The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1)

by Gregory Ashe

  “Got anything to eat? I’m starving,” Sam said.

  “I’ll check,” Irene said. “Toast alright?”

  Before Sam could answer, she had left.

  “Have a seat, Sam,” Cian said.

  Sam looked like he didn’t particularly want to sit, but when he saw Cian’s face, he took a chair. Cian felt a flicker of sympathy. The boy—and he was a boy, barely old enough to be out of the house—was in far over his head. That much was obvious. But sympathy wasn’t going to keep Cian from breaking the boy’s legs if he tried to escape.

  “I got rights,” Sam muttered.

  “Anything you want to tell us?” Harry asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t start that,” Cian said. “You won’t like how it ends up.”

  “Know what I think?” Sam said. “I think you’re a lot of talk.”

  Cian took a step. Sam flattened himself against the chair.

  Right then, Irene walked in with a plate of toast and a glass of milk. She looked at Sam. She looked at Cian.

  She sighed.

  Cian tried to meet her gaze. He couldn’t. He looked away.

  “Ha,” Sam said. “Knew it.”

  Cian slapped him across the back of the head. Sam howled.

  Irene shushed him, handed him the toast and milk, and gave Cian a hidden smile.

  “Children,” Harry said. “I’m surrounded by children.”

  Like a whipped dog, Sam hunched over his meal, eating in the ravenous bursts that only truly young men can manage. Harry’s face revealed pure dismay as he watched crumbs spray across the leather upholstery of the chair. Cian fought a grin.

  “I’m sorry we have so little,” Irene said. “I’ll do a bit of shopping today and make us a proper dinner.”

  Sam looked up. “Dinner?”

  “Get used to it,” Cian said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Until we’re sure you’re safe,” Harry added. He was staring at a particularly large crumb—practically its own island of toast on the upholstery—but his voice was friendly. “This is for your benefit, Sam. Those people you got involved with, they’re dangerous. They’ll find you and they’ll make sure you can’t tell anyone about what they did to you.”

  “Staying here isn’t any safer,” Sam said. He set glass and plate on the coffee table. Milk made a ring around the base of the glass.

  Harry’s hands twitched, as though desperate for a towel.

  “What do you mean?” Harry asked, still staring at the glass.

  “What do you think I mean?” Sam asked. He pointed to the cuts to his face, peeled back the collar of his shirt, and stabbed a finger at the burns and bruises to his chest. “This wasn’t just for my benefit, you know. They wanted to know all about you folks.”

  “What?” Cian said.

  “Yeah. Cian Shea, Irene Lovell, Henry Witte, Pearl Morecott, and some Hun name. Friedrich. Something.”

  “Did you—” Harry asked Cian.

  Cian shook his head.

  “Neither did I,” Irene said.

  “And you didn’t say anything until now?” Harry asked.

  “Why should I? All I cared about was getting out of there. I didn’t know you from Adam. But then, on the ride back, I started putting things together. A big, dumb-looking mick with a face like a bad bag of rocks. A fine-looking bird with her nose in the air. A Hun. Starts making sense.”

  “Anything else?” Harry asked.

  “Did I mention they said the mick was as dumb as he was ugly?”

  Irene was covering her mouth, her body rocked by tiny waves.

  Cian fixed Sam with a glare.

  Sam shrugged and sank back into the chair again. “It was them that said it. Not me.”

  “Sam,” Harry said, reaching forward to pluck the crumb from the chair and deposit it on the plate, “until now, I feel like I’ve been very patient with you. But that patience has a limit, and we are quickly approaching it. No more jokes. No more games. What did they want from you? What did they know about us?”

  Sam watched Harry for a minute. “They said your name a lot. Like they were scared of you. The others not so much, but you—you, they were almost shitting their pants. Why’s that? You don’t look like much to me.”

  Harry didn’t answer.

  After a moment, Sam swallowed. “Anyway, I already told you. They wanted to know how I knew the lot of you. If we were friends, if I worked for you, if it was a set up. All that stuff. And they wanted to know why you’d give up the mask. I think they figured it was bait.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cian put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. Nothing more, just rested it there.

