by Sean Little
“At first, there were little things. People began to see ghosts in town. A woman was accused of witchcraft. Milk would curdle in the pail. The cats fled the town. The dogs were distressed. Some went like the cats and ran. It was all very strange. None of us had any answers.”
“Nor should you,” said Bobbins. “It all sounds very strange.”
Vasile nodded. “Very strange. Very bad. At first, we tried to laugh it off, but then dogs began to disappear. We started to find large, thick claw marks on trees outside of town, but our foresters told us they were not made by any bears. Too high on the trees, they said. We found wolf tracks—massive prints, bigger than the biggest wolves.
“People began to spread the rumor that our town was cursed because an Englishman was taking over Castle Cioară Neagră and renaming it. Others began to spread the rumor that the spirits of the mountain were angry because the Englishman might shut down the mines.”
“Not true!” said Bobbins. “I know mines. I know how important they are to communities. Plus—you never know when you’ll find gold!”
“Rumor ran rampant. People began to panic. Some argued for Lord Bobbins. Some argued against. In the pubs at night, neighbor would strike neighbor because of differences of opinion and fear. We were losing our minds.” Tears sprang afresh in Vasile’s eyes. “People began hiding in their homes, leaving only when necessity forced them to. The men going to the woods would only go for short bursts during the noon hour, when there was the most sun, and avoiding the woods on cloudy days. The mines were abandoned as the wives and children of the miners begged them not to go to work. Songs stopped. Laughter stopped. Everything about Cărbunasatul changed. When I thought things were the darkest, the first murder happened.”
“Murder?” said Shaw from the corner. “You never mentioned anything about murder, Lord Bobbins.”
“It is news to me. Why didn’t you put it in your letters, Mr. Sala?”
Vasile hung his head in shame. “I didn’t want you to worry unnecessarily. The first murder was a local drunk. He was found one morning, lying in the main road through the village, his throat torn out. We tried to laugh it off. That man—he was always drunk. He stumbled through town at all hours. Perhaps a wild dog got him. Perhaps a rogue wolf. Surely it was an isolated incident.”
Vasile shook his head slowly. “It wasn’t. It got worse. A woodsman was murdered while he felled a tree. A hunter was found mutilated at the mouth of a cave near the mines. And then, the worst of all, a little girl, the daughter of the hunter, she was found mutilated at the same cave where her father died. She had gone to try to lay a wreath in memory of her papa.” Vasile began to sob vigorously. Everyone was silent for several long moments while heavy sobs shuddered and wracked through his body. “After that, we began finding footprints in town, long, clawed things, larger than a man’s foot. The woodsmen began to report seeing a furred man in the forest, one that ran faster than any man could run. Then, one day, a group of hunters came back with the wolfman. It had attacked a hunting party. Four men died before their bullets stopped it. The remaining five men brought it back, where we had the only man in the village with a camera capture its image to send to you, Lord Bobbins. The picture was taken by Brother Paschal, our town’s priest. He oversaw the whole thing.”
“Where is the body now?” asked Clarke. “Can I see it?”
“No…no. The body was put in the home of the undertaker. We believe the beast’s mate came looking for it that night and murdered the undertaker, his wife, and his three children. The body was taken. No one has seen it since.”
Bobbins began to pace in front of the fire, taking several quick steps and then spinning on his heel in a military fashion. “This is not good. This is horrible.”
“The people will come to you tomorrow, Lord Bobbins,” said Vasile. “They will look to their primar to put a stop to these tragedies. They will look to you to repair the damages.”
Bobbins stopped pacing. He looked grim. “And if I cannot?”
“They will rebel, sir. They might try to take your life.” From the corner, Shaw blew out an angry huff, but said nothing.
“That’s a shame,” said Bobbins. “I’ve grown rather attached to breathing.”
“As one would,” said Clarke. “Was that murder the end of it?”
“Not at all. The beast comes every night. At first, it only prowled outside the town. Now, we find prints every morning around the houses. The people in town would lock their windows and bar their doors. Husbands and sons take turns keeping watch, a rifle trained on their front door. Women are hanging garlic wreaths on their doors. People are melting down treasured family heirlooms to make silver bullets. It is bad, sir. Very bad.”
