The Beast of Nightfall Lodge

by SA Sidor

  You may have hired a confidence man, I thought. He tried to convince me you’re a heartless striver who would use us as bait to make a bigger name for himself. At the very least, you do not know him like you think you do. Or you are the best actor in the world…

  Oscar left to retrieve his medical kit. After handing it over he strode down the hall past his stuffed animals. He was a man with purpose.

  So was I.

  “I want to see Cassi,” I said to McTroy. “Then we need to talk to Viv. If she’s communicating with the dead, she might tell us where the Beast took Pops. Through Pops, we can find the origin of this green elixir head. The Wendigo spirit is heavy here. It had hold of me when I jumped from the coach. Evangeline and Wu were under it too. They talked about eating me. We’ll be at each other’s throats literally if we don’t get a handle on this.”

  McTroy scratched his beard. Revivification had slowed his thinking but not dulled it.

  “I don’t figure somethin’,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “If Earl’s right about Smoke Eel, if he’s this Frenchy LaFarque… then he ain’t no Indian.”

  “So…?”

  “Well, he’s the one who filled you in on the Wendigo spirit and its ways. Who’s to say that ain’t phony too? A pretend Indian ain’t no expert on Indian evil spirits. Maybe this thing we got here ain’t a Wendigo at all.”

  He pried the lid on the rum barrel and peeked inside, sniffing.

  “I see your point. But then what is the Beast?”

  McTroy shook his head, and I heard a sloshing in the barrel.

  Evangeline came in with Wu. I scrutinized their demeanor. When I was satisfied that I saw no cannibalistic hunger in their eyes, I asked them to help me search for Cassi.

  “Are those medical tools in that bag? We must treat your wound. You’re weak. A fever is the last thing you need,” Evangeline said, taking the kit from me. I acquiesced. I was feeling queasy and my legs had begun to tremble. My vision blurred.

  “Take off your coat. Lean against the wall if you are dizzy,” she said.

  Wu and McTroy went to fetch Cassi. McTroy had the rum barrel under his arm.

  “Bring Vivienne here as well. We will need her,” Evangeline called after them.

  “For what?” I asked as she used a pair of silver scissors to divide my sleeve.

  “We’re going to have a séance.”

  Evangeline finished dressing my shoulder when McTroy wheeled Vivienne into our bedroom.

  “Wu and I are going to see if Smoke Eel is back. If he is I’ll make sure to watch him. Make sure he doesn’t try to run for it. He may have already flown the coop,” McTroy said.

  “Be careful. He cannot be trusted no matter who he is,” I said.

  McTroy nodded and left.

  Vivienne did not appear as wild and incoherent as I expected from her husband’s description. Or it was possible that my assessment of how disturbed a person needed to look to be deemed irrational had shifted here at Nightfall. I surveyed all those present. If any of them had entered the Institute for Singular Antiquities office in Manhattan a week ago, I likely would have bundled them off to a hospital for medical observation and a strong dose of sedatives.

  “You’ve been shot!” Vivienne cried out.

  “Only with a blunderbuss. Evangeline got all the foreign bits out of me.” I scooped up a collection of lead balls, two bent nails, and several fragments of gravel. I dumped them into my hostess’s upturned palm. She inspected them with a mixture of fascination and disgust.

  “My word, she dug those out of you?”

  I received back the objects of my profound discomfort and put them in my watchpocket. Artifacts, you know. “Oh, Evangeline is an excellent excavator. I shall take her on my next field expedition. She has a keen eye and a delicate touch. And persistence. I only screamed once.”

  “Twice,” Evangeline corrected me. “But to your credit the second was more of a yowl.”

  I slipped on a clean shirt and began buttoning it, slowly, one-handed.

  Evangeline finished the job for me.

  “Viv, Oscar tells us you’ve been having strong impressions from the other side?” Evangeline was best suited to this rather sensitive probing. I only hoped that Vivienne would be as cooperative as I had been. It took all my concentration to keep my mouth shut.

  “It’s been awful. I can handle one spirit at a time. Typically, I direct the encounter. These intrusions have been assaultive in nature. No sooner is one spirit filling me with its energy than I am pressured by another and another. They are crowding through the door. But I am the door!”

