Mister Creecher

by Chris Priestley

Creecher looked at Billy and nodded. Billy headed off without saying another word. He did not need to look round to check if the giant was with him. He could sense it somehow.

  Besides, he did not want to see Creecher behind him. It was all he could do as it was to stop himself from running. He did not want to turn and see that inky shape, smudged by darkness. The sight of him in clear light was bad enough, but what a horror it would be to see him vague and spectral.

  Billy led the way, moving quickly and smoothly through narrow alleyways, down winding flights of weathered steps and out across deserted squares, pausing only occasionally at corners to check the wide streets.

  The air was even colder down here by the river. Billy could feel it enter his lungs and linger coldly there, chilling his chest. He could taste the stink of it in his mouth. He coughed and spat and looked behind him for the first time to find Creecher almost standing on his heels.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ hissed Billy. ‘How can you be so big and creep up on someone like that? It ain’t natural.’

  Creecher made no response but motioned for Billy to follow him into an alleyway, where they stopped and looked back out into the street. The giant was staring intently at the building opposite.

  When they had been standing like that for several minutes, Billy took a deep breath and let out as big a sigh as he could muster. Creecher did not break off from his vigil.

  ‘What?’ said Billy finally. ‘What are we waiting for?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Creecher.

  It was spoken with such understated menace that Billy’s heart skipped a beat.

  ‘Look,’ said Creecher, pointing to the door of the building as two men stepped out on to the pavement and walked away towards Covent Garden. After giving them a head start, Creecher set off in pursuit, with Billy at his heels.

  The men crossed the Strand and headed up Southampton Street. Billy knew these streets well. Tourists and drunks were easy pickings and there were plenty of both here. He stayed close to Creecher. If Fletcher was alive, he was as likely to be here as anywhere.

  Creecher kept away from the lamplight’s glare. Billy marvelled at how darkness seemed to cling to him. Those who caught a glimpse of the giant saw only a fleeting phantasm of blackness and chose to question their senses rather than accept the unnerving truth of what they had seen.

  The two men walked into the throng of people and disappeared now and then among them. They stopped by the columns of a church. Billy and Creecher were near enough to hear them talking to one another in what sounded like French to Billy’s ears. Had Creecher followed these men from Swissland? A busker sang mournfully nearby.

  ‘Do you see those men?’ asked Creecher, as if he and Billy had not been following them for the past half hour.

  ‘Course I see them,’ said Billy. ‘What of it?’

  ‘I want you to follow them,’ he replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That is of no concern to you,’ said Creecher. ‘If you follow them, I will reward you.’

  Billy looked at the men and wondered what connection Creecher could have with them. Unlike him, they seemed perfectly normal. They also appeared to be wealthy.

  ‘Why can’t you follow them yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘By day I am . . . too visible,’ said Creecher. ‘And I am known to one of them.’

  Billy was intrigued. But not intrigued enough to want the job. He screwed up his face.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t think so?’ said Creecher.

  ‘Look,’ Billy explained, ‘like I said – I’m grateful to you for looking after me and if I had some way of paying you I would.’

  ‘I don’t want money,’ said Creecher. ‘I want your help.’

  There was something in the giant’s tone of voice that made Billy think twice about arguing. But still, he saw no reason to get mixed up in whatever it was that was going on here.

  Billy spat at the gutter and sent a rat scurrying from its hiding place into the glare of the gas lamps. It paused briefly in its headlong sprint to look for the nearest shadows, its black button eyes squinting at the lamplight.

  The two foreigners were being swallowed up in the crowd of theatregoers spilling out of the opera house. Beggars and thieves buzzed about like flies round a cowpat.

  ‘Well?’ said Creecher.

  But Billy’s attention was elsewhere. Two boys lurked in front of a chestnut-seller’s brazier. They were hardly more than silhouettes but he recognised one of them straight away by the bite-sized chunk missing from his left ear.