At that moment, a long howl erupted from somewhere near the castle. It was louder than the wolf that howled for Clarke earlier, and there was something different about the sound, more guttural, more savage. Clarke’s hand instinctively reached for a sidearm, but he wasn’t wearing a holster.
Bobbins looked to Shaw, and the bodyguard nodded. She walked to the entryway and opened a long, heavy trunk. Inside was a small arsenal of weapons and ammo. She pulled out a small pistol for herself, a slim and practical Colt single-action revolver. “Gun, Mr. Clarke?”
Clarke surveyed the selection. “The Winchester, please.”
Shaw handed Clarke a lovely Winchester Yellow Boy and a stack of bullets. They loaded the weapons as they walked out of the keep and into the bailey.
It had been some time since Clarke had held a gun of that quality. For the last few years, he’d tried to avoid guns entirely. The rifle, although not nearly as heavy as longer guns, still felt strangely heavy in his hands. The slim stock was polished smooth and felt glossy under his fingers. This was not a working man’s rifle, he thought. It was a showpiece, a collectible. He wondered when the last time it was cleaned and oiled. He wondered if it was properly sighted.
“This way,” said Shaw. She began jogging toward a stone staircase that led to the ramparts atop the wall, her skirts splaying out behind her like a trailing cape.
“You have to admire a woman who fights werewolves in a dress,” said Clarke, following.
“I have more practical clothing in my portmanteau, Mr. Clarke,” she called over her shoulder. “I just don’t have time to change at the moment.”
The woods loomed around three sides of the castle. Shaw fixated herself at the western wall while Clarke maneuvered to the southeastern corner. The ramparts were worn to a slick and shiny smoothness from at least two centuries of guardsmen patrolling them. The walkways were stone on the exterior walls, and a rickety-looking wooden handrail on the interior. The exterior walls were gapped intermittently with stonework extending to six feet from the walking path to allow spots where a man to shield himself from arrows. The stones were growing mossy with lichens from disuse.
Clarke peered into the forest. With the small fire still alight in the bailey, everything beyond the bailey was black as tar. The mountains to the south ridged the sky above the inky treetops, themselves a lighter shade of black. He stared hard, seeing nothing. It reminded him of being a sniper, knowing there was a target somewhere before him, but being unable to see anything because of an overcast sky.
The silence of the night struck him, as well. When he had been loading the cart, there had been some bird noise, the occasional crack of a twig as some unseen thing tread upon it. Now, it was oppressively silent, as if quiet was an invisible monster that pressed on his eardrums.
“See anything?” Shaw called across the compound. Clarke raised his hand and made a slashing gesture. It meant “negative” when he had been in the 141st. Shaw nodded. Clarke noted that. She’d had some military training somewhere.
The howl rose again from the blackness. Clarke had a better ear on it than he’d had inside, and he moved to the southwestern corner of the ramparts. The howl had come from somewhere beyond. Clarke hefted the rifle to his shoulder and peered down the barrel at the woods. Further
away, in the mountains, several howls answered it.
Shaw was behind him in seconds. “See it?”
“I can’t see anything.”
Shaw turned and grabbed one of the lengths of wood that made up the handrail to the walkway and yanked and tugged until it broke free. She pulled a book of matches from a pocket somewhere near her waist and struck a few matches. When they flared to life, she held them against the end of the wood until it caught fire. She coaxed the fire to greater life with gentle breaths, and then heaved the burning lumber as far over the wall as she could. The torch spiraled through the air and landed fifty feet from the base of the wall, burning for a moment and illuminating the forest’s edge before the damp weeds and growth choked out the flame. There was nothing.
They listened and stared for a long time. There were no more howls. The noise of the night birds began to return. After an hour of watching and waiting, Shaw finally called it quits. “It’s gone. It has to be.”
