Dr. Anton Jessup's Halloween Spectacular

the various monstrous correspondences we have to reply it. Given all of this work and the demands of my own other research projects, I hope you understand we can't possibly do this more than once or maybe twice a year. So let's go ahead and fire up the pneumatic tube, remove the canister, and see what we have here. First, spectacles please Maxwell. This one is written in small script. It reads, dearest doctor Jessop, I confess that my husband and I are writing to you at our wits end.

Our issue, you see, is our young son Bob. We've tried everything we can think of to give him a proper environment to nurture his inner darkness, but nothing seems to take. When Bob was a toddler, we lived in a house that we'd been garanteed had been built on a former burial ground in which the headstones had been moved,

but the rotting bodies had not. We tried in vain to interest Bob in the eerie voices that would manifest in the post broadcast television static or the mysterious portal to another dimension that had so obligingly manifested in his bed room closet. Decaying corpses routinely burst from the swimming pool and the beast rampage several times through our living room, but Bob remained blissfully oblivious, playing with his blocks, or

horror of horrors, watching the loathsome sesame street. Thinking that we understood the problem, we moved to a house that was next to a proper cemetery, complete with tombstones, both in the yard and even one inside the living room.

We set up playdates for Bob with a ghostly young lady from the neighborhood, and hired the most unsettling babysitter we could find, hoping that their bad influence would help Bob achieve his potential alas even with witnessing multiple random bat attacks by a curiously persistent member of the species and mutilated corpses mysteriously piling up in the cellar. Bob has persisted in his love of wholesome children's tes television, and I shudder to say his model drain set. Doctor jessup,

Are we trying too hard with Bob? Would malign neglect perhaps be a better strategy with our son? In our loftiest dreams, we see him summoning forth Luke Thou or Nikra Korraf. But perhaps we'd settle for him writing a series of best selling hard novels that culminate in a tone that drives the entire world insane. Whatever are we to do? Yours, respectively be deviled near Boston, Ah, A parent in question. Let's see well. First of all, I share your suspicion of Sesame Street, though the count is

a good friend of mine. It really sounds as if you've tried all the right things, providing your spawn with the right environment and the right media, the right social environment as well. I wish I could employ the expertise of my colleague doctor Freudstein, but alas he no longer answers my letters, my advice is to maybe lean into the whole train set obsession. There are many wonderfully haunted trains out there, and various monsters are drawn to their

strange energies. The late Professor Sir Alexander Saxton wrote some rather excellent works on the Trans Siberian Railway and ancient beings that wouldn't quite stay dead. Yes, Yes, encouraged the training obsession. This next one comes to us from a Rackney lacayas.

else froze, but I knew what to do. I broke the glass panel on the emergency box, whipped out the revolver inside, and dropped the fiend with three rounds. You still gave me a C on the necropsy that semester total bs, But I like to think I found my life's purpose that day, or at least that's how I used to look at it. Monster slaying sounds sexier than it is. It's not the desperate villagers who come calling, it's the monster makers. I have a few regular clients

in the fringe sciences Zorka Calligar Courtner. You know, the type, always pushing the boundaries, but never around to clean up the mess, so they call me. It's hard to keep good clients. The monsters generally catch up with them in the end. But a special subset of my clientele don't have to worry about that at all. They're the ones who always get away with it. They have deep pockets, deep powers, and an intense desire to stay out of the limelight. I work a lot on behalf of her Grace.

We're not supposed to use her given name. Her cleaner Walter rings me up every couple of months, a slippery guy with serpent eyes behind tiny shades. We always meet up at Noctua, this little bar downtown near the library. He always tries to order me a Martinez.

