Terror in the Night

by J. M. Robinson

  But that night Higgs had been late. His mother had kept him back after tea to discuss his part in his sisters wedding. When he had arrived Agnes was no longer there. If she had been there at all. Perhaps something dreadful had happened to her on the way.

  He walked to the door for the dozenth time, put his hand on the handle meaning to go out and look for her, but pulled back at the last moment. What would people think if they saw him wandering the streets at this hour looking for his wife? They would think him just another copper who couldn’t keep hold of his wife, no doubt.

  Graham paced the floor again, a little quieter now. The last thing he wanted was to annoy the other tenants and have them running off to Mrs White. She would ask all sorts of questions and he didn’t think she would consider letting his wife go off by herself at night to be ‘good christian behaviour’.

  Maybe he could tell her that he was going back to the Yard, that he’d had an epiphany about the case he was working on and needed to check on it at once. On the way he could search for Agnes and then again on the way back. No one would question that, would they? He was a detective, just doing his job.

  He went to the door again, hand on the handle, ready to open it and go out for real this time. Then he heard slow footsteps in the corridor that he recognised at once as belonging to Agnes. You didn’t live with someone for fifteen years without learning to recognise their footsteps. He sighed with relief, she was home and safe.

  Quickly he removed his coat and hung it. He walked to the chair and sat down just as the door started to open. He still had his boots on but hopefully she wouldn’t notice that. He looked up as she closed the door behind her, feigning weariness. “Good evening dear,” he said.

  She hung her coat and untied her hat. “Hello Graham.”

  “Successful evening?” he said, expecting her usual snappy response that ‘at least she was doing something’ which he always let slide, even though he knew that all she was doing was watching the trains.

  “Quite good yes, thank you.”

  “You’re getting somewhere then?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps.”

  He watched her walk across the room and yawn. “If you’ve made some progress perhaps you should share it with Detective Parker,” he said. Parker, he had managed to find out, was the man looking for his daughter. He had made little, if any, progress.

  “Oh I don’t think I could tell Scotland Yard anything they don’t already know,” she said. She stopped with her hand on the bedroom door.

  He realised that she knew something and that if he asked her outright she would probably tell him. They were generally honest people. But, just as she hadn’t wanted him to know she was going to the train station each evening and that he had been right about how difficult it would be, he didn’t want her to know that he thought there was a chance she had discovered something. So he didn’t ask. “Perhaps they could help you then?”

  “Scotland Yard help me?” she said. “Oh I wouldn’t have thought so. What if I’m responsible for her disappearance?”

  To which he had nothing to add.

  She yawned again and opened the bedroom door. “I’m going to bed,” she said.

  He nodded and watched the door close behind her. Something had happened that evening but for the life of him he couldn’t think what. He took off his boots and put his feet up on the table. He wouldn’t go into the bedroom until he was sure she was asleep. In the meantime he had a lot to think about.

  CHAPTER 18

  HE CLIMBED DOWN THE LOOSE EARTH WALL AS the first rays of the morning star cut through the mist and scorched his neck. He had to be quick because soon the workers would arrive for their daily labour.

  They were coming for him. He’d known they would. In their eyes he had failed and, as the girl was still alive, he could see their point. But he had no intention of falling on the stake for them, if they wanted him they would have to find him and he would not make that easy.

  Arthur had known Lunden before it had become a city. It had been little more than a few shacks by the river compared to what it was now. He had walked the same streets for more than two-hundred years, give or take a few decades. He knew where he could go to ground, but he also knew the danger in doing so.

  Now that the ground had been opened up it was easier. There were thousands of feet of tunnel to sleep in. It would be safe until the trains started to run and the less enlightened of his kind started to hunt there.

  He crept along the dark passage, the loose ground sliding away beneath his feet. He could hear voices in front but they were no concern of his: two young men arguing over a woman they had snatched from a school. Who should get the first taste? Should they turn her? All the while the girl, who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, lay on the ground crying. She couldn’t run away because they had broken her ankle.

  Arthur could have saved her. He was older, bigger and stronger than the two boys. But he had learned not to interfere with the affairs of other vampires. They were rarely understanding and often took offence when he explained that they didn’t have to behave the way they did. It was their nature, they said, it wasn’t their fault.

  Maybe one day they would learn, maybe they wouldn’t. If they turned the girl her leg would heal quickly, if they didn’t she would be dead and wouldn’t have to worry about it anyway.

  He turned away from them, into a narrow tunnel that came off the larger main one. He could still hear the boys arguing in the distance. They had agreed to kill the girl, drain her completely and leave her body to be found empty, a medical mystery. Once upon a time Arthur would have tried to stop them and a time before that he would have fought them to take her for himself. But people changed. There was only one person he drank from now.

  They were far enough away that he could tune them out. Even the screaming didn’t disturb him. He was tired and this seemed like as good a place as any to make his bed for the day.

