by Mark Latham
I can picture a day, far in my future when I am old and grey and someone asks me if I have any regrets in life. I believe I shall answer: ‘Just one.’
Just one.
ADDENDUM
26th June, 1891
I have felt compelled to add one last chapter to my testimony; the only such note that I am willing—indeed, that I am able by oath and duty—to record. Since the destruction of the Lazarus Gate, I have become much changed. It is only by reading the notes of barely a year ago that I realise how much. There is, of course, no going back; the old John Hardwick is dead.
On the evening of 13th June 1891, I undertook an assignment for the Order of Apollo, one that I had been anticipating for a long time, and one that I accepted without hesitation, despite the risks, despite all I knew. It was not a mission of diplomacy, nor an act of war—it was revenge, pure and simple. On that night, accompanied by a small group of soldiers of my own choosing, plucked from the ranks of my old regiment, I returned at last to the Isle of Dogs.
* * *
The Artist had been working feverishly for hours. In the darkness of his studio, his four arms scratched and scrubbed at a large canvas, working in perfect unison like the many legs of a spider spinning an intricate silken thread. The room was dark, save for the pale stream of light from a lonely gaslight outside that shone through the grime-smeared windows of the apartment and threw into stark relief the tall, slender figure of a man possessed, and yet dispossessed—a man without a world. Despite the gloom, every brushstroke, placed as it was at breakneck speed, was daubed in its proper place, with the style and confidence of an accomplished master. Tsun Pen needed no eyes to see; the inspiration flowed through him from an unseen source, his arms working automatically to render his latest masterpiece. He believed himself the weaver of the very strands of fate, the architect of the destinies of lesser men. But he was not; he was a criminal, a murderer, a blackmailer. He was my enemy. And for all his powers of prescience, he had no idea that we stood in the shadows, watching his every move.
Some small sound distracted the Artist for a second, perhaps made by one of my men being uncharacteristically careless. As one Tsun Pen’s arms stopped their creative flurry, and he stood in the moonlight, head inclined to listen, motionless as a statue of some many-limbed Eastern deity.
‘Hu? You know better than to disturb me when I am working.’
There was no reply, but the Artist seemed to sense at once that he was not alone. I imagined that no one had ever managed to take him by surprise before; leastways not since the fateful night when Lazarus had taken his revenge upon the House of Zhengming, the night when Tsun Pen had become something… other.
‘I know you are there,’ he said. ‘I do not know how you got in here, but it does not matter. You are a fly, and you have flown into the wrong web.’
‘Even spiders have their predators,’ I said, and took a step forward, this time allowing the boards to creak beneath my boot. The Artist spun instantly in the direction of my voice.
‘How, pray tell, did you evade my men? And why did my monkeys not screech at your presence?’ The Artist’s voice was calm and steady. His business had resumed in the wake of the Othersiders’ failed invasion, and once more he operated in the belief that no one would dare do him harm. To Tsun Pen, we were insects, come to frighten and threaten, and we would be found as wanting as the last men who had tried.
‘I have my ways,’ I said, ‘as you have yours.’ At an unspoken command, one of my men moved slowly from his position, unfurling himself from the rafters where he had lain for an hour, and allowing himself to make but a small noise as he dropped to the floor—a telltale scuff that would betray the presence of another enemy. Tsun Pen did not turn towards it as we had calculated, instead remaining stock still, facing me, ready to spring into action when the intruders thought him unprepared.
‘And why are you here?’ the Artist said, warily. ‘Surely Scotland Yard has not sent you—they would not be so bold a second time, I think.’
‘It does not matter who sent me,’ I said, and I sensed Tsun Pen’s confusion as my voice came from his right. I had learned much in the intervening year since my torture; if I wished, I could walk unseen and unheard. Even by one such as the Artist. ‘All that matters is that your time has come, Tsun Pen.’ I unwrapped an object that I had been carrying, and threw it to the floor next to the Artist’s feet. It landed with a metallic clang. By the look on Tsun Pen’s face, I gathered he knew what it was instantly.
‘Poor Hu,’ he said, reaching down and picking up the metal hook. ‘Loyal to the end.’
