Hold The Dark m-3

by Frank Tuttle

  I shoved. I found a wall and leaned against it. The sun was getting low. Curfew was coming, and I was a long way from home.

  So I gritted my teeth, set my jaw and decided it was time for drastic action.

  I found the nearest blunt Watchman’s hat, dove into the crowd and steered toward it.

  I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, Martha’s strange rapport with repellant, hostile creatures ran the range from ogres all the way down to the Watch.

  Turns out, it had.

  The second Watchman I spoke to remembered Martha. They’d rarely spoken, he said, but she’d always smiled at him as she passed.

  He was a young man, my second Watchman. A vet, only two years on the Watch, which may explain why he was still human. And though neither the Hoobins nor Darla had stressed the point, I surmised Martha was unlikely to go unnoticed by any young human male.

  “Pretty, is she?”

  I swear the man blushed. “Yessir. Nice too. Didn’t ever seem like she was in a hurry either.”

  I’d nodded, hoping he’d go on, hoping he’d idly mention seeing Martha forced at sword point into a nearby shop or carried bodily into a carriage emblazoned with the name and address of the owner.

  He didn’t. Yes, he’d seen her pass, most days. No, he couldn’t recall the exact day he’d last seen her. No, she’d never been in the company of anyone else, neither had she ever seemed nervous nor upset or even mildly perturbed.

  He’d then surprised me by offering to ask his fellows the same questions. His name was Rupert, and I could find him again at the same street corner tomorrow.

  After that, I hoofed it west. The tall red brick buildings swept the cobblestone street with shadow, and the sky took on that brief blaze of crimson that heralds sunset. By the time I reached the plain, well-scrubbed buildings of the New People night had fallen and the Curfew bell had rung.

  And that last lingering bell toll cleared the streets, at least in this part of town.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets, walked on and whistled. My shoes made loud clop-cloppings on the pavement. A chilly wind sprang up and walked with me, sending paper scraps rustling behind me, setting neatly trimmed boxleaf shrubs tossing and making dry whispers in the dark.

  All in all, I was wishing I’d taken a cab. Not that I was afraid a passing halfdead might take a fancy to my upturned coat collar and decide I might do as a snack. But I wasn’t getting much out of this jaunt through the Hoobins’ neighborhood, my feet were tired and now I’d missed supper at Eddie’s.

  There were lights in most windows, and the scents of a thousand hearty suppers mingled with the shy wind. I’d expected the New People neighborhoods to be poor but well scrubbed. Instead, I had to look hard to see any signs of poverty. The doors were all square and plumb and light didn’t show at the edges. The windows sported new glass and frilly curtains and outside each one hung wood shutters painted to match all the rest. The stoops were all swept, and though I did see a child’s carved horse left out on one I never saw a drunk or a weed-head or even a smashed wine bottle.

  But the street was empty. That bothered me. If it was deserted or nearly so that evening Martha walked it, she could have been snatched. It would have to have been done quickly, it would have to have been done quietly, but there were ways to do both, and men who would do them.

  Why? I looked about me, at the warm homey glows from all those ranks of windows. Why Martha Hoobin?

  Curtains jerked as they were hastily drawn back. So. The street might be quiet, but that didn’t mean no one was watching.

  I squinted into the shadows, found a house number, tried to figure where I was in relation to the Hoobin place.

  It wasn’t far. My feet sent up a fresh pair of aches to let me know what they thought about that judgment, but I waved at my audience and moved on.

  Maybe, thought a small petty corner of my mind, maybe they’ll have supper done by now.

  I found the Hoobin place, banged on the door, waited while windows flared with sudden lights, dogs began to bark and I heard the sound of tramping feet behind the door.

  A panel opened in the door, and a pair of suspicious blue eyes regarded me from a cautious distance.

  The eyes went wide.

  “The finder!” shouted a Hoobin. Young Borod, I decided. “Ethel, it’s the finder!”

  Latches clicked, and bolts clacked, and I counted the release of four different locks before young Borod flung the massive door open and hauled me indoors with a frantic beefy handshake.

  His face was aglow, but that didn’t last long.

