Pawnbrokers of Eternal Blight

By Stuart Hopen

Foulness spreads across the Florida Everglades. Its gangrenous veins stretch from the salt marshes to the Indian burial grounds, to the Live Oaks, now blackened and dying. Some strange manner of contagion -- the like of which has never before been seen in the world -- leaves a Stygian residue, as if the very light of creation were being leached from the land. Is this the result of using strong chemical toxins to drive back the bestial flies brought to America by the Central Powers? Is it some new accursed pestilence provided by the Mysteriarchs of the Abyss ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370446933

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#3 Pawnbrokers of Eternal Blight

and

The Visions: What is Told and What is Tolled

by Stuart Hopen

Bold Venture Press • 2018

Copyright Information

Published by Bold Venture Press

www.boldventurepress.com

Copyright © 2018 Stuart Hopen.

All Rights Reserved.

The Twilight Patrol TM 2018 Stuart Hopen. All rights reserved.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher and copyright holder. All persons, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

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Our Story Thus Far

The Twilight Patrol has arrived in the Florida Everglades to rescue the besieged American nation from the invading German Army and their sorcerous horde of flesh- eating flies. But the spirit of Thamiel has invaded as well. This demon embodies the principle which attacks the unified grandeur of the universe. Thamiel represents the force that venerates extremes of prejudice and perception. Thamiel represents the force that breaks the link between being and nothingness, consigning each to mutually exclusive isolation.

Both of the armies battling on the Southern Front have been corrupted by the Mysteriarchs of the Abyss. Queen Cassiopeia’s great airship, Defianze II, has been shot down. Forced to separate, the members of the Twilight Patrol wander the hostile grasslands where every hand is turned against them.

Queen Cassiopeia searches hopelessly for Prince Peyotr, who had fallen into the clutches of American forces under Thamiel’s sway. Wootin has gone to Cuba to reassemble what remains of his Caribbean spy network. Though wounded in ways that even her shapeshifting abilities may not be able to repair, Lael makes her way onto the German compound, preparing to confront Wolfgang Von Schtorr, the last remaining high Archon of the ravenous flies.

Pawnbrokers of Eternal Blight

Foulness spreads across the Florida Everglades. Its gangrenous veins stretch from the salt marshes to the Indian burial grounds, to the Live Oaks, now blackened and dying. Some strange manner of contagion — the like of which has never before been seen in the world — leaves a Stygian residue, as if the very light of creation were being leached from the land. Is this the result of using strong chemical toxins to drive back the bestial flies brought to America by the Central Powers? Is it some new accursed pestilence provided by the Mysteriarchs of the Abyss? Or could it be that the very rune the Twilight Patrol thought would be America’s salvation will bring damnation for all?

Chapter One

Hard Times for the Truth

"Truth is beautiful, without

a doubt, but so are lies."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

January 25, 1918

In the dead of night, the woman who could change her shape climbed out of the reedy wetness. She hoisted herself onto the wooden ramp that ran toward the encampment of Central Powers. Though recently built, the planks were already slick with mold and algae.

Her clothes were torn, barely more than rags and threads clinging to her. The sentry was drawing near. By the time he was close enough to get a good look at her, she had molded her form into a likeness of the High Archon, her face masked with compound eyes, feathery antennae, sharp teeth and bristling barbs.

The glittering insect armor proved to be all she would need in the way of credentials or a uniform. The sentry saluted without daring to question the shockingly naked and unquestionably masculine display of cross-species anatomy. She walked along the creaking planks. Past the bridge lay the half-built compound, and beyond that, tents.

As she stepped inside the barracks, she shivered, dreading what would follow. The silent horrible work. She often wondered what kind of person she might actually be. Her morals were as fluid as fluid as her features. At times, she found murder vaguely cathartic. At other times, she experienced profound despair when her conscience revived long enough to torment her.

She girded herself for the terrible tasks.

If she worked quickly enough, she could murder all the troops while they slept in their barracks. But killing them all wasn’t her goal. She was acting in the service of a much more ambitious scheme, these deaths contributing minute details to an intricate design.

She was setting a trap. She needed to be wary, lest the trap ensnare her before she was ready to be ensnared.

***

We would slog, slog, slog

through the grasses and the bog

and the sun doled out its torments in between

while pursuing all the violence

in the sacred name of science

and the sifting of the soil ‘neath the green.