‘He was.’ I was behind him now. Tsun Pen swallowed hard. Was he finally afraid? Was that perspiration on his brow?
He seemed to gather his courage when he spoke. ‘Your little games have provided some distraction, and the loss of Hu is most regrettable, but it is time to end the charade and spell out your terms. We both know that not even the police commissioner would dare arrest me, and no judge in the land would convict me. I own them all. So spit it out; what do you want?’
‘Take him,’ I said. Tsun Pen, with astonishment, realised that the instruction was not aimed at him, but at my men—there were three others in the room, and he had sensed only one, and only then because we had allowed it. The three soldiers rushed at him, but the Artist was slippery as an eel. In an instant he had dropped his brushes and pulled a blade from behind the easel, and his flailing arms moved with uncanny speed against his attackers. One man fell as he was slashed with the razor-sharp knife, another fell to a pummelling fist from the unnatural giant. They battled in the moonlight, thrust and parry, attack and riposte, until I stepped from the shadows myself, silent as a cat, and sliced across the back of the Artist’s calf with a slender blade. Tsun Pen went down on one knee, crying out in pain, and the other men pounced upon him like hyenas. He struggled hard against the combined strength of the men who restrained him, but it was to no avail. These predators had the better of him.
With the last of the Artist’s struggles over, I stepped towards him, my footfall heavy, measured. He would feel fear this night, this monster, this killer. I walked around to face my enemy. Even on his knees, the Artist was almost as tall as a normal man, and so I leaned forward, so that the Artist could feel my breath on his cheek.
‘An eye for an eye,’ I said. And the Artist’s expression changed, as finally he knew me.
‘Captain Hardwick?’ said Tsun Pen, and he tried to stifle a mocking laugh. ‘So, you have come back twice the man. And it is not the Queen’s justice you seek, but vengeance, am I right?’
‘These days, they are one and the same thing.’ My voice was a growl of barely restrained hatred. The Artist tensed as he felt something cold and sharp scratch against his chest. If he had not been blind, he would have seen the moonlight reflect for a second off the thin fencing blade, and glint off the silver pommel engraved with the monogrammed ‘H’.
‘You would kill me in cold blood? Unarmed, and restrained? Can you really do this thing, Captain Hardwick?’
‘It’s Colonel Hardwick now,’ I said.
‘Pah! Have you finally put to rest the ghost of your father then, and become the dragon of my nightmares? I very much doubt it. You are weak, too weak for the task that has been assigned you.’
My blade plunged into the Artist’s chest, as straight and true as an arrow. His breath rattled, and blood bubbled up from his punctured lung to spill out over his robes. I pulled away the sword, and the soldiers let go of the Artist’s arms. Tsun Pen dropped to the floor, holding himself up with the last of his strength, trying to form his dying words, though it pained him to do so. Finally, he looked up at me as though he were not blind at all, with that familiar, hateful sneer on his lips.
‘Like… father… like son,’ he gurgled through his own blood, before dropping to the floor dead.
Only then did I swing a lantern towards the canvas on which the Artist had been working so feverishly. What I saw made me swallow har
d, and set my jaw so that no trace of emotion would be displayed to my men.
In the ruins of a great gothic castle, beset with thick cobwebs, a gigantic spider lay in its death throes, its bloated abdomen sliced in twain by the sweeping claws of an enormous red dragon. From the spider’s wound, a hundred of its tiny offspring fled, pouring from their grotesque parent like grain from a sack, before climbing towards—and onto—a third figure. A radiant woman with dark eyes, wearing a yellow dress now swarming with arachnids, with a veil of webs draped upon her. I reached out my hand, almost not daring to touch the canvas, but finally put my fingers to Rosanna’s face. The wet oil paint smudged at my touch, and I withdrew my hand at once, mortified at the dark stain I had created upon her.
I stepped back from the Artist’s body, away from the easel, as the blood slicked across the floorboards towards me. I wiped my blade clean, and left the room.
