The Amazing Adventures of the Sensational Squirrelman

Blood-curdling Issue Four!

I am called… the Sentinel! I have watched and witnessed all that is, all that was, and all that might be for fifty years! I have watched the Sensational Squirrelman as he was wounded and nearly defeated, chased into the area of Action City known as Weirdsville, where the dead walk the night and terror is unchecked! There, where the last remaining buildings of the city that stood before the Crash of 1947 crumble into ruin and despair, where the spirits of those who died that fateful day suffused the area with the energies of death and terror! Ghosts and goblins, vampires and werewolves, and things with no name that go bump in the night, held back by a lone nocturnal defender, a former costumed crimefighter, now dead, known as the Blue Ghost! In this borough of blood and bone, Squirrelman seeks only to survive the night against…

The Wicked Witches of Weirdsville!

Squirrelman stumbled along the rooftop of the ancient red brick brownstone and found the fire escape ladder. He was weakened from blood loss and Matt wasn’t sure he’d be able to survive even so short a fall as four storeys. He climbed slowly down the ladder as rain began to fall.. not a heavy driving rain, not a light pleasant rain, but somewhere in the middle… as though the rain had been designed to heighten his misery and shorten his field of vision, but not so hard that it impeded the few passing cars – cars that still rolled on wheels, part of Matt’s mind noted – wheels that were very capable of splashing through the puddles that almost immediately formed. A bolt of lightning threw the ancient, dilapidated buildings into stark relief, and the crash of thunder that almost immediately followed caused Matt’s already adrenaline heightened reflexes to kick into overdrive and he found himself grabbing onto the underside of an overhanging balcony, trembling. He lowered himself to the ground with a groan at the pain that shot from every wound and he stumbled along, trying to keep hidden from his pursuers… he still believed that his six nemeses were after him, and the misery that was pounding down on his spirits was sinking him further still into self-pity.

As he stumbled along looking for some sort of shelter or police station or cruiser or all-night clinic he realized… he wasn’t having any memory-flashes. He was truly lost – apparently Squirrelman had never been here before. He stopped at a corner and looked at the street names – Stoker Avenue and Shelley Boulevard. The names meant nothing to him, sparking no memory-flashes at all. He looked across the street and saw three hookers under the awning of a porn shop. He tried to square his shoulders but it hurt his ribs too much, so he settled on stumbling over.

The three hookers were addict thin and deathly pale, dressed in shiny tight black leather boots and skirts and red corsets, looking cheap and still somehow seductively desirable. Part of Matt was fascinated – he’d seen hookers before, had never even been curious about purchasing their services – he found the idea repugnant actually - but something about these three was alluring, intoxicating… he walked up to them.

“Excuse me… uh… ladies,” he began.

“Buzz off, mask,” the tall one said. She had black hair and bright red eyes.

“Yeah, beat it…” the shortest said, although she wore huge platform fuck me boots with high stiletto heels to offset her lack of height. She had hair like pale white moonlight and eyes of silver.

“No, wait,” the middle one said. Her hair was the colour of blood, bright and arterial, and her eyes were as black as sin. “This little mask is bleeding…”

The three hookers smiled, and Matt saw something that made the blood drain from his face and his hands go cold. The three women had fangs… they were vampires.

“Come to play, little mask?” the redhead said.

“Come to feed us, darling?” the blonde added.

“Come to the Blood Sirens for fun?” the brunette finished.

Squirrelman realized then that they had slowly been moving around him, keeping him distracted by little flashes of cleavage and thigh, their sing song voices and gazing hypnotic eyes… He backflipped away from them and swung up onto the lamp post.

“Sorry ladies,” he said as they hissed at him from the street below, lightning flashing once more, glinting off their pale upturned faces, their shining elongated incisors, their sharp cruel claws. Blood dripped along Squirrelman’s arm and fell from the street lamp… down between the three vampire hookers. They watched in fascination as the blood drop fell and they scrambled toward it, each shoving against the other in a frenzy to catch the bright red drip. Matt didn’t wait around to see which one of them caught it, but leapt up onto the brick building and hurried as far down the block as his wounds would allow him to go. When he couldn’t bear it any longer he dropped to the alley floor with a grunt and a sharp hiss as the stabbing pain in his side stabbed harder into him, now more painful with every breath. He knew he’d broken his rib then.

He stumbled along the darkened alley to the next street, but just as he was about the reach the light of the street lamps he felt all the hair on the back of his neck and arms suddenly forced themselves against the confines of his costume, goose pimples covering his entire body. He stopped walking then, sure there was something behind him… he could hear, over the rain, a kind of slithering sound, something dragging itself along the alley floor… something he hadn’t seen… only heard, over the sound of the rain falling down and the pounding of his heart and the rasping of his breath.

