I tried to follow Nine-Nails’ eyes, but it was very dark down below, the building itself blocking the moonlight. Only a small corner of the backyard was lit, quite dimly, and we could see the floor: a thin triangle of grey slabs, closest to the wall by Rose Street, the wet stone reflecting –
‘There!’ McGray spluttered, pointing down just as I saw it too.
Emerging from the darkness – a red spot. A hand. Trembling and smearing the stones in the colour of blood.
30
‘Banshee!’ McGray hollered, his voice resounding through the night like a rolling thunder. People on the street turned their heads up; our officers too. ‘In the backyard! There!’
He pointed down and then sprinted to the stairs, all before I could even look away from the floor. The hand had retreated, leaving nothing but an auburn stain. Now the air reverberated with our chaps’ shouting, boots on cobblestones and the screech of their whistles, and the world became a commotion.
I ran after McGray but clashed against Irving.
‘Did you really see –’
‘Don’t stay here on your own!’ I barked at him before running down the creaking staircase. I instantly yelled: ‘How can anyone rush on this death-trap?’
The steps were steep and smaller than my feet, and with each stride I pictured myself falling on my face, rolling down and breaking every bone in my body. I’d never reach McGray in time.
There were screams from the streets, and then a gunshot.
‘There!’ McGray was shouting. He had kicked the one window open and half his torso stuck out.
‘They’re running away!’ someone on the ground yelled back. At once McGray hurled himself out through the window and disappeared in the darkness.
‘McGray!’ I screamed, expecting to see him crushed on the backyard’s flagstones. Instead I found him dexterously sliding down along the drainpipes, the lead joints cracking under his weight.
I put a leg out the window, then –
‘No, I cannot possibly do that,’ I mumbled, and ran back to the stairs, grasping the handrail so tightly my hands burned. I darted ahead, tumbling and grunting yet unable to move as fast as I wished, and each moment I spent in those blasted stairs I reproached myself for not following Nine-Nails.
There was a second shot, and this time I was close enough to hear the cries that came from the ballroom and the hotel rooms.
Upon reaching the ground floor I met a sweaty cook, ghostly pale, pointing towards a corridor which I followed. I rushed past the steaming kitchens, where more staff pointed, and then through a large pantry that led to the backyard.
I felt a trickle of sweat roll down my forehead as I leaped out. The place was cold and dark, but I saw the wide back door rattling, as if someone had slammed it an instant ago. McGray had gone, but I saw the shadow of an officer struggling to get on his feet, swaying clumsily and with a hand on his temple.
‘I thought you were guarding every entrance!’
‘Someone hit me!’ the chap whimpered.
A very brave maid came out right behind me with an oil lamp, shedding light on the floor. I glimpsed at the red smears only enough to recognize it was a written message, the light drizzle already blurring the edges. I did not have time to decipher it, for there was a third gunshot from the street.
‘Somebody write that down!’ I shouted as I dashed towards the exit.
Right then a big hand grasped me by the shoulder, pulled me backwards with mighty strength and made me roar in frustration.
‘What the –’
It was Bram Stoker, sweating profusely and his mad eyes open like perfect circles.
‘A banshee can also appear as a black dog!’
He stuttered some other nonsense but I did not even reply. I ran to the narrow street and followed the racket of the pursuit. I could hear McGray swearing and more whistles blowing frantically, the noises moving like a physical mass around the corner.
I ran there, to the wide road that descended to the busy Princes Street and on to its sunken gardens. There I saw three policemen and McGray’s wide shoulders; they were all running south, towards the castle.
I went after them and just as I made it to the well-lit Princes Street I saw a black, cloaked figure entering the leafy park.
‘Call for help!’ McGray was yelling as he crossed the busy road. ‘Get men on every exit!’
One of the officers went away, whistling frantically, while the rest of us ran ahead into the gardens.
I descended across the lawns, which were so steep I felt I was falling forward, bouncing on legs no longer in my control. The momentum toppled me over and I fell on all fours, leaving the skin of my hands and knees on the gravelly path. I jumped up and looked ahead.
