Category: Horror Publisher: Static Movement
ISBN-10: 9781617061004
Pages: 238
Copyright: April 4, 2011
ISBN-13: 9781617061004
Sixteen tales of Urban Fantasy edited by George Wilhite
Welcome to Weird City
These sixteen tales of Dark Crime and Urban Fantasy take us to cities throughout our known world—and beyond—where the supernatural is commonplace.
Hard-boiled detectives walk alongside innocents ill-prepared for the dangers lurking at every turn.
The streets of these stories are filled with vampires and zombies, angels and demons, as well as many creatures never before encountered.
Horror and wonder abound within these pages, so enter the boulevards and alleys of Weird City if you dare . . .
Excerpt
THUNDERIN' MUNGO
by
Ken Goldman
"Okay, if you want I should lay it all out for you one more time I will, but it ain't gonna come out no different . . ." For over half an hour the lanky sixteen year old who called himself Speedo had rehashed the circumstances surrounding the murders earlier that night of the two young gang members he had been the last to see. Officers Al McDermott and Dan Woodman watched him fidget in his seat as if the old ribbed wooden chair in which the youth sat had been placed over a bed of steaming coals. In the dim light of the 12th Precinct station house the sweat glistening on the boy's dark skin shone like silver beads. ". . . it won't come out no different at all." "Humor us," McDermott said, wearing an expression that barely passed for a smile. For months the officer had listened to other kids give their personal variations of the same story about some ghetto-roaming slime-thing that had developed an acquired taste for the flesh of several of Fishtown's young drug dealers. Because a few local pushers had suddenly mysteriously vanished the story quickly became gospel, creating the kind of folklore common among inner city kids who had little else to occupy their time. Most likely the story served as a convenient place to lay the blame for the street violence that had become just as common. McDermott knew that trying to put a lid on the killings in this part of town was like trying to clean up after Hurricane Andrew with a whisk broom, so not many murders got solved once the area's dealers declared open season on each other. More than likely the ghetto-stalking slime thing in the kid's story was just another beeper-carrying slime ball. Still this skinny gang punk's emotionally charged version of the Mungo tale was definitely an Academy Award contender. "Yeah. Right. Why shouldn't we go 'round this story one more time? And meanwhile you be sittin' on your fat asses here, and that motherfucker be tearin' through Fishtown like somethin' hungry just busted loose from the jungle. I guess the Mungo Man must be makin' the job of trackin' down local homeboys a whole lot easier. Saves all that paper work when you don't need to bust no dead man, ain't that right?" The kid took a moment to collect himself, wiping some spit from his mouth with the back of his hand. "Listen, I need a smoke, okay?" "Haven't you heard, Speedo?" McDermott leaned forward and spoke directly into the boy's nostrils. "Our mayor says all Philadelphia precincts have to be smoke-free starting today. Sorry." "For Christ's sake, Al, give it a rest," Woodman interrupted, and slipped the kid one of his Marlboros, even lit it for him. "Go on, son. Tell us again what happened tonight." The boy took a long draw on the cigarette while suspiciously eying the officer who gave it to him. Woodman shot a look at McDermott that told him ol' Speedo might be a mite too sharp to fall for the usual good cop/bad cop crap. "Like I tol' you before, the deal was goin' down at 'K' and 'A', near where you picked me up." The kid meant the corner of Kensington and Allegheny, and every Philadelphia cop knew that intersection was the lightning rod for just about every drug transaction east of the Frankford El. "Names," McDermott said holding his note pad. "Yeah, why not?" the kid said to the wall. "Won't matter much seein' as the two dudes is dead anyway. Well, first was Snipe . . . Willie Jamison's his real name, but no one never called him that. He was the one usually scored the blow from some blademan belongs to the 12th and Oxford boys. They's a bad-assed load of coal from over 'round Columbia Avenue, and my homeboys don't have much to do with 'em." "Except, of course, when you and your friends feel like getting a little high, then you and the Oxford boys suddenly get real tight. Isn't that right?" McDermott asked. He and Woodman had made the kid empty his pockets earlier and found a wrapped cellophane bag containing two dozen orange-cap crack vials, enough crack for the skinny tough and his friends to talk to God for quite a while. "You want to hear about the Mungo Man or not?" the kid said, demonstrating to the two officers that McDermott's words had struck solid granite. "Look, the homeboys and me, we don't want no mess with Oxford, we just doin' some business, see? We figure we score some blow and maybe some reefer, then party a little over at the Chain Man's place. The Chain Man, he always got these superfine bitches hangin' 'round--" "Forget the bitches, Speedo. You were telling us about Mungo---" "--Yeah, I'm gettin' to him. See, the 'K' and 'A' elevated station is still got some people comin' down the stairs at 11: 00 p.m. when we doin' our business. So Cheese - he's the Oxford boys' bag man - Cheese suggests we finish the deal a little down Allegheny away from all them bright lights and straphangers comin' off the trains. So me an' Snipe, we say we'll meet him down in that long alleyway behind Mr. Kelley's Bar and Grille, maybe a quarter of a block from 'K' and 'A'. Cheese, he says that's okay with him, so it's just the three of us goin' to do business. Snipe and me, we got maybe a couple hundred for a little Cee and maybe some crack, but me and the other homeboys is only buyin' the stuff, see, we ain't sellin' it . . ." "Yeah, Speedo, I'll be sure to write that down in my report," McDermott said. He thumped the eraser end of the pencil on his