Paul Tilman never found out how the girl had gotten into his office. Tilman, age forty-seven with a podgy build and a bad toupee, was working late at his estate law firm there in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He looked up from his desk and suddenly saw her.
She was a voluptuous brunette in her teens, with luminous blue eyes and her mouth painted like an inviting red gash. Her only clothes were a scarlet crop top, a black miniskirt, and spiked heels.
“May I… May I help you?” stammered Tilman, straightening his tie. “May I help you, Miss… ?”
“Wingus,” purred the girl. “Anastasia Wingus, but you can call me Stacy. I want you.”
Tilman put up no resistance to the young girl’s advances, and a few minutes later he gasped in ecstasy whilst she sat upon his lap with her legs spread.
“That was hot,” said Stacy Wingus. “Now, I have something else for you.”
Then, before Paul Tilman could even react, the girl produced a long stiletto switchblade and plunged it directly into his heart. She stood up and walked away, leaving him to die there in his swivel chair with his trousers down around his ankles.
“It’s all right now, Father,” said to girl to-wards the already opening door. “I’ve done it.”
The man who now entered the room was seemingly of middle years, his face still showing signs of handsome distinction despite having the marks of lifetimes of extreme ungodly wickedness. His hair was long and dark, and his countenance decorated with a thin moustache and goatee. Most of all, his pale eyes shone with an absolutely hypnotic glow. He was clad in a silk suit of ebon black.
“Excellent work,” he approved, eying the results of his daughter’s tryst with Attorney Paul Tilman. “Now, the Hellfire Talisman shall be mine, and I -- Magister Don Wingus -- shall become supreme ruler of all!!” …
My name is Doctor Daniel Rumanos. I carry within my blood the vastly superior genes of the legendary Watchers of Algol, the most intellectually advanced race in all of the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it appears to be miraculous to lesser beings.
Whilst most Algolites live in elitist seclusion from the rest of the Universe, I am an operative for an organisation known as the KOSMIKOS. Assisted by the beautiful Miss Millie Drake, I protect Earth from all manner of menace. I am -- The Daemon-Star!!! …
“Sir Francis Dashwood?” wondered Millie Drake. “The leader of the Hellfire Club? That’s who the stolen talisman once belonged to?”
“Quite so,” I affirmed. “It was being held for safekeeping by the now-late Mr. Tilman, who was estate lawyer for a certain local family directly descended from that notorious Eighteenth Century British nobleman.”
We were riding in my specially-modified canary-yellow Edwardian roadster, affectionately known as “Lizzie”, into the borough of Steelton, about four miles southeast of Harrisburg on that hazy afternoon. I was behind the steering wheel, clad in my usual finery -- including a frilled poet shirt, velvet suit, sunspecs, panama hat, jungle boots, and one of my favourite opera capes.
My companion, Miss Millie Drake, is and exceedingly beautiful young lady, petite and perfect with luxurious chestnut hair, lovely violet eyes, and sun kissed skin. The purple dress she wore only served to highlight the soft lines of her wondrous adolescent figure.
Our robotic friend, Kit-10, had stayed behind to do some work at our city headquarters.
“So, was it all true?” queried Millie. “I mean the stories about Dashwood practising Satanism and conjuring devils and all that?”
“Apparently someone believes so,” I pondered, “to have stolen the talisman. It is of some monetary value, but not so much as to commit such a gruesome murder when there are other far more valuable antiquities to be had. It was acquired by the Hellfire Club from some Middle Eastern mystic, and is said to have been utilised by them in ceremonies intended to call forth the very power of Lucifer himself!”
“And Lucifer is, in reality,” added Millie Drake, “a remnant of the alien race known as the Cacodemons of Andromeda.”
“Quite so,” I affirmed to her. “The ‘Lucifer’ was a military rank, similar to ‘commanding general’, during the Galactic Wars. After their defeat, the Cacodemons spread out across the Cosmos, some of them making it to Earth where they were worshipped as demonic ‘gods’ by the primitive humans of the time.”
“So, Daniel,” Millie said, “our instruments at headquarters showed that the talisman is now at this location in Steelton?”
“So it appears, Mills,” I rejoined. “An energy signature akin to that used by the ancient Cacodemons was detected coming from a portion of the old abandoned steel mill here, hmmm? The talisman, you see, would generate a certain energy based upon Andromedan technology, and manifesting itself as a strange blue-black radiation. Ah, here we are.”
I parked the car and Millie and I walked to-wards the dilapidated structure that was one of the outbuildings of the old mill. We had just about reached the door when I suddenly heard my companion scream:
“Daniel, look out!”
I then turned slightly and beheld an horror. It was a small apelike man, with brown skin and his body covered in coarse black hair. The horrid thing chattered in challenge, baring his hideous subhuman teeth as he leaped up to-wards me!
Due to recent adventures, I did know what the creature was, so I also knew immediately how to defeat him. I reached out my hand as he was almost upon me, touching a certain pressure point on the back of his low-browed head.
The ape-man immediately stopped all movement and dropped to the ground.
“By the Eternal Spires!” I swore. “It seems I overdid it a bit, hmmm? The poor creature is dead.”
“Are you all right, Daniel?” cried Millie concernedly.
“I am fine, love,” I assured her.
“But that thing… Isn’t it the same… ?”
“It is indeed the same sort of creature; a member of one of the primitive tribes of the jungles of the Philippines who have kept the characteristics of the Homo erectus and other proto-human primates. However, it cannot be told for certain if it is the same one we previously encountered. After all, they all look alike!”
