Mengele's Moustache - Part 1

(Note: The following was inspired by characters and events originally depicted in Clive Barker's Cabal. I do not own the right to any of these characters.)

Eigerman held the photo by the edges, as if to stymie anyone interested in his fingerprints. The image, grainy but clear enough, offered a telescopic close-up of a woman carrying a child wrapped in a blanket. The woman’s name was Rachel or something. The kid clutched a brown Macy’s bag with the top half of a teddy bear’s head sticking out of it. The bear’s head looked like one of those old Kilroy Was Here graffito’s. Eigerman wondered where she got the bag. There wasn’t a Macy’s within 300 miles of Shere Neck, and never had been.

When the phone rang, he let Darla answer it, even though he knew it was going to be for him. Answering phones was Darla’s job. It was just about her only job. He put the photo face down when she stuck her head in the doorway. She didn’t need to see his business.

“Labowitz, line 1,” she said.

He looked at the phone with more than a little aggravation. They’d all been getting flaky ever since the dust-up at that big boneyard, but Labowitz was supposed to be their rock. Now, two times he’d gone and called in sick, and everyone knew full well there wasn’t anything wrong with him, not in the physical sense.

But usually he had the common courtesy to call. Not today, at least not until now, almost at the end of his shift. Eigerman picked up the phone and grunted.

Darla was starting to flake out, too. Whoever this was, it wasn’t Labowitz.

“I’ve got a horror story for you, Eigerman.”

“Who is this?”

“I’ll get to that in my own good time. Did you ever hear of Josef Mengele, Herr Kapitän? They used to call him ‘The White Angel’. Just like you, Eigerman. You and your storm troopers riding in on your big white horses and your bright shiny badges. The way some folks saw it, Mengele was one of the good guys.”

Eigerman sat up and reached for his cigarettes, shook one out. “Give me a reason not to hang up this phone, come find you, and kick your ass so hard you shit shoe polish.”

“Have you seen Gibbs lately?”

That got Eigerman’s attention. “What do you know about Gibbs?”

“I know that the rest of you came out of Midian feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof, while Gibbs left with a sort of sickness in his heart. Isn’t that right? The fires hardened the rest of you, but it somehow softened your comrade-in-arms. But that’s how things go, sometimes. Gibbs was slipping, and now he’s gone. Did you ever stop to think where he might have gone to? Or perhaps more importantly, what might have been waiting for him when he got there?”

“Maybe we could meet up somewhere and you could tell me more about it,” said Eigerman.

“You might not like that. Tell you what, say hi to your pal Labowitz. That’s a Jewish name, isn’t it? Dr Mengele had himself a couple of Jewish assistants at his lab in Auschwitz, did you know that? Helped the White Angel butcher all those children for his precious experiments, but they could hardly be blamed, being under duress and all. Although Labowitz was hardly under duress, was he?”

“I don’t suppose,” Eigerman said.

“And yet, he was practically up to his armpits in blood before that night ended – both ours and yours, did you know that Herr Kapitän? Did you know Labowitz went bezerk down there and killed 4 of yours?”

“Bullshit.”

“Is it?” There was a dry, reedy chuckle on the other end of the line. “Maybe I can make him talk for you one of these days. Better yet, maybe I can cut out your pet storm trooper’s tongue and hand it to you.”

On the other end there came a muffled scream, and Eigerman accidentally crushed the cigarette he was holding between his fingers. He shouted into the phone, not an actual word but the sort of noise you might make to ward off a wild animal. This earned Eigerman another one of those low, throaty laughs, but at least the screaming stopped.

“Do I have your full attention?”

“What did you just do?”

The voice continued as if the scream never happened. “Dr Mengele’s research was supposed to have some bearing on Eugenics, but mostly he liked to torture folks. Now, here’s your horror story, Eigerman. By the time the Nazis faced what they had coming, foxy old Josef Mengele was long gone. Sure, he was sentenced to death at Nuremberg, but the ugly bit of it is that the ‘White Angel’ was sentenced in absentia.
The real horror story is that foxy Mr Mengele died of perfectly natural causes on a beach in South America at the ripe old age of 67. He died – no joke – while actually splashing in the surf on a beach in Brazil. Playing in the goddamned ocean. Sometimes Eigerman, the monsters get away after all. The hell of it is, in this particular situation that could cut either way, don’t you think?”

Eigerman found himself gripping the phone so tight that it creaked in his fist. Finally, he managed “Who are you?”