I'm the convergence of two monstrous lineages, the Wolf and the Spider, and I wouldn't exist at all if not from modern science. The resurrection of ancient DNA. The biotech

company responsible Biogamouth didn't last long. When the Twelve discovered the operation, they sent in their most horrifying enforcers, the Hecatonquarees, the hundred Handed Warriors, though calling those horrendous appendages hands is generous there the god's monstrous bioweapons meant to wage war against immortal foes, so they made short work of the scientists in their labs. But they spared the engineered children of Biogamuth. Why threw away a useful tool? The

Twelve let us grow up in the world. They found parents to raise us. My mom didn't know my true nature. I looked like everyone else, really, and I just looked like another infant in need of love. When she saw the words Arachney Lacayan scribbled on my documents, she kept it as my first and middle name. I took the folder and left, better not to hang around too long

in her graces house anyway. I took the folder to Butler's Coffee just off seventy Second, the one where they hammer your laptop if you try to set one up. No computers, no headphones, just books and below average coffee. I spread the file's contents out in front of me. Despite Walter's insistence, I'd still half expected the same old god drama. Due to some code of theirs, the Twelve never killed directly and saved their own monstrous avengers for

more serious threats. Instead, they spitefully twisted the mortals who spurned or insulted them, as they've done for millennia. It then fell to me and people like me to slay their creations. If they proved an inconvenience, that's the Twelve for you. Far be it from me to understand the Gods. The file, however, detailed something unexpected. My Quarry was another child of the Biogamath project, engineered and cloned out of resurrected lineages of ancient god touched DNA. The document listed

her classification and tight black script Arachne Lacayan. That was my classification as well, the very words that became my mortal name. The monster they tasked me with slaying was at the very least my mad science sibling, if not my double. The document gave her an individual name Ekrew. That was it. No other form of identification under the

dangerous or objectionable behavior section. The profile mentioned interference with Olympian operations, which was thoroughly vague and almost as an afterthought. Mortal murders. The documents recommended beheading as the preferred mode of slaying, which I suppose would be the preferred way of killing me as well, and listed an address and time for ideal interception of quarry. The gods are precise. They know where you are, and with a margin of

something like a city block where exactly you'll be. All they have to do is point you in the right direction. An appointment card in the folder included the name of a nearby flower shop and an order number. An hour later, I pulled a double edged short sword from a box of carnations. To say it was exceptional craftsmanship would be an understatement. Hephestus himself had forged it in another world. I brought a fingertip within an inn of the cutting edge to test it, and the flesh began to smoke

ever so slightly. It would do the trick. The documents told me where to go and when to do it. Such is the exactitude of the gods, and such as their view of mortal tools like me in their minds. I'd merely been placed on a track, little more than a machine, but I followed the instructions all the same. The old warehouse towered over the surrounding neighborhood. None of the children and old people looked in its direction, though they stared at me with increasing suspicion as I walked

past them. And then the living neighborhood simply ended. The buildings most adjacent to the warehouse were abandoned and boarded up, as if some event horizon were crossed. And venturing so deeply into the warehouse's shadow, I went to the predetermined doors and found them chained and enough steel to shackle an elephant. But even this was no match for my favorite trick. My lineage is strange, you see. I pulled off my left glove and moved my awareness to my

uncovered hand. I focused on my index finger and thumb. I watched them elongate an arch into a pair of lupine claws. I winced at the sudden pane of lengthening bone. My nails sharpened into wicked claws. I pinched the claw tips together, then pulled them apart to spend a single thread of webbing that gleamed like silver even in the deepest shadow. I looped the thread around the massive padlock, and with a quick turn of my wrist, closed the loop and severed the steel my strange legacy of wolf

and spider. I ventured into the darkness of the warehouse, at first, encountering only the detritus of abandoned industry, dilapidated machines of unknown purpose, and hints of the human work force that once animated it all. But as I ventured deeper into the space, other signs presented themselves. I passed fresh wooden crates newly opened, and around them cast off plastic and styrofoam padding some new industry, it would seem, pulsated in the decaying husk of the old, And soon enough

I encountered signs of my quarry as well. I descended a long hallway crisscross with lines of silver webbing much like my own, and scattered beneath them the remains of the dismembered bodies. My lap grown cousin could use her threads as weapons. It seemed monofilament lines that, when pulled taut, sliced through any one in their path. I knelt beside one of the bodies. It was naked, humanoid and basic shape, but more arthroopod in every other respect. Rows of tiny,

useless appendages lined its chest. I knew them well. These were human louse hybrids, the accidental offspring of biogammus. Ancient DNA experiments see Ectoparasitic lights sheese on the hair of otherwise mummified bodies can preserve host DNA, making retrieval at least seem possible. The science wasn't there yet, though, and the cross contamination of human and lys's genetics birth monsters. They often infested abandoned biogamath facilities. But I know what

