by Ian Richards
‘Oh God.’ Ebenezer pointed at the Rag-and-Bone man on their side of the platform. It was beginning to advance towards them. Each step was slow and clumsy, but it was drawing closer to the open carriage doors by the moment.
Suddenly the voice of the train driver crackled over the intercom. It was sharp and to the point. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is the policy of London Underground to suspend all activity on the line following serious accidents. But in this instance, given the state of the thing currently staggering towards my train, I think I’m going to ignore that directive just this once. Please stand clear of the doors because we will not be hanging around.’
At once the doors hissed closed and thankfully, mercifully, the train began to draw away from the station. The first Rag-and-Bone man was left alone on the platform, a terrifying mannequin, his broken arms reaching out after them as they disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel.
Of the second, there was no sign.
*
For a while they trundled along at a steady speed, putting distance between themselves and the station. The mood amongst the companions was a mixture of relief and fear. Though they were glad to have escaped their pursuers, it was impossible to feel safe in the subterranean darkness of the underground. A thick blackness pressed itself against the carriage windows, constantly reminding them that they were far from the safety of the surface.
These feelings of claustrophobia only increased when the train engines suddenly cut out and they eased to a stop. Tony and Vanessa exchanged looks.
‘What’s happening? Why have we stopped?’
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ It was the driver again. ‘If there is anyone still on board—which I sincerely hope there isn’t—we’ve been stopped by a red light. I can’t go any further.’ She cleared her throat nervously. ‘There’s something on the tracks in front of us.’
Tony heard a clang. The sound of metal on metal. Coming from further down the tunnel. The breath caught in his throat. There were others out there. Down in the darkness, closing in on them. Another clang rang out, this time from behind them. It was followed by a series of rhythmic thuds—hands beating on Plexiglas.
‘What do we do?’ he shouted. ‘We’re surrounded.’
‘Any more spells?’ Ebenezer said to Vanessa. ‘Because I think now would be the time to use them.’
A burst of shattered glass detonated from the back of the train. Through the carriage window they saw another Rag-and-Bone man scrambling through a jagged hole several carriages down from them. Once on board the creature advanced past the screaming passengers and began banging on the next window. Another explosion of glass. He crawled on through, drawing closer, carriage by carriage. At the speed he was moving he would be upon them in minutes.
‘I don’t have anything that would hold them for long,’ Vanessa said. ‘Whoever sent them after us knows more about magic than I do.’
‘Who did send them?’ Tony cried. ‘What do they want with us?’
Crash. Another window exploded in a shower of glass and blood. The creature’s arms were lacerated. Blood hung from them in sickly strands. Red ribbons draped across broken chunks of glass.
But still it came, its face as blank as a shop floor mannequin.
‘You have got to be kidding me …’ The driver had switched on her microphone again. As well as her voice it carried the amplified sound of meaty fists pounding against shuddering glass. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are still being held by a red light. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t give a—’ Crash. ‘Oh no, oh, you do not come into my cab, you—Hold tight, ladies and gentlemen. This could get messy.’
The power faded up, an electronic hum that held suspended in the air for a second then gave way into a rush of engines. In an instant the train was off, speeding through the darkness with such suddenness that they were thrown to the carriage floor. Through the speaker system they could hear the driver struggling with her unwanted passengers.
‘No, get out, get out, get—’
The train sped onwards. Holborn station shot by in a flash of light. Covent Garden in another.
Then, with a sudden bang, the microphone went dead.
There was quiet now. Eerie rattling quiet.
The train began to slow.
It trundled on for another quarter of a mile, losing speed as it went, before coming to a halt a few meters inside Leicester Square station. Tony had seen enough. Stumbling to his feet he tried to prise open the doors with his fingers. Vanessa helped. Ebenezer, too. But it was no use. The doors wouldn’t budge. The few passengers on the station platform watched their struggle with bemused expressions. Tony saw an American tourist in an ‘I LOVE LONDON’ baseball cap, a hen party dressed up in sparkly dresses and sashes, a student in a second-hand army jacket.
