by Felix Gilman
A Warning-Authority-Family Arguments-Corruption-Resistance
Ruth
The Know-Nothings took Ruth and Zeigler back to the Chapterhouse. Ruth walked in silence. Silence was best—talking only made them angry, only showed weakness. Zeigler, stunned, outraged, frightened, seemed inclined to argue; she put an arm on his elbow to say, keep quiet.
The local Chapterhouse stood in what used to be the Hall of Trade, on Holcroft Square, across from the Museum. The old ornate pillars and friezes of the Hall of Trade were blackened with soot and grime. The grand brass-bound doors to the old lobby were locked, forgotten, jammed with decades of wet windblown rubbish and leaves; the Know-Nothings went in and out by the back door, the old servants’ entrance. A small sign by the side of the door read civic league local 141c, beneath which was a list of the League’s local corporate sponsors—Holcroft, Patagan, Axis, half a dozen others. Otherwise the building was unmarked. Everyone knew what it housed.
Inside it smelled of beer, cigarettes, oil lamps; sweat and fear. The sound of typing rattled through the corridors. Young men lounged with their feet up on the tables, played cards or darts, stared into space—aimless, stupid, restless time-wasting. Some of them were people Ruth recognized. In the outside world a few of them were almost friends—she didn’t much like Know-Nothings on principle, but people did what they had to to get by, and …
In here things were different. They looked at her coldly—like a thing. A ghost. She shivered, went pale. “In here,” Siddon said. They put her and Zeigler in separate rooms.
And to her surprise, her slowly growing relief, they didn’t beat her, didn’t so much as lay a hand on her. Her questioner was an old man, round and grey and shoulderless, with the look of one of those who’d been in the League so long that they’d settled into it as a kind of comfortable retirement. He was almost courtly. He called her a pretty young thing, and she didn’t tell him to get lost, she batted her eyelashes and spoke softly, thinking: better to be ashamed of yourself later than shot in the head now.
“What did that … ghost say to you?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t know.” Plead ignorance. That was what they liked to hear.
“What did you mean about a, a monster?”
“Don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t know. I had a dream, once. That Museum scares me, sir. Who knows what’s in it? I don’t know. I was upset, because of the …”
/ don’t know. That was the catechism. Over and over. The interrogator nodded, coughed, smiled, stared at her with weak pale eyes. I don’t know anything about anything.
It wasn’t an interrogation; it was a warning. Keep your mouth shut. She bowed her head. She could take a hint. I never saw anything. I don’t know anything. By the end of the day she almost believed it.
They released her and Zeigler both at the same time. It was evening, and cold. Zeigler’s nose was bloody and his scalp bruised, his spectacles broken, the fingers of his left hand swelling and the nails going black. “They took my notes, Ruth, can you believe it?”
The warmth of relief ebbed away, and Ruth began to shake with the fear and anger she’d been holding back all day—but the Know-Nothings were still watching, so all she said was, “Shh, please, Mr. Zeigler.”
She helped him home.
Maury
Inspector Maury rode across the city in the back of the black motor-wagon, sat on the hard rattling benches, under the darkness of black canvas, in the constant smell of leaking fuel, in the constant drone of the wagon’s engine.
The motor-wagon was a rare and remarkable thing. It was one of the perks of his rank and his special status, his roving and open-ended jurisdiction—as were the security detail who rode behind in the motorcar.
Even by motor-powered vehicles, it was a long trip from Brace-Bel’s house on Barking Hill northwest to Fosdyke, and Holcroft Plaza, and the Museum.
The woman—Low comma Ivy—the prisoner—sat on the bench across from him, and stared defiantly into his eyes. A contest of wills was taking place, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was winning.
She’d answered none of his questions about Brace-Bel, or about the Arjun fellow who’d fled with him, or about anything at all, until, on a whim, he’d said, “Arjun, then—don’t pretend you never talked to him—he says there’s some kind of monster in the old Fosdyke Museum—did he tell you anything about that?” She smiled; her eyes lit up.
