“But he wouldn’t say what it was?” The question was calm but insistent, almost incredulous.
“No,” said Lottie, and felt herself reddening. “He just said I wouldn’t believe it.”
There were more questions, and Lottie kept finding herself repeating “I don’t know” to all of them. The police did not seem to mind. At the end they took it down in longhand and gave her the statement to sign. Then went away, politely repeating how sorry they were about the situation.
The story faded out in the media over the next week, until one of the tabloids had an exclusive. Under the headline Satanic Cult Murder, a story gave details leaked from the police investigation, including the autopsy. Jack had not just been killed, but ‘brutally dismembered’. The killing was a warning; police had received emails from a group calling itself Children of Pan claiming responsibility for the killing. The journalists had verified that Jack had been a member of various Internet forums connected with witchcraft, Satanism, and the occult, many of them overlapping with drug use. The Children of Pan hinted that Jack had betrayed some secret, or was about to, and had been punished for it.
The newspaper called him Jack the Ripped. The killing had been violent, brutal, and thorough. Some body organs had been removed and not accounted for.
“Don’t read any of it,” Grant advised her.
“You’ve read about it, though.”
“It’s pretty unpleasant. It’s not going to make you any happier.”
“Is there anything about a yellow car at all?”
“Nothing. They’re more interested in finding the people he was talking to on the Internet.”
For days Lottie was waiting for the police to call again, was looking over her shoulder. Could the police track her by details in her mobile phone? Grant said that the police would only be able to tell the general area it was in at the time, and then only if they did some correlation with mobile numbers, which they would only do for a suspect. She did not seem to be one.
Their alibi was that the two of them had been at home together that Saturday, doing nothing much. But what if they asked Steve about Grant borrowing his car? The police had not even asked what they had been doing that day, but now Lottie did not know if she could lie. She wished she had made an exact note of what Jack was supposed to have said on the phone when she gave the police a new version of the story. But making notes would leave damning evidence on her hard disk that might be found if they searched the place.
Sometimes Lottie wondered about what had really happened. Grant was quite jealous, quite protective. He was much bigger and more powerful than Jack. Had Jack really been dead when Grant arrived, or had he found her unconscious, assumed she had been assaulted, and there had been a fight? Was Grant capable of killing and then lying about it? It was hardly stranger than the idea that she could have killed Jack and remembered nothing about it.
The fear faded gradually, but it did fade. Jack’s girlfriend, Lisa, was released; she refused to talk to the media and flew back to Australia with her parents the same day. The police questioned a man whom Jack had contacted on the Internet, a dealer in herbal remedies and legal highs. They also impounded his laptop, looking for a connection to the Children of Pan emails, but the man was released without charge the next day.
The police issued appeals for witnesses, but there was no new evidence. The story dropped out of the papers. Lottie received a form letter telling her that her statement was being retained as part of an ongoing investigation. And that was it.
One evening Lottie drew the bedroom curtains and noticed how the street was silvered by moonlight. It was almost a full moon, a lopsided seven-eighths moon. That meant it must be a whole month now. The moon would always remind her of that day at the cottage.
Lottie woke with a burning pain in her ankle. It felt as if a rusty manacle were squeezing and biting into her, but the sensation faded as soon as she was fully awake. The alarm clock showed 2:30 a.m. Lottie lay awake, listening in the dark. Grant’s breathing was heavy and regular.
Pain seized her left ankle again.
Was something biting her?
Lottie brought her knee up and touched where it hurt, feeling around her ankle. There were no fleas or ticks or bedbugs, but a sort of hot glow of pain ringing her ankle. Lottie found her whole foot was oddly numb. She could not feel her foot. She explored with her fingers and discovered that her foot was not her foot.
It was scaly, and the shape was exactly like a chicken’s foot. The toes were long and thick and ended in curved talons.
This really is Kafkaesque, she thought.
Shock took over. Lottie felt over the chicken-foot again and again, and explored where it joined on to her ankle. Some impulse made her try to flex the toes on her numb foot—and the huge talons flexed horribly in response. She lay back again, trying to breathe, trying to think calmly. Grant was a shadow next to her, sleeping placidly through it all.
I’ve got to think about this rationally, she thought. Why chicken feet? Why not webbed feet like a frog? Wasn’t she supposed to turn into a frog? Why did it stop at her ankle? Lottie’s thoughts raced, piling up on each other, and then she was racing along some underground tunnel into a maze of dreams.
On Sunday morning Lottie was brushing her teeth before she remembered her experience of the night before. She looked down at the same two ordinary feet that she had always had. She flexed her perfectly normal toes. That was quite some nightmare. Probably it had been triggered by the reminder of the full moon.
Later that morning she saw the moon from the kitchen window. It had filled out and rounded into a complete shining circle. On an impulse she went into the bedroom, threw back the duvet, and saw the long parallel cuts as though the cover had been sliced with open razors.
Lottie heard the pulse thumping in her ears. She examined the cuts clinically. Yes, there were four of them, in the right configuration. There were matching cuts in the duvet itself where stuffing showed through. She tutted involuntarily: that was a nuisance, they’d have to get a new one.