you're wondering. Didn't the Hecatonkrees destroy all the biogammuth labs? I wondered the same. I jumped at the sound and glimpsed her a crew shoot across the inn of the hallway, a figure wrapped in a tattered trench coat. I drew the Divine sword. The threads of razor sharp webbing burned away as I brought the blade near. I easily sheared away the strands she'd used to slay the hybrids, as well as the more subtle ankle level lines that she'd loved to stop me, and so I followed her unobstructed,

into another vast factory space. Why you hunt me, cousin, that's above my pay grade. We should talk, then, come out. Let's talk. Not here. Something rushed me, and I ran it through with my blade, but it was only her empty trench coat. I saw her vanish behind a whole industrial press, and so I dashed after her sword. At ready, I narrowly managed to dodge and sever the threads of

razor webbing she'd left in her wake. I chased her down another hallway, through another chamber with signs of recent habitation. Here I passed not only fresh crates, but various tanks and machines that unmistakably bore the logo of the Biogamuth Corporation, the hand extending from a fiery double helix. It was exactly the distraction she'd counted on. She'd flanked me amid the lab equipment, and I felt loose webbing spin around me.

I pulled the sword up just in time to sever it and keep her from pulling it taut around me and threw me. As I brought the sword back with the decapitation swing, but she was too fast. She recoiled from the sword's lethal arc with maybe an inch to spare. I saw her in full for the first time, illuminated in the green glow of assortied biogamuth equipment. While I could call on wolf and spider and do my one

little trick, she had embraced our lineage completely. She was unclothed of human garments, but were splendent in her full monstrosity. The animals we call spiders are just a shadow cast by the form of God cursed a Rackney. So too the twisted airs of Arcadia and the comparison of the wolf. Human language fails in the face of a perfect monster. There was a lupine wildness to her hair, which cascaded

in a flowing mane, down her spine and tail. Her hands tapered into claws as long as my forearms, and I saw the gleam of silver threads suspended between the tips. Her eyes were deep dark pools, the eyes of a hunting spider like mine, beneath the spe lenses I wear, And in that moment, Ekru was my reflection, not of who I was, but of what I could be if I only gave in to the power. She smiled her sharp teeth at me. You should stand with us in

this light? What if I stand with them? Mortals you killed? They choose to serve the tyrants of you when you see what we've grown here. Though, I don't care about Biogamuth or whatever titan they think they've resurrected this time, not the tightening cuss. I think we sprang at the same time. If deep down we were the same, then I suppose our instincts and impulses were identical, though not our weapons. I slashed my sword and felt one of her razor webs spun so deftly in the air, sliced

clean through my shoulders. My left arm fell to the floor in a cascade of blood, though not all of it was mine. My monstrous double, my more perfect twin, laid at either side of me, cleaved neatly into by the fifestian sword. I let the weapon fall from my remaining hands. Our collective blood hissed and smoked against its otherworldly steel. I struggled to stay on one knee to avoid collapsing from the sudden catastrophic blood loss, but I

am not quite human. I have never been, And so I felt the wound rapidly clotting, the severed veins and arteries stitching themselves closed. I used my teeth to pull the glove off my remaining hand and let my claws grow out, felt my fangs grow sharp. I'd completed my assignment, but she was right. I needed to know how had biogamas survived. What were they attempting to resurrect from ancient

artifacts and desiccated flesh. If not one of the Titans of old, the parents and forerunners of the current long declined dynasty of gods. Still faint, still barely able to push ahead, I shambled deeper into that temple of abandoned industry, into the otherworldly fusia glow of multiple grow tanks. I saw the suspended flesh inside. If flesh it truly was. This was no Titan or God, no genetic mixture of their offspring. It was something infinitely more horrifying, more perfect. Still,

curtains of shredded silk obscured the great central vat. As I stumbled toward it, I glimpsed wild shapes moving within the glowing fluid. I fell to my knees. I raised my clawed hand to draw back the veil. Anyway, just thought you'd be interested to hear about all that love the show. Say hi to Maxwell for me, iraqne la canne.

doctor Anton Jessop concerning monsters. You can email them to us and we will forward them to him and his cohort. He'll probably be back for a holiday episode before he reached treats into his studies for yet another year, So just send those emails to contact at stuffd blow your Mind dot com.