Yasfiera Bey moved soundlessly to stand at his side. She wore a long, deep blue cloak, its hood up, the folds hiding her face. “And no less safe, Mr. Vicar. Thieves plunder our graves as well.”
The tone of her voice made him glance at her, and look back. “Your brother has told you, then?”
She nodded.
“You disapprove of my reasons too, I assume.”
“It is not my place to approve or not, Mr. Vicar,” she said. “Khirhal does what he must.”
He shivered again, violently, in a gust of the wind and drew his arms closer to his sides. “He will be at the Avlocks tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, so shall we all. Perhaps then something can be done to clear up this situation.”
The woman turned to move away, and looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes were invisible, her red lips thin. “It will, Mr. Vicar. I’m sure of it. It will.”
He stared after her for several minutes, until the gravestones and trees hid her from view. Then, with a shrug, he dismissed her and made his way to the back of the fence. The soft ground had been thoroughly trampled by the police and others, but he wasn’t looking for footprints now; Emmett had returned here for a reason, presumably at the end of the day, and the workers who had left before him had not known why.
Knowing the slovenly caretaker as he did, John could not believe it had been a last minute check to be sure all was in order. He wasn’t that conscientious. So there was another reason — a meeting, a reconnaissance, something. And an hour later he found part of the answer.
“Well,” he said. “Well, well.”
Three bars in the fence had been filed through and refitted so snugly that it would take more than casual effort to pull them out and pass through to the plot beyond. Grave robbers, he thought; Emmett might possibly have been part of a gang.
Once inside, he grunted and dropped carefully to his hands and knees, crawling along a path from the fence to the mausoleum’s wall, shaking his head, sitting back every so often and stretching the stiffness from his neck and shoulders. By the time he reached the wall, the clouds had thickened and the light was nearly gone, but he’d found nothing, no sign of tunneling, no chisel marks in the stone; and when he walked around to the front and tried the gate and doors, they were securely locked.
The wind blew again, softly keening over the tomb, and he hurried back to the fence, passed through, and replaced the bars as he’d found them.
Dimlight, faint shadows, the tolling of a church bell.
He stood on the street beside his tethered roan and frowned, looked back at the graveyard and passed a hand over his face. Looked up at the sky and rolled his shoulders to banish the tension growing there, inhaled and exhaled while he counted to ten. Then he mounted the horse and rode down the street without seeing, without hearing, until he found himself in front of Dr. Gravell’s house.
“I saw what I saw,” John insisted. following the large man into the makeshift laboratory at the back of the building.
“You saw nothing a shadow couldn’t do,” Gravell insisted.
“It was no shadow.”
The doctor said nothing. Instead, he opened a drawer in a cabinet and pulled out a small wooden box, flipped back the lid and stared into it. John stood beside him; it was the shard of cloth found beneath Gert’s body. Next to it was another piece, longer and encrusted with black dirt.
“Today?” he asked quietly.
Gravell nodded.
“Do you know yet?”
“All I can tell you, John, is that it’s old. Very old. A form of linen, I think, that should have been dust before you or I were born.”
“Grave robbers,” he said with a sharp nod. “I’d thought as much.” Gravell took a pair of tweezers and gingerly lifted one of the pieces, held it up to the ceiling light and shook his head. “It’s not part of a shroud.”
“It has to be, James.”
“And there have been no graves opened as far as I know.”
Frustration clenched his fists. “So what are you saying? The killer was wearing whatever this is?”
The doctor looked over his shoulder. “You tell me, John. You tell me.”
Alden was behind the duty desk again and took obvious great pleasure in telling him that Jones had been released first thing that morning.
“Then where is he?” he demanded. “He wasn’t at work.”
“Not my job to know, is it,” the sergeant said. “Maybe he’s out thumping someone else.”
John refrained from leaping over the railing, turned stiffly and marched out, trying to ignore the man’s quiet derisive laughter. A moment on the station steps to find his composure again, and he hurried up to the Brass Ring, to a short flight of stone steps leading down to the service entrance on the far side of the tavern. The door was open; he walked in, and down a short stone corridor to a narrow door on the left.
He knocked, and held his breath when the door swung open.
The room was tiny, smelling of garbage and stale ale, liquor and urine. A cot on the righthand wall, a chest on the left, a rickety table with a lantern and a Bible beside the cot. There was no sign of Freddy, and when he asked the barman upstairs, he was told that the half-wit hadn’t been seen since the day before.
On the street again he tapped his foot impatiently, unable to think of where the man might be. Hiding, he suspected; hiding from the monsters.
Retrieving his horse from in front of the police station, he rode out of the village toward home, changed his mind when he reached the wall, and hurried on. To Isle Hall. A massive brick building drowning in rustling ivy, its windows high and shuttered, all its chimneys giving smoke.
He dismounted and knocked on the door. Knocked again. Knocked a third time and stalked off in disgust around the corner. Through an unkempt yard where shrubbery grew wild, flowers were already dying, and stones poked through the ground to trip at the unwary.
