Stan Pines was in a nightmare he'd kept having for a week since last Sunday. In the nightmare, he was laying on the couch at Boaz Marsh's, in a drugged stupor; Mother Marsh was howling, dragging her withered legs as she crawled towards him in a stained pink nightgown. Her pale face wasn't human… it was green scaly with wide fish eyes, a gaping fish mouth.. gill slits on her neck and a rough bald head. She was clutching a large knife in one hand as she slithered towards him, and he couldn't move, not one finger… In his drugged state, he couldn't even whimper or moan. She was getting closer and closer, wailing and growling, the knife ready to slice his guts up. In a instant, as her stinking breath hit his face (How could he smell it in a dream?), he knew Malahath, Mr. Sargent and Boaz were the same, they were all these horrible fish people, and they'd let him be murdered.
He woke up with a start. The room was dark. Rick was snoring; a standing fan was blowing a cool breeze over his body and the alarm clock read 12:00 pm. Stan was about to close his eyes, and then the phone rang. He groaned and nudged Rick.
"Hey… Rick, get the phone, it's ringing." Stan grumbled into his pillow.
Rick mumbled: "W-w-why do I have to g-g-get it, Punchy?"
"It's probably for you," Stan muttered.
"F-f-fine," Rick grunted.
He got up. Stan used the opportunity to steal his pillows and put them under his head. Stan heard Rick answer the phone in the other room and was just about to drift back to sleep when the bedroom room light was unceremoniously flicked on. It was bright and jarring. Stan groaned and pulled the blankets over his head. The blankets were ripped off.
"What the fuck, Sanchez!?" Stan shouted.
"G-g-get up, Punchy," Rick said. "You need to come with me, we need m-m-muscle for this….." Rick made a vague circular gesture. "E-e-endeavor."
"What?" Stan sat up and rubbed his eyes, the world blurry, his muscles aching.
"Mr. King caught this ya know," Rick burped. "-extra dimensional entity… He wants us to g-g-get information from it on how to get to other dimensions. This is fucking big, Stan! This could be a fucking break through!"
Stan was puzzled. "Why do ya need me?"
"Because," Rick stated mildly, "It ain't talkin'. It needs to be roughed up, maybe then it'll talk."
"Alright," Stan said. "Make me some coffee first, I'll come."
Rick smiled. "That's t-t-the spirit, Palooka."
They got dressed.
As the coffee percolated, Stan tried to remember what little he knew about this nonsense. "So what's it look like? Does it have uhhh tentacles and shit?"
Rick raised his unibrow. "Naw, it's not powerful enough to uhhh to-" Rick took a sip from his flask. "-do much with its real form, yet. It's young, Punchy. Like an adolescent version of whatever these things are. So it possessed a drifter. And it's been having fun. By fun I mean slitting up hookers from Maine to Connecticut. "
"Geez, that's fucked up," Stan said.
"Yep," Rick nodded. "It got sloppy outside of of Boston. Mr. King's people caught it and brought it to the local loony bin. We're going to meet the rest of the technomancy department there."
The coffee was ready. Stan poured himself a mug and drank it down. Rick put some in a yellow monogrammed thermos topped with a generous helping of whiskey.
"Let's get going Punchy, get the lead out," Rick grumbled.
They went out to the car. Outside, it was muggy, and gray clouds covered the sky. A late summer thunderstorm was coming and the night was oddly silent. The crickets had quieted down, and nothing else stirred. They climbed in the car and drove out to the asylum.
The old madhouse was a compound of towering hostile, square brick. There was a chain link fence around it topped with barbed wire. Rick showed a security guard at a booth in the front his ID. They drove through and parked in the front, entering the lobby to find the others waiting: Stanley, unshaven, sleepy, with tousled hair. Fiddleford, in a light grey seersucker suit, alert, pacing like he'd had more than his share of coffee already. And Dr. Hinter, in a white button up men's dress shirt and a pair of slacks. She looked vaguely bored. The lobby was shabby, the tile floor was chipped, the tan walls needed a good scrub, the furniture had seen better days, and the all the potted plants were rubber.
"Stan?" Lee asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Rick said I should come, to provide muscle," Stan replied.
