A Matter of Temperance (The Adventures of Ichabod Temperance Book 1) (15 page)

Ichabod

“Well, here we are at your hotel’s door, Miss Plumtartt, Ma’am. Now don’t you worry none, I am in the adjoining room. If so much as a shadow moves, you just give a holler and I’ll come a running.”

“I am fully assured, sir.”

“Goodnight, Miss Plumtartt.”

“Mr. Temperance.”

I’m gonna listen for Miss Plumtartt to turn the lock, before retiring to my own room.

~click~

There we go. Now I can relax in my own room.

My mind is buzzing with all the excitement I’ve been thrust into, I guess. I’m so restless, I can’t sit down.

So much is happening so fast.

The city is calling to me.

I've been cooped up in one train after another.

The city is calling to me.

I don't want to get too far away from Miss Plumtartt.

The city is calling to me.

Maybe I’ll just step outside to smoke my pipe.

The city is calling to me.

Yep, it’s nice out here. Maybe I’ll just go for a walk around the building.

The city is calling to me.

I don’t want to get too far away from Miss Plumtartt.

The city is calling to me.

The smell of the Pacific Ocean is in the air.

The city is calling to me.

I’ll stay close by.

The city is calling to me.

I won’t go too far.

The city is calling to me.

I just want to look around a little.

The city is calling to me.

There’s such an unusual architecture here in the west. The local building material is something called ‘adobe’. As I branch out into town, it is easy to see where the ‘old’ Los Angelos ends, and the ‘new’, begins. From the low, wide, structures of some age, I pass into wooden clapboard buildings. This town is as old as dirt in one spot, and green as a cabbage leaf in another. The paint is barely dry on these tall, fancy halls, each one heavily hawked, promising fun and excitement.

They call to me.

That dance hall seems pretty inviting.

It calls to me.

I really want to go in there.

It calls to me.

“The GoldenBear Emporium” looks like it’s a popular place.

This place is a party! There’s a stage full of cutie-pie girlies dancing for all their worth, bless their little hearts.

The GoldenBear Emporium is packed with men of all description. Men of the sea are mixed in with cattlemen herders. Nowadays folks call ’em ‘Cowboys’. There’s high stakes gambling at tables stocked with steely eyed men in fancy duds. Men of Spanish descent from Mexico sit playing with farmers, ranch hands, and lots more assorted fellas of disparate description and unknown background.

Plus there's the girls!

Lots of
pretty
girls!

Girls! Girls! Girls!

Dang! They’re everywhere! Most of ‘em are running around with their fanciest underwear showing!

There’s a lot of traffic on the stairs, concerning the girls, upstairs.

I am drawn towards the stairs.

As I make my way towards the staircase a large woman of Indian descent blocks my path.

“May I help you, sir?”

What a strikingly beautiful, yet fierce woman this is. I can tell that a warrior’s blood is flowing just below the surface.

“I want to go upstairs.”

“My name is Abigail GoldenBear. I own the GoldenBear Emporium. Why do you want to go upstairs?”

“I want to see Okzana.”

Why did I say that?

She snaps into an even more acute examination of my face. There is more to this woman than meets the eye.

After a few moments of thought, her obsidian eyes never blinking, she tells me: “Go on up.”

Suddenly, I am filled with trepidation. I don’t really want to go upstairs, but something is making me think I do. This whole situation does not feel right, but I am powerless to stop my slow tread up the steps.

I’ve never moved so slowly in my life. After a few steps I turn to look back. Miss Abigail GoldenBear is watching me make my tortuous ascent.

I resume my journey up the Stairway to Heck.

Imaginary lead weights at the ends of my legs make the climb difficult.

Oh, golly, I have a bad feeling.

What am I doing here?

I keep walking. Normally I skip up and down stairs two or three steps at a time, but right now it is all I can do to climb these carpeted headstones one at a time. I’m moving slower than molasses going uphill on a cold, January morning.

Why did I leave the hotel? I need to stop and get back there right now!

I feel as if I am walking in deep, thick mud. The clinging suction of the imaginary muck makes every plodding step an eternity.

I should go back. Why don’t I turn and leave right now?

I stop in front of a door.

Why did I come to this door?

“Come in, my Ichabod.”

The velvet voice is a feminine command, thick with a Bavarian accent that cannot be resisted.

Opening the door, I enter a room, that is soft in its lighting and furnishings. Pink, diaphanous material, and peach coloured curtains are hung throughout, like fleshy spider webbing.

The air is suffused with pungent perfumes and spicy incense. Taffeta tidings amongst feminine frippery adorn the sumptuous boudoir.

The bedchamber is as soft, inviting, and deadly as the welcome sleep that comes in an odourless, gas-filled coal mine.

“Good evening, Ich, a, bod,” purrs a thick, syrupy, Baltic accent. “I am so happy you have come to see me.”

Rising from a vanity, a very, majestically, female form is backlit against a lady’s dressing screen. With hair piled high, the shapely shadow ever so slowly slinks from behind its place of concealment.

“Great Googly Moogly.”

This woman is tall, dark-haired and beautiful. The physical dimensions of her outlandish feminine proportions I would not have thought possible. Such a pleasing and supple form I could not imagine. Stunning, womanly contours and curves relieve me of my sensibilities. Knowing eyes hungrily take me in. With more sensuality than I would have thought possible, she moves to me.

“Ich, a, bod,” her breathy, Lithuanian accent enthralls me. With a panther’s deadly gait, her tightly corseted, barely dressed body insinuates itself ever closer. Slinking like a big cat trying not to frighten its prey, one knee after another is exposed in the break of her satin robe.

