The Beast of Nightfall Lodge

by SA Sidor

  I didn’t notice Smoke Eel writing another note until he pushed it into my face.

  YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL WHO YOU TELL.

  ONE OF US = THE BEAST.

  BUT WHICH ONE?

  “Yes, that is the key question.” Despite the numbing blast of the blizzard winds, I was glad to leave the cramped passage. “I know who I plan to talk to first,” I shouted over the storm.

  Smoke Eel scribbled another message

  REMEMBER. TRUST NONE OF THEM.

  NO ONE IS SAFE.

  MAYBE NOT EVEN YOU.

  He had the lantern hanging between our faces. I read the note and looked into Smoke Eel’s steel-blue eyes. He stuffed the notebook down into his layers of furs. He blew on his fingers and put his mitten back on. As he lowered his light, I regarded the sawed-off shotgun holstered to his thigh. His mitten rested on the pistol grip. He could cut me in half with one pull.

  A blue-eyed Indian guide.

  Trust no one, I thought.

  Good advice.

  20

  A Cheshire Grin

  “Let me understand you. You’re asking me if I change from a man into the Beast? Do I have that correct? This is too much. Is everyone hearing what Dr Hardy is saying?” Claude’s voice climbed higher. “It’s a joke, right? You’re playing some sort of cruel, awful prank on me. Ha! Well, I appreciate humor. But yours is in poor taste, Hardy.”

  Claude Adderly reclined on a tufted gold velvet divan in front of a roaring fire. The orange flames threw warm tiger-stripes over his body. He had a whiskey glass in hand. Empty. He wore a silk robe. His hair was combed back wetly; the rows of the comb’s teeth still showed. He had bathed since returning from his ride. I smelled the musky soap he used. He lit a cigarette.

  He put the cigarette between his lips. His hands were shaky. He had dark rings around his eyes like an insomniac. After a few puffs of tobacco, he started clapping.

  “Bravo, Dr Hardy.” He talked around his cigarette. “You take first prize among fools. Father! Get the doctor his treasured Apis Bull from ancient days. But really, no one has more bull than the doctor does. Am I right? You’re positively full of it. Don’t be greedy now.”

  “I only want to ask you a few questions,” I said. “If you answer them satisfactorily, then we can all rest easier. You will be vindicated. I’ll gladly apologize for any insult you’ve felt.”

  I had tried to carry out my interrogation privately. I asked Evangeline and Wu (thank God he had returned safely and was in the process of forming a posse to aid me when Smoke Eel and I came through the door) to be present, along with Oscar and Vivienne. Cassi overheard our conversation and insisted on being included. Smoke Eel lingered on the perimeter of the discussion. I wanted him there. He was a witness, the first one to discover the shredded clothing.

  “Answer the doctor’s questions, Claude. You have nothing to hide,” Oscar said.

  The long, trying, murderous day had made everyone tired and irritable. I knew my accusations would fail to endear me to the Adderlys. But I saw no other way. Oscar had a cigar in hand. He’d also been drinking. Now he perched for a moment on the arm of a well-worn leather wingback chair. He could not bring himself to sit down fully. He had been pacing the length of the room ever since I told him of my intention to confront his son. I told them Billy was dead and Pops was missing. Vivienne backed her wheelchair against the wall, as if she expected a physical brawl to break out. And it might well have, if not for Cassi. Claude’s twin sister did not treat me as an enemy or a joke. If anything, she acted as though she hoped we all could still be friends.

  “Rom isn’t charging you with a crime,” she said, gliding near her brother’s seat and bumping up against it with her hip. She reached out, ruffling his hair with her fingernails.

  Claude ducked forward to escape her. Lank locks fell down his forehead. He left them there. Smug, bored, and spoiled rotten – and yet the greatest aura he gave off was fear.

  “I have no authority,” I admitted.

  “And I have no compelling reason to submit to your grilling. In my own home!”

  “Claude, darling,” his mother said. “Talk to us. We are your family.”

  “Huh! You don’t act like a family. You with your starcharts and occultist literature. Communing with the spirits of the dead or whatever it is you do locked away in candlelit rooms at all hours of the night. And Father… Father has his safaris and expeditions. He’d pay more attention to us if he could shoot us and stuff our carcasses for his morbid little jungle dioramas.”