A pale figure in a grey suit and top hat.
‘No!’
But it was too late, the hand smashed through the window as if it wasn’t there, grabbing him by the collar. Tony caught the stench of putrid skin. He tried to pull himself free but the creature’s grip was unrelenting. Bright yellow eyes bore into his. Vanessa and Ebenezer tried to pull him away but without success. Crash. Crash. The others were getting closer too, closing in on them from either side. Each one was less than a carriage away now. Drawing closer all the time.
The creature jerked him forwards. Tony winced. There were barely a few inches between them now. He could see every scar, every piece of diseased skin, every blemish. Like the first one he had encountered, this Rag-and-Bone man’s eyes were a sickly yellow. They stared at him intently, studying him as if he were an insect on a slide. Tony felt dizzy. Malarial. As if his mind were draining away from him.
A cold, damp hand reached out and traced its fingers down his face. Reading him like Braille. He caught the taste of rotten meat on his lips and shook his head, trying to escape the foulness.
‘Tony!’
But the fingers kept coming, stroking him, caressing his flushed cheeks, ignoring the cries emanating from his mouth. The eyes burned like sulfur.
Then the creature suddenly let go. It stood on the platform, staring blankly at him, then turned away and hurried off towards the escalator. The others followed its lead. Their interest in smashing into the carriage became a need to exit the train as quickly as possible. They kicked and punched the doors until a shaky sigh opened every one on the train at the same time. Without even looking at Tony they hurried after their companion, the one with only one foot hopping comically as he did so.
‘What happened?’ Ebenezer was at his side, checking his eyelids, feeling for a pulse. ‘What did you do?’
‘I don’t know.’ He still had the rancid taste of dead things in his mouth. ‘It was like they changed their mind. Like they didn’t want me at all.’
‘But then what did they want?’ Vanessa said. ‘Rag-and-Bone men don’t come after you without a reason.’
They rushed through the station and out into the icy London night. There was no sign of the creatures. Just the bright lights of Leicester Square and the rich smell of food wafting across from Chinatown.
‘You said they were bloodhounds,’ Tony said as they hurried through the crowds. Sirens wailed. Flashing blue lights played in the distance. ‘Maybe they got their scents muddled up …’
‘Unlikely,’ she answered. ‘They don’t follow physical smells, they follow auras. And each aura is as individual as a snowflake.’
‘But how would they get hold of mine in the first place?’
‘That’s easy. Any of your possessions. An old jumper, a schoolbook.’
He thought again of the evil yellow eyes boring into his. The sensation of having his mind studied, his thoughts scanned.
He realized then. Anastasia’s doll. And it wouldn’t just have had his aura on it, it would also have—
Suddenly he felt very small. Because he knew where the Rag-and-Bone men were going now. He knew what they were looking for.
They hadn’t been after him at all.<
br />
They wanted Martell.
*
He ran, as fast as he could, feet pounding on the pavement, too frightened to slow down for even a second. Ebenezer and Vanessa were somewhere behind him—a long way behind—dots in the distance. He didn’t look back.
He ran. Through streets busy with people buying presents, past tourists studying maps and taking photographs of the Christmas lights. Anyone in his way was shoved aside. Any insults shouted after him were ignored. All that mattered was getting to Dover Street before the Rag-and-Bone men did. He didn’t care about anything else.
What if there were more of them that had already gone after Martell? What if the ones in the tunnels were following up on his scent while the others chased down Martell’s?
He found himself muttering aloud as he ran. ‘Please no, please no, please no.’
What if the reason they let him go was because the others had already got what they came for? What if Martell was already dead?
A stream of traffic blocked his path. He didn’t stop. He navigated the flow of buses and motorbikes and cars and cyclists without breaking his stride, in tune with the rhythms of the city in a way that only those brought up within its boundaries can be. Though horns honked and tires screeched he ran ever onwards. Down alleyways, across garage forecourts. Nothing in the world was real save for the fire in his lungs and the steady slap of pavement beneath his feet.
