Chronicles of the Skullmask: Revenge is Justice

By Teel James Glenn

Six tales of justice and revenge!
"I was fashioned from the skin of the first victim I would avenge. I am the collective experiences of all who have worn me in their quests for just Vengeance. I am the means to redress wrongs. My wearer may die but I live on. I am the path to justice. My wearer shares my memories, which are longer than any who live today. I am a candle of justice in a cathedral of evil. Snuff me out and a new life will relight me. My causes are many. My lives are innumerable. I am the angel of vengeance. I am the demon of justice. I am the last and only hope of the hopeless. I am the Skullmask; pity those who wear me. Wear me if you dare."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005651121

Teel James Glenn

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Teel--or T.J. as most know him, has a long career as a performer, teacher, stunt expert that has informed his writing.

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Copyright © 2021 Teel James Glenn. All rights reserved.

Editor: Audrey Parente

Design: Rich Harvey

This is a work of fiction. The names, places, and incidents used are fictitious. Any similarities to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

No part of this book, except for review purposes, can be reprinted electronically or in print without the written permission of the publisher and author. If you are reading this eBook, please purchase your own copy. Thanks for respecting the hard work of this author.

Bold Venture Press edition May 2021

Available in print and electronic editions

www.boldventurepress.com

Publication History

These stories were originally published in Weird Tales of the Skullmask: Revenge is Justice (BooksForABuck.com, 2009) with the exceptions of:

The Black Mirror, original to this edition.

Desert Justice, Adventures in Otherwhen (BooksForABuck.com, 2012)

The Deadly Puppets, Deadline Zombies: The Adventures of Maxi & Moxie (BooksForABuck.com, 2010)

Dedication

To David Burton, a man out of his time and a friend regardless of distance ….

& Rob Preece, one of the few gentlemen in an insane business.

Introduction

Genesis of the Skullmask

A Journey into the past:

My favorite quote to describe the pulp style of writing is from Algys Budrys who boiled it down to a clear-cut solution to a sentimental problem. But I think it can be whittled down even further to that to one word: Passion!

Or perhaps breathtaking. Or exciting.

No pulp writer ever sold a story that bored. Just wouldn’t happen and that is the credo I’ve tried to follow in scribing the adventures of (what I hope) is the weirdest of the weird heroes to never grace the pulps of old.

The Skullmask.

He has a linage that makes the Medici’s family line look angelic.

When publisher Harry Steeger visited Paris. he saw a performance of the Grand Guignol theatre, a grisly stage performance showing dismemberment, murder and other atrocious acts performed with the skill of stage magicians and the sensibilities of Desade. He decided right then and there that he could sell magazines using the same horror background and when he returned to the states. His brainstorm became the shudder pulps.

The so-called weird menace pulps began with the first weird menace title which was Dime Mystery. It started out as a straight crime fiction magazine but in 1933 began the slide to the new sub-genre of the actual horror fiction popular in the other magazines decorating the stands. This cul-de-sac of terror’s style generally featured stories in which the hero was pitted against evil or sadistic villains, with graphic scenes of torture and brutal murder. It spawned a host of imitations (some from the same company) such as Horror Stories, Terror Tales, Spicy Mystery, Thrilling Mystery and a few short-lived single-character pulps that ‘dipped into the weird menace pool such as Doctor Death, the Mysterious Wu Fang, Dr. Yen Sin, the Octopus and the Scorpion and the ultimate cross-over when the Mysterious Dr. Satan ran in Weird Tales. The mystery in the title of many of these magazines was often a misnomer — these pulps went far afield from the mystery genre, often with supernatural threats and mad scientist villains.

Meanwhile (as they say), back on the magazine racks, a phenomenon occurred: The Hero Pulp was started by Street and Smith publications. The publisher, W. A. Ralston and Editor John Nanovic, concocted a magazine titled, The Shadow to take advantage of the popularity of a radio narrator who had been reading on air from their magazines.

They had no idea who or what The Shadow was, but they knew just the right guy to write it; a magician/journalist-cum-pulp writer named Walter Gibson. Under the house name of Maxwell Grant, he created a fascinatingly dark & mysterious crusader who, with his army of aides and agents, fought a constant war against the forces of gangdom.

Imitations of this dark avenger popped up with the Green Lama the most notable on the light side and The Spider on the dark.

And, oh boy, was the Spider on the dark side. The sheer body count in a Spider story often exceeded the population of some European countries. And the menaces he fought were Vampire Kings, body twisters, plague spreaders — just a really horrible bunch of people and things!

His own look mimicked them — The Spider a/k/a Richard Wentworth started out with a conventional domino mask like the Phantom Detective but, before his ten-year run in the pulps was over, had evolved into a white fright wigged, fanged and a hunchbacked figure topped by a long cloak and a slouch hat. He was so scary, in fact that the publisher did not allow the cover artists to actually represent him on the cover in his true guise!

