The Infernal Express

by Josh Reynolds

  It burned like an inferno. It blazed more brightly than any earthly fire, and within its coruscating depths, something moved. A chill rippled down his spine as he watched it, and he heard the maniacal skirl of ancient pipes and the clash of cymbals. Ghostly shapes writhed sinuously about the seated man, swaying and flickering in time to some hideous melody of which St. Cyprian was only able to comprehend the faintest echo. His tongue burned with the mingled taste of wine and blood, and he saw something looking out through Bonneville’s eyes, looking at him and…

  …his inner eye slammed shut, hard enough to send a wave of pain rippling through his mind as he was abruptly wrenched back to reality. Bonneville had noticed nothing, and was still talking. “Blake knew, though he did not understand. And others besides—Machen, Byron…Dionysians all.”

  “And Jack the Ripper as well, I suppose,” St. Cyprian said as he rubbed his aching head. The Ripper had been a black stone dropped in the river of London’s history. Every year saw new theories, new claims as to his identity and motive, each more impossible than the last. Men grafted their own story to the Ripper’s deeds. Sometimes, as with the members of the late, unlamented Whitechapel Club, the result was something truly abominable. They, at least, had only summoned a monstrous apparition by accident. Bonneville was intentionally, and with malice aforethought, calling something into being.

  “Oh he was more than that,” Bonneville said. “He was the last of a storied line, I think. And I, his successor. The Romans were not as thorough as they might have liked, when they banned Bacchic cults. But the cults simply went underground, until Caesar resurrected them in order to placate the mob. The priesthood of Bacchus continued on, through famine, fire and flood, through the death-throes of one empire and the rise of another. But…this age…this pestilential age of choking smog and belching chimneys…” He shook his head. “It could not be borne. So I have conceived of a powerful ritual…the Magna Bacchanalia.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The Magna Bacchanalia, the Great Revelry,” Bonneville said, slopping wine on his trousers. “A rite to open the gates of men’s unconscious minds, to unleash the irrational and set London ablaze.” He shouted the last word, eliciting a stirring from the direction of the door. One of the club’s porters peered in, a worried expression on his face. Bonneville twisted around and snapped off a shot, mutilating a bust of Quatermain above the door. The porter retreated with a yell, as Bonneville whipped back around.

  St. Cyprian, half out of his chair, found himself nose-to-nose with the Webley. He sat back down carefully. “You were saying?” he said, politely. I wonder if Gallowglass heard that, he thought. He hoped so. He could feel something rising in the air, as just before a storm. Bonneville was growing increasingly agitated.

  “But the ritual, alas, was interrupted. I was prevented from completing that most sacred of rites by your meddling,” Bonneville said, through gritted teeth. “So, it is your turn now. Tell me a tale. Tell me how you came to be on my trail.”

  “That’s hardly of interest, I should think,” St. Cyprian said.

  Bonneville cocked the Webley. “I insist.”

  “A ghost,” St. Cyprian said. Keep him talking, he thought. The longer he kept Bonneville babbling, the longer he had to figure out some way out of the situation.

  “Eh?”

  “A ghost, Dr. Bonneville. A spirit, a phantom, a poor benighted wraith, torn from this earth too soon by the blade of your knife,” St. Cyprian said. He made to reach for his coat pocket, but paused. “Might I trouble you to allow me a last cigarette while I talk? Condemned man, and all that, what?” he said, smiling crookedly.

  “Fine, yes. But what do you mean, a ghost?”

  “London is full of the dratted things, and many of them are quite chatty, if one has the wit and wile to converse with them.” St. Cyprian pulled his cigarette case from his coat and extracted one. He stuffed it between his lips and lit a match with his thumbnail.

  “Which you do,” Bonneville said, eyes narrowed.

  “Obviously,” St. Cyprian said, puffing on his cigarette. He expelled smoke from his nostrils and smiled. “Otherwise, how could I have linked such savage murders with esteemed historian and lecturer, Dr. Briseus Bonneville?”

  “Deductive reasoning,” Bonneville said. “Ratiocination, perhaps. You are an agent of the police, no doubt. Some Scotland Yard jack-in-office…”

  “Come now, do I look like Sherlock Holmes?” St. Cyprian blew a plume of smoke into the air. “No Dr. Bonneville, I am only affiliated with the police in the loosest sense of the word. You did not allow me to finish my introductions earlier—I have the honour and distinction to be His Majesty’s Royal Occultist.” St. Cyprian paused for a beat. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

  Bonneville blinked. “No.”

