Still more reviewer praise

"This anthology of fourteen original pulp sci fi, horror, and thrillers hearkens back to the nostalgic post-war days of movies featuring water-heater robots with blinking plastic eyes, fog-shrouded Universal backlots where comedians flee classic monsters, lumbering mutants and aliens in rubber suits wreaking havoc on suburbia, mad scientists with dastardly plans turning dials and tapping gauges, and junior G-Men patrolling their neighborhood for commie spy rings...

"DC Larson has created a wide variety of short stories reminiscent of those chillers, produced in a more innocent time when evil never won, when the Army deployed to blast invading UFOs and giant amoebas with tentacles, and when a kid, reporter or scientist with a little know-how and a lot of gumption could save the day.

"Larson captures that spirit of slapdash production values and naive film making in literary form. It's as if he remembered those glory days of cheesy, youthful imagination, and invented original, yet familiar tales along the same lines...

"It actually works, because the reader envisions B-list actors in the roles, and it all seems to fit together for a rousing good read."

http://patrickdornreviewer.blogspot.com/2019/07/book-review-ballad-of-riegelsberg.html

More reviewer praise

"The Ballad of the Riegelsberg Werewolf and Other Fantastic Accounts is an anthology book inspired by the 'creature feature' horror and science fiction films of the 1950s and '60s. Growing up watching films and TV shows like Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and Johnny Jupiter, DC Larson has assembled a collection of new stories that harken back to the early days of film.

"The Ballad of the Riegelsberg Werewolf does an excellent job of recreating the feel of those older films. The quaintness of small towns and horse-drawn carriages, the inspiring feats of humanity accomplishing the impossible, and the horror of monsters coming to life."

http://www.roguesportal.com/review-ballad-of-the-riegelsberg-werewolf/?fbclid=IwAR3xE0ESIC-d6YdorRRtye05pfxZ2zCEZMXh56KSdxrZ_MfvDkyuIpkcRsM

Reviewer praise

"If Universal Studios really desires a resurgence of its dark universe, or even a revival of its old-time sci fi, the blueprint for success lies in this masterful raconteur's 'Ballad.'"
- Michael Housel/Bizarre Chats blog.

http://bizarrechats.blogspot.com/2018/10/dc-larsons-ballad-of-riegelsberg.html

The crawling amoeba

The white lab-coated head of Army special research supervised storage of the liquid Uranium-Anastol still under development.

"Be very careful with that barrel, gentlemen. Watch your step. The slightest movement may set off a chemical chain-reaction possibly capable of unknown devastation."

“Understood, sir," a soldier hefting a barrel from one side said. Then he whispered to his partner: “Now he tells us!”

The young assistants tread gingerly toward the Dangerous Materials shelves in the top-security storage locker.

The supervisor swept dust from the shelf, then motioned for his assistants to place the barrel on it. He had one last warning:

"And you must ensure that experimental substance does not come into contact with your skin. Not in any manner, or to any degree. Should such occur, the Army cannot promise your life will not suffer in irreversible and horribly disfiguring ways!"

----------

 Two thugs lueked in the shadows night offered. A green-and-white patrol car cruised the downtown boulevard. The two froze in an alley entrance,

Once the police had passed, Gage gripped his underworld revolver and continued inching along the government research facility's red-brick alley wall.

"Eddie, what time is it?"

His seedy accomplice checked the scratched gold watch he'd stolen from a drunken sailor the night before, after he’d slugged him with a lead sap. "Almost midnight."

Gage smirked nastily. "The security guard shifts should be changin' any minute. Then we make our move!"

"Hey, who are you going to sell the stuff to?"

"You mean what country? I don't know who they are. Somebody foreign. Anyway, makes me no never mind. I just want that big cabbage. And anybody willing to fork it over is jake in my book."

Gage had made his criminal reputation one slugfest or shootout at a time, from the tough streets of his misspent teen years to the sorts of dives only men without good character frequented. The unlucky ones were carried out feet first.

The back door opened. Light shined into the black alley.

