STILLETTO EYE & RAZORGUT by DWAYNE COLTRANE & THE HYPERDEATHPSYCHOROCK 3

Chapter 6 - STILLETTO EYE & RAZORGUT AND THE HOWLING HOMUNCULUS

StilletoEye and RazorGut were driving Betsy, their sleek black 55 Cadillac, along the precarious and crumbling mountain road, a steep cliff drop either side of the wheels. Up ahead, the jagged castle was silhouetted against the moon and the wind whistled through the toothy valley with an unholy wail.

Once they reached the castle, a hunchbacked and slobbering villager shuffled up to help StilletoEye and RazorGut with their things, but they shooed him away and walked up to the gates.

They were unable to budge the huge forbidding wooden doors with knockers the size of a whole human torso, when they swung gently open, and the Count came out to greet them. He bade them enter and to make themselves at home, before showing them to the dining room, where more of the deformed villagers hurried around, laying the table, spilling drink and tripping each other up; all gibbering and spitting in some archaic Gypsy tongue.

It was a cavernous and mouldy chamber, and on the huge rotting wooden table in the centre was spread with a huge roast pig, with several stalagmites dripping on to it.

StilletoEye and RazorGut asked if it was possible to arrange cheeseburgers and milkshakes and at once several of the villagers were snapped at and began hurrying around clattering dishes and soon brought through cheeseburgers and milkshakes.

Over dinner, the Count told StilletoEye and RazorGut of his exile from Egypt as a result of his experiments in cross breeding wolves and cherubs in a human host to create an ethically superior being with ferocious strength which, he said, would be the pinnacle of human endeavour, our own replacements.

He told of his laboratory being burned to the ground by the Dean of Miskatonic, of his time as a medic in the jungle battlefields and his unorthodox theories of surgery which resulted in his being hounded out into enemy lines, effectively left for dead. But, he regaled, there the enemy took to him and his perverse cut’n’paste experiments, and put him in charge of their prisoners of war.

His tale was interrupted by one of the crooked villagers hobbling up and whispering in his ear. His eyes burst red and his face puffed violently.

“Come, my friends, you must leave,” he told StilletoEye and RazorGut.

They walked over to one of the thin windows in the castle wall and saw the road they had driven up now crowded by an approaching mob, baying and jeering, wielding torches, rifles, scythes, cleavers, rakes, harrows, tongs, hop hooks, clubs, chaff cutters, shovels, mauls, barley forks, mallets, flails and slashers.

“This way,” the Count beckoned, hurrying them down a trapdoor under the dining table. He slammed the door behind them and StilletoEye and RazorGut found themselves in a manky corridor, sloping downwards. They followed the passageway and were again assailed by the whistling wind’s high-pitched squeal.

Some way down below, they came to a cavernous dungeon, heavily populated by hideous monstrosities: dazed village folk with grotesque amounts of orifices and limbs; top torsos of men sewn to top torsos of women, crawling on four arms; octopuses with sleek showgirl legs instead of tentacles; a man with the upper body of a gigantic centipede; a small girl standing unsteadily on an extended tower of legs, her 20 knee joints buckling under her weight... it was their howling that StilletoEye and RazorGut had taken for the wind.

They hurried through the hideous chamber to where Betsy was parked, and sped down the back road from the castle, turning to see it being torn and burnt to the ground.