Black Lake
by Lanier Thomas
The lights flickered dimly in the dark mist filled street.
There lights were discouraged where trode the robber’s feet.
There were lines of homeless people misbegotten
Lying under tarps and all of them forgotten.
Around them in the pall dark street noises broke out
When someone opened a door and light spilled without.
This was an area of the city most shunned
by goodness and honest people though they were gunned.
The police were well paid to look the other way
And even they only came out during the day.
Most of the businesses were criminally run
And benefitted from dirty deeds they had done.
Theft was daily fare and murder all too common.
And no one there ventured the police to summon.
Along the street with cracked pavement and garbage heaped
Discarded folk watched as drunken revelers leaped.
There were laughter sounds and sometimes pleas for mercy.
Screams of death filled the night with belligerency.
There were sounds of struggles and merriment risky
That accompanied the rank smells of old whisky.
Such was this notorious part of the city,
Where murder for hire was a day’s activity.
Music sounded brightly from a stone building’s door
That was briefly opened to reveal the dance floor.
Entered a careful man who stood just to one side.
His strong athletic build his dark clothes could not hide.
He let his vision get accustomed to the light.
Moved did he like a stalking leopard in the night.
He did not seem big, at least not at first glance,
But was a powerful Judoka from his stance.
His blonde hair was cut short and under a hat black,
The bill of which shadowed his face holding light back.
It was his eyes that were arresting, however.
They burned like seas of blue flames in deep forever.
His clothing was a sort of nondescript off black,
Blending into the crowd as he walked to the back.
The music was beating so it was an assault.
The revelers noticed not the danger he brought.
As he looked, fashionable people he could see
Partying and sharing drugs in their gaiety.
They bumped and gyrated against one another
on a dance floor so packed it caused them to smother.
The air was heavy with smoke from drugs and perfume.
The smells of stale whisky and vomit filled the room.
The bar was lined three deep with people vying for
their fancy drinks, or drugs, or sex, or whate’er more.
The room had a fashionable sleazy feeling,
with black walls and dim lights sending senses reeling.
He forced his way through the dense pack’d crowd of drunkards
Standing three deep at the bar waving their tankards.
Some got angry until they got a look at him.
Then, fright held their tongues as they saw his face so grim.
He had a look about him that reeked of quick death
And they turned away quickly while holding their breath.
“Yeah? Whaddaya want?”, demanded the bartender,
Tired and thinking only of what drink to render.
He put a large amount of money on the bar,
Hoping it was sufficient to avoid a spar.
“I want to know where Jack Arko is headed for,
That and a drink are what I want and nothing more.”
“He thinks himself some kind of black hearted wizard.”
“Certainly his heart is as cold as a blizzard.”
Picking up the money with a beholden grin,
“I would like to know who it is that be askin’.”
“I’m his cousin Brad Arko and not impartial.”
“I’m going to tear him from his head to his tarsal.”
“He kidnapped a girl, so young and so finely wrought,
Like a small dainty bird in his evil trap caught.”
“She’s the daughter of a Senator afore time.
That’s what makes this dark deed a deplorable crime.”
“Now there’s a considerable reward for her
Setting a man up for life if rescue occur.”
The bartender thought and scratched his pink haired big head
And finally reaching a decision he said,
“He has gone to Black Lake and the tall building there.
“Don’t go, for no one comes back of any who dare.”
“Besides the swamp he has soldiers about the isle
And something worse is what’s whispered by those with wile.”
“Many a man and woman have come there and gone,
And none have reappeared to tell the tale save one.”
“His mind was lost that frightful night they found him.”
“He was wandering in the fields, his mind was dim.”
““The eyes! The eyes! They came out of the wall!” he said.
“Whenever they looked at a man and wherever they came, all were dead!”
As Arko turned a big man was standing behind.
He was close enough to touch and Arko did mind.
Said he, “Looking for Mister Arko. I hate cops.”
“I’m going to beat you from your top to your flops.”
The leopard replied, “Be sure what you try to eat
Does not eat you instead and you end up the meat.”
The man reached under his dark suit coat for a gun.
His partner grabbed the switch and the lights were done.
In the pitchy dark there was a shot and a scream.
When the lights came back on the big man could be seen.
Eyes wide in the surprise of death the big man lay.
Judgement had caught up to him and made him to pay.
Of Braden Arko there was not a single trace.
He slipped through the crush and the crowd closed up his space.
