Greed, crime, and apathy plaque all. Evil lurks around every corner as well as within the hearts of men. There are but few who seek to bring Justice to those who would harm others. Among them, a lone figure with the power to cloud the minds of others and the ability to meld with the darkness which sprung him. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!
ISSUE #6 (August 2018)
Written by D. Golightly Featuring: The Shadow
Moe Shrevnitz
Margot Lane
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"Battle for Control!"New York City, 1938
“Thank you, Burbank. Your constant dedication never goes unnoticed.” Lamont Cranston hung up the receiver of one of only two phones within his massive household, ending the call with one of his most trusted informants. Burbank’s position as a telephone operator in the city made him one of the Shadow’s most valuable agents, as he was able to intercept vital conversation and relay them back to the Shadow. “That about Tuttle?” Moe Shrenitz, the equally dedicated cabbie, asked. Lamont leaned back into his leather chair in his study, sipping from his coffee mug. The warm liquid did much to replenish his body, having just recovered from a lightning-quick sword strike to his back. “Yes,” he replied. “He was confirming that our man in the local precinct was able to collect the secret formula and return it to Professor Tuttle this morning. It was ‘carelessly’ left off the evidence list.” “Good,” Moe said, taking a long pull from his own mug. “Those Kobra goofs were pretty wild, huh, boss?” Lamont nodded silently. He had seen many common thugs since returning to the United States from Tibet, but those he found within the Kobra Klub two nights ago, who called themselves members of the Order of the Kobra, were an entirely new breed. They were well organized, trained, and vicious. He was beginning to suspect that they were part of a much larger, nationwide organization, but wasn’t sure exactly how the Shadow could put a stop to their terror. After all, while Kent Allard, his real alter ego, may still have connections in a few cities across the country, his assumed identity of Lamont Cranston was limited to New York City. He was now Lamont for all intents and purposes and the Shadow had thus far remained localized. Perhaps he needed to start thinking about branching out. “What’s our next move?” Moe asked as he slurped down the lasts of his coffee. He looked around, but didn’t see where to put his mug down in the study. The blue collar man typically felt out of place in such a lavishly decorated home. Before Lamont could respond, the door knocker pounded. Not expecting anyone at this hour of the morning, he swiftly stood up, tightened the belt of his robe, and headed for the foyer. To his surprise he opened the door to Margot Lane, niece of Mayor LaGuardia, and recent confidant. She was out of breath and urgently pushed her way inside the mansion. “Miss Lane,” Lamont said in greeting. He watched her stomp into the foyer before closing the door behind them. “You have to help!” she finally squealed. “They’ve taken him!” He placed his hands on her shoulders, trying to match her shifting gaze and could instantly feel their connection reignite. For whatever reason, he and Margot shared some kind of mental bond that he had yet to deduce the origin of. “Easy, Miss Lane,” Lamont said soothingly. “Who? Who’s been taken?” “My uncle!” She exclaimed. “They’ve kidnapped the mayor!” That evening, after Margot had been brought down and she had a better chance to explain the circumstances, gone was the guise of playboy Lamont Cranston. In his place was the other side of his nature, the enigmatic mystery man that stalked the streets of New York City, who struck fear into the hearts of those who gleefully planted the seeds of crime. The night wrapped itself around the figure, who would cloud the mind of anyone that might see him, leaving only shade in his wake. This was how he truly felt alive, not as the wealthy investor, but rather as the vigilante known to criminals as the Shadow! It was his manner of redemption for his own past crimes. The Tolku had shown him that much. But thoughts of his past would need to evaporate like his own visage as he concentrated on the case at hand. The Shadow knew that Mayor LaGuardia had connections to organized crime, specifically to Francis “Big Boss” Turiano, who was now awaiting his trial. Given Margot’s story, it seemed likely that the mayor’s sins were catching up to him. As his niece, Margot was visiting the city and staying with her aunt and uncle at their estate, touring and making a place for herself on the society pages. But last night, when her uncle had been expected home after a fundraising event, in his place had returned a telegram stating that the mayor would only be released if a one-million-dollar ransom was paid promptly. Margot’s aunt had feinted, but when she had come to, the police were the first place she had turned. Having just discovered Lamont’s secret persona the day prior, Margot herself sought another manner of swift justice. The Shadow slipped along the alleyway easily, and even though any passerby would see nothing by scattered trash thanks to his abilities, the streets were still vacant and left he free to move about. At this hour very few wandered the streets alone. The telegram had given an address for the ransom drop, which he was sure the