"'Night, boys. See you tomorrow." A guard touched his cap’s brim as he departed.

The new-shift guard did likewise. "Right. Say hi to the missus."

Then, all was again dark and silent.

"Okay, Eddie. Follow me."

Gage and Eddie had no trouble getting inside. "For a big-deal set-up, they sure don't take no precautions," Eddie whispered.

"The stuff we're after is straight ahead." Gage pointed to the storage locker door marked Do not Enter.

He and Eddie immediately entered and cased the shelves. They were littered with auxiliary equipment. Toward the end was the stored barrel reading Uranium-Anastol.

"Take it down careful-like," Gage instructed. "Don't get that stuff on you. We don't know what it could do."

But Eddie grabbed too quickly. And the barrel full of brownish-yellow, unstable liquid Uranium-Anastol drenched the right side of his face and forearm.

Immediately, the acidic-smelling experimental chemical began to fizz and smoke.

"Gage! Help me!"

"Take off your jacket," Gage hissed. "Don't let the stuff seep through the sleeve!"

Eddie weaved, in his thunder-filled brain’s eye a swirled panorama of lunatic images. He could feel the skin on his face change ... melt...ripple.

Gage half-carried his doubled-over accomplice to their battered sedan.

----------

Once the hoodlums had returned to the rat-trap apartment in which they'd holed up, Gage sat Eddie down on the sagging bed.

"Okay, hold your head up," Gage ordered. "I can't see your face."

The revulsion Eddie saw in Gage's expression made him leap to his feet and rush to the mouse-chewed dresser's mirror.

What he saw flabbergasted him. The side of his face that had been drenched by the liquid looked like dripping wax with protruding blood-red veins. Half of his jaw was now laying against his neck. His mouth, on that right side, was contorted back to the extreme and fixed in open grimace. Undulating gums and jagged teeth were bared in sickening display.

But the worst was his eye. Obscenely enlarged and round, it appeared to bulge nearly out of its socket. Revolting red veins, jaggedly erratic like miniature lightning bolts, stole toward the shockingly blotchy cornea that never stopped rolling crazily.

Eddie gripped the dresser with shaky, sweaty hands. His knuckles were white. He could feel his knees start to buckle.

"Let's see the arm," Gage managed to whisper. He gulped.

Eddie rolled up his sleeve and gasped. The skin was corroded and greenish. His forearm bulged with pus. His fingers had become long and tipped by talons.

He collapsed to the grimy floor.

Gage stared. "What the devil was that stuff?!"

----------

Helen and her mother were having the same argument they'd had innumerable times.

"If you were a smart girl, you'd walk away and save yourself from a lifetime of heartbreak."

Helen turned away. "I've told you, time and again: Eddie says he's all through with that life. He's turned over a new leaf."

"Ha! I'd like to see that!" Her mother lowered her voice. "And you've got your future to think about. Don't you want a nice family?"

"Of course I do. You'll just have to accept that Eddie will be in it."

The dimly lit apartment was cramped. It was where Helen had grown up. Since she'd met Eddie, she'd found work at a local bar and gotten her own apartment. It wasn't much. But she knew Eddie would soon take her away from all that.

"All I can say is, I'm glad your father isn't here to see this."

"Yes, let's talk about dear old dad. He left us stranded, penniless! And you hold him up as someone to admire?"

"You watch what you say!" Helen's mother crossed herself. "Your father did the best he could."

"Oh, I'm tired of hearing what a misunderstood man he was. Just give me that money and I'll be on my way."

"And what do you need $50.00 for? To pay off his gambling, probably!"

"What I do with it is my business!”

----------

Gage sat alone in the grody apartment. It was illuminated by a bare 40-watt bulb that hung above the rickety, peeling card table.

"This is crazy," the penny-ante hood lamented. Beads of terror-sweat dotted his worry-wrinkled brow. "Just when I'm gettin' on top, this has gotta happen! I was going to ice Too-tall Salvaturi and take over the whole operation."

He leaped to his feet and yelled out the window. "Hey, world! How come you don't give Gage nothin'?!"

