by Kim Newman
‘The name is a corruption,’ Saul went on. ‘Originally, it was Sacrifice Stone. Old even in Sir Pagan’s time. Our Palaeolithic ancestors used it. It’s been washed over and over in blood.’
There were traces of blood on it now.
‘You say the woman was lying here?’ I addressed Venn. ‘How? Arms and legs out, as if thrown away? Or tucked straight, as if on display?’
Venn thought about it, red brows knitting. ‘The second way.’
‘Her hands? Show me how her hands were. By her sides, or...?’
I made defensive claws, as if shielding my throat. Venn crossed his wrists, palms flat against his breast.
‘Never known an animal arrange kill for a funeral,’ I said.
Venn nodded. ‘Only one do have such a habit. That be a human man. But a human man don’t bite out a woman’s throat.’
That showed how limited the reddleman’s experience of the world was. As Moriarty and I learned during the Affair of the Hassocks Hobgoblin, some specimens of ‘human man’ have exactly that predilection. In this case, I’d seen Mattie’s wound and concurred that no man had done that damage.
‘Only a beast could have killed Mattie, but only a man would have laid her out,’ said Saul. ‘In the story of Red Shuck, Venic was sometimes man and sometimes beast.’
Nakszynski spat tobacco at Scary Face Stone, unimpressed.
I was conscious of my silver-loaded revolver. As if on cue, the howling started.
The others had heard this before, but all bristled. Even Nakszynski’s white hair rose under his patched hat.
I don’t know what men mean by fear. My nerves aren’t plumbed in that way. But that howling – softer, more expressive than I’d imagined from reports – pricked an instinct I’d thought dead. It was as if a sail-maker’s needle slid into the nape of my neck then drew down, scraping every bone-knob in turn. My wet skin crawled in disgust at myself, the others, the noise...
We looked around, but it was impossible to tell where the howling came from. I fancied it might be high up, in the trees – but dogs, no matter how big, don’t climb. Red Shuck wasn’t a cat – they scratch as well as bite and Mattie had no claw marks on her. Besides, I know cats. You can live with cats if you’re wary, but you can’t use them the way you can dogs. Red Shuck was being used.
Nakszynski, guns in his hands, wheeled about, scanning for movement. Venn stood slowly, in a fighter’s stance – a double-grip on his stave. The howl died down. There was a noise of birds taking flight. The Albino aimed upwards, but didn’t waste a shot.
Saul, not at all concerned, whistled shrilly.
It was a wonder Nakszynski didn’t shoot him there and then. I knew at once what he was doing.
In answer to his trilling came another howl. Longer, and closer.
With the mist and the trees and the wet, even the best tracker wouldn’t be able to run down Red Shuck in his own woods. But bringing the beast to us was easy. All we had to do was sound a dinner gong.
Saul whistled again.
XII
In the Carpathians, they say this about werewolves: there’s always a tree between you and it, but never a tree between it and you.
I tugged off my right glove with my teeth and stuffed it in a pocket. I like a naked finger on the trigger, no matter the cold. I unslung my rifle and took a firing position, stock to shoulder. Beyond the gunsight, I saw only trees. Thick black pillars in white mist.
There was movement in the mist.
We could still hear howling, but Temple Clearing was confusion to the senses. The noise didn’t seem to come from the moving shape.
I kept my gun up. Eddies and waves in the mist told me something big was coming, careening between trees, picking up speed. We heard crashes, saw lower branches shake. The thing was running blind.
Beats, like a galloping horse. It was coming fast and low, without regard for itself or us.
Another howl sounded, shrill and close and mocking, off to one side. Not from the onrushing creature.
I looked to the howling, bringing my aim round.
We were in The Chase with more than one beast.
I swung back to the more imminent threat, just as some big, black – not red! – and shaggy quadruped burst into the clearing, barrelling like a bull, snorting like a hog, foaming like a mad dog. I fired true and placed a shot in its skull. Momentum kept the thing coming. What was it? Venn whacked with his stave, which was snatched from his hands. I cleared my breech and reloaded. The Albino’s guns went off, blasting fist-sized red gobbets out of a woolly hide.
