by C W Briar
“No, Gideon. You’re wrong.” Rose, standing in the doorway, held up the pages I had stolen.
“It’s far worse than that.”
19
“What do you mean ‘worse’?” I asked Rose.
“Where did these come from?”
I cleared my throat. “I found them.”
“You stole them,” Timothy said, stomping his foot.
Rose shoved the papers back into my coat pocket. “Are these from the pavilion?”
I nodded.
“Then it appears Mr. Voor is dabbling in biological alchemy.”
Alchemy. Every clue and suspicion knotted around that despicable word. The vials of sulphur and black sand. The ancient-world symbols. The wretched amalgamations of diverse animals joined into one. Contrary to my earlier impression in Mr. Voor’s study, the owl and bat parts may not have been attached to the preserved cat with thread, but by science.
And the critters would have been alive when it happened.
I thought the practice was purely conjecture and myth. The alchemists I knew were charlatans, the shysters of chemistry. They tinkered with the properties of minerals and chemicals, combining and separating their components, then made grandiose claims about what their concoctions could do. Every proponent of alchemy argued for its legitimacy, but none of them ever presented solid proof.
While traversing the fruitless rumors, I had happened upon legends of a darker and more unbelievable variation of the practice. Biological alchemy, the art of altering and combining living flesh. I never found anything more substantial than stories and speculation, but would practitioners of such a vile, nightmarish science ever admit to it publicly?
“I do not understand,” Claude said. “I thought alchemists create gold.”
“It is more than transmuting gold from baser substances. In theory, alchemists use exonatural energy to expand the limits of natural chemistry. The darkest forms manipulate the biology of living creatures.” I exhaled strongly, expelling clouds from my nostrils. “Only a madman would commit such a crime against nature.”
“Is it possible?” Rose asked.
“Until this moment, I would have said no.”
“I still do not understand,” Claude said
I marched toward Timothy in spite of his gun. “It means that if Charles Voor achieved biological alchemy, the real thing, then he did not import the ghoul. He created it in a laboratory from other animals.”
“Is this true?” Sheriff Richt asked.
Timothy backed away and lowered the gun to waist height. Based on the quivering of his arms, I doubted he had enough strength to hold it any higher than that.
“They are lying. Master Voor is a chemist, not some witch doctor.”
“What will we find in the chamber?” I asked.
“I have no idea. This entrance belongs to the Ragistons.”
“Stop slipping away from the questions, you eel! Charles and Leonard studied together in the pavilion, and according to Dr. Torani, they both stored surgical supplies in their basements.” I tossed a glance at Claude, who caught it with visible trepidation. He understood that any guilt placed on Charles Voor also tightened like a noose around his family’s name.
Timothy lowered both his gun and umbrella. “Utter rubbish.” Deep, chesty coughs interrupted him. “Why would he create some monster?”
Rose said, “According to the pages, he also used alchemy to extend lives. Mr. Ragiston, did your grandfather ever require his workers give blood for influenza testing?”
Claude wiped the rain from his brow. “I do not know.”
“Yes,” the older James said. He grabbed the crook of his elbow. “I heard the stonemasons talking about it, how a doctor from Pittsburgh took blood out of their arms.”
“Thank the men for contributing years to Mr. Voor’s and Mr. Ragiston’s lives,” Rose said. “Well, at least until the creature killed Mr. Ragiston. Blood-soaked ruthenium adds thirteen lunar cycles when buried in the chest.”
A look of utter horror stretched Timothy’s wrinkled face. He backed away from us and then shuffled away toward the Voor house.
“Mr. Barron?” Sheriff Richt called.
“Let him go,” I said. “We can question him after we stop the creature.”
Rose and I led the others into the chamber. I took two lanterns from my bag and lit them with matches from a tin. For the first ten paces, the sloped passage narrowed enough to be mistaken for a crypt. I stooped to avoid striking my head, and moisture dripped from the ceiling onto the back of my already-soaked neck. The air hung dense and stale as if the room had inhaled and held its breath for years.
“You’re bleeding again,” Rose said.
Blood and water dripped together off my hand and colored the lantern’s glass. The scent from my wound would crowd the passages.
She asked, “Is that safe?”
“None of this is safe.”
At the top of the incline, the tunnel opened into a broad room with a half dozen columns and walls of stacked stones. Rat pellets rolled like gravel under my boots, and the light from our lanterns snagged in the curtains of cobwebs. God only knows what the spiders ate in there. Water rushed off a lip of stone that projected from the back wall, flowed down a trough, and vanished into a hole in the floor.
Two more passages branched from the chamber, both of which ended at iron doors. Attempting to orient herself, Rose straddled the water trough in the center of the room and straightened her arms toward the tunnels. “The one to the right leads to the Ragiston house. It’s the door we could not open before. Where does the other one lead?”
“To the Voor house,” I said. “Or, more likely, to the space under the pavilion.”
The others scouted the room cautiously. Claude must have promised a handsome payment to the locksmith because he ventured into the darkness with us. Younger James ducked and clawed a cobweb out of his hair, and older James laughed at him.