At the sound of a front door-knock, he spun. "Whoever ya are, ya better clear out! I don't want no company!"

"It's me, Helen. Open the door. I got Eddie’s $50.00."

"That's the only good news I've gotten, today." Gage let her in.

She looked around the tawdry apartment and sat in one of the unmatched folding chairs. "Where's my Eddie?"

"Never mind that, you said you got the money?"

“It’s for Eddie.”

“Well, he owes it to me, so let’s just cut out the middle man!”

She dug in her purse and handed him the crumpled bills.

He stuffed them in his pocket. Then he had an idea."Now, you wanna see Eddie? He's in there."

Helen entered the bedroom and left the door wide. Gage saw that Eddie's condition had worsened. His entire head was now bloated, grisly, and inhuman. His torso and both arms, too, had become swelled, hideous. And his size had nearly doubled.

Gage also could hear Helen's struggle and terrified screams for help. But he paid them no mind and slammed the bedroom door.

He had an empire to plan.

----------

"Good Lord in Heaven, what happened, here?!"

The stupified morning research team stood in the storage locker's doorway. One assistant spoke. "This is going to set back the entire schedule!"

"Never mind about that!" The head researcher examined the lock. "Of far greater urgency is the fate of the spilled substance and of anyone it might have touched!"

He faced his colleagues. "Gentlemen, this may well mean the entire city is in grave peril!"

An Army security detail arrived. "Geniuses," one soldier muttered. "The Army can't live with 'em, but we can't live without 'em."

The man hefting a rifle beside him agreed. "I say, they're more trouble than they're worth!"

The head researcher overheard them. "I suppose you think I should be digging ditches."

The first soldier stifled a laugh. "That's a hot one: Poindexter getting his hands dirty!"

----------

Gage paced the apartment. He stared at the wide wooden floor-strips. They were stained. A mouse scurried to its corner-hole, having found no food.

"Too-tall Salvaturi is due any minute,” Gage said to himself.  “And he's gonna wanna know where Eddie is."

Eddie was Too-tall Salvaturi's nephew. And Gage knew the aging mob boss planned for Eddie to take over when he went back to Sicily.

From behind the door to the bedroom came a furious pounding.

"Shut up, in there, Eddie! I'm tryna think!" Gage swiped at the empty bottle that stood on the card table. It smashed against the faded wallpaper.

The front door swung open and in strode Too-tall Salvaturi. As calm as could be.

No pleasantries. "Where's Eddie?"

A way out occurred to Gage. "Oh, he's right in the next room. Go on in. I'm sure he'll be glad to see ya."

Too-tall Salvaturi opened the door. He was yanked in.

Gage watched as a flood of poisonous foam covered the mob titan, drowning out his desperate pleas for mercy.

The growing monster had only the previous evening been Gage’s accomplice. But any sign the thing had once been human was now gone. It was a surging mass that took up nearly half the room. Tentacles slapped the floor. It pulsed, and its hateful red eyes rolled wildly.

The disgusting amoeba reached out through the doorway with a cold and slimy tentacle. It wrapped it about the pathetic hood’s leg. Gage pleaded for mercy, shouted for help as loudly as he could, and strained with all his might to cling to the door jamb. But the amoeba dragged him across the floor and loosed another gush of poisonous foam.

Within moments, Gage was a skeleton.

The amoeba crashed through the window, though its ballooning size kept it from doing so without scraping its sides on the jagged remains of the pane. But if it was aware of the slashes on its bulging mass that oozed sickeningly yellow pus, it gave no sign.

It began a squishy gallumphing toward the research facility, within which were still stored additional barrels of Uranium-Anastol. That supply meant the amoeba's power would be enough to destroy the city.

It was by now the size of a garbage truck. Plate-sized, scowling red eyes glared at the world. Hairy fangs jutted at weird angles from its slobbery maw. Yellow streetlight glare illuminated its slimy-green corpulence.

From its bulging underside, it secreted more poisonous foam. A bubbling wet trail streaked the cement in its wake. Oncoming cars swerved, shrill police sirens erupted, and terrified pedestrians fled.