  “They are not all jungle scenes,” Oscar said. “You know that. I am an avid explorer. It’s in my blood. I have invited you to join me on multiple occasions. You steadfastly refused.”

  “I’ve no desire to sit in a tent, shivering with malaria. Hearing Bwana this, and Jefe that out of the mouths of the fawning local villagers is not my way of enjoying a tramp in the woods. I’d rather go to Paris. Or London. I want cities. Joy! People! Slaughtering exotic fauna doesn’t set my heart racing.”

  Oscar grunted with disgust.

  “That is unfair to your father,” Vivienne said. “He is a pioneering naturalist. Whether you agree with him or not, your father is an artist. Without his collections many animals would be lost to history, unknown to museums and the general public. He loves his animals famously.”

  “He loves the dead ones he can control and play with like toys. His animals – that’s more correct than you intended. He wants to possess them. Only they don’t have any say. Do they…?”

  “Enough!” Oscar roared. He slammed his fist down on the desk beside him, making the pens and ink bottles jump. “You will answer Dr Hardy’s questions.” Oscar shook his white-knuckled fist at his son. “Afterward, you may leave this house. If we are no family to you, then go!”

  “Father!” Cassi cried. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I mean every word. Claude feels he is better than we are. So let him prowl the globe until he finds others like himself. I have given you and your brother everything. Maybe now is the time for you two to make the leap. Seek your own fortunes. You might find the world is less kind than you think. You want joy? You’ll be lucky to get survival.” A cylinder of ash dropped from Oscar’s cigar. He stepped on it, grinding it into the Persian carpet. I don’t think he perceived what he had done, either to his children or his rug. “Dr Hardy, ask away. Claude will comply. If nothing else, your inquiry has revealed to me a schism in my own household. Begin, before I lose my temper and throw the lot of you out on your asses into this stormy night.”

  “Yes, well… thank you,” I said.

  I was feeling much less sure of myself now that I had the floor. My frozen coat and trousers had begun to thaw. I saw a puddle spreading under me on the boards. I stepped away from my leakage. “Billy the Kid is dead.”

  “Obviously,” Claude said.

  “What I mean to say is that the man we knew as Billy the Kid is dead. And he was, in fact, Billy the Kid. Pops brought him back from the dead with a bright green glowing elixir that he injected into his brain. But the revivified Billy is also dead. Dead for certain. I saw the Beast crush his head flat. And then… the Beast ate him.”

  Claude started laughing.

  Cassi covered his mouth with her hand. He nipped at her. She bared her nails as if to gouge out his eyes. But while she was playing to break up the awkward atmosphere of the room – an awkwardness I delivered and still had more in supply – Claude was genuinely unnerved.

  Everyone stared at me. Even Wu, who knew the truth of what I related. Claude pulled a queer, elastic smile stretching his cheeks like a mask. His mood had altered from a sense of personal outrage to barely controlled mania. He bobbed his head along with my every word.

  “Yong Wu is my witness,” I said.

  Wu cleared his throat.

  “Yes, I saw what Dr Hardy has told you.”

  “Thank you, Wu.” I started to feel a confident wind gatheri
ng in my sails. “The Beast grabbed Pops and, from the sounds we heard, he is also a fatal victim of the Beast.” I decided to omit the part about the Beast talking to me. “In my retreat to Nightfall I ran into Smoke Eel who told me he had found something along a second narrower path, closer to the mountain.”

  “The goat path,” Claude interrupted. “Sorry. That’s what we’ve called it since Cassi and I were children. Go on. Your tale is captivating me. I am a great fan of the mysterious and macabre. Poe has nothing on you, Dr Hardy.” Claude smashed the stub of his cigarette roughly into a black onyx ashtray atop a carved stand shaped in the image of the Egyptian goddess Bast, the feline deity, daughter of Ra, the sun god, and wife of Ptah, the craftsman god of re-birth. The onyx dish balanced on the tips of the cat’s ears. She was intricately carved rosewood with gold flake eyes. Claude nearly knocked her over.

