Speaks the Nightbird

by Robert R. McCammon

  Matthew caught a hint of bitterness. “Why? Was your father discharged?”

  “Not that. It was my father’s wish to leave. He didn’t care for the way Mr. Cedarholm—the man who owned the circus—had decided to run things. My father is a very decent man, God love him, and he bridled about bringing in the freaks.”

  Matthew suddenly stopped his pacing. “Freaks?”

  “Yes. Three of them, to begin with.”

  “Three,” Matthew repeated. “May I…ask what they were?”

  “The first was a black-skinned lizard, as big as a ram. The thing had come from some South Sea island, and it near made my mother faint to look upon it.”

  “The second,” Matthew said, his mouth dry. “Might it have been an imp of some kind? A dwarf, possibly, with a childlike face and long white hair?”

  “Yes. Exactly that. How did…” Now Smythe truly appeared confounded. “How did you know?”

  “The third,” Matthew prompted. “Was it…an unspeakable thing?”

  “The third one was what made my father pack our bags. It was a hermaphrodite with the breasts of a woman and…the tools of a man. My father said even Satan would shrink to look upon such a blasphemy.”

  “Your father might be interested, Mr. Smythe, to know that all three of those creatures have lately found work in Fount Royal, with Satan’s blessing. Oh, I have him now! I have him!” Matthew couldn’t restrain himself from smacking his palm with his fist, his eyes bright with the fire of the hunt. He immediately reined in his enthusiasm, as he noted that Smythe took a backward step and appeared concerned that he might be dealing with a lunatic. “I have a request. Again, a very important one. I happen to know where Lancaster lives. It’s not very far from here, at the end of this street. Would you go there with me—this moment—and look upon him face-to-face and tell me you positively know he’s the man you claim him to be?”

  “I’ve already told you. I saw his eyes, which are as unforgettable as his voice. It is him.”

  “Yes, but nevertheless I require you to identify him in my presence.” Matthew also wanted Lancaster to know before another hour had passed that a blade had been thrust into his repugnant, inhuman plans, and twisted for good measure.

  “I…do have some work to get done. Perhaps later this afternoon?”

  “No,” Matthew said. “Now.” He correctly read the reticence in Smythe’s eyes. “As an officer of the court, I must tell you this is official business. Also that I am empowered by Magistrate Woodward to compel you to accompany me.” It was an outright falsehood, but Matthew had no time for dawdling.

  Smythe, who obviously had well learned the lessons of decency from his esteemed father, said, “No compelling is necessary, sir. If this has to do with a matter of law, I should be glad to go.”

  Matthew and Smythe proceeded along Industry Street—the former in expectant haste and the latter more understandably moderate in his willingness to advance—toward the house of the formerly known Gwinett Linch. Smythe’s pace slowed as they reached the execution field, and he regarded the stake and pyre with dread fascination. An oxcart had been pulled up beside the woodpile, and two men—one of them the giant Mr. Green, Matthew saw—were at work unloading another cargo of witch-burning fuel.

  Yes, build it up! Matthew thought. Waste your muscles and your minutes, for when this day is done one less nightbird shall be confined in a cage and one more vulture there in her place!

  Further on stood the house. “My God!” Smythe said, aghast. “Mr. Lancaster lives there?”

  “Lancaster lives within,” Matthew replied, his pace yet quickening. “The ratcatcher has groomed the exterior.”

  He felt a gnaw of disappointment. No smoke rose from the chimney, though indeed the breakfast hour was long past. But all the shutters were closed, indicating that Lancaster was out. Matthew inwardly muttered a curse, for he’d wished to have this identification promptly done and then escort Smythe directly to see Bidwell. It dawned on him that if Lancaster was indeed in there, closed up from the sunlight like a night-faring roach, he might turn violent, and they had no weapon of defense. Perhaps it would be best to go fetch Mr. Green as a precaution. But then another thought hit Matthew, and this one had terrible implications.

  What if Lancaster, upon knowing he’d been recognized, had fled Fount Royal? He would have had ample time last night. But what was the procedure for getting out the gate after sunset? Surely such a thing was unheard of. Would the watchman have allowed him to leave without informing Bidwell? But what if Lancaster had saddled a horse and gone yesterday afternoon while it was still light?

