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    Monster Aces
    Monster Aces
    Monster Aces
    Ebook261 pages5 hours

    Monster Aces

    By Pro Se Press

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    About this ebook

    THEY DON’T JUST HUNT MONSTERS – THEY DESTROY THEM Having selflessly abandoned their identities, their pasts and their futures, the Monster Aces are all that stand between humanity and the fell creatures that lurk in the shadows. Four men and one woman use their amazing abilities as a team to scour the globe for monsters and bring an end to their unholy existence - whatever the danger, whatever the cost. Through five thrilling tales crafted by some of Heroic Fiction’s most engaging authors you will ride alongside the Aces on the trail of monsters both classic and new. No environment is too severe nor too remote for these adventurers to seek their prey and destroy them forever. The team, lead by a mysterious military veteran, uncover evil in mysterious European villages, in dark forests and fetid swamps, in ancient rivers and on the high seas...monsters are everywhere, but so too are the Monster Aces. Concept creator Jim Beard is joined by writers Ron Fortier, Barry Reese, and Van Plexico for a new twist on the classic monster stories of yore, a unique melding of horror and driving pulp action that will thrill and chill you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPro Se Press
    Release dateNov 12, 2012
    ISBN9781301112104
    Monster Aces
    Author

    Pro Se Press

    Based in Batesville, Arkansas, Pro Se Productions has become a leader on the cutting edge of New Pulp Fiction in a very short time.Pulp Fiction, known by many names and identified as being action/adventure, fast paced, hero versus villain, over the top characters and tight, yet extravagant plots, is experiencing a resurgence like never before. And Pro Se Press is a major part of the revival, one of the reasons that New Pulp is growing by leaps and bounds.

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      Book preview

      Monster Aces - Pro Se Press

      MONSTER ACES

      Copyright © 2012 Pro Se Productions

      Published by Pro Se Press at Smashwords

      The stories in this publication are fictional. All of the characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the publisher.

      Edited by – Percival Constantine

      Editor in Chief, Pro Se Productions - Tommy Hancock

      Submissions Editor - Barry Reese

      Publisher & Pro Se Productions, LLC Chief Execuitive Officer - Fuller Bumpers

      Pro Se Productions, LLC

      133 1/2 Broad Street

      Batesville, AR, 72501

      870-834-4022

      proseproductions@earthlink.net

      www.proseproductions.com

      Hunting the Monster Aces, The Devil’s Clutch, and Hand of the Monster copyright © 2012 Jim Beard

      The Swamp People copyright © 2012 Barry Reese

      The River of Deceit copyright © 2012 Van Allen Plexico

      The Ghoul copyright © 2012 Ron Fortier

      Monster Aces concept created by Jim Beard

      Front Cover Art by Terry Pavlet

      Cover Format and Logos by Sean E. Ali

      E-book Formatting by Russ Anderson

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION: UNDER THE FEDORA, BEHIND THE MASK

      by Tommy Hancock

      BLACK MASK, BIG CITY

      by Tommy Hancock

      THE PORTRAIT

      by Terry Alexander

      BUTCHER’S FESTIVAL

      by Ron Fortier

      VOICE TO A NEW GENERATION

      by Erwin K. Roberts

      THE BONE QUEEN

      by Andrea Judy

      HUNTING THE MONSTER ACES

      Chances are good that if you’ve picked up this book, it was that one, single word in its title that really reached out and grabbed you:

      Monster.

      Am I right? Of course, I am. Not surprising, really, because as we all know, people love monsters.

      There’s no pressing need to dissect that particular passion, for among those of us in that none-too-secret society, we understand that getting goose-bumps over monsters is a phenomenon that stretches back to prehistory, maybe even beyond, and speaks to mankind’s greatest fears…and our darkest dreams. Monsters have been right their at our side as we crawled out of the cave and began to build civilizations that, on the surface, would one day claim that monsters were nothing more than figments of our imaginations, child’s play and the like. But we know better, don’t we?

      The ancient mythologies of history are littered with the bones of monsters, and though such tales served to horrify their intended audiences as morality – and mortality – plays, they also entertained them. Which just goes to prove that old adage once again: can’t live with ‘em and can’t live without ‘em.

      MONSTER ACES has a straight-forward, shoot-from-the-hip mission statement: to combine the monsters that thrill and chill us with the type of pulp fiction story that was in its heyday at the same time as heyday of classic horror films. In other words, the perfect Monster Mash.

