THE SAD, STRANGE FATE OF EVIL EYE
A Short Story by James D. Pratt
Copyright 2010 James D. Pratt
Fortune City, 1963 – In the winding tunnels deep beneath the infamous Maligant Mansion, the man known as the Black Scarab stood leaning against a stone wall. He’d tracked down Evil Eye to the mansion, the rumored site of countless supernatural occurrences and battles between the forces of good and evil, to finish up some old business. Things weren’t going according to plan.
The Black Scarab remained on his feet only through a supreme effort. His features hidden and inscrutable, the heavy rasp of his breathing hinted that he was far from well. The Black Scarab’s chest felt like he’d been kicked by a mule. It was a given that he was sporting at least a few broken ribs. So far he hadn’t coughed up any blood so his lungs were probably still intact but that didn’t completely discount the possibility of internal bleeding. His modified pistol lay nearby but might as well have been on another continent. Evil Eye stood just a few feet away, staring into a mirror set into the stone wall, seemingly oblivious to his own brutal handiwork. To the Black Scarab, the worst part was that he’d some so close.
The Black Scarab had already caught up with Fat Cat, the Smiling Skull, and Card Shark. Most of the rest had already passed away. The Jersey Devil died of cancer years ago (probably from smoking all those smelly cigars), Dogface of old age (turns out he aged like a dog, too). So it went.
Oh, a few familiar names popped up every now and again. There was supposedly a girl running around in red tights and a pair of little plastic horns. She called herself the Jersey Devil and even claimed to be the original’s granddaughter. And there was that girl in the cat-costume who made the same claim about Fat Cat. But they were part of the new generation. The young heroes could deal with it.
As for Evil Eye, his was the last name on the list. If the Black Scarab’s dreams were correct (and they almost always were), the borrowed time on which he’d been living all these years was soon coming to an end. And so he had made a list of unfinished business. Like the others on the list, he had come looking for Evil Eye to settle old accounts. Too bad it looked like Evil Eye was going to settle with him first.
That was okay. The Black Scarab was pushing sixty, had enjoyed a long life filled with excitement and romance, and had no regrets. Well, maybe a few. There were some things he might have done differently, but his was the ka of one born to oppose the forces of evil. It was the will of the gods when he found the mystical scarabaeus in the dusty depths beneath the pyramids of ancient Egypt all those years ago. It was his fate.
There had been a time when the Black Scarab briefly entertained thoughts of retirement, of reconnecting with his estranged son and meeting his grandchildren for the first time. He’s only seen their smiling faces looking back at him from photographs. The Black Scarab was an anachronism, a left-over from an earlier age when good guys and bad guys settled their differences with guns as often as they did with fists. But that was history. The law took itself too seriously these days.
. One by one, the Black Scarab’s generation was quitting the game or simply dying off as a new generation of mystery-men and women with bright costumes and strange powers took up the good fight. That was okay. They’d earned their rest. Maybe he had too. Then the dreams returned, for the first time showing the Black Scarab a future that was his own.
Out in the hallway, one of Evil Eye’s goons moaned. The Black Scarab had left them alive. Even in the old days, he didn’t kill nearly as often as some of his contemporaries. Rumor was the Red Masque alone had killed over a hundred men. Back then, they’d called the vigilantes heroes. These days, the words they used for such men were ‘serial killer’. Times had changed, and then some. Still, the clock was ticking and the scales weren’t going to balance themselves. With karma on his side, he had come to put an end to Evil Eye once and for all. Funny thing was, the man who had just whipped him like a rented mule was his last link to a quickly fading past.
Evil Eye might have been a relic, but at least he was the real thing. He was the last of the “freaks,” the circus sideshow oddities of previous decades that had largely been replaced by the costumed villains and all-to-human psychopaths of the modern world. The rest of his generation had been dealt with. Even the elusive Johnny the Fish had gotten what was coming to him, and tracking down a brilliant criminal mastermind who happened to look like an actual fish was no small task. It was the dawn of a new decade, the emergence of the superhuman, and once Evil Eye had been taken care of the slate would be wiped clean.
The Black Scarab caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Something washed over him that might have been nostalgia, except nostalgia wasn’t supposed to make one feel so bitter. The Black Scarab had changed his uniform a few times throughout the years. He’d even done the tights thing for awhile. Currently he wore an all-black variation of his original outfit, the classic wide-brimmed hat, double-breasted suit, flowing cape, and gleaming, bug-eyed mask he’d first donned back in the old days. The changing look led some to speculate there had been more than one Black Scarab over the decades. But it had been him, always him.
“This is where it all started,” Evil Eye said in an oddly hollow voice. “And this is where it’s gonna end.” He turned to the Black Scarab. “You know who I really am? My real name”
“Anthony S-Scarlotti,” the Black Scarab gasped. It even hurt to talk.