* * *
We left the Artist’s apartments by the back stair, making our way through the twisted innards of the House of Zhengming, a warren of passages and apartments, until eventually we reached a dead end, a passageway terminating at a brick wall where I was certain the inner door to the opium den should have been. To our left was a small set of steps leading to a damp, brick cellar lit by green paper lanterns. The last time I had seen that room, the niches beneath its low vaulted arches had been occupied by the half-dead opium fiends whose entire lives had been given over to chasing the dragon. Now it was cold and empty, and not where it should have been. The dead end should have been the exit to the opium den, I was sure of it. In fact, the back stair should not have led us here at all… Was this a different cellar? It was possible, but it looked so familiar. In the centre of the flagstoned floor was a sad, flat cushion, where the old Chinese man with the rheumy eyes had sat, grinning at me with his gummy mouth.
‘We must have got turned around, sir,’ said Sergeant Whittock. ‘Should have turned left a ways back.’ Whittock was a practical man, and a loyal one, which was why I had requested him and the two others be assigned to my command whilst they were on leave from India. Along with Lieutenant Bertrand and Corporal Beechworth, we made up a group of four assassins who had achieved what Special Branch could not.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, absently. I stepped down into the cellar. The room was twisted, the ceiling and floor uneven—improbably so, I thought, even if it had been under the effects of subsidence for many years. At the far end was a wooden door, which I had not seen before. Stepping towards it, I felt the familiar cold creep up my spine, that strange prescient feeling that had warned me so often of supernatural dangers. Yet the Lazarus Gate was closed, so what was this? I held out a hand and placed it on the rough wood of the little cellar door. The wood did not resist, but instead submitted to my touch, bending as if it were made of rubber. There was a low humming sound coming from behind it, and I knew then that I did not need to open the door. I remembered what the Artist had told me: ‘My humble opium den, though unchanged from an outside perspective, has increased in size considerably. Some of the rooms, however, are quite inaccessible, due to the unstable effect of sharing space and time with another universe entirely.’ The House of Zhengming was not in this world or the next, but a contorted labyrinth bestriding two universes; at least, I hoped that it was only two. The closure of the Lazarus Gate had not changed the peculiar nature of the Artist’s noisome den, and who knew how many doors led to worlds beyond the veil, or what might one day venture through them? I couldn’t help but think of the hideous Thing that I had seen in the sky on the other side, the tentacled monster that still haunted my nightmares, scratching inside my mind every time I tried to sleep. I shuddered. I thought of Larry Ecclestone, whose body had never been recovered. Could it be that he had been pushed through one of these doors? And if so, what hell was he now trapped in?
‘There is no escape from the house of the dead,’ I muttered under my breath.
‘What was that, sir?’ Lieutenant Bertrand had entered the cellar, wondering what had got into his commander. I turned to him.
‘I said we should burn this place. Burn it to the ground.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My heartfelt thanks are extended to my friend George Mann, for learnin’ me a thing or two and offering much support. Thanks also to former partner in crime Mat Ward, whose advice and patience have been invaluable. A secret handshake goes out to my very own clandestine club, the Diogenes (a.k.a. Andy, Dom, Gav, Adam, Max, and Sarah) for providing a wellspring of inspiration.
As this is a debut novel, it would be remiss not to thank my editor, Ali Nightingale, and my agent, Jamie Cowen, for taking a punt on me. Clearly two people of unimpeachable character, fortitude and astonishing good taste, I’m sure everyone can agree.
The greatest thanks, of course, are reserved for my lovely wife, Alison, not just for believing in The Lazarus Gate, but for putting up with my eccentric dildrams and whiff-whaff for so long and with such grace, even in the knowledge that it shall continue for the foreseeable. Or at least until I earn enough shillings to mend the time machine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark A. Latham is a writer, editor, history nerd, frustrated grunge singer and amateur baker from Staffordshire, UK. A recent immigrant to rural Nottinghamshire, he lives in a very old house (sadly not haunted), and is still regarded in the village as a foreigner.
Formerly the editor of Games Workshop’s White Dwarf magazine, Mark dabbled in tabletop games design before becoming a full-time author of strange, fantastical and macabre tales, mostly set in the nineteenth century, a period for which his obsession knows no bounds.
Follow Mark on Twitter: @aLostVictorian
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