Mister Lullaby by J. H. Markert

Author:J. H. Markert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

Excerpt from Detective Harrington’s notes

December 13, 1929

Harrod’s Reach

FIRST DAY ON the job.

At roughly 9:00 PM, Matthew Ordaine, senior partner in the law firm Ordaine, Fitzpatrick & Grimes, entered the Grand Lobby of the Beehive Hotel. At first, according to witnesses, no one paid him much attention. It wasn’t until Matthew Ordaine, noticeably disheveled and smelling of body odor, bellied up to the bar, ordered an illegal Honeybee cocktail with whiskey and extra cherries, and plopped a muddy pair of wingtips on the counter, that the night began to get weird. Not only were these shoes covered in mud, blowflies, and maggots, they still held the remnants of two severed human feet inside, what was left of them, rotten and decaying to the bone.

It wasn’t until the Beehive waitress Jasmine Banner screamed and dropped her drink tray that the crowd began to hush and the band, who’d just started into “Bye Bye Blackbird,” stop playing. Because of his gaunt, unshaven appearance, most assumed Mr. Ordaine drunk, a condition more common to his post-midnight departures from the Beehive Hotel each weekend, and not his typical entrance. Yet he’d sworn he hadn’t imbibed a drop all night. He did, however, shout to everyone inside the stunned Beehive lobby that he was no longer Matthew Ordaine, attorney at law, but now well on his way to becoming a Wendigo.

I arrived soon thereafter, and although Matthew was boisterous, insisting his transformation was real, he left the Beehive willingly, and was utterly exhausted by the time I walked him into lockup. I have since researched said term, Wendigo, and learned the following: In some Native American folklore, it is believed that if one dreams of a Wendigo, this humanoid-like monstrous beast of the dreamworld, the body of the sleeper will become vulnerable to possession by the Wendigo’s spirit. In a sense, making that spirit real. Once the possessed has consumed human flesh, the body will then begin the grotesque transformation in which Matthew Ordaine claims to currently find himself.

After a brief nap inside his cell, Matthew appeared more lucid and therefore more prepared to answer my questions, which makes what I’m about to write even more disheartening. When asked where he found those two severed feet (inside the shoes), Matthew Ordaine claimed they belonged to a street bum he’d killed earlier in the week. When asked who this bum was, Matthew claimed to not know. When asked what the bum looked like, Matthew could not recall that either, which leads me to believe he’s not being completely truthful. Or has some sort of brain fatigue. When asked about the rest of this bum’s body, Matthew, although hesitant, then claimed to have eaten it, adding, because that’s what Wendigos do. When asked how he’d eaten the body, he said with a knife and fork. He then grinned, revoltingly, I might add, revealing teeth that looked stained enough for me to start believing he’d at least eaten something he shouldn’t have. When asked about the bones, Matthew hesitated again, before saying he buried them in the backyard.

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