Spring 1941:
Beginning in 1897 West Virginia had been plagued by a “blue devil dog,” a named coined by local farmers and hunters in Randolph county, who ventured again and again into the hills and forests to put a stop to the creature feasting on sheep and other livestock. This is our story of our involvement in bringing the hound to heel.
“Okay sweetie when I say ‘Lift!’ you lift the back of the car. And I should remind you not to lift it by the bumper guards.” I said, reminding Sue of how her lycan strength had pulled the guards off our Pierce Arrow, the result being our new car going into the shop, yet again.
“Oh like how you crush doorknobs when trying to open doors, my Maddy dear?”
“Touché dear. Now come on, ready? Lift,” and with that, Sue lifted it in the blink of an eye
I had changed the flat tire on the left rear wheel. We had made sure no one came motoring by in either direction so as to not witness our Bia and Hermes shtick. Now with that chore finish and me too mortified to let Sue know she has a line of road mud, across her maroon diem plaid over coat from the lift, we continued on our way to find a hunter’s cabin owned by Joshua Portefaix. “Did you check the moon’s position tonight?” I ask after taking a last bite of a rare cooked hamburger smeared with piccalilli while Sue picked pepperoni out of what locals call a pepperoni roll. We had stopped at a diner a few miles back on this road “Old Scratch” would be proud of.
“It will be a quarter moon after sundown at 6:48, so I won’t need its pushy help tonight,” Sue answers me while chewing. “At the most a quarter moon is like a tail wind glow. Now let me ask you this dear. When are you going to admit we’re lost? Admit it; we’re lost. Well?”
“Listen as crappy as this road is, we’re headed in the right direction Sue.”
“Says who?”
“Says the next shack or cabin we get to, to ask directions.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Well Seneca Susan Alberta SunMountain, breakfast for you, minus cackle fruit and pancakes, at Pete’s twenty-four hour pancake joint on Times Square, or a movie at the Apollo on 125th Street, and if I’m right regarding our direction? What do I get? “I love to see Sue cringe when I use her middle name, Alberta.
“How about a little libation from my neck when we get back to New York?” Sue gives me a coquettish smile, knowing I couldn’t pass up that wager.
“It’s a bet love,” in truth it wasn’t a bet ’cause at the end of the day, or in our case the dead of night, Sue would get her bacon and OJ, and I would get my nibble puncture treat anyway, and what my doll doesn’t know is when I do, I plan to gift her a loop of Akora black pearls that I had hidden back home. I tell you brother, we smother each other.
Stopping in front of a run-down house set back from the road, we see on a porch a gentleman with a weather-beaten face in bib overalls and flannel shirt, and next to him a stern-faced woman in a plumberry country dress, and they are in their chairs slowly rocking away time, while a gaggle of dowdy rowdy children stop playing after supper tag and stare at us, as we exit our auto.
“Hey friend my name’s Carl La Fong, and this fabulous young lady next to me is Tess
Garfield; we manage the Tammany Hall Rod and Hunt Club in Queens, New York, and we’re looking for a Joshua Portefaix, I hear he’s good at training blue tic coon hounds.” Back in ’38 Eliot Ness had christened Sue and I with those aliases during an affair in Cleveland, and we liked them so much we keep using them.
“You can say that, though he sold his dogs. My name’s Larkin.” Larkin’s wife gives him a “You’re giving out too much information” look.
“Which way can I find him? “looking past Larkin, I give the wife a mind control “calm down ma’am” gape, which gives her a jolt then makes her return a confused smile.
“You would have found Frenchy by now, if you hadn’t stopped to ask directions. His cabin is just a holler up the road, a crick and woods, to your right his cabin to your left,”
“Thanks much pal,” Sue sucks the air between her teeth at my “I told you so” smile.
“But y’all best be careful; we got that blue devil dog roams round these woods at night. Don’t want to be caught on foot!”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I say, giving the husband the same look I had given the wife, and we drive on.
It was during the Great War that I met Joshua Portefaix. The federal government had got wind of Sue and my exploits with the Office of Special Concerns in New York and invited me to join the U.S. Army Corp’s secret “Hoo Doo” bureau led by Major Milford Fulbright, an old calvary man and occultist. Sue would stay stateside and handle affairs in old New York. We were an odd bunch, from Astro “The seer” Kerby and his N rays to Joshua the hunter, to yours truly; we would go behind enemy lines at night and work our trades. At first we didn’t gel, to the point of Joshua and I engaging in city versus rural fisticuffs, but once he tasted my knuckle game, he calmed down. It also helped that I saved his tail from a Kaiser patrol one night.
“You think Joshua’s okay?” Sue asks with concern in her voice.
“I hope so. These woods on the other side look ominous, and perfect if looking for a folklore legend. There, that should be it.” I pulled in, or should say I bumped along, for all of the odds and ends of junk that littered the front yard, parking next to the carcass of an old model T Ford, to see, among all of this mess, Joshua’s cabin. Sundown finished, the glow from Sue’s quarter moon plus stars are more in abundance than what we city folk can view back in New York, and they are helpful. After a few yells for Joshua go unanswered I give Sue a, “I know what I’m doing” look before applying a soft magenta glow to turn and unlock the cabin front door.