The howling kept up. I didn’t fire again. This might be a tactic to get us to waste our shots.
‘It’s Old Pharaoh,’ shouted Saul.
It must be dead or dying, but still it tore around, head down, butting at us. Venn, off his feet, slammed into me. I fell backwards into damp mist and put out my hand – which jammed painfully against cold rock. I fell onto Scary Face Stone. My rifle hit me in the face.
‘Git Priddle’s prize black ram,’ Saul explained.
I recalled the beast, which Priddle claimed was taken by Red Shuck. Stoke suspected Old Pharaoh was hidden from his tally-man, so the farmer could duck out of paying tax due.
Through agitated mist, I saw the ram was as big as some lions I’ve shot, humped like a buffalo, with curls of battered, hardened horn. Blood leaked from the hole I’d put in its bulbous forehead. Life was gone from saucer-sized eyes, but it took long moments for the message to reach the body.
Then, Old Pharaoh fell, dead.
Outside Temple Clearing, the howling abated.
I groped in the mist for my gun. Saul waded towards me – to help? His boot came down on my bare hand, crushing it against Scary Face Rock. Two or three fingers broke. Pain rushed up my arm.
I swore.
Saul tried to apologise. I kept swearing, at the pulsating hurt as much as the blundering idiot. Saul took me by the shoulders and helped me get my balance. I found the rifle on the ground, but agony hit again as I made a fist to pick it up.
I raised the gun in a rough aim, but could no more fit my snapped trigger-finger into the guard than you could thread a needle with a sausage. I threw the rifle down. My revolver was slung for a cross-draw. I had to reach into my coat and fish the gun out of my armpit with the wrong hand.
I laid against a bleeding wall of mutton, as if the dead ram were a pile of sandbags. Venn was beside me.
‘Sheep be driven,’ he said. ‘By a dog.’
I’d worked that out by now.
Even though we’d all suspected human agency behind Red Shuck, no one at Trantridge – including yours truly – had thought it through. With my hand swollen and useless and the smell of just-dead sheep in my nose, I had a moment to wonder whether Moriarty had seen the truth and not troubled to mention it. It was the manner of smug trick he was given to, a refined version of his testing via sudden missile or sharp question.
From Stoke’s story, I’d pictured a canny malcontent importing or discovering or raising some unknown species of canine and letting it prey on whom it might. This feint with Old Pharaoh bespoke more active agency. Our as-yet unknown enemy had Red Shuck trained as a sheepdog. Doubtless, the doggie was tutored in amusing tricks – fetch out the fellow’s throat, jump up and bite, roll over and kill. In Wessex, it wouldn’t even take a mastermind. A half-skilled shepherd could manage the trick, and the region was thick with the bastards. If I survived the afternoon I’d call on the Priddle hovel with harsh questions for a well-known ram-withholder.
I was still trying to make a fist, to control the knot of pain at the end of my arm.
Venn coughed blood. It smeared his chin, matching his skin. Even his teeth were red.
Saul, in the centre of the clearing, shrugged off his sample-bag, ears pricked. The Albino was by him, reloading. Besides Old Pharaoh, he had shot several trees – which bore fresh, white scars.
The howling stopped, but I didn’t think the beast had gone away. It had been called to heel.
Saul whistled again, drawing out his trill.
I brought up my revolver. I’m a fair left-hand shot, and the pistol was best for close work anyway.
In answer to Saul’s whistle came a low growl.
‘Shuck be hungry,’ Venn said.
‘Chalky,’ I called. ‘It’ll be under the mist. Can you shoot fish?’
The Albino nodded.
‘If it comes into the clearing, blast it!’
I flapped my crushed hand, as if telling Nakszynski – and whoever else might be spying – I was out of the fight. My thought was to leave the sheepdog to the Albino and save my silver for the shepherd.
Saul whistled again, higher – as if trying out signals.
‘Shut up, you damn fool,’ I shouted. ‘Dog knows we’re here. Dog don’t need a foghorn to find us.’
Saul swallowed and was silent. Who’d have thought such a fairy-footed fellow could do so much damage? My hand felt as if it’d been stamped on by an elephant in clogs.