‘Damn!’ I grunted. The gardens were in full bloom, the canopies of birches and chestnuts blocking all the light from the road. Even under the midsummer dusk and the bright moon we had lost the running figure.
I only recognized McGray amidst the darkness because his lustrous jacket reflected the beams from the officers’ lanterns.
‘What did you see?’ I asked as I caught up with him.
‘Barely anything. They hit that Cooper lad and – There!’
McGray snatched the lantern from the officer and ran ahead, directing the light to the base of Castle Rock, where I saw a fleeting movement. We all followed Nine-Nails, even if we were not sure he’d seen anything at all.
We jumped on to the railway that went along the gardens, the tracks made muddy and slippery by the rain. My utterly inappropriate ballroom shoes skidded all over the gravel and I nearly fell on to the steel rails. One of the officers pulled me up just before I did, and very soon we reached the black lump that was Castle Rock. The jagged mount was surrounded by dark shrubs, its rocks covered in moss and undergrowth, and we soon lost sight of the cloaked shadow.
McGray went on undeterred, through the thorny bushes and up on to the rocky hill, which at points was as steep as a wall.
‘Always in my best suits!’ I grumbled, but I could not hesitate. I had to follow him, my eyes straining to see as McGray and the other chap swung their lights from left to right.
‘Have we lost him?’ I asked, as we all looked in every direction, and I tried to hear footsteps or a frantic breath. There was none of that.
The yellow gleams from the castle windows loomed above us, and higher above, the rainclouds threatened to block the moonlight.
‘Stop!’ McGray hollered, raising his gun and shooting to the air. ‘We see ye!’ I did not know if he lied. If he’d spotted anything the rest of us were at a loss to see.
We climbed on, the sharp, cold stones cutting my skin, my shiny shoes slipping on the wet stone. My hands then landed on a very large nettle.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’
‘Stop!’ McGray shouted right then, directing the light beam to a small shelf of rock on the western side of the hill. My heart jumped as I had a clear sight of shoulders and a male head, but the silhouette soon went back into the darkness.
We rushed in that direction, moving on to the steeper side, where the hill became a vertical crag. I saw the lights of the city beyond the gardens as we went up and up. We were so high I shuddered: at least fifty feet above the garden’s lawns. Just as I realized it my feet slipped again and I had to clasp an overhanging rock. McGray had gone on but stopped a few yards ahead.
‘Dead end!’ he said, looking all around.
I joined him then. We were standing on a cleft barely wide enough for our feet, before us nothing but a precipice.
‘Where did the bastard go?’ I cried, looking back to retrace my own steps.
‘He’s vanished!’ McGray shouted. ‘He must have –’
I did not hear the rest. The cloaked shadow landed right before me, jumping down from the rocks just above my head. Under the moonlight his face appeared before mine, so close and so familiar I lost control of myself for one disastrous instant.
‘It’s you!’ I shouted, j
ust as his fist hit me in the chest.
I felt a tingling wave of vertigo, flailed my arms in wide circles and felt my feet slide, my entire body falling backwards and into the void.
McGray grasped my collar and pulled me back up, hoisting me on to the hill. The stone wall hit my face and I saw an explosion of stars, just as Nine-Nails sprinted around me, towards that blasted man.
The sparks blurred my vision, but I still caught glimpses of Nine-Nails and the young officer, both struggling and throwing blows. I saw the black cape billowing, blacker than the sky, and then, just as I clung to the slick rocks with all my might, I recognized that thin, pale face one last time, before McGray threw a blow at him. The man waved to dodge the fist, but then lost his balance and fell into the darkness.
I heard his panicked scream and how abruptly it ended, somewhere down there in the garden’s grounds. I thought I’d heard the crack of bones. And I felt sick.
I remained dizzy for a good while, so I had to put an arm around McGray’s shoulders as he guided me down the hill. The one thing that felt perfectly clear was the acute pain on my face, as if the rock had split my cranium in half.