He didn’t want to turn around. He knew that if he stopped to turn around it would get him. He knew that if he could just make it to the street he’d be safe. The dull yellow circle of the lamp light was a shelter, it would save him… if he could just get his feet to start walking again… if he could just stop himself from turning around.

But of course, he couldn’t. Couldn’t stop himself. Couldn’t stop turning around. Morbid fascination, morbid curiosity filled him. He needed to see the thing that was sliding along the rain soaked alley floor. He needed to know what the thing was, if it was going to eat him. He needed to turn around…

He turned and saw the thing… ill defined in the darkness, a flash of lightning revealed thousands of little eyes, hundreds of pencil-thin tentacles, a mouth filled with triangular shark teeth.

Matt screamed then, a blood curdling scream unlike any he’d ever screamed since he was a child, and the sound broke the spell, and Matt did an instinctive backflip away from the thing that slid toward him, and out into the middle of the street, and from across the street another thing came out of another alley, a thing made of razor blades and shadows, whirling in chaotic frenzy, death in the dark on one side, eaten by some nameless horror on the other side, and Matt ran, no energy for screaming, only running, desperate to get away, to get anywhere.

The two things met in the street. The beast of offset blinking eyes and writhing tentacles burbled something from its great maw filled with sharp cruel triangle teeth. The being of thin whirling blades and darkness answered in a hissing reverberated voice. A person who spoke the languages of the Dark Powers of the Hidden Dimensions, such as a black mage of the highest order, or a demon, would have understood them thusly:

“Evening Sam.”

“Evening Ralph.”

“What’s his problem?”

“You know humans… so judgmental.”

Matt ran down the street, turning the corner, sure that death was behind him. He was wounded, and sore, and soaked, and he wanted more than anything for the doctors to finish the brain surgery he was sure he was undergoing so he would wake up and finally get the therapy it was so clear he needed.

Obviously he had suffered a massive head trauma and it had released all the repressed hero dreams and childhood nightmares he never knew he had repressed. He breathed hard and ragged, fear and pain fighting for dominance over him… he looked up and saw down the street an ancient crumbling monstrosity of a gothic church… stained glass windows shattered, doors boarded up, two ancient, dead, leafless oaks to either side, some of its spires damaged, so it looked as though the church had had its teeth broken and it raged gap-toothed at the sky. Lightning forked and arced across the sky beyond the church, and although it appeared fearsome, something in Matt saw it as a harbour against the things that he was sure still chased him, slowly, relentlessly. He stumbled, running toward the church.

Tired and weakened, drained by wave after wave of adrenaline surges, he had to focus on getting the hot squeeze that would force his claws out… all the while sure that things were right down the street, right around the block, watching him, waiting for him to give up, to give in and give them his blood, his heart, his soul…

“Come on, come ON!” he said to his hands, and finally the claws popped out, and he climbed the boarded front doors to the shattered stained glass window above, pulling himself carefully through the broken pieces of glass still held in the casement, like a beast’s opened mouth, filled with brightly coloured fangs.

Inside broken pews were shattered, leaning against each other, domino style. Rain dripped from many holes in the ceiling far above, and cobwebs and bird feathers – and droppings – covered everything… thick layers of dust testified to the fact that nothing and no one had come here in a long time… perhaps decades. A couple of four foot tall candelabras stood to either side of the dust covered altar, thick candles still standing in the multiple arms. As Matt lowered himself to the dusty floor, the candles flared to life.

Who dares, a voice moaned from everywhere at once.

“Great, first vampire hookers, then things that want to kill me, now a haunted church, “ Matt muttered to himself.

A wind began to swirl the dust around the altar, slowly, without flickering the candle’s flames at all. Matt shivered at the incongruousness of it, and then shivered more as the dust coalesced into a blue glowing man. He wore a loose-fitting body suit, tattered cloak and hood, turned down boots and flared gloves that had been popular a half century before, a mask covering his eyes and nose. His face was gaunt, his body almost skeletally thin. Thin pinpoints of bright white light shone where his eyes had been. A memory-flash told Matt the blue glowing man’s name… the Blue Ghost. He had been a costumed crimefighter in the thirties and forties and early fifties known as the Grey Ghost, until he had been killed by an insane priest and sent back from wherever the spirits of the departed went… given a blue glowing ghost body, he defended the area known as Weirdsville from supernatural threats.