  “You did not find our Martha, no?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not yet.”

  Ethel came clambering down the stairs to the right of the door. He was wiping his mouth with a napkin. The other brothers were fast behind him.

  “Finder,” said Borod. “It is after Curfew. What is the matter?”

  I blinked in the light. My shoes scraped on clean white tiles.

  “Nothing,” I replied, trying not ogle. Tiles on the floor, walls of smooth new plaster, doors framed out in oak and cherry. “I’ve been out asking around, came up with a few more questions for you and your brothers.”

  “After Curfew?”

  I shrugged. Let them think I was Markhat the fearless finder, heedless of the halfdead. That was better than telling them I lost track of time and, by the way, I could use a bite of supper.

  “Finders can’t keep banker’s hours. Forgive me for interrupting your meal.”

  “You will join us of course,” said Ethel. “We talk and eat, no?”

  I nodded, and there was maybe just a ghost of a grin on his wide burn-marked face.

  “Yes,” I said, and Ethel turned and led the way.

  “Martha did all the cooking,” said Ethel. I suppose he was apologizing for the rudeness of the fare. He need not have, and I told him so.

  Roast beef, hot and plentiful, and steaming butter-filled sweet potatoes too. The Hoobins ate with the gusto one normally doesn’t see outside barnyards at feeding time. I noted that “leftovers” were a concept unknown to our brave New People as every morsel of every dish quickly vanished.

  Borod pushed back his empty plate and belched, and Disel caught him an open-handed slap on the back of his head. Ethel returned the blow to Lowrel with about double the force, and then everyone laughed, punched each other in the shoulder and stood.

  “We talk in great room,” said Ethel. He nodded at Borod, who sighed and set about clearing the table.

  And to the great room we went.

  We went down a hall filled with doors, two on each side, and then down the stairs, and then through a set of tall double-doors that creaked and screeched as they opened. Disel and Lowrel darted about lighting lamps, and Ethel motioned me toward a chair.

  “Nice room.” I meant it. They’d apparently gutted the bottom two floors of the building, just to make this one room. The walls were stone and plaster, rough-hewn beams spanned the far-off ceiling, and a monstrous soapstone fireplace and hearth covered most of one wall.

  I sat. The Hoobins took their places. Three chairs were empty-one for hapless Borod, who had garnered kitchen duty, a dainty one that must have been Mama Hoobin’s before she’d had her stroke and a well-upholstered cherry-framed Regency style recliner that I knew instantly was Martha’s.

  Ethel’s chair wasn’t central to the fireplace. Martha’s was. And beside her chair sat a small Regency claptrap table, its polished round top covered with a neat assortment of sewing goods, a pair of expensive gold-rimmed reading glasses and a thick leather-bound black book with gilt-edged pages.

  Ethel saw me look and nodded.

  “Martha’s,” he said. The other Hoobins nodded. “Now tell us, finder. What have you come to say?”

  “I’ve been to the Velvet. I spoke to a woman named Darla.”

  “We know this woman Darla,” said Ethel. His tone was neutral, merely matter-of-fact, but it hid a hint of disdain. I gathered Ethel didn
’t approve of Darla’s un-Balptist sense of humor.

  “I’ve also talked to some Watchmen,” I said. Disel snorted, went quiet at a glance from Ethel. “The Watchman remembers seeing Martha, now and again. He doesn’t recall anything unusual, on that last day.”

  Ethel nodded.

  “I’ve got a feeling that’s all we’re going to get out of the Watch or the Velvet or the people on the street,” I said, gently. “That’s all we’ll get, because that’s all they know.”

  Ethel looked confused, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “I need to look in other directions,” I said. “And I need to start by looking here. In Martha’s room. At her things.”

  Lowrel and Disel, in perfect unison, sat bolt upright and half-rose from the enormous chairs. Ethel stilled them both with a slight lifting on his right hand.

  “Missus Hog told us you could see through shadows that left others blind,” he said, staring at me. “She said we were to do as you ask, even if it goes against our ways.”

  Lowrel and Disel sat, turned their glares on the toes of their boots.

  “What you ask-to touch her things, to see what only a husband must see-is it necessary, finder? Do you must?”

