Eli McMorn & The Strange Case of the Missing Professor - Chapter 10

I grasped Professor Gruner’s old walking stick as best I could in my cuffed hands and advanced toward the ghoulish stranger. I held the bottom end of the cane like a baseball bat and looked to plant the sharp-pointed antler of the handle deep inside the stranger’s skull. No matter how horrible a creature, if it bleeds, it can die.

The evil stranger’s spooky grin gleamed white like a bleached skull in the eldritch light of his rusty lantern, and he spun to face me as I closed the distance with the cane raised. I swung as hard as I could and aimed for the temple on the left side of his dirty, overlarge head. Aim small, miss small.

As the cane arced toward him, the stranger dodged just enough for the cane to miss the side of his head by mere inches. Instead, the antlered handle of the cane struck his black stovepipe hat, and it flew off his head into the damp ground leaves a few yards away. The rotten-red smell of brimstone filled the air.

The stranger did not turn or throw an arm up to block the cane. He was too busy with his mysterious lantern. No doubt he planned to melt me into a bloody mess like Police Sgt. Bill Friemann.

To my surprise, when the stranger’s hat came to rest on the ground, his black, oversized hound skulked in its direction to retrieve it for his unnatural master. The stranger, fearsome grin still painted across his sallow face, bellowed, “Don’t mind the hat, Ol’ Shuck. Sic em!”

The stranger glanced back at his dog, and before he could say another word, I brought the cane down on the grimy hand that held the lantern. The antler point sank into his thick wrist, and he reflexively dropped the lantern. It fell heavily to the ground, and the stranger yowled as the old lantern rolled a few feet away.

I will never forget what happened next. The glass porthole of the lantern sprung open and dozens of golden fireflies streamed out. The stranger howled demonically as the tiny lights winged out of the lantern and into the humid night air of the Claiborne Sinks. “The souls are getting away!” the stranger cried, his voice like stones crunched underfoot.

The supernatural hound was returning to attack and would soon be on top of me. To my surprise, at the last split-second, the hound slammed to a stop at the hypnotic sight of the lightning bugs and the confused cries of his master. I saw my opportunity and took it.

I dropped the missing professor’s cane and fell to my knees at the pile of clothes left behind by the dead police officer. A moment later, I had my trusty Berretta in my cuffed hands. I raised it to fire and saw three things at once.

The stranger was busy grabbing fireflies out of the air and cruelly stuffing them back into his lantern. That same instant, the giant hound lept toward me, his eyes green and his foaming maw wide open, a nightmare of hellish teeth. Last, I glanced down at the handgun in my hands and saw that Sgt. Friemann had removed its loaded magazine.

My only hope was that he’d left one round in the chamber.

(All rights reserved. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.)