“Agreed,” said Clarke. They left the ramparts and returned to main keep where Sandsworth and the chef had rallied to throw together a basic, but filling evening meal. The table was covered with a linen cloth, and Sandsworth had laid out Bobbins’ travel china—simple, but elegant plates, bowls, and mugs of hardy porcelain. Small glasses of brandy stood by each plate. Chef had made a simple stew of venison, carrots, onions, and potatoes in a thick, brown broth. There were baguettes of bread that had been baked on board Endeavor. Bobbins was sitting at the head of the table, halfway through his meal.
“I apologize for starting without you,” he said, “but I had no idea if you were going to return before I retired. Did you see anything? I heard no gunshots, so I shall assume the werewolf, or whatever it was, is still at large.”
“We saw nothing. There is something out there, though,” said Shaw. She sat down to the plate at Bobbins’ right hand. “Something large. It’s got to be bigger than a wolf, judging by the sound it makes.”
“Would that be your deduction as well, Mr. Clarke?”
Clarke sat opposite from Shaw. He tore an end off on of the baguettes and began sopping up stew with it. “It would be. I’m not saying it was a werewolf, but there is something out there.”
“Well, isn’t that fun?” said Bobbins with a smile.
“Hardly fun when people are getting murdered,” said Clarke.
“That is a downside, to be sure. That is why I’m paying for you to put a stop to it, Mr. Clarke. Could you imagine what will happen to land value here if we prove that there is such a thing as a werewolf? It will skyrocket. Everyone in this town will be a millionaire.”
“If they’re still living, you mean.”
Bobbins reached out and patted Clarke’s forearm. “I have the utmost confidence in your abilities, Mr. Clarke. You will put a stop to it.”
“Where do we go first?” said Shaw.”
Clark looked up from his stew and arched an eyebrow. “Are you using the royal ‘we’ again?”
“This time, I am using the personal. You and me. Where do we go first?”
“I was a sniper, Ms. Shaw. I’m used to working alone.”
“That won’t be an option, I’m afraid.”
“What about guarding his lordship, here?”
“I will be perfectly safe in the keep, I’m sure,” said Bobbins. “Safe as church mice. I will have Chef and Sandsworth and the few villagers I keep in employ here. I will have guns. We can bar the doors. Don’t worry about me, Mr. Clarke. Worse comes to worse, I was a bare-knuckle champ back in my day. I can throw a right hook that will wobble your jaw.”
“I’d be more worried about what it will or won’t do to a werewolf’s jaw,” said Clarke.
“We will start first thing in the morning,” said Shaw. “Right after breakfast.”
“Agreed,” said Clarke. “I think our first order of business is to go see that cave where the hunter and his daughter were killed. We’ll pack a lunch, get directions from Vasile, and take a few weapons. We’ll need lanterns, because I’ll want to go into that cave.”
“To the hunt,” said Bobbins raising his brandy.
“To the people who died,” said Clarke, raising his.
Bobbins inclined his head. “To the future of Castle Bobbins and the town of Cărbunasatul. May we end these tragedies and build a bright future.”
Clarke retired to as spartan a cell as he’d ever bunked. It was a small, cold room near the top of the keep. It smelled of urine and age. A pallet bed in the corner was covered with a nasty, tattered canvas cover, well stained by all manner of god-knows-what. There was no other furniture in the room, although there was evidence of there having once been some odds and ends that had been hacked up and possibly burned for heat.
Clarke considered lying on the bed. At one point in his life, given enough whiskey, he might have even done it. However, old age and a general distaste for fungus had made him much more persnickety than he’d once been. Clarke took up the packages of clothes provided to him in London and went searching for better accommodations.
The upper floors of the keep were arranged in a simple pattern. A hall curved around the outer edge and stout oak doors led to rooms on the interior. On Clarke’s floor, all the rooms were more or less in the same condition as the one he’d been given. He descended a floor and tried the first door he saw, but found it locked. He moved to the second door and jiggled the handle. Locked again. Before he could move on, the door opened and Sandsworth stood there bathed in light, still in his evening suit and white gloves. “One moment, Mr. Clarke.”
The door closed again and reopened. Sandsworth stood to the side and gestured for Clarke to enter. “Mr. Clarke to see you, m’lord.”
