We are delighted to welcome author Howard F. Clarke to Omnimystery News today.
Howard's new mystery/thriller with an occult element is The Cult Cop (April 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we are pleased to introduce you to it with an excerpt, the first chapter.
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THE KNIGHT. THE HANGED MAN. THE MAGICIAN. THE Fool.
Four cards representing four souls.
Alexander Kale, clad only in a bath-robe, studied the Tarot cards laid on the desk before him. His face regis-tered emotions of surprise, curiosity, and even some trepidation. Kale knew which of the four cards represented his own place in the grand order of events. But the other three cards were harbingers. Unknown factors.
He was being watched from the shadows of the dimly lit study by someone who reeked of cigarette smoke and who knew better than to approach too closely, partly for not wishing to offend with the tobacco odor, but also out of habit and cau-tion.
This observer, Kale knew, would consid-er him insolent, spoiled, and ridiculous to spend time peering down at Tarot cards on the expensive desk while work, serious work, waited. But Kale kept the man in the shadows waiting a little while longer, nonetheless.
The man in the shadows, from several feet away, could see the four exposed cards and accurately could make out their exquisite markings because he was trained to do such things. He took it all in and gave the younger man — this rich young pompous ruler — his due and waited like a servant in the dark. Because that was what the man in the shadows was: a servant. Never mind that he carried a badge, a gun, and the authority to use them.
"So," he said, "which am I, Mr. Kale? The Fool, no doubt."
"The Fool? No. The Fool is not a court jester. The Fool in Tarot is the final trump. The pebble in the shoe." Kale looked up. "No offense, but you're simply a knave. Not even a card in the deck."
"Whatever," the man in the shadows said. "I've got to get go-ing."
"Show me," Kale said.
The other man pulled from his pocket a small plastic bag containing a single bullet. "No magic. A simple dud that will eliminate another fool."
"Good luck," Kale said, going back to his Tarot cards.
"I don't need luck. Just the bonus you promised. See you in New Mexico … sir." He let himself out of the room.
Kale reconsid-ered the four cards. He touched the Hanged Man card, an elaborately hand-painted depiction of a man in medieval garment hanging, upside-down, from a rope bound to his feet rather than to his neck. "Scratch one cult cop," he said.
The man from the shadows approaches the Los Angeles police headquarters and is recognized, waved in by the desk sergeant. The man proceeds to the detective's floor and finds it empty. But one detective's desk has a service revolver — a back-up pistol — lying on its side. Beside it, like a row of tiny metallic silos, are five cartridges. The owner of the gun, luckily (luck!), is out of sight for a moment. A toilet flushes from the latrine and so, a quick motion is necessary. Gloves on, unzip the plastic bag, replace one of the bullets on the desk with the one from the bag. Back, back into the Captain's empty office — empty because of the annual compe-tition shooting about to begin. Watch from the shadows as the target stumbles out of the latrine. Larry Cobbs, cult detective. Larry Cobbs, unshaven, clothes rumpled, eyeglasses smudged, clearly on his last legs. Larry Cobbs, pathetic fool. Fool enough to harass Alexander Kale.
Night terrors. That is what doctors sometimes call them. Sometimes, the terrors can begin gently, even pleasantly, but then they will erupt into horrors that stay with you, gnaw at you for days.
The terrors began that night for Jack Salt-er.
At first, a gentle dream. Waves of tall, green grass and clusters of wild flowers undu-lating under crisp breezes. Craggy mountain peaks resembling spires of ancient icy castles in the distance. Glimmering water cascading through beaver ponds down the length of the hill.
Jack Salter felt damp earth clinging beneath his boots and sharp air bracing against his face. He found that he was unshaven and wore jeans and a cotton plaid shirt. He felt an intoxicat-ing sense of peace and belonging. Then, Jack turned around.
A rickety wooden fence teetered in the wind for miles in either direction. The fence was gray and termite-infested. Portions of it had collapsed although the fencepost still stood upright, giving it the gap-toothed appearance of a grotesque jack o' lantern. In the distance, across the grassy hills beyond the fence, several animals approached, running low to the ground like hyenas or wild dogs. There were eleven or twelve of them and they loped toward him in a pack. The pack snapped and slavered, flecks of foam tossed from bared fangs onto his boots. The dogs' hackles rose with rage and hatred. The dog pack halted at the fence despite its decrepit condition.
Jack found himself holding a hammer and nails in one hand and a wooden board in the other. A stack of lumber lay beside him.
He hesitated, then knelt and placed the board between two fence posts while the infuri-ated dogs renewed their frenzied gnashing within inches of his fingers. He set the nails down and placed one against the board while pinning the board into place with his elbow. He struck the nail on the head and heard the dogs squeal as if they, instead of the wooden board, had been impaled.
Footsteps rapidly approached behind him and a voice said, "Let me give you a hand, buddy." The owner of the voice clutched Jack's shoulder and Jack experienced a feeling of deep revulsion mixed with cold fear. He saw dirty fingernails and sallow stained skin on the hand gripping his shirt.
"No. That's okay," Jack answered, unwilling to face the owner of the voice. "I can do this." And he hammered the nail completely into the board, transfixing it to the fencepost. The dogs howled and the man's voice behind him snarled in turn. Jack felt himself hauled to his feet and jerked forcibly around. He stared in horror.
