Man with No Name: A Nanashi Novella by Laird Barron Page A

None speak English. They’re paid to look the other way, to keep their mouths shut. They know what’s good for them.
    I worry anyway. I’m a busy bee, fetching and toting for the Master; coming and going, sneaking and skulking at all hours. Capturing live subjects is dangerous, especially when you’re as conspicuous as I am. There can be complications. Once, I brought home three kids I’d caught smoking dope in the park. The chloroform wore off one of them, and when I popped the trunk he jumped out and ran into the woods, screaming bloody murder. Luckily, Pelt was sober enough to function, for a change, and he unleashed a pair of wolfhounds from the kennel. Mean ones. We tracked the boy down before he made it to a road. The little sucker might’ve escaped if I hadn’t cuffed his hands behind his back.
     
    *   *   *
     
    In unrelated events:
    A circus rolled through town one week in the fall; in its wake, consternation and dismay due to a murder most foul. An article in the Olympian documents the spectacular and mysterious demise of Niall the Barker. The paper smoothes over the rough edges, skips most of the gruesome facts. The reporters in the know talked to the cops who know this: While hapless Niall lay upon his cot in a drunken stupor, some evil doer shoved a heavy duty industrial strength cattle prod up his ass and pressed the button. His internal organs liquefied. A blowhole opened in the crown of his skull, and shit, guts, and brains bubbled forth like lava from a kid’s volcano exhibit at a science fair. His muscles and skin hardened and were branded with the most curious Lichtenburg Flowers.
    Sometimes I go back and watch it again, just to savor the moment.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Dr. Kob requires that we take supper together on Fridays. We sit at opposite ends of a long, Medieval-style table in the dining hall. The hall is gloomy and dusty and decorated in a fashion similar to Dracula’s castle in the Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee films. God, how I adore Christopher Lee, especially the young, B-movie incarnation. His soliloquy to carnal delights in The Wicker Man stands my hair on end. Dr. Kob doesn’t know anything about cinema or actors. He says there’s no television where he comes from, no theatre. That’s likely an exaggeration—the Master is fond of hyperbole. Read a few of his interviews in the Daily O and you’ll see what I mean.
    Dr. Kob’s father was an eminent scientist until some scandal swept him and his family into the shadows. After his expulsion from whatever prominent university, Kob Sr. conducted his research in the confines of home sweet home. I think of the dungeons and oubliettes in those ancient European keeps and feel a twinge of pity for the peasants moiling in the fields beneath the Kob estate. Ripe fruit, the lot of them.
    Snooping about the Master’s quarters, I unearth a musty album full of antiquated photographs of Dr. Kob and various friends and relatives. Many feature the redoubtable Pelt. Has the hunter always been Kob’s henchman? Perhaps they are fraternity brothers or blood cousins. Today the good Doctor bears a strong likeness to Boris Karloff, which is also pretty much how he looks in his baby pictures.
    On the other hand, the Pelt I know scarcely resembles the man posing with a pack of hounds, his curls long and golden, his bloodthirsty grin as sweet and guileless as Saint Michael’s own. What a heartbreaker (and likely serial killer) he was! One of the pictures is dated 1960. Now, he slumps over his plate and goblet. His hooked nose, his sallow cheeks are gnarled as plastic that’s been melted and fused. Oh, and he’s pot-bellied and bald as a tumor. It’s all very sad—he’s like a caricature of a Grimm Brothers’ illustration. Maybe this is how Rumpelstiltskin ended his days.
    “Mary had a little lamb,” Dr. Kob says, and titters as he downs another glass of port. That Mary business annoys me more than he can imagine. He doesn’t realize I caught