Quoth the crow, p.1
Quoth the Crow, page 1
part #3 of The Crow Series
William Blessing is obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe. Like Poe,
he is a writer of dark fantasy. And like Poe, he has powerful
enemies.
One of them pretends to be a friend, even as he plots to murder
William and steal his wife. Blessing’s only hope is to learn the
truth about his “friend” before—
But this is the realm of the Crow, where the grave is the
doorway to truth. William must walk through it to discover
Poe’s final secret. Then, and only then, with the help of a dark-
winged “Raven,” can he return to feed on the human carrion
who raped his wife and slaughtered his soul.
David Bischoff
Quoth the Crow
The Crow: 3
ePub r1.0
Titivillus 14.03.2023
Original title: Quoth the Crow
David Bischoff, 1998
Digital editor: Titivillus
ePub base r2.1
Table of Contents
Cover
Quoth the Crow
Dedicatory
prologue
one
two
three
two
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
seventeen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
twenty-four
twenty-five
twenty-six
twenty-seven
twenty-eight
twenty-nine
epilogue
To Dean Koontz
present, and future master
A flap of the wing to:
Jimmy Vines, Martha Bayless, Robin Shurtz,
John Douglas, and Jeff Conner
prologue
I was sick—sick unto death with that
long agony; and when they at length
unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I
felt that my senses were leaving me. The
sentence—the dread sentence of death—
was the last of distinct accentuation which
reached my ears…
…The thought came gently and
stealthily, and it seemed long before it
attained full appreciation; but just as my
spirit came at length properly to feel and
entertain it, the figures of the judges
vanished, as if magically, from before me;
the tall candles sank into nothingness;
their flames went out utterly; the
blackness of darkness supervened; all
sensations appeared swallowed up in a
mad rushing descent as of the soul into
Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and
night were the universe.
—Edgar A. Poe, The Pit and the
Pendulum
THE HOUSE SCREAMED.
It was one of those bloodcurdling cinematic screams, the
kind horror movie scream queens were famous for. It seemed
to rattle the windows of the little rowhouse building, shake the
walls. The bass aspect throbbed the foundation, the high
ululation reaching up to the flat roof, shaking the gravel and
tarpaper.
It sounded, Count Mishka thought, rather like Jamie Lee
Curtis.
In fact, it was Jamie Lee Curtis, doubled and manipulated
like a Tarzan yell. A digital stitching of classic distress from
both Terror Train and Prom Night.
The youth, all dressed in black (black shirt, black boots,
black jeans, black T-shirt, black earring, black nose-ring, black
eye liner, black razor-cut, black scarf, black jacket—all not
merely black but stylishly Gothic black with bits of shine and
gloss on hems and edges, a little touch of glitter around Alfred
E. Neuman/Prince Charles ears) giggled.
He pushed his new door alarm again.
Another female scream, this time a little bit shorter and cut
off quick, as though some killer had just slashed off her head.
Brinke Stevens and Linnea Quigley? Yes, surely. Nice and
sexy, even in terror. Especially in terror.
Yum.
Dusk, bleak and autumnal, settled over the snug Baltimore
neighborhood. A dog barked in an alley. A woman in a
hooded. coat bent toward a destination. The smell of fresh
tarmac hovered from a construction site a few doors down.
A gull, a little off base from its harbor environs, swooped
over the line of tiny Fells Point rowhouses.
Carrying his loot under his left arm, Count Mishka, known
to his parents and the government as Richard Mark
Henneman, slotted the key to his house with his right hand.
The keys jingled as the door opened. The last of the
prerecorded door alarm screams the Count had engineered
wafted away in the shadows like dark smoke.
A cold chill seemed to blow through the house.
Richard shivered, with something more than the cold.
What the hell? he thought. Is this house haunted?
Cool, he thought.
The gang would approve.
For a year now Richard Henneman had allied himself with
a self-described “elite” group of local Goths—that post-punk,
funereally festooned subculture whose fierce rejection of
mainstream commercialism was often obscured by equally
rigid, narcissistic obsessions, scorched-earth cliquishness, and
an unhealthy addiction to black nail polish. The Gothiques,
however, had of late, become a much more closely bound unit.
A unit bound not just in blood…but in money. Lots now. A
great deal more in the future. Yes, the Gothiques were quickly
becoming Goth, Inc.
And all because of a teensy little murder.
How delicious!
The Count’s hallway was splattered with blood.
Movie poster gore.
Bloody fanged Draculas from Bela to Gary menaced.