"I don't know if we'll need that," Stanley said looking worried.
"What's the hold up?" Rick asked Dr. Hinter.
"They aren't letting us in," she said, shaking her head.
"Mr. King said everything was taken of," Fiddleford muttered as he paced. "Why in tarnation can't we get past the lobby?"
Through the inner glass door leading from the lobby to the institution proper came a small bespectacled woman in a black suit, her silver hair in a bun. She was flanked by two large meaty male orderlies in their white uniforms. She stepped into the lobby, her eyes narrowed.
"I am Dr. Black-Flashman, the head of psychology here at Arkham." She spoke with a cultured British accent. "I'd like you to know I in no way approve of what is about to occur."
"Yeah, we don't care," Rick said with a shrug.
"We swear we won't hurt him, if we can manage it," Fiddeford said with a nervous smile.
She sighed. "That is not the reason I disapprove. Working here for the past twenty years, I've seen many, many disturbing things. But that—that— entity known as Mr. Abel Milch Grimes is the worst, most dangerous— and it poses a great risk to my patients and staff. I did not want it housed here," she passed. Her voice became sharper, harsher. "But Mr. King made so many generous donations, my objections were overridden by the administration."
"What does this have to do with us?" Stanley asked.
"You can interview 'Mr. Grimes', if you wish. Do what you can to extract your answers— if you get it to tell you— but my staff will not aide beyond bringing it into the room and setting up some of the 'equipment' you brought," she said. The word 'equipment' was spoken in a tone as if it was made of shit.
She took out a ring of keys and opened the glass doors. They walked through, and she continued her talk as they moved briskly down the hallway. "We have heavily sedated it, because of the danger this Mr. Grimes poses. You can wake it if you wish, but this whole thing is a fool's errand…"
And then Stan tuned her out. She kept rattling on as they walked down the dimly lit hallways of the asylum, mostly about Mr. King, Miskatonic's interference, and some guy called Herbert West…Blah... blah… blah. Stan needed more coffee. He wondered vaguely why she kept calling the the patient 'it'.
They were going downstairs, deeper and deeper into the bowels of asylum. The walls were gray concrete; there was a smell of mildew and damp stone. The doors down here each had one tiny sliding window on the top and one on the bottom… one to check on the loon, and one to slide a dinner tray in. Stan expected more noise, but down here it was quiet. Their footsteps echoed.
Stanley took out his cigarettes and lit one.
"These cells are unoccupied, aren't they?" he said calmly, taking a puff.
"Yes," Dr. Higgins said. "They used to put the most troubled cases down here, but since I've been head of psychology, the practice has stopped."
"Then why are we putting Mr. Grimes here?" Fiddleford asked.
"Because I don't want to bother the other patients," Dr. Higgins replied. "Mr. Grimes… is not… Whatever he was, it is not that now."
Dr. Hinter sighed. "Are we at the room yet? Having to listen to your tedious conversation is annoying."
"Yeah." Rick took a swig from his flask. "You and me both, Ushas."
"We are here," Dr. Higgins grumbled. She flicked on the light switch outside the door and unlocked the nondescript metal door of the cell.
The room was stone, damp and bare except for the equipment Mr. King had given them, and a chair in the middle of the room. Among the equipment was a boxy machine with knobs and wires on it, an extension cord snaking out into the hallway. It had a two long wires coming out of the top with two small rubber pads. There was also a very old heavy leather bound yellowed book, with some chalk and a step ladder in the corner, along with some hefty metal chains.
"I suppose I'll make the circle," Fiddleford said, taking up the book and chalk. He moved the chair to the side and turned to a bookmarked page. He held the book in one hand and the chalk in the other as he stood on the step ladder and drew on the low ceiling. He was very careful drawing the circle, putting each weird symbol in it's place. Then he moved the stepladder away and put the chair dead center in the circle.
"Do we need all this crap?" Stan asked.
"Yes," came the reply from everyone else.
Mr. Grimes was out cold when the orderlies wheeled him in. He was in a straight jacket, and he flopped around when the orderlies sat him in the chair. Stan took a look at the fellow. He was a shrimp: small, pale, sickly, with stubble on his cheeks and a sunken face with a yellowish tint to it. His greasy brown hair lay limply on his head. This was the guy they were so scared of? This guy had really killed those hookers?