Once inside after a brief look around, scanning for electrical help, a ceiling fan light is sparked on displaying a cabin, that has either been lived in too much or was scene of a horrific struggle. Empty tin cans of Armour dressed beef are strewn on a rickety blood-stained dining room table. In a corner is a toppled over RCA Victor phonograph, and scattered around on the floor, are, or rather were, 78’s, the making of a Mildred Bailey record collection that is now worthless chips of shellac.
“Maddy take a gander at this,” Sue orders standing in the doorway of the cabin bedroom.
Inside a bloody, slashed, ripped-up mattress and box spring have been upended.
“This is not good Sue.”
“You don’t think the blue…,” Sue starts.
“I think we have to find Joshua pronto is what I think,”
****
Sue cleared the dining room table while I retreated to the Pierce to get our suitcases. Returning to the cabin I find Sue, with one hand on her hip, is waiting for me. Oh boy is she waiting for me, in the other outstretched hand is her now earth-toned overcoat.
“You mean to tell me, Madison Prescott Cavendish, you didn’t notice mud on my coat?” When Sue’s irises and pupils do that hazel back and forth, brother she’s mad.
“I didn’t notice dear,” I lie.
“I bet you did! “says Sue violently bushing her coat. The heart of the matter is the coat is a match to her dress and veiled pill box hat, or it would be if she smeared mud on said dress and hat, which I, for one, have no plans to suggest she do.
“I tell you what. When we get back to Manhattan, we’ll have it cleaned and I’ll even throw in a surprise,” I flash my cute fangs, which gets her all the time, and gets me out of trouble.
Placing her coat on the back of one of Joshua’s wooden chairs, Sue steps to me wrapping her arms around the back of my neck, with her optical rant subsiding, Sue whispers into my ear, “You mean that string of black pearls you thought you hid from me in that hollowed-out copy of Zanly Norwood’s Alchemist Recipes, which Sekhmet showed me,” Sue coos.
Zanly’s book was not good, I see, as a hiding place, just as it was not a good alchemy book in general. I also make a mental note to talk to that nosey, tentacled feline when we get back. We smooch, which may turn into a mongoose versus cobra amore entanglement, if we don’t cease. “Okay let’s get to work love,” I tell her after we come up for air. Outside a night mist
has arrived and both our ears pick up a ghostly howl off among the sycamores. The only way we figure to meet up with the blue devil is to go after it. With that thought in mind, Sue undresses. Out of dress, unmentionables, stockings, square-toed block heel shoes, and before we head out the door I point to Sue’s pillbox still on top of her head, which she hands to me with a smirk.
Once outside, with the aid of a Tilley lamp, Sue gets down on her hands and knees gripping grass and soil, while I stand to the side, with a house coat and slippers. Eyes closed Sue is silent until “Oh Maddy please I can’t…!” Sue moans, which turn into growls and baying a grayish fur with a magenta streak bristles up through her skin, legs and arms stretching into fore and hind legs. Back in 1914, after we were infected, over dinner at Shanley’s one night, I asked her how the transition felt, and with tears in her eyes, my Sue said it was like being torn apart while having the sensation of her brain being on fire.
Rising up Sue jerks her head in my direction, but recognizes me, and she bounds off across the road into the misty woods towards that howl that has come closer. I pull from the holster under my tweed jacket and overcoat my .44 to check the bullets resting in its chambers. I wait like Joe Louis’s corner man, Jack Blackburn, parking myself down on a rocking chair on Joshua’s front porch. We’re going to meet this devil dog, and find out what has happened to Joshua.
After an hour or so, frenzied barking and howling jangle and jar me to a standing position on the porch, through the mist Sue returns in a slow lope switching to an upright hind foot toe walk, and behind her struts a bipedal canine, its coat a slate blue. Stopping suddenly it dashes behind a tree. The sinister snarling from behind the tree ebbs into a human cough, as Sue enters Joshua’s cabin to calm down and change.
“That you Cavendish? “comes a nasal voice from behind the tree.
“Greetings Josh I see old habits die hard,” I tease.
“I reckon so buddy, but before I fill you in, could you kindly go into my cabin and fetch me my work boots and a red union suit from out my middle dresser drawer, darn chilly it is tonight.”
“Sure thing Josh,” I guess Sue must have overheard us, for before I could knock, the door opens just a bit, and my sweetie thrusted out what Josh requested, being as she was in the midst of dressing herself.
“Cavendish what brings you here and who or what in the Sam Hill is it that chased me out the woods?” Josh, now dressed somewhat, and in front of the tree, is a long-faced man. His brown hair is in a bowl cut, and he is buttoning up his union suit.