Both The Shadow and the Spider made it to the silver screen in serials from Columbia, though the more successful Shadow had only one while the Spider (in yet a third physical representation) got two whole serials!

The weird menace pulps and the Spider had roughly the same ten year run both gone by late 1943 as the horrors of war turned the home front minds toward more cheery images and subjects.

Exploring the pulp universe in the creation of my in the light hero Dr. Shadows, the granite man got me thinking about that darker world of these weird and shadowed avengers and sparked me to create the Skullmask, a generational dark hero with a high body count in all the stories. The generation aspect, like the comic strip Phantom, allows me to tell many different stories in many different eras with my grisly good guys (and gals). Several of the different Skullmasks, in fact, encounter Dr. Shadows at different points in his long career fighting crime as well as my reporter hero Moxie Donovan.

So welcome to the dark, but hopeful world of the Skullmask; enter at your own risk!

— Teel James Glenn

Creed of the Skullmask

I was fashioned from the skin of the first victim I would avenge.

I am the collective experiences of all who have worn me in their quests for just Vengeance.

I am the means to redress wrongs.

My wearer may die but I live on.

I am the path to justice.

My wearer shares my memories which are longer

than any who live today.

I am a candle of justice in a cathedral of evil.

Snuff me out and a new life will relight me.

My causes are many.

My lives are unnumberable.

I am the angel of vengeance.

I am the demon of justice.

I am the last and only hope of the hopeless.

I am the Skullmask;

pity those who wear me.

Wear me if you Dare.

The Skullrider of Desolation Flats

Prologue:

Use the ropes on them bunch quitters, ya lazy greaser! Are you blind? Do it or I’ll use a rope on you, Buck Larkin yelled at the outriders on the herd. The big, bullnecked ramrod spit out a chaw of tobacco and cursed under his breath. Lazy good fer nothing Mexicans. He had a square jaw, a perpetual two-day growth of beard and close-set brown eyes beneath heavy brows that always seemed to be scowling.

Quit needlin’ them, Buck, the cowpuncher that rode along besides Larkin said. You ride them vaqueros awful hard. Buck Larkin’s companion, was a tall, spare man, with a scar along his jaw line that disappeared down the collar of his grey coat. His eyes were flint grey chips that seemed to miss nothing in the space around him. His attitude was grim at best and when Larkin spoke to him his thin lips tightened and his voice lowered.

I need an opinion out of you, Josiah Silence, I’ll slap it out of you, said Larkin. He was a head shorter than the grim figure that rode beside him but wider across the chest by a half and with arms that all but burst from his flannel shirt. He was known for his ability to bend a horseshoe without much exertion.

I don’t work for you, Buck; I don’t have to take your guff.

Larkin snorted a full deep throated laugh full of dark mirth. I wouldn’t hire you no how; so don’t loose no sleep over what I do. Larkin spurred his mount and moved ahead to yell at one of the outriders moving the small herd leaving Silence to glare after him with cold grey eyes.

One of the vaqueros who had been near enough to hear the exchange rode up beside Silence and spoke. You should not question him, senor Silence, the Mexican said. "He is moy loco e’ capessa." The rider had features that hinted at the Yaqui blood in him.

Why do you put up with him, Juan? Silence asked. There are other spreads around here to work for that pay as much as Buck.

The handsome Mexican shrugged his shoulders. His father was a good man to work for; a fair man. When Senor Buck took over he felt he had to prove himself, the vaquero gazed off across the dusty plain toward the foreboding badlands to the north and made a gesture that was half shrug and half a sigh of resignation. "He was always cruel but when he come back from the sea, since his father’s stroke he has become moy worse."

So why not go?

Most of us have families and we have been here so long; it is not a easy thing to change. The two of them rode along by the small herd, the New Mexico dust swirling around them like unasked questions. And, the vaquero continued, it is not so different with many other Americano; many do not like Mexicans — in some ways he is just more honest.

Silence gave a shallow nod. Honest is the last word I’d use to describe Buck Larkin. When the vaquero laughed as well, the grey rider gave him a ghost of a smile then waved a farewell and rode off toward his own spread to the East.

Stop jawing with no good squatters and get back to work, Juan, Larkin called from a distance ahead. We gotta get this beef up to the west range by nightfall; it’s Saturday night and I got me a bunch of drinking to do tonight.

The Mexican shuddered at the thought; Buck Larkin was a hard man sober, but he was a dangerous man drunk.

Chapter One

An hour past nightfall the town of Page’s Hope, New Mexico was not a riotous place. In truth it never was a riotous place, though the last Saturday of the month when the drovers and cowpunchers got their months pay it was noisy enough to justify the town sheriff’s pay for the rest of the time.