I didn’t like the way this expedition was going.
Either you bring back trophies or scars – often, both. I could claim Old Pharaoh’s horns, but ram wasn’t the game I’d set out for.
Unlike Old Pharaoh, our new caller came stealthily. The mist was all about like a smoking pool, thickening by the moment. I couldn’t see my own boots. The ram’s hump was barely an island. Saul was in it up to his chest. Nakszynski, furthest off, was almost a ghost.
I heard the dog. It might be a Wessex Wolf or a Trantridge Terrier, but it was a dog. Only dogs pant that way. Only dogs rattle spit as they contemplate din-dins.
We were supper on the hoof.
Though it was only early afternoon and less than a mile from Trantridge Hall, we were lost in nighted jungle, with monsters on all sides.
‘Why be you smiling?’ Venn asked.
‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you,’ I said.
I might die in The Chase. The notion made me hot and angry. It rankled I was so ill-prepared as to find myself in this fix. But a curl of my brain – which everyone from the fulminating Sir Augustus to the calculating Professor Moriarty found fault with – was alive now as at no other time. Some chase women, some chase opium dragons, some chase pots of gold. Dammit, some chase postage stamps or currant buns. I chase these edge-of-life-and-death moments – when an animal or man tries to kill me, and I kill them instead. It’s the surge inside – in the water, behind the eyes, in the loins. That’s what Basher Moran’s about. All the rest is fancy trimming. Nice enough to have, but not real. I’d protested when the Prof diagnosed my ‘addiction to fear’ on our first meeting, but had come to see he’d known me better than I knew myself in those innocent days.
There was that smell again. The Chase smell, vile to the nose and eyes. Old and faint on the reddleman, sharp and new on the dog.
Nakszynski was taken by a red devil which leaped up on his chest and bore him under the mist. I glimpsed eyes of flame and teeth like yellow knives. No point in firing wild. I guess the Albino dropped his guns and tried to get a grip on the neck of the thing with its fangs in his throat.
A long string of terrible Polish words came out of Nakszynski – the only speech I ever heard from him. I’d thought him mute. Then, with a liquid gurgle, his verbal torrent petered out.
‘Saul, run,’ I shouted.
He needed no further orders and bolted for one of his tunnel-paths. I looked for a red streak in the white – and took aim. If Saul Derby played hare to this hound, it might afford me a shot.
No movement.
I turned to Venn, to suggest he watch our backs. Red Shuck could come at us from any direction.
The reddleman’s face was an open-mouthed mask of surprise. He saw something behind me. A whining, straining, inhuman sound assaulted my ears. I turned and brought up my gun. A heavy length of wood smacked into my skull.
A human figure rose out of the mist, head hung to one side. It was veiled, wore a long black dress and held Venn’s stave.
I wondered if silver bullets were good for ghosts.
Before I could fire, the apparition swung. I took a whack to my head. Hot wet blood gouted from my ear and I went down. This time, I went out too.
XIII
I woke up in an earth-floored, flame-lit space. My cold, wet clothes were now hot, wet clothes. Blood crusted in my ear, under a field dressing. My fingers were splinted and bound.
I tried to sit up, which hurt.
Venn, bent over the fire, stirred a cauldron of broth. With his flame-lit, scarlet face, he could pass for a pantomime demon. The sulphurous smell was thick. Runic scratchings marked rock walls. Stick-figure men chasing big-mouthed, pointy-eared dogs twice their size.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
Venn noticed I was awake. ‘Red’s Hole. Old, old place. Be my home, for now. Plenty live here afore me, back to Bible times.’
That was a comfort.
‘It might sound ungrateful to ask, but why aren’t we dead?’
‘Brokeneck Lady. Drove off Shuck. Patched you up.’
I’d expected to be torn to pieces by the beast which brought down Nakszynski. Unconscious, I couldn’t have put up a fight.
‘Where is this spectral Flo Nightingale now?’
‘Outways,’ Venn said, jerking his thumb towards a woven curtain of vines.
‘She have much to say?’
‘Not so you’d note. Ghosts, generally, don’t.’
My head hurt from more than the thwacking now. I’d failed to make the proper deductions...
By my watch, it was getting on in the evening. I still had my half-hunter, though my guns had been taken.
I was hungry enough to try the reddleman’s soup.
The curtain rustled. A white, long-fingered hand gathered a fold and switched it aside. Into Red’s Hole came the Brokeneck Lady...
A wet dress dragged on the ground. The veil hung to the waist on one side but almost up to the ear on the other. I’ve seen hanged men. Their heads loll just the same.
Venn glanced up, but kept stirring.
The ghost’s head rolled, as if it were trying to set skull on spine like a cup and ball game. For a moment, the head was in its proper position. Then it inclined in the other direction. And back again. Then, evenly, it nodded from side to side. The veil swung.
I knew that cobra-neck wobble!
The veil was lifted.
‘Moriarty,’ I shouted. ‘You f---ing c--t!’
Professor Moriarty showed teeth and hissed. His eyes were flint.
‘What I mean to say is... damn it, what’s the meaning of this?’ I blustered. Few call the Prof a ‘f---ing c--t’ and live to write their memoirs. ‘How? Why? What the...’
‘Fair questions, Moran,’ he said. ‘They shall be answered.’
Moriarty unfastened his dress, pinching a row of little black buttons out of their eyelets. Underneath, he wore his town clothes.
I saw his dress and veil were shiny, waterproof material. More practical than unearthly. In his cocoon, the bastard kept snug and dry. Whereas I felt like shit. Wet shit that’s been trodden in.
‘You hit me,’ I said. ‘Twice!’
‘You were about to waste silver, Moran.’
It was like him to be more concerned over expenses than the threat to his life. Even with my left hand, I’d have shot him square.
‘One can learn more observing from concealment than out in the open,’ he expounded. ‘With you in the field, Moran, no one looked for me.’
So, I’d been the hare to flush out this hound. I wasn’t surprised. Being used this way came with the position of Number Two. Everyone in his employ was expendable. I wasn’t even angry he had acted according to his nature, just as I would to mine. That didn’t mean I liked being so used, or would forget.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘I came down on the same train as you,’ he said. ‘In the next compartment. I overheard every word which passed between you and our cl
ient. Stoke, in fact, mentioned the significant point of the smell in The Chase...’
‘Hold on a mo, Moriarty! You couldn’t have got off at Stourcastle. We’d have seen you.’
‘I travelled on to Sherton Abbas and made my way back to Trantridge via hired trap. I have been in The Chase ever since.’
I couldn’t imagine the habitué of lecture halls and laboratories in the wild woods, even with his waterproof frock.
‘Where did you sleep?’
‘I did not sleep. I took an injection. Too much had to be found out and tested. I exploited rumours of the ghost of Theresa Clare to conceal my presence.’
He would never admit it, but I knew Moriarty derived some thin, watery thrill from ‘dressing up’. Like his deduction craze, it came on him as if he were in a competition whose terms were set by another he wished to better. Usually, he was rotten at dissembling. He couldn’t do voices and the snake-neck thing gave him away. This performance was well above his average. The Polish Jew in Irving’s The Bells wasn’t half as eerie.
‘How did you make the noise? The ghost sound?’
The Professor’s lips set in a tight line – his approximation of a smile. From his pocket, he produced a wooden box with a crank-handle. He worked it and a whine filled the cave. It set my teeth on edge.
‘You don’t imagine I would dismantle an Amanti on a whim? The violin was sacrificed to this invention.’
Mercifully, he shut the toy off.
‘Wouldn’t rattling a chain and going “woo-woo” have been a damn sight cheaper?’
‘This is not for your ears, Moran. Nor any human ears.’
‘Communicating with spirits now, Moriarty? I’d not take you for a table-rapper.’
‘This instrument has nothing to do with ghosts. It is for dogs.’
XIV
It was full dark in The Chase.
Venn remained in his hole. He was not Red Shuck’s master. Our commission was to kill the dog only. Therefore, we’d no quarrel with the radical reddleman.
Moriarty returned my guns. I could balance the rifle on my bandaged paw and pull the trigger with my left hand – but accuracy would be an issue.