      See, our guide, our touchstone for MONSTER ACES is the classic cycle of Universal Studios monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s, with a liberal dash of the later Hammer Studios eerie efforts mixed in for good measure. I was introduced to those films on Sir Graves Ghastly out of Detroit in the early 1970s and, now that I think of it, that’s about the same time that my dad first introduced me to all the legendary pulp heroes…which sets the origins of this book at an even earlier time than I realized.

      The center-point of the concept is a team of adventurers whose sole purpose is to scour the globe for creatures of all kinds and destroy them at all costs. But, as in all those great black-and-white films, a hint of humanity in our resident monsters may also serve to make us pause us in our tracks and ask that ages-old question: who exactly are the real monsters?

      The bible that I prepared for the purposes of this book defines a monster as a supernatural or extra-normal being that was either born a monster or became one through an accident, either scientific or occult-based. It continues to note that in the world of the MONSTER ACES, these creatures are evil or are pawns of evil and must be destroyed at all costs. Stopping them is not enough; their preying upon the innocent must come to a bitter end.

      The adventurers who seek that bitter end are known as the Aces, and they’re literally the best at what they do, thus the popular pulp tag of aces. They’re a selfless lot, like the best of the classic pulp heroes, each of them having given up their true names, personal lives and pasts to devote their existence to fighting monsters. Someday, when the world is free of such beings, they will lay down their arms, disband and, returning to society, reclaim their lives. Until that time, they have sworn their allegiance to Cap’n, the leader and founder of the Aces, and the ideals of the group. And they cannot be shaken from those ideals.

      Above and beyond those specifics, I believe we’ve loaded MONSTER ACES up with plenty of thrills, spills, action and adventure to keep the most particular pulp aficionado and monster maven on the edge of their coffins and turning the page to see what happens next. To do that little thing right, I took the concept from a solo mission to a true team effort.

      My fellow scribes on the project, Ron Fortier, Barry Reese, and Van Plexico, had they been born into a much earlier age, could have given such classic monster screenwriters like the great Kurt Siodmak a run for his tana leaves. They dug into the Aces and their adventures with gusto and came back with three tales that not only rang true to what I had envisioned for the team, but also added their own unique touches – and that’s just what a shared anthology should be, in my book. Messrs. Fortier, Reese, and Plexico’s monsters are the kind of creatures that not only inspire terror, but also rise up from the pages they occupy to live and breathe like their cinematic counterparts. I couldn’t be happier with their efforts, and I hope you’ll feel the same once you’ve visited their strange, twisted little worlds.

      Now, I’m not sure about those guys, but as I was writing my own two stories for this volume, I could see some of the legendary horror stars of yesteryear lurking around the corners of my mind’s eye and lending me a bit of their voices. Hopefully, you too will feel the spiritual presence of Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney, Lee, Cushing and all their brethren in MONSTER ACES.

      There wasn’t a publication quite like this back in the glory days of the pulp magazines, but, if there was, we’d like to think its stories would be much like the ones you’ll discover in this volume.

      It was a labor of love – love for monsters, that is!

      Jim Beard

      Somewhere in the Great Black Swamp

      THE DEVIL’S CLUTCH

      by Jim Beard

      1. The Horror in the Night

      THEY RAN HEADLONG towards home, their little village, cold and exhausted and lungs burning. Terror had taken root in their bellies. They had never known such fright in their young, innocent lives; it made their hearts hammer in their chests as if they would burst.

      Down from the hills and into the darkening woods that surrounded Nacht like a crescent of ancient sentinels, the boy and girl reached out desperately for the trees like old friends. Only when their fingers at last brushed the aging oaks did they release their death-grip on each other.

      Into…into the woods, Dala! implored the boy between gasps. He fancied himself a man until this night. Earlier, in the daylight, he had strutted like a peacock around his circle of friends, boasting to them that he had the word of the girl that the two of them would take a walk together after sundown, and that they would hold hands. Now, he would give much, maybe everything, to be home and safe and warm and to be shut of the whole thing.

      The girl, a pretty thing with long brown, braided hair, took one long shuddering breath. Ragged and rasping, it burned through her chest as she melted against a tree. Up there, up in the hills where they had played together as small children, she and the boy, they had been approached, and then hunted.

      Dala whipped her head around suddenly, peering into the darkness, to see if they were still prey for whatever it was that had sought them out.