  “God’s truth, I don’t. They had a light in my eyes the whole time, I couldn’t see nothing.”

  “Couldn’t see anything,” Irene said.

  Sam blinked at her.

  “We need to move him,” Harry said. “Before they come looking. Pearl’s place would be best for now. Freddy’s a bit high strung.”

  Cian agreed and he didn’t like that he agreed. He tried to keep it quiet, but both Irene and Harry looked at him.

  “Did you say something?” Irene asked.

  “What was that sound you just made?” Harry asked.

  Before Cian had to answer, Sam tried to stand up. Cian pressed him back into the seat, and pain washed over the boy’s face.

  “You don’t understand,” Sam said. “I’m trying to tell you. They know everything about you. Where you live, where you work, what you ate for lunch last Sunday. Send me to Pearl, send me to the Hun, it doesn’t matter. They’ll find me as soon as they want to find me. You got to let me go. I’ll clear out of here.”

  “First smart thing you’ve said,” Cian said.

  Harry shook his head. “Something doesn’t add up. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but I’m not letting him out of my hands until it makes sense.”

  Sam glanced up at Cian. “They said he was mad,” Sam said, nodding at Harry. “A total loon. Listen to him, he’s not making any sense. You know I’m right. Let me go.”

  Cian gave Sam’s shoulder a squeeze, careful not to hurt the boy, and said, “It’ll be alright, Sam. Have a little faith. In a few days, you’ll be out picking pockets again with no one the wiser.”

  Despair stamped itself in Sam’s features. He gave a halfhearted nod.

  When Cian looked up, he saw Irene staring at him. There was something in her face. Something completely unreadable to him, something he had seen the night before, in the squalid hole where Sam had been held prisoner.

  As though she had seen him naked.

  He shrugged and looked away.

  Then Irene said, “Wait, Sam. You said they knew everything about us.”

  Sam nodded.

  “Harry, my parents. I have to check on them.”

  “Go. I’ll stay and watch Sam. What about you, Cian?”

  His laugh was short and hard. “No, no parents. No family.”

  Harry frowned. “Nobody connected to you?”

  “Maybe the Doyles. I rented a room from them. I’ll stop by and take a look.”

  Harry nodded. “Freddy will be back soon enough.”

  “Don’t leave me with him,” Sam said. He grabbed Cian’s arm. “Please.”

  Cian glanced at Irene, who wore shock like the best silk, and Harry, whose face was expressionless. Cian felt sick to his stomach. He peeled Sam’s fingers off his arm.

  “You’ll be fine. Harry’s decent enough.”

  One of Harry’s eyebrows shot up.”

  “And he’s not going to hurt you,” Cian said. He leveled a firm look at Harry.

  Harry shrugged. He looked like a choirboy.

  The sick feeling worsened.

  “We’ll be back tonight,” Irene said. She tried for a smile, but it kept slipping.

  Cian took her by the arm and led her to the door.

  “You boys have fun,” Irene called b
ack.

  No answer.

  As they started down the stairs, winter rubbed color into Irene’s throat and cheeks and ears. Cian watched her sideways.

  He thought about what her lips would taste like.

  “What are you looking at?” Irene asked. “Do I have something?” She brushed at her cheeks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come by my rooms at the Louisiana after, won’t you?” Irene asked as she hailed a cab. “We’ll come back together?”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Let’s just meet here.”

  “Oh for God’s sake don’t be so stubborn. Say five? At the Louisiana?”

  “It’s completely out of my—”

  Irene threw him a kiss and climbed into the cab. “Perfect. Five, then.”

  Cian watched the cab carry her away, still trying to figure out what had just happened.

  Without an answer, he trudged towards Kerry Patch.

  The sausage shop was closed. Cian knocked three times, huddled in the doorway as a winter wind whipped down the unnamed street. Kerry Patch hadn’t changed in the few days he’d been gone. It still looked like the kind of place that wanted to hit you across the back of the head and rifle your pockets. A thin woman with even thinner hair came up the street, leading two children by the hand, and she smiled at Cian. He smiled back. She looked familiar, which meant that he had probably seen her a dozen times on the street. The old Cian, though—the one who had rented this room from the Doyles—hadn’t paid much attention to anyone who wasn’t bringing him a glass of booze.