Within minutes, Army troop trucks roared up.

The veteran colonel commanding the soldiers realized the unnatural amoeba's horrifying ambition. "It's headed to the research facility!

If that thing manages to meet up with the rest of the stored Uranium-Anastol, it'll be too powerful to stop!"

A little girl with a black ponytail broke away from her mother, who cried, "Lisa! No! Come back!"

The distraught parent began to chase after the innocent child, but was pulled back by a policeman. "I can't let you get near that thing, ma'am! It's too dangerous!"

The little girl extended a daisy to the blobbish monstrosity. "I want to be your friend."

Her eyes wide with horror, the mother held her breath.

The amoeba let out what sounded like a furious growl. It gushed poisonous, steaming foam. The innocent girl was knocked off her feet and covered by the toxic ooze.

The mother wailed at the loss of her daughter, burying her anguished sobs in the patrolman's chest.

"Just as I would've bet," a man said, his teeth clenched in anger. "That amoeba isn't human!"

The colonel whirled to his men. "Hit that thing with all you've got!"

But the machine gun fire did not stop the crawling menace.

"Hurry up with that jet," yelled the colonel into his transmitter. "It's zero hour! Time to drop the big one!"

The amoeba broke through the chain-link fence surrounding the facility. The crowd screamed. Ambulance sirens screamed. Red spotlights criss-crossed the black sky.

A woman in the crowd pointed up. "Here they come! At last!"

A trio of fighter jets bore down on the area. One broke formation, zooming in directly over the monstrous amoeba.

"This is it, brother," a policeman muttered to himself.

A grandmother squeezed shut her eyes. "I can't watch!"

"Give 'im one to remember in Hell," a teenager shouted, his defiant fist aloft.

The bomb detonated squarely atop the hideous creature as it crawled mere inches from the facility's brick wall. The entire building was consumed by a mammoth, orange-and-blue conflagration. Shards of window glass rained down on the ground. Bricks crumbled, and twisted metal became white-hot.

The weird, murderous amoeba's high-pitched death-scream could be heard for miles before it exploded into a million smithereens.

Copyright © 2019 David Charles Larson

Adam and Eve on Monster Island     

Video monitor technician "Tennessee" Taylor zoomed in. "Okay, y'all. Keep your eyeballs peeled on this."

Blue-uniformed government workers crowded around his swivel seat, peering down at the video screen.

He drawled "Here comes the first monster transport."

A bulky army plane lowered onto the island's clearing. It paused, and wide exit door dropped open. A blobbish, jelly-like creature -- the size of a Buick and with angry, blood red-veined eyes -- slithered onto the sand.

"That's the Crawling Curd," Taylor said. "Number one in today's monster hit parade."

No sooner had the plane lifted off, and the Crawling Curd disappeared into the island's ubiquitous greenery, than a second army plane appeared.

"Wonder who this one's bringing?" a technician wondered.

"I don't know that it matters." Colonel Peterson had stepped up to the crowd. His green uniform stood out. "Just so these monsters are as far from civilization as possible. That was one of our purposes in establishing that freak-show getaway."

Another creature was disembarking onto island sand. This one lurched, hunched over. Its arms were thrust ahead, and its sloping brow nearly obscured its heavily lidded, cold stare.

"El Monstruo! I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley!"

A hulking and broad-shouldered thing taller than any man, El Monstruo looked as if death were his way of life.

One staffer watching the screen remarked: "They say it has the strength of ten men."

"I suppose that's to be expected," replied the Colonel. "After all, he was sewn together from ten men."

Taylor looked back over his shoulder. "Colonel, y'all want me to maintain monitoring?"

"By all means." Peterson took a pipe from his mouth. "Let's watch the parade."

The planes kept coming. A vampire, the infamous Archduke Leonidis of Budapest, stalked in regal sinisterness. His ebony evening clothes were of the finest design, his bearing that of a nobleman to the manor born. 

But despite such disarming outward appearance, the Devil's own evil lurked in the dank recesses of his grotesque spirit.