Lottie waited until Grant went out of the house to put in a few hours’ healthy toil on the allotment. Then she went on the computer and Googled the details of the Dorset Ripper killing. According to the known evidence, the house had been broken into, apparently in the middle of the day while Jack was there. He had shut himself in the bathroom, but the intruder or intruders had broken down the door.
The exact cause of death was unknown because of the extensive mutilation. Jack’s abdomen had been sliced open and the chest cavity had been excavated. Most of the organs were still present, but the heart and liver had been removed. Terms like ‘frenzied attack’ and ‘bestial violence’ were used. But the killer had some knowledge of anatomy and surgery, and the killing bore the signs of ritual murder.
Feeling ice-cold, Lottie started an image search on birds’ feet, looking for a match. She started with raptors, eagles, and vultures that tore their prey.
Birds’ feet were the wrong shape. They were all evolved for perching and gripping. The feet she was looking for were more like lizards’. The nearest match was a Komodo dragon. She thought about Siegfried and other myths where people metamorphosed into dragons. Of course, you’d start human-sized, but, like other reptiles, you’d grow and grow over the years and centuries.
Lottie remembered what had happened after Grant had found her and put her in the car. How she had leaned over a grassy ditch and thrown up repeatedly. She had not thought at the time about the sheer volume of what she had thrown up, or the odd taste it left in her mouth. A bit like liver pâté.
Lottie sat very still, listening to her own breathing. She was still there when Grant got back. She heard the door, heard him scraping his shoes and taking them off on the mat, the sound of the coat cupboard being opened and closed. He stopped halfway into the living room.
“Lottie—what’s wrong?”
“When you talked to Jack on my mobile,” she said, “what did he say to you? What exact words did he
use?”
Grant shook his head. “I don’t remember the exact conversation. It was so confused…but he kept saying it worked and you were going to kill him.”
“It worked. Meaning his Vinum Sabbati worked.”
“I suppose so.” He stood uncertainly in the doorway.
“Was there a lot of blood?”
“You know there was,” said Grant.
“I mean, a lot of blood on me?”
He nodded slowly.
“On my face and mouth?”
“I had to clean you up,” he said. “I used paper towels from the kitchen, took them with me in a plastic bag, and binned it at a service station.”
“Shit,” said Lottie. Two tears overflowed and rolled down her cheeks.
A second later she was sobbing, and Grant was holding her in his arms. He smelled of earth and vegetation.
“It’s all right, Lottie,” he told her. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right,” she said, choking on the words. The sobbing subsided by degrees and she was able to talk normally, still holding tight to him, her cheek against his. “That stuff changed me. Flipped all the epigenetic switches and left them there. It’s probably linked to some monthly hormonal cycle; that’s when it takes effect. Every fucking full moon I’ll turn into god-knows-what. The Norwood Builder. The monster inside comes out.”
“The what?”
“It’s what Jack said. I looked it up. It’s a Sherlock Holmes story, ‘The Adventure of The Norwood Builder.’ This builder disappears and it looks like a murder. But it turns out the builder is trying to frame his neighbour. All along he’s hiding in a secret room in his house.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Jack’s theory was that aliens interfered with human epigenetics, then they disappeared. But he’s found where the aliens are. They’re hiding inside us. Just waiting for when the stars are right and they can come out again. But Jack opened the door in me and it can …”
She was sobbing again.
“That bastard’s not going to beat us,” said Grant. “I won’t let him.”
“It’s a full moon tonight,” she said. “You’ll have to tie me up. Lock me in the shed. Restrain me.”
“That didn’t work last time.”
“I’ll go away,” she said. “Grab the tent, take the car and camp in the New Forest or somewhere.”
“Every full moon?” he said. “That’s not going to work.”
Lottie pulled herself away from him. “I know you want to protect me, but I want to protect you too. I read what happened to Jack—”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“What I did to Jack. It’s a carnivorous reptile, like a velociraptor or some shitty thing like that,” she said. “One with long claws for tearing things open. You’re not going to survive that, even if you sleep in chain mail. I am the original proof of epigenetic metamorphosis in Homo sapiens. My beast within. Have you seen how fast lizards move? And it’s probably warm-blooded. My God, I’ve just thought, what if I get pregnant? Oh God, Grant, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?” Lottie realised she was babbling.
Grant waited until he was sure she had finished. He had been crying too, but his brown eyes were steady and he spoke quietly.
“I have an idea what it is,” he said. “There was something on that video I deleted. Just blurred moving shots.…Jack got his fairy tale ending, but the wrong fairy tale. Maybe if he could have made you more scared he would have turned you into a frog. He said the psychological part was the key, didn’t he? But you were angry, not scared. That’s why you turned into that human-dragon-alien thing. Jack got what he deserved. It wasn’t your fault, Lottie, none of it was your fault. You have to believe that.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she repeated. “But it’s going to happen again.”
“It isn’t going to happen again,” Grant insisted. “I’m telling you, Lottie, it’s all over now, it really is.”