“Why I’m the Devil to you angel, Eigerman. I’m a flaming rat. I am the fire that cleanses, Mein Kapitän, and you will know my name soon enough.”

The line went dead without another word. Eigerman stared at the phone in his hand for a good, long time before replacing it in its cradle carefully, as if it were a grenade.

He pushed away from the desk on legs that felt hollow, and as fragile as porcelain rose stems. He flipped the photo back over for one last look, and felt his stomach turn a slow greasy roll. He studied their faces. He’d seen them before, sure enough.

“Get me Labowitz on the phone,” He hollered out to Darla. He hated the way he voice broke.

“Something wrong, sir?”

Eigerman felt for his cigarettes, saw them on the desk, and left them there. “Nothing,” he said. “Just, get hold of him, will you?”

“He hasn’t answered in almost an hour, sir.”

***

30 minutes later, Eigerman was at Labowitz’s house, pounding on the front door. He went back to the car and radioed Darla. “Try his phone again,” he said.

“I’m trying,” Darla said. Nothing.

Eigerman cut off the radio. A cursory search of the porch yielded a spare key under the ashtray next to the rocking chair. “You’re in law enforcement, Labe-o,” said Eigerman. “You ought to know better.”

He let himself in, saying “Don’t shoot” and the like to what he discovered fairly quickly was an empty house. There was an unpleasant smell to the place, but Eigerman attributed that at first to the fact that Labowitz had the unsanitary habit of cleaning deer on the back patio, and didn’t always hose off the concrete right away.

Only, something whispered to him that might not be the case today. He unsnapped his holster and rested his hand on the butt of his gun. The kitchen didn’t set his mind at ease. It looked the same as always, except for an overturned chair and a spilled bottle of Labatt’s on the linoleum floor. The bottle wasn’t shattered, just spilled. If this was a struggle, it was a quick one. Something else made the hair on Eigerman’s arms stand on end. It was a black matchbook with letters stamped in gold. They bore the words “Eden’s Draw.”

The very same place that the little girl and her mother had been photographed at.

Eigerman spun out of the driveway, almost losing control of the cruiser, running over a garbage can, veering out of the road culvert. All screeching tires and spraying gravel into the narrow unpaved road, he raced towards Eden’s Draw.

***

There were 4 police officers left in Shere Neck after the raid on Midian. That was 6 weeks ago. A week after that, Gibbs turned in his resignation and headed off to stay with some relatives in Calgary. Nobody heard from him since.

The thing was, nobody had bothered to look. That jab earlier about coming out of the fires hardened, that seemed true enough, but maybe they were all a little too hard. Maybe they’d gone brittle. Anyway, with Labowitz off the grid, that left just Eigerman and Pettine.

“Speaking of which…” Eigerman snatched up the radio and attempted to make contact with his (last) only other deputy. No luck – after 5 minutes on a half dozen bandwidths, he realized that all he was doing by now was making anyone with a police scanner very, very nervous.

***

There were 4 police officers left in Shere Neck after the raid on Midian. That was 6 weeks ago. A week after that, Gibbs turned in his resignation and headed off to stay with some relatives in Calgary. Nobody heard from him since.
The thing was, nobody had bothered to look. That jab earlier about coming out of the fires hardened, that seemed true enough, but maybe they were all a little too hard. Maybe they’d gone brittle. Anyway, with Labowitz off the grid, that left just Eigerman and Pettine.

“Speaking of which…” Eigerman snatched up the radio and attempted to make contact with his (last) only other deputy. No luck – after 5 minutes on a half dozen bandwidths, he realized that all he was doing by now was making anyone with a police scanner very, very nervous.

The Eden’s Draw Motor Lodge was a 90 minute drive from Shere Neck. Eigerman made it there in just over an hour. He got Darla back on the radio and conveyed without saying as much exactly how important it was that they get a hold of Pettine.
Puling in front of the main office, Eigerman saw 2 rows of duplex bungalows, no doubt with a privacy door between the suites. Most of the cars out front looked old and shoddy, many with meager belongings roped slipshod over rusted luggage racks, many more with cardboard and black garbage bags duct taped over the windows.

A center office housed a chain smoking elderly Russian immigrant named Bepka, who favored keeping her considerable iron grey mane piled up on top of her head in a 50’s style beehive hairdo, and wore cat eyed reading glasses with a faux pearl fob.
8 faded blue Cyrillic characters were tattooed on her prominent knuckles. She sat in a bulletproof glass booth that was nearly opaque from smoke stains. Now, Bepka lit a fresh cigarillo and studied the glossy that Eigerman had slipped through a stainless steel drawer, along with 2 twenty dollar bills.