  St. Cyprian’s face fell. “No?”

  “I’m sorry, no,” Bonneville said.

  St. Cyprian sat back. “It’s one of the oldest offices in Great Britain.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Bonneville said.

  “Created by good Queen Bess herself, and bestowed upon Dr. John Dee, for services rendered to the crown,” St. Cyprian said. “Formed for the express purpose of investigating those occurrences deemed to be outside…the…remit of—oh dash it. Fine, no, never mind.” He flipped a hand dismissively. “Fine, who cares? Where were we?”

  “You were babbling about a ghost,” Bonneville said.

  “Yes,” St. Cyprian said. “As I was saying, I simply asked the ghost of your latest—ah—’maenad’ who had done for her.”

  “And she told you, did she?” Bonneville said, with a smirk.

  “Well, yes, actually. What you did to Eleanor Caudwell was quite cruel,” St. Cyprian said softly. Bonneville flinched.

  “Cruelty in good cause is no cruelty at all,” he said.

  “Ah, well, there you and I differ, I think,” St. Cyprian said.

  Bonneville hesitated. He cocked his head. “I was right then, wasn’t I? If one such as you—Royal Occultist indeed—is here, then I am on the right path. The Magna Bacchanalia is close to culmination, and the thirsty London stones wait for but a single goblet more!” His voice rose in pitch, and his eyes shone with an ugly light. He pushed himself out of his chair, emptied his glass and hurled it to the floor.

  He took aim at St. Cyprian with his pistol and touched his chest. “I can feel it building within me, my Magna Bacchanalia. I hear the flutes and pipes of Bacchus, growing louder with every drop of blood spilled.” As he spoke, St. Cyprian flinched back into his chair. He could hear it as well—an arrhythmic keening, rising up from somewhere deep and wholly unpleasant. Bonneville had awakened something.

  And whatever it was, it was beginning to stir in the shadows of reality.

  2.

  “Well, somebody will be screaming anyway,” a voice said in the sudden silence which followed Bonneville’s declaration. The sound of a revolver being cocked followed. Bonneville turned stiffly, eyes narrowed, and St. Cyprian followed his gaze.

  A young woman, dark and slightly feral looking, wearing a man’s clothes and a battered flat cap resting high on her head, sat on the bar. There was a bottle of Schiedam balanced on her knee, and a Webley-Fosbery revolver extended before her. “Drop it, or I drop you,” Ebe Gallowglass said, grinning at Bonneville.

  “How the devil did you get in here?” Bonneville snarled.

  She shrugged. “Sneaky, innit?”

  “Gallowglass is a master of the art of the unobtrusive sidle, and a champion creeper. Practically an alley cat in a flat cap,” St. Cyprian said as he stubbed out his cigarette and stood. He glanced at her. “You heard the gunshot?”

  “Both of them. I rang the plods,” she said, still looking at Bonneville. “I said drop it.”

  Bonneville shook his head. “I think not, my dear. I was wondering how I might extricate myself from this club, and seek out my final maenad, but here you are, reeking of gin.” He laughed and swung his pistol towards her, eve
n as he reached into his coat. He fired, and St. Cyprian’s head throbbed as the unnatural music reached a crescendo. Whatever Bonneville had awoken, now had its full attentions fixed on them.

  Bonneville’s bullet chewed the bar as Gallowglass flung the bottle she’d been holding at him. He ducked and fired again. The bottle shattered against the wall. Gallowglass slid behind the bar. St. Cyprian clawed for the Webley in his pocket, and Bonneville twisted about, eel-quick, and his hand emerged from his coat, holding a slim-bladed knife. He chopped down, catching the barrel of St. Cyprian’s revolver even as he raised it. The weapon was torn from his hand with stinging force. He stumbled back as Bonneville came after him with a leopard-scream.

  “Oi, over here,” Gallowglass shouted, leaning over the bar. Her Webley-Fosbery roared, and Bonneville twisted with inhuman grace, the buttons on his waistcoat popping as he undulated like a dancer on a Minoan mural. He sped towards her, gun barking, driving her back. Bonneville tossed the empty weapon aside and flung himself onto the bar.

