The Beast of Nightfall Lodge
Page 30
The Beast grabbed the bars on either side of my face and pulled them apart as if they were licorice whips. Then Cassi lifted me out of the cage. My feet didn’t touch the ground. She turned away from the others.
“I will show you what no man ever sees, Rom. I will make it so you do not lose your sanity despite the magnitude of unearthly designs. Do not be terrified. I feel your heartbeat. Come with me through the gateway of endless tomorrows. We dare to dream this now together.”
As I had carried Cassi in her human body on this same night, she cradled me in her arms and walked toward the gallery. “The woods are cold. But I will warm you, Rom,” she whispered.
Evangeline pulled the triggers of the shotgun.
Blood blinded me.
I thought I was dead. I knew darkness. I fell through the abyss, not knowing if I would ever wake again. Not caring, if truth be told. The darkness welcomed me as few places ever had.
A list of wounds, their treatment, and the results. For the record, and to the best of my memory:
Hodgson returned in the morning from Raton, where he had indeed gone after Oscar dismissed him. His affection for Vivienne, and hers for him, no longer stayed secret. They were the lovers I snuck up to in the lions’ diorama that midnight when I first talked to Orcus and saw the Beast in the window. Besides being a gifted horseman and an excellent bookkeeper, Hodgson proved to be a proficient student of the occult. Later a teacher of the same highest quality. The Ram Hotel was rebuilt as a school for female sensitives, like Vivienne. It remains in operation to this day.
Vivienne Adderly was never the same woman after losing both of her children in the tragedy at Nightfall Lodge, but she found relief in escaping her oppressive husband and freely acknowledging her love for Hodgson, whose first name is Erasmus, but who I will always think of as stern Hodgson. Still regarded as one of the three most gifted sensitives west of the Mississippi, Viv has mentored many mediums and students. She and Hodgson retired from the Ram School of Mediumship, turning over the reins to their twin daughters, Agatha and Eudora.
Unbelievably, Oscar Adderly did not perish from his grisly wound. His disfigurement required multiple surgeries from the finest medical teams in America and Europe. In the end he fashioned his own prosthetic lower jaw from a combination of wood, silk, and dyed leather. He never regained his speech and wore a black notebook on a chain around his neck in the manner of Smoke Eel’s disguise. Oscar continued his expeditions for several years after the murders. However, his health deteriorated after his separation from Vivienne who, despite their catastrophic break, continued to be the sole heir of his collections (she did not need his money; her family had more than he did). Oscar lived at Nightfall alone for five years. He maintained a small staff, but, like Hodgson, they lived in Raton. Oscar committed suicide on his sixtieth birthday. He jumped into the same crevasse from which he had rescued Vivienne years before. His suicide note, pinned to an elk antler in his trophy room, read: I DID THIS. He named the crevasse and asked that his body not be recovered. It never was.
The Apis Bull which the Copper Team was awarded proved to be a fake. It was melted down, and the gold went into the coffers of the Institute for Singular Antiquities, where it was spent.
Rex McTroy and Yong Wu left Nightfall Lodge with the head in the rum barrel. They rode out into the New Mexico desert where the Pecos River and Salt Creek meet in search of the star man and his shipwreck. It is their story to tell, and not mine. But I will say they returned to Yuma with an empty barrel, and McTroy suffered no more afflictions attributable to psychic links.
Romulus Hardy, Egyptologist, and his partner in the Institute for Singular Antiquities, Evangeline Waterston, took a terribly long train ride back to Manhattan together. You know the rest of that story, Evangeline, so I will not bore you with it. There’s my story. How did I do?
35
Variation on a Monster
New Year’s Day, 1920
The Waterston Institute for Singular Antiquities
Manhattan, New York City
“You have the best memory of anyone I’ve ever known, Hardy,” Evangeline said.
Her silver hair was an enchantment to me. The late afternoon light was catching it in the best way possible. People who don’t know Evangeline Waterston often call her distinguished. But that does not scratch the surface. It makes her sound old, outmoded, like a nice formal building people eat lunch in front of when the weather is pleasant. She is so much more than that.
The woman lives!
“Thank you for the compliment,” I said.
“But,” she started. “You have a fault in your recollection. A blind spot. As I suspected, you have blocked a key piece of information out. Or, to be more precise, you’ve written it to make it more acceptable to you. Less painful.”
“I hardly know how the mountain adventure at Nightfall Lodge could be more pain-filled. I still have trouble lifting my shoulder on cold days like this from that blunderbuss wound Dirty Dan gave me. But it is almost worth it to tell people that I have a blunderbuss wound at all.”
I chuckled.
Evangeline took my glass, walked over to my liquor cabinet, and poured.
“This must be bad! You’ve even got me to the point where I might say I’ve had too much, too early in the day. It’s not even close to fully dark yet.”
She lifted a framed photograph of me from the cubby next to my whiskey. “I’ve always adored this picture,” she said, handing me the glass.
She showed it to me, though I knew it better than my own face in the mirror. The face in the mirror changes, but this sepia representation never does. It was the boardwalk. I wore a linen suit, so it must have been July or August. I forget months, sometimes exact years. This was two decades ago. He had a stick in his mouth. No leash. The idea of him on a leash was absurd.