  He wasn’t sure what had happened to that Cian. Maybe that old bastard was dead. Today, with the sun shining, with a wind as cold as Satan’s balls cutting his face, Cian felt awake. Awake the way he hadn’t felt in a long time. Years, maybe.

  How long since he’d used liquor to smash in the back of his brain? A few days? He didn’t count the wine; it had only been a few drinks.

  He hadn’t thought about Corinne. Not once.

  Cian turned and knocked again, rather than letting himself think about Corinne. Still no response, which made no sense. Mr. Doyle hardly ever left the shop, and Mrs. Doyle maintained a vocal presence. Perhaps a family emergency. Did they have family?

  Cian scrubbed a hand through his hair. The reek from the shop was strong—a rotting meat smell, instead of the cleaners that usually masked it. Maybe the Doyles really were gone.

  He went around back, climbed the stairs to his room. The door was still busted from when Bobby Flynn had come looking for Cian. The rail to the steps was still broken too, where he had shoved Bobby through the wood. Cian didn’t let himself look down. He didn’t want to see that spot of ground.

  The room had been tidied, the bed stripped, the dresser emptied—not that there had been much to begin with. Anything he had left was gone.

  Good. Better that way.

  He went back down the stairs, into the back of the lot. Nothing on the ground showed where Bobby Flynn had died. The grass had a uniformly trampled look, as though winter had rolled on its back. The garden plot was nothing more than frost-rimed stakes. It might as well have been a graveyard.

  He should leave. Right then. The Doyles had gone to visit a relative. Or been called away by a neighbor.

  The sun was shining.

  The ice on the stakes gleamed.

  Cian didn’t leave.

  He checked the back door. The frame was split, the bolt torn free, the door hanging ajar. A line of snow had drifted in against the new angle of the door, like a refugee fleeing the cold. Cian pushed the door open.

  The rotting meat smell was stronger. The kitchen was dark. With the windows shuttered and the fireplace empty, the place felt new, as though Cian had never been there before. A ceramic bowl, covered with a cloth, sat on a floured table.

  Cian twitched the cloth aside. Frozen dough lay waiting for his attention.

  Bread. She had been making bread.

  She made bread almost every day.

  Cian shut the door. The darkness was complete, aside from the lines of light that battered the shutters. He fumbled the matches from his pocket. Struck one.

  Light and warmth grumbled between his fingers. He lit a taper on the hearth above the mantel.

  Leave. Run. That was the smart part of his brain. The part that had been to France and back. The part that had told him, years ago, to run, to leave. The part that had watched and seen what happened when he stayed.

  Candlelight rippled on the walls. Cian tried to steady his hand.

  He pushed open the door to the shop. The candlelight showed three dark forms. One, slumped over the meat grinder. One in a chair. A sock lay on the floor next to her. One standing upright, face to the door, as though he had forgotten how to open it and had frozen to death trying to figure it out.

  In the candlelight, their skin was black.

  Cian’s breath was like his escaping ghost. Even in the winter, they stank. Not the bloated, summer rot he had known in France. This was more contained. The percolating decay set just out of sight, like potpourri on the stove. He tried to breath through his mouth. The steam of heat and life blurred his vision.

  Molly Doyle had wanted to comb his hair.

  That was the only thing he could think of.

  Cian’s hand had become steady. As though he were holding a gun instead of a candle. He moved forward because now he had to know for certain. The candle light wrapped long fingers across Mr. Doyle’s face. The sagging cheeks were frozen and stiff, the eyes wide and glassy as they stared into the meat grinder, as though searching for a piece of gristle. There was something vast and existential about it. As though they were all only gristle caught in some heavenly meat grinder.

  Cian swallowed something bitter. Metaphors. He couldn’t seem to think straight. His brain had taken a train.