“But the last time, it was being used as a servant by…” shuddered Millie.
“Now now, my dear,” I interrupted her. “Let us not speculate before we have more factual information, hmmm?”
We continued to cautiously approach the old building, finding the door unlocked. Then, as it creaked open, another eldritch horror assailed us. For at that very moment did flow forth from the interior of the building a wave of darksome energy, blue black in colour and accompanied by a sound as unto that of the wailing of countless damned souls.
The dark energy then shot itself directly to-wards Millie Drake and me!
I heard Millie scream in terror as the dark energy swirled around us with its terrible cacophony of unholy noise. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the energy suddenly drifted away, back into the building.
“Daniel, was that really?” enquired Millie Drake.
“Quite so,” I confirmed. “Hellfire energy like unto that utilised by the Cacodemons of Andromeda. That was only a very tiny portion of it. Someone has indeed evoked the powers of that old talisman, going even beyond what Sir Francis Dashwood and his horrid club once did!”
We then entered the building and cautiously began to explore it. The only light was dimly filtered through the high windows of the old steel mill.
Eventually, we came to a room in which the blue black energy was swirling. In the centre of the chamber was a table covered will a black cloth. On this makeshift altar was the hellfire talisman itself, made of silver and carven with a distorted pentagram and quasi-Arabic lettering.
Standing behind the table was a man clad in black standing next to a voluptuous teenage girl. Around them swirled drifting suggestions of blue black energy. Of course, I recognised the man immediately. I recognised him as my oldest and most bitter enemy -- the renegade Algolite who has become the most dangerous and wanted criminal in all of Time and Space.
“Don Wingus!” I said his name. “I should have known. So you did escape from Beelzebub. It is you -- assisted by your daughter, Anastasia -- who murdered Paul Tilman and stole the hellfire talisman.”
“Oh of course, Rumanos,” mocked the villain. “Of course. My, what a fabulous detective you are. It is such a shame what you did to my Filipino servant, though. He had such a nice hairy hole. Nevertheless, your efforts are useless. The hellfire talisman is mine, and I shall use its powers to conquer the world! I shall become the new Lucifer and shall establish my own complete dictatorship over this planet! The human race shall kneel before me! Then, with my own Algolitish superiority augmented by the power of hellfire, I shall improve the technology of Earth to build a fleet of Space warships that I shall then use to conquer other worlds; solar systems; galaxies -- the very Universe itself!!”
“Wingus, you insane fiend!” I charged. “You cannot control the powers of hellfire. They are completely of a different realm of existence! They are pure chaos!”
“Oh, but you are wrong, Rumanos,” he countered, the eldritch energies building around him. “You are wrong. My little Stacy and I have already completed the psyche-sexual rites necessary to summon the power -- indeed the very power of the Lucifer which is now mine to command!”
With this, at the mentalist command of the evil Don Wingus, there did shoot forth an awesome blast of hellfire energy directly at my companion and me.
“Now, you will die, Daniel Rumanos!” exulted the evil Don Wingus amidst peals of his own wicked insane laughter. “You will die! I -- Don Wingus, the lord of hellfire -- have declared that you will die!!”
Do you even begin to comprehend the terror, in truth the supreme unhallowed horror of this situation, my dear friends and readers? There we were, Millie Drake and me -- Doctor Daniel Rumanos -- being assailed by the ancient hellfire energy of the Andromedan Lucifer; forsooth, energy that the evil Magister Don Wingus intended to utilise to conquer worlds!
“You will now die, Rumanos!” cackled Don Wingus. “Die! Die! Die!”
The darkling energy of the hellfire talisman began to surround Millie Drake and me, encroaching quickly upon us and blocking out all other sensations.
“Please don’t do it, Father,” suddenly interrupted Anastasia Wingus. “Please don’t kill Doctor Rumanos. I like him. I want to have him as a plaything when you come into your empire. Oh, please let me have him, Father! Please?!”
“Stacy, you ridiculous harlot!” returned Wingus, slapping his daughter hard across the face. “I am so utterly sick and tired of your teen crush attraction to that accursed old Rumanos!”
With this, an odd thing occurred. The blue-black hellfire energies that had been sent to-wards Millie and me suddenly reversed their direction and began quickly drifting to-wards Don Wingus and his daughter in stead.
“No! You cannot do this to me!” bellowed the villain in outrage as the evil energy surrounded him. “I am Magister Don Wingus, the rightful ruler of all! I am the lord of hellfire! No! No! Nooooooooo!!!”
Within moments, the howling hellfire energy had complete obliterated both Don Wingus and young Stacy. When it dissipated, they had utterly vanished.
I looked around the room. All was quiet, and there was no evidence that the occult horrors we had experienced had ever even existed. Even the hellfire talisman had disappeared.
“Daniel, what happened?” enquired Millie.
“When Wingus became distracted,” I explained, “he lost control of the hellfire energy. This caused it to seek the thing in the room most akin to itself -- forsooth the evil Don Wingus and his wicked daughter!”
“But where have they gone?”
“The hellfire has taken them to a certain inter-dimensional realm, were they will indeed receive the proper punishment for their sins. It appears that the old talisman has been destroyed as well, and I am certain we will find that the remains of that ape-man have also vanished.”
“Well, that’s good,” said my companion. “Do you think we have seen the last of them? Of Don Wingus and his daughter, I mean.”
“We can certainly hope so, hmm?” I stated as we walked out of the abandoned building. “We can certainly hope so.”
We did not know that, after we had left, in the now empty room of the old building, there could briefly be heard a strange unearthly echo as of insane wicked laughter.
***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN
