The Third Interlude

A Patrick Midnight & Reverend Blackstone Tale by Arbogast

This is an excerpt from THE ADVENTURES OF PATRICK MIDNIGHT, which is currently available for purchase from The Bizarchives.

The stillness of the night unnerved Patrick Midnight as he stood lookout from behind one of the castle’s lantern windows. He had been more or less frozen in place for hours, as a private army of men slumbered behind him. His only company, as ever, was Reverend Blackstone.

“Dost thou remember the tale of Beowulf, lad?”

Midnight kept his eyes focused on the flat, foggy plain in front of him, but mumbled that he did indeed remember the story of the brave Geatish hero and the horrible monster Grendel. “That was in Merrie Olde England, right?” Midnight said absentmindedly.

“Nay, lad. ‘Twas our people that first put the story on record, but the facts of the matter took place long ago in heathenish Daneland.”

“I see. Why bring it up now?”

“Hast thou mutilated thine own imagination?” Blackstone said with some pique in his voice. “Canst thou not see a similarity?”

Midnight pondered a moment and recognized the truth in the ghost’s words. Indeed, Midnight, an American special agent from rainswept New England, had been called away by a foreign nobleman to defend his realm against the wrath of an unknown beast. However, rather than Denmark or the white cliffs of Dover, Midnight’s assignment found him in rural Mie Prefecture on lands belonging to the ancient Otomaro clan. Their last living descendant, Baron Yuta Otomaro, had contacted the Society of Gentlemen Geographers and requested assistance. Per usual, Midnight had gotten the call and had to suffer a prolonged and nerve-wracking airship ride from New York all the way to Tokyo. Now, after a day’s worth of meetings and drilling with the Baron’s small army of loyal employees, Midnight had to stand the second watch of the night. He struggled to keep his eyes open.

“So far, from what I’ve heard, something is destroying the crops and killing the farmers around here,” Midnight said. “The Baron considers himself an educated man—a man of scientific reasoning and empiricism. To him, our enemy is either a roving madman or a band of rural hooligans dedicated to destruction for the mere sake of it.”

“Aye, but the men testify to something different.”

Midnight sighed. “Yeah, the one who can speak English, Toshiaki, told me that the Baron’s men think their enemy is a yokai, or nature demon.”

“Aye, and like long-dead Beowulf, we find ourselves in heathenish climes, so demons do run amok.”

Midnight smirked and turned his attention back to the desolate landscape in front of him. The black, undulating hills rolled on forever, while the fog bank seemed to grow thicker. Just a little past his line of vision rested the Pacific. The special agent quietly congratulated the Otomaro elders on their wisdom in choosing such beautiful real estate.

“Dost thou think these men can survive battle?” Blackstone inquired.

Midnight turned at the waist and studied the sleeping army. Each man was either elderly, out of shape, or both. They represented the last loyal servants of the Otomaro clan, but instead of being serfs, they were employees in the Baron’s limited holding company. They had pikes, swords, and one or two Enfield rifles. Midnight did not feel very confident.

“They are warm bodies,” he said. “Sometimes that’s good enough.” Here, Midnight looked down at his own armaments. Besides his ever-present .25 automatic, the Baron had supplied him with a short magazine Lee-Enfield that had apparently seen combat at Tsingtao. So far, Midnight had gotten the most usage out of the Baron’s binoculars. He brought them back up to his brow and scanned the darkness.

There, in the far instance, a faint white light appeared. Midnight dropped the binoculars and rubbed his eyes. He needed sleep badly, but the old soldier of the Yankee Division brought the binoculars back up and once again saw the white figure as it moved closer to the Baron’s castle. Midnight kept his focus until he realized that the white figure was actually a young woman with raven hair and a white linen blouse that looked dirty and tattered. Once the woman came underneath the weak moonlight, Midnight saw that she carried a baby in her arms.

“Someone is coming this way,” Midnight intoned to Blackstone.

“Shall I gather the men?”

“No. It’s just a woman and a babe. I think…I think she’s coming for help,” Midnight said. Once the woman reached the castle’s stone drop portion, she held her arm aloft and waved it back and forth. It was the international signal of distress, and Midnight felt duty-bound to answer it.