The orderlies left the room, their eyes fixed on Mr. Grimes as if they were scared. Stan watched as Ushas taped the small rubber pads from the machine to Mr. Grimes' forehead.
"This technology is so crude. Not the way I would have done it," she huffed.
Rick took the chains and, with Stan's help, looped them around the unconscious Mr. Grimes.
Stanley turned on the machine. It hummed into life.
"Go on," Rick said. "Wake up our s-s-sleeping beauty."
Ushas removed a vial of sparkling powder from a pocket in her slacks, and with a precise movement blew it in the face of 'Mr. Gimes.'
The man in the chair woke up, body instantly stiffening and sitting straighter. He opened his eyes. They were a dull brown for a moment. In an instant, they flashed silver, as the entity woke up and became aware.
A grin spread across Mr. Grimes' face as he looked around. He began to cackle, loud and harshly. He laughed so long he began to cough. He continued his choking cough, then he started to vomit up blood.
"Jesus!" Stan shouted and darted towards the guy, trying to help.
Rick stood in his way. "Don't. It's just a gimmick."
The thing inside Mr. Grimes stopped coughing up blood and, with lips coated in red, began to bark and yip like a dog, snort like a pig, and gurgle. Finally, it spoke in a high childish voice: "Well, well well… who do we have here. A spic, two kikes, a faggot and an uppity bitch." It grinned, and then, speaking with a voice as deep, dark and gritty as the unfinished basement, added: "This is going to be fun."
Stan balled his fist at the slur, but Rick put out an arm to stop him.
Stanley stepped forward slowly. "Are we addressing the entity inside Mr. Grimes?"
Its eyes flashed a liquid silver, like mercury. It said in a mocking tone: "'Am I addressing the entity inside Mr. Grimes?' HAHA! There is no Mr. Grimes, Christ Killer! Abel Milch Grimes isn't a real person. I have no idea what the name of this poor fellow I'm riding is. All part of Mr. King's game. Now I'm going to have some fun too."
The entity strained in his chains. It scowled deeper, strained harder. Then it looked up. "Oh, oh…. clever, clever meat sacks! I see you've put a ward on the ceiling to stop me from having too much fun! Well, you'll see, I still have my ways. I can still play with you, and we're gonna play 'two truths and a lie'."
"C-c-cut out the bullshit. Mr. King wants to know how you got into this dimension, Rick said.
"Bzzzzz Bzzzzz Bzzzzzz." The entity imitated a fly exactly. "Bzzzz. Bzzzz Bzzzz….. you fucking wetback. Your mother lay dead in that house for three days. Three days with her head smashed in and the flies crawling all over her corpse. Your father just left her there. Carried on drinking. You couldn't be bothered to even attend her funeral. You're gonna be just like him: a worthless, shitty drunk."
Rick blinked and shook his head. "Y-y-you think you're going to get to me with your fucking slurs and talk about my dead mother."
"What about your sister, Ricardo? The one you send money to still. But you were too cowardly to stop your father raping her. You only tried once, and he broke your arm for the trouble. Never again after that. Just shut your eyes and put a pillow over your head. You could have stopped him. You were clever enough," it said in the same mocking voice.
"I was a kid! He smashed my inventions, every chance he got! I couldn't do anything!" Rick shouted. "I was a fucking kid!"
The entity chuckled. "That's a sorry excuse and you know it."
"Y-y-you're trying to get to me, and it's not going to work. Fids, you handle this, while I. Ya know. Cool off." Rick said. He took a pull from his flask and a step back. Breathing hard, he took another sip from his flask.
Fiddleford came forward.
"What is your purpose in this dimension?" he asked, trying to be as calm as possible, though there was a slight tremor in his voice.
The entity spoke in a gravelly, rough voice, like a carny: "I was hungry, but mainly it was for shits and giggles. You'd know all about that, wouldn't you Mcgucket?"
"Wha-what do you mean?"
"You're a fucking faggot. Always have been," the entity said. "You like sucking dick and taking it in the ass."