Clarke walked into a massive bed chamber. A huge four-post bed with thick burgundy velvet sleeping curtains dominated the room along the far wall. Near it was one of the largest armoires that Clarke had ever seen. Off the corner of the foot of the bed was a sitting area. Off the other corner of the bed was a large desk and comfy wing chair. A hearth in the corner opposite the bed had a nice fire to warm the place and candles lit the rest of the room. A small, barely-humanoid steam-mech stood next to the bed. It was nearly four feet tall and plated with tarnished silver. It’s eyes were dull and not glowing. It wasn’t switched on. The room was utterly free of dirt, filth, or fetid stench. Instead, it was strangely clean and smelled of lavender.
In the bed, propped up on pillows and having a small pre-sleep tumbler of whiskey with a twist of lemon, was Lord Bobbins. He wore a white linen nightcap and white silk pajamas. He held up his glass to Clarke. “Ah, Mr. Clarke! Lovely to see you. Drink?”
Clarke stood dumbfounded for a moment. When did Sandsworth have time to set up this room? How was it so clean? He took a few steps into the room. Bobbins threw back the covers and climbed out of the bed, pulling a long, red robe over his nightshirt. He slipped his feet into leather slippers and walked to the sitting area. “Please, have a seat,” the lord said. “Do you like my bedchamber? I had the furniture flown here last week. Vasile, Andrei, and Csupo set it up for me.”
“It’s very nice,” said Clarke. Truth be told, he’d never even seen a bed the size of Bobbins’ bed, let alone slept in anything so fine. He’d spent the equivalent of years of his life sleeping on the ground in the service. It was hard to imagine anyone slept in beds so fine and so large.
“I apologize for the state of your chamber. I wired ahead to tell Vasile to have things made for your room, but with all the goings-on, I suppose you can imagine that it did not happen.”
“I can imagine.”
“I will have Sandsworth send a wire tomorrow and we’ll try to get it remedied as quickly as possible, although I’m betting an old soldier like you is used to roughing it, eh?”
“I have spent my share of time sleeping on rocks, yes.”
“There you are! That’s the spirit!” Bobbins sank the rest of his drink and thumped the glass down on an end table.
Clarke pointed to the steam
-mech. “Never saw one of those up close. Those are pricey little trinkets.”
Bobbins looked to where Clarke was pointing. “Ah, yes. Indeed they are. That one was a gift from Victoria. I call it Percy. He’s been malfunctioning a bit lately, so I put him to sleep as punishment.”
“What’s it do?”
“What do any steam-mechs do? They stand in the corner and annoy you. I’m just thankful they don’t talk.”
“That doesn’t look like a servant model.”
“No. It’s a Guardian Model. He watches over me when I sleep.”
Clarke arched an eyebrow. “Really? An assassin mech?
“Guardian Model,” said Bobbins with a wink. “Assassin mechs are illegal, as you well know.”
“Wait—you tellin’ me that you’re comfortable sleeping with a malfunctioning assassin mech in your bedroom? I heard a story about a screwy mech turning a man into a leather wallet.”
“Oh, I don’t worry too much. Percy wouldn’t hurt me at all. If he truly malfunctions, he’ll go after people he hasn’t been blood-matched to recognize…which at this moment only includes you, Mr. Clarke. Look—the odds are he won’t even find you if you don’t come creeping in here while I’m asleep.”
“Thanks? I think?”
Bobbins polished off his drink and made an exaggerated, theatrical yawn. “After such a long day, I am well and truly ready for my sleep. Good evening, Mr. Clarke.”
“Uh, good evening,” said Clarke. Sandsworth was at the door, gesturing for Clarke to leave. Not knowing what else to say or do, he got up and walked into the hall.
Sandsworth promptly closed the door behind him, leaving him to the near-blackness of the hallway.
Clarke tried two more doors on the floor, but found them all locked. He descended another floor and saw the balcony overlooking the great hall. The hall was quiet, save for the crackle of the fire. He tried the first door on the third floor and found it locked. Before he could move to the second door, the latch was undone and the door popped open. Dolly Shaw was standing there with the Colt trained on him. She was still fully clothed. When she saw him, she pulled the gun up, pointing it at the ceiling.