Please don’t be too late, he thought. Please don’t be too late.
But as soon as he turned into Dover Street he knew that he was.
The door to Martell’s Antiques hung from its hinges. Hurrying inside Tony felt a sick fear grip him. The shop had been ransacked. There had been a struggle. He could see where furniture had been upturned and ornaments toppled.
He could smell the stink of rotten flesh.
‘Martell? Martell, where are you?’
His voice shook. To see the shop in this state felt unnatural, as if it wasn’t just the antiques that had been smashed, but life itself.
He shouted again, more desperate this time. ‘Martell!’
But no. There was nothing.
He stepped deeper into the gloom, deeper into the terrible, terrible darkness.
And a pool of blood squelched beneath his shoes.
17 - Mr. Krook And Mr. Kepler Make Plans
As Mr. Krook and Mr. Kepler walked through the grand halls of the National Gallery, passing the works of Van Gogh, Seurat, and Constable with barely a glance, they discussed how unfortunate it was that murder was not held in the same high esteem as other works of art. There were plenty of similarities between the disciplines after all, Kepler was fond of saying. A good murder, like a good painting, required patience, skill, creativity, and talent. Such flair deserved recognition in his opinion. If the purpose of art was to shock the bourgeoisie out of their complacency, then murder met the definition. If art existed to inspire feelings of awe and wonderment amongst its viewers, murder did, too.
It was a conversation they had had several times before, and they fell into its grooves easily, as old friends tend to do.
Both were smartly dressed this particular day, which was a frosty mid-November morning, almost a week on from the scandal in which the living dead had attacked the London Underground (the official verdict had swung between extremes: the event was agreed to be either a surprisingly creative terrorist attack or else an art-school prank gone terribly wrong). Mr. Kepler wore a smart grey suit beneath a long dark coat. With his long hair neatly swept back he could have passed for an art collector or gallery curator. Mr. Krook also wore a suit, though the effect on him was much less refined. He looked squat and miserable. His stocky limbs and humped back strained the seams of his clothes, and he wore them awkwardly, aware of how uncomfortable he must appear to the other gallery visitors, the simpering intellectuals and ponderous tourists who surrounded them.
It had been a good week, the week following the Rag-and-Bone men’s assault on Martell’s Antiques. They had spent their time productively, chasing up old debts and taking a brief holiday to Southend-on-Sea, where they had hunted down a former acquaintance and convinced him that running out on his responsibilities wasn’t such a smart thing to do after all. Mr. Krook and Mr. Kepler had enjoyed the fresh sea air. They had taken long walks along the promenade, eaten chips soaked in vinegar, and unleashed enough violence to keep the street gangs of Southend at each other’s throats for weeks to come. Such amateurs, these doltish youths with their furrowed brows and limited vocabularies. How easy to manipulate them, to wind them like the cogs of a clock and let them tick their way towards self-annihilation. Usually Krook and Kepler preferred to instigate such chaos in the city. It was easy work, knocking off a would-be thug, framing someone else, and watching from afar as the surrounding estates went up in flames. But to do the same thing out of town, down in Southend-on-Sea, where the gangs lacked the hot-headedness of their London counterparts, that took real skill. Earlier that morning Kepler had read aloud a story from the national newspaper that described the ongoing trouble in Southend. Another murder. A retaliatory rape. Widespread arson attacks. They had both laughed heartily over their breakfasts and raised the possibility of another holiday sometime in the future.
It had been a good week. One of the best.
But now they were back in the city, and back on the job.