pad. The detective studied his coffee cup. He and Woodman had searched the alley and found some drops of blood near the cans, but no bodies. A drug deal gone bad, maybe a few homeboys cut and tossed somewhere else, but a meal for the Mungo monster was really pushing it. "You want to tell us again what you saw?" Woodman finally asked. "Oh, man," the lanky kid said, taking a deep breath. Retelling this part of the story required a real effort on his part, and he waited a beat before he spoke again. "Okay, it was like this. The deal was made, clean and proper. We was ready to leave for the Chain Man's when we seen him come out from behind the trash cans in the alley behind Mr. Kelley's Bar." For a moment it seemed McDermott was about to yawn. "You want to describe this 'Mungo' for us, Speedo?" McDermott's tone suggested he might be just as interested in hearing the kid recite the Donnelley Directory. "Hell, no! But I guess that's what I'm gonna do, ain't it?" The kid crushed the Marlboro in the ash tray and kept his eyes fixed on it. "I never seen nothin' like him, man. I mean, I heard about him, but I ain't never really seen him before. He come thunderin' out from behind those trash cans like he just been waitin' for the moment, and I could see he wasn't no human. More like some kind of ape or bear, or somethin' big and hairy you see comin' out of the woods. But he was standin' upright and he was one big mother. And somethin' else, somethin' that almost made me piss myself right where I stood. He was wearin' this old ratty coat, all stretched out and not fittin' real good, but wearin' it just the same. Must've got it from one of them gutter bums you see sleepin' on the heatin' grates near the river. Whatever that matted stuff was that he had all over him, it was drippin' funk right through that coat wherever he walked. Bet you'll probably find some of it still stinkin' up that alley!" "You said that Mr. Kelley's alleyway was dark," McDermott added. "But you saw this 'Mungo' dripping ?" "Yeah, it was dark. But it wasn't pitch, man, and I ain't blind neither. I know what I seen. And I didn't only see him --- I smelled him! We talkin' 'bout the kind of funk you usually wipe off your shoes. But what I did see was . . . I seen that thing's mouth open like a car hood, like its head was nothin' but mouth. And it was full of teeth, just rows of 'em, and opened so damn wide I bet the dude could scarf down a piano. Just went Ka-chomp! ---and Snipe wasn't standin' there no more. The Mungo Man just fell on him with those teeth, and when I seen that thing with Snipe's new boots hangin' out of its mouth I couldn't even get myself to turn my back to shag-ass, I was shakin' so. Cheese, he saw Mungo comin' for him and I seen him turn to run, but the alleyway was too long and thin for him to bust past me. I was behind Cheese, and that thing just got to him first. Damn, he moved fast!" McDermott and Woodman exchanged glances. "You ran?" McDermott asked. This wasn't an admission that many street tough kids would own up to. It violated the code. "Damn straight I ran! I heard Mungo chompin' on Snipe and then on Cheese, and I ain't fool enough to hang around to be desert. I hauled my ass outa there! Man, I never been so glad to see a patrol car as when I saw yours pull up." McDermott's pencil-taps had taken on a faster beat. "You were a block away from that alley when we picked you up, Speedo," Woodman said. "Son, that alley was clear no more than five minutes after you ran out of it, except for some blood, and there wasn't a whole lot of that. We picked you up with a pocket full of orange-caps and your own beeper, but you're telling us you don't deal that stuff. . ." Woodman flashed his best 'good cop' smile at the kid. ". . . and now you say that some huge dripping creature came slogging out of the night and just ate two guys whole, two guys you just happened to be 'doing business' with? Didn't leave a trace of them, then slithered back into the darkness without a single person on the street seeing anything? Are you asking Officer McDermott and me to believe that, son?" "Look man, I don't know any more than what I seen! Maybe the dude brought his Handiwipes. How the hell am I supposed to--?" The kid leaned back in the chair and looked blankly at the ceiling. He sighed deeply before he spoke. "I shoulda known it. Damn! I shoulda known no cop would never believe--" McDermott tapped his partner on the shoulder, Woodman nodded, and the two men stepped out into the office area away from where the kid sat alone in the dim light of the interrogation room muttering and cursing to himself. "So what do you think, Al?" "You already know what I think, Danny. Punks like him are used to spraying perfume on a turd and expecting us to say we smell roses. We got nothing on that kid except a possession charge, meaning we got jackshit. But that pusher he mentioned, that Cheese from the Oxford Street gang, you remember him? Collared in North Philly, then signed his own bail with dope money a few months back and boogied right out of the slammer. Maybe we should look for him and that Snipe kid. If they don't turn up, then we've got something to consider, something our pal Speedo knows a whole lot about. Maybe we should take our squirming little friend in there for a ride back to the 'K' and 'A' el stop to see what we can find." "Suppose what we find is ol' Thunderin' Mungo?" Woodman asked. "Suppose you kiss my ass," McDermott answered.
I remember publishing that story that Ken wrote for your anthology -- I ran it in Issue 9 of the magazine. He is a damn good writer who worked with almost everyone in the industry. He worked with me on four of the five Tabloid Purposes anthologies I published. He wrote a damn darkly funny hockey story called Gull Tender. It is cool that you are keeping him in print I appeared with him in the pages of RAGE MACHINE MAGAZINE and published him in the pages of multiple issues of The Ethereal Gazette he and Brian W. Keen came to the magazine when I started eight years ago.
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