by Paul Finch
The colonel glanced up. Though now in late middle-age, he was still a solid wedge of a man, immensely broad at the shoulder. He was bushy-haired and had a huge pair of white mutton-chop whiskers. His gaze was that of the jungle beast: long, cold and penetrating. “Are you playing some kind of game with me, sir?” he wondered.
Young Brabinger looked shocked. “Not at all. In fact, I came to you specifically, Colonel Thorpe, because I have nothing but respect for you. Your hunting trips are the stuff of legend. They say there isn’t a predator that you yourself haven’t successfully predated on.”
“And how can that be of interest to you?”
“In short, sir, I aim to capture this creature. If not tonight, tomorrow night. But in order to do it, I’ll need help. Expert help.”
The colonel put the newspaper down. “This creature, as you call it, is a figment of some drunken fool’s imagination.”
“But it’s left a trail of very real crimes.”
“Which were no doubt perpetrated by a range of very real villains, who are all now mighty pleased to find their misdeeds blamed on a fantasy being from the realms of children’s storybooks.”
“Might I draw your attention, sir, to the fact that in 1837 the Duke of Wellington himself organised patrols in order to try and apprehend this fiend?”
Colonel Thorpe re-stuffed his pipe and touched a match to it. He gave several puffs before responding. “And might I draw your attention to the fact that that was forty-four years ago. This fiend, as you call him, if he lived at all – and if he did, I’m guessing he was some kind of demented acrobat – will now have difficulty jumping over a shoebox, let alone a house.”
“Colonel Thorpe …”
“Captain Brabinger!” The colonel had clearly heard enough. “I can categorically assure you that a creature like this,” and he struck the newspaper with his forefinger, “does not exist in a city like London.”
“Even if I categorically assure you otherwise?” the young man persisted. And if, unlike you, I base my assertion on the evidence of my own eyes rather than a bull-headed conviction that just because I haven’t seen it, it cannot be?”
At first Colonel Thorpe looked as though he was about to explode – the damn insolence of the fellow. But he was aware that several other members were now watching, and as he was as much a fixture in The Union Jack Club as its deep, leather chairs and ancient oak fittings, it wouldn’t do for him to be seen getting into an argument here with someone young enough to be his grandson. Besides, the Uxbridge Brabingers were not just highly-placed among the landed elite, they were connected in town as well; they had friends in high places, whom Henry Brabinger, this young pup’s father, wouldn’t hesitate to call on if some issue arose that might cause him embarrassment.
So the colonel replied in more measured fashion. “I think it’s rather possible, my young friend, that you got too much sun while you were out in Natal. Either that or you have a wild and vivid imagination unbecoming to the role of a professional soldier. Consider the savages you slew while you were serving your country. They were real, were they not? So real that they’d undoubtedly have killed you had you given them the chance. Ponder that, and ponder it well. Our kind is a strange animal, young Brabinger. By necessity for life, we must only ever deal in hard truths. Never in childish whimsy.”
“In which case,” the young man said, standing, “the hard truth of this situation is that I shall be the one credited with bringing this reign of terror to an end. Not you.” And with that he turned and walked from the room.
The colonel peered after him, but not so much with rage as with fascination. The young rogue had seemed very sure of himself. Was it possible he really did have some secret knowledge about this bizarre affair? This could always be the work of some of the club’s junior members, the colonel considered, trying to make sport of him. But he doubted they’d be so foolish.
A moment passed before Colonel Thorpe sent a waiter for his hat, coat and gloves.
*
Death came over the arid hillside like a colossal swarm of ants.
There was no question that this was indeed death. No question at all. Charles Randolph Brabinger of the 24th Regiment hadn’t realised it until now, though as a regular soldier who’d served on the Cape frontier for several years, he most certainly should have done. The veteran corps of the Zulu impi was without doubt the most fearsome fighting force in the whole of Africa. Their plumed and leopard-skinned warriors advanced at speed yet in rigid, organised phalanxes. They weren’t running as such, but marching in perfect quick-time. The sun glinted on their waxed ebony hides and the needle tips of their assegais as they drew steadily closer – two hundred paces, one hundred and fifty, one hundred – all the time pounding their war-shields with thunderous volume.