      No, no! she cried plaintively at the boy, pointing into the trees. "Too tight…we would be trapped! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!"

      ***

      THE BOY, FLANDER, grasped the arm of the girl and wrenched her around to face him. His countenance was white. Bone-white. Spittle flew from his lips as he admonished his companion.

      It’s the only way, Dala! Go! I will follow! It’s almost upon us!

      Not two steps into the hopeful shelter of the trees, they heard the sound again. The sound they had first heard up in the hills, toward the mountain. Like no sound on Earth.

      Skittering, crackling, like sticks being rubbed together or snapped in rhythmic succession. It grew louder behind them, lower to the ground at first and then higher, as if whatever chased them had reared up to reach out for them. Dala screamed, and Flander dragged her deeper into the woods. His nails bit into the skin of her smooth arm.

      They ran as fast as the trees would allow them. Then, Flander stopped, and then pulled Dala to him. Where once she would have been coy and shy to him, she now welcomed his arms around her.

      Listen, he whispered throatily in her ear. Dala tried to still her throbbing heart and then listened.

      In the distance, they could hear the sound of the North Sea, crashing itself against the cliffs outside their village in the little country of Brevaria. It was a lonely sound. They strained their ears further and waited. Flander realized with alarm that the darkness was now complete; they could see absolutely nothing, not even their hands before their faces. Not even each other.

      Dala shuddered, finally feeling the cold of the night deep in her bones. Her shawl was gone, dropped somewhere in the hills they had fled. A pang of regret spiked in her bosom, and then subsided. The summer was coming to an end; soon it would be autumn, then the harvest, then… But she could not concentrate on what might be, days and weeks from now, only on living through the night.

      Again came the sound. The skittering, the crackling, the dry rustle of…something.

      They looked all around. Up, then down, then deep as they could into the inky blackness. Nothing. But the sound continued, at first off to one side, in the direction from where they guessed they had come. There was no real way of knowing.

      Then, the sound came from above. Directly above.

      ***

      THE TWO YOUNG PEOPLE froze. It was as if they forgot to breathe. Something brushed Dala’s cheek. Flander felt the touch of what he imagined to be a finger on his hair.

      A scream tore itself out of Dala. Then, she ran. Flander ran, too, only a step behind the girl.

      Belialah said…said we would be…safe… she muttered, more to herself than anything.

      Some innate sense of direction flooded through them both at that moment, guiding them towards the village. It was a primal thing, a survival instinct activated deep within their brains. It drove them on, through and around the trees and towards what they believed to be safety.

      The alien sound followed them.

      Suddenly, the girl lost mobility. It was as if her arms and legs were frozen in place. Her limbs had become entangled in clammy strands of some unknown substance, and then, horribly, she felt herself falling. The boy crashed into her from behind, toppling them both into the loam of leaves and dirt between the close-knit trees. The ground smelled of mold. Dala’s face went directly into it, and she choked and coughed as the dirt entered her mouth and nostrils.

      Incredibly, though, Flander’s headlong plight and subsequent impact upon her seemed to have freed her from her restraints. She felt the boy’s weight jump off of her and his hands grab at her arms, his grunt of shock and then determination ringing in her ears.

      Then, a sharp pain in her calf sent knives of cold ice through her veins. She screamed and screamed again.

      Consciousness abandoned her there in the dirt, among the trees and the oppressive night.

      ***

      THE HARVEST FESTIVAL should be sacrosanct! bellowed the mayor of Nacht, his cheeks puffed up to unhealthy proportions. "To-to change it—to change any part of it—would be akin to heresy!"

      Those gathered around him in the little tavern crinkled their eyes and smiled behind their mugs of dark, thick ale. A few nods bent a few necks. For a meeting of the Planning Committee, it was already following a normal, quite predictable path. That is to say, chaos.

      Some called for civility, others for a vote; one citizen called for the mayor’s resignation. Almost every man present called for more ale. Nothing could possibly surprise them this evening, and they meant to be prepared for a lengthy planning session.

      Then the door flew open and Flander catapulted through it, heaving the insensate body of young Dala onto the nearest table.

      "I-I-I think she’s…dead!" he wailed.

      ***

      THE MAYOR SHRIEKED and the other men gripped their tables in shock. There was an immediate sense that a sacrilege had been performed, the interruption of a meeting of the Town Elders. Then, a more common sense prevailed and one man stumbled over to Flander and grabbed the boy.