  “I must. There might be something there-or something missing-that could tell us what happened.” I spread my hands, imploring. “Martha’s been gone seven days. You don’t know where she’ll be, this night. I don’t know either. But if we all agree that she isn’t where she is by choice, we must also agree that she is probably in danger.” I rose. I’d saved my best for last. “Didn’t Mrs. Hog tell you I could be trusted?”

  Ethel was still a moment. Then he nodded, once, his gaze never leaving mine.

  “Up the stair. Third floor. Last door on left.”

  “Is it locked?”

  “This be home,” said Ethel. “What manner of people lock their doors at home?”

  I didn’t answer. I just got up, found the stairs and ascended before one or all of the brothers changed their minds.

  But the stairs remained empty behind me. I found the third floor, counted doors and put my hand on the polished brass knob that led to Martha’s room.

  I put my hand on it, but didn’t turn it right away. I listened to the sounds of the house-the creaking of wood beams, a soft hooting of wind somewhere up in the attic, a gentle snoring that came from the bedridden Mother Hoobin’s room. All the sounds were muffled and faraway, lost in the big solid confines of the house. They were gentle sounds, homey sounds, the sort of easy familiar sounds that lull you right to sleep.

  I turned the knob, pushed and let light from the hall lamps spill in before me.

  It was just as I imagined. Neat and orderly. Hand-sewn and bright and comfortable. There was a four-poster bed with veils hung across the posts and a big iron-banded cedar chest at its foot. There was a polished oak dresser that hadn’t come from any flooded farmstead, a big round mirror hung on the plaster wall above it. There was a nightstand on the far side of the bed, a flower-box beyond the window and a door that led to a bathroom on the far wall. There were lamps, and a handful of long matches in a silver vase. I lit both lamps and looked about.

  The wood floors were covered with two big red rugs, the weave and dye so fine I found myself unconsciously tip-toeing over them.

  A pair of fuzzy slippers waited by the bed. A second pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses sat atop a book on the nightstand. A long-hemmed, plush, red bathrobe hung on a hook by the bathroom door.

  And there was the closet. I made for it first.

  If it was empty, I had some bad news for the Hoobins. But I doubted I’d find it empty-anyone who packed their clothes would certainly take their reading glasses and a book or two as well.

  The closet was full. I mean packed tight-clothes upon clothes upon clothes. I pulled a handful of dresses out at random and spread them on the bed.

  Darla had been right. Martha had a gift. She’d taken silk and cotton and wool and made works of art.

  I poked around in the closet, counted ten pairs of shoes, fifty-six dresses, nineteen pairs of pants and a plethora of hats and scarves and undergarments I left untouched lest the Hoobins hang me from a ceiling beam or mount my head above the mantel. Also in the corner was a good leather clothes bag. It was new and empty and if it had ever been used I couldn’t spot it.

  I finished poking in the corners and turned from the closet to the dresser. I spent a few moments rifling through the drawers, starting at the bottom and working toward the top like a good burglar. Stockings and unmentionables and bolts of silk and linen were all I found.

  Atop the dresser lay neat ranks of moderately expensive make-up, the various and sundry tools of application, and a plain glass jar full to the brim with clothes-pins, bent needles and bits of this and that.

  Satisfied that the dresser contained no threatening letters from deranged suitors or the torn halves of still-legible stagecoach tickets, I opened the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. There were more clothes, more bolts of new fabric, a stack of old books and a tiny cedar jewelry box in which a single gold ring lay. Atop it all was a ragged stuffed bear, more tatters than fur, wrapped in a clean white towel with a tiny pillow tucked under its head.

  I closed the chest and entered the bathroom. Aside from a fancy flushing toilet and hot running water in the sink, I found nothing there worth mentioning except the half-used bottle of bath suds that smelled of Darla’s hair.

  I closed the bathroom door behind me, heard footfalls on the stair, counted, divided and decided that all the Hoobins were about to pop in and see what I was up to.

  I sighed, regarded my glum expression in Martha’s big round dressing mirror, and saw a tiny glimmer of silver from deep within the junk jar at the edge of her dresser.

