Wrath and Ruin

by C W Briar

  By contrast, recent events since the twelfth of January share cohesive accounts. Three more people have been attacked, and the survivors and other witnesses describe a monster with a starved man’s form that crawls on all fours like a beast. Its forelegs are consistently reported as being slender and exceptionally long. The ears are said to be enormous, as if taken from a human-sized rabbit or bat.

  Mr. Carlson confirmed those descriptions and claimed to have observed the creature himself. His sighting occurred while he stared out into the fog from one of the mansion’s windows. I thanked him but remained uncertain of his account; poor weather and rumors can make false monsters out of distant animals and bushes.

  Other qualities about the ghoul remain less clear, such as the creature’s hide. Conflicting accounts describe it as bald, furry, or bristled like a bed of nails. One woman swore it has wings and can fly. The claims that it wears tattered clothes are consistent with other ghouls I have faced; reports that it hides and avoids eating the victims are not. I need more time to sift through the rumors to determine their veracity.

  The secondhand accounts are a fine start, but my foremost priority going forward is to visit the sources of the rumors. I plan to examine the evidence from the attacks and to interview the witnesses. However, my assessment thus far is that something unnatural is prowling Haughtogis Point, and the town is justifiably unnerved.

  5

  I awoke twice during the night. Both times, I spent about half an hour staring out at the tentacled groves of trees in the mist. The ghoul never appeared. After the second watch, I lit a candle and wrote my initial letters to you.

  Rose confirmed in the morning that she had seen nothing of interest from her room except roaming cats.

  Haughtogis Point is a long, slender village bent by water and stone. Its southern boundary folds around a curve in the Allegheny River, and the north traces the tree-crowned gray cliffs. Brick houses arranged in long rows comprise the majority of the residences. These belong to working-class citizens, many of whom travel by ferry to the Ragiston-owned quarry on the far shore.

  Five buildings overshadow all the others. Two are places of worship, and the Presbyterian and Catholic church steeples stand like watchtowers at opposite ends of the village. The other three are mansions belonging to Haughtogis’s wealthiest families. Each connects to the others by paths and acres of gardens along the steep riverbank. The Voor house lies at the center, bookended by the Ragiston and Carter residences.

  The two fatal ambushes occurred in the Voor gardens, so I decided to begin my search there. After some martial arts practice and breakfast, Rose and I asked Mr. Williams for a tour of the attack scenes. He obliged. I hurried back to my room for my derby, revolver, and bag, and then we set out.

  We walked first to a circular, wooden pavilion halfway between Lady Ragiston’s statue and a small stable behind the Voor house. Pigs were grumbling in the latter.

  Mr. Williams stamped his foot on a spot near the pavilion’s entrance. “The sheriff said the blood trail started here.”

  I tugged on the pavilion doors to have a peek inside, but they were locked. Rose took interest in the cuneiform etchings on the entrance. Meanwhile, I circled around the structure in search of another door or window. Each wall panel had a lion head sculpture but no glass.

  “Are these symbols Egyptian or Mesopotamian in origin?” Rose asked.

  “I’m not certain,” I said. “But Egyptian artifacts are popular with wealthy collectors.”

  The damp ground sucked on my boots with each step. When I backed up, I spotted a ring of windows between the upper and lower sections of the conical roof. Little good they would do me without a ladder.

  A maid, about my age, emerged from the stable with a slop bucket in hand. She stopped when she saw us, and I called her over.

  She greeted the butler as she drew near. “Good morning, Mr. Williams.”

  “Morning to you, Susan.”

  “Are you in need of something?”

  “Yes, your help,” I answered for him. “My name is Gideon Wells. I have been hired by Mr. and Miss Ragiston to investigate the ghoul issue.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “But Mr. Ragiston is dead.”

  Mr. Williams said, “The young ones, dear. Claude and Ida.”

  “Oh.”

  I waved my hand over the ground. “Tell me, is it true the creature attacked the elder Mr. Ragiston here?”

  “So said the doctor and sheriff. We found him further down the path, closer to his home. About there.” She pointed at a spot where the path bent around a raised bed of flowerless, muddy soil.

  “Susan?” A gaunt old man stumped toward us from the direction of the Voor house. He had wiry, white muttonchops, a tweed suit, and the labored gait of a chain gang marcher. “Susan, who are those trespassers?”

  Susan closed her eyes as if making a brief, silent prayer.

  Mr. Williams whispered, “Oh, curse the devil.”

  “Who is your friend?” I asked.

  “Timothy Barron, my counterpart at the Voor residence.”

  “Excellent. Just the man I would like to speak to.”

  Mr. Williams smacked his lips. “You do not want to speak with him under any circumstances.”

  I chuckled. “I like you, Mr. Williams. We should play cards sometime.”

  “Thank you, sir, but the missus would not approve.”

  Susan, a sweet woman, introduced us to the curmudgeon. “Sir, Mr. Williams is here. He is helping Mr. Gideon Wells and…” She gestured toward my accomplice.

  “Rosette Drumlin.” Rose curtsied.

  “They are here to get rid of the ghoul.”

  “It’s not here,” Timothy said briskly. “Do you see the monster?”

  I could tell he would be a dry well of help. “Before locating the creature, I need to understand its previous attacks. Is Mr. Voor home, perhaps? I wish to speak with him.”

  “No. He departed on business.” Timothy shooed the maid away with shaky hands. “Go on, Susan. Get on with your work.”

  “Will Mr. Voor be returning soon?” I asked.

  “I do not know.”

  “Where has he gone?”

  “He is busy with research in Ontario.” Timothy bent in a fit of coughing that shook his body. When he straightened up again and cleared his throat of phlegm, his eyes were red and teary.

  “Are you all right?” Mr. Williams asked. He sounded genuinely concerned.

  “I will be when I go back in from this cold, damp air. Instead, you have me out here. I will not stand for some inspector trampling the flower beds and causing rumors about the master. It was bad enough after the men died back here.”

  I stared at Timothy for a long moment. “My, you are a beacon of sunshine.”

  Rose approached and stood near him, just behind his shoulder. Timothy let out a lesser cough and glared back and forth at the two of us. Addressing Mr. Williams by his first name, he said, “Robert, tell your guests to keep to the paths. I do not want them destroying the gardens or interrupting the staff.”

  I asked, “Do you have any guesses why the ghoul might have come here or why it attacked the men?”

  “I cannot speak for the ghoul, as I have never seen the thing. As for Mr. Ragiston, he was a dear friend of Master Voor. He visited often when in town. He also liked to stroll through the garden and to read books in the pavilion. And Joseph Prentice was our grocer. He delivered food to our back door most mornings.”

  Joseph Prentice was the other man the ghoul had slain. I had learned about him during my conversation the previous night. The circumstances of his death closely resembled those of Mr. Ragiston’s, except he had collapsed on the doorstep of the Voor mansion.

  “Is the pavilion always kept locked? How would Mr. Ragiston have gotten in to read?”

  Timothy scowled. “It’s locked for good reason, to keep thieves away from the valuables in Master Voor’s study. Mr. Ragiston had a key, and it has since been returned to us. I showed Sh
eriff Richt the room. You can bother him about it, or about anything else you want to know. I already gave him my full account.”

  Timothy strained through the last few words and succumbed to another fit of coughs. He wiped his lips. “I am through. I would appreciate if you keep to the—”

  Rose patted a tuft of his sideburn. Timothy swatted her hand away.

  “What are you doing, child?”

  Rose rubbed her own hair. “They feel lighter than I expected,” she said of his sideburns. “How long did it take you to grow them?”

  He stormed off, stomping as heavily as his light, frail legs could manage. “Be gone, Robert, and keep them off the grass.”

  “Grass” was a rather generous description of the brown growth on the lawn.

  I patted my apprentice on the shoulder. “Be kind, Rosette.”

  “He was being a bear.”

  “Don’t you tell me to do unto others as I would have them do unto me?”

  “I would let him poke my sideburns, if I had them,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I apologize for that, Mr. Williams.

  The Ragiston butler wore the wryest of grins. “I saw nothing that needs apologizing for.”

  Honestly, neither did I. Rose was right; Timothy was a bear.

  We next sought out Sheriff Richt, a man of little height and even fewer smiles. Based on the loud huff he made when I began my inquiries, I figured he would dismiss us without providing any information. But I have since determined he reacts in kind to all requests for help.

  I learned a few new things from the sheriff that are perhaps significant. First, a local doctor found a bullet or a piece of shrapnel in Mr. Ragiston’s chest. It was an old wound, and the skin had been stitched over the metal, so it did not cause his death.

  I thought little of the detail until I passed it along to Claude and Ida. Neither was aware of their grandfather’s injury or of him having served in combat. That leaves a victorious duel as the most likely source of the bullet.

  Wealthy men are prone to adventure in their youth.

  Second, I asked about the old, unsolved crimes I described in my last letter. He had nothing to add in regards to two of the mysteries, but he did mention that the female victim almost certainly died of a knife wound. The gnawing on her skin came from the rats discovered with the corpse. Upon learning this, I assumed the ghoul incidents were limited to only the previous few months.

  Third, the grocer, Joseph Prentice, put up a fight against the creature. He had a swordstaff on his person at the time of death, and the tip of the blade was red with blood. That detail means our fiend can, in fact, bleed, and if it is a ghoul, then it must have emerged recently. The blood of the awakened dead blackens and rots over time, or drains entirely.

  Fourth, the fatal wounds on both Mr. Ragiston and Mr. Prentice included deep tears surrounded by wide, shallow cuts. The marks are indicative of a fanged creature. Also, the ghoul left Joseph Prentice’s body unmolested beyond the kill, but it plundered the groceries. The evidence unfortunately expands rather than lessens the number of monsters I have to consider.

  Finally, I learned that Sheriff Richt coordinated hunting parties for two weeks after Mr. Ragiston’s death. Armed men searched the surrounding forests for wolves or bears, but that ceased once sightings of a hellish creature began occurring in the village. The hunters failed to kill the ghoul before it could attack again, which leads me to my next letter.

  6

  After my garden investigation, I bid Mr. Williams to return to the mansion. Rose and I went with Sheriff Richt to our first interview. Along the way, we crossed a wooden bridge that spanned a creek-sized runoff ditch. After a short walk down a bowed street lined with identical gray homes, we arrived at the desired door. Dozens of garments hung like banners from the laundry ropes that zigzagged between second-story windows. A few women regarded us while they tended to their shops or mended clothes.

  Sheriff Richt rapped his knuckles on the door. Several young, muffled voices sounded within, then the cloth covering the nearby window lifted aside. Three children, none more than six or seven years of age, pressed their slender faces against the glass and peered out at us.

  Rose, whose list of virtues does not include patience, did not wait for a proper greeting at the door. She raised the window and spoke with the oldest of the children, a boy with disheveled blond hair. “Hello. Is your father home?”

  The boy stayed at the sill, but his brother and sister retreated from Rose. “No ma’am. He’s gone to quarry. My mama’s here.”

  “We would prefer your father, but she will do.” Rose bared her teeth at the boy and gestured at them. “Your teeth are quite yellow for a child your age. Do you own a toothbrush?”

  The boy maintained his puzzled stare while calling “Mama?” over his shoulder. A moment later, the door opened. A weary-looking woman with a sleeping infant in one arm greeted us.

  She tried to read all of our expressions. “Is something amiss, Sheriff? Is my husband all right?”

  “As far as I know, Mrs. Hill.” He removed his hat, revealing that his head lacked any hair above the cap’s brim. “The Ragistons hired an investigator from a university in New York. May he ask some questions about the attack?”

  Her gaping worry changed to squinting suspicion. She blew a strand of hair away from her face and stepped back from the door.

  “Welcome to you. Come in.”