“The Beast. The lizard. It has scars, Inspector—I’ve seen it. I may even know who made it, in what laboratories.”
She wouldn’t say anything more, so of course he slapped her around a bit. In fact he bloodied her up a little more than felt proper, with a pretty face like that. But she seemed indifferent to pain, contemptuous of it. He had a sense that she was waiting, somewhat bored, for him to reach an obvious conclusion. She made him feel unimaginative and small. He stopped and lit a cigarette to cover the shaking of his hands.
“Fosdyke,” he told his bodyguards. “You heard. There’s something sick going on in the Fosdyke Chapterhouse.” That was the nature of Maury’s special rank and status. Internal investigations. He watched the watchmen. That was a line from an old book he’d had burned. “We’re going to have some fucking questions for the Fosdyke Local. Take this bitch with us. Back of the wagon, tie her hands.”
Now he sat across from her, in the back of the wagon, and tried to meet her gaze.
Maury’s wife had died, what, ten years ago? Since then he hadn’t had much in the way of dealings with women—what one did with ghosts, of course, not counting. His wife had been a good woman, but plain, and thick as two short planks. He didn’t have much experience with beauty. The Low woman made him uncomfortable. He felt his authority slipping in her presence. Once, as they went north through Marriot, he jumped up and slapped her, and she sneered back at him, “Did that help, Inspector?” It didn’t much. He didn’t do it again. The wagon rattled and strained up and down hills, over iron bridges, into the night.
And so Inspector Maury hit Local 141C at just past midnight like a storm, like a wicked gale blown down from the Mountain, that rattles the windows and strips the trees and fills strong men with nightmares—that bloody woman might not have been scared of him, but those lads were all right. Midnight shift in the Chapterhouse, skeleton crew, a few pale unbloodied lads hanging around over the last gaslamp in the mess hall, drinking, smoking, farting, telling each other ghost stories; none of them ready for Maury, who’d been building up a great head of steam in the back of the wagon, and was ready to explode. “You want to see my fucking papers, boy? Do you? Are you challenging my fucking authority?” No sir, no sir, too fucking right they weren’t. Maury’s own personal staff flanked him, cracking their knuckles, ready for the word, ready for just so much as a nod irom Maury—and he thought about it, he definitely thought about it. Local l4lC’s night shift looked ready to piss themselves. Can’t get the quality anymore. This lot had a particular look to them—furtive, corrupt. “I hear you’ve been keeping secrets.” Oh, they knew—he could smell it. “Keys to the Museum, boys. Let’s go digging.” They didn’t dare say no. Throughout all this the prisoner, the Low woman, Ivy, stood by his side like she was his own personal bodyguard or advisor or something, and it didn’t seem quite right, but it didn’t seem exactly wrong either.
Through the locked halls, filled with shrouded and dusty relics— between two great bronze knights on horseback, offering up their swords as if in surrender—under a stone arch carved with fat writhing snakes—through a room of cracked beads and brittle yellow fans—the lads from Local 141C making their various excuses all the way. “So glad you’re here, sir, to be frank keeping the thing alive never sat right with me, orders are orders, so glad you’re here to set things right.” Clever lad, that one. Watch that one. Down through the corridors, smelling of torches, mildew, cigarette smoke; across a vault of velvet ropes, empty plinths, dark spaces; through a plain unmarked door like any other storage-room door. The smell that escaped through
the crack in the door—indescribable. Metals and acids. Formaldehyde? Death and Time. A sense of weight. A hiss … And suddenly Maury felt a kind of furtive, overpowering fascination. Whatever was in the room, he wasn’t willing to share it.
“It’s caged? Fucking answer me—it’s caged? Right. Wait outside. All of you. And take her away,” he said, waving a hand at no one in particular. “The prisoner. What’s she doing here? Lock her up. Local cells, go on.”
For a moment it looked, absurdly, as though the woman might object—might refuse. Then she gave a tiny, ironical bow—as if to say, all right. This once. No time to worry about that now—more important things to worry about.
Then he was alone.
He went in alone.
