Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny

dispensing brutal punishments. He punched heads and chests and sides, and the sound of breaking bone was crisp and sharp on the enforced quiet. No blood flowed—not yet. And no matter how hard he hit them, none of the bodies stirred or reacted, or even rocked in place.
    I saw it all and heard it all, because even though I was frozen in place like everyone else ... I could still think and observe. Perhaps my special gift protected me from the wand’s magic, or maybe my unnatural bloodline. Like it or not, I am still my mother’s son. Either way, I decided to keep this to myself. Larry didn’t need to know.
    And I might need to use it against him sometime.
    Larry finally returned to his original position, not even breathing hard from his exertions. He took out his wand, started Time up again, then put the wand away and enjoyed the general unpleasantness. The whole crowd cried out in shock and surprise and agony. Bones broke, bruises blossomed, and blood spurted from mouths and noses. Some collapsed; some fainted; some lurched back and forth clutching at broken heads and cradling broken ribs. Augustus Grimm lay flat on his back, fortunately unconscious, so he couldn’t feel all the terrible things Larry had done to him. Never get the dead mad; they don’t have our sense of restraint.
    I pretended a certain amount of surprise, then looked sternly at Larry.
    “Wasn’t that a bit extreme?”
    “You’re a fine one to talk,” said Larry. “At least I don’t rip the teeth right out of their heads. Besides, this bunch wouldn’t have been quite so mad if they hadn’t been customers, or potential customers, of Turnabout Inc. And therefore deserving of what just happened to them, on general principles. Like my elder brother, there is some shit up with which I will not put.”
    Those of the crowd who could had already departed, leaving the moaning and the unconscious behind. Larry turned his back on them all, studying the rest of the people on the busy street, most of whom were far too taken up with their own wants and needs to notice a minor scuffle. Business went on as usual, and Larry took it all in; and his cold, dead face showed nothing at all.
    “I wasn’t there that night,” he said finally. “I was busy with the war, organising resistance against your damned mother. If I had been here, do you think it would have made any difference? Would my brother still be alive if I hadn’t entrusted him to your care?”
    “I couldn’t save him,” I said. “No-one could have. It was a war. People die in wars.”
    “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Is it?” He didn’t look at me. He didn’t expect an answer. “You’re sure this is the street where he fell? This is where he disappeared?”
    “A bit further down from here, but yes. I didn’t actually see him die. So there is still some hope.”
    “Hope is for the living,” said Larry. “The dead must make do with vengeance.”
    He still wasn’t looking at me, apparently concentrating entirely on the street.
    “I haven’t seen Hadleigh in years,” Larry said finally. “Don’t even know what he looks like, these days.”
    “Shouldn’t think many do,” I said. “Only ones who see him now are his enemies and his victims; and they’re not usually in any shape to talk about it afterwards.”
    “He isn’t that bad,” said Larry. “Just a really scary agent of the Good.”
    “You ever met Razor Eddie?” I said.
    “Hadleigh isn’t a monster,” said Larry. “I have to believe that. The last living Oblivion brother can’t be a monster.”
    I looked back at the ruins of Turnabout Inc. and invoked my gift. I concentrated on my inner eye, my third eye, and used it to summon up ghost images from the recent Past. Important events and significant people stamp themselves on Time, for a while. I let go of now, and focused my Sight on what had happened to Turnabout Inc. so very recently. The world went misty and uncertain, then snapped back into focus as the street changed before me. The shop was still a ruin; something kept me from going back any further; but Hadleigh Oblivion was standing right before me.
    He didn’t look like any of the usual ghost images I See in the Past: shimmering figures, translucent as soap bubbles, sometimes barely there at all. Hadleigh looked firm and solid and almost unnaturally real. A tall, forbidding presence, in a long leather coat so black it seemed almost a part of the night, with a great mane of long, dark