The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

me in all that blood. God, it was scrambled all over the floor like rotted guts from a slaughterhouse, and it pulled itself together… just came together like somethin’ out of a nutty cartoon. The damn thing crawled over the bodies of my boys and I started to let it have it with the gun… wracked the thing pretty good, wracked up my boys’ dead bodies, too, but I didn’t even care no more… and then it spun around when it got to the window, stood up, holdin’ out something black in its hand, a bloody thing that looked like a baby. And it said in that voice it has, ‘You live without it, dead man. You just try living without your soul…’”

Dempsey ducked his head against Hearthstone’s shoes and whined, begging for another finger.

So, there was a weakness in the fabric of The Shroud, a weakness that gave Professor Hearthstone hope. Perhaps it was simple fear, and perhaps it was something more complex — something that could not be named. Still, Hearthstone knew that if the riddle of The Shroud could be solved, death might not be inevitable.

Hearthstone considered all the possibilities as his execution date drew nearer. He thought of The Electric Man’s state of mind during The Shroud’s invasion of his body and decided that the gangster’s own fear had allowed The Shroud to control him. And then he remembered how The Electric Man’s own anger had grown - anger at what had happened to his wife, anger at what The Shroud had forced him to do to his fellows — boiling to a hateful rage that was pure and possibly quite insane.

When he finished his examination of The Shroud’s battle with The Electric Man, Hearthstone was confident that he could form a plan of attack should the demon reappear. He prayed that such a creature as The Shroud could not glory in silent victory. He concentrated on hate, and he was pleased to find that insanity was a prize well within his grasp. And on the night before his execution, the thing came, a nightmarish red-black pudding that sluiced through the bars of his cell and puddled on the brick wall, oozing a great, ugly grin.

“I have supped on your suffering, Jacob Hearthstone,” The Shroud said. “And now, as I promised, you will die.”

The professor’s only reply was a smile. He thought of Anastasia White. He closed his eyes and saw her. Straightened and heard his ruined back pop and complain. Gritted his remaining teeth and pictured bloody molars dotting the slimy cobblestones of a San Francisco alley.

“Tomorrow when you sit in the electric chair, I will be there,” The Shroud said. “I will be inside the man who wears the hood. Mine will be the hand that pulls the switch.”

Hearthstone wasn’t listening. He was deep inside his own head. He saw Thomas Clancy sitting before him, a bloody bubble on his lips. Saw the bowie knife clenched in Clancy’s left hand, the thin cuts on the Irishman’s wrist.

Suddenly Hearthstone stood and stepped close to the wall, confronting the scarlet grin, sucking the fetid breath that boiled from The Shroud’s mouth as if it were the finest perfume in all the world. He removed his glasses, slipped the cover from one of the ear pieces, and drew the rough metal across the back of his right hand. A trickle of blood seeped from the wound.

Hearthstone challenged The Shroud. “Come in, you bastard. If you dare… if you are not frightened.”

The scarlet thing was breathing fast now. It slid away, toward the ceiling, but the smell of blood was too great a lure. The shadow sprang from the wall, poured over Hearthstone’s hand, and burrowed inside his wound.

I know you, Hearthstone began. I know your amber-eyed bitch.

Great whistling gasps wracked the professor’s lungs. He felt claws scrabbling over his heart, fighting for purchase.

Nothing there, devil. No fear to hold onto. Only hatred, strong and pure.

The Shroud twisted in his guts. Hearthstone doubled over.

Oh, you’re good. But not that good. Because I remember. I met a man who fought you to a draw, and I learned well the lessons that he taught me.

Teeth ripped at his brain. A fist clenched his heart.

Hearthstone’s insanity pushed them away. I’ve had your bitch. I’ve pressed my lips to hers. Felt that creamy skin under my fingertips. And now I have you.

The Shroud slipped across the condemned man’s shoulderblades and down the bones of his arm. Hearthstone pressed his left hand over the wound on his right. Not so fast, he thought. Don’t leave me just yet…

The Shroud coiled inside Hearthstone’s forearm. The professor felt the thing shiver. Felt it shrink.

Hearthstone laughed. Your Irishmen were tougher than this. Your bitch had more backbone.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. A guard on bed-check duty.

“Now comes the real test,” Hearthstone whispered. “Let’s see who’s in control.”

Hearthstone parted his fingers. He willed The Shroud to extend itself in a thin coil that snaked between the bars, and then he unleashed the full power of his insanity, creating a dark monster in his mind, commanding it to grow in the shadow-choked corridor.

Part jaguar.

Part ogre.

Part Kong of Skull Island.

The shadowthing roared. The guard fired his pistol once and was batted against the brick wall by a huge black tail. He lurched to the center of the corridor, unconscious but still on his feet, and was smashed against the opposite wall by a shadowfist.

Keys rattled. Hearthstone’s cell door swung open.

Hearthstone stepped from his prison and joined his ebony escort.

Soon the prison corridors swam with blood.

Later, laughing uncontrollably, the professor wandered the deserted city streets. He twisted The Shroud into a gnarled knot, a feeble arthritic thing. Blew the devil up like a balloon until it was a fat ebony clown. Made the demon crawl on its belly, an armless, legless freak.

Tired of frivolity, Hearthstone ripped the thing’s umbilical tail out of his wrist. The Shroud twisted on the pavement, a red-muscled horror that whined like a skinned dog. Hearthstone stomped it, spat upon it, laughed at it, gloried in the way it shrank from the dim glow of the streetlights.

He kicked it down the street, watching it carom like a child’s ball. Chased after it, kicked again. It bounced from one curb to the other, then suddenly sprang claws and raced toward the gutter. Nails clicked on wet pavement, and a second later it disappeared into a drainage opening.

Hearthstone ran to the curb. “Run away, coward!” he shouted, his eyes yellow in the glow of the streetlights. “Run away from the man who turned an electric chair into a throne!”

Dempsey padded forward, secure on a leash that Hearthstone held in his left hand. In his right he gripped the automatic, which he’d reloaded while the dog gobbled a second filet mignon.

No shadows, the professor told himself. No shadows here. And no shadows on the night the thing died. No shadows then, either.

It had been a great change for him, of course. Leaving America. Relocating to Japan. But the country had seemed ripe for the plucking at the close of World War II, and he’d cashed in his chips in America and reinvested in the land of the rising sun.

It proved to be a wise course of action. Soon Hearthstone doubled his money. Then he tripled it.

He waited for someone to challenge him. No one did. Not the Americans. Not the Japanese.

Not The Shroud.

But did it matter where the shadows hid? His bride… the doctor… the yakuza… even the dog… they had all walked among the shadows at one time or another, had they not? And surely they had all bled. Was there not the possibility? Wasn’t it always there?

As long as he remembered.