A small room, but dark. The torchlight that slanted through the half-open door only deepened the shadows. No windows. Underground, of course—felt somehow like it was deep underground. Buried. The yellow headlamp eye of the thing in the cage …
Maury noticed—he’d been an Inspector for longer than he cared to remember, he kept a cool head and he noticed these things—that the floor was littered with cigarette butts; and he pictured with sudden savage clarity all the men of Local 141C coming down here, alone, furtive, mumbling, chain-smoking, night after night, waiting for the creature to … speak?
It blinked at him and said nothing.
He got a torch from the corridor outside and held it close. The dark pupils contracted, dwindled into the yellow of its eyes, vanished like tiny black bats retreating into a yellow moon. Intelligence fled, leaving dullness behind. The eyes themselves—misshapen. Uneven. The folds, nearly human, scarred and stitched. The huge shoulders hunched, the tail dragged. “Fuck, you’re ugly.”
It settled back on its haunches.
“What the fuck are you?”
A long tongue the color of spoiled meat flickered across its jaw.
“Speak to me, then.”
It sat there in dumb animal silence.
He shivered, shook himself, laughed. “Fuck you, then, you horrible thing. Back in the dark for you.”
When he left, he locked the door behind him and slipped the key into his pocket.
Time to find a bed somewhere. Time to find a bed, and put the thing out of his mind. Go blank, which was something he was good at doing. Big day tomorrow.
Ruth
Marta was scarcely two years older than Ruth. That never stopped her from going maternal at times like these. At first it was, “What happened to you, you left the shop shut all day, where’d you wander off to this time?” And she scowled and crossed her arms like a fishwife. But then she saw the look on Ruth’s face, and Ruth told her the story, and at once Marta was full of a fierce frightened kindness—she alternated all night, and the next morning, too, between concern for Ruth and rage at the fucking Know-Nothings, fucking Siddon, that treacherous little shit …
“You know you shouldn’t,” she said over breakfast. “Oh, Ruth, you know you shouldn’t do those things.”
“That poor man,” Ruth said, meaning the murdered soldier. “Someone had to help him,” she explained. For some reason it was always easier to talk to Marta about those things when Marta was frightened—when she was calm those conversations turned into shouting matches. “What could I do? Leave him to Zeigler? They’d both be dead.”
“You’re lucky you’re not dead.” Marta sighed. “Following those ghosts—this is the world we have to live in, Ruth.”
“For now, maybe.”
Marta shook her head. They finished their breakfast in an exasperated affectionate silence. The arguments were long familiar to both of them—living in the shadow of the Mountain, in the shadow of their father, with their extraordinary sister, the Low sisters argued about the supernatural the way other families who bore more normal burdens might argue about money.
“I have to see Macaulay about his leg,” Marta said. “Will you be all right this morning?”
“Oi course I will, Marta.”
“Stay out of trouble, then.”
Outside it was not quite dawn yet, and Fosdyke’s shifts were beginning, the whistles were sounding. Carnyx Street—home to the eccentric, the dissolute, the irregularly employed, those who lived on their wits—was still half asleep. The list of chores Ruth had been neglecting was long and forbidding. She put things off for another morning. Not being shot in the head and thrown in a ditch— that was enough of an accomplishment for the day. She read; sometimes she started shaking. Eventually she fell asleep, and dreamed of impossible creatures, ghosts of unusual beauty and brilliance, a world in which she, herself, was perfect, inviolate, alien and immaterial, a ghost or a dream.
Martha banged the table. “What happened?”
“Huh? What?”
“Is this you and Zeigler—did you do this?”
Ruth blinked; her head was full of muzzy grey clouds; it appeared to be afternoon. She repeated, “What?”
“They didn’t say anything, yesterday? No? I’m sorry, Ruth, I just—there’s bloody great motor-wagons outside the Museum, and the Chapterhouse.”
“Executives. Someone important.”
“New men, with guns. Have you been asleep all morning? Everyone’s talking. The Square’s full of new men with guns, Know-Nothings, and there’s something going on. They’re up to something. Shouting—Macaulay said he was walking that way and he heard shots. This can’t be good. Can’t be.”