A howl burst from the next military transport, and out scrambled the Appalachian Wolfbeast: a hirsute, tornadic whirl of yellow fangs and astoundingly lengthy, rip-ready claws.

The patchwork Geek followed, a deranged sideways grin plastered across his pasty half-skeleton face. He wobbled and lunged, lunatic eyes darting from side to side.

The final creature an army plane brought was the mummy Ho-Tap-Tu. He was entirely wrapped in decaying bandages, some of which  trailed from his feet as he trudged in unstoppable strangulation quest.

"Are they going to be left there," asked a female technician. "Without any armed oversight?"

Colonel Peterson shook his head. "Not entirely. The researchers want to use them as guinea pigs, so they'll be monitored at all times. 

"That's why that specific island was selected for the job," he continued. "It's got a mock city we built on a radiation test site years ago, buildings and all. Our scientists want to gauge any effect the remaining radioactivity might have on the monsters."

Heads bobbed. 

"At least they'll make that contribution to mankind," said one of the technical assistants.

"The first thing they're going to do is try to get off the island," Peterson said. "That's where Doctor Omar's defensive shields come in."

A small, baldimg man in a white lab coat had joined them. He wiped his eyeglasses and put them on again before speaking.

"We've erected protective barriers around the entire perimeter. Any detected motion past the approved water demarcation, and reinforced ironesium walls will spring up, immediately repelling any would-be transgressor. A precautionary stratagem most imperative."

As the colonel and the doctor made their exit, "Tennessee" Taylor whispered to a colleague "That is it, last word, and final. This ol' boys just gotta get hisself a dictionary!"



----------



Also on that same island, their presence unknown to the Army scientists who'd selected the monster radiation-testing area, were a Man and a Woman. From their hillside vantage spot, they watched as the motley miscreations arrived. And though they recognized them as monsters to be pitied, monsters to be despised, little did they suspect that gruesome depravity would shatter the idyllic life they'd begun.

The Crawling Curd. El Monstruo. The Appalachian Wolfbeast. They were the first to loom out of the shadows in various, despicable manifestations of vile hideousness. 

Archduke Leonidis. The Geek. Ho-Tap-Tu. Their peculiarly outrageous silhouettes were more than enough to strike paralyzing fear into the marrow of any scrambling prey. No man could survive their bloody viciousness.

Oozing poison-slime, lurching doom, hissing and saliva-flinging ferality, sinister menace, berserk unpredictability, and a curse-carrying, centuries-old strangler whose eternal murderous mission had been inscribed in cryptic runic phrasings on his ceremonial Egyptian sarcophagus in ancient days.

Hand in hand, the trembling Man and Woman fled to the shelter of a rock pile.


----------


Year after year, two-star General McCarr had been stuck at that rank. He never quite received promotions. The other generals, he knew, laughed behind his back. "Two-star McCarr," they called him.

Colonel Peterson hurried to the general's office upon being summoned. He found McCarr watching an executive military video monitor. 

The general barked over one shoulder. "Peterson, get ready for a shock."

The colonel knew the general's monitor offered unique perspectives unavailable to Taylor's screen, downstairs. 

The colonel couldn't believe his eyes. Two people were on that terrible island, hiding behind a rock pile. Their apprehensive attentions were fixed on the monsters. 

"A man and a woman! What are they doing there? If the monsters find them --"

"Exactly, Peterson. They'll suffer excruciating tortures we can only imagine." McCarr turned, his round face grim. "The army wants you to leave immediately for the island."

"A rescue mission!"

"Yes. There will be danger, of course."

"Sir, I don't give a hang about anything but completing the mission," Colonel Peterson bit off.

"Spoken like a true soldier! Take such battle and technical personnel as you deem necessary. And bring back those dratted fools!"


----------


Eyes wide with astonishment, the Man and Woman beheld a bizarre procession of inhuman barbarians.

Over the years, a large radiation mass had solidified amid the weeds and undergrowth. A throbbing pile of death. Its unseen power acted as a ferocious magnetic impellent, drawing into unstable transformative force the grisliest, most ghoulish monsters the world had ever known.