"I'm not! I'm married, I have a son… I love my wife," Fiddleford stuttered.
"That doesn't stop you. Gina says she can share you. Says she loves you… but how long before you bring some faggy STD home, and she'll leave you? You think your boy wants a queermo for a Dad, huh? You will always be nothing but a redneck pansy with pig shit on your knees. All your work is for nothing, Mcgucket," the Entity continued, its eyes flashing silver again.
"No! I-I… you have no idea what you are talking about!" Fiddleford was flustered, blushing.
"You do. So do Rick and Stan," the entity said. "Don't think I've forgotten about you two, the beaner and the big-nose Jew… 'roommates.' That second bedroom isn't—"
And it couldn't talk, because Stan had punched it in the face.
"SHUT UP!" Stan bellowed.
Mr. Grimes' head jolted back with the impact. After the punch, it spit out teeth, grinning a shit-eating grin with the body's mouth. "Touched a nerve, didn't I?"
Dr. Hinter sighed. "Let me handle this, boys." She approached the entity and spoke: "What are you?"
The entity began bucking its taken hips, giddily humping air as it screamed: "IA! IA! SHUB-NIGGURATH! THE BLACK GOAT OF THE WOODS WITH A THOUSAND YOUNG!"
"Yes, yes," she sighed boredly. "That's what you are descended from, but you haven't answered the question."
It smirked at her. "What are you, Ushas?" Or should I call you by your real name? You aren't what you appear at all. Also your extracurricular activities…" The entity's silver eyes looked from her to Rick, then it smirked and humped the air once again. "Such base things for such a superior mind, tsk."
Dr. Hinter wasn't fazed. "I get bored. There is little else to do here."
The entity inside the drifter broke into a smile. "You will watch your world burn, and be helpless to stop it."
"Nonsense," she said nervously. "I don't… care about… that place."
"You will never run through the silver grasses, with the orange sky above. You will never be able to go home again," it said.
"I don't want to," she sniffed, but seemed shaken. "I never liked it there, and you are straying from the topic."
"I'm not answering to Mr. King's bitch," the entity sneered. "Because that's all you are, isn't it? You are nothing but King's pet, and he keeps you on a very short leash… doesn't he?"
"I am a no one's bitch," she countered. "Mr. King and I have an arrangement… I'm just holding up my end of the bargain."
"Because you have to, bitch. He's forcing you to. You can't slip out of this. You can't betray him like you betrayed your friends," the entity tittered gleefully. "I have to give him credit. For an old codger, Mr. King sure knows his stuff."
"Answer the question," she commanded.
"IA! IA! SHUB-NIGGURATH! THE BLACK GOAT OF THE WOODS WITH A THOUSAND YOUNG! IA! IA! SHUB-NIGGURATH! THE BLACK GOAT OF THE WOODS WITH A THOUSAND YOUNG! IA! IA! SHUB-NIGGURATH! THE BLACK GOAT OF THE WOODS WITH A THOUSAND YOUNG! ALL HAIL HER!"
Then it began to rock, twitch and yip like a small dog.
"Stanley," she said in a voice like ice. "Use the machine, make it answer."
There was a question in Stanley's eyes, but he flipped a switch on the machine. The thing called Mr. Grimes stopped yipping, eyes rolling up in its head. It writhed and yowled in pain as the electricity coursed through it for under 30 seconds. Finally, Stanley turned the switch back to the off position. Mr. Grimes lay there slumped in the chair, bound in chains. There was the smell of singed hair.
Stan walked over to the limp figure. "Is he dead? Ya did just fry him." Stan said.
There was no movement from Mr. Grimes. Maybe they'd killed the poor bastard; it was a possibility. Stan inched closer. The man stunk of blood and piss. Suddenly, with a torrent of growling, gibberish, and snapping his teeth, Mr. Grimes snapped back to life. Stan jumped back with a curse.
Mr. Grimes's eyes turned silver and it gave a bellowing laugh. "YOU DUMB YID! Come back here Stan, you snipcock. Show me what yer made of," it ranted in that rough carny voice.
"OH, I'LL SHOW YOU—!"