Native superstition told how, before combat, the Zulu troops would take secret drugs which increased their strength and stamina, and massively boosted their fearlessness. Charles could believe it. In the raging midmorning heat, the thinly spread lines of red-coated soldiers on the lower ground before him were exhausted merely from taking up position, their heavy tunics thick with sweat, their white helmets and fretting now yellowed by the endlessly blowing dust. And how few of them there looked to be in comparison to the awesome foe closing in. Even had their numbers not been halved by their commanding officer’s rash decision that very morning to ride away to the Mzinyathi hills and flush out a peripheral enemy force that existed only in his imagination, the oncoming fight would have been staggeringly one-sided, ten to one at least.
Now, on the open ground below the north side of the unfortified camp, hurried orders were barked. Breaches snapped closed as Martini-Henry rifles were raised to shoulders. There was a frantic neighing of officers’ horses, their terror growing rapidly as the approaching roar of the Zulus became deafening. Charles drew the pistol from his side-holster and slotted six bullets into its chambers. His palms were greasy with sweat. It trickled down his back, while the bristles on the nape of his sunburned neck were stiffening like wire. Yet even in the midst of that terrible anguish, he thought of Annabelle. He took the locket he’d brought from home and flipped it open on the water-colour impression of his fiancée. She looked coy and girlish, innocent as a flower and so lovely.
Annabelle, whose own family had been cursed by tragedies born in this darkest of continents. Annabelle, whose long ordeal he’d in some weird and indirect way hoped to even the score for by his actions here.
Annabelle, who he now would never see again.
“Belgravia Crescent, sir,” came the cabbie’s Cockney voice.
Charles opened his eyes and saw that they’d arrived outside number nine. It was a bitter February night and an icy fog hung in the narrow cul-de-sac. The tall, stately townhouse, though separated from him only by a strip of front garden and a flight of marble steps, was barely visible in the gloom. The gas-lamps suspended to either side of its classical Greek porch were dull orbs which gave off a wavering glow.
Charles paid the cabbie, dashed up the steps and knocked loudly on the front door. He waited impatiently, tapping his cane on his boot. Light but unhurried feet arrived on the other side. Slowly, as though with difficulty, the heavy oak door was opened, and Annabelle stood there.
“Charles!” she cried, her eyes widening, her pretty pink mouth forming a perfect O.
Charles didn’t waste time admiring her bustled evening-gown or the perfect loop-coils in which her chestnut hair was styled. He barged straight past her, unbuttoning his overcoat. “Are you performing all the household duties these days, Annabelle?”
“Charles, good heavens!” she exclaimed, still startled, though perhaps a tad less delighted than he’d normally have expected.
She made a move to embrace him, but he firmly extricated himself from her arms. He stared around the walnut-panelled hall, then up the stairs to the first floor. Both were deserted. “Where are the staff?” he asked. “As if I didn’t know.”
“What’s
the matter?” she said. “I don’t understand … what do you mean?”
He rounded on her. “Don’t treat me like a child, Miss. You think I didn’t read the newspapers while I was in the hospital at Durban? They might have been a few weeks out of date, but the stories didn’t change.”
“Charles!” Annabelle shook her head, perplexed and hurt. “You didn’t even cable to tell me you were coming. In fact, you haven’t had home leave for nearly three years, and for part of that time, almost six months in fact, I thought you’d been killed at Isandlwana. And yet the first words you speak to me when you see me again are harsh ones.”
“Let’s not play games, Annabelle.” Charles threw his hat and coat onto a stand. “They’re out hunting it, aren’t they? Nigel and Joseph, I mean.”
She said nothing, but her silence spoke volumes.
“You lied to me, Annabelle,” he said sternly. “Three years ago, you assured me this hellish business was over. You told me he was dead.”
“He is dead,” she said quietly.
“Indeed?” Charles’s tone was scathing. “I think not.” He turned and raced up the great stairway, taking it two treads at a time.
“Charles!” Annabelle grabbed her skirts and hurried in pursuit. “What are you doing? How dare you come into our home like this?”
On the first floor, Charles grabbed a flaring candelabra and proceeded down the left-hand corridor to a dark, closet-like doorway. On the other side of that there was another stair. This one was dank, built from bare timber, and it spiralled steeply upwards. Charles hastened up it, and at the top, as he’d suspected, found the iron door to the first attic room standing ajar.
Inside, it was a sordid den.
Naked flagstones provided the floor, cold bricks the encircling walls. Overhead, the rafters in the sloped recess of the roof were black with age and decay, and hung with creepers of dirty cobweb. The room’s most repellent aspect, however, was its suffocating stench: it reeked like an animal house at the zoo, a matter made worse by the rancid straw and husks of gnawed and now rotted vegetables that strewed every foot of it.
“Good God,” the soldier breathed. Though he already knew about this place, