by C W Briar
“What if they have enough shade?”
“Perhaps.” Our conversation left the sheriff and Mrs. Hill in a silent stupor. I asked, “Can you show me where it attacked him?”
“If I must,” Mrs. Hill replied.
She headed outside with Sheriff Richt. I followed them until Rose stopped me at the door with a tug of my sleeve.
“May I?” She held up the dollars she stores in her pocket.
“No, Rose. That’s too much for you.” I opened my billfold and, to her delight, handed over a twenty-dollar bill. “Take it from me instead.”
Giggling, she waved to the children at the top of the stairs and left the money on the table.
We returned to the bridge we had crossed earlier. Mrs. Hill pointed to the stone-lined recess beneath it. “My husband was breaking rocks and repairing the ditch. It rushed out from under the bridge and bit him. He kicked it and broke free, and it went back into hiding.”
Sheriff Richt added, “We piled rocks under there to keep the devil in the sewer, but it climbed out somewhere else and eventually attacked Miss Murphy.”
Harriet Murphy was the other living victim, and I intended to visit her next.
Rose leapt down into the ditch, and her boots sunk halfway into the mud. She leaned to one side and peered under the bridge. “The drain is still blocked.”
I kicked a pebble off the lip of the ditch. What kind of monster would ambush and withdraw? Most beasts lack the necessary mental faculties for such tactics.
“Have you searched the sewers?” I asked.
The sheriff paled at the question.
7
We visited the final victim, who was recovering at her cousin’s house. Miss Harriet Murphy intrigued me more than any other witness. At the time, she had been working as a maid for Claude and Ida, and the attack occurred in the Ragiston basement.
Her wounds were still grisly despite two weeks of healing. Stitches corrugated the red flesh on her forearm, chin, and cheek. Bandages covered her left eye, the one that had been clawed.
I asked Miss Murphy to share anything she could recall. She prepared tea for all of us and sat down to explain what happened.
She had gone by candlelight into the basement for flour and discovered the pantry door ajar. The room had been raided, and broken jars and torn bags lay spilled onto the floor. She feared a burglar might be lurking in the dark. If one considered the guilty fiend a mere burglar, she was right.
Miss Murphy heard damp, congested breaths like those of a pneumonia patient, and she smelled a stench similar to a corpse or sewer. She cried, “Hello?”
A gray mass wriggled off the top shelf of the pantry. Then the beast looked up at her with a yellow, vicious gaze.
Not surprisingly, she screamed in terror. The creature thrashed about the room and clawed her, then fled into the deeper, darker recesses of the basement. She yelled for help as she ran up the stairs.
Miss Murphy ended her story abruptly. She set her cup of tea down because her hands were shaking enough to spill it. Then she touched the wrinkled skin around her stitches and wept silently.
She was young, pretty, and a maiden. The facial wounds must have disturbed her terribly.
I told her, “The cuts are straight. The scars will be faint if present at all.” Hopefully my assurances will one day prove true.
We did not stay after that. I thanked her for her help and promised to kill the so-called ghoul. Guilt gnawed me as I left. I appreciated her insight but lamented that it required her to dive back into the depths of her nightmare.
8
Professor, please forgive my handwriting in this and all ensuing letters, for I now have to write left-handed. You will understand why after you read the incredible new details I have sent you.
Last night, in defiance of Ida Ragiston’s pleas, I undid the lock on her basement door. It had been sealed since the incident with Miss Murphy.
“I beg you to reconsider,” Ida said. She and the other members of the Ragiston house were standing in the kitchen. “Going down there is not safe for you or Miss Drumlin, and it puts the rest of us at risk.”
“Which is why I need you to close the door behind us.” I raised my revolver in front of my lips to gesture for them to be silent. I pushed the basement door open far enough to listen for movement in the darkness below. I sensed nothing besides silence and the cool, damp air.
Rose sat on a stool, kicking the front of her skirt. “Do you hear anything?”
I shook my head.
She shrugged and tore pieces from a loaf of bread on the table.
Ida squeezed the folds of her dress. “Oh, dear. Can you not try another plan? I do not want to be at fault for having put the two of you in terrible danger.”
“The three of us, ma’am.”
“Three? Who is the third?”
“He is.” I thumbed at her brother, who was holding up a lantern at my back.
“Me?” He lowered the lantern so swiftly that it bounced off his thigh. His eyes widened with fear. “You said nothing of me going down there when you asked for my help.”
“Why in the blazes would I need someone to hold my lantern here in the kitchen while I’m down there?”
Claude turned to his three servants. Mr. Williams’s head was bowed in prayer, and his wife looked nearly as flustered as Ida. He called Mr. Carlson by his first name, John. “Carry this lantern for our guest.”
“No, he will not,” I ordered.
“I beg your pardon?”
I glared at him. “How much do you pay Mr. Carlson?”
Claude stuttered, and then said, “A proper wage, but I do not understand what that has to do with the matter at hand.”
“A proper servant’s wage is not enough for a man to risk his life.”
“I can pay him more for the trouble.”
My kind opinion of Claude wavered. “No, Mr. Ragiston. I know too many wealthy inheritors who never earn their respect or way in life. Some of those vermin crawl on the far branches of my own family tree. This is your home, your inheritance, and you are the one who hired me, so hold onto that lantern and kindly follow me into your basement.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed on a hard swallow. He nodded, at first tentatively, then with vigor. “All right, I’ll go.”
Perhaps I could hold out hope for him yet.
Mr. Carlson searched me without blinking, no doubt wondering if he should obey me or help his employer. I gestured toward Ida and the Williamses. “Please stay and guard them, Mr. Carlson. Unless one of us calls for you by name, remain here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you ready?” I asked Rose.
She sprang from the stool. “I’m ready,” she mumbled through fat cheeks stuffed with bread.
Rose picked up her handgun and leather medicine bag, which contained tools appropriate for hunting in the dark. I took two weapons for myself. The first was, as I mentioned, my revolver. I fastened a hooked, silver bayonet beneath the barrel before going downstairs.
The second weapon was my light-staff, a special walking stick I commissioned from an Irish fellow in New York. The handle is capped with a metal dragon head, and when I press its spines, light shines out of its mouth. The beam is narrower than a lantern’s light and can only be used for brief periods, but you can imagine the usefulness of such a tool.
The hinges squealed an indecipherable warning as I opened the door and shined my staff into the black descent. The beam illuminated a few cobwebs and floating specks of dust. Everything else was shadow.
I tiptoed into the musty stillness. The stairs creaked nonetheless.
“What is the layout ahead of us?” I asked.
Claude followed close enough at my back that I could hear the lantern’s flame dancing on the wick. “The basement is rather complex. When we were children, Ida and I used to get lost down here on purpose.”
“At least describe the first few rooms.” Understanding my surroundings would decrease the odds of me being
caught unaware.
“The hall has three doors,” Clause whispered. “The wine cellar and ice stores are to the right. The pantry is to the left. The hall splits in two directions after that.”
I reached the smooth, stone floor at the bottom of the steps. Bricks formed the corridor’s arched ceiling, but stacks of roughly cut stones made up the walls. Just as Claude described, the first door opened into a wine cellar. Racks lined the room, and bottles nested in at least half of the grooves.
I should have risked an expedition to that glorious vault on my first night. Fate rewarded my sweeping inspection of the stock. “Oh, sweet mercy.”
“What is it?” Claude shrank behind me, but at least he managed to keep the lantern above my shoulder. “Is it the creature?”
“No. It is far more significant than that.” I hung my pistol from the holster by its bayonet and turned off my light-staff, which had begun to warm. I lifted a bottle of luscious Romanée-Conti wine off a rack as tenderly as one picks up a sleeping babe. “We have come to rescue you, little one.”
“You are incorrigible, sir,” Rose said from the doorway.
“It’s Romanée-Conti, Rose.”
Bah, what do the youth know? Professor, if you have ever had the pleasure of tasting that complex, extraordinary nectar, then doubtless you understand my excitement.
I was prepared for my good luck. I took a corkscrew out of my breast pocket and opened the bottle. The aroma cleansed my nose of the dank air.
“Is it expensive?” Claude asked.
“Extreme—I mean, it is extremely difficult to find, but not expensive.” I lied in hopes the wine’s value would not be deducted from my pay. I raised the bottle to my lips. The drink embraced my tongue.
We next checked the pantry, the site of Harriet Murphy’s attack. The door still hung open. My boot struck a toppled basket when I stepped inside. The smells of salt and rotten apples wafted from the dark floor and shelves.
“Move closer,” I said to Claude.
He did as asked, and the light recounted the violence that had occurred there.
Glass jar shards covered the floor between two of the shelves. The exposed vegetables and fruits had been chewed, either by our prey or by mice that benefitted from its invasion. Salted pork lay beneath the hook it had been torn from, and I doubted any mouse could be blamed for the chunks ripped out of it. The reddish-brown stains splattered on the floor and wall likely originated from Miss Murphy’s unfortunate encounter.
“It attacked her here,” Claude whispered.
“I guessed as much.” I took another drink from the bottle. That poor girl. Even if she had not been hurt, the sight of a monster emerging from the clutter would have haunted her for ages. I stepped over a spilled bag of potatoes and examined the ragged gouges in the side of pork.
“How did it get in here?”
“We do not know,” Claude said.
“Was the door from the kitchen locked at the time?”
“No, but why would the creature come down here when it could steal food from the kitchen?”
He raised a good point. And what were the odds of it going unnoticed inside the mansion? “What entrances are there from the outside?”
“Only one, but the door is locked and has been for years. None of us can open it. We made a poor attempt to find the keys when Ida and I first arrived, but other priorities took precedence.”
“The keys are lost?” I asked.
“Yes. The knowledge of their whereabouts died with my grandfather, I’m afraid. He might have lost them years ago.”
“But you are certain the door is locked?”
“Yes.” He paused. “At least it was when we last checked.”
I considered for a moment the possibility that someone did possess the keys, and that they had let the creature in by malice or mistake. Maybe they had stolen into the basement for food and left the door open. It seemed more likely than our ghoul learning to pick locks.
We would need to check the door he referred to. In the meantime, I had information to glean in the pantry. “Rose, come help me survey the food. I wish to know what types attract the beast.”
“I cannot,” she said, and not in her monotone, playful manner. I noticed a sharp intensity in her voice, and Claude raised the light toward her.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
Her face soured. “I smell a sewer odor.”
Tripping over potatoes, I raced back to the long, arched corridor. She was right. A vile stench like concentrated rot oozed out of the deepest darkness of the passage. Miss Murphy had encountered such a smell just before her attack.
I listened for any hint of movement but heard only Claude’s rapid breaths and the lantern rattling in his trembling grasp. I pressed the spines on my staff’s dragon head and aimed its narrow beam down the hall. There, from around the corner, a pair of yellow, oval eyes stared back at us with predatory rancor.
A chill cut me to the quick.
9
My companion screamed. Not Rose. She pushed forward to my side, readying her gun. The cry came from Claude.
The creature reacted with spastic movements, its yellow eyes shaking wildly and flashing with each blink. It uttered a warbling growl, then it launched down the rightmost tunnel branch as swiftly as a fired cannonball.
“Quick!” I cried. After sprinting a few steps, I stopped, seized by my better senses.
Rose asked, “What’s wrong?”
I raised the wine for one more hurried sip, then rushed back and set the bottle of ravishingly delicious Romanée-Conti on a pantry shelf. “I dare not waste this,” I said as I raised my gun and ran after the creature.
The next branch of the passage narrowed, and we moved in single file. Vertical stains darkened the bleached, dusty walls wherever moisture had trickled down them like blood from a wound. The rusted pipe at the peak of the arched ceiling had taken on the color of an artery.
I rolled my steps from heel to toe, quieting my movements as much as possible. I kept my light-staff aimed ahead and my gun at the ready should the creature surge toward us. The doors to the left and right were all closed, so I assumed the beast had continued on to the chamber at the tunnel’s end.
The ceiling in the last room stooped so low that I felt the need to crouch, yet the walls spread out wider than the reach of our lights. I swung my staff back and forth. Its beam became lost in the chaotic mess of bags, casks, and crates stacked into towers. At least three tables occupied the chamber, and the one nearest to us had vials, a scale, and other chemistry tools. Empty sconces reached out like clawed paws from the pillars, begging for lit candles.
Our target was hiding in a bastion of clutter and darkness. The risk of ambush grew tenfold. I crept toward the left. Saws hung from the low ceiling beams ahead of me, and their teeth drew jagged shadows in my light. I had to move with a dancer’s grace to avoid stepping on steel rods scattered over the floor.
The farther I advanced, the more the light faded. Claude lingered at the door, too afraid to follow me into the broad chamber.
“Mr. Ragiston, bring the lantern up here,” I said.
“But I do not have a weapon.”
“For good reason. You are as likely to shoot me as that beast if you had one.” A glass vessel tipped over and rolled somewhere in the dark. “Hurry! I have no time for cowardice. I can’t fight what I can’t see.”
He shuffled forward. Halfway to me, he stumbled, and the lantern swung violently as he regained his balance. “Oh, I always hated this room, even before that demon appeared.”
“Shh. Keep the light behind my head so you don’t blind me.” I jerked my light-staff to one side but too late. Whatever I sensed moving hid itself again. “Rose, please release—”
I heard the clasp of her medical bag being undone. She was already setting the plan in motion. Rose removed the lid from one of her jars and released the contents into the air. Glowing, shimmering beads of green took flight and meandered in drunken patterns
about the room.
“What are those?” Claude whispered.
“Corpse beetles.” I took a step toward the sound of feet slapping on stone.
Rose completed my explanation. “They’ve been painted with an extract from glowworms, and they’re attracted to the rotting stench of the awakened dead.”
The beetles should have swarmed in the direction of the beast, but they continued to wander about the various heaps of boxes and bags. I heard a low, gibbering noise but struggled to discern where it came from, so I moved toward the densest cluster of green specks. The insects circled like vultures above a pile of animal hides and skulls.
“What are these?” I asked.
Claude peered from behind one of the tables. “I do not know. My grandfather collected these things while my sister and I lived in Philadelphia.”
“Hmm.” I mused at the beetles’ uncertainty.
“It’s not an awakened dead,” Rose said, seconding my unspoken epiphany.
“What do you mean?” Claude asked.
“She means it is a living animal and not a ghoul.” But an animal of what terrible species?
The hairs on my neck stood upright, not because of the chilling air but because of my tactical blunder. I had led them into terrible danger because my estimation of the beast had been wrong.
Strategies for living monsters differ from those for the awakened dead. With the latter, the straight-forward technique of using oneself as bait is most efficient. But living creatures possess cunning and a desire for self-preservation. Against such a foe, the safest plan is to distract its attention with anything but your flesh.
Oh, how I loathe uncertainty and error. Nothing else is as apt to cause death on a hunt. Did Rose understand our situation? I could only hope, because admitting the danger of my error might have caused our inexperienced lantern-bearer to panic. He was frightened enough already.
I leapt over a large, oddly shaped sack and immediately swept under the next table with my light. My heated staff began to flicker and dim at random. When I stood back up, I shined the dwindling light in the gaps between shoulder-high stacks of rummage. I half-expected to see the creature ambushing me.