The Dolocher

by European P. Douglas

  Chapter 6

  It was a pitiful night to be on sentry duty. A clear black sky showered stars over the housetops of Dublin, and a small crescent moon threw what little illumination it had in its thin band over the sleeping city. The clear sky with its lack of cloud cover sent the temperature plummeting and a chilling wind whipped through the streets and alleyways that led to the open space at Cornmarket and then pressed hard against the walls of the Black Dog and, consequently, against Martin Gleeson, who was on sentry at the foot of the south tower that night.

  The night had been uneventful so far, just a few men from the whisky cabins and taverns to send on their way and a couple of streetwalkers teasing him and offering their services. It was late enough now that Gleeson was not expecting to see anyone until the early-morning traders arrived to set up stalls. This was the worst part of guarding the prison at night: there was nothing to do or see for hours to come yet.

  This was a new sentry position, created after the mob violence on the day Olocher’s body was taken away. The army wanted security standards improved at the prison in case they ever had to place someone there again. Brick protested about finding money to pay for another two guards every night, but the rumour was that he was to pay for them himself or the army would make his life a worse hell than it already was.

  At about four o’clock in the morning, Gleeson was at his most weary and was leaning with his back to the prison walls. Twice his head drooping into sleep had startled him, but he felt too tired to stand up straight. That was, until he heard a noise coming from one of the thin alleys up the road a little way from the prison. He stood erect and looked in the direction of the alley. He couldn’t be fully sure that he had heard something, that it had not been the beginning of a dream, but he listened closely and heard it again.

  Then he heard it a third time and was sure of it: a low, rolling noise that he couldn’t place, and yet there was something familiar about it. He listened more intently and stepped out from the wall to see down the street better. Now there was a new noise, and this was one he did know. It was the noise of a pig, shuffling through the alleys and looking for something to eat. From the (fifth-hand) description he had received, he couldn’t stop his mind from picturing those pigs eating the body of Olocher a few days ago and what those soldiers must have seen. He felt a shiver of fear run through him at the thought, and then he heard the other noise again. It was closer now, and he recognised it as a growling noise.

  The hairs stood up all over his body, and he snapped fully awake. His sensible mind knew that it was probably a dog trying to warn a pig off from whatever food it had found, but the images his mind had conjured up of Olocher and the pigs brought fresh scenes of all kinds of beasts coming at him from the darkness. The noise came again, echoing off the cobbled street and stone walls—no mistaking it for anything other than an animalistic growl now, and again it seemed to be closer. Gleeson gripped his short halberd more firmly and glanced around to see if there was anyone around, but there was not.

  Cold sweat gathered on his back, causing him to shudder at the shock of it, and he stood facing the direction the noises came from, his feet rooted to the spot where he stood and his ears cocked for any sound. A tremendous bark and injured howl of a dog peeled off as a midsized black canine flew from the darkness past him and into the streets beyond. Once again, he heard the pig and knew what he’d heard was the noise of a pig snuffling and eating something. His sensible mind had been right all along.

  He released his tense grip on the halberd, and he could feel the sweat now under his armpits from holding so tight. He stepped back to the wall and leaned against it, smiling at his silliness and at letting his imagination get the better of him and…

  “RAAAAARH!” Something big and black came at him from the same darkness he had peered into. The massive bulk knocked him to the ground, and then all he could see was furious eyes over a long, black snout before massive white teeth slashed into him. The monster’s jaws seemed to be able to work independently of one another, their size and ferocity startling him and hurting him in equal measure. Gleeson screamed and tried to fight back, but he was badly hurt and there was nothing he could seem to do. All of his strength seemed to be taken up in his knees and legs as he tried to force his attacker away from him. He felt a scorching pain across his cheek and another across his neck as the teeth slashed at him. He’s trying to bite my head off! was his last thought before losing consciousness, and as he drifted away, he heard someone shouting somewhere from high up, but what they said he didn’t know.

  Had he stayed conscious, he would have been aware of the other guards rallying to his point. One from inside the towers had seen that there was something going on, but what he was at a loss to say. He had called down and, upon hearing the cries of pain from Gleeson, he had sounded the alert.

  The women in the Nunnery had heard the attack from their street-level windows, though they had been too frightened to look out. Kate listened to the sounds of shredding clothes and flesh, and she heard the vicious snarling of whatever it was that attacked the guard.

