The Devil Came to Arkham by Byron Craft

Author:Byron Craft [Craft, Byron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781976246654
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2017-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

***

I had a hunch and decided that we should pay a visit to a couple of lobos named Piccadilly Slim and Slackie Knolls. Slim, an ex-bootlegger, sold his distillery for a fortune but still had the hum in his blood. Thus, he set up a speakeasy in a tumbledown apartment building next door to a brothel in the north district of Arkham Commons, the Devil's Playground. It had become a living symbol of everything that was wrong with Arkham. Piccadilly Slim now bought his illegal hooch from the mob he sold his bottling works to and resold it to the down-and-out that frequented the district.

I hadn’t journeyed to that foul neighborhood to see Slim. I wanted to question Slackie Knolls. Slackie, at present, worked for Piccadilly Slim tending bar. Slackie was a huckster, a con man that had talked his way into being Corvus Astaroth’s campaign manager. An arrangement, per word on the street, that was beneficial for both him and Mayor Astaroth, at the time. I feel like shooting myself in the foot every time I refer to Corvus by that honorable title! With the election over Slackie had found himself between engagements, hence his employment with Slim.

Bell and I walked up three flights of stairs. The desolation of the building was almost complete; it looked abandoned. Echoes responded to our footsteps on the bare-worn treads. I knocked on the door of one of the dingiest tenements I had ever smelled. The place reeked of cigarettes and stale beer. It hadn't been swept out in a day or a week, maybe a month. They had knocked out a wall between two apartments doubling the size of the place. They did little to disguise their rugged carpentry work. Dingy drapes had been nailed up to partially conceal the ragged wood lathe and plaster exposed by the demolition. Pieces of what looked like soiled discarded carpeting had been thrown over the uneven threshold where once stood the barrier between two dwellings. An odd assortment of chairs shoved under makeshift tables that appeared to be made from used lumber dotted the rough-and-ready saloon. I prayed that Officer Bell would have control over his stomach on this call.

It was three in the afternoon, and the joint was deserted but for Slackie and Slim. They were sitting at a table drinking up their profits. Slim, a nickname he had acquired as a gag, was his usual fat plus balding self. Slackie, on the other hand, did not look well. His skin lacked the intensity of color, his cheeks were sunken, almost cavernous, and although normally as rotund as Slim he had turned into a skeletal shadow of his former self. Flesh hung off his arms in loose folds. He had the sickness that people in town started calling "the Arkham Stain."

“I couldn’t be more surprised if Hitler turned out to be a Jew!” Slim shouted in an inebriated slur. “The Arkham Constabulary in my joint. I am honored. How about a drink fellas? On the house.

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