  The logs in the fireplace collapsed, sending up fiery sparks and unraveling tentacles of smoke that drifted through the iron grate. The wood statuette distracted me. I thought I heard it purring loudly but no one else reacted to the sound. Claude rolled himself another thinly-twisted, abysmal-smelling cigarette. His whiskey glass, tucked between his knees, glinted in the firelight.

  “Will anyone pour me a drink?” he asked, not bothering to glance up from his rolling. He licked the cigarette paper. He had a very long, very pink tongue. Why hadn’t I noticed that until now?

  Cassi appeared beside the divan with a crystal decanter. She refilled his whiskey.

  Claude shot his big eyes up at her and blinked slowly. Then he smiled a Cheshire grin. It was too wide, that smile. His teeth were like tusks, pressing down against his lips. Without breaking his connection with his sister, he swept a long, silky arm at me.

  “Your question, Doctor,” Claude said.

  “Pardon me,” I said.

  “Ask me if I am the Beast.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t there yet.”

  “I know. I’m skipping ahead.” Claude sipped his bourbon. The purring – I was hearing it. Definitely. I looked at the statuette. It seemed less wooden now and more like a real cat, covered in shimmery hair. The eyes were alive, watching me coldly. Claude watched me too. I backed away from the divan. Claude swiveled, crouching on his haunches. He was covered in hair too.

  “Rom, are you feeling all right?” Cassi asked.

  Evangeline came to me out of the shadows. She put her arm around my shoulders. She touched the back of her hand against my forehead.

  “He’s burning with fever,” she said. “Help me get this damp coat off of him.”

  “It is not a fever,” I said. “Do none of you see Claude’s teeth? They are horrible.”

  As they shucked the coat from me, I fell with it to the floor. Fainting has never been a manly quality in literature or in life. That held true for this occasion as well. I peered through the space between Evangeline and Cassi to spot Claude tearing at the divan cushions with scimitar claws. His jaws opened and his throat was like a train tunnel.

  Oscar leered at me through a cloud of cigar smoke.

  “I have had worse fevers,” he said.

  “What is wrong with my teeth?” Claude asked.

  “Get him up and onto the couch,” Evangeline said, taking charge.

  Claude (who appeared restored to his human state) and Oscar seized my armpits and ankles, depositing me on the couch. It was not torn up as I had envisioned. Claude’s smirky attitude had dissipated. If he did not seem quite as caring as his sister he was at least aiding in my revival. He waved an embroidered pillow at me and tried to give me a sip of his whiskey.

  “You were changed,” I said to him. I pushed the smeary glass away.

  “So you have said. Repeatedly. Rest up and you can accuse me in the morning.”

  “Bast,” I said. “The cat changed too. It was alive… purring…”

  “Hardy.” Evangeline unbuttoned my shirt. “You are hallucinating. This is fever talk.”

  I propped myself up on the cushions. The ashtray, the Bast wood carving – it was normal.

  “No! You will not dismiss me so easily. I am not hysterical,” I said.

  “He’s acting like a damned madwoman,” Oscar said. “He’s the one we need to watch.”

  I grabbed the onyx ashtray and threw it at him. It smashed the window. Snow poured in.

  Evangeline, Cassi, and Claude – together they restrained me.

  I was weak. My head spun.

  “Smoke Eel? Smoke Eel, tell them what we found. Look on the floor with my coat. I have the shredded remains of a man’s clothing. Smoke Eel found it outside. There were tracks. Boot prints. They stopped abruptly. Whoever made them clawed up the frozen ground… Tell them!”

  “Smoke Eel, is any of this true?” Oscar asked him.

  The guide came forward cautiously. He went over to my coat on the floor and looked inside the folds. He wrote in his notebook. Turning the pages toward Evangeline to read.

  But I saw them too.

  NO.

  THERE’S NOTHING IN HIS COAT.

  I NEVER FOUND TRACKS.

  “He’s lying! We found them. He is lying!”

  And in my struggles the exertion overcame me. I felt a dark liquidity pooling up from underneath me. The trophy room flooded with darkness. My head sank. Black pools rising. The howl of the wind in the shattered glass… the firelight flickered like the devil’s own tongue. Smoke tentacles wrapped me tight and squeezed me down hard into the divan’s soft cushions. Vivienne was the last thing I remember seeing. Her face calmly observing me from the shadows.