  “Who are they?” Evangeline asked.

  “I remember only pieces. That is unusual. Usually my connections remain quite clear.”

  “Do your best.” Evangeline sat opposite Viv, their knees almost touching. “I am worried that if we cannot make sense of your recent dead talks Oscar will tie you to the bed again.”

  Vivienne rubbed her wrists. I saw purple welts. But she quickly adjusted her sleeves.

  “I think they were the Beast’s victims. All those poor men, the hunters. I know Gustav was there. He’s the one I spoke with at the Starry Eyes. But there were new voices. That man with the spectacles, the bald one with the medicine wagon… he spoke to me.”

  “Pops?” I said. Evangeline shot me a glance. I coughed into my fist.

  “Yes, he was there. And Billy the Kid. He was furious but hard to understand.”

  “His head was smashed to a pulp. That might account for his hostility and poor communication. Ah!” Evangeline screwed an unseen fingernail into my thigh. I gestured for Viv to keep talking. “Sorry. I will say no more. No interruptions from me. Do continue. Please…”

  If Viv had not been so exhausted and perturbed I think she might’ve asked us exactly what we were about, why were we interrogating her, and where did our authority lie. But she was frazzled and out of sorts. Her dark hair had come unpinned, streaming out in all directions like electrical charges. Her cheeks were pale, as always, but now they appeared drawn and hollow, as if she were losing vital juices and being literally sucked dry. The blaze in her eyes had not dimmed. To the contrary, it seemed an inferno burned in them. Here was a woman using every ounce of energy she had to hold herself together and to keep from running mad. Oscar had made her sound hysterical. But she was not acting disproportionally excited. She was fighting insanity appropriate to the level of bizarre stimulation sprouting around her.

  If invisible spirits spoke to me in great numbers, would I not rave? I had been touched by the Egyptian sorcerer Odji-Kek and I was now sensitive to forces which had flowed around me for years, yet passed unnoticed. It was as if a man who had never seen lightning were transformed into a lightning rod. Vivienne Adderly had made a study of her sensitivity. She had honed and developed it into a set of peculiarly alarming skills. How much more energy did she attract than I? What dark forces struggled to control her mind and cast her into an abyss of absurd speculation and unending delirium?

  “May I ask you if you saw Claude on the road?” Viv smiled queerly.

  “We did,” Evangeline answered with minimal detail.

  “How did he look? Was he still angry, or happy to be away from Nightfall?”

  “Angry at first. But Claude was at ease when we left him. Wherever he travels, part of him will always remain at Nightfall. He takes a part of his family with him, like a legacy.”

  “I thought I heard him,” Viv said. “Among the dead voices. A mother knows the sound her children make. I couldn’t be sure. They’re all talking at once. But I thought…”

  I hoped at this point that Evangeline would not go any farther. Viv could not withstand the verification of her son’s death. I think she knew, even then. But she did not want to know.

  “He told us about your family inheritance. Your father’s persecution in Mexico.”

  Viv’s eyelids fluttered. She
gripped the armrests of her wheelchair and watched us. “His murder, you mean? Claude told you about that? Ahh, well, the cat is out of the bag, then. Yes, my family has old bloodlines. Oddities are bound to creep in. Have you told Oscar?”

  “We’ve told him nothing,” I said.

  Viv’s body visibly relaxed; her shoulders slumped forward and her jaw dropped.

  “Thank God. I can’t imagine what he would do if he found out.”

  “He doesn’t know?” Evangeline said, shocked.

  Viv shook her head.

  “The changes don’t begin until adolescence. For Claude it came late. He was a perfectly normal troublesome little boy who took great pleasure in irking his father since before he could speak a word. But no bodily transformations. Not until last year. If Oscar finds out about this, well, he will call it a curse. It would embarrass him. Oscar hates to be embarrassed. It’s only a matter of time until he learns the truth, I suppose. Nightfall has been an easier place than most to hide my family’s heritage. That’s why I insisted he build it. We had money. Oscar knew all about that. It’s why he married me, to fund his excursions around the globe. He’s famous now, but he wasn’t when we met. Ambition was what he had. He was awfully handsome and bold. I think I loved him the moment we first danced… it was summer in Newport, Rhode Island…”

  “What about Cassi?” I asked.