Evil Eye nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. ‘Big Tony’ they used to call me, even when I was a kid. Once upon a time I was, just a regular guy. Grew up on the wrong side of the streets. Wasn’t my fault my mama drank too much and my dad never had two nickels to rub together. So I did what I had to do to get by.”
Strange. Evil Eye wasn’t one for monologues. Still, it wasn’t an opportunity to pass up. “Like breaking peoples’ legs?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I ain’t apologizing for it. The streets was mean, so I became meaner. Wasn’t nobody as mean as me. And it got the right peoples’ attention.”
The pistol was maddeningly close, only a few feet away. “The mob?”
“Yeah, back when that meant something. So they brought me in, gave me some jobs to see if I could cut it. Wasn’t nothing I wouldn’t do, and nobody I wouldn’t do it to. Pretty soon I was a made man. But…”
Keep playing the psychiatrist. “But you wanted more.”
“Damn straight. I had the fists but not the brains. So I went to this gypsy lady back in the old neighborhood. Madame Yorga, everybody called her. She’d been around as long as anyone could remember. Story was she could ‘make things happen’, providing someone had enough cash of course. So I went to her and told her I needed an edge.”
“Everybody needs an edge.”
“Damn straight. She told me to come here, to Maligant Mansion. Said that’s where I’d find what I was looking for there and to bring it back to her once I’d found it.”
It was beginning to sound more like a confession than a monologue. “Does that mean the stories about that place are true?”
Evil Eye shrugged. “Hell if I know. But I do know this. I got there and knew right where to look. Something…I don’t know, some force led me down to the hidden door in the basement and straight through those freaking tunnels to this chamber where we are right now. And that’s where I found it, glowing in the darkness and pulsing like a beating heart.”
“Found what?”
Evil Eye pointed to the glowing orb in his right eye-socket. “Had I known what that old hag planned on doing, I would have left it right where it was. Or maybe just shot her
right on the spot. But I was desperate so I let her… do it to me. And now…”
“And now?”
“I…I don’t know. The gem, whatever it was, it did its part. It made me smarter, stronger. Hell, it gave me power. But it took something in return. It…I think it took my soul.”
The Black Scarab’s heart was pounding like a jackhammer. It felt like a wild beast thrashing against his shattered ribcage trying to break free. He suspected he’d sustained life-threatening injuries, not that that was unusual in his line of work. Twice the Black Scarab had been beyond death’s door and twice the scarabaeus had brought him back. Even so, each time he’d come back somehow “diminished”, as if a bit of him had remained in that other place. He was certain the third time would be the last. After that, the Black Scarab would die a true death and stand before Sebek the crocodile-god to be judged. Perhaps that day would be today.
“You know, I used to hang with all the freaks back in the old days. Fat Cat, the Jersey Devil, all those guys. It was like a, whatchacallit, a fraternity. But I was never one of them. I wasn’t born this way. And they never let me forget it. Hey, you wanna hear something funny?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Out of everybody from the old days, you’re the one I’ve known the longest. And you’re the only one that’s still around. This is gonna sound corny as hell, but you’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve got.”
The Black Scarab looked hard at the gangster, trying to feel him out, but it was no use. Evil Eye’s only visible attribute was the glowing gem that sat in his right eye-socket. The rest of his once-handsome features were hidden in the curiously shifting shadows beneath his gangster’s fedora and behind the long scarf wrapped around his face.
“Here’s the thing,” Evil Eye went on. “I’m dying. Only not like from a disease. This gem, it’s eating away at me, at who I really am. Or who I really was. Only it’ll never finish. It’ll just keep on feeding, leaving just enough to keep me alive. Do you understand?”
“No,” the Black Scarab whispered.
“I mean I’m dying but I’m never going to die. I can feel it. Not just in my bones but in my head. Things slipping away a bit at a time. Gobbled up like Sunday leftovers.” Evil Eye made a sound that might have been a sob. “What do I do?” he moaned. “What do I do?”
The Black Scarab coughed, this time detecting the coppery taste of blood in his throat. There wasn’t much time. He had chance shot, to reach his pistol and-
Evil Eye sank to his knees. “I don’t know what to do!”
The Black Scarab was silent for a moment, a line from the religion he’d abandoned long ago suddenly running through his head. “If the eye offends thee, pluck it out.”
Evil Eye slowly began to nod. “Yeah, yeah that’s it. Just like in the Bible. Pluck it out.” Fingers capable of bending steel bars reached into the one-time gangster’s right eye-socket, clamped onto the mystical shard that had sat there for decades, and tugged. After an almost minute-long struggle, Evil Eye managed to dislodge the gem, taking part of his skull with it. “Gotcha,” he said. His fedora tumbled to the floor, granting the Black Scarab a momentary glimpse of his enemy’s sunken, cadaverous features before the desiccated husk that had once been Anthony “Big Tony” Scarlotti crumbled to dust.
As the Black Scarab slowly, painfully made his way out of the depths of Maligant Mansion, a purple gem glowed in the darkness, pulsing like the beat of a hideous heart.
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