  I went that way. I’d marveled at the way Martha’s make-up, combs and whatnots were lined up in neat ranks on the dresser-top. You see that a lot, with poor folks who come into money-they tend to treat every possession, no matter how humble, like a treasure. Martha was certainly that way. The junk jar was only there for things she didn’t want to throw away yet, but had no particular affection for.

  So what was that gleaming silver at the bottom?

  I was dumping it out just as Ethel popped his head in the door.

  “Have you found aught amiss?” he said.

  I froze. There it is, said a voice only I could hear. Finally.

  “Oh, I have indeed.” I picked my “aught amiss” up, shook a pair of sewing needles out of the bristles. “Have you ever seen this before? Any of you?”

  I held it up, and they crowded around, tip-toeing on Martha’s fine red rugs just as I had.

  I’d found a comb. A silver-handled comb, worked in the shape of a swan, finely cast, laden with detail, heavy in my hand like the small fortune it surely cost.

  The brothers Hoobin shook their honest heads.

  “No, never.”

  “Not I.”

  “Nor I.”

  “No,” said Ethel. He scowled at the comb as if he could make it confess to a litany of sins merely by glaring it toward righteousness. “No, I have not seen this thing.”

  I nodded toward the dresser. “But you have seen that one. The comb there.”

  I pointed. They all nodded yes. “It was our mother’s, and her mother’s before,” said Ethel. “From where did this comb come?”

  I squinted. There were no hairs in the bristles.

  You use a comb once-even once-and there will be hairs.

  I felt like dancing. Instead, I shrugged. “I found it there. Stuffed in that jar, with a lot of other junk.”

  “But it is not junk,” said Ethel. “Is silver, no?”

  “Silver, all right. Well worked.” I turned the comb. Let it glisten in the light. “But Martha put it in that jar. She never once used it.”

  Ethel held out his hand. I let him take the comb.

  He closed his eyes, gripped it tight. The other Hoobins closed their eyes and began to mumbl
e what I took to be lilting Balptist prayers.

  I shut up and watched. Ethel’s face went red, his jaw quivered and I could see his teeth grind together through the skin of his cheeks. I counted to fifty and decided Hoobins didn’t breathe like mere city folk when his ears flushed and he opened his eyes and sucked in a lungful of air.

  He flung the comb down, atop Martha’s bed.

  “I could see nothing,” he said, more to his brothers than to me. “Nothing to help, or find.”

  I frowned. “What were you looking for?” I said.

  “For Martha,” he said. “Sight runs in our family. But mostly to the women. And Momma is stricken, Martha is gone and it is for you to find her.” He took up the comb, holding it gingerly, as though it were hot, or unclean. “Take this, finder. Take whatever you will. Take and find.” His gaze turned down, and he sagged. “This much I saw, brothers. Martha lives. But only at the sufferance of those who know neither mercy nor shame.” He looked up at me again, sky blue eyes wet and pleading. “Find her. Any price. We will pay.”

  I took the comb and looked about at Martha’s things, at the sad rabbit-furred slippers waiting by her bed, at the bathrobe patient on its hook.

  “I’ll find her,” I said. “And you’ll pay what we agreed, no more.”

  Ethel nodded. His eyes were welling up, and I got out of there, preferring the tender mercies of halfdead or the Night Watch to the spectacle of all the Hoobins weeping around Martha’s empty red chair.

  Chapter Four

  I kept to the middle of the street, all the way out of the New People neighborhoods. I even whistled an old Army marching song and put a jaunt in my step, jut to let the scores of New People peeping down at me know how much vampires and silly Curfew laws meant to the fearless finder Markhat.

  Once out of sight, of course, I shut my fool mouth and slunk all the way home, darting from doorway to doorway, giving dark alleyways wide berth, hiding twice from passing Watchmen and once from a band of mean-eyed drunks.

  By the time I reached Cambrit, I was winded and weary, but none the wiser. I toyed with the comb in my pocket, but saw no further than Ethel had. Had Martha bought the comb for herself? It seemed unlikely-why spend so much on a bauble, if she’d planned to toss it out when the junk jar filled up?