  Molly Doyle’s face was fixed like a mask from Oedipus, Jocasta’s face as she realized the truth. Cian wanted to reach out and shut her eyes. No one should have to stare into eternity like that. But he couldn’t. Her expression was too terrible.

  He knew that look. It was what he felt crawling under his skin when he first realized what the golems were. When he saw the giant spiders, when he met a ghost, when he fought a lizard-man. It was madness. The madness of seeing something impossible.

  That was what Jocasta had learned. And Molly Doyle. And Cian himself, if only a little bit. The truth was cosmic and mocking. Better to be mad than stare truth in the muzzle.

  Something scraped the boards. Cian jumped. Hot wax splashed his hand. He cursed.

  Rats. God damned rats. He needed to get the police here. They wouldn’t care about a couple of dead micks in the Patch, but at least they’d take care of the bodies.

  Cian took a step toward the front door, trying to identify the dead man from behind. Who had the third one been? An unlucky customer who had been present when the Children arrived? A friend stopping by for a drink? Someone inquiring about the empty room upstairs? The clothes were muddy, as though the man had dragged himself through the dirt before reaching the sausage shop. Maybe a miner, then.

  Cian took a step to the side to see the man’s face.

  The dead man’s head turned. Shriveled, lifeless eyes studied Cian.

  Bobby Flynn.

  Cian darted back. Bobby Flynn moved like a puppet on strings—fast and jerky. The dead man’s mouth hung open, revealing a blackened tongue. Rotting fissures split his lips and cheeks. One of the dead man’s hands came up and swiped at Cian’s face. Cian dodged. He fumbled for the Colt. His fingers were stiff and frozen from the cold. The gun felt like a block of ice.

  The light from the candle rocked with Cian’s steps. It pooled across Bobby’s forehead, his chin, his throat. It left dark wells around his eyes.

  It was the eyes that made Cian want to scream.

  He choked the sound back.

  Bobby lunged again. His fingers caught Cian’s coat. With surprising strength, the dead man jerked Cian forward, throwing Cian off
balance. The candle tumbled to the ground. Light tilted across Bobby’s face.

  Dead, withered eyes bore the fullness of the light.

  Bobby caught Cian with a punch to the side of the head. The blow knocked holes in Cian’s sight. His knees went out, and the only thing holding him up was the dead man’s strength. A second punch landed. It sounded like the sea: a crashing, pounding white punctuated by pain.

  Cian fired.

  He kept firing until he realized he was on his knees. Until he realized he was breathing, and the roar in his head was quieting. Until he realized something heavy was on top of him.

  Cian pushed the now twice-dead Bobby Flynn to the ground. This time he watched.

  Bobby Flynn didn’t get up.

  The dead man’s face was shattered from three lucky shots. Nobody would recognize Bobby Flynn now. Nobody would mistake this mess of bone and cartilage for the man at Seamus’s.

  Cian knelt there until the Colt had cooled. He got up and staggered out of the sausage shop. The sun was at the edge of the sky, and the sky had the pallid bruising of a corpse. Cian patted snow on his cheeks, his lips, his neck.

  He thought of Molly Doyle’s face, and Jocasta’s, and the universe.

  The snow only helped a little.

  When Irene arrived home, she followed the long drive around to the back of the house. Smoke chugged from one chimney, which meant that her father had decided to indulge a fire, and the scent of wood-smoke made Irene think of childhood winters. Candied apples, her father adding an extra splash of rum to the eggnog when Mother wasn’t looking, and the nights of sharing a bed with her grandmother’s cold feet. The memories were good ones, but they sat in her stomach like curdled milk.

  They know everything, Sam had said.

  Irene went around back because she was thinking about Sally, who had died because of the mask. At least Sally had died quickly. What would the Children do if they came back looking for Irene? Or her parents?

  It wouldn’t be quick. Irene knew that much.

  When Irene reached the back of the house, she paused. One of the cellar doors was ajar. Irene’s skin pimpled. Nothing to worry about, she told herself. The coal was delivered to the cellar. The house had an old furnace and it went through coal like an old woman through a bag of peanuts.