Dark Things Crawl Out by C. S. Magnuson

Author:C. S. Magnuson [Magnuson, C. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Horrorsmith Publishing

Chapter 19

The Cafe

Martin and August heard the lonely tinkling of a piano even before they reached Main Street. The sound was strange, and the notes, slightly off-key, tore at the air, ripping tiny holes in the silence. It filled the men with an uneasy wonder. Who would be playing music at a time like this? Who was left? Each note struck was one of foreboding, and the men followed the sound to the center of town, to a small dining hall just off Main Street.

The dining hall hadn’t been one for long. Right up until those politicians in D.C. had passed their infernal Prohibition, Matty Cobb’s eatery had been a saloon, and it still bore the look of its previous incarnation. The walls were covered with dark damask wallpaper, the ceiling with shiny, pounded tin, and the windows with tasseled velvet curtains—gaudy in gold but good at hiding most of Tiefer Spalt’s dust—from floor to ceiling. The rich oak bar top had become a lunch counter, and the only cards laid out on the tables once hosting night-long poker games now listed daily specials and the soup of the week.

August and Martin entered and found a player piano across the room churning out music, its punctured paper scroll sliding upward to elicit the tune of a Chopin nocturn.

“Shut it off,” Martin directed, and August complied, hurrying across the dining hall and flipping the switch on the infernal contraption. The paper stopped scrolling and the music slowed, dying out with a final, mournful chord.

“Was listening to that,” Walt Weber slurred. He sat hunched over the bar top—a dusty gray lump with a half-empty bottle of hooch in his hand and a second unopened bottle within easy reach. “Always you should ask before you take a man’s music.”

Martin joined him at the bar top. He raised one of Walt’s bottles and checked the label before giving it a sniff and whistling at its potency. “I see you found where Matty keeps the bug juice.”

“Is not all I found,” the old man said, his voice dropping to something just above a whisper.

“Yeah?” Martin glanced around, and August did the same. There was no sign of Matty Cobb, the proprietor, or his jolly wife, Lucille, who did all the cooking and most of the talking. “I didn’t make out the Cobbs back at the church with the dead folks,” Martin said to August. “Did you?”

August shook his head. “Is that what you found, old man? Matty Cobb? Is he still here?”

Walt took a long pull from his bottle of whiskey, then folded his arms on the counter in front of him, laid his head down, and seemed to drift off to sleep.

“Hey!” August shook the man by his shoulders, jerking him awake. “Have you just been sitting here this whole time, Weber?” His voice was thin and bitter, as caustic as the cheap gin Walt was drinking. “I find my wife dead and you’re getting blotto? Just sitting and drinking and feeling sorry for

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