***
The road to Black Lake twisted and turned like a snake.
The color of death was the moonlight on the lake.
With lights out he slowly crept toward the lake dark.
A sign said Black Lake Laboratory by Clarke.
From the back of his truck he pulled out a small raft
And headed toward the island in his black craft.
From the island center rose an imposing pile,
A tall ink black building of otherworldly style.
Reaching the shore he stealthily crept forward slow.
He watched his six so any guards he would know.
As he quietly approached a large gargoyle tree
A guard and three were quite dead as he now could see.
There was a smell of spilt chlorine bleach in the air.
That explained all of the dead bodies that were there.
Suddenly, shadow detached itself from shadow.
It was a man in clothes the color of a crow.
Black he was from his feet to the mask on his face.
Arko reached out and grabbed him and held him in place.
“Who are you,” hissed Arko in the struggling man’s ear.
“Just a man like you after the reward so dear.”
Arko replied, “Then why don’t we partner on this deal?”
“We know not what monsters we face in that bastille.”
“Done and done,” replied the man, rubbing his sore neck.
“The building is said to be guarded by high tech.”
“No one who has got that far has come back alive.”
“It will take both of us if we are to survive.”
The two moved from shadow to shadow in the dark
to the ebony building in the moonlight stark.
A genetic laboratory it had been.
What it once created had been a mortal sin.
The steel door was warped and dented from what within?
With unease they could see where the hard blows had been.
With cautious hands Arko began to hack the lock.
The door eased open and they braced it with a chock.
Inside all was Stygian dark and quite silent.
Over everything hung a feel malevolent.
The place felt unclean and unholy in the night.
They could sense that something was not completely right.
There was a smell that made their neck hairs stand upright.
It aroused long dead ancestral primeval fright.
In the eerie silent dark they turned on flashlights
That pushed back the sinister dark with their bright lights.
Their footsteps strangely echoed off the walls of gray.
They struggled to keep superstitious fears at bay.
Suddenly Arko’s companion started gurgling.
Above his dead body were red eyes aburning.
It was an impossible genetic titan.
A fifty foot cobra his torch did enlighten.
It was thick through the body and with its hood spread,
It was truly ginormous and filled him with dread.
Here, then, was the reason no one ever returned.
About his survival he was justly concerned.
The ancient king cobra brought back from extinction
Now intended to bring Arko to restinction.
Its strike was as swift as a bolt of dark lightning.
Arko barely dodged. For his life he was fighting.
From under his jacket he pulled a short shotgun.
The sound of his shots echoed throughout the donjon.
The giant snake writhed and whipped in its deathly throes,
Nearly crushing Arko with its terrible blows.
Finally the awful monster was done to death.
Arko picked himself from the floor and caught his breath.
Still shaking and trembling he cautiously went on,
Fearing what new nightmares that him might set upon.
The stairs he found seemed from a fantastic vision,
The steps were oddly sized for uncanny reason.
The steps were shallow with some wide and some shorter
with strange irregular landings in disorder.
Cautiously up the weird inky dark stairs he climbed.
Around each turn, expecting trouble was he primed.
Each floor was as silent as an ancient graveyard.
There was only darkness against which his light warred.
He finally reached the topmost door. There! A light!
He opened it a crack and saw an ancient rite.
There was the man he pursued holding knife in fist.
There, too, was the woman he sought bound feet and wrist.
“Stop, cousin!” he barked. “Or I kill her this moment!”
“Her soul will roam and not make heaven’s enrollment.”
He was dressed in his flowing all black wizard’s clothes.
“We must wait the moon and be ready as it goes.”
“It is at the moonset this night that she must die,
Just at the moment it wanes and leaves the dark sky.”
“She will atone for her father, so stained with sin.”
“Then a bright newly formed world can grandly begin.”
“You shall not stop me. Here is something that I made.”
He reached in his robes and produced a hand grenade!
Arko acted as soon as he saw the movement,
And shot his cousin in the face as most prudent!
He quickly ran to the tied girl and cut her loose.
To stop her from hugging him he could not induce.
She kissed him about face and mouth repeatedly.
Her gratefulness she expressed most unceasingly.
Arko covered her torn gown with the wizard’s cloak.
Then down the stairs and out of the building they broke.
“I’ll marry you and make you happy forever,”
She said and Arko thought about it with pleasure.
“I get the girl and the reward. What a treasure!”
“These for a little while disrupting my leisure!”