“You think the ghoul lives down here?” Sheriff Richt asked.
I raised my voice above the clamor of water. “I do, so keep up your guard.”
After checking the left door, I asked the locksmith if he could open it. He dug at the keyhole with his hooks until it clicked, but still the door would not move.
“Something is blocking it,” he said.
“All right. Put away your tools. It’s barred from the other side, just as the Ragiston door was.”
The older James craned his neck to peek around us. His unpleasant breath lingered in the tunnel. “Do you think the ghoul came through here? Can it open doors? That would mean it can break into houses to kill us while we sleep.”
“I am not sure how it moves around. I have yet to figure out how it got into the Ragiston house.”
“Through here,” Rose called from the wide part of the chamber. She motioned toward the spot where the runoff water spilled out of the wall. “It can fit in this hole.”
Her teeth chattered as she spoke. Wet clothes and cool air were taking their toll, on her and the rest of us. My skin craved warmth.
I walked back and knelt beside the trough. Rose had placed her lantern in the hole, on a crevice just above the water’s level. The air emitting from it smelled dank, rusty, and slightly sulphurous. When I stuck my head inside, my shoulders stopped against the rim like a sideways cork atop a bottle. My eyes reached deep enough for me to peer up the drains, which flowed toward me from two directions. A faint glow illuminated the left duct about fifty feet away.
I pushed back from the hole.
Sheriff Richt asked, “Well?”
“She may be right. It’s wide enough, and the creature might be able to reach any sewer drains diverting rainwater to this point. Claude, are there any drains in your basement?”
“Yes. A few.”
“I know where next to look to find how the ghoul got in.”
“We need to open the door on the Voor side,” Rose said.
I paid no mind to her comment until one of the
men cleared his throat loudly. Four of them averted their eyes, and older James gaped at Rose. I turned him away when I realized why. She had removed her skirt, exposing her short pants underneath, and she was untying the straps on her leather bodice.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing, Rose?” I asked.
“I said we need to open the door.”
“So you’re stripping to nude and pretending you’re a key?”
“No, but perhaps our alchemist friend could help me do that.” She slid the loosened bodice down over her slender frame, leaving naught but her chemise and pale camisole covering her torso. “There’s a lock bar on the other side. I intend to crawl through and open it.”
Apprehension punched my chest. Upon dread realization of her plan, I seized her arm. The fool girl was practically throwing herself into the jaws of the beast.
“Stop this, Rose. We will find another way in. Patience over courage.”
Sheriff Richt peeked through his fingers. “You’re speaking madness.”
Rose pulled free of my grasp, planted her fists on her hips, and scowled. “No one else will fit.”
“Rose, no,” I said sternly.
She flushed with anger. “What if it attacks someone while we wait? What if it kills a child this time?”
“That child could be you.”
“Except I’m not a child. I’m an employee of Gideon Wells Exonatural Investigations, and I have a job to do.”
Professor, you have four grown children, correct? And is not one of them an Army officer? I admire your fortitude. Among myriad reasons why I would make a pitiful father is my apparent lack of courage for the responsibility. I have faced dozens of fanged monsters that tried to eat me, and I have trained Rose how to fight back against them. But sending her alone and defenseless into the creature’s lair racked me with trepidation.
Her plan was feasible. It was clever. But it was reckless. In the end, I let her go anyway. I knew Rose’s stubbornness too well.
In the absence of further objections, she began to climb belly-down into the small, square hole.
“Gideon, she cannot be serious,” Claude said.
I held my tongue.
“Wait,” the younger James called. He ran to Rose and held out the knife I had given him. “You might need this.”
Rose rolled it over so the blade aimed away from her, then bit down on the steel. She grinned at him as best she could with the knife between her teeth.
“Be quick, and stay safe,” I told her.
“None of this is safe,” she mumbled. Then she slid lithely into the hole. The frigid water surged around her body.
“Mind your thoughts, James,” I said.
I meant it for the older boy, but they both replied, “I’m sorry.”
I watched and waited from the entrance. The light from the lantern and from the far end of the tunnel outlined her figure. Had Rose been a few inches larger in girth, she never would have fit. Her shoulders and her head, which she had to hold above the water level, dragged against the sides of the duct.
She stopped and plucked the knife from her teeth. “The channel branches.”
“Which way?” I asked.
She nodded left and right. “Both ways. The tunnels are the same size, but they are pitch-black.”
“Stay on course then. The light is your best bet.”
Rose wriggled forward like a squeezed caterpillar. When at last she reached the place where the light illuminated her hair and shoulders, she rolled with noticeable struggle onto her back. Her muffled grunts echoed louder than the churning water.
She slid a hand around her hip and pulled the knife out of her mouth again. “The opening is covered with a grate.”
“Can you open it?”
She pushed and pulled at the obstruction. “No. The stench wafting through the grille is revolting. I smell a rotting corpse.”
Each second heaped more risk onto the plan. My gut knotted, and my instincts screamed that Rose should abandon her attempt. “Rosette, slide back to me now.”