It would pick up by eight or nine o’clock and the three saloons in the town proper wouldn’t shut their doors until almost dawn. Many a man would stumble into Sunday morning services with watering eyes. The tremor in their voice when they sang the hymns was not religiously spawned passion, though many of them were praying for headache relief all through the services.

Buck Larkin made it into town after a quick bath and a shave by seven o’clock while there were still some of the descent townsfolk out and about, scurrying to finish their chores and get off the street before the monthly fun began. It was the mercantile compromise the growing town had made with the devil; it didn’t want to be known as a cow town, but it didn’t want to die of neglect either.

There was talk of a railroad spur from Taos, but no one who heard the rumor could say where they had heard it from or when this steam powered miracle would happen. In the meantime, cattle and the drovers were the lifeblood of the town and the families trying to build a town into a city put up with the rowdiness once a month.

One of the townsfolk who were part of the push to grow the town was Hehewuti Greycloud. Her white friends called her Hehe. She was a Southern Hopi Indian who had studied back East at reservation expense to become a schoolteacher. She had come to the town more than a year before and now ran the two-room schoolhouse at the North end of the town.

She was tall and thin, with pretty features and piercing dark eyes that proclaimed her intellect and self-assurance. She was dressed in a high-necked homemade brown dress. She wore her long black hair piled high on her head without a bonnet and had a red shawl pulled around her shoulders against the chill of the New Mexico night.

Hehewuti had visited one of her sick pupils to bring her the week’s work and stayed for dinner with the girl’s family. She had realized too late it was the last Saturday of the month and taken her leave abruptly. Her small house was at the opposite end of town and she was hurrying to get there before the cowhands filled the street.

"Hey, Breed, Buck called from horseback as his roan lopped along on the street parallel with the woman. You need a date for the night?" He wore white cotton shirt, starched collar and a dark black frock coat that, stretched across his broad chest, seemed too small. He still wore his beat-up brown Stetson pushed back high on his forehead.

Hehewuti kept her pretty face focused forward. She was used to crude comments from many of the cowpunchers, and particularly from Buck who had often made a point of making his opinion of Indians and schoolmarms widely known around town.

"I’m talkin’ to you, Indian! He made Indian a dirty word by his tone. You deaf as well as cheap?" He spit a chaw of tobacco so that it struck the ground near her feet, some of the black slug splattering on her skirt.

I hear the wind, she said without looking at him, I hear the birds and the sound of rain in the distance; but I have no ears for the whining of dogs in heat. She quickened her pace, her boot heels clacking against the wooden deck of the sidewalk.

Buck glared at her for a long moment then laughed a snorting laugh and rode ahead into a side street that would take him to the Golden Cactus Saloon.

Hehewuti let out a sigh of relief, her shoulders sagging and let her pace slacken a bit. She waved to a shopkeeper just closing his leather goods store and then turned off the main street to head toward her small cottage on the edge of the town. She lived just this side of the acceptable part of town, just across the wooden bridge over the creek that divided Page’s Hope from ‘Mex’ Town’ as the poorer and seedier section of town was called.

Buck Larkin went on to the Golden Cactus with little or no more thought about the Indian teacher, his mind already on the saloon girls who worked at the Cactus — particularly, Molly with her golden hair.

He dismounted his horse outside the saloon and threw a nickel to an old Yaqui, Bluesilence, who hovered around the saloon to watch the horses.

You take care of that horse, you useless redskin, Buck warned him, Or I’ll know ride your skinny ass home.

When Larkin pushed through the doors of the saloon there was a breath’s pause in all those in the room. Eyes darted to the swinging doors and then quickly darted away for fear of giving offense. It was a smoky room with a real oak bar and genuine brass spittoons placed along the foot rail and sandboxes in the corners of the room, for when the spittoons became too full on Saturday nights.

Molly Machean was the head girl at the Cactus and had been for years and knew how to keep a line of cowpunchers all thinking they were her special guy. She was on the lap of a cowpuncher from the Lazy L ranch when Buck burst into the room and all but jumped from the man’s lap and raced across the room to throw her arms around Larkin’s neck.

Buck! she breathed beer breath on him and her over made-up face split into a grin, I sure missed you, honey.

He picked her physically off the floor for a hug that made her grunt with discomfort then set her down hard.

Let a man wet his whistle first, Molly, he said, Then you can get to appreciatin’ me. He pushed his way to the bar and the bartender had already set out a beer mug and a whiskey chaser for the big cowhand. Buck drank each in one gulp and then made a show of wiping off his mouth.

Now I’m ready to do some drinkin’, he called to all who could hear. Who’s with me?

The room reacted in different ways to the invitation. The new men in town bellied up quickly to get a free drink, but those who knew Buck and his rages stayed at the back of the pack or absented themselves completely preferring to owe the man nothing.