  “Of course she knows. She and Claude are as close as any twins I’ve ever–”

  “That’s not what I mean. Is she…?”

  The bedroom door burst open.

  It was Wu.

  “Come quickly! Miss Cassi has been attacked by the Beast!”

  28

  Ripping

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “McTroy took her into the trophy room,” Wu said.

  We rushed down the hallway. Evangeline pushed Viv, and Wu and I ran ahead of them. Coming through the anteroom, I saw the trail of bright blood on the floorboards. My heart sank.

  Cassi lay on the divan near the fireplace. McTroy stood over her. The blankness on his face might have looked menacing to a stranger but I knew that he was worried. This knowledge did nothing to comfort me. I would’ve immediately bolted to her side if not for the presence of a second figure at the divan. I assumed it would be Oscar Adderly. But the bandana and black braided hair with the twin eagle feathers told me that the man in the deerskins was Smoke Eel. I approached quickly but with caution in mind.

  Cassi lay with her eyes closed under Smoke Eel’s mink poncho.

  “Is she… you know?” I asked McTroy.

  “She’s alive. But the better part of her left forearm is gone. Ol’ Smoke said he found her about an hour ago. Half hanging in a crevasse.”

  “She was outside? What took so long to get her here?” I gazed at the guide.

  Smoke Eel wrote in his notebook.

  TAKES TIME TO GET DOWN A MOUNTAIN. IN THE FOG. I WAS ON LOOKOUT FOR BEAST. I CARRIED HER. LUCKY I FOUND THE GIRL. SHE’D BE DEAD.

  “Wu and I spotted him above the lodge. He had her over his shoulder.”

  Viv wheeled herself up to the edge of the divan. When she could maneuver no closer, she pushed up with her arms and raised herself up on her braced legs. She stood for a moment, finding her balance, and then sat on the end of the couch, rubbing her daughter’s wool leggings.

  “She’s so cold. Dr Hardy, slip her boots off.”

  I pulled the muddied boots from her feet. They were large boots for a woman, although perhaps not for a female werecat. I noted scuffs in the leather, creases, and weathering marks. I turned the pair of boots over in my hands and set them on the hearth to dry out.

  “Yong Wu,” Viv said. “Will you build up that fire? I want it roaring.”

  “Yes, Mrs Adderly.” The boy removed the cast-iron scrollwork screen and added logs.

  I was not finished with Smoke Eel, although I did not feel the full conviction of my previous hot anger toward the man.

  “Did you see the Beast?”

  He shook his head. And scribbled.

  I HEARD IT. THE WHISTLE.

  “Well, there is more than one way to make a whistle,” I said, remembering the giant’s brass whistle Gavin Earl had thrown at me. And that horrid mask merging buffalo, elk, and myth. A monster conceived in a circus. “What makes you sure it was the Beast that attacked her?”

  SIZE OF THE BITE. AND I TOLD YOU I HEARD WHISTLE.

  Wu dragged the fire screen back in place. The logs were catching fire. Smoke floated into the trophy room. Wu waved it away with a photo album of Oscar’s North American excursions.

  “She is coming around,” Evangeline said. She poured a glass of brandy. And she brought a stack of Indian quilts to cover Cassi. What was left of Cassi’s arm was folded across her chest.

  Cassi moaned, tossing her head side to side.

  “Away… Stay back… I will jump.”

  “Cassi dear, mother is here. You are home, safe and sound.” Viv sounded unsure herself.

  McTroy had tied a tourniquet above Cassi’s elbow with his belt. Her lower arm was bandaged in a scarf that I knew was his. Blood soaked through the fabric.

  “I will jump,” Cassi said again, weakly.

  She opened her eyes. They were so enormous. Too big almost. Honey-colored. They stared with a warm intelligence and made me feel undeserving of being watched so thoughtfully.

  I smiled at her.

  “Rom, have you saved me?”

  I did not know how to answer her. “I did my little part. It was Smoke Eel and McTroy who brought you home. Wu helped too,” I said. “But you shouldn’t have been out in the fog.”

  She did not seem to recognize that we were not alone.