      What’s the meaning of this? he shouted in the youth’s face. Dead, you say? My lad, I will thrash you myself for this petty trickery…

      Flander’s wild eyes bore into the man, one of his father’s best friends. "No, no! Herr Halpern, look! Dala…she is hurt! She might be dead! I don’t know! I don’t know!"

      The men of Nacht gathered around the table on which Dala lay in a clump and they straightened out her limbs and spine into a more restive position. Doctor Leck spread his arms, silently requesting room for him to observe the patient.

      The girl was of ashen complexion, her hair unkempt and full of leaves and small twigs. There was soil on her face and her filthy garments were torn in many places. She was not dead, for the men could see her chest rise and fall, though sluggishly. On her leg, they could also see a horrible rent, as if she were slashed with a straight razor. Blood was caked around the wound, as well as more dirt and bits of leaves.

      Doctor Leck turned slowly from the girl and leveled his gaze at Flander. Menace filled his eyes as he skewered Flander with mounting fury.

      You! he growled. "What have you done, boy? What heinous, vile—"

      "No, no! cried Flander. Realization flooded over him, the cold dread of the falsely accused. I would never—"

      Then, came a loud, booming noise, like clods of dirt on a coffin lid.

      ***

      IT REVERBERATED throughout the entire structure of the little tavern, shaking it to its very timbers and rafters. The sound occurred to some of the inhabitants as something very large or heavy impacting against the outer walls. It was an alien noise to them, like nothing they had ever experienced.

      A window shattered across the main room, on a back wall. The mayor flinched and yelped. So too did others of his constituency. Only a few feet away from the first, another window noisily shattered into bits. Something was obviously trying to get in, said the collective brains present, but there seemed to be no time to dwell upon what that something might be.

      The loud impact sounds continued, one after another. The tavern-goers traced the impacts down the wall, away from the shattered windows and around one corner. Then, horrible screeching sounds came to their ears, as if great tree limbs were being forcibly scraped across stone and then shattered.

      Something made the doctor look up just then, but altogether too late to save the poor old soul as a portion of the roof caved in and buried him in debris.

      The young man Flander could take no more of it. Something snapped within his already-compromised senses and he flung himself at the front door, the cries of outrage and fear from the townsmen nipping at his heels. Forgetting Dala, forgetting everyone, perhaps even forgetting his own safety, he threw open the door and plunged out into the night.

      He pitched headlong into what could only be described as an immense net. Though the ropy tendrils of the supposed trap caught at his clothes, his skin and hair, somehow his trajectory and his youthful burst of speed drove him through the net and beyond.

      Flander did not look back. His immortal soul would most certainly have to pay the price for it, but he did not look back. Cobblestones beneath his boots, he ran down the lane and towards the cliffs and the crashing North Sea.

      ***

      A DRIVING, HOWLING WIND had picked up since Flander approached the tavern carrying the girl Dala. Now, it blew even stronger, like a living thing, a certain sign of an approaching storm. The village of Nacht was prone to such gales—surprise storms the villagers called them, though they were normally of no surprise whatsoever. That night, one such gale whipped up and over the huddled buildings of Nacht and its little band of dwellers.

      The boy reached the cliffs that defined the western border of his birthplace, but drew up before pitching over them. With distance between him and the horror of the woods and tavern, his panic had subsided enough for some small reason to return to his fevered brain. Lightning flashed in the distance, out over the sea. Then, closer. It lit up his immediate surroundings in blinding, staccato explosions.

      Flander thought he might have heard a scream from the village. He prayed for those he’d left behind.

      He was not certain exactly why he’d run in the direction of the cliffs, but there were many times in his youthful existence when he’d sat at their edge and stared out at the sea, wondering what the waters might bring on any given day. Such thoughts had given him a kind of peace in days past.

      Another bolt of lightning then illuminated the cliffs and the waves that licked their sides. There, in the middle of the burst, like a dream, Flander saw a large ship.

      The image of the vessel had burned itself into his eyes in the short burst of the lightning. He could see it still, though the dark had once again asserted itself. He was quite sure it was real—yes! He could hear voices from down below, somewhere between the ship and the shore. Someone was coming!

      Flander began to run towards the Long Stair, the only access to the village from the shoreline that lay at the bottom of the cliffs. If there were visitors from the ship, they would have to use the Long Stair to approach Nacht. There was no other way.

      His footing was sure, knowing well the terrain he covered, but the boy was too late to meet anyone at the top of the

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