Then:

It was too horrible a sight to watch, but somehow impossible to turn away from. The Man and Woman could only stare open-mouthed, stomachs turning and terrified thoughts cascading, as the radiated monsters merged with one another in the unspeakable genesis of the greatest, strangest hybrid of awfulness man had ever seen. 

Finally, once all had blended, it reared back and roared its rage at all things decent. It stood nearly 20 feet high. Every muscle rippled beneath a leathery hide. 

Here and there, scattered amid rancid husks and tusks, were parts of the contributory monsters' yowling faces. In wretched combination, they had found power far more stupendous than anything each could ever have boasted in isolation.

The Man and Woman could only gape, awestruck, their minds reeling at the implications for mankind. 

Still gripping one another in shocked disgust at the newly born abomination, the two whirled at the sound of military vehicles cresting the nearby hill.

Colonel Peterson leapt from the lead vehicle. "What the devil is that thing?"

"Back home, we'd call it a Wampus Haunt!"

The colonel spun. "Taylor, you were brought along for technical monitoring, not homespun narration!"

The Man found his voice. "It was individual monsters. They somehow merged!"

"I'll deal with the two of you, after this is over," Peterson told the Man and Woman. "And you'd better have a blasted good reason for being here!"

The Wampus Haunt bellowed in ear-shattering fury, Its crazed eyes reflected in staggering unnaturalness a multiplied monstrousness too bone-chilling to even contemplate. 

Peterson put two and two together. "Of course! It must be the radiation!" He scowled. "Once again, scientists causing trouble with their blamed curiosity! And we have to pick up the pieces!"

"Colonel?" A soldier had approached. "I'm Sergeant Dawes, sir. Want us to blast that thing?"

"My gut says yeah, " Peterson snapped. "And I put a lot of stock in my gut's opinions! Dawes, I want every rifle trained on that thing. You boys give it all you've got, when I give the order!"

Sergeant Dawes snapped his salute and ran back to the vehicles.

Colonel Peterson waited until Dawes and the other soldiers had lined up in firing formation.

"FIRE!"

A tremendous volley of army-certified ammunition with enough combined killing capability to flatten a regiment hit the Wampus Haunt dead on. But far from obliterated, the creature seemed only annoyed.

"What does it take to kill that thing," Taylor yelled. "An in-cant at the midnight crossroads?"

Peterson saw Dawes running toward the Wampus Haunt, an explosive device in his hands. "Dawes! Don't be a fool! Get back with your men!"

Dawes had intended to hurl the explosive into the creature's ghastly face. But he never got the chance. He'd gotten within feet of the Wampus Haunt, when a bizarre force emanating from within the creature locked the sergeant in its beam. And in a flash, the heroic Dawes had been sucked into the Wampus Haunt.

"Colonel Peterson! Did you see that?" Taylor cried.

But the colonel knew better that to indulge emotion when the moment called for cunning. "If those rifles can't do the trick, we'll give 'im the sonar-blaster! Let's see him withstand that!"

A soldier ran up. "Colonel? We got company!" He pointed back to the hill.

Doctor Omar would later call it a Cyclopsodic Spider. But in that moment, Colonel Peterson just saw a new danger with its own ugly face.

The Cyclopsodic Spider had been roused by the battle. It was a fat, waddling beast with eight long, thin legs ending in points, a hate-filled goggle eye in the center of its face, jagged teeth extending from a severe slash-mouth, and an odiferous, matted hair-mass as black as the worst nightmare Hell can produce.

But the worst was yet to come. Swinging about to face the fearsome Wampus Haunt, the Cyclopsodic Spider opened wide its mouth and spewed an orange-and-blue flame-stream that encircled the roaring, thrashing Wampus Haunt in a ball of wicked fire.

Leaping out of the flames around it, the creature whose being combined six monsters of shuddering atrocity grabbed hold of the Cyclopsodic Spider. It began dragging it to a cliff.