  “But you would’ve saved me if given the chance,” she said. “By yourself, you would have.”

  “I certainly would. You are worthy of saving.”

  She smiled a toothy smile.

  “Do you have nightmares, Rom?”

  I looked around at the others a bit flustered. I felt the color climbing in my face. The heat of the fire was intense at this point. And the smoke drifting into the room had gotten worse. It reddened my eyes and made me cough.

  “I have nightmares from time to time,” I said.

  “I had a terrible nightmare. About the Beast. I was going to kill myself.”

  “Now don’t say that. We found you. For whatever reason, the Beast did attack you. But the good news is that it could have been much worse. You escaped with your life. You took a wound to your left arm. But I’m certain we can fix you up. What were you doing outside?”

  Cassi frowned.

  “Outside?”

  “Yes, you were on the mountain above the lodge. Smoke Eel found you at the edge of a crevasse. Do you remember?”

  “I sleepwalk,” she said. “Mother was hearing voices. We put her to bed. I went to nap. Claude is gone. He went away, and I don’t think he is ever coming home again. Father is awful to him. I went to sleep and I had that creature chasing me in my dreams through the fog. I couldn’t see where to go. I couldn’t run because I couldn’t see. Then it bit me! I couldn’t believe it. But it bit me and it shook me like I was nothing. A page in a book. Made for ripping. I was going to jump into the crevasse and kill us both because that would teach the Beast a lesson. But then I…”

  She seemed to lose consciousness. I grasped her good hand and felt the rough skin of her palm. The tough pads of a werecat, I realized. Evangeline had to be right. Claude was a werecat. So was his twin. They kept their extra clothing in a trunk in a cave down the road. They ran through the woods and they killed things together. Who knew what else they did during the long days and nights with their paralyzed mother and oft-absent father. What would be worse, Oscar away in a jungle or a far-off forest hunting exotic trophies for his dioramas or Oscar at home, lounging about his stuffed animals, smoking his Havanas, and dreaming he was someplace else?

  “Where
is Oscar?” I asked the room.

  No one knew.

  “He wasn’t here when we came in,” McTroy said.

  I looked at the half-boarded windows. The fog pooled beyond the glass like gray milk.

  The fog was leaking into the room from the edges of the windows. It was getting inside.

  No, not the fog.

  Smoke.

  The fire was burning, but the smoke wasn’t going up the chimney. It was billowing back into the room. Plumes of gray smoke rose to the ceiling and collected there.

  My coughing turned to choking.

  “Something is wrong with the fireplace,” I said. “Get water.”

  I pulled the iron screen off.

  McTroy kicked at the logs. He grabbed a poker and poked it up the chimney.

  “There’s something stuck in there,” he said.

  It was too hot for him to stand amid the enflamed logs. Evangeline ran to the fire and dumped a pitcher of water onto the conflagration, which hissed and smoked even more, sending bitter ashes into the air as well. Smoke Eel grabbed one of the wool blankets from Cassi’s lap and attempted to smother the flames. The wool began to sizzle, giving off an unpleasant odor like burning hair. The smoke reduced. Wu returned from the kitchen with a sloshing bucket of water and doused the wooly logs, leaving quite a smelly mess. But we could breathe. Evangeline opened one of the boardless windows, and the smoke gradually found its way out. McTroy prodded up the chimney with the poker again. Then he tossed the poker aside and thrust his hands up into the bricked chimney. He seized hold of something and with a bit of struggle managed to free it from where it had been jammed rather snugly. The burnt logs clattered and one or two rolled into the room. McTroy heaved the blockage onto the Persian rug.

  “It’s Pops!” Wu cried out.

  Or half of him.

  I had avoided studying the smoked corpse too closely. But the boy was correct.

  Pops had been ripped in two, lengthwise. We had the right side of him, one arm, one leg, and as luck would have it, his entire head. He was obviously quite deceased. And naked. Smoke blackened his skin. More so the top half of him, which led me to believe he had been stuffed down the chimney headfirst. Or, I suppose for the sake of argument, rammed feet first up the chimney. Though that seemed pretty unlikely. His hair had been burned off completely, including his eyebrows. He appeared singed and altogether like a poorly executed Christmas ham.