  “You’re near running!” Smythe said, trying to keep up. Without Lancaster, Rachel’s fate was still in doubt. Damned right Matthew was nearly running, and he did break into a run the final twenty yards.

  He slammed his fist on the door. He had expected no answer, and therefore was immediately prepared to do what he next did: open the door and enter.

  Before he could cross the threshold, Matthew was struck in the face.

  Not by any physical fist, but rather by the overwhelming smell of blood. He instinctively recoiled, his mouth coming open in a gasp.

  These were the things he saw, in a torrent of hideous impressions: light, streaming between the shutter slats and glistening off the dark red blood that had pooled on the floorboards and made large brown blotches on the pallet’s sheet; Lancaster’s corpse, lying on its right side on the floor, the left hand gripping at the sheet as if to pull itself up, the mouth and icy gray eyes horribly open in a slashed and clawed face, and the throat cut like a red-lipped grin from ear to ear; the formerly meticulous household ravaged as if by a whirlwind, clothes pulled from the trunk and strewn about; desk drawers wrenched out and upturned, cooking implements thrown hither and yon; hearth ashes scooped up and tossed to settle over the corpse like grave dust.

  Smythe had also seen. He gave a choked moan and staggered back, and then off he ran along Industry Street in the direction of his companions, his face bone-white and his mouth trailing the shattering cry, “Murder! Murder!”

  The shout might have alarmed everyone else who heard it, but it served to steady Matthew’s nerves because he knew he had only a short time to inspect this gruesome scene before being intruded upon. He realized as well that the sight of Lancaster lying dead and so brutally disfigured must have been the same sight viewed by Reverend Grove’s wife and by Jess Maynard, who had discovered Daniel Howarth’s body. Little wonder, then, that Mrs. Grove and the Maynards had fled town.

  The cut throat. The face savaged by demonic claws. And, it appeared, the shoulders, arms, and chest also slashed through the bloody ribbons of the man’s shirt.

  Yes, Matthew thought. A true Satan had been at work here.

  He felt sick to his stomach and scared out of his wits, but he had time for neither debility. He looked about the wreckage. The desk’s drawers, all the papers and everything else dumped out, the inkwell smashed. He wished to find two items before Mr. Green surely arrived: the sapphire brooch and the book on ancient Egypt. But even as he knelt down to negotiate this mess of blood, ink, and blood-inked papers he knew with a sinking certainty that those two items, above all else, would not be found.

  He spent a moment or two in search, but when he suffered the smear of blood on his hands he gave up the quest as both impossible and unreasonable. He was fast weakening in this charnel house, and the desire for fresh air and untainted sunlight was a powerful call. It occurred to him that Smythe had been correct: Lancaster would indeed not be caught dead in his ratcatcher’s rags, as he wore what had once been a white shirt and a pair of dark gray breeches.

  And now the need to get out was too much to withstand. Matthew stood up and, as he turned to the door—which had not opened to its full extent, but rather just enough to allow his entry—he saw what was scrawled there on its inner surface in the clotted ink of Lancaster’s veins.

  My Rachel

  Is Not

  Alone
/>   In the space of a hammered heartbeat Matthew’s flesh prickled and the hairs rose at the back of his neck. The first words that came to his mind were Oh…shit.

  He was still staring numbly at that damning declaration a moment later when Hannibal Green came through the door, followed by the other rustic with whom he’d been working. At once Green stopped in his tracks, his red-bearded face twisted with horror. “Christ’s Mercy!” he said, stunned to the soles of his four-teen-inch boots. “Linch?” He looked at Matthew, who nodded, and then Green saw the clerk’s gore-stained hands and hollered, “Randall! Go fetch Mr. Bidwell! Now!”

  In the time that ensued, Green would have thought Matthew a bloody-handed murderer had not David Smythe, pallid but resolute, returned to the scene and explained they’d both been together when the corpse was discovered. Matthew took the opportunity to wipe his hands on one of the clean shirts that had been so rudely torn from the trunk. Then Green had his own hands full trying to keep people who’d been alerted by Smythe’s cry—among them Martin and Constance Adams—out of the house.

  “Is that Lancaster?” Matthew asked Smythe, who stood to one side staring down at the corpse.

  Smythe swallowed. “His face is…so…swollen, but…I know the eyes. Unforgettable. Yes. This man…was Jonathan Lancaster.”