— Orville Wootin

***

Congrieve was still weak, recovering from his wounds, but he was on his feet, and moving, exploring the strange grasslands. He stumbled upon a small church beside a large churchyard. Marble monuments added grandeur to the humble structure. From a great distance, the church brought to mind an old romanticized painting that had filled him with inchoate hope during an especially lonely moment in his dreary childhood. The building seemed to sparkle, with dreamlike rainbow colors. But when he got close, he found the exterior heavily beaded with multiple layers of the hell spawn flies. The facade literally crawled. Glittered with jewel-like beauty from afar, up close it was wretchedly hideous. It was as if the demonic horde had taken up a sentinel residence, blocking any spiritual sanctuary, obscuring any refuge of hope.

The blocked and desecrated church filled Congrieve with despair. Then anger.

He carried his rune into the once sacred space. The flies instantly bolted, but they did not flee beyond the outer perimeters of the rune’s enchantment. They lingered, hovering in space.

Surrounded by a loitering haze of vagrant flies, the simple country church looked as it were exploding — but trapped in a miasma of destruction. It formed an icon of sacred space torn apart by shrapnel. It was worse than when it was beaded with resting flies.

Congrieve attacked the problem in a new way, placing rune after rune around the perimeters in an expanding spiral. Slowly, he peeled back the pestilence.

On Sunday, a steady trickle of worshippers found their way to the liberated church. Word had spread throughout the region, like a silent summons carried on the winds. The scattered and desperate denizens converged on a single shining point within the hostile grasslands. Congrieve joined the wearied crowds passing through the portals. He hoped to make contact with the American forces here, and join up with whatever passed for the army in these parts.

One by one, congregats took their positions on the long-neglected pews.

The music of a congested pump organ wheezed out hymns. The bellows blew gusts of dry motes and desiccated insects. The omnipresent Florida sun filtered through stained glass and poured colors upon the dusty clouds of old carapaces, long dead and dried out flies, wafting around in the wind of sacred music.

The old hymns stirred something profound and unnameable in Congrieve, bringing him back to an earlier time, an earlier state of being. He felt connected to these people, even though they were strangers. They were his countrymen. Here, in this remote, rural spot, he felt infused with a new spirit. Reborn, in the ancient music as it flooded through him. This was real, he thought. An experience of timelessness, a glimpse of a languid days in Eden, before the fall. The moment was eternal, and time had changed its meaning, and everything outside of the song and the prayer was unreal and meaningless. No amount of logic or learning or argument would persuade him otherwise. At least, for the moment. The young women were looking at him, some furtively, some openly. He didn’t mind that.

The Governor of Florida entered the sanctuary. He was a big obelisk of a man, over six-foot-tall and tipping the scale past the two-century mark. Raising a swaying hand to greet his multitudes, he swaggered down the aisle, pearl-handled six-shooters strapped to his hips, headed straight for the pulpit, his mouth tightening to suggest he wouldn’t hesitate to put anyone who got in his way six feet under. His wild head of flaming hair made it look as if he’d used lighter fluid instead of hair tonic and had been careless with matches.

Corporal O’Deal accompanied the Governor.

The ceremony began.

Congrieve bowed his head until a girl seated herself beside him. She turned her face toward his, demurely, angling so that she could see beyond the edge of her tight blue bonnet. She let her eyes rest upon his face long enough for a flirtatious glance before she swiftly and judiciously looked away. And then her eyes swiveled back, just as swiftly, and she took a good hard look. And then she began to scream over the organ music.

Look, you all. Look. It’s that feller. The traitor. The killer … the one we …

There was no sanctuary anywhere.

Congrieve bolted upright. He hurtled over the pew, angling to escape. A man grabbed him by the jacket. Congrieve swiveled around. He knocked the man down. But others had gathered, seizing him from all directions. The organ music finally stopped playing. The singing of psalms was replaced by curses and shouting and the percussion of blows and stampeding feet. Bodies and pews collided with one another, tumbling over. A cloud of dust rose up from the unswept floors. Fists pummeled Congrieve. And handbags.

Within seconds, the crowd held him fast.

He’s a traitor. He’s a killer. Should we string him up? Governor? asked one of the parishioners.

Congrieve said, I’m no traitor. I came here to join up. Pray first, then join up. Can’t a man pray? You going to string me up for coming here to pray? If I’ve killed … when I’ve killed — it’s been in battle for America. I’ve been fighting for my country — for our country. For all of you. For all of us. Don’t you know who I am? Let any man who calls me a traitor defend it with his fists. One on one. Come and try me.