police would stake out themselves. However, the drop wasn’t scheduled for another two hours, leaving the Shadow time to make an advanced scouting. There, at the corner of 45th and Madison and on the same side of the avenue as the Shadow, stood a lone figure leaning against the lamppost, silently smoking. The corner and the street were both empty otherwise. The pile of cigarette butts at the man’s feet proved that he was waiting for something. The Shadow stepped deftly out into the open, but he could easily penetrate this man’s mind. He found that the easiest way to do it was to catch his target off guard, unnerve them, and retain their full attention. He did that through his signature laugh. It rose from his belly, reverberating off of the alley walls, instantly causing the lookout’s heart rate to increase. The cigarette hung from his mouth as he looked back and forth, trying to find the source of the laughter, deep and terrifying. But all he could see was a long, slender shadow painted on the sidewalk, stalking toward him. The light of the lamppost might not illuminate the Shadow himself, but his shade was ever present. The sound of his feet on the sidewalk mixed with the laughter, and the presence of the eerie and elongated shadow gave rise to the thug’s worst fears. “Good evening, Seymour,” the Shadow’s seemingly bodiless voice said. While he was clouded from the lookout’s eyes, he was still standing physically right in front of the man. “We have much to discuss!” The man, Seymour, tried to scream, but it was cut short when the Shadow grabbed him by his lapels and slammed him up against a concrete wall. He rattled Seymour’s cage a bit, and then said, “Yes, I know who you are. I know, Seymour, that you’re nothing but a putrid, waste of life. And you’ve made some poor choices, haven’t you? But tonight you can make those wrongs right again, just by giving me the information I need.” “L-let go of me!” Seymour shouted. “H-how do you know who I am? Where the hell are you? What are you?” “I can read you as easily as a book, Seymour,” the Shadow’s disembodied voice replied. The Shadow allowed the mists of the night to swirl around his invisible form, quickly parting to reveal his true personage. His black cape with red lining hung from his shoulders, shrouding most of his black overcoat beneath. A wide-brimmed, black hat was atop his head, with a scarlet scarf tied tightly to conceal the lower part of his face. The image of his captor suddenly fading into being overwhelmed what little hold Seymour had on reality. The Shadow shook his captive by the lapels again, saying, “Tell me where your partners are keeping the mayor!” Something slammed against the Shadow’s now revealed skull, loosening his grip. He uncontrollably fell to his knees as Seymour stumbled away, but the Shadow heard several other sets of footsteps quickly approach. He looked up from where he knelt on the ground to see three men in pinstripe suits towering over him, one of which held a long metal pipe, undoubtedly what he had been struck with. “So, this is the Shadow, huh, boys?” the one with the pipe said. “And he’s right where the boss said he would be! I guess our little mousetrap worked after all.” The Shadow’s hands both dove into his cape to retrieve his twin automatic pistols, but the pipe swung down too fast, and everything went black. Splash! The Shadow awoke to a sopping wet face, drips of water stinging his eyes. He gulped in a deep breath, more from shock than anything else, and tried to focus. The room was dark, but not dark enough to keep him from seeing the men that had assaulted him standing only a dozen feet away. He reactively jerked toward them, trying his best to get his hands on them, but the jingle of chains and the tightening restriction on his wrists kept him from taking any action at all. They laughed at him, chuckling softly. He took in his surroundings better, seeing now that he was strung up by the wrists and forearms against a supporting wooden pillar in an old warehouse. The majority of the vast space was covered in grime and cobwebs, with the three well-dressed men the most interesting aspects in his immediate area. What he quickly realized, however, was that his mask had been removed. The scarlet scarf that hid his features was gone, undoubtedly pulled away by the same ruffians that had sucker-punched him. His face was bare, his identity revealed. “For a moment there I thought you weren’t going to come back to us,” someone from the shadows said, someone familiar. “I was worried that this was scheme would have gone to waste! Glad that you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, though…Lamont!” The Shadow tried to twist his neck enough to see the newcomer, but the chains kept him from moving too far. He was forced to stare blankly at the three men that had been his downfall. “Nothing to say?” the voice inquired. “Don’t feel too bad, Lamont. My men are absurdly good at what they do. Aren’t you, boys? Hired them from the Kobra Klub myself. I first came across the Order of the Kobra in the Far East…where you left me for dead!” And with a snap, things feel into place in the Shadow’s memory. The voice from his past, the insinuation of his history with a smuggler in Tibet; it all added up to just one possible explanation. His suspicions were confirmed when the owner of the voice finally stepped into the light. Portly, an inch