  As I went under in utter blankness.

  My consciousness obliterated.

  Like a dying star…

  21

  Mad Men

  I awoke in a rush. All my senses snapping into focus instantly. I sat up. I was in bed, naked but for a sheet. There was a pitcher of water on the nightstand. A bowl with a washcloth soaking. A half-filled glass. My head ached. I filled the glass all the way and drank it down. Then I did the same twice more. I had the most unquenchable thirst. I stopped, fearing I might make myself sick drinking so much water so quickly. The room, my bedroom at Nightfall, was dimly lit with a low-burning oil lamp. I smelled herbs and noticed an oily residue on my neck and chest.

  I thought I was alone.

  “You look like mule shit that’s been stepped in. Paler than a drowned witch too. Though maybe I shouldn’t be talking so loud about witches,” McTroy said.

  He tipped his chair forward, away from the wall, and dropped into the circle of light.

  “It’s good to see you,” I said. I rubbed my fingers on my chest. My skin tingled.

  He nodded toward the door.

  “We’re locked in.”

  “You cannot be serious!” I jumped up from my bed. Winding the sheet around me like a Roman toga I proceeded to the door. I jiggled the handle and discovered McTroy was right.

  “This is absurd. You and I are the only two people I fully trust right now.”

  “Ain’t you being a little harsh on Evangeline and Wu? They’re our partners in this affair.”

  I stalked my way a short distance back to the bed and sat on the mattress.

  “I wish I could trust them. I mean I do trust them. But I don’t know if they are them.”

  “Doc, I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed the way you talk. Now can you explain it to me so a person might understand? Ever since that concoction squirted in my head I get fuzzy thoughts, though I’m starting to feel better. Part of me is still in the desert somewhere bakin’ under the sun and almost freezin’ while I do it. But the boxed up part of me is gone now. I’m floatin’ and feelin’ pretty fine.” He hiccupped, smiling his gold-toothed smile as he scratched his overgrown chin. “My thirst is cut down. The world’s looking a lot more charming than it did a few hours ago, I’ll tell you that.”

  “You’re drunk!” I gazed in his bleary, bloodshot eyes. I smelled his stale bre
ath.

  “Don’t see how that’s possible. I ain’t been out of this room. They locked me in right after you left. Then they opened the door only long enough to dump your butt in that bed. They stripped your clothes off. Viv perfumed you like you were a dancing girl. I was too damn beat to care. But now that you mention the liquor – I do feel pleasantly lubricated.”

  I stood up again, attempting to walk around the bedroom as I was puzzling over things.

  “Of course! The head is in rum. You, McTroy, therefore are submerged in rum. Or the head you are connected to is sunk in spirits. The desert part of you must be associated with the headless body. It is a three-part, triangular connection between you, the severed head, and the headless desert body, which we have no idea how to locate. I suppose that Billy also felt this bonding, if you will. That explains why Pops kept the head sequestered from the outside world by locking it inside the inner sanctum of his medicine wagon. Everything is becoming clear!”

  McTroy sat with his arms braced on his knees. He wore faded long underwear with holes worn through the knees and elbows and a sprinkling of patched moth holes, poorly sewn, that resembled closed, puckered eyelids.

  He grinned.

  “Doc, I can’t believe I’m saying this. But you’re making even less sense than usual. Now go back further and explain what the hell you’re talking about. ’Cause I ain’t got nothin’ better to do for one. And for another, it seems important. Whose head is where now?”

  “Viv stripped me?” I asked, just realizing what he had said.

  “Naw.” He waved me off.

  I sighed with relief.

  “It was her and Evangeline together. But it was like they done it a thousand times before. There wasn’t no joy in it. A pair of grim night nurses. Like nuns. At least they weren’t giggling.”

  I turned up the lamp. “I suppose it is too late to feel any embarrassment.”

  “Your bare ass meant little to them.” He patted me on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort me. “They thought I was sleeping and left me alone,” he added. “For what it’s worth.”