“You have come to me.”

I should not be here. She should not know my name, nor I hers. This is wrong.

“My little Ichabod.”

She wraps me in a sheer, black-lace embrace.

~Gulp.~

“Kissss, . me . . . ”

~Gulp!~

“Kiss! . Me! . ”

~GULP!~ “
Gee whiz, Ma’am. I really shouldn’t even be here.”

“Kiss! Me!”

Her eyes are shining bright. Her mouth searches for me eagerly... I can’t move!

The door bursts open. Abigail GoldenBear has knocked it off its hinges.

My amorous seductress hisses at Miss GoldenBear.

The door bustin’ Indian woman clutches an amulet and begins a low chant.

The svelte, Viking vixen shrieks. Something in her face has a slightly non-human look to it.

“Herold! Get Keef and the Irishman!” commands Abigail GoldenBear to her security/doorman who had followed on her heels. He bolts.

Suddenly, the overbuilt, underclad, black haired Baltic Beauty has me by the throat. Good grief! Her grip is unbelievable! I am being choked into unconsciousness.

The owner of the Emporium begins to chant. It’s low and slow at first, but now it is rising with intensity.

On hearing the chants from Miss GoldenBear, the vexed voluptuous Latvian vamp vehemently throws me aside as she unleashes an unearthly scream. Gasping for air, I see her give an apparent psychic headbutt to Abigail.

Miss GoldenBear stumbles.

Just then, two men crash into the room. One is a tall, strongly built man of authority. The other is compact, but with an air of feistiness.

The BeloRussian Bombshell stretches her arms...

and stretches her arms...

and stretches her arms until they split into many squirmy appendages.

A dozen tentacles or so shoot out in four directions.  Me, Miss Abigail, and the two unfortunate gentlemen that have joined us are clutched by the loathsome limbs, their rubbery intimacy unbound.

Me and my would-be rescue team are all being impossibly thrown about the room in a violent manner.

“Ha, ha, ha, my Nipponese clients would envy you.”

I am held against a wall, while the big man has been swept off his feet. The smaller of the two is being banged up and down against the ceiling. Miss Abigail is being choked and smothered by the hated tentacles. The evil vixen laughs most horridly.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

The upside-down fellow on the ceiling has just unloaded a very powerful revolver into the octo-woman.

The horrible girlie is staggered, but quickly rallies.

“Sit down, lady!” roars the big man from the floor, as he pulls the rug out from under the big Rus.

This action is enough to loosen the gruesome lady’s hold on me. I get to Miss GoldenBear, and cut the offending tentacles with P.E.R.K.

The monstrous would-be temptress does not like having her tentacles cut. She peals another ear-splitting scream.

The big man has drawn his revolver and unloads it into the monstrous woman.

She is staggered, but still does not go down.

The two men make to reload, but she strikes, pinning both of them.

I go to renew my attack, but she catches me, as well.

Miss GoldenBear resumes her chant.

The squid-lady falters.

Cutting myself free of the suckery limbs, I press my attack.

The emerald blade sinks home.

The concurrently captivating and blood-curdling creature cackles:

“Vhee have already vhun. As soon as you left her alone, Meese Pluhmtar-r-r-tt vhuz ripe for assassination. By now chee is already dead.”

- - -

The loathsome/lovely Lithuanian’s partially gorgeous, partially grotesque, form stiffens, turns green, and melts.

“Listen, Keefer m’lad, do ye’ not hear the despairing cry of a doozen horses outside?”

“Yeah, O’Hagan, that’s not good.”

“Oh my Goodness, I gotta get back to Miss Plumtartt!”

“Freeze, citizen, you don’t know what those terrified horses signify.”

“Yessir, I do! With these goggles, I can see ‘em!”

“Go on!”

“Nossir, it’s true!”

“He means go on and get your skinny butt out the door, you daft little farmboy, there’s mischief afoot!”

“Yessir! There they are! There’s a swarm of skeeter monsters flying in the doors...hey!”

“Give me those goggles, citizen. The boy is right, O’Hagan; with these goggles, I can see them. I estimate the flock to be comprised of twelve, twenty pound mosquitoes.”

“Come now, Constable Smith, dinnae be stingy; kindly share the view. Ho, ho! These lanterned goggles are just the trick! Look at the ghastly, phosphorescent lobsters flopping through the air! Tee, hee!”

“Them goggles are mine, give ‘em back, y’all!”

“We are temporarily commandeering your ooncanny coontraptions, soonny. We’ll retairn them with the dispatch of these hideous pests.”

“You promise, sir?”

“Of course, laddie.”

Even without my ‘Green Beauties’, I can still track the swarm, as I can barely hear, and sometimes get a flash of shadow to indicate the monsters’ positions.

All the gambling, drinking, and flirtin’ comes to a quiet conclusion.

The musicians are shushed and stopped from their performance.

The dancing girls on the stage stop their enthusiastic high stepping as they too sense the strange danger that has entered the saloon.

Everyone in the room is silent and tracking the swarm. Tiny flickers of half-seen movement are enough to give an idea for the position of the buzzing cloud to the naked eye.

A nameless dread holds the room in its cold clutches.

The vicious hum of invisible source circles the girls on stage. The barely dressed girlies cling to each other in fear. The spinning swarm reaches a howling crescendo and then drops on the hapless ladies.

The dancing girls try to fight off the parasites in blind terror, desperate and harried, moved with primal defenses.

Twelve of the girls scream in horror and clutch at invisible monsters that have apparently latched onto their heads.