His own twin stood before him. Same face, same hair, but face contorted by hatred. The eyes were piercing and from them burned a look of madness. "I TOLD you!" The twin said, between gritted, yellow teeth. "I will give you a hand." And he struck Jack full across the face sending him crashing through the board he had just nailed, onto the ground beyond and into the midst of the slavering dogs. The dogs tore and slashed at Jack as he desperately struggled to regain his feet. The dogs pulled Jack back down and ripped at his clothing, face, flesh …
He awoke, thrashing and twisted amongst sweat-soaked bed sheets. He lay there, exhausted, reliving the details of the nightmare. The searing pain of the tearing fangs of the wild dogs subsided. He extricated himself from the sheets and, feeling disoriented, laden with the almost drugged-like effect the dream had on him, stumbled to the bath-room.
He glanced at the mirror and stiffened. A red welt resembling the shape of a hand marked the side of his face. He splashed water over his face and felt better, but the face, the obscene version of his own features, kept forcing itself into his mind … the filth-smeared face … the madness. "Get a grip," he ordered himself … but his face still stung from the welt and his soul still shrank from the evil it sensed.
He found his father's whiskey downstairs and carried the bottle back up to the bedroom where he poured himself a shot. It burned all the way down. He took bottle and glass to the balcony doors and pushed through into the night. Warm air, muggy and thick with the musty odor of an old, deteriorating city, squeezed around him. He stepped to the rail and poured himself another drink, despite knowing that it would make him ill. He scanned the street below him and heard the harsh laughter, the distant sirens, the arguments, the automobile sounds that signaled a busy squalid Friday night in Jersey City, New Jersey. God, what a place to live, even in the line of duty. What a place to die alone.
The beefed-up car stereos of the cholos — the low rider gangs — reverberat-ed their thud, thud, thud against the bedroom walls as the gang members' cars cruised down the street. A rock band, heavy in percus-sion but with a strong-voiced female singer, pounded out a song from a nearby tavern. Jack could smell the fat and grease of the food from up here. It was all a long way from the mountain scene of the night-mare. He cursed the job, the work that first brought his father to this place and then his father's son.
He looked down at the sidewalks and resisted the childish impulse to spit. He wondered what it would feel like to fall from this height; he also wondered if normal people had such thoughts. Perhaps he had latent suicidal ideations. Why not hang himself from the balcony instead of jumping off it? He laughed at the impression he would make to those below. His tongue jutting out, his face discolored. But in Jersey City, would anyone even no-tice?
He stepped back from the rail and listened to the street life. A terrible melancholy ached inside him, a sense of loss that was greater than the absence of Jenny or even the passing of his parents. Something that mattered in his life was not answered by his professional success or his growing bank ac-count.
It's just me and Jim Beam against the world, he thought. Several more drinks eased the rest of the pain and he laughed at himself, and then went back to bed where he slept, this time unmolested by slavering dogs or evil twins.
Larry Cobbs chugs a drink from a whiskey bottle and puts the bottle back into an open bottom desk drawer. From the desk top, he grabs the framed photo-graph of a beautiful raven-haired woman, her eyes equally dark — unfathomable. He pitches the frame into the drawer where it shatters. He glances down at the sound of broken glass with a moment's regret, but sees among the glass shards an amulet on a gold chain. He curses the woman in the photograph and slams the desk drawer shut. He begins to load his pis-tol.
Nathan Fist inched the old battle-worn Jeep Cherokee along the ravine bottom with the slightest crunching sound of tires against rocks and gravel. When gravel gave way to soft sand, he parked the vehicle — what he fondly referred to as his "Jeep Navajo" — and climbed out. He closed the door without a sound and started forward with his double barrel shotgun pointing the way. His uniform consisted of blue jeans, denim shirt, and a black Stetson hat. His silver badge was tucked away in a shirt pocket because the moon was full and there were no clouds to prevent the badge from betraying him with its sheen. His boots were soft and made no sound. Nathan Fist moved with an uncharacteristic tightness in his back and a very uncharacteris-tic knot in his stomach. Old fears flitted about in the night air. Fears and dimly remembered scary tales — native folklore that his parents and grandparents had tried to use to subdue his rowdy adolescence. As he grew up on the "res," he had not known enough of the world to be truly afraid. But since those days of childhood, he had seen enough to give him a healthy anxiety for situations like this one.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Howard F. Clarke
Howard F. Clarke is a novelist, editor, and an optioned screenwriter, whose extensive life experiences include military service, initially as an enlisted man and then as an officer; later he taught as an associate professor at a medical college. He has traveled through Europe, Asia, and much of the United States. He is the owner of the small, independent press, Western Gate Books. His next book will be a science fiction end-of-days novel set in Europe.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at HowardFClarke.com or find him on Twitter.
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The Cult Cop by Howard F. Clarke
A Novel of Spiritual Warfare
Publisher: Howard F. Clarke
Jack Salter, troubled son of a disgraced police chief, and Nathan Hand, a tough but disrespected Navajo Nation deputy, join forces as they probe the underbelly of a powerful cult that is infesting medical clinics, funeral parlors, and even the local church in an infernal scheme to control the lives and souls of a New Mexico community.
— The Cult Cop by Howard F. Clarke