“That, old man, is my love afflatus, Miss SunMountain,” in the few letters we mailed each other over the years I never went into detail about Sue to Josh. “Sue, you decent?”
“Yes. Come in, sorry to put you out of your own place Joshua.”
“Aw shucks, don’t mention it ma’am.” Inside, as a politeness to us, Josh refrained from sniffing Sue’s backside, as he’s prone to when encountering other cryptids.
“So what happened Josh?” I ask, looking about the disarrayed cabin.
“Bad business Cavendish. Last year I had bamboozled folks into thinking the blue devil dog bought the farm, used a wolf carcass dyed blue then placed it on a farmer named Cooley’s land. Let him take credit, which the old sod shifter gladly did, sorry Sue.”
Sitting across the table from Josh, Sue silently nodded ‘Okay,’ but I knew, in truth, she didn’t like to hear of a distant kin of hers being destroyed.
“I figured willpower would win out, I reckoned. I reckoned wrong. Tonight I was listening to music, but I started pining for the feel of fur on my body and the hotness of blood in my maw. I fought it, and won first prize, first prize for wrecking my place that is.” Josh picked up an empty dressed beef can off the table, examined it, then pitched it violently across the room. “Say what y’all doing here anyways? “Josh’s look on his mug went from anguish to suspicion.
“Well, old man, as you know from the state of the world, this country is going to be pulled into war whether we like it or not. The war department has whispered to the U.S. army signal corps to resurrect the “Hoo Doo Bureau.”
“You shitting me?!” Josh jumped up out of his chair at attention as if a commanding officer had burst through the cabin door to verify his unevenness even in human form. Sue’s freckled face was a mask of stoicism, hiding a silent guffaw at Josh’s histrionics. “But didn’t you write me one time saying that Major Fulbright died?” said Josh sitting back down.
“Sure did; he passed in ’35. Stuart Kirkland from New York will take over the bureau with oak leaves on his shoulders, and he’s a good egg, Josh, Uncle Sam needs you,” saying that made Josh ponder a bit.
“I’m in. I’m sorry-assed tired of these here and yonder hills. I’m gonna sell this cabin and land, but I gotta find somewhere to hang my hat.”
“Maddy, how about Stumpville?” a lightbulb clicked on over Sue’s head before mine.
“Stumpville?” Josh’s question was laced with the hope of a new start.
“It’s a nice little village of lycans and other cryptids living in upstate New York; you can get settled down there before induction down at Fort Meade,” I said. “I think you’ll fit in.”
Sue sweetened the deal. “I’ll even help you replace your Mildred Bailey collection.”
“Well I’ll be a galvanized Yankee in mint condition, I’m really in now!” and with that, Josh preceded to attack Sue and my ears with his rendition of “Darn That Dream.” Fuck.
****
Joshua Portefaix did fit in. You see he was the ancestor of a Jacques Portefaix a survivor of an attack by the Beast of Gevaudan, who had a reign of terror in France during 1764, the curse handed down generation to generation, and crossing over into the new world. Settling in Stumpville Josh jumped into the social mix and began dating Regina Kupman, the village’s librarian. After December 7th, and before us reporting to Fort Meade they were wed. While we attended Camp Franklin signal corps school at Fort Meade, Regina soon found herself carrying their first child, Reggie. Once the war got rolling we were assigned to Patton’s third army.
Our cover story, like in the Great War, was as radio operators by day, but by night we went behind enemy lines killing on sight any of Adolf and Benito’s boys, to assist us, we had on loan spring-heeled Jack from the Brits MI-6, and from the French resistance Fantômas, both working to earn their clemency-pardon deals. From Sicily to EL Guettar to Metz to the Bulge. By the time of the Bulge, Sue was also in Europe, as a lieutenant in the 6668th, and we worked at our bloody trade. In Sicily, among the tombs of Necropolis of Pantalica, I met and befriended an Ethiopian vampiress, Gonda, who was more than happy to join us in our traveling blood banquets. After the war the Portefaix family grew with the addition of Darlene, and baby of the family, Connie, her hair blue like her dad’s fur.
During the 1950s the bell rang again for us, but this time it was for Korea. Now with the 8th Army, we were at the Chosin reservoir helping the 1st Marine division bug out from the Red Army. At that ice cold debacle of blood, Joshua went M.I.A. Then, in 1968, while puttering around at MACV Pentagon East in Saigon one night, waiting, along with my handler Lt. Hulan Brown, for my next kill orders I came across a classified intelligence teletype item, a man, a “Gwai lo,” if you will, fitting Joshua’s description, was sighted in a village near the North Korea-China border in the midst of a hand to hand, pickaxe to pickaxe violent schism between scarlet and red guards. The man was reported to be an American. The teletype also mentioned that the troops on both sides were reporting having many of their number culled by a tremendous and terrible dog, a devil hound, they called it, that troops reported glowed blue in the moonlight. Once again, I knew my friend was alive, and told Sue I would use my next leave to find him, and help him return from killing to his family in Stumpville.
INSTANT NOODLES 