“Blue Ghost!” Squirrelman said, stumbling down the walkway toward the altar.

“No, I am the Blue Ghost,” the spirit said, voice pitched low, almost a whisper. Matt saw the spirit’s mouth didn’t move as he spoke. “And I do not know you.”

The Blue Ghost floated down from the altar, the candles dimly slightly as he moved away, down along the walkway toward Matt.

“There are those uptowners who enjoy the sensation of being bled,” Blue Ghost not said. “A service the Blood Sirens are more than happy to provide. And Sam and Ralph would not have harmed you.”

“Sam? Ralph? Those things have names?”

“Everything has a name… Squirrelman. But not Squirrelman…”

“What are you talking about? I’m Squirrelman!”

Blue Ghost drifted around Squirrelman, examining the wounded crimefighter from all angles.

“You are similar, it’s true… but being released from the confines of mortality granted me the ability to see beyond the mortal coil… into the souls of the beings around me. Who are you, familiar stranger? Or should I call you Matthew for now?”

“What? How did you - I mean –“

“Seek not to understand, friend Matthew… Suffice it to say, I know who you are. But why do you inhabit a body not your own, and where is the original owner? I do not sense malice in you, nor did harm befall the previous occupant… Why are you here, friend Matthew?”

“I got hurt in a fight with a bunch of maniacs, then I ran into this part of town and wound up here, looking for help… a safe place to hide.”

Blue Ghost raised an eyebrow.

“Squirrelman… ran away from his most hated foes… how… peculiar…”

“What do you mean?” Matt asked, then hissed as his broken rib stabbed at him painfully.

“Never mind…” Blue Ghost looked at Squirrelman enigmatically. “I can heal your injuries, Matthew… but I require some assistance in return.”

“To do what?” Matt asked, suddenly suspicious.

“I cannot say until you agree… that is also part of the price of my aid.”

Matt took a deep breath to steady his nerves and it felt as though a knife was being pressed in his side. He bit down on his lip against the pain and nodded silently.

Blue Ghost drifted forward, thin-fingered hands outstretched. Matt saw the hands touch his side but felt nothing… until they sank into his chest. Icy cold, Blue Ghost’s hands reached inside Matt and set the ribs back in place, fusing back together, healed in a flash of freezing cold. Matt gasped suddenly. The waves of cold spread out from his ribs and to all his other cuts and bruises, the sprains he had suffered. Blue Ghost slid away from Matt after a moment, and Matt stood there, shivering uncontrollably, his body’s autonomic responses to the freezing cold that penetrated all the way to his core. Matt breathed in shivering ragged breaths.

“J-j-j-jeez you cuh-cuh-c-c-could w-warn a guh-guy,” Matt finally managed to stutter around chattering teeth. “Sssss-so wuh-what’s the p-problem you n-need me for?”

“There is a rash of disappearances in the area lately…” Blue Ghost said, hovering silently. His tattered cape fluttered in an intangible wind. “Children have been taken from the streets. These disappearances coincide with the arrival of four strangers to Weirdsville… and hardly anyone arrives in Weirdsville with good intentions. These strangers in our midst are four sisters, alluring, young, beautiful… and sorcerous.”

“So what’s the rumpus? I mean, that’s your jurisdiction, right? Poof in there, find the kids, poof ‘em out again. Supernatural horrific stuff like this is a piece of cake for you. And could you move your lips when you talk? It’s freaking me out a little.”

The Blue Ghost smiled self-deprecatingly.

“Normally I would be able to ‘poof in and out’ as you put it,” he said, his lips moving not quite in sync with the words, as though he was out of practice, like a film with the audio track off-sync.

“No, wait, stop, go back to the way before, that’s just too creepy.”

The Blue Ghost smiled again.

“As you wish… Normally I would do exactly as you have described… but these sisters have enchanted their home against intruders of a supernatural kind. And so I turn to you for aid.”

“I don’t get it,” Matt said, looking at his ghostly host. “I thought you weren’t supernatural… more… you know.. miraculous.”

“In life I was a priest,” the Blue Ghost said, looking longingly at the altar, and around at the church. “But I was appalled at the corruption and injustice around me. So I forsook my vows and did what any right minded individual would have done – I put on tights and a mask and fought crime by night as I ministered to the community by day.” The Blue Ghost looked at Squirrelman and shrugged. “What? It was the thirties, everyone was doing it.