or two shorter than himself, and sporting a pencil mustache was the man whose identity the Shadow had usurped: the real Lamont Cranston. His thin lips pulled back to reveal yellow teeth, culminating in a wretched smile that smacked of hidden agendas. There was no doubt. This was the man he had thrown off a ship in Tibet, assumed his identity, and had premonitions about. “When I heard of a mystery man running around my old town, whose parlor tricks made him like some kind of ghost, I knew it had to be you,” Lamont said. “Did you think I forgot about you? And now you call yourself Shadow. Ha! Like you’re something out of one of those penny dreadfuls.” He came up close, his hot breath pelting the Shadow’s cheek. “And I begin seeing news clippings of my return from the Far East. My return! You stole my name, my money, abolished my underworld ties, and have been galivanting around the society pages like Mae West!” Lamont slapped the Shadow’s naked face hard enough to leave a red, stinging print. “But when I stumbled onto the Order of the Kobra, imagine my surprise when it seems they were also interested in finding out who you really were,” Lamont continued. “In exchange for helping to uncover your face, they brought me back to New York. Now I’ll reclaim what’s rightfully mine.” He paused, turning back to the three men as if looking for some kind of adulation, but they simply waited patiently. Then he said, “Nothing to say, Shadow?” The vigilante chuckled softly. “You’re just as weak here as you were in Tibet,” the Shadow shot back, his voice dry. “Your mind is as open to me know as it was then.” “Indeed.” Lamont came closer, his breath stinking of whiskey. “Then tell, Shadow…what am I thinking now?” The air blasted out of the Shadow’s lungs as Lamont’s fist crashed into his stomach. Already dazed, the Shadow felt like he needed to vomit after the strike. He gasped for breath as Lamont stepped back, laughing manically. The other men stood stoically, hired and trained to await orders. “Am I weak now, Shadow?” Lamont bellowed. “Who would have thought that the fear of New York’s underworld could be so easily taken?” He yanked a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth. His smile twisted into a sneer as he eyed his quarry one more time. Then he turned to the three waiting men and said, “Give me an hour to get elsewhere and form an alibi, then kill him. Dump the body. I have a lot of work to do if I’m going to liquidate his assets and reclaim my name. Thanks to him I’ll need to do it in another city, though. No one here will recognize me as the Lamont Cranston they already think they know.” With a final look of disgust at the Shadow, Lamont stomped back into the darkness and exited the facility. Alone with his soon-to-be killers, the Shadow breathed deeply. Not because he was anxious, or even concerned, but he needed to calm his mind and focus. The three thugs, trained men of the Order of the Kobra, would undoubtedly wait until the appointed time as ordered before they came for him with death in their eyes. They would stand guard over him, but for the next hour, the Shadow was free to explore the powers of his mind. Meddling with their perceptions was worthless, however. He was chained up, and while he might be able to cloud their minds, he would still be unable to free himself. He needed help. His thoughts immediately went to the one person in New York City that he felt had a chance of saving him. Time passed, perhaps slowly for the guards, but for the Shadow, it was as if the clock moved because he willed it to do so. Before long, though, the hour was nearly up. One of the guards, who he recognized as the one that had bludgeoned him, checked his pocket watch. Satisfied, he stepped over to a workbench and picked up a huge wrench designed for working on industrial machinery. It would seem that they did not intend for him to have a clean death. The Shadow braced himself. “Stay still,” the killer said as he approached. “Or this will take longer than it has to.” Something tugged at the Shadow’s mind, and in response instead of cowering or pleading with his killer, he began to laugh. It was a deep, echoing laugh that criminals throughout the city had come to fear. It was a trademark of the enigmatic Shadow and a tool that he used to for his prey into submission. For the killer, it made him pause. “Your only chance of surviving this encounter,” the Shadow finally said, “is leaving now.” The thug looked back at his compatriots, confused, but decided these were the last words of a desperate man who was in denial of his predicament. When he turned back and hefted the heavy wrench over his head to deliver the death blow, the wall behind them exploded. Wooden shards peppered the room and moonlight poured in through the new opening, like it was pushing in the yellow taxi cab that had smashed its way inside. The two other men were struck down by the cab, crushed under its tires. The man with the wrench was awestruck, and the Shadow used the distraction to his advantage, kicking him in the gut. The man doubled over, winded, and the driver of the cab leapt out of the vehicle and was on him in a flash. Moe Shrevnitz, the loyal cabbie, struggled with the last thug, but it was obvious that he was being overcome. He was pushed back against his own cab, fighting for his life, with the Shadow so close, yet unable to help. Metal scraped