Stan clenched his fist, ready to give it the old left hook. But Stanley caught his eyes from the corner, and Stan lowered his fist. He walked off and punched a wall.
"Yeah. That's it, Stanford, let them order you around like a little bitch. You already let the wetback fuck you like a woman."
"YOU LYING BASTARD MOTHERFUCKER!" Stan roared, and charged Mr. Grimes.
Stanley, Rick and Fiddleford held him back.
It laughed again. "Aww, can't solve everything through punching it, Stan! You have some cunning, but you will never be a genius like these guys. You know you're here just to beat answers from me. Not that you could win a fair fight. You were always a loser. By the end of next year, you'll be in a foreign prison cell selling that hairy Jew ass of yours for cigarettes."
Stan closed his eyes, only half listening to Rick and Fiddleford trying to calm him. It was taunting him, taunting all of them, he had to let it say this…. How did it know this crap? Some of it must be BS, but still…
Rick stepped in front Mr. Grimes, his unibrow quirked: "L-l-look, I'm not calling you Mr. Grimes, because that's clearly some bullshit name you made up and you won't tell us your real one… We just want to know how you got in into this dimension."
The entity tilted its head to one side, spit in Rick's face, and began to laugh again. "Abel Milch Grimes wasn't my idea of a name, it was his!"
"Whose?" asked Rick, wiping the spit off.
"The oh so respectable Mr. Flavius William King, HA HA! That's another joke! Most of you have no IDEA what he is!" the entity said.
"What are you talking about?" Rick asked. "What is he?"
Dr. Hinter shifted and sidled up to Rick. "Don't listen to it, you know it lies."
"Yeah, Rick! Listen to her instead, she only wants to vivisect you after this's all done!" it shrieked joyfully.
Rick gave a side-long glance at Dr. Hinter, stepped away from her, then took a swig from his flask and asked: "H-h-how did y get here?"
"How did Mr. King? You know he's was in a catatonic state since 1920, and suddenly only snapped out of it last year. Don't ya wonder how and why?" the entity said in its rough voice.
Rick seemed to think about it and said, "I didn't know that."
"Very wealthy family, the Kings. Very curious family too. Madness runs in their bloodline. All dead now, except for poor ol' Flavius," it added with a chuckle.
Stanley looked at Rick. "It's not answering our questions. It needs to."
Rick shot a glance at Stan. "C'mon Punchy, make it answer."
"I've been waiting for this," Stan said.
He punched it in the gut, and it doubled over.
"Tell us how you got in this dimension," Dr. Hinter said calmly.
"You think all your knowledge, your 'superior' brain, means anything? When you will be killed by your own abominations. Die alone, and unmourned. You can never go home, Ushas," it spat out.
"I don't want to go home. I have no need for that place," she said, a bit too haughtily. "They exiled me, after all."
"And the loss of it will fester and infect that sorry soul of yours until the end," the entity said.
Stan wondered. Rick told him Dr. Hinter was Anglo-Indian, right? Did the creature mean India or the UK? As far Stan knew, you couldn't be exiled from those places anymore.
"You- Stanley's brother." She pointed at Stan. "Hit it harder."
Stan glared at her but did it, giving it a sock on the jaw and one in the gut again. It started coughing, hacking, and a thick black liquid poured from it's mouth.
"Ewww," Stan said.
After a particular nasty blob of phlegm fell out, it stopped, looking him squarely in the eyes. "Keep going, Jew Boy! The pain just adds spice! Old Flavius is onto something with his dominatrix visits!"
"Kinky," Rick sighed.
"Look, we don't care what Mr. King gets up to," Fiddleford said. "That's not the point."
"What about what you get up to, hmmmm?"
"That's not important…" Fiddleford said, blushing and not making eye contact
Maybe you became such a faggot, cuz your Daddy died in that mine collapse when you were twelve. Should have been around longer to turn you into a real man," said the thing inside Mr. Grimes.
"That's... that's irrelevant." Fiddleford was starting to shake. "Tell us how you got in."
"His last thoughts were of you, how proud he was of you and how much he loved you… Think he'd still be proud, knowing you turned out to be a cock-sucking fag?" said the thing. "That his only successful child became some ass pirate? A man who cruises public restrooms along the highway, looking for dick?" it said.
