”

All I could do was laugh. Valentine’s Day must be different for normal people. We are definitely not normal.

~5~

The street was busy. A hot dog vendor took the corner where little jimmy usually stood hocking newspapers. I walked up to the guy and bought a dog from him with all the trimmings plus a drink. I sank my teeth in and saw Maggie on the opposite side of the street near a cigar shop, talking to Jimmy. I took three more bites and threw it down on the sidewalk. The Hot dog vendor screamed at me he had a trash can. I said nuts to him, tossed him my unopened soda.

I marched over to Maggie and Jimmy, steaming mad. I grabbed her wrists. “Why are you here?”

She wrangled away from me. “Hey, what gives?” she rubbed her wrist with her other hand. “Can’t I have a conversation with a friend?”

“C’mon, now. Break this shit up,” Jimmy got between us. “I know–” Before I knew it G’nal had appeared and finished little Jimmy’s sentence. “Why you are here, Chambers…I know nothing about the shotgun. Except it kills without someone pulling the trigger.”

“What about the Symbol I keep seeing? A circle with a slash through it.”

“I know nothing of this Symbol…”

“I know about it,” Maggie said.

“You’re not getting involved–”

“I’m already involved with YOU. You want to know about the Symbol or what?”

I nodded. Against my wishes, she’s involved. I had made a pact with myself to protect Maggie. I don’t have the guts to rid myself of her, which would be the only way to protect her.

“The Symbol is to recognize a group of men who overlook the ongoings of the people of this city,” Maggie said.

“This group has a name?”

“Afraid I don’t know that, Pete.” She touched my arm. I stood a little closer to her.

“How do you know about the Symbol, Maggie?”

She smiled. “I’m married to the man who is president of this esteemed club.”

I sighed. “I see,” I turned to face a strange tapping on the sidewalk. Before I could respond a creature had pounced on me. Its ugly faceless head was pointed, but its jagged little teeth had bit into my jacket and torn a piece of fabric. Its claws held me down on the sidewalk, piercing my hands with its ten tiny needles. It spat the fabric out of its mouth and growled in my face.

Suddenly, as if an imaginary hand had lifted the creature into the air and tossed it aside. As it hit the paved street, it exploded just as a bread truck drove through. Parts of the creature added new artwork to the picture of the little girl eating a sandwich that boldly covered the truck.

I heard G’nal laugh.

“Whoever you say is responsible for this weapon obviously knows nothing of demonology. That was a Grendel. The lowest of the lows…I use them to gather seeds for dead trees in the lower depths of Hell…it’s all they are trusted with for their lack of intelligence.”

“Thanks, G’nal,” I muttered. I took out a cigarette, noticed Little Jimmy was back. He lit my cig, laughed as he shook his head.

“What now?” Maggie helped me to my feet.

I poked a finger through the hole in my jacket, cursed. “We need to find out how Munroe got the shotgun and why he wanted it. Then we steal the shotgun from the cops.”

“I already know how he got it. It was kept at the Grimoire club.” Maggie walked along with me, headed toward the police station.

“Why did he want it?”

Maggie laughed. “Munroe was a collector of those objects…”

“Just like your husband,” I looked down and she was holding my hand. “You sure know a lot about what’s going on.”

She looked away. “Yeah,” She bit her lower lip. “I know too much.”

The shotgun had me in its sights. I was standing in the middle of the evidence room with Maggie. She was yelling at me, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. The shotgun moved when I moved. I saw Hemlock and Ragdale push their way through the door with a couple of blue uniforms.

Then I heard the voice, as much as I could make out, it was the voice of Jack Danforth. It was a cold, monotone voice.

“Answer the riddle and you escape death, answer correctly and quickly,” The voice said, my thoughts locked into whatever was said. “It is greater than God and more evil than the devil. The poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you’ll die. What is it?”

I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t struggle. The answer came to me in a flash. It felt like something had guided me. “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than the devil, the poor have nothing, the rich need nothing and if you eat nothing you’ll die.”

The shotgun fell to the floor, lifeless.

I staggered backward, Maggie caught me. She threw her arms around my neck, kissed me.

Hemlock ran toward me, Ragdale followed. “Why didn’t it shoot you?” Hemlock asked.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, tried to keep my hands from shaking. “I had to answer a riddle. From this voice.”

“Did you get it right?” Ragdale asked, smiling as if he just cracked a joke. We all stared at him until he stopped smiling.

~6~

Later, I was at Maggie’s house, she was on the couch getting dressed. I put on my pants and went to her bedroom to use the bathroom. That’s when I saw the Thorn Bridge spell caster open on her dresser. The page showed a pen and ink drawing of a Grendel, the demon that attacked me on the streets earlier.

I walked back into the living room. She was at the bar pouring drinks. “I got a whiskey sour for you, baby.”

I tossed the spell caster on the counter. She looked down at it, bit her lower lip.

I turned from her, put my jacket on. “Wait, don’t you want to know why I did it?”

I heard her begging me to come back as I shut the front door of her house. A Bentley pulled in the driveway. Her husband was back. The window to the backseat lowered via a power button.

I walked by and said: “She’s all yours, bud. I’m done.” I kept going down the street and didn’t look back.