“I fought crime for almost fifteen years as the Grey Ghost. I didn’t have any powers, but I was dedicated to my nightly calling. And I did good… real good. But when I was betrayed by a fellow priest and murdered by him because he was jealous of my popularity as a priest, I died and went to my eternal reward… but for betraying my oath I was sent back, to continue the fight I loved more than my devotion to God.”

He smiled sadly.

“And so my powers are both miraculous and supernatural. I am not a man of God any more, nor even a spirit of God… I am trapped between worlds, of neither. And thus can their supernatural protection prevent my entrance to their home.”

He turned and looked to the bell tower, hearing a tolling that only he could hear. He looked at Squirrelman.

“Come,” the Blue Ghost not said. “The hour grows late – the Witching Hour is upon us.”

Squirrelman saw the Blue Ghost’s cloak open wide and he saw a bright blue light and then he was standing on a wind-swept street. The rain had stopped but lightning still arced overhead, thunder occasionally crashing down. He was standing alone on a street in the oldest part of town, on the outskirts of the city.

Huge thick oaks gnarled bare branches at the sky, and Victorian houses stood on either side in a long row, empty windows staring out into the night. Nothing lived in these homes… but whatever walked there, walked alone.

The one house that had candles lighting the windows of the attic level was right in front of Squirrelman.

This is their home, Squirrelman heard the Blue Ghost’s voice explain. I can go no further.

“Isn’t that convenient?” Squirrelman muttered. He stretched out his cold stiffened muscles and snuck around the outer perimeter of the yard, leaves collected around the wrought iron fence and gate, walkway unswept. Whoever lived inside, they were no gardener.

Squirrelman snuck up to the house and started climbing as silently as he could up the wooden planks that made up the ancient siding of the once great manor. Now it wouldn’t have looked out of place in a horror movie. Squirrelman half-expected some knife-wielding manic in a ghostly white mask to come hurtling out of the shadows with murderous intent.

The wind howled its outrage around him as he climbed up the side of the ancient house. He reached a window and it opened with a slow creak as the casement protested. He hoped the sound of the storm around him hid the shriek from the occupants inside the house and slipped into the darkened room.

He snuck to the door, trying not to step on any creaking floorboards. He cracked open the door and heard women’s voices chanting, coming from the attic level upstairs, soft flickering candlelight casting more shadows than illumination coming from the stairwell. He opened the door, wincing slightly at the sound of the creaking hinges, and moved stealthily down the hall to the stairwell to the attic above.

He realized he was more scared than he wanted to admit. Witches abducting children? Weird chanting in an ancient Victorian attic? It was as though his childhood fears had come to life. His breathing was loud in his ears, as loud as the pounding of his heart. He didn’t want to go upstairs, didn’t want to see what the witches were doing, didn’t want to know… but knew he had to go, try and help the children, try and put a stop to whatever horrible evil was being perpetrated.

Using his claws to gain purchase on the crumbling plaster walls, he kept most of his weight off the floor and made his way to the staircase. The chanting was louder now, more frenetic, and he knew that he had to act. He steeled himself to the horrors he knew awaited him atop the stairs and ran up.

In the attic, four women stood at the four cardinal points of a circle. Each was young, and beautiful, and extremely sexy to look at. Each was wearing very stylish clothes. Each had a different hair colour: one with short, obviously dyed blonde hair cut in a bob, one with red highlights in her wavy hair, casually worn in a pony tail, one with dark brown curls cascading down her back to the small of her back, and one with goth black hair tied in twin braided pigtails and perfect bangs. Each held a silver object in her hand – dagger, cup, wand, and some circular metal thing that Squirrelman couldn’t quite see – the redhead had her back to him. They were chanting in some language he had never heard, but hurt his brain as he tried to follow along. Silver coloured flames burned along the floor, and golden light spilled from dozens of candles lit on every surface. A small group of children sat huddled and shivering, wide-eyed, in a corner.

“Okay ladies, game over, everyone out of the pool!” Squirrelman yelled.

“Not now you idiot!” the pigtailed goth yelled at him. As her attention was diverted an explosion knocked them all off their feet and a huge monstrous thing, a blood coloured lizard man with a horse head, huge wicked clawed hands and one hideous eye, a thick curling horn sticking out the top of its head, its long tailed tipped with cruel barbs like a stegosaurus, suddenly appeared.

“Foolish witches!” the thing bellowed. “Thought to rob me of my prize?!” it moved toward the children, who shrieked in terror.

Squirrelman leaped to their defence, grabbing the thing’s horn and flipping himself onto its back.