  Warner was one of Fletcher’s boys and no sooner had Billy registered the fact than Warner saw him. He pretended that he hadn’t, but he had, Billy could tell.

  After a minute or two, Warner tapped the other boy on the arm and leaned towards him, whispering. The other boy wasn’t as practised as Warner and could not resist a sideways glance at Billy and got a swift kick in the ankle as reward. The two boys slunk away into an alley like lizards into a crack in a wall.

  Billy turned and walked away in the opposite direction. He walked with an unhurried air completely at odds with the drum roll of his heartbeat. But he had not gone more than a few strides before he heard a familiar rumbling voice.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Billy did not turn round, but quickened his pace. The giant overtook him in the blink of an eye and blocked his way. Billy looked up at him and was shocked anew to see that pallid, wrinkled face and the watery gleam of those eyes. A woman came out from a doorway, took one look at Creecher and dropped to the floor in a faint.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Creecher repeated softly, stepping over the woman.

  ‘Fletcher ain’t dead,’ said Billy. ‘I can feel it. I’ve got to keep moving.’

  ‘Those two boys?’ Creecher asked.

  ‘They’re in Fletcher’s gang,’ said Billy. ‘They’ll go straight to him.’

  He tried to walk on, but the giant placed one of his huge hands on Billy’s shoulder and he had to stop himself from whimpering at its cold and heavy touch.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ said Billy, his voice quavering now like he was eight years old and a climbing boy again, pleading with the sweep not to beat him.

  ‘I can protect you,’ said Creecher.

  ‘You can’t be around all the time. Even you have to sleep, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Creecher with a slow nod. ‘I have to sleep. But will you be any safer without me?’

  Billy swore and put his face in his hands.

  ‘If you hadn’t –’

  ‘If I hadn’t stopped him, the one called Fletcher would have taken your eye.’

  ‘Well, he ain’t going to stop at an eye now, is he?’ Billy snarled. ‘He’s gonna kill me for sure. And not quick, neither.’

  ‘No,’ said Creecher. ‘He will not kill you. I will see to it.’

  Billy squinted up at the giant, but his horrible face seemed devoid of any expression.

  ‘I ain’t asking you to kill him!’ said Billy.

  Creecher did not respond.

  ‘Not that anyone would mourn him,’ Billy added. ‘But still – I never said I wanted him dead. You can’t say I did, cos I didn’t!’

  Billy looked at the giant, who once again seemed to have edged into the darker side of the alley, as if he carried his own shadow with him.

  ‘And all I have to do is follow these two men round London?’

  Creecher nodded.

  ‘How will I know you’ll keep your side of the bargain?’ said Billy. ‘How will I know that Fletcher won’t jump on me one –’

  With horrible suddenness, Creecher moved towards Billy, grabbing him by the throat and pinning him to the wall.

  ‘Because when I say I will do a thing, I do it,’ he hissed, his rancid breath making Billy blink. Again the giant looked back towards Covent Garden and the two foreigners. ‘Unlike some.’

  His fingers tightened their grip on Billy’s throat. He seemed to be
lost in thought and Billy tugged at his arm to try to pull him away as he gasped for breath. It took several hard punches at the giant’s forearm before Creecher looked back at Billy and released him.

  Billy slumped down, choking. Creecher stood over him, watching without a trace of emotion.

  ‘We are bound together, you and I,’ growled the giant. ‘Our destinies have become entwined for the present.’

  Billy rubbed his throat and took special note of that ‘for the present’. What would this devil do to him when his use was over? Crack his neck and hurl him in the Thames, most like. Billy felt as though he were running along a high rooftop, each tile slipping at his footfall and ever on the verge of plunging to his doom.

  The woman who had fainted moaned and began to get up from the cold cobbles. She blinked and peered at Creecher, who turned to her and growled. The woman whimpered and swooned once again.

  ‘I will meet you back at the attic,’ said Creecher.

  With that, the giant walked away. Within moments, Billy was alone in the alleyway and, for the first time since those early days on the streets as a runaway, he began to sob.