“Marta, what were you doing out by the Museum?”
She stopped, went silent, shrugged. “I don’t know, Ruth. You’re not the only one who remembers things.”
Maury
In fact there was no shooting—it came close once or twice, but cooler heads prevailed. There was a scuffle—one of Maury’s boys, Pake, got into a bit of a fight with two of the local lads, had to bloody a few noses. Otherwise the men of Local 141C shouted, simmered, sulked. They telegrammed for confirmation—and found that Maury’s authority was unchallengeable. In the end they accepted the inevitable. They were in enough trouble already.
“You’re all going to be up on fucking charges,” Maury said, “every last one of you, if I get my way. What have you been playing at here? What is that thing?”
Maury had the key men questioned in separate rooms—the Chief Officer, the Local Secretary, the Holcroft Rep, the First and Second Investigators. He told his boys, “No violence yet—nothing too nasty. Go easy.” He sat across the table from those sweating, nondescript, frightened men, waited a carefully measured time for them to speak.
They all had the same story.
The monster in the basement had been there before their time—and when they’d first joined the League, twenty, thirty years ago, the men who’d recruited them had said it had been there before their time, too.
They said it was just—sort of down there. They never talked to it. None of them ever went down there.
Well, that was a lie, for starters; Maury had seen the cigarette butts scattered down there by the monster’s cage. He sighed, and told his lads, “Break this lying bastard’s finger—one finger! No more. Don’t go crazy. Not yet.”
Sobbing, they admitted that sometimes—sometimes—they went down there to look at it, to see the horror of it for themselves, but nothing more, nothing more …
That would have to do for the moment; more intensive interrogation methods would require additional paperwork.
They said they didn’t know why the creature was still alive. They said they’d just never got round to killing it. They said the paperwork wasn’t in place, they weren’t sure they were allowed. They looked honestly confused.
They all swore that they never fed the creature—not once in thirty years. They still swore to it even after Maury had more fingers broken.
Maury spent most of the afternoon typing up charges against the local officers. He typed one-fingered, with a great deal of fumbling, swearing, backtracking. His mood was foul; a whole Chapterhouse corrupted!
Maury was loyal to the cause. T
oo many of the League, especially the young lads, joined up for the bit extra in the pay-packet, the chance for promotion, the social life, the thrill of a bit of violence. They didn’t really fear. They didn’t get out of the Chapterhouse enough. Maury, raised in the shadow of the Mountain, haunted all his long life, scarred by a hundred encounters with unnatural things, knew how to fear. Nearly his earliest memory was of a bloodied and torn and ash-shrouded ghost who’d reached from the darkness of an alley mouth, pulled little Maury from the afternoon’s game of stick-and-ball, away from the other little boys and girls and into the shadows, and said, all you people are gone—the War wipes you away—you’re not real, and had proceeded to …
Maury had very definite ideas about what was and what wasn’t real. The rattle and ring of the typewriter; the sweaty institutional smell of the Chapterhouse; a stack of neatly typed-up charges and indictments!
Without quite meaning to, or thinking about it, Maury got up, walked across the empty evening Square, through the cold rain, turning the Museum keys over and over in his hand, and went down into the presence of the Beast.
Still in its cage. Its head lay flat on the ground, at a mournful angle. It opened one eye to regard him.
He carried a gun. He could have shot it. But then he wouldn’t have evidence for his charges against the local officers. “A few more days,” he whispered. “You monster.”
It was silent.
“There’s new management here now,” he said. “That’s bad news for you. I’m in charge here now.”
It flicked its tongue.
“Look at you. You ugly bastard. Never seen nothing like you. Those bars had better be strong.”
He gave a curt laugh. “Big fucking lizard. Look at you.” He laughed again, louder; it boomed in the little room. “Never was one for pets, me. The wife had a rabbit but it died. Lizard. Ridiculous thing. If I had kids I’d tell them about you, but they’d never believe me.”