on concrete as the wrench was picked up by the cab’s second occupant, and Margot Lane clobbered the killer on the back of the head, knocking him out, and saving Moe in the process. “Oh!” she squealed after the thug hit the concrete floor, and she dropped the wrench. “Dear me! This is too much for me, I’m afraid.” “Margot!” the Shadow shouted, elated. “Moe! You came!” Moe rubbed the back of his neck as he helped himself off of the hood of his car. “Not that I knew where I was headed, boss!” he replied. “Miss Lane here comes into your place, all a tizzy, demanding that we head down to this place. I thought she was crazy!” “I thought I might be crazy, too!” Margot added. She rushed to the Shadow, pulling at his chains. “I wasn’t sure that the telepathic summons I placed in your mind would work,” the Shadow said. “Tele-what?” Margot asked. “Telepathic.” Moe retrieved the key to the chains from the pocket of one of the men and came over to them to free his employer. The Shadow continued, “When we first met we felt that connection; do you recall? I wasn’t sure that you would be able to understand me when I reached out to you with my mind, but I’m glad you did!” “We got here just in time, from the looks of things,” Moe said. He dropped the last of the chains on the floor, freeing the Shadow. “So, what’s next, boss?” The Shadow retrieved his special ‘45s from the workbench, happy to feel their weight in his grip once more. He took in a deep breath, spun them into his twin shoulder holsters, and said, “Next…I end this once and for all!” Lamont Cranston was beginning to think that his luck was changing. Having dragged himself from the dank river in Tibet two years ago, he had assumed that he would perish in that horrible, faraway land. But he had survived. That was what he did best. Regardless of who he had to defile to get what he needed, he survived. Now, back in New York, he was both aggravated and delighted at discovering his holdings. The sheer audacity of the impersonator to take over his life so completely and publicly had nearly driven him insane, but when he discovered just how successful the investments had been, he could now retire comfortably for the rest of his life. But it would take some sleight of hand paperwork. First, he needed to get the bank to release his documents in the safe deposit box they had secured in his name, and it would probably take a few weeks to quietly unload his shareholdings. He wanted to disappear again, money intact, but with no ties to anyone else. That meant liquidating nearly everything, including the house. And what a house it was! This other Lamont, whatever his real name was, had been a master of design and possessed impressive taste. The mansion, tucked away in the outskirts of the city, would have rivaled that of Rockefeller or Carnegie. It would be hard to leave behind, but with the money he would collect from its sale, he was sure that he could find its like in another city. Perhaps Chicago. There was quite a lot of organized crime there these days, and he still had his contacts in place. He could start all over again, swimming in money, with the sky as the limit. He approached the door to the gothic mansion, wondering just how he was going to get inside. From his scouting he didn’t believe that the Shadow had any servants, so he was likely going to have to break a window or kick the door down. But then the echoes of laughter surrounded him. He nearly leapt of our his shoes he was so terrified. It was impossible, but the laughter was growing louder until it was all he could hear. Then the darkness seemed to creep up from nowhere, ensnaring him, covering him, devouring him. He cried out, desperate. Was he going crazy? How could a dead man be haunting him like this? He saw himself, he saw the Shadow, he saw images of his past, he saw those he had killed, murdered, enslaved, brutalized… The barrage was relentless. The laughter, the darkness, the memories. They were encapsulating him completely, driving him mad. When the Shadow finally appeared before him, again masked behind his swirling, scarlet scarf, Lamont Cranston’s mind had been devolved into nothing more than mush. He whimpered and drooled at the entrance to the mansion, and the Shadow loomed over him like a phantom of retribution. “This is how I leave you,” the Shadow said. “With your mind your own prison.” Lamont screamed as his eyes finally fixated on the Shadow, the final semblance of sanity now wiped away from the fear induced by the vigilante. And as the laughter began to rise again, night deepened over New York City, with its inhabitants unaware of the battle that had raged on that evening, a struggle not just for the identity of one man, but for the fate of a lifetime. Casefiles & Comments And thus ends the series. Thanks for those who read the whole way through! I’ve always loved the Shadow radio serials and wanted the prose to feel like those old shows, but there are obvious tips of the hat to the Alec Baldwin movie in my stories. I know that the Shadow isn’t strictly a DC character. There was a Shadow comic series released by DC in the 70s outside of their main continuity, but there were later Batman issues that did put Lamont Cranston into the Dark Knight’s history. That’s pre-Flashpoint and various other Crises, of course, so who knows these days. For DC2K, I consider the Shadow a part of DC fanfare. Thanks again! |