  He bent down and pulled out clods of dirt. The moisture didn’t bother him and would not disturb his rest. It would make it easier to pack back around himself and reduce the chance of some unlucky construction worker finding him.

  When the work was done he lay still. Heavy earth surrounding him on all sides. He closed his eyes and saw her face. He wondered what she was doing now. Would she be worried about him as he was about her? If he could have written he would but it was safer for both of them if he just waited and hoped that she would do the same.

  Sleep was a long time coming. He had got himself caught in the middle of something he didn’t quite understand and lots of people wanted him dead. He tried to think of a way out of it but everything he came up with involved abandoning the girl and her mother, something he was not prepared to do.

  A noise in the tunnel beyond his dirt wall caught his attention. The two boys were long gone and it did not sound like the construction crew arriving. He listened. Voices spoke in a strange language.

  The next thing he knew the earth was falling away beside him. He could hear it hitting the tunnel floor and feel the wall beside him sliding away. He didn’t know who they were and he didn’t know how they had found him.

  A hand touched his shoulder and he felt the rapid pulsating blood within it. He tried to get away but there was nowhere for him to go. He scrambled for something solid to hold onto but came away with hands full of mud.

  They pulled him out of his bed and he fell to his knees on the soft muddy ground. He looked at the four feet in front of him, up the expensive silk trousers and matching jackets. They wore ties and neatly pressed shirts.

  “Arthur Park?” one of the men said. He carried a little excess weight around his gut and his dark hair had been cut short to disguise the fact that he was going bald.

  “Who wants to know?” Arthur said. Sensing no immediate danger he stood up, dusted himself down and was pleased to see that he was bigger than both of them.

  “Are you Arthur Park?” the man said again. He spoke slowly and sounded as if he was ou
t of breath.

  “I am,” Arthur said. “How can I help you gentlemen?”

  The man who hadn’t spoken was small and wiry. He was practically bouncing on his heels. Ready to be sicked on me, thought Arthur, well they would both get a nasty surprise if they tried that. He might not drink from humans anymore but if one attacked him he would be happy to defend himself.

  “You were supposed to kill the girl,” the big one said, although, if he wasn’t standing next to the bouncing whippet, he would have appeared distinctly average. Arthur could hear him breathing between each word.

  “There was a change of plan,” he said. “Weren’t you told?”

  The little one smiled and revealed two rows of sharply pointed teeth.

  “You were supposed to kill the girl,” he said again. His eyes looked dead, his whole face sagged. Arthur wondered if he was really there. Maybe he was just some random business man who’s body had been co-opted for this conversation.

  “I know I was supposed to kill her but I couldn’t, alright?”

  “The Church have her.”

  “No one told me the Church were sending people,” Arthur said. “I could have been killed.”

  “If they use her as they plan we will all be killed.”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “You were supposed to kill the girl. Now the Church have her.”

  He hadn’t been able to bring himself to kill an eight year old girl. He had done enough horrible things in his life without adding that to the list. Arthur had known he was there to kill someone but not a child.

  “So what now?” Arthur said. They hadn’t come all this way just to tell him something he already knew: he was supposed to have killed Bridget Kable but he hadn’t been able to. He hadn’t been able to keep her safe either, which had been his fallback plan. Now the Church had her and if they did whatever it was they were planning to do everyone would be killed. “Are you here to kill me?”

  “You are to kill the girl,” he said.

  “What if I refuse?”

  The little guy licked his lips and left a thick coating of yellowish drool over his mouth.

  “You are to kill the girl,” said the big one.

  Well that was clear enough but he knew he couldn’t do it. Maybe they could help him anyway. “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “The Church have her.”

  “Yes but where?”

  “You are to kill the girl.”

  It seemed he had reached the end of the big one’s vocabulary and the little one didn’t seem capable of speech at all. “Fine,” he said. “Now will you please leave so I can go back to sleep?”

  They stood there blankly but as he watched Arthur saw the face of the big guy start to twitch, the corners of his mouth turned up. “They are on the river,” he said. “They have a long journey ahead.”

  Arthur said nothing. If they were on the river then they thought they were protected, old stories said that vampires couldn’t cross the water and the same for any number of other creatures they might have thought The Grigori would send after them. If all they thought they had to worry about were humans then maybe they wouldn’t be well prepared.

  When he turned to look back at the men he saw that their faces had relaxed. They stood in front of him like wax figures. Eventually they would leave. They were just vessels sent to carry a message, they had never really been a threat to him. He was perfectly safe but he didn’t feel as if he could return to his hole with them standing there, and besides, sleep seemed like a distant concern.

  He walked passed the two emissaries and back into the main tunnel. He could hear the distant voices of tired men arriving for a days hard labour. He walked away from the sound and past the body of the girl that the two boys had abandoned on the floor, in full view of whoever happened to come this way. With his boot he pushed her limp and bloodless body to the side up against the wall, he couldn’t do anything for her but he could prevent the workers having a nasty surprise.