“Orcus loved the beach. He could walk for days,” I said.
“He was a good companion to you.”
“I think he felt guilty about leaving the lodge that night. He knew too much. His loyalties were divided. Whom to protect? Whom to attack? He went for a walk instead. Spent the rest of his life trying to make it up to me. Oscar wouldn’t have him. Said he failed to guard the house. What a bastard Oscar was. I buried him in the park, you know. Orcus, not Oscar. Took my shovel and buried him one midnight in Central damn Park. I was like a reverse resurrectionist.”
I sipped my whiskey deeply. I was better than half-drunk. Old dogs do break your heart when the memories start coming at you from all sides. But it’s a good kind of pain. Sweet, really.
“Abandoning Orcus wasn’t the worst thing Oscar did,” Evangeline said.
“No.” I searched my pockets for my pipe. “No, no… Where is my...?”
“It’s right there in the ashtray.”
“Huh! I have had too much. Are you trying to lure me into a compromising position?” I swirled my glass and raised my eyebrows.
“Isn’t that your fantasy?”
“A-ha, Touché.” I relit my pipe, but it even smelled awful to me. I put it down. “What were you criticizing about my memory? I thought I did quite a good job considering the passage of time and how confusing the whole Nightfall situation was.”
Evangeline sat close to me.
“Hardy, I need you to listen. This will be hard. But the truth is often that way. I’m going to tell you what you got wrong. I don’t know if the violence erased your memory, or if you did it consciously. But you’ve held Cassi’s death against me for a long time.”
“Oh, pshaw! That isn’t true. You and I are on good terms. There’s no one I admire more on this earth. I know what you did. There was no other way in your mind. I can see that.”
“Cassi was not walking you out the door to live with you in some cosmic relationship for two lonely souls. She was a monster. Maybe not at first, she wasn’t. The werecat part of her was predatory. That is natural. But the Beast in her was un-natural. This isn’t a love story, Rom.”
&n
bsp; I stared at her.
I said, “I understand that she was in some minor way your rival. You had turned down my proposal. I was vulnerable, yes. Some men would call me weak. Fair enough. But Cassi and I had a strong connection from the moment we met. I’m not forcing you to call it love–”
“She wasn’t taking you out of the lodge to run away with you, Hardy. She was going to eat you. I shot her when she opened her mouth around your throat.”
I swallowed the last of the whiskey. We sat there together in silence for half an hour.
At last, I got up. I was as ready as I ever would be. I fetched my ape-headed walking stick from the ceramic stand near the door. Then I turned and met Evangeline’s eyes. “I have something to show you. Are you coming with me? Or am I to do this alone?”
“You don’t have to do anything alone, Hardy. I am here for you.”
“Then let’s go.”
We took the stairs slowly, which is the only way I take stairs these days.
Together we crossed the large exhibition hall. In the back there is a door marked Storage. Storage in a museum often houses the greater part of the collections. Items rotate for public viewing, but most things are in boxes, or drawers, or they sit on shelves getting dusty.
Like old men.
At the back of the Institute’s main storage room is a second smaller room to which I have the only key. I have visited this room once before, two weeks after Oscar Adderly died. He’d shipped me something before he wrote his last note to the world and jumped to his death in that crag. The shipping crate had a card attached. A hasty message scribbled inside.
SHE IS YOURS NOW
Nothing on the billing told me what it was. I only knew it came from New Mexico. And it was large. Very large. Although when I pried off the front of the crate, I didn’t really expect to see what I did. He’d kept it up there on the mountain with him for years. I picture Oscar working on getting the features just right, the way they were at Nightfall when we were last together. He’d become a recluse. His face scared people. The adventurer was a hermit.
I turned my key in the door and opened it.
Evangeline grabbed my hand. I felt her trembling.
“There she is. Oscar did a fine job, I think. He got the eyes right.”
Red ice.
Red ice…
Acknowledgments
Thanks to those who ushered the Beast into this world: Ann Collette, agent and guide; the Angry Robot Gang of Marc Gascoigne, Lottie Llewelyn-Wells, Penny Reeve, and Nick Tyler. And for my friends along this rugged journey: Gary Heinz, Bob Tuszynski, Ross Molho, Pat Howard, Greg Wolf, and the Novel Approaches posse. Lastly, to my family, who keep me safe from storms and light my lantern in the dark woods; and to Lisa, my best partner and true love.
About the Author
S A Sidor writes supernatural historical adventures. He lives near Chicago with his family. He is also the author of four acclaimed dark crime thrillers.
sasidor.com • twitter.com/sa_sidor
By the Same Author
The Institute for
Singular Antiquities
Fury From the Tomb
The Beast of Nightfall Lodge
Skin River
Bone Factory
The Mirror’s Edge
Pitch Dark
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If you go down to the woods today
An Angry Robot paperback original 2019
Copyright © S A Sidor 2019
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UK ISBN 978 0 85766 764 9
US ISBN 978 0 85766 764 9
Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 764 9 765 6
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ISBN: 978-0-85766-765-6