Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

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 blankets and checked them carefully. Satisfied he ran his fingers through his bride’s hair; but still found nothing there.

He sighed. Stepped back. Impossible. Taoka was dead. And Machii was dead. And Dempsey was loyal.

His bride…

Impossible. But something was here. He could feel it.

And whatever it was, it was more than a memory.

He pulled Anastasia to him. Parted her mouth and kissed her. He forced his tongue against hers, felt it squirm away.

Like that night in the prison, he thought. Like The Shroud, shrinking from my power.

Anastasia pushed at him. “He’s weak.” She sobbed. “He’s nearly dead, just leave him be. Let him die in peace.”

Hearthstone slashed Anastasia’s shoulder with the katana, then drew the blade across his palm. “Come on, you bastard,” he said. “It’s time to face your master.”

Hearthstone took the stainless steel scissors from the top of the dresser. He cut open his bride’s nightgown, then drew it apart.

He stared down at the purple scar that ran the length of her breastbone.

Black blood oozed from Anastasia’s wound. She pressed a hand against it, stemming the flow, her fingers trapping the creature that desperately wanted out. “You won’t have him,” she said, her eyes glowing with defiance. “Not while I’m alive.”

“Very well,” Hearthstone said.

His bride shivered as the scissors touched her sternum.

Anastasia shivered as Hearthstone drove the katana into her breast. She fell back, slipping off the short blade, collapsing onto the floor with hardly a sound.

Hearthstone dropped to his knees and pressed his wounded hand against Anastasia’s bloody chest.

Her heart wasn’t beating.

She wasn’t breathing.

She wore a slight grin that fell somewhere short of a smile.

“Come out, you bastard,” he whispered, his eyes everywhere at once: on the shadows that swam beneath the furniture; on Anastasia’s blood; on the hem of her silk dress, which ruffled under a breeze from the open window. Each image burned into his brain as if branded there.

“Come out, you coward.” He closed his eyes but saw the room, the blood, Anastasia’s dress. “Come out and let me forget.”

Hearthstone held his hand to Anastasia’s breast, whimpering in frustration, until her blood began to dry.

He sat there alone, but for his memories.

Hearthstone stared at his bride’s lips. At the scissors in his hand.

No, it couldn’t be.

He wouldn’t do this.

His bride was an innocent. She was not possessed. Neither was Dr. Taoka. Nor the yakuza, Mr. Machii. Nor Dempsey.

This was madness. Time had passed, so much time without incident. The Shroud was dead.

Dead to the world.

Dead, everywhere, but in Jacob Hearthstone’s memory.

Anyone…

The professor turned toward the mirrored wall and stared at his reflection. What he saw didn’t match his memories.

If he had to remember everything, why couldn’t he remember how to be the man he once was? Young, strong, confident…

Now he was none of those things.

Hearthstone laughed at the feeble old man in the mirror. Here was the true seat of memory. A withered receptacle, nothing more. “Wipe the slate clean, grandpa. Purge the hatred, the insanity. Make afresh start. ”

Hearthstone turned the scissors on himself and drove the blades deep into his chest.