  The house was a simple tenement decorated with an unframed painting, a chipped vase, and an empty wood-and-glass jewelry box. Beyond that, the first floor had an oven, fireplace, table, and four chairs. The daughter and middle boy swept the floor together, spreading dust more than cleaning it, and the eldest boy practiced his writing by copying words from a Bible.

  “There’s pottage on the oven.” Mrs. Hill raised her chin toward an iron pot.

  I nudged the ladle sticking out of it. The congealed, brown stew barely moved. At least its smell more closely resembled food than its appearance.

  “I hope the neighbor doesn’t miss her cat,” I said under my breath.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing, ma’am. I’m muttering to myself.” I turned and warmed my back against the oven’s residual heat. “Mrs. Hill, is your husband healthy?”

  Rose, standing prim and proper with her hands clasped, mumbled, “With four young offspring, I would guess quite healthy.”

  I raised a finger to my lips to hush her, but my snorting laughter undermined the seriousness of my order. “His injuries. Has he healed from them?”

  “He returned to work soon as he healed enough for it. He didn’t lie none. You can see for yourself his leg is scarred and hobbles.”

  Mrs. Hill’s infant began to squirm. She bounced him on her arm. “You won’t fire him, will you? We need the money for food.”

  “Relax, ma’am. I am honestly here to dispose of the ghoul and nothing more.”

  “All right,” she said, but she was not all right. She remained tense in spite of my calm grin.

  I guessed that my association with the Ragiston family, her husband’s employer, unnerved her. In order to look less imposing, I moved to a seat and leaned one elbow on the table. When I produced the journal from my bag, I positioned it so she could steal glances at whatever notes I recorded from our conversation. I wanted her to know I had no ulterior motive for being there.

  “Sheriff Richt and others have shared plenty of stories about the ghoul, but most of the witnesses are dead or spotted it from afar. Your husband is different. He saw it quite clearly when it attacked him, correct? Can you share what he told you about it?”

  She called out, “Boys, take your sister upstairs.”

  Her two oldest sons led the little girl away.

  Once they had gone, she said, “It attacked him in full daylight, it did. It weren’t a wolf or some dog. He said it looked like the ghoul’s mother were a sickly woman, and its father were every kind of despicable vermin rolled into one. It had the mouth of a
coyote, ears of a bat, eyes of an owl, and claws of a rat.”

  “It sounds like a poem,” Rose mumbled.

  I finished my notes and asked, “Did the creature have fur or wings?”

  “It had long spines on its back, like a porcupine. The rest of the body looked like a gray human corpse. My husband said it was hungry. He could see its ribs through its skin.”

  “Thank you.” I wrote the information down in pencil, then smiled past the woman at her three children. They were doing a poor job of being discreet as they spied on us from the top of the stairs. “Did he mention anything else that might help me find it? Perhaps a noise or smell?”

  “Only that it smelled awful, but that’s no surprise. It crawled out of the sewer.” She chewed her lip as she sifted through her memory. “Oh, and it was wearing cloth.”

  “Cloth? What do you mean?”

  “It had cloth wrapped around its waist, like it was wearing short pants or a skirt that been torn to bits.”

  I closed my journal and considered all that Mrs. Hill confirmed. My intrigue boiled. Our creature represented a new species, of that I felt certain, but a new species of what? I could not rule out ghouls, but the possibility of it being a lycanthrope increased. Lycanthropes’ appendages grow, while ghouls tend to lose ears and other thin flesh as they decay.

  Rose voiced my thoughts. “It would be our first ghoul with quills and ears.”

  “First ghoul?” Sheriff Richt and Mrs. Hill asked in unison. Then the sheriff said, “Have you seen more of these demons before?”

  “Yes. I stopped three that kept digging up bones from the Antietam cemetery. They are awakened dead, by the way. Not demons.”

  “We should investigate all recent mass deaths that might have drawn it here,” Rose said.

  “I agree.”

  “It might be a lycanthrope, but have you ever heard of one attacking in daylight?”

  The girl’s astute mind is an endless wonder. She has caught up to my knowledge of exonatural creatures in a quarter of the time. “No. Ghouls prefer the night, but lycanthropes require it.”