The Case of the Murdered Hyborean

The Silvergrey Sea

Part One: A Little Excitement

The Case of the Murdered Hyborean

* * *

My first instinct was to hustle Drago out the door; I already get too many whackadoodles in this job.

He anticipated my reaction and clarified immediately by showing me an old rope scar across his neck. As a private eye, I’d seen my share of suicides. I had to admit it looked like a hanging wound, though I’d never seen one healed before. Whether or not his story checked out, that scar would give him good reason to suppose he had died.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“I’m uncertain of the timeline. My memory of the hanging is fresh. I would have thought no more than a day or so before I woke up in Vita. That was two days ago.”

“Your scar is a lot older than that.”

He nodded. “My memory is unreliable in this instance, to be sure.”

“Maybe you should start at the beginning. How did you wind up at the end of a rope?”

“I was born and raised on Hyborea, a world on the Hermetist’s trade routes through the Silvergrey Sea…”

* * *

Drago’s story took some time to tell. What made it hard was Drago’s habit of using the least number of words possible. I had to drag details out of him, though he never evaded a question. Before he was halfway through, I knew I was going to take the case. I also knew it was going to be one of the riskier endeavours of my career.

While Drago told his story, something feral flashed in his eyes for just a second, like an enraged animal was trapped there. It startled me but was gone before I could speculate as to why. By the time he reached the end of his tale, it had happened twice more. I added it to the list of things to ponder about this new client.

I thought the issue of my fee might be a sticking point, but I needn’t have. It seemed that, along with everything else, Drago’s rescuers had left him a fat roll of bills. It was Hermetic Scrip, too, not the local currency. He paid for the first week plus my estimate of expenses and, at my suggestion, went to find a room at a local place I recommended.

I told him I’d start my preliminary inquiries that evening and the next day and that I’d come to see him with my initial findings the day after.

I saw him to the door and stretched out on the cot in the back room for another couple of hours of sleep.

* * *

Before going home for a quick shit, shower, and shave, I called up Josie at the Red Palazzo and told her to expect Drago and to put everything on my tab. After, I went to dinner at Mabel’s, my favorite greasy spoon, with an emphasis on ‘greasy.’

Hey, if I were concerned about my health, I wouldn’t be a P.I.

It was raining so, naturally, there wasn’t a cab anywhere on this side of town.

I trudged along Falcon Avenue, collar up and hat brim down, toward the local Hermetic Chapterhouse; I needed some background on the Hyborean.

The widest and longest street in the city, Falcon ran from the docks to the top of the ridge that crowned Santo Mortis. All the city’s most important civic buildings, as well as its most expensive real estate, clustered along the last three switchback miles of it.

I trudged along a wide, mostly empty sidewalk, the occasional truck or bus rumbling along past me. Three, four, occasionally seven, or eight storey buildings huddled together for warmth. Most of the storefront windows were black. I glanced at them in odd moments and saw my dim self, slightly hunched, eyes hidden in shadow beneath the brim of my fedora. Across the street, I could make out the half-lit windows of apartments. They were upper mid-level rents just here, unlike the tenements I preferred, which were closer to most of my paying work. A rumble that could have been thunder, or a low-flying aircraft headed for the port outside Vita made me shiver in happiness. This was my element. I crushed out my stub of a smoke beneath my heel and reached for another. Lighting the cigarette in the rain is not hard to do, with practice.

I began to consider what Drago had told me and to give a second thought to whether I should have taken the case. Don’t get me wrong, I love money, but I also love the routine of my job.

I concluded that I had taken the case partly because it promised a break from that. Life had become, not stale exactly, but less than exciting. Part of me wanted a bit more mental exercise than I’d been getting, lately. Another part reminded me in detail of those times excitement had nearly gotten me killed.

It took thirty minutes to get to the nearly featureless Blaxstone cube that was the local chapterhouse of the Order of Hermes, sandwiched between the courthouse and the hall of records. I reached the end of the slog easier in my mind about taking the case. I decided to approach it with my general attitude of enthusiastic caution.

The rain stopped when I was a dozen paces from the front door, natch.

A bare outline of posts and a lintel excised from the surrounding stone provided the only clue the structure had an entrance. I stood in front of it not bothering to knock.

After a slow count of three, the barrier faded from view. By the overhead light, I could just make out a hallway. I stepped through.

Four steps in and the lights came on. I was in the reception room. I didn’t need to look behind me to know both hall and door were gone.

The room itself was another black cube, this one lit along its edges with white light. At the back was a desk on a dais behind which was another Hermetist: female, of middle years, her uniform coloured in patches of white and black; mostly black.

She was busy at the screen to her right when I arrived. After a few seconds, she tapped a couple of keys and looked up. “Harry. Good to see you again.” Her voice was a pleasant soprano with an undertone of bored. She was smiling, though.

“Hi, Sally. I’d like to see Abram if he’s available.”

“I think he’s in; let me check.” She began doing something at the terminal.

After a few moments, “He’s here. Take a seat. He said he’d be down in ten to fifteen minutes.”

The room had half a dozen squarish chairs with low backs. I sat on the one closest to the only visible exit from the room. It had just enough padding to make me wish it had a lot more. Fifteen minutes of this and I’d need surgery to repair my ass.

I casually pulled my cigarette case and lighter out of my breast pocket. Before I could get a smoke to my lips, “No smoking, Harry! You should remember that.” I hadn’t expected to get away with it, but it was fun to try. I gave Sally my best fake smile as I reburied my cancer sticks.