“Stay here with the men until I can figure this out,” he said to Blackstone. The Puritan gave his young charge a wary glance but did as ordered.

Midnight gingerly climbed down the old castle’s steps until he reached the stone drop, and then, with a leap of faith, he landed easily enough on the wet grass. Less than fifteen feet in front of him was the woman. Her beauty immediately took Midnight aback. Her skin was moon pale and clear, and her soft, almond-shaped eyes were a fairer shade of brown than normal. Her lithe fingers pulled back a small linen hood to show that the child was also female and barely past the age of one month. The child’s face showed some scarring that either indicated a previous attack or some unknown malady.

“Do you need a doctor?” Midnight asked in English. The woman replied, but in a musical kind of Japanese that Midnight found intoxicating. He did not understand her words at all, but the way she sang her consonants and vowels put him into a kind of small trance.

Rather than ask again, Midnight used his hands to gesture the woman towards the castle. To his surprise, she shook her head and showed great fear of the place. She began to gesture to herself, beckoning Midnight with her hands to follow her into the darkened fields. Without thinking, Midnight agreed and followed the woman and child deep into the fog. The first thing that the special agent noticed when he lost sight of the castle was the total cessation of ambient noise. The previously noisy frogs had gone silent, and the random whine of the tanuki had ceased. Midnight, a veteran of numerous supernatural experiences, immediately knew that something was wrong. He stopped in his tracks and tried his best to unfreeze his blood. But, in his haste to aid the poor woman and child, he had left his Enfield behind. The fact that his lone protection was the .25 automatic heightened his unease.

“If you need help, please let me go back to the castle and fetch a doctor,” he said as a nervous tic. The special agent knew that something bad was about to happen, and yet he could not stop himself from treating the strange woman as just another person.

The woman in white said more poetry in Japanese, and Midnight noticed, too, that the child echoed its mother’s words. The two began to chant, and Midnight felt himself grow sleepy, the kind of tiredness that cannot be easily fought off. The special agent’s eyelids sagged and drooped, and his knees weakened to the point where standing proved painful. With his last look, Midnight saw the woman’s face begin to distort. A long, slender, and hairy leg sprouted from her mouth and reached for Midnight’s foot.

***

While his young charge slept the slumber of the damned, Reverend Blackstone, who had covertly followed his descendant across the fields, materialized enough to draw his rapier against the yokai monstrosity. Gone was the innocent woman and babe. In its stead was a large and fearsome spider that sang songs like a Lorelei. Blackstone shielded his ears by repeating Psalms out loud, and each thrust of his ectoplasmic weapon made the creature sing a little less boldly. The pair struggled violently, with Blackstone being pierced by the spider’s legs several times, but, after three accurate jabs to the spider’s chelicerae, Blackstone felt the demon wither.

“I cast thee back into whatever hell will take ye,” he said as he delivered the killing blow down into the eye. The chthonic yokai screamed once before perishing.

Midnight would not wake up again until he was flying above the Pacific in a Society-owned airship. The special agent touched his face to make sure it was really there, for a sense of rigor mortis lingered in his body.

“Thou were poisoned sonically,” Blackstone said. The specter was half-formed next to Midnight in the empty airship. The only thing visible was his face, his hands, and the family Bible that he had opened to the Book of Matthew.

Midnight cleared his throat and apologized to the Puritan. “I should have known better,” he said with a cough. “I swear I was ready to jump on that creature, but her voice was just so…so…enchanting.” It was a weak defense, and Midnight knew it. To his surprise, Blackstone placed a comforting hand on his charge.

“Female demons are known for such magick. Do not demean thyself anymore about it. Remember, lad, thou art still young and fully human. Had I been a man still made of flesh and blood, I canst say that I would have resisted her.”

The empathetic words floored Midnight, who was far more used to angry sermons from the Puritan. The shock was a pleasant one, and rather than ruin the moment by uttering something stupid, the groggy Midnight leaned back, shut his eyes, and asked Blackstone to read him a passage from the Good Book.

“This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about,” Blackstone read. “His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found pregnant…”