"Colonel! That thing's gonna throw that other thing off'n the cliff!"

Peterson snapped "I can see that for myself, Taylor!" A thought struck him. He looked to the grass. "But, he's going to go over with it. Why would he want to --" 

He looked back up. "Of course! It's Dawes! He's still fighting the Wampus Haunt's evil spirit from the inside!"

Peterson's mind reeled and rocked at the age-old struggle between Good and Evil he knew to be surging within the hideous Wampus Haunt. He prayed Good would carry the day.

The grappling monstrosities strained against one another in deadly earnest, rolling and crashing, their fetid hides bloodied and their every stomp shaking the ground. 

Colonel Peterson, Taylor, and the rest could only stare, flabbergasted, as the Wampus Haunt and the Cyclopsodic Spider flailed and smashed in hysterical death-match. 

And when the battling behemoths did indeed go over the cliff, all ran to gape at the splintered limbs, hide scraps, and fire bursts that were all that remained of the two.

The colonel took off his hat. Taylor and the other soldiers followed his lead.

Dawes had been a true hero.



----------



Peterson watched the vehicles head back to the lagoon for amphibious transport back to the base, then turned to the Man and Woman. "Okay, let's hear your story. You two were in great peril on this island. It's a military property. What are you even doing here?"

The Woman looked to the Man. He spoke. "We think mankind has really made a mess of things, with what they call 'advanced civilization.' We came here to start over, to begin a whole new world."

The Woman looked down. "I suppose you think we're silly."

"Tennessee" Taylor shook his head. "This here is one crazy place to set up housekeeping, if you ask me."

"I'm pretty sure no one asked you." Peterson said. He appraised the Man and Woman. "No, I wouldn't say you're silly. To tell the truth, sometimes I feel like throwing the whole thing away, too."

He looked to the cliff. "But then, I remember the good man can do."




Copyright © 2019 David Charles Larson

Blinky, the robot spy-smasher         
by DC Larson

The empty house at the end of the street had become popular, but with strange occupants. Serious men who never spoke to their neighbors came in and out all day, and sometimes even at night.

Most dressed in curious, dark clothes, wore black beards, and carried papers. One man, whom the others treated as some type of leader, peered coldly through round, wire-frame glasses. He strode determinedly, a large, red book under one arm.

Rumors circulated. But no one really knew what was going on.


A half-dozen elementary-school boys and girls, the Swayze Street Gang, were running and laughing around the old Hulsizer place. Tommy emerged from the abandoned garage, "Come in here, everybody. Take a gander at what I've discovered!"

Inside, they surrounded his surprise find. Junk and straw had been pushed aside, revealing something startling that had lain beneath.

"What is it?"

"It's a robot, stupid!"

"Well, of course, I can see that. I mean, where'd it come from?"

"Why is it just laying there?"

"It needs fixin'! Look at it!"

Indeed, it was in sorry condition. A pot-bellied thing on spindly legs, it stared with blank, red plastic eyes at the rafters. One arm hung loose, held to its socket only by green wires. A jaunty, metal pork pie hat lay a few feet away.

Its grey gun-metal hull was faded. The dust of decades covered every inch. Understandably, it didn't appear happy.

"What do you want to do with it?"

"My dad's got tools!" Tommy cried. "I'm going to try to get it working!"



----------



Army officer Maxwell entered the general's outer office. "I've been called to see the general on an important matter," he told the secretary, busy at her typewriter.

"Of course, go right in."

He found the general gazing out the window behind his desk. "Officer Maxwell, reporting as ordered, sir."

"Look out at that city, Maxwell. All those citizens, living their lives, pursuing their happiness, each trusting that we will protect them from foreign invasion. None know the peril now upon our very doorstep."

"Peril? I don't follow you, sir."

The general turned. "Spies, Officer Maxwell. I'm talking about spies. Right here in Clydesville."

"Spies! Here?"

"Yes, a threat to national security, right here in our own sleepy town. We've had reports of a spy ring setting up shop in the Swayze Street neighborhood. I want you to get to the bottom of it."