Fiddleford looked into the entity's silver eyes and gulped, red as a beet. He was shaking, but his voice was steady. "My father would love me no matter what. You don't know what you are talking about-" Then his voice changed as he lunged at the entity. "TELL US HOW YOU GOT IN THIS DIMENSION!" The sentenced ended in a screech.
Rick grabbed Fiddleford and restrained him. "Fids, you're better than this… C-c'mon, it's trying to get to us."
"Oh, you'd know about that, wouldn't you? He got to you alright, when you were roommates at MIT. You were just 14, he was 16. Rick, you were so tender, so in need of someone to trust. Someone who wouldn't betray you like Mommy did. Or leave like Cassandra did. What did Fids do with that trust? He used it to corrupt you, said the thing with a chuckle.
Rick shook his head and took a swig from his flask. "I didn't need corrupting, asshole."
"Sure, you acted tough back then. You had your copy of Catcher in the Rye, your stolen whiskey and bummed cigarettes. Your cynicism and sarcasm. The black eye your Daddy gave you as a going away present. But inside you were as naive and soft as a school girl. Ol' Fiddleford was a seasoned pervert, by then. He took you and he fucked you. Taught you to suck his dick. Took you to bathhouses when he got tired of your cloying affections, so everyone else could get a piece of lil' Ricardo."
"Shut up!" Fiddleford screeched again. "Shut up!"
Rick gave a sidelong glance to Fiddleford and took a step away. "My name isn't Ricardo, n-n-not anymore. Stop fucking around and tell us."
"What are you gonna do, Ricardo? Have your rough trade boyfriend beat me like your Daddy beat you?" said the entity, grinning. "Or have his sadistic twin give me more electric shocks?"
"We have as long as you want," Rick said. "Y-y-you think you scare us with your third rate Jack the Ripper impression, and exorcist tricks?"
"You'll die alone, Ricardo," It said. "All your genius, and you'll die face down, choking on your own vomit. No one to save you. You push away everyone who loved you."
"Yeah, well, that isn't happening any time soon," Rick said. "But we will g-g-get you to tell us by the end of this night."
"Tell you what?" the thing in Mr. Grimes said. "The founder of the King family, Joisah King, fled England on charges of witchcraft in 1721. He came here a pauper, failed at farming, but died old and rich as Croesus. Don't you wanna know why?"
Rick's eyes gleamed with interest. He opened his mouth to speak, but Dr. Hinter cut him off: "Stanley, give it another shock. This time, stronger."
Stanley shrugged, but turned the dial up. Mr. Grimes twitched and moaned. After it was done: "Ow. That was a good one, Stanley Sheeny. But then again, you've never had a problem inflicting pain, have you?" Mr. Grimes said with a laugh.
Stanley sighed and said, "Tell us how you got here, and I'll stop."
"How I ended up in this poor sap? He only wanted a hot meal and a warm place to sleep, but I've never dealt straight. Kinda like your Dad," Mr. Grimes said.
"Don't talk about Pa!" Stan said. He charged forward, and no one stopped him as he punched the thing over and over again, hearing the crunch of breaking cartilage.
Rick and his brother pulled him away.
"Heheheh," Mr. Grimes sniggered. "You guys really bought that whole pack of lies about him? About his job? You didn't know what he really was, not until the end…"
Fiddleford had composed himself. He took a breath and stepped forward. "Tell us how you got here and we will let you go."
"You'll die broken and insane, your family will have abandoned you, your body a ruin. You'll come full circle, Mcgucket. Nothing but a stupid hillbilly boy. All your genius, your famous Mcgucket labs, it'll all be nothing," it said. "A vagrant, a madman, and you'll have done it all to yourself."
"That- that doesn't matter now." Fiddleford said with surprising calm. "But what we will do to you will. I have the grimoire here..." He lifted the old yellowed book. "That will banish back from where you came. You don't want to go there. You are barely a fledge, and there are things that prey on what you are."
"That old dusty thing, banish me?! I'd like you see you try, fag!" it bragged, its silver eyes flashing... but there was something uncertain in its face.