Joey, the piano player near the back of the room, began to play tunes he knew that Buck liked, making the shift without showing any concern at all beyond very professional caution.

It wasn’t long before Buck had removed his jacket and pushed back his left sleeve to show off his tattoo to the newcomers. It was a topless mermaid, crudely etched in blue on the inside of his massive forearm.

I got me this when I was a mate on the Empress of the Sea out of San Francisco. The cowpunchers that had never seen a tattoo crowded in and gaped openly at the blue image of the nearly naked figure and the girls (who had all seen it before) giggled when he made his muscles appear to make the mermaid swim.

Didn’t it hurt? one of the young cowhands asked. His eyes were fixed on the line drawing breasts of the image and he was trying his hardest to not be so obvious that he had never seen a real woman naked.

Not more than a pin prick, the giant said as he drained another mug of beer. He grinned and puffed his chest out, leering at one of the saloon girls so obviously that Molly felt compelled to reach over and swivel his head around to plant a long kiss on his lips.

I was sore fer a day but worth it. Buck said when Molly let him come up for air. Them island folk do it all the time. He leaned in as if imparting a great secret to the young cowhand. Them little brown girls don’t hardly wear nothin’ ’scept a grass skirt all the time. There were quiet gasps from some in the group.

No! more than one herder gasped.

Yer fibbin’, one young man who was new to the town said, Can’t be no such place.

Everyone in the room who knew better inhaled with anticipation of some sort of explosion.

What’d you say? Buck asked with a crocodile smile on his broad face. Molly knew him well enough that she backed away from him and pressed her back into the bar.

I said t’ain’t no such place, the tall thin wrangler said. He was a freckled faced boy of no more than eighteen with rough clothes that seemed too big for him and a shiny new six-gun stuck in his belt to proclaim his arrival at manhood.

You callin’ me a liar? Buck asked in a quite voice. Before the cowpoke could answer Buck smashed the beer mug across the boy’s face, shattering the thick glass and spraying blood and beer across the front of everyone around the pair.

The young cowpuncher staggered with a high-pitched cry of agony. His hands flew to his face as he blubbered in pain and tried to see past the red haze that was blinding him. He cursed the big ramrod and moved his bloodied hand toward his gun.

Buck stepped in and snatched the gun from the bleeding man’s hand and used the handle to bludgeon the injured man to his knees. Then he kicked the man in the head so that he toppled over bloodied and unconscious into the sawdust spread on the barroom floor.

When one of the saloon girls went over to the boy’s side Buck yelled, leave him be! at the girl and she froze. She looked up with frightened animal eyes for a moment not sure what to do, but self-preservation won out and she went back to the group.

Another round, Larkin called out with great mirth in his tone, and let me tell you about this dance the girls do they call the Hoolah! The crowd continued to drink and laugh with forced enjoyment at Buck’s stories while the cowpuncher on the floor bled into the sawdust for most of the night.

Chapter Two

Hehewuti Greycloud read for a short time when she reached her modest two-room cottage, but there was not much money for the oil in the lamp so she was forced to ration herself.

She closed the book by Dickens and checked that the latch was thrown on the front door. She turned out the lamp and guided herself with a single candle glad there was enough moonlight streaming through the front window for her to find her way.

She decided she would rise early and read for a while, then take herself to church for the Sunday morning service. She was not a Christian, still holding to many of her Hopi ways, but she had learned in her schooling in Boston that it was better to be seen to blend than to not. She would go to the little Mexican church in Mex town, across the bridge. She had many friends there and it was a good community.

Her good friend Rachel Silence, who lived on a ranch about an hour out of town with her husband and child, had come in to stay with Rachel’s parents and to have her year-old daughter christened at the Mexican church. Rachel’s father was the town doctor for Page’s Hope. The family would meet at the church and after the ceremony head out to the Silence spread for a celebration.

The pretty Hopi woman dressed in a cotton nightdress and let her long black hair down in preparation to twist it into a sleeping braid. She sat at the edge of her bed with a single candle burning on the nightstand beside her and combed her hair first. While she did so she softly hummed a Hopi Lullaby her mother used to sing to her. She braided her hair tightly when she was finished and was putting it up under a night cap when a sharp sound came from the front room.

Hey! a muffled voice startled the woman. There was the sound of something breaking and then a curse.

Hehewuti shot to her feet and grabbed for a shotgun she kept by her bed as the door to her room was kicked violently inward and the dark bulk of Buck Larkin squeezed through.

You outta been nice to me, you lowlife half breed, he said in a slurred voice, You think you’re better than us range folk. Well we is white so you can’t be better! But you’re gonna be nice to me now.

The Indian maiden started to raise the gun but the ramrod moved while he spoke with surprising speed, flashing across the room and backhanded the woman across the face. Then he punched her when she bounced off the wall. The force