‘Are ye all right?’ McGray asked as we descended, and I grumbled something that sounded vaguely affirmative. ‘Good,’ he said, wiping a trickle of blood from my face. ‘Ye’ll look really ugly in the morning – that wound will swell.’
By the time we set foot on the smooth lawns there were four more peelers rushing in, all with blinding lanterns and pointing in our direction. With the additional light we very soon found the black cape, all crumpled and wet – sadly, not with water.
One of the officers knelt before the body and turned it over quite brusquely – there was no hope anyone would survive that fall.
McGray gasped, utterly shocked, but not I. Again I saw the face that had startled me and nearly made me fall to my death. I’d recognized him too well: the lean features and the gaudy moustache of Alan Dyer, the journalist from The Scotsman.
He was now soaked in blood, the flesh on his face contorted in the most disturbing manner, and I thought with a shiver that, had my feet landed a few inches in the wrong direction, that could have been me.
‘We have to go back,’ McGray urged, shouting orders at full speed: the body was to be taken to the morgue, his colleagues should be informed, his belongings searched. There was a slight quaver of panic in his voice.
‘What is it?’ I asked as McGray virtually dragged me across the gardens.
‘He wisnae the banshee, Frey. He was there just for gossip. That thing might still be around the hotel.’
‘Dyer could well have been the one doing the writing,’ I protested as we crossed the street, the ground still feeling a little wobbly under my feet.
‘Don’t think so,’ McGray said with laughable conviction. ‘I’d bet my life he was just lurking around to get stories. He must have found the writing – perhaps he even saw who did it.’
‘Then why run? Why would he risk being arrested – or killed?’
‘’Cause he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He must have been frightened; must have thought we’d blame it all on him. Ye would have!’
‘Nine-Nails, may I remind you that you threatened to stuff his mouth with newspapers? If anything frightened him –’
‘Och, d’ye want me to pat sleazy suspects on the back and buy them a pint and beg them to be cooperative?’
I snorted. ‘Well, the man is dead now, which is most inconsiderate of him. And all covered in blood. It is impossible to tell whether it is his own or a spill from what he used to leave the message.’
‘Aye, but there might be other ways to find out.’
On our return the Palace Hotel was still in turmoil, but Millar had done a very good job at keeping – almost – everyone inside. The officers who’d not followed us had stayed and guarded all entrances, aided by a handful of other policemen who had approached after hearing the gunshots. Now they were keeping a dozen reporters at bay. Clearly, they had all been spying around, just like I believed Dyer had done, and now they’d emerged like earthworms in disturbed soil.
‘Did you see the apparition?’ a daring newsman asked McGray. ‘Was it the same banshee as –’
Nine-Nails pushed the man, who fell backwards and knocked over another two who’d planted themselves in front of us. Nobody yet seemed aware of the death under Castle Rock.
‘Only four people came out o’ the building through the main door in the past half hour,’ said Millar as soon as we stepped into the foyer. ‘Two young men, very haughty looking, only a few minutes before all the fuss began.’
‘Irving’s sons,’ McGray grunted. ‘Who else?’
‘The Lord and Lady Provost. He called for his carriage just in the thick of it. Of course, we couldnae stop them.’
‘Of course,’ I echoed. Edinburgh’s Lord Provost could not have borne being spotted at a scandalous crime scene – particularly not one that involved ghosts and stage celebrities.
I forced myself back into my full senses, and managed to walk into the ballroom without McGray’s aid, but we still caused a stir: our suits were torn and muddy and my face was bleeding.
McGray jumped on a chair and announced, with a roaring voice, that nobody was to leave the building until we’d carried out our search. There was a rain of protests, and immediately I had Catherine and my father in front of me.
‘How could you involve us in this dreadful scandal?’ Catherine whimpered, blind to my wounds, pulling Elgie by the arm. Conversely, my brother could not have looked more excited.