  CHAPTER VI.

  Billy stole a loaf on the way back to the room above the baker’s. He almost hoped he would get caught. Maybe that was the only way to be free of Fletcher and the giant both: to get thrown in Newgate and transported.

  But Billy was incapable of being a bad thief. It was like asking a falcon to slow its flight. It just wasn’t in his nature. You are what you are, thought Billy. That’s all there is. That’s all there ever is.

  He slept, though he thought he would not, and dreamed like a dog, twitching and muttering at the passage of the day’s events.

  Then, what seemed like seconds later, it was morning and he awoke with Creecher’s pale blue-white face huge and filling his view.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that!’ said Billy, recoiling.

  Creecher stood up and tossed a pie at Billy’s feet before walking to the other side of the attic and dropping to his haunches.

  ‘Eat,’ he said.

  ‘Give us a chance,’ Billy replied, yawning.

  He picked up the pie and took a bite out of the pastry crust, crumbs tumbling to the floor. He nodded his approval to the giant, who smiled back out of the gloom, his white teeth glowing horribly.

  ‘Well, you seem to be in a good mood at any rate,’ said Billy.

  The giant’s white smile was instantaneously eclipsed.

  ‘You are feeling stronger today,’ he said.

  It was less a question than a statement of fact, and Billy nodded in agreement.

  ‘Bon. Then tomorrow you are ready to work?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Billy.

  ‘You will follow the men I showed you and tell me everything – everything, you understand.’

  Billy nodded.

  ‘I want to know where they go, what they do, who they speak to,’ said Creecher. ‘I want to know –’

  ‘Everything,’ interrupted Billy. ‘Yeah – you said.’

  The giant looked as though he was going to say more but thought better of it and sat back, head bowed. Billy swallowed the last mouthful of pie and stared at him, trying to work out what was going on in that head of his.

  ‘Won’t you even tell me a little about them?’ Billy asked. ‘It don’t have to be no great secret, but it might help for me to know something about them.’

  Creecher made no response.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ continued Billy, ‘is that the more I know, the more advantage I have over them and the easier it gets to guess their moves. If I knew why they was here I might –’

  ‘If you knew that, you would piss in your pants, English boy,’ hissed Creecher.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Billy. ‘They don’t look very frightening to me.’ He cast a sideways look at Creecher. ‘Leastwise not compared to you.’

  Creecher lurched forward until his terrible face was only inches from Billy’s. His dry, parchment-like skin seemed unable to contain the workings of his body and appeared slightly too large, gathering here and there in wrinkles. Billy could see the blood coursing through his veins.

  ‘You do not know what you are dealing with,’ the giant growled. ‘You must believe me.’

  Must I? thought Billy. What had he done to deserve his very own demon? Was Creecher really going to protect him from Fletcher? It was beginning to feel like, rather than being relieved of one peril, he was now placed between two.

  ‘Why not kill them, then?’ he said quietly, almost to himself.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Creecher, though Billy was sure the giant had heard him.

  ‘If they’re so dangerous,’ said Billy more forcefully, ‘why not kill them? You’d be doing us all a favour, wouldn’t you? Why not kill them and be done with it? You obviously hate them.’

  ‘Hate . . . ?’ said Creecher, shaking his head. ‘No. If he had shown me but one drop of kindness, one tiny crumb of understanding – oh, then I would have loved him. No son would have been more loving.’

  Billy frowned at Creecher, who seemed lost for a moment in the rapture of these thoughts. Who was he talking about? Billy strained to make sense of what it all meant but he could not.

  ‘But no,’ said Creecher. ‘I was shunned. He treated me as though I were some sort of abomination, as if I am the one to blame. He recoiled from me in horror, yet it was he who made me as I am.’

  ‘What?’ said Billy. ‘What do you mean?’

  Creecher suddenly seemed to come to his senses.

  ‘Enough!’ he snapped. ‘I have told you enough.’ He slammed his fist into the floor, making Billy jump.