Luckless women with deep cleavage held up their arms,
screaming. Alongside these posters were framed collages
Richard had made of pictures Xeroxed from his favorite
fan-boy genre mags, Fangoria, Shivers, Midnight Marquee,
European Trash Cinema, and their lesser-known brethren.
Exotic movie makeup and mayhem. Decapitated heads.
Eviscerated bodies. Slobbering monsters trailing guts, rarely
their own.
Art, pure and simple.
Frozen moments of pure pop cinema at its zenith.
Chuckling to himself, the Count turned on the living-room
light, kicked the door closed behind him, and headed straight
for his holy of holies, his entertainment center. He bowed
slightly to the fat Buddha above the television set. “Much
incense to be burned tonight, oh Enlightened One!”
He dumped his treasures on the couch, dug out the new
Iggy Pop CD; well, not so new really, as it was the Raw Power
remixes, a twenty-year after-the-fact revision of the classic
album that had been “ruined” (according to hardcore fans) by
David Bowie’s attempt at making it sound commercial, back
when Mr. Pop was still called Iggy Stooge. The Count put the
disc in the CD player and hit random play (the most important
development in modern conveniences since the remote
control). Immediately, Iggy and the Stooges started blaring
proto-punk through his new Bose satellite speaker system.
“Rock my world, Iggy!” said the Count. He pogoed
through the narrow dining room, through the narrow kitchen,
where he opened the Sears Hotpoint refrigerator, pulled out a
fat can of Fosters, and ripped off the poptop, letting the foam
spurt up, Aussie-style. Back in the old days, he had to drink
National Boh. Now the Count drank good stuff. “Go, Iggster,
go!” He laughed, letting beer run down his mouth and shirt.
The Stooges electronically obeyed.
The bass throbbed and screeching guitars rang. The drums
ripped and hammered. “I am the world’s forgotten boy!” Iggy
shrieked.
Iggy rocked the walls, postered with Goth rock, darkwave
icons. The Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, The Mission, The
Damned, and Bauhaus; newer acts like Switchblade
Symphony, Laibach, Chem Lab, Attrition, Lycia, Dorian Gray,
Die Laughing, London After Midnight; and even molding
oldies like David Bowie (hey, Trent digs him), Kiss, and Alice
Cooper (Marilyn Manson should be paying them royalties for
stealing their acts) to show the catholicity of his taste.
Iggy rocked the bookcase, holding film and T V books and
a few horror novels. Iggy rocked the racks bulging with
plastic-covered comics. Iggy rocked the CD racks and the
record stacks, Iggy rocked the multimedia racks stocked with
hundreds of videos near the thirty-one-inch Sony TV and
various video players, dripping with yet more videos,
laserdiscs, and DVDs.
Iggy rocked all.
The Count’s collection of pop culture and effluvia flowed
out from the living room, filling the dining room. Rolling up
the staircase were more piles of videos and CDs, on up to the
top rooms of the house, which were also filled with bookcases,
comics, posters, action figures, Japanese robots, and other
arcana.
Many of these things had been stolen.
Richard was an excellent shoplifter. He’d found, as a
prepubescent youth, that his hunger for comics and such far
exceeded his allowance. Deft of finger, fleet of foot, and big of
coat, he found his forté was in theft. What he didn’t want to
keep, he sold or traded, thus starting up a most wonderful
collection. At the age of fourteen, he’d broken into a comic
shop at night, cut off the lock on the collector’s case and stolen
a treasure trove of old Marvel and DC comics, even some EC
titles from the fifties. By the time he was eighteen, he had so
many comics and books, tapes, CDs, and records that he
operated a store out of his college campus apartment, making a
major killing on Image Comics (love those variant covers!)
during the market’s speculator boom.
Alas, he’d been thrown out of college as a sophomore for
numerous offenses. Unchastened, his larcenous activities
continued, refining his skills while building his stock and
trading capacities—but his constant hunger for more and more
loot kept his vision low, a victim of his own compulsive
appetites.
Then he’d met the Gothiques, or rather, Le Salon des
Gothiques, the funky basement hangout presided over by one
Baxter Brittle.
His talents were quickly discerned by salon director
Brittle, a boozehound artist and erstwhile editor of Tome
Press, blessed with a recent inheritance (namely the Cork’d
Sailor bar, home of said basement), whose own collections
were often augmented by the Count’s activities. Previously
just a spotty nerd with a light touch, Richard Henneman’s
social activities increased. He achieved the identity of “Count
Mishka.” He even got semi-regular helmet polishing from a
few of the Goth chicks attracted by Brittle’s garish personality
(and free booze).
