The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

As long as he pulled over the riddle of The Shroud.

It was.

So, best to be careful.

Eagerly, Dempsey pulled at the leash as they moved down the hall, but the professor held him back. “Easy, boy. Easy, Dempsey. ”

The money didn’t make him feel much better. He took a young bride, but she didn’t make him feel much better, either. He remembered The Shroud’s promise that he would suffer before he died. And one evening he looked at his bride and realized that he was making himself suffer.

His bride had beautiful amber eyes. She could have been a sister to Anastasia White. And he had slipped the ring on her finger, not The Shroud. He alone had brought her into his home.

Hearthstone felt the sting of prophecy. He knew that as long as he remembered the past, he would suffer each time he looked into his bride’s eyes.

Dempsey stopped at the end of the corridor. Scrapped at the closed door there.

“I don’t know if we should disturb her.” Hearthstone was unable to banish fear from his voice. “The doctor says she hasn’t much time left. ”

The past was always there. Hearthstone was carrying it around, all of it, locked in his heart. All those old failures scrabbling over his innards like the claws of The Shroud.

But there was a way to put an end to it.

He would collect all the pieces of his past, everything that he hadn’t destroyed. He would stare at them, make his peace with them. And then he would crush them under the heel of his boot.

And then, and only then, could he begin to live again.

With shaking fingers, Hearthstone opened the door a crack. Closed it and shrank away.

Shadows. The room was full of them.

In there, in the dark, she was sleeping. Though Hearthstone had instructed Taoka to keep the room well-lighted at all times, the good doctor had obviously disobeyed his orders.

The professor stared at the black line of darkness where the bottom rail of the door fell just short of meeting the plush rug.

Calm yourself, Jacob. The thing is dead.

No. Not as long as you remember. Memory makes everything alive.

Drawing a deep breath, Hearthstone reached for the knob once again.

The yakuza brought a dozen old Irishmen to Hearthstone’s country estate. The professor watched their executions on a gray morning, so early that the event didn’t seem quite real. Afterwards, he returned to his bride’s bed for a few hours, where he dozed and dreamed of the beating he’d suffered years before. Waking, he talked to her of the executions and of his memories. He was delighted to find that both events seemed unreal, as if they’d happened to another man.

Three doctors followed the Irishmen. They came of their own free will, under the assumption that they were attending a medical conference. It was only while waiting in the cabin of Hearthstone’s yacht that they realized something was amiss, for even after the passage of several decades each man recognized the others as old colleagues. None of them remembered Jacob Hearthstone, but he was considerate enough to relate his own memories of his stay in the prison infirmary. When the pleasantries were over, he introduced the doctors to three bosozoku with sledgehammers in their hands.

Hearthstone opened the door. Just an few inches. He slipped his hand into the darkness, his fingers fumbling for the light switch.

Hearthstone felt better after the Irishmen’s visit. Better still after his audience with the prison doctors. But on the day the yakuza brought Anastasia White to him, he knew that he was going to feel very fine, indeed.

Hearthstone flicked the switch. Light washed away shadow.

That was all he needed.

Light was the bane of The Shroud.

Pure, clean, electric light.

Electric…

A voice from the past — a memory he’d thought erased now — an observation by a man once on intimate terms with The Shroud: “And now I’m startin’ to think that it ain’t a thing you can answer. It ain’t like a puzzle where all the pieces fit.”

And then a thought: if hatred could banish The Shroud, if insanity could defeat him, could the same elements, stored deep in the heart for much too long, return him to life when they were finally purged?

Anastasia was still beautiful. Still slim. Still a stylish dresser. But there was a sadness in her amber eyes that was somehow beyond description. And worst of all, she refused to play Hearthstone’s games. She refused to reminisce about the old days in San Francisco; she ignored his queries concerning the fate of The Shroud.

Hearthstone’s bride rested on the small bed, her black hair fanning over white pillowslips.

Somewhere beneath that hair, dark shadows lurked.

Dempsey growled, snorting at the antiseptic odor of the chamber.

Silently, Hearthstone approached the sickbed. “My dear, won’t you smile for me?”

Anastasia’s silence was like stone. Hearthstone’s heart sank. She would give him nothing. She knew her life was lost, and she would make no desperate pleas, no bargains that he could betray.

She refused him satisfaction.

He stared at her, thinking of the days when he’d mulled Shroud riddles with such enthusiasm, thinking of all his hypotheses and conclusions…

…wondering at the fiery glow in her amber eyes.

Hearthstone’s bride did not move. He brushed her hair, let his fingers drift to the plastic oxygen mask strapped over her mouth. “My goodness.” He laughed. “Of course you can’t smile with this thing in the way.”

Hearthstone took the katana from its case, unsheathed the weapon, and showed its silver blade to Anastasia White. “I have been thinking about our friend The Shroud,” he began. “I’ve been thinking about the way it scurried through a sewer grate when I was close to killing it. For many years I thought it was down there, under the city, licking its wounds.” Hearthstone stared at Anastasia’s eyes, recognizing the gaze of an unexpected guest. “Now I don’t think that anymore… Oh, I think it’s licking its wounds all right. I still think that. But I think it found another sewer, one that runs with blood.”

His brides breaths came short and fast without the oxygen mask, and he prodded the corners of her mouth. “Smile… smile…”

“I’m not going to kill you, Anastasia. It’s The Shroud I want. It’s always been The Shroud.”

Her eyes brimmed with tears. She could not keep her silence. “Leave him alone,” she begged. “He’s tired. He’s broken… You’ve beaten him once. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, never enough.” Hearthstone raised the katana, held it to her eye, thinking of the way The Shroud used human hosts, recalling the thing’s aversion to light and the way it had scuttled for the protection of a dark sewer. He remembered the prison cell where he’d tempted the creature. He remembered the insane hatred he’d used to defeat it.

But he hadn’t killed it.

It ran. It took refuge.

Anastasia White. The Shroud.

Hearthstone grinned. “Any port in a storm. Is that not the way of it, my dear?”

The professor prodded open an eye. Stared at the amber orb.

Blank. Nothing there. Anastasia was…

No. This was his bride.

He lifted his bride’s head and examined the white pillowslip. Next he drew back the sheets and