  Billy knew when to hold his tongue and stared sullenly at the new crack in the floorboard in front of him. A spider emerged from the hole, as if it had been waiting for a lull, and took the opportunity to scurry away.

  ‘Please,’ said the giant quietly. ‘I am sorry about losing my temper. There are things I cannot speak of. If the world knew what kind of man Frankenstein was – what he had done – then he would be arrested, and I do not want that. He must remain free.’

  ‘Frankenstein?’ said Billy. ‘That’s one of the men?’

  Creecher nodded.

  ‘Victor Frankenstein,’ said the giant. ‘The taller one. The other is Henry Clerval. He is harmless. It is Frankenstein you must watch closely.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Billy.

  ‘So tomorrow you will follow them?’

  Billy nodded.

  ‘Bon,’ said Creecher with a smile.

  Yeah, thought Billy. I’ll follow them for you, you murderous freak, until I can figure out some way of getting rid of you.

  CHAPTER VII.

  Billy’s stomach flipped nervously as he stepped through the door. A place like the British Museum presented lots of opportunities for a thief and there were certainly plenty of wealthy and distracted people milling about.

  But Billy had always made a point of never working inside. Montagu House was congested, and Billy needed a clear escape route should he be spotted. There were just too many unknowables here.

  He had been on the trail of Frankenstein and Clerval for two days now. That morning he had followed them from their lodgings and now shadowed them as they wandered round the museum.

  The two men seemed to find something called the Rosetta Stone inexhaustibly fascinating, but Billy could see nothing of interest in this great slab etched with rows of chisel marks. Educated people were impressed by the strangest things, he mused.

  The foreigners moved on to studying a room full of broken sculptures. Billy listened to someone nearby and heard that the stone figures came from Greece and were very old.

  He was embarrassed at first. Many of the figures were naked and, even when there was clothing, it clung to the bodies as though it were wet, revealing the form beneath.

  Two fashionably dressed young women were standing in front of a scene showing a fight going on between a
man and a creature half man and half horse. On closer inspection Billy saw that the women were not that much older than him. Their accents betrayed them as out-of-towners, up in London for the season.

  ‘So I was, as it were, “How dare you talk to me in that insolent fashion!” And she was, as it were, “I’m very sorry, madam, it won’t happen again.” But they always say that, don’t they? And then it does happen again and they are all, “I’m so sorry, madam,” all over again. I told Mama. You can’t be soft with servants. They only take advantage.’

  ‘Oh my stars. You are so right, sister.’

  ‘Incontestably.’

  Billy shook his head. Rich girls. Some of them were pretty enough, until they opened their mouths. What was the point of all that education if at the end of it you came out speaking such drivel? He wanted to knock their silly bonnets off.

  Frankenstein and Clerval had moved on and Billy followed them. He found them standing in front of a huge statue. Or rather it was a fragment of a huge statue brought back from Egypt.

  The statue was of an ancient king of those parts. He was called Rameses II. He was stripped to the waist and wore an odd kind of headdress.His head had a sizeable piece broken from it, as if a great sword had sliced from crown to ear. His face was intact, smooth and handsome in a girlish way, with a strange scabbard-like beard stuck to his jaw. He seemed to be quietly pleased with something.

  Billy could see that this was no bust. This was the remains of a whole figure, snapped at the waist, one arm taken off at the shoulder, another at the elbow. There was a hole near his right shoulder. A great crack arced up through his chest, as though a surgeon had opened him up.

  Billy wondered who this strange king was and what he was like. He’d heard of Egypt – England had fought the French there – but this was from ancient times. How different he seemed to mad King George and his odious son, the Prince Regent. But perhaps he was just as bad as they were. Maybe he had not even looked like this. Maybe he had really been a fat old letch, like the Prince.

  Whatever he was like, he had probably thought his statue was going to stand for ever, and now here it was, snapped and cracked and gawped at by tourists in London. Billy smiled at this idea. It was pleasing to see the mighty laid low, even if they were from another country and another time.