“Hey ugly, didn’t anyone ever tell you not to play with your food?” Squirrelman laughed with bravado he didn’t feel, kicking the demon in its one eye. It roared in outrage, swatting at the grey guardian of Lower Uptown.

Squirrelman jumped over its clumsy attacks, easily dodging each thick clawed hand. He grabbed tightly onto the horn and flipped over backwards, down along the demon’s back, throwing it off balance.

The demon’s tail smashed down on the floor that Squirrelman narrowly avoided becoming one with. He was holding onto the rafters of the attic ceiling when he saw the four witches move into position around the demon and place four glowing crystal pyramids on the floor. As one they lifted their instruments – the circle, he could see now, had a five pointed star etched into it on this side – and chanted:

“Andrea, Althea,
Alexandra, Alicia!

“Go back to your hell,
We’re sure not to miss ya!”

Silver lightning suddenly arced from each of the four crystals and to each of the others, creating a pyramidical web around the demon, who roared his rage as the web contracted around it. The demon seemed to grow smaller – or perhaps further away was closer to what he was witnessing, because Matt sure didn’t understand what was happening – and just as suddenly as it had appeared, the demon was gone.

“You dumbass!” the redhead yelled at him.

“You could have gotten us all killed!” the blonde raged.

“Now sisters, leave the nice costumed crimefighter alone,” the brunette with the massive tangle of curls said, eying him appraisingly. “Squirrelman couldn’t have known he was intruding on a summoning/banishing circle, now could he?”

“Oh jeez, Andrea, can you not hit on this guy please?” the blonde said, rolling her eyes.

“What?” Andrea said innocently. “I wasn’t hitting on him Alicia, honest.”

“Right, and I’m the Tooth Fairy,” the redhead said sarcastically.
“Not any more at least, Althea,” the pigtailed goth said.

“Alexandra, honestly, one Fairy Tale gone awry and you’ll never let me forget it.”

“I was the Wicked Witch of the West!”

The other three sisters snickered at their goth sibling.

“Okay, ladies, just what is going on here?” Squirrelman said, trying to recover the situation.

“Big ‘n’ scaley there was harvesting children,” Althea explained.

“We tracked him to his lair and saved the kids, but he got away,” Alicia continued.

“So we brought the kids here as bait and summoned him so we could banish him,” Andrea added.

“Until you showed up and almost got us all killed,” Alexandra smirked.

“Okay, so… you four are witches?”

“Yes… not very good witches I’m afraid,” Alicia said with a little self-deprecating smile.

“Oh yeah, we’re awful witches,” Althea agreed.

“You might say we’re wicked witches,” Andrea said with a look at Alexandra.

“Shut up,” Alexandra retorted. “Goddess, you’re such a bitch sometimes.”

Andrea blew her sister a little kiss.

Alicia took pity on Squirrelman, seeing his confused look.

“Most people believe witches to be evil ugly old crones,” she explained.

“We’re not evil.”

“Or ugly,” Andrea added.

“Or old,” Althea said.

“Some of us are crones though,” Alexandra shot at Andrea.

“Can you two stop embarrassing yourselves for five minutes, please?” Alicia said, rolling her eyes.

Squirrelman held up his hands in the classic time out gesture.

“The kids are alright? I can tell Blue Ghost not to worry about you four?”

“Blue Ghost? He was worried that we were a threat?” Alicia smiled. “He’s so sweet!”

“Right… so can we get these kids home to their parents?” Squirrelman was beginning to feel this was going to be a long night.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Althea said, clapping her hands. The children disappeared in a twinkling of pixie dust. “They’ll wake up in their beds thinking it was all a nightmare.”

Squirrelman nodded.

“Listen ladies, much as I’d love to stay and chat, Blue Ghost is waiting for me and there’s a city full of maniacs who want to kill me, so… duty calls.”

The four charming witches looked disappointed, but understood. They promised to visit Blue Ghost and explain their intentions of providing good magic for the folks of Weirdsville to turn to rather than hiding in their homes at night. The witches dreamed of a world where creatures of the darkness and normal humans could co-exist peacefully.

Back at the church, Blue Ghost seemed pleased with the news. As he showed Squirrelman to the broken stained glass window, the ghostly guardian said, “I have pondered this night on why it might be that your soul now inhabits this body… and I cannot find any answer in the supernatural. You must turn to super science for the answers you seek, friend Matthew. You must go Uptown.”

At the casement ledge, Blue Ghost paused and pointed to a gleaming tower in the distance, a citadel of light in the night. High atop was a distinctive lightning-style S in a circle.

“There is where you may find you answers, Matthew. You must turn to Doc Sterling.”