  CHAPTER 19

  GRAHAM WOKE UP ON THE SOFA. SHAFTS OF winter sun came through the open curtains and heated up the room to an unbearable degree. He was still fully dressed, the bedroom door was still closed. He stretched and heard bones click in his back and arms. He stood up.

  He walked across the living room to the bedroom, pressed his head against the door and listened. There was no sound. Quietly he opened the door and peered into the darkness. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust but he could already hear her breathing. A dark shape in the middle of the bed, spread out like a starfish. He watched her chest rise and fall for a moment and then pulled the door closed.

  Last night he had fallen asleep waiting for her to come home. She had been staying out later and later each night and he knew that she was no longer going to the train station. She hadn’t been there for a week. Higgs had tried to find out where she went, had waited outside the apartment building, hidden in the cloak of night, waiting to follow her. Graham had thought him a fool for losing track of her so easily but two nights ago he had tried and had the same result.

  He opened the door to the apartment. It was still early but there was always work to do at the Yard, he didn’t want to be there when Agnes woke up. They had barely seen each other these last few days. He didn’t know what to say to her anymore. The few times their paths had crossed she had looked at him in a lofty manner but refused to tell him what she was doing. Not that he had asked, of course, but he had given her plenty of opportunity to explain herself.

  “Detective Kable,” Mrs White said. He was half-way down the stairs and looked back up to see her standing at the top.

  “Good morning Mrs White,” he said.

  She was in a pink dressing gown, her hair in a net. She yawned. He wondered what time it was was. “I’m glad I caught you,” she said. “Might I have a word?”

  He really didn’t want to have a word with Mrs White. “I really should get to work.”

  “This won’t take long,” she said and turned around assuming that he would follow her. Which of course he did. Back up the stairs and along the corridor, he thought she would wait outside his door to be let in but she carried on walking, up another flight of stairs and another. He followed her until she reached a plain wooden door. He wondered how she had heard him leaving his apartment from two floors above.

  Mrs White’s room was barely furnished. There were no pictures on the wall but a large cross. Three wooden chairs and a table dominated the small room. The curtains were already open and fragile light filled the room.

  “Please take a seat,” she said. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “No thank you,” he said. He sat down.

  “A matter has been brought to my attention by one of the other guests,” Mrs White said.

  “And what might that be?” he said.

  She cleared her throat, “Mrs Kable, she has ah... been going out a lot recently?”

  He lowered his eyes and nodded. As he had feared Agnes’s behaviour was not christian enough for Mrs White. “She has been looking for our daughter,” Graham said.

  “And yet she has found another man.”

  Graham felt as if he had been punched in the gut. He shook his head, that couldn’t be right. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

  “I warned you when you arrived, did I not, that I expected good christian behaviour from all of my guests?”

  “I didn’t...” Graham stood up. His expression fixed on determination, hiding the anger and hurt that he really felt. He didn’t understand, he and Agnes were happy, weren’t they? Or had he driven her into the arms of another man? Even in her frail state he was sure there were many who would want her desperately. “Who saw them?” he said.

  Mrs White shook her head. “Sit down detective.”

  “I will not sit down,” he said. “Someone has accused my wife of being unfaithful and I demand that you tell me who.”

  “Sit down detective,” she said, her voice was calm but fir
m. He sat down. “I will not tell you who has brought this information to me but I can tell you that yesterday I confirmed it for myself. Your wife has been stepping out with another man and a most undesirable one at that.

  “You need to put a stop to this detective. I will not have my home become a place for loose women. I have a reputation to consider, a good christian reputation.”

  He nodded. Forced himself to be calm and remember that Mrs White wasn’t the one to blame for this, she had just brought the matter to his attention. “I understand,” he said.

  She smiled. She actually smiled, a gesture that seemed so out of place, given the situation, that he didn’t know how to react.

  He left her room and walked back down the stairs, more slowly with each floor that passed. When he reached his own door he stopped. Suddenly the anger was gone and he didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to confront her and learn the truth about what was going on. Graham loved Agnes and the idea that she could be seeing someone behind his back was so appalling that he couldn’t believe it.

  The door opened and Agnes was standing there, wearing a long dress and a bonnet she looked ready for a day at the market.

  “Graham!” she said with evident surprise. “I thought you had left.”

  He shook his head but for a moment the words wouldn’t come. “I need to speak to you,” he said and it was like someone else was saying the words.

  She nodded and stepped back, he walked into the apartment and closed the door behind him. She stood in the bright sunlight, meek and frail she didn’t look capable of doing anything wrong. He had forgotten the arguments and her nights out ‘alone’, he just wanted her to tell him that Mrs White was wrong, that of course there was no one else, she was faithful to him.

  “What is it dear?” she said. She raised a hand to his face, a pale delicate little hand that looked so much like Bridget’s.