However, it had only been in the last year, with his
induction into the inner circle of Baxter Brittle’s trust, that his
monetary situation truly improved. He bought a small
townhouse in Fells Point and moved the contents of his
apartment and storage spaces here. True, soon he was going to
have to rent another storage locker, but such was the volume
of the flow of materials through his possession (some, like
tonight’s stuff, actually bought) that he was able to keep
selling things and making a profit in addition to the moneys
achieved from his work at Tome Press.
Iggy rocked the book vault.
The elaborate cabinet, a genuine antique of solid oak, had
been a gift from Tome Press. (“For extraordinary services
rendered,” said Brittle.) All the locks had been refitted with
modern hardware, and the interior made air-tight and moisture
free, perfect for housing rare books, just like the special cases
used by William Blessing for his famous Poe collection.
Iggy Pop railed on about penetration and shake appeal
while the Count laughed. Shaking his head to himself, he
chuckled as he inserted the magnetic key into the antique
facing of the lock. He opened the cabinet and looked at his
most prized of treasures. His “double-bag” items.
Behold! he thought. First editions. Signed first editions, a
collector’s best investment, guaranteed to appreciate in value.
From Stephen King to Anne Rice to Clive Barker to Dean
Koontz to Ramsey Campbell to Robert Bloch to Shirley
Jackson to Richard Matheson, they were all here. And a nice
tight copy—or better yet, an unread, signature-only copy—had
more built-in security value than any 401k plan or IRA
account. There was a first edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
signed. Ambrose Bierce. Some nice Lovecraft. Dozens of
wonderful collectable valuables, ah, yes.
Glorious stuff indeed.
However, the totally primo material he had only just
recently obtained…The most valuable, the oldest…the most
magical…
And for free!
There they were: a solid set of first editions by Edgar Allan
Poe. These from an era when first printings ran in the mere
hundreds, and often were just privately issued. Fruit of that
terrible night of four months ago that had turned, somehow,
into such a bonanza.
Even now, as he did every night, his fingers drifted over
the leather spines of the old, custom-made clam-shell slipcases
(valuable relics themselves) that held the fragile volumes from
the corrupting influences of light and air and unnecessary
handling. He felt a palpable thrill, an exquisite energy
humming within these repositories of magic.
Ah, yes, who could have predicted that through a death
and a burglary, such luck would fall upon his collector’s head!
Tome Press was doing very well indeed, expanding by
leaps and bounds. Richard Mark Henneman, being one of the
Inner Circle, was now Vice President in Charge of Special
Projects. Which meant, in addition to his usual cool duties of
overseeing a small press turning into a large press, looking
into other avenues of expansion. Being a music maven and
motion picture nut, it was natural that the Count’s interests
should be stirred by the desire to “produce.” And to judge by
the idiots already doing so, how hard could it be? concluded
the Count. Just today he had spoken with some film students
about Tome Press making its first horror movie, And he was
sure he could get one of those one-man studio “bands” like
Trust Obey to do the music, then make a soundtrack deal with
Projekt, Tess, or Cleopatra. The possibilities were endless.
Man, what a blast!
Touching the volumes of Poe was like getting jolts of
power.
Raw power! Hey!
Goth, Inc. was headed for the stars!
“And we’re along for the ride, huh, Iggy?” the Count said,
closing the cabinet.
Iggy bellowed and groaned and retched in reply.
“Give me danger, little stranger,” they sang together.
He took another chug of Fosters, then wiggled into the
living room. He took a carefree backward half-gainer (after
placing his hefty beer can on the coffee table, already groaning
with Cool Stuff) onto the couch.
He grabbed one of his controls.
Aim. Press of button. Off with Iggy’s head!
He hit another button and Interview with the Vampire
zapped onto the thirty-one-inch TV screen. The Count mimed
along with Brad Pitt’s dialogue, then took another swig of
Australian brew.
Yes, after a long day in the salt mines, it was time for a
little lie-down. Then, up in time to hit Fletcher’s, where Death
On Two Legs, a new band he was interested in, was playing.
He’d check out the babes, do a little Ex…have a good time
shmoozing…
And then, maybe find a willing female (his personal goal:
an honest-to-God honey from the Goth Babe of the Week
website) and come back to the bachelor pad to watch trailers
for sixties horror films and partake in some hot sex.
Man, talk about a perfect prospective evening!
Even as the ominous music swelled from the vampire
video, the Count found exhaustion closing in on him,