There was no response at the kitchen door, and he turned with a snort of anger, staring at but not seeing a small fieldstone building not bigger than a shed at the back of the lawn, near the trees that marked the back of the estate. And when it finally came into focus, he frowned and walked over, walked around it in puzzlement because he’d never seen it before.
There was a padlock, unfastened, and with a glance at the house he removed it and opened the door. But it wasn’t the dark that drove him back into the open, nor the scuffed footprints in the dust; it was the odor.
The death smell he’d encountered the night he found Peter Reskin.
The wind, sighing; the dampness turning to a light drizzle that dripped slowly off the leaves.
He pounded on the front door again, fear and anger keeping him at it until, at last, he heard the lock turning over.
The door opened, and he pushed in without waiting for an invitation.
“I want to see — ”
He stopped in the half-light that barely reached the ceiling of the Hall’s expansive foyer, aware of the silence, the cold, the shapes and turns of darkness that filled the corners and rippled over the bare floor.
Khirhal Bey stood by the entrance to the living room, hands clasped in front of him, only his face and white shirt visible in the dusk that settled in the house.
“Where is he?” John demanded.
“Mr. Isle is not to be disturbed,” the man answered stiffly.
John took a step toward him. “And you’re a servant now, not a guest?”
The Egyptian did not move.
“Where is he?”
“Mr. Isle, as I told you — ”
John waved him silent and started for the stairs at the far end of the foyer.
“Mr. Vicar.”
John ignored him, grabbing the ball of the newel post to haul himself up, his hand running along the polished banister as he looked up toward the landing where the stairs split to rise right and left.
“Jeffrey!” he called. “Jeff, it’s me, John!”
Dar
kness greeted him; no sound but the wind.
“Jeff?”
“Mr. Vicar, please.”
There was a small table beside the staircase, and on it, in the dim light, he saw a tiny book, bound in dark leather, and on the cover a gold-etched figure of a jackal-headed man.
Jesus, he thought, and started to climb.
“Mr. Vicar.”
At the landing he looked down. Bey had not moved, though his face was raised, his head trembling slightly as if he were a blind man seeking the source of a noise.
“Jeff!” he called again.
A footstep on the top stair, the groan of a riser.
His eyes narrowed as he tried to peer through the darkness. “Jeff?”
“Mr. Isle is rather busy,” Yasfiera Bey said, stepping out of the night into twilight, her hood thrown back, her eyes painted round in blue. Red lips that glistened as if they had drunk fresh blood. “I’m sure you’ll understand.”
“I want to talk to him,” he said, taking a step up to meet her.
“That’s not possible.”
He could feel it then as she stared at him without moving, a cold and empty force that made the hairs on his nape stir, made his fingers clench and open.
He backed away.
She followed, the husk of her cloak, the whisper of her gown, the silence of her soles as they took another step down.
“I need to talk to him,” he said. “About the bowl.”
He didn’t realize he had reached the bottom until he felt Khirhal standing beside him. He whirled away, afraid of being struck though the man’s hands remained clasped and his eyes remained unfocused. Yasfiera stopped at the landing, a dark shadow in darkness.
“Jeff!” he yelled. “Jeffrey, can you hear me?”
Khirhal moved then, herding him slowly toward the door.
“The bowl, Mr. Vicar,” Yasfiera said, in a whisper that filled the house, and filled him with dread.
“That is something for Mr. Isle and I to discuss,” he said, more bravely than he felt.
“The bowl,” she repeated.
He started when the door thumped against his back, and he started again when Khirhal opened it without seeming to move. His hands felt gloved in ice. When he swallowed, he felt daggers. And when he backed onto the porch, Khirhal Bey nodded to him once, whispered, “It’s too late, my friend,” and gently, very gently, closed the door in his face.
Chapter 13
When the storm exploded over the village an hour past noon, there had been little warning save for the gathering of the wind, a swift darkening of the sky. A brilliant flare of lightning, a concussion of thunder, and the rain slanted in glistening sheets, drumming on slate roofs and rattling across panes, quickly filling the gutters and swelling the streams. Birds were driven to their nests, horses plunged in their stalls, pedestrians on Centre Street were drenched to the skin before they could find the safety of a shop, the temporary lee of a doorway that was no refuge at all when the wind abruptly changed.
Lightning, and thunder, and the screaming crack of a bole as an elm split and fell, the prolonged groan of carved granite as a headstone toppled in the mud, the silent rending of thick velvet when a branch lunged through a window.
Vera Avlock shrieked hysterically until the servants rushed into the bedroom and quickly disposed of the limb and stuffed rags into the break. Sterling stood in the doorway, hands on his hips, demanding to know what had interrupted his nap, didn’t anyone remember they had a dinner party that evening and he needed his rest?
Freddy cowered in the cluttered large closet, his eyes tightly shut, whimpering as he pulled a worn blanket to his chin, holding a stout length of wood across his quivering thighs, flinching at each thunderous peal, ducking his head when lightning ripped through the valley.
It had taken him most of Thursday to follow the secret way to his aunt’s empty home, but no one had seen him and that’s all that mattered. He was bad, very bad, for not going to work, but as soon as he had heard that Mr. Emmett was dead, he knew too that the graveyard was no place to be for someone like him.