  His knife swept out, shattering glass and popping corks, filling the air with the scent of alcohol. Bonneville moved like a man possessed, his arms stretching farther and faster than they ought, as he reached down and plucked Gallowglass from behind the bar and flung her to the floor on the other side. She landed in a heap, her pistol clattering from her hand. St. Cyprian moved to help her, but Bonneville got there first.

  He jerked her to her feet, and encircled her neck with his arm, so that the edge of his blade pressed to her carotid artery. “We’ll call it a double-header, yes? Two for one,” Bonneville said. He cackled as he pressed the blade tight against Gallowglass’ throat. “I shall open her up, and London with her—the Apollonian will give way to the Dionysian, and mankind will learn new ways to laugh, revel and kill!”

  As Bonneville ranted, pale wisps of things clustered about him, like coiling wreaths of ivy. St. Cyprian realized with a chill that the insubstantial entities were where the other man’s strength was coming from. They inundated him, leeching from him, even as he took from them. Whatever they were—Maenads, spectres, something else—they were hooked into him, battening on him. “I shall make of this world a red Shambhala,” Bonneville said.

  “Or maybe you’ll hang,” St. Cyprian said. His hands clenched uselessly as he stared at the knife pressed to his assistant’s throat. Bonneville was too fast—too strong. Nevertheless, he had to try. “Either way, I don’t think I’ll give you that chance—Gallowglass!” He lunged forward and Bonneville instinctively slashed out at him. Gallowglass’ foot came down on his instep and he howled. He shoved her aside and swept his blade out, tearing a strip from St. Cyprian’s waistcoat as the latter stumbled back.

  “Can you hear it? The clash of knives, the wet rip of parting flesh, the skirl of pipes,” Bonneville hissed, his eyes starting from their sockets. “I hear the screams, even as the others must have. Bacchus spoke to them, in those red moments, even as he speaks to me. Can you hear it—the sound of the Great Revelry to come?”

  St. Cyprian could, though he dearly wished otherwise. The whole room was shaking. The remaining bottles behind the bar trembled and shifted, and the glasses clattered. He could hear snatches of wild laughter and that same abominable music as before, only louder now. More pale things flowed through the walls and wavered in the light, twisting, moving dancing. Not all of them were human-shaped. Amidst the music he caught sounds like the snarling of great cats or the squealing of pigs.

  Bonneville moved through this sea of phantoms like a sleepwalker, dancing along with them, his knife flickering down, almost faster than St. Cyprian’s eye could follow. “Can you see them?” Bonneville cried. “The Raving Ones come, thirsty for blood of the grape, the wine of the body!”

  St. Cyprian backed away from the slashing blade, hands raised. The spirits clung to Bonneville like a cloak, dragged in his frenzied wake. He was all manic stretched grin and staring eyes now. The pale things cavorted about him, or clustered about the shattered bottles and spilled liquor as if they were…

  Thirsty, St. Cyprian thought, as he watched them. Maenads. Spirits of the grape and vine. He looked past Bonneville and saw Gallowglass scrambling for her pistol. “The bottles,” he said, “Shoot the bottles behind the bar.”

  Gallowglass looked at him, and then, revolver in hand, began to fire at the bar. Bottles burst, and liquor slopped across the bar and floor. Bonneville turned, eyes bulging, nostrils flaring. Gallowglass backed away from him, reloading her revolver.

  Bonneville staggered after her, the spirits clustered about him stretching ghostly fingers towards the dripping wines and gins. While he was distracted, St. Cyprian snatched up his pistol and took aim. Something snarled in warning and Bonneville whirled, teeth bared in a monstrous grimace. “Thirsty,” he grunted, in a voice too deep to be human.

  “Well have a bloody drink on me, then,” Gallowglass said, from behind the bar. As she spoke, she flung a bottle at the floor in front of Bonneville. It bounced and rolled across the carpet. Quickly, she threw two more. St. Cyprian fired at one of the bottles, shattering it. Bonneville fell upon it like a man dying of thirst, stuffing dripping shards of glass into his distended mouth. Blood and alcohol mingled as they dripped into his beard.