Father (who had spilt half a glass of claret on his white shirt front) grabbed my arm as if I were still a naughty eight-year-old and hissed at me, ‘Make haste, Ian! Pull some strings and let us go at once.’
I snorted. ‘I will do no such thing. You are all witnesses now and will have to be properly questioned.’
‘Oh!’ Catherine seemed to faint, placing the back of her hand on her forehead and ‘falling’ slowly enough so that a passing gentleman could catch her.
I let go of my father’s grip, and McGray and I rushed to the backyard.
The place was fully lit now but the entire image was an attack on my senses, and for an instant I did not know which way to look: on one side was Constable Cooper, still slightly stunned, now being aided by a colleague and a maid who’d brought him tea. On the other side, glimmering under the lanterns, was the red writing.
‘Ye all right, laddie?’ asked Nine-Nails. Once young Cooper nodded, McGray took a few steps towards the bloodstains. He shook his head and covered his mouth; I could sense his anxiety without even seeing his face. I feared to look, and when a cold finger tapped my shoulder I started.
‘Here, sir,’ a young maid said, offering me a piece of paper. ‘The head cook wrote it down as you wanted.’
I thanked her and took the note, although I would not really need it. The soft drizzle had not managed to erase the words; it had only smudged the edges of the letters, making them look as if the blood had oozed from the slabs themselves.
11 JULY SIGHTING
Chase not the voices and the spells they write
For only death and blood your hand shall spread;
One falls on the stage, maybe one tonight
If you hunt whispers that concern the dead
Bram Stoker’s Journal
Extracts from the final entry for the evening of 11 July.
Transcribed by I. P. Frey, given the poor handwriting.
[…]
Tried to warn them about the banshee shape-shifting, but the Inspector left and shooting ensued. Didn’t know what to do.
Read those horrendous words and could scarcely recollect myself – then something queer happened. As outlandish as the following lines seem, I swear on everything I hold most dear that all here described is truthful.
Heard a voice. Rasping, guttural. Male or female? Impossible to tell, but came from outside. Made me tremble to my core. I tremble even
now when I put it on paper.
‘Bram,’ it whispered. ‘Bram. You know it is time.’
God – My blood curdled.
The policeman next to me was oblivious to it. I pushed the door and looked at the street. Trembled again when a shadow lurked there, short but broad, that very massive dog, as black as night itself. The very animal I saw at the Lyceum in London; the same red eyes, staring at me hungrily as if waiting for a treat. It walked away, then looked back at me, as if bidding me to come after.
Reckless, but I went out. The policeman gave me some warning but I felt I must follow and the small man couldn’t stop me.
In the alley I lost the dog. Too dark.
‘Bram.’
That voice – it drew the heat, the life out of me. But still I followed!
How my heart pounded, how my whole body felt pierced by pins and needles.
Turned around a corner. A long, narrow backstreet opened before me, entirely deserted except for one tall figure, patiently waiting for me a hundred yards ahead.
Rubbed my eyes to convince myself. It was really there. A black cloak, much like Irving’s. Faceless. Dear Jesus, faceless. Only deathly pale hands, long fingers interlaced.
The dog was there, its dark body hugging the equally dark shroud.
Walked cautiously to it, as though pulled by some force I cannot ascertain. What was I doing? Was I walking to my death?
Then I saw that second shadow join the first. Smaller, trimmer, cloaked as well, but as it drew nearer I saw something glint under the hem. The iridescent –
Note:
The two following sheets have been torn out from the journal, and there is only a short paragraph scribbled on the subsequent page. – I. P. Frey.
Hand hurts now but had to write down these happenings. I can finally res–
Note:
This is the last known entry in Mr Stoker’s journal. – I. P. Frey.
31
‘What these verses say …’ McGray mumbled, looking as pale as a ghost. ‘This is what just happened. There’s been one death …’
A Mask of Shadows: Frey & McGray Book 3 (A Case for Frey & McGray) Page 21