For someone who had seen monsters that no one believed in.
And the moment he reached the cottage, he gathered all the food he could carry from the sparsely laden kitchen, the blankets from Gert’s sagging bed, the pillows, a lantern he made sure was filled and working. Then he locked the doors front and back and crawled into the closet, jammed a length of firewood under the latch, and pushed himself into the corner.
Waiting.
Listening.
Feeling the night grow darker, grow heavier, and fill with the mist that seeped up through the floorboards.
He said his prayers a hundred times, and a hundred times again, all the while trying to remember what he had seen that horrid day. Something he only vaguely understood that Mr. Vicar should know. But his mind kept wandering, and he wept at his failure, and chewed on a knuckle to bring on the pain that would force him to think, that would force him to remember.
While the night passed, and the wind rose, and the mist touched his face.
While the storm raged and shook the house and shattered the windows, slammed open the front door.
While he cried out at the lightning, and screamed when he recognized the scent of burning wood.
John sat in his study and stared at the bowl, willing it to tell him what he knew was hidden there and could not see because something was standing in the way, like a shadow. Part of it, he understood, was the unreasoning fear he’d experienced the night before, the way Yasfiera Bey and her brother had looked at him, spoken to him, and finally had driven him away.
He had barely slept.
He refused to dream.
And when the Karragans didn’t show up in the morning, he knew they were waiting for the storm to blow itself out.
Every lamp was lit then, every light switch thrown, and still he couldn’t banish the clinging damp cold, or the shadows inside that worked to strangle his soul.
He stared, and he rummaged yet again through his books, and just shy of sunset he sat up, his finger on a page that held a picture of the darkshadow.
The house whispered to itself as the storm seemed to linger directly above, panes trembling, boards creaking, the flames in the fireplace curling away from a draught; a shutter banging, a hinge squealing, the fingernail scrape of a branch over glass.
“Impossible,” he whispered. And, “Impossible!” much louder.
It was several minutes before he heard someone pounding on the front door.
He rubbed his eyes as he stood, rubbed them again and stretched as he walked slowly up the hall, glad for the interruption, relieved for the sudden breaking of the spell.
The pounding; and the storm.
“I’m coming,” he muttered. “Hold on, I’m coming.”
It was Jeffrey, his cloak wind-wrapped about his chest, his hair whipping at his eyes, rain running from his shoulders to puddles at his feet.
“God,” John exclaimed in relief and standing aside, “am I glad to see you. I’ve been — ”
“I can’t come in,” Isle told him curtly. “I have to know, John, if you’re going to give me the bowl.”
He squinted and turned his head away from a burst of blue-white lightning followed immediately by a peal of thunder that made his ears ring. “Jeff, this is wrong. I’ve already told you — ”
“I know that, damn you,” Isle said, nearly yelling. “And I’ve told you that you don’t understand.”
“Then for God’s sake, man, take the time to explain!”
Jeffrey glared at him before whirling away and stomping off the porch, heedless of the rain, braced against the wind. In the middle of the walk, he turned and raised a fist. “You’re a fool, John Vicar!” he cried over the storm. “You’re a goddamned stubborn foo!!”
John strode onto the porch with every intention of grabbing the man and dragging him back into the house. But he stopped. There was a carriage waiting on the Pike, and as Isle
climbed in, he could see someone else. A figure in a dark hood, who leaned over and stared at him, red lips in a smile.
He threw up a hand as if to protect himself from a blow, quickly stepped back inside and slammed and locked the door; a sudden weakening of his knees made him lean against it and marvel at the perspiration dripping from his brow.
Then he ran to the study and grabbed up the bowl, held it tightly in his left hand while he stared at the page.
Blackshadow.
A walking dead man.
Several thousand years old.
The crop twitched in her hand, and Betty told herself that using it on Sterling wouldn’t be the worst mistake she’d ever made. Nevertheless, she did her best to hold her temper while her brother-in-law paraded across the hearth, alternately bellowing demands at the Almighty and throwing demands at her. At one point during his tirade, she feared he was going to throw a glass of brandy in her face, which made her retreat to the living room entrance, still in her riding clothes, though she’d been home for hours, arriving just barely ahead of the storm.
“Do you have any idea,” he said acidly, “what sort of impression you’re making around here, my dear?”
She shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“It certainly matters if my sister-in-law brings disgrace upon this good house by insisting on looking like a common slut.”
The crop twitched again, and a fire burned in her cheeks. “Then would it matter,” she said, snapping the words like so many whips, “if your sister-in-law ordered you out of her house?”
He laughed. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“I am my father’s daughter more than my sister is,” she told him contemptuously. “I would dare. And unless you apologize, I shall dare.”
He sneered and turned away, resting an arm along the mantel. “Rebellion doesn’t suit you,” he said disdainfully. “Now do as you’re told, child-get out of those dreadful clothes and into something decent. Don’t you realize we’re having guests tonight? My god, first that damned window, and now this! Am I never going to have things go right for a change?”
The Universe of Horror Volume 3: The Long Night of the Grave (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 9