  The spirits were flocking thickly about him now, nuzzling his bloody mouth or slurping silently at the floor, becoming more substantial as they did so. St. Cyprian picked up one of the remaining bottles, opened it and emptied it in a wide circle around the distracted Bonneville. As he did so, the abominable cacophony swelled, nearly deafening him. He snatched up the remaining bottle and tossed it up over Bonneville’s bent head.

  As it arced up, St. Cyprian snapped off a shot, shattering the bottle. Its contents rained down over Bonneville and he reared back with a swinish grunt. His flesh bubbled and bulged obscenely, as if something were growing within him and his eyes had become black pits of abhuman lust. The ghostly things crouched around him like eager supplicants, and they too were changing. St. Cyprian could almost see their faces now, though he dearly wished he couldn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said, as he stretched out his hand.

  Bonneville staggered to his feet. He opened his bloody mouth, as if to speak. St. Cyprian gave him no chance. His spirit-eye wasn’t the only trick in his psychic tool-bag; there were others, some more useful than others. He snapped his fingers, and a spark of ectoplasmic heat and flame leapt from him, to fall into the alcohol.

  A circle of fire rose up with a roar, caging Bonneville—the thing wearing Bonneville’s face—and driving him back. As he raised his arms, his alcohol soaked hair and clothes caught fire, and a high, shrill keening rose from his ragged lips, or perhaps from the spectres which burned with him. Bonneville hunched forward, engulfed in flames, clawing at himself. The heat and stink of burning meat filled the room.

  St. Cyprian reached out, straining against the hunger of the fire. He’d called it up, kindled it from the heat of his ka, and could snuff it as easily, but controlling it was harder than either. It wasn’t in the nature of fire to be controlled, as he’d learned to his cost more than once. He fought against it, keeping it from spreading beyond the circle he’d made for it. The skin on his hands and face flushed red and his hair began to smoulder.

  He muttered the calming mantras he’d learned from a Tibetan lama of his acquaintance. Aside from having what St. Cyprian considered an unhealthy fascination for the color green, the lama had been a good teacher. He could no longer see Bonneville amidst the blaze. And the cacophony had fallen silent. Whatever had been in him had retreated, slipping out of the world back into the outer shadows it had emerged from.

  St. Cyprian brought his hands together slowly, and the flames began to die down. Sweat covered his face and stung his eyes. His body ached, as if he’d been stricken with sunstroke. The fire fought him, resisting his attempt to snuff it. “Back…in the box…you go,” he hissed, as his palms slapped together. All at once, the fire vanished.

  All that was left w
as a greasy pile of ash on the floor and a circular soot stain on the ceiling above. Amid the ashes something gleamed wickedly—Bonneville’s blade. St. Cyprian staggered forward and picked it up. As he did so, he could hear a skirl of distant pipes.

  He sank into a chair near the bar with Gallowglass’ help. “You look proper done in,” she said. She glanced at the charred circle. “Been awhile since you’ve done that. Not since Shooter’s Hill…”

  “Yes, well, it leaves me feeling like a bit of used lettuce afterwards,” he said shakily. “A tool of the last resort, what?”

  “Do you ever use any other kind, Charles?”

  St. Cyprian glanced towards the door. A familiar round face, permanently stamped with a disapproving expression bobbed towards him. “I see you handled this matter with your usual aplomb,” Morris said, with a sniff. The man from the Ministry was egg-shaped and wrapped in a suit of dismal gray wool. He surveyed the char marks with the cool eye of a professional busybody. “Special Branch will be happy, I suppose. Then, not everyone has the Ministry’s standards for what constitutes a successful investigation.”

  The Ministry of Esoteric Observation was a nondescript building near Whitehall, with quotas, allocations and stuffy offices filled with mouldering paperwork. It was a model of modern efficiency, and the men who worked for it prided themselves on their political and scientific acumen. Some said that it was where magic went to die. Morris and his ilk had a bad habit of locking up dreadful tomes and sacred scrolls rather than reading them, thus necessitating the occasional consultation with the Royal Occultist.

  They were never happy about it, and never shy about sharing that unhappiness. It offended them, in their callous little souls to have to rely on a relic of less enlightened times to get the job done. At the moment, Morris fairly seethed with discontent.