She looked at his calm face.
“But I’m going to metamorphose again tonight,” she whispered. “Those claws, they’re like knives …”
Grant held her cheeks in his hands.
“No, no, no,” he said gently. “I know about fairy tales too. And I know how to break the spell. You’re not going to change again. Like Jack said, there’s a psychological part to this. What you believe matters. And we know how to solve this.”
“But how can you stop—”
“I told you, I know about fairy tales. I’m breaking the spell. You’re not a frog. I’m turning you back into a princess forever,” he said, and he leaned forward and kissed her.
SHADOWS OF THE WITCH HOUSE
Canterbury House Sanatorium, Upper Norwood, South London, 1927–37
Unhappy those!—Who darkling sail,
When stars, and ports, and pilots fail.
—Miguel de Cervantes, The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings,
And crawled head downwards down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
—T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
I
Dearest William,
I must confess at once that I am a murderess and a madwoman.
The madness can hardly be a surprise. As you will know, I have spent the last ten years in various institutions, bedlams, clinics, and asylums—or asyla, as George would have insisted.
These have been difficult times, and I have only gradually groped my way back to the light. Before he died, Daniel claimed that the world is made of words. Now I am the one wielding the pen. Perhaps I can write my way out of here, thread the maze by spinning a yarn and finding the exit. Your final struggle with the Whatleys’ Cthulhu-spawn in the church proved that words are our only real weapons against our demons. With my education I should be a mistress of words—Miss Sophie Alexandra Victoria Hetherington, M.A. (Hons) (oxon), no less—but I still can’t get them to obey. They hop and scamper around me like poorly trained animals.
Weia-lala! Think of me as a dotty, doting Ophelia to your Hamlet, both of us hemmed in by supernatural forces, sudden death, and bouts of insanity. Though surely I’m not as wet as Ophelia?
A smaller confession: I have read your account of the events at Dulwich that frightful summer when George and the others died, or at any rate your first draft. I discovered from a mutual acquaintance that you were writing a memoir, and it was not so very much trouble to get into your rooms one afternoon. I was not even lying when I told the porter I was an old friend. You have always been so organised that it was the work of a minute to find where the manuscript was filed in your desk.
One should never read private diaries or other people’s letters, but one always does, doesn’t one? You, I know, are too perfect for such snooping, but forgive me, for I am mad. I hasten to add that I did not attempt to look at the papers in the locked tin box under your bed. I left that particular beast undisturbed for now.
You do make it into a marvellous story. Of course, I remember things differently, and I saw more behind the scenes than you did. I much prefer your version of us—brave, selfless, strong—but I might have to disillusion you a tiny bit. It’s wonderful to be so blind to the faults of others, but does distort one’s view so. Your discretion is admirable, but failing even to hint at Tom’s activities, or George’s appetite for shopgirls and waitresses, makes your narration incomplete if not decidedly unreliable. Tom’s ambition to photograph every one of the perversions in Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis was surely one of his more interesting foibles, and you missed it entirely. I raided his room and spirited away the worst of his photographs, by the way.
Equally unforgivable is your absolute blindness to clothing. You do not describe a single one of my outfits; even worse, you ignored Jessica’s, and that after all the trouble she went to trying to catch your eye. You never even mention George’s
outré waistcoats, which were universally recognised, even by people who didn’t know his name. George’s waistcoats were known far and wide. And Daisy, beautiful Daisy, who was flypaper for every man’s eyes, is quite ignored when most people would have spent pages describing her.
But perhaps I should focus on more important things. When I saw your poor, battered body after they pulled you from the ruins of that church I felt guilty. Guilty that I had not dissuaded you from going, guilty I had not been more help, guilty I had not been there with you.
My small penance was to throw myself into rescuing your reputations and looking after poor Daniel. I explained your marsh gas theory to the police, the newspapers, and everyone else. It caught on very well. It was not a cover-up; it’s just that people like nice, simple explanations that make sense. They insist on them, whereas the mind revolts at stories of ancient beings and other dimensions which make no sense and raise more questions than they answer. I can be very plausible when I put my mind to it—remember all those faux-highbrow parodies I used to submit anonymously to sabotage your magazine at oxford!—and journalists are a lazy bunch, they’re happy to have you do their work for them. I used up the last dying glimmers of my brilliance in making George the hero trying to close down a dangerous church before the congregation were all gassed. The vicar had been sending some quite barking letters to his bishop, and the Church also preferred to believe methane intoxication was the cause rather than anything more theologically embarrassing.
I should have written to you before. Tragically, we may still end up murdering each other. Though I hasten to add that there is simply nobody by whose manly hand I would rather perish. Perhaps I can play Desdemona to your Othello. Be gentle with me.
George had little real understanding of what we faced, but he bulldozed on regardless of the dangers. It was the first challenge he had met that he could not overcome by persuasion or pulling strings, or getting the rest of us to solve it for him. We were George’s cabal, his circle of advisors and fixers, and for the first and last time we disappointed him.
The Dulwich Horror & Others Page 32