  “Move back!” Green told the onlookers. “Move back, I said!” Then he had no choice but to close the door in the gawkers’ faces, and thereupon he saw the bloody scrawl.

  Matthew thought Green might go down, for he staggered as if from a mighty blow. When he turned his head to look at Matthew, his eyes seemed to have shrunken and retreated in his face. He spoke in a very small voice, “I shall…I shall guard the door from the outside.” So saying, he was gone like a shot.

  Smythe had also seen the bloody writing. His mouth opened, but he made not a sound. Then he lowered his head and followed Green out the door with similar haste.

  Now the die was well and truly cast. Alone in the house with the deadly departed, Matthew knew this was the funeral bell for Fount Royal. Once word got out about that declaration on the door—and it was probably beginning its circuit of tongues right now, starting with Green—the town wouldn’t be worth a cup of cold drool.

  He avoided looking at Lancaster’s face, which had not only been severely clawed but had become misshapen from such injury. He knelt down and continued his search for the brooch and book, this time using a cloth to move aside blood-spattered wreckage. Presently a wooden box caught his attention, and he lifted its lid to find within the tools of the ratcatcher’s trade: the odious long brown seedbag that had served to hold rodent carcasses, the stained deerskin gloves, the cowhide bag, and various wooden jars and vials of—presumably—rat bait. Also in the box was the single blade—wiped clean and shining—that had been secured to the end of the ratcatcher’s sticker.

  Matthew lifted his gaze from the box and looked around the room. Where was the sticker itself? And—most importantly—where was that fearsome appliance with the five curved blades that Hazelton had fashioned?

  Nowhere to be seen.

  Matthew opened the cowhide bag, and in doing so noted two drops and a smear of dried blood near its already-loosened drawstring. The bag was empty.

  To be such a cleanliness fanatic, why would Lancaster have not wiped the rodent blood from the side of this bag before putting it back into the wooden box? And why was the five-bladed appliance—that “useful device” as Lancaster had called it—not here with the other utensils?

  Now Matthew did force himself to look at Lancaster’s face, and the claw marks upon it. With a mind detached from his revulsion he studied the vicious slashings on the corpse’s shoulders, arms, and chest.

  He knew.

  In perhaps another fifteen minutes, during which Matthew searched without success for the appliance, the door opened again—tentatively, this time—and the master of Fount Royal peered in with eyes the size of teacup saucers. “What…what has happened here?” he gasped.

  “Mr. Smythe and I found this scene. Lancaster has left us,” Matthew said.

  “You mean…Linch.”

  “No. He was never truly Gwinett Linch. His name is—was—Jonathan Lancaster. Please come in.”

  “Must I?”

  “I think you should. And please close the door.”

  Bidwell entered, wearing his bright blue suit. The look of sickness contorted his face. He did close the door, but he remained pressed firmly against it.

  “You ought to see what you’re pressing against,” Matthew said.

  Bidwell looked at the door, and like Green he staggered and almost fell. His jerking away from it made him step into the bloody mess on the floor and for a dangerous instant he balanced on the precipice of falling alongside the corpse. His fight against gravity was amazing for a man of his size, and with sheer power of determination—and more than a little abject, breeches-wetting terror—he righted himself.

  “Oh my Jesus,” he said, and he took off both his bright blue tricorn and his gray curled wig and mopped his sandy pate with a handkerchief. “Oh dear God…we’re doomed now, aren’t we?”

  “Steady yourself,” Matthew instructed. “This was done by a human hand, not a spectral one.”

  “A human hand? Are you out of your mind? Only Satan himself could have done this!” He pushed the handkerchief to his nose to filter the blood smell. “It’s the same as was done to the reverend and Daniel Howarth! Exactly the same!”

  “Which should tell you the same man committed all three murders. In this case, though, I think there was a falling out of compatriots.”

  “What are you running off at the lips about now?” Bidwell’s sickness had receded and anger was beginning to flood into its mold. “Look at that on the door! That’s a message from the damned Devil! Good Christ, my town will be dust and maggots before sunset! Oh!” It was a wounded, terrible cry, and his eyes appeared near bursting out. “If the witch is not alone…then who might the other witches and warlocks be?”