Governor, what do we do?

The question had been posed to the Governor, but it was Corporal O’Deal who strode forward. The red-haired man with the glass eye held the title and the office, but it was obvious that white-haired O’Deal was the true power. The hand behind the hand.

You’re Hollister Congrieve. I recognize you from the papers, said O’Deal.

Damn right!

These are hard times, soldier. People can’t tell friend from foe. The word came down from on high to shoot you on sight. Orders, from the top.

Lies, I tell you.

These are hard times for the truth. No one is really sure what is really going on. Hard to tell what is the truth, and that’s the truth; it’s hard to tell. No one knows for sure who is in charge. No one knows who is who, and what side they’re on. As far as this country is concerned, we don’t even know if there is still an America outside of Florida.

There’s still America, shouted the Governor. Can’t say how far north it runs, but there’s still America.

Congrieve said to the assembly, Well, take a good look at me, folks. What do your eyes tell you? What you feel in your guts? You’ll know the truth if you just pay attention.

An eerie pall fell over sanctuary.

You said you wanted to join up? O’Deal asked of Congrieve.

Sure. That’s what I came to do. Join up, not be strung up. Say my prayers and fight the Jerries.

O’Deal smiled and rubbed his hands together. There’s many ill things being said about you, sir, in high places. Who can say if they’re true? Not me. I’m a forgiving man, and you’ve come to a house of forgiveness. So, I say — let’s give him a chance. I can use a pilot with his talents. Set him free.

The sudden reprieve and reversal of fortune made Congrieve suspicious of O’Deal’s motives. But then, he had been reprieved in order climb into a plane and fight. For most, that was a death sentence anyway.

Congrieve looked skeptically at O’Deal. I’m grateful to you, Sir. Then, with conviction, he said. Give me a chance and I’ll not let you down.

The men released their grips on Congrieve. He dusted himself off. He helped to right the fallen pews. He took his seat among the multitude.

A minister in his own right, the Governor mounted the pulpit. He intended to preach and politicize at the same time. He was gifted with near mystical intuitions. He could touch the pulse and heart of the mob.

"You good people of Florida have so recently come from your supreme hour of triumph, to have gained a victory over the forces of opposition so masterful and strong as were those that stood arrayed against you; and to have conquered them, now — only to face a new menace.

"In your glorious 1916 election, you withstood the onslaughts of the county and political rings, the vast corporations, and the railroads, the fierce opposition of the corrupt press and the organization of the Black voters of the state against you, and the power of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy against you. Yet over all these the common people of Florida, the masses, triumphed.

"When I was seeking your vote, I warned about the way that Irish, Slav, and Italian immigrants were flooding into the state. Rum and Romanism go hand in hand, I warned, and raised the specter of monks from the St. Leo Benedictine Abbey arming the state’s black population to pave the way for a German invasion. You will recall what I said then. And it still holds true. Once Florida falls to Kaiser Wilhelm, Pope Benedict will move the Vatican to central Florida, and all other churches will be demolished.

The little red school house to stand as an emblem of the nation’s liberty against the fly besotted forces amassed against you. Your triumph is no less in this good hour in beautiful Florida. And the crowning political dogma for all — America for Americans throughout eternity!

A Palm Beach newspaper had once written that whenever the Governor spoke, he never failed to hit the nail squarely on the thumb. There was a comic quality to the Governor, with his flaming hair and his glass eye, his exaggerated proclamations, his priggish stiffness that had kept him from his own inaugural ball because dancing offended him. Yet there was no denying his power to stir his gathered minions. There was a spirit at work here. It was palpable. It almost lent credence to his claim of a visitation from an angel and spiritual rebirth during a Baptist revival years before.

Congrieve found himself suddenly caught up in the energy sweeping through the room. The Governor was at the center of the energy, but the energy was being generated by the gathering itself. The man, vested with the gravity of his high office, had become a funnel for something emanating out of the multitudes. A group of strangers was transforming into a community.

Raised by Jesuits, Congrieve was taken aback by the anti-Catholic rhetoric. He couldn’t understand its purpose or motivations. Surely now was not the time to draw distinctions between churches, nor for turning Americans against one another. Just as surely, now was not the time to condemn drink. Hard times for the truth call for hard liquor. He wouldn’t have minded so much if the condemnation were truly directed against rum alone, for he never much cared for rum, being a whiskey and beer man himself. But he well understood the attack was not meant to draw the same division between liquors as had been drawn between churches.

Congrieve had cut his ties