“I will try one of the branches next.” Her voice sounded so distant and restricted.
“You will do no such thing. Come back—”
Two-thirds of the way up the tunnel, a pair of oval eyes crept into view. The light reflected off them in a sickly yellow glow. When the ghoul rotated its head like an owl to look at Rose, one of its long ears stuck out across the entire width of the passage.
“Here, here, here!” I cried, trying to attract the beast to me. I balled my wounded hand into a fist and squeezed out blood as impromptu bait, then I drew my revolver. “Rose, do not move. It’s here.”
The gun slipped in my wet hand, and the remaining stitches strained as I held it. I aimed the weapon down the tunnel, but I never fired because I could not fit my head in at the same time. I risked hitting Rose if I shot blind.
I pulled the revolver out and poked my head in. Rose’s and the creature’s silhouettes merged into one.
“Don’t move,” I shouted. “Feign death.”
I never would have given that advice while I thought the creature was a genuine ghoul.
Straining to climb in after her accomplished nothing but bruising my collarbones. I heard thrashing in the water and Rose’s cries.
Desperate, I sprinted to the barred door and threw my body into it. It threw me back with painful resolve.
“Help me!” I yelled to the men standing off to the side. They hurried over and, as one mass, we slammed against the door like a human battering ram. It shook, and the chamber echoed with the thunder of our effort, but still we could not break through.
Amid my efforts, I remembered there might be another way in. I stopped the others.
“You, try to get the lock bar open,” I said to the locksmith. To the younger James, I said, “Stay here and guard him.”
“But I—”
“Stay here, James.”
I ordered the rest of the men to follow me.
I grabbed my bag and sprinted to the pavilion ahead of Claude, Sheriff Richt, and older James. Someone had already opened the door and turned on the lights. I caught Timothy stuffing alchemy books into a bag.
I aimed my revolver at his head. “Tell me how to open the door.”
20
Timothy dropped the books from his arms. “I do not know what you speak of. What door? You are standing in the only one.”
“The hidden one in the floor. How do I open it?”
Sheriff Richt hustled into the room, panting. “Holster your weapon, Gideon.”
I ignored him. “That seal is covering a hole, and I need to get down there at once. How do I open it?”
“He is mad,” Timothy protested.
James whistled his astonishment as he and Claude entered. “So this is Old Voor’s shed?”
The sheriff put at least some faith in my claims. He stomped on the bronze disc. The metallic echo rang under the floor. “I’ll be darned. There is something down there.”
“Do you know how to open the door?” I asked Timothy again.
“No.”
My throat clenched with anger. “Tell us now!”
He fell to his knees. “I do not know,” he moaned.
And I believed him.
Disheartening visions of Rose crawled into my thoughts. I had no time for interrogations. I instructed the others to search the room for a hidden mechanism that opens the door. Claude tugged at the various decorations. Sheriff Richt and I clawed books off the shelves. James at least stayed out of our way. Meanwhile, Timothy sank into one of the seats, struggling just to breathe.
After we tipped, pulled, and rolled every object in the room, I focused on the decorative bronze floor. I skittered on hands and knees over the images of stars, plants, crystals, and animals. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
The bird.
A hole had been bored into the eye socket of the eagle symbol. I pressed my small finger into it and felt a ridge of metal.
“Mr. Barron, did
Mr. Voor carry any sort of long, slender key or staff with him whenever he came to the pavilion?”
He looked ready to weep or drink a bottle of cheap whisky from the liquor cabinet. “Not to my knowledge, but it appears there is much I did not know about him.”
“What about this?” Claude picked up a three-foot-long steel shaft with a leather grip on one end and a hook on the other.
“Perfect.” I shoved the instrument into the hole and, with some maneuvering, tripped a concealed latch or device.
The two pipes near the bookshelves hissed with steam. The room hummed and vibrated. After a few seconds, a ticking reminiscent of a loud, rapid clock sounded, and the round seal divided into sixteen triangular segments. The pieces descended to progressively deeper positions and formed a circular staircase.
I hurried below with my bag and lantern. Three arched doors waited at the bottom of the dark pit. Light and the stench of death seeped around the edges of one of them.
21
Professor Emerick, it is I, Rosette Drumlin.
Mr. Wells asked me to provide a written account of the lair belonging to one Mr. Charles Voor. The world knew him as a chemical magnate who lived in Haughtogis Point. In private, he was a repugnant man involved in the nightmarish science of biological alchemy.
The chore of providing this letter falls on me because of what I alone witnessed in the underground Voor laboratory. Furthermore, Mr. Wells is unable to write because of the tragedy that befell him. I speak of the wound he received from the creature. He currently has to write with his left hand, and his already-poor penmanship has become what can only be described as a tragedy.
This letter is an unpleasant task, one which required much coaxing for me to write it. I did not want to put these words to paper because they forced me to dwell on the things I saw. Consider this my final declaration of the events, and do not ask me questions whereupon we meet. I will not reply. It will take me quite enough time to quell the pain of the memories I now possess.
I am quite serious. Do not ask me in the future about the laboratory. I will strike you.