  “Shut up that yammering and listen to me!” Matthew advanced upon Bidwell until they stood face to sweating face. “You’ll do yourself and Fount Royal no good to fall to pieces! If your town needs anything now, it’s a true leader, not a bullier or a weeper!”

  “How…how dare you…”

  “Put aside your bruised dignity, sir. Just stand there and listen. I am as confounded about this as you, because I thought Linch—Lancaster—was alone in his crimes. Obviously—and stupidly—I was wrong. Lancaster and his killer were working together to paint Rachel as a witch and destroy your town.”

  “Boy, your love for that witch will put you burning at her side!” Bidwell shouted, his face bright red and the veins pulsing at his temples. He looked to be courting an explosion that would blow off the top of his head. “If you wish to go to Hell with her, I can arrange it!”

  “This was written on the door,” Matthew said coldly, “by a human hand determined to finish Fount Royal at one fell swoop. The same hand that cut Lancaster’s throat and—when he was dead or dying—used the ratcatcher’s own five-bladed device to strike him repeatedly, thereby giving the impression of a beast’s claws. That device was also used to inflict similar wounds on Reverend Grove and Daniel Howarth.”

  “Yes, yes, yes! It’s all as you say, isn’t it? Everything is as you say!”

  “Most everything,” Matthew answered.

  “Well, you didn’t even see those other bodies, so how can you know? And what nonsense is this about some kind of five-bladed device?”

  “You’ve never seen it? Then again, I doubt you would have. Seth Hazelton forged it for the use—he thought—of killing rats. Actually, it was probably planned for its current use all along.”

  “You’re mad! Absolutely roaring mad!”

  “I am neither mad,” Matthew said, “nor roaring, as you are. To prove my sanity, I will ask Mr. Smythe to go to your house and explain to you Lancaster’s true identity as he explained it to me. I
think you’ll find it worth your while.”

  “Really?” Bidwell sneered. “If that’s the case, you’d best go find him! When my carriage passed their camp, the actors were packing their wagons!”

  Now a true spear of terror pierced Matthew’s heart. “What?”

  “That’s right! They were in a fever to do it, too, and now I know why! I’m sure there’s nothing like finding a Satan-mauled corpse and a bloody message from Hell to put one in mind for a merry play!”

  “No! They can’t leave yet!” Matthew was out the door faster even than Green’s pistol-ball exit. Straightaway his progress was blocked by the seven or eight persons who stood just outside, including Green himself. Then he had to negotiate a half-dozen more citizens who dawdled between the house and Industry Street. He saw Goode sitting in the driver’s seat of Bidwell’s carriage, but the horses faced west and getting them turned east would take too long. He set off toward the maskers’ camp, running so fast he lost his left shoe and had to forfeit precious time putting it back on.

  Matthew let loose a breath of relief when he reached the campsite and saw that, though the actors were indeed packing their trunks, costumes, featherboxes, and all the rest of their theatrical belongings, none of the horses had yet been hitched to a wagon. There was activity aplenty, however, and it was obvious to Matthew that Smythe’s tale of what was discovered had put the fear of Hell’s wrath into these people.

  “Mr. Brightman!” Matthew called, seeing the man helping another thespian lift a trunk onto a wagon. He rushed over. “It’s urgent I speak with Mt. Smythe!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Corbett. David is not to be spoken with.” Brightman looked past Matthew. “Franklin! Help Charles fold up that tent!”

  “I must,” Matthew insisted.

  “That’s impossible, sir.” Brightman stalked off toward another area of the camp, and Matthew walked at his side. “If you’ll pardon me, I have much work to do. We plan on leaving as soon as we’re packed.”

  “You needn’t leave. None of your troupe is in danger.”

  “Mr. Corbett, when we discovered your…um…situation with the witch from a source in Charles Town, I myself was reluctant—extremely reluctant—to come here. But to be perfectly honest we had nowhere else to go. Mr. Bidwell is a very generous friend, therefore I was talked into making the trip.” Brightman stopped walking and turned to face Matthew. “I regret my decision, young man. When David told me what had happened…and what he saw in that house…I immediately gave the order to break camp. I am not going to risk the lives of my troupe for any amount that Mr. Bidwell might put on our table. End of pronouncement.” He began walking once more and boomed, “Thomas! Make sure all the boots are in that box!”