He turned back toward the window. "We've got to stamp out this filthy rot before it spreads. Keep me briefed. And be careful, Maxwell!"



----------


The kids gathered in the abandoned Hulsizer garage to admire the repaired robot. The pork pie hat was now tipped at a rakish angle.

"I worked all week on him," Tommy declared, proudly.

The boy put him through his paces. "Robot, raise your arms! Robot, jump! Robot, dance!"

You haven't seen everything until you've seen a 3 foot robot doing the Hornpipe.

The metal man was happy. His red plastic eyes flashed.

"What are we going to call him?"

"Hey, look at his eyes! Let's call him Blinky!"

A chubby member of the gang came in. He'd brought with him a tall man whose crisp green uniform and silver medals announced him as an Army officer.

"Say, who's your mechanical pal?" the man asked.

"Oh, sir, that's Blinky. He's the newest member of the Swayze Street Gang -- that's us kids!"

The little robot beeped in friendly greeting.

One of the younger kids tugged at the officer's sleeve. "Mister, are you a weal Army man?"

Maxwell chuckled and tousled the tyke's hair. "Yes, son. I'm a real Army man."

The officer became serious. "I'm looking for foreign spies, and need any information you can provide. Anything at all, even if it seems unimportant. Have you seen anything out of the ordinary in the neighborhood, lately? Any new people move in?"

"Sure! Right across the street. Strange people are always going in and out of that house, but they never say hi."

"Yeah, and the guys all have beards. My pop says they must be too poor to visit the barber shop!"

The officer dropped to a knee. "Okay, fellows. Can Uncle Sam count on your help?"

"Sure!" "Yeah!" "You bet!"

"Okay, good. Now: Nothing dangerous. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Report anything strange. I'll take it from there."

He stood. "Okay, children. Raise your right hands and I'll swear you in as junior army intelligence investigators!"

One kid held up the little robot's steel hand. "Come on, Blinky! You're in this, too!"


----------



The kids took turns monitoring the old house and its strange occupants. Tommy was in a tree across Swayze Street, his telescope trained on the situation. 

Suddenly, the front door swung wide. Two men with long, dark beards hustled out, a thrashing woman between them. One covered her mouth with a hairy hand.

"Blinky!" Tommy shouted down to the robot that stood at the bottom of the oak. "Run to the Army base and get Officer Maxwell! As fast as you can!"

The little robot with the pot belly who only last week had lain unmoving beneath mold and debris sped toward help as quickly as his spindly legs could carry him. One hand clamped his pork pie hat, lest it fly off.

Maxwell had just completed his briefing of the general when Blinky burst into the office,

"What th--?"

"Why, that's the gang's robot, sir! Blinky! Look at his eyes blinking. He's trying to tell us there's trouble on Swayze Street. I'm on my way!"

Maxwell swerved his sedan to the curb in front of the mysterious house. One of the bearded spies stood guard in the front yard. The officer drew his revolver, then returned it to the holster. "I don't need firepower to deal with a lousy subversive!"

The kids were clustered across the street, cheering and punching the air.

The army officer whaled the daylights out of the bearded stranger. One last, old-fashioned uppercut, and the seedy spy was seeing stars.

From the side of the house came the leader, clutching the red book under one arm. His attempted escape might have succeeded, had the plucky little robot not stuck out a foot.

The leader sprawled across the lawn and his book went flying. 

Maxwell grinned. "Good man, Blink!"



----------



At the Army base, the next day, the kids of the Swayze Street Gang were commended in official ceremony. The general himself praised their service to the country in helping smash the spy ring. 

The kids lined up to receive medals. Tommy shouted: "Blinky's the real hero!"

The cheering kids hoisted the little robot onto their shoulders. His red eyes flashing, Blinky clasped his hands above his tilted pork pie hat like a prizefighter.




Copyright © 2019 David Charles Larson

Ballad of the Riegelsberg Werewolf is no longer available as an Amazon ebook. I've taken it down, and am contacting a publisher. 

All my other books can still be purchased as Amazon ebooks.