Rick said in a whisper that carried through the room: "Why didn't he think of that earlier?!"
"There's a catch, isn't there?" Stan mumbled uneasily.
"Yes," said Stanley "There is a big catch. In order to banish it, we have to erase the ward keeping it restrained."
"Without it, it would be able to use all of its powers," Dr. Hinter said. "That is the last thing we want."
"That's f-f-fucking great," Rick said.
"What it can do now is like from a horror flick. What other powers does it have?" Stan asked.
Fiddleford shifted. "Limited telekinesis and superhuman strength."
"I don't know what the first one is, and the other doesn't sound like something I want to mess with," Stan said.
"Limited Telekinesis, Stan. What it means is Mr. Grimes can move objects, and maybe us, around the room with its, ya know, mind," Rick admitted.
"So it could just knock us about the room like ping-pong balls? No thanks!" Stan said.
"Yes. Mcgucket, your idea is seeming less and less feasible," Dr. Hinter sighed.
"I was just trying to get it to tell us how it got here," Fiddleford complained. "Nothing else is working."
"Maybe…" Stanley began. "We need to really turn the voltage on this thing."
There was cackling from behind them. "Of course, you'd think of that, Himey," Mr. Grimes growled.
"Tell us how you got in." Stanley said, unmoved, hands on the dial. He turned it up and pushed the button. Electricity crackled, and Mr. Grimes twitched like a marionette in a high wind, screaming.
"You fucking sadistic Yid. Did he ever tell you about the ESP study he conducted with transients?" Mr. Grimes giggled. "He liked giving them shocks, to 'provoke a psychic reaction'."
Stanley was still unmoved. "It was part of the study, they knew what they were signing up for. Tell us how you entered the dimension."
He turned up the dial again, pressed the button, and Mr. Grimes screamed and writhed, shaking in the chains. "Did he tell you about the mice and chimps he killed as part his experiments?"
"I had to, I didn't have a choice," Stanley said. "You aren't answering the question." He turned the dial up and shocked Mr. Grimed again. The smell of singed flesh, hair and ozone lingered in the air.
Mr. Grimes' eyes flashed bright silver. "OR," he chuckled darkly, "About what he did to his own father."
"LIAR!" Stanley had lost control of his voice. He lunged for the controls, but Rick and Stan held him back. A question bubbled in Stan's mind. Mr. Grimes was lying, right?
"He killed him! There's a circle in hell reserved for kinslayers. He was the only one who gave in to the old bastard's requests for a quick death. Only one cold enough. Just put a pillow over the old man's face until he stopped breathing. That's when you knew how easy it was to kill, right Stanley?" Mr. Grimes said, his voice filled with Glee.
Rick was struggling to hold back Stanley. He was on his own now… Stan had let go his jaw slack, his eyes questioning. He sought answers in his brother's face. But Stanley was gone, leaping towards the controls, turning the voltage dial up all the way and pushing the button long and hard. The electricity crackled. Mr. Grimes screamed, screamed, screamed, until he stopped. The odor of burnt hair and…. flesh, sickeningly like a barbecue, was overpowering. There was smoke, and there in the center of the room was Mr. Grimes body, charred and dead. Stan poked it to be sure.
They packed up and got another stern lecture from Dr. Black-Flashman. Stan tuned it out. He was tired. Like, soul tired. He kept looking back at his brother. Lee wouldn't meet his eye. They didn't speak, until they were in the lobby. Outside, a summer thunderstorm raged.
"Lee?" Stan asked.
"Yeah," Stanley answered.
"That thing was lying, right? Pa died in his sleep... right?" Stan asked.
Stanley didn't look at him, but said, "Yes, of course."
And hearing it, Stan knew his brother was lying. That Mr. Grimes had told the truth. But that there was nothing he could do, and all the rage in the world wouldn't help.
"That was a waste of time," Dr. Hinter sighed, even as she looked a bit disconcerted.
Fiddleford looked pale, and kept looking at the floor.
"Hey, ya know what would help us now?" Rick said. "Getting wrecked. Totally black out drunk."
"You know, Rick," Stanley said, sounding tired. "That's an excellent idea."
Everyone else nodded in agreement. They needed it, after that night.