Stopping in front of a tall entranceway, Mr. Kepler glanced at the gallery map he had picked up on the way in, and stepped inside. Mr. Krook followed, looking around cautiously at the paintings that hung on the walls around them. The display was new. It included works by Henry Fuseli, Sophie Anderson, and Richard Dadd, all artists Kepler admired very much. For the first time since arriving at the gallery he took his time and inspected the paintings in detail. The delicate brushstrokes. The use of shadow and darkness. He found it amusing, how varied these different interpretations of the Shadowlands were. His favorites were the ones that imagined fairies to be thimble-sized sprites who wore acorn caps and played amongst the flowers.
‘If only they knew, eh, Mr. Krook?’
‘I should say,’ Mr. Krook snapped. ‘I’ve never seen such rubbish in all my life. These painters don’t have a bloody clue.’
Kepler smiled. It was true, there was nothing in any of these paintings that came close to capturing the true character of the fairy form. Everything seemed too soft—so sickly-sweet it made his stomach turn. The creatures displayed were either impish devils, plump cherubs, or beautiful princesses. He didn’t see any hint of madness, anything as lean and devilish as Firefox. The few flashes of red hair and green eyes appeared accidental rather than deliberate.
It was to be expected, he reasoned. Fairies were more than happy to feed humans this skipping-through-the-meadows nonsense if it meant concealing their true intentions. He had met a handful of fairies during his life. He found them fascinating creatures: more sharp and twice as dangerous than any of Mr. Krook’s knives. They made him uneasy, and he had been glad when he had received confirmation that the doorways between Faerie and the human world had finally been closed for good.
The only doorway that remained now led the way to Marshwood. Just the thought of the house made his skin prickle. He could hear Firefox’s screeching laughter in the back of his head. Haroo, haroo! The sound of a maniac. As if it wasn’t a house at all, but rather a lunatic asylum.
Mr. Krook stood scowling at a painting of a buxom fairy queen, possibly Titania herself, reclining by a riverbank. Tiny, insect-sized fairies fluttered adoringly around her.
‘Needs a bloody fly-swatter, she does’ he grunted.
‘Indeed. If only all fairies could be dismissed quite so easily, mm?’
Mr. Krook shot him a look, but Kepler offered only a smile in return. Moving on to the next painting, he placed his hands behind his back and nodded.
‘We’ll make a move on the boy tomorrow night, I think.’
‘About time, too.’
‘We’ve given Firefox the
week he requested. By now the child will have let his guard down. He’ll be worried about his uncle. He won’t be thinking about us.’
‘Good,’ Mr. Krook hissed. ‘I still haven’t forgotten about that auction. The biggest heist of our careers and that little brat ruined it.’
‘It was a loss, certainly, but don’t be too despondent, old friend. Who knows what treasures await us inside the Black Magician’s cave? I wouldn’t be surprised if we make it out of this in a far better position than either of us imagined.’ He paused. In front of him, captured in swirling inks, a plain-faced fairy prince stared back.
‘I hope so,’ Mr. Krook said. ‘Because between you and me, Kepler, I’ve had enough of working for fairies to last me a lifetime.’
They left shortly afterwards, returning to the icy chill of the streets outside. In Trafalgar Square a crowd of French schoolchildren huddled around their teacher, clipboards in hand, while tourists took photographs of the statues. Mr. Krook and Mr. Kepler walked with their hands in their pockets and their heads bowed against the rising wind. The threat of snow hung in the air. The city felt unseasonably cold, as if the clouds above could release a torrent of white flakes at any moment. Kepler’s arthritis throbbed—a dull, aching pain, brought on by the cold. A few raindrops fell from the sky. They struck his face and dribbled down his leathery skin.
‘Rain,’ Mr. Krook said.
‘Rain,’ Kepler agreed.
They flared their umbrellas and walked on in silence.
*
Martell remembered only fragments.
Footsteps marching up the staircase.
Opening the window and setting Pushkin on the rain-slicked roof-tiles, urging the cat to run to safety.
He remembered the cold bite of the wind, the drizzling, mizzling rain.
The almighty crash of hands hammering against the bedroom door.
Looking at his photograph of Emily, as if somehow she could help him.