  When they pulled his tattered and torn body inside the gates of the prison and slammed them shut behind, the women could see the bloody mess that was Gleeson. Kate let out a howl of fear and revulsion just as Brick appeared, once more in the movement of agitated dressing.

  “Keep low in there, or you’ll go hungry again, tarts!” he shouted in with a quick, angry glance. Kate was silent as she watched him rush up to the other guards and break through to see what was going on.

  “What the hell happened?” he asked of the guards tending the victim.

  “Something attacked him at the south tower sentry point.”

  “What do you mean, something? Who attacked him?” Brick shouted.

  “I was up in the north tower, and I heard something outside. When I looked down, there was something big and black over him, and it was doing savage damage to him,” said a guard who had come down the winding stairs, his face white with what he had seen.

  “A man in all black, you say? What weapon was he using to do this?”

  The guard, who had seen the attack, looked at some of the others as though for support. “It didn’t look like a man, sir,” he said, “and I didn’t see any weapon.”

  Brick looked at him suspiciously. “Have you been drinking?” he whispered harshly and pulled him forward to smell his breath,

  “No, sir!” the guard exclaimed in a wounded tone.

  “Where’s the doctor?” Brick called out, letting go of the guard.

  “On the way, sir,” another of the guards answered.

  As Kate looked out, she could see that they were all at a loss as to what to do with the injured man while they waited. She could no longer see him, but there was a pool of blood forming on the floor. She could hear guttural sounds, as though he were trying to breathe and there was blood sloshing about in his lungs or his throat. He was moaning on and off as well in a delirious way, and she could hear his feet scrape on the floor as he writhed about. She felt terribly sorry for him and wondered if he would not be dead before the doctor even got here.

  “Can you not do something to make him a bit more comfortable?” she asked through the bars. “Try to stop him bleeding, maybe?” The guards looked at her. It was clear in their eyes that they wanted to do something but feared they would only make things worse.

  “I told you to shut up in there!” Brick shouted. Kate backed away from the cell door and back into the fold of the women, who were just behind her.

  “Better not say anything more,” Betty whispered to her. “The doctor will be here soon, and he’ll do what he can.”

  Soon they heard the clipping of a horse outside and then heard a man dismount and the gates rattle to a heavy knock. The wooden gates pulled open, and the noise was terrific now in opposition to the silence that had fallen over the prison for the last ten minutes. The doctor rushed in, saw the man straightaway, and knelt by his side, examining h
im. He pulled a handkerchief from his coat and pressed it against the neck of the maimed man.

  “Why did nobody stem the bleeding?” he asked, looking admonishingly at the people who stood around him. No one answered, and the doctor looked back to the patient. “What happened to him?” the doctor asked.

  “He was attacked outside on sentry duty.”

  “Attacked by what?” the doctor asked, examining the wounds on the man’s chest, causing him to cry out in pain.

  Brick looked at the guards and then replied, “We don’t know. We heard him cry out, and we found him like this.”

  “Some of these wounds look like they were done by an animal, a large dog or something. But the bruises here have points, like those you would see from a hoofed animal,” the doctor said, pointing as he spoke.

  Kate trembled at the idea that an animal had done this to the man; she looked at the bars on the windows and wondered if it might be possible for it to get in through them. This basement dungeon took a terrible toll on the mind, she felt. She had been here only six days, but it had felt like an eternity. Every night, there were new fears of what could come and get her in this dark and stinking pit. She scolded herself in daylight hours for her wild night thoughts. She would seek out the corners and crannies that were in complete darkness once the sun went down and see that there were nothing in those spaces. But at night, those same dark spots would fill her with terror, and she would feel that something was watching her, waiting for her to let her guard down.

  She was reasonable with herself, and she could only curse the fact that her first time in a prison was when Olocher had been sentenced, and that she was there on the night he killed himself. She remembered the pigs squealing at the gates that night, and when she heard the doctor say that there were bruises in the shape of hoofed feet, she wondered for a moment if the guard had been attacked by a pig. But the thought seemed ridiculous to her. The idea of one of those lazy, slothful animals attacking a man seemed wild, and the fact that there were the teeth marks of a different type of animal also swayed her back to her senses.

  “Take this man to the infirmary and make sure to keep this cloth pressed to his neck,” the doctor said, rising and exchanging places with one of the guards.

  “Will he live?” Brick asked the doctor after taking his arm and leading him a little way from the victim’s ears. The doctor looked at him and then back at Brick.

  “It will be touch and go,” he said. “I won’t be surprised to see him dead in the morning, but I’ve seen men survive worse.”