“Ya, I seen them,” said Bepka after a moment. “They rented both rooms in building 13, paid cash."

“How many nights?” Eigerman asked. Sweat broke out on his upper lip.

Bepka slid the photo back through the tray and looked him over. “What do you want with women and children, Politsey? I don’t think there were, forgive me – are, up to anything that would warrant the attention of the law.”

“I just want to ask them a couple of questions. They aren’t in any trouble.”

“So you say,” Bepka said. She looked at the 2 twenties on her side of the bulletproof glass with a resigned sense of defeat. “I still say these two are better left alone, Härra Policeman. But, money’s money.”

Bepka rummaged through a small metal box mounted on a wall near the rear exit. After a moment, she slammed down a set of keys for 13A, and a second set for 13B.

“For what it’s worth, the woman and the little girl left either late last night or early this morning. I know because their car is gone, and hasn’t been back.”

“You see anybody else with them?”

“Ya.” She stared at him until he slid another twenty through the slot, but she pushed it back at him.

“No need, Härra Eigerman. I’ll tell you what I know. He was tall, but not as tall as you. He wore a long overcoat and a hat. A - what is the word – a cowboy hat. But he was no cowboy.”

“Did you see his face?”

“He did not have a face. I mean… I did not see his face. I am sorry, my English, there is not a …” She trailed off, and Eigerman saw that Bepka had gone the color of milk. She finally managed to say “I wouldn’t go looking for him if I were you.” Then, she slammed down the shade and turned off the light, and despite Eigerman’s knocking, Bepka never came back.

He tried calling Pettine again before screwing up the courage to approach Bungalow 13. In the air hung a foul, wild animal smell, along with the coppery scent of blood. Eigerman unhooked the holster strap, pulled out his .45 and thumbed off the safety before inserting the key into the lock.

The door gave some resistance, and the smell grew stronger. Driven by a mixture of fear and outrage, Eigerman drew back and stomped his boot against the door so hard it cracked in half and flew right through the frame.

Instantly, the figure on the bed rose up, draped in a crimson sheet with its arms stretched out forward, towards Eigerman. It moaned and thrashed, and it floated a full foot up off of the filthy mattress. It was a screaming, faceless skull, all wide wild yes and gnashing teeth. Its clasping fingers groped for the tip of Eigerman’s nose. Eigerman fired, a quick center mass double-tap followed by one to the head, tearing away chunks like bloody softballs. Acrid cordite filled the room and the smoke detector set off a piercing wail as the apparition began to swing slowly, back and forth like some nightmare piñata.

“What the Christ?” Eigerman asked to nobody. He leaned against the doorway and pivoted, clearing the room. Every door had been left open. Now he saw the silvery filaments that connected the bloody carcass to eye-bolts in the bungalow’s ceiling. Eigerman moved through both halves of the duplex without another word. His finger had about 4 lbs of pull on the 5 lb. trigger. If so much as a shadow moved the wrong way it was getting its head blown off. Meanwhile, the stench inside the place smell landed continuous square punches in his nose and solar plexus.

With his eyes darting everywhere, Eigerman flicked out his leatherman and unceremoniously cut the man loose from his moorings. He would have stood just over 6 feet tall, Caucasian, supine on the hotel mattress with his arms stretched out like a reclining Christ figure. Where his face should have been was a mask of blood and sinew. His hair had been removed too, leaving a hideous landscape of blood and gleaming white bone. His teeth jutted from his skinless lips like piano keys, and a hundred some-odd blowflies were engaged in a riotous airborne orgy, frolicking and splashing about in a surf paradise of gore.

What set Eigerman off though, wasn’t the man’s missing face, but the chunk that appeared to have been torn from his upper arm. It reminded Eigerman of a lamb shank bit down to the bone, and that was it. A geyser of noxious bile surged up his esophagus. His eyes were unable to stop processing the wretched tableau that stretched out before him – the bloody grinning skull, the chunk of meat missing from the muscular arm.

Then he saw the message, scrawled in blood on the wall behind the bed. Eigerman read it out loud in a tremulous, awe-stricken voice:

Les Yeux Sans Visage

He thought back to what B had said just before slamming her window shut: “He didn’t have a face.”

The phone began to ring.