Twenty-five minutes and eight nic fits later Abram, the bastard, finally showed up. He smiled a little more convincingly than I did as he crossed the floor, hand out. “Harry! I hadn’t—” I rose and shook his hand—”expected to see you again so soon.”

Four solid pumps, then a lingering grip as we conversed: I’d’ve known Abram’s handshake in the dark while drunk. “I’ve got a new client, and I could use some help checking a couple of things, if you’ve got a few minutes.”

His eyebrows rose, making his ice-blue eyes seem bigger. “I’m intrigued. I can’t remember the last time you came to me for that kind of help.”

I smiled as he finally dropped my hand. “I do. It was our last year of college, before you were initiated formally—”

He cut me off with a look. “Why don’t we talk in my office. It’ll be much more comfortable.”

“After you.” I didn’t bother hiding my grin.

He led me through a door past the raised desk. Sally gave me a goodbye nod and went back to whatever the hell she did all day.

Abram’s office was on the third floor. That meant stairs. For some reason I was never clear on, the Hermetists didn’t like elevators. What the hell, at least I didn’t have to climb.

We walked through an archway a ways down the black, neon lit hall. Abram stood on a trapezoid of slick black stone no different from the floor; one of twenty arranged in a circle. It began to move upward. Once at the height of the average stair riser, the one behind it also began to go up, then the next. Standing on another, two steps behind my colleague, I then began to rise. Once the whole circle became an ascending helix, Abram gripped a handrailing that had appeared and we gently began spiralling up the moving stone stairway.

We went round twice before Abram stopped us by letting go the railing. Off the platform we went and down an identical hall to another archway, this one blocked by a stone door. It faded to nothing just as the front door had done as soon as Abram laid a hand on it.

He walked around a plain black stone desk putting that weird hat of his on a stand as he passed it. He hung his coat under it. “Have a seat,” as he sat behind the desk.

I decided to keep my coat on. As I placed my hat on the desk, a cut crystal tumbler half-full of something clear and deep amber slid toward me. I noticed the nearly empty ashtray and decided to take a chance.

There was no objection; in fact, he joined me, lighting one of his liquorice smelling cheroots.

I exhaled my first lungful before taking a sip of the good bourbon my friend kept for special guests.

We both leaned back, smoke rising, whiskey clutched in free hands and smiled at each other.

“Why do I get the impression you don’t relax a lot in this job?” I asked.

He smiled, but only on one side of his face. “Oh, I do get to unwind occasionally, but it seems I only get to have fun when you’re working a case. One where you actually need my help promises to be as good as a long vacation.”

I almost cracked a sincere smile, something I hadn’t done since the last time I’d had sex. Speaking of which, I was overdue for a night at the Red Palazzo. More on that later.

“So, Harry, what’s the skinny?”

How much to tell Abram upfront was something I’d spent no little time considering. I’d known him since we’d cut classes together as teenagers. If it came to a choice, I doubted personal loyalty would triumph over the honour of the Order of Hermes. If some of the things Drago told me checked out, the Hermetic Order might not even survive the next few weeks.

“I have a client who claims to have been kidnapped from his native world, a planet called Hyborea.” Time to tap dance around the truth. “He also claims not to have any memory of what happened after until he woke up in a hotel room in Vita.” Not exactly a lie.

“So, what do you need from me?”

“Primarily an astronatal scan to see if he’s telling the truth about his birthplace.” I didn’t need Abram for this, but getting one done elsewhere would have cost me. I figured my old friend would be intrigued enough to give me a freebie.

“You doubt him?”

“No more than anyone else. There are some aspects to his story that are unlikely, though.”

“Such as?”

“He has an old hanging scar around his neck that he claims he didn’t have it before he was taken. Neither does he remember how he got it.” Only half a lie.

“So, either he has serious memory problems, or he’s lying. Why take the case at all? You’re not hard up for cash, are you?”

I let my cynical smile bloom. “Not lately, no. There’s something about this case that intrigues me, though.” I finished the last of my bourbon just as Abram reached into the drawer for another refill himself. I slid my glass across the desk, which he refilled and slid back.

He ashed his thin cigar in the big crystal tray before replying. “Someone’s mischief has you by the nose, again. Don’t suppose you’d care to share?”

I shrugged; then crushed my ciggy butt in the tray. I answered as I retrieved another from my case and lit it. “At this point—” I put the smoke to my lips and snapped the case shut—”it’s just a vague feeling.” The click and fizz of the zippo as I sucked flame onto the end of the butt. Snap! and the lighter joined the case in my breast pocket. I exhaled as I spoke. “I think this guy, Drago, is legit. There’s an alien feel to him that I’ve never encountered before. He’s been places, strange places. I’d bet my last credit note on it.”

Abram spent a few seconds staring into his glass. He took a big swallow. “How much did this Drago tell you about his world?”

“Mostly that it is a place of extremes. It has an arctic northern climate, a tropical southern one, and virtually no temperate zone at all. Also, his race is dimorphic, and the sexes don’t live together.”

Abram nodded. “An odd place to be sure. Their mating customs are quite out of the ordinary, as well.”

It was my turn to nod and crookedly smile. “He told me a bit about that, too.”

“What does he look like?” I described him. “He sounds like he’s from Hyborea.” After another moment’s consultation of the Oracle of the Spirituous Beverage, “Bring him in.” Another smile. This one told me nothing; in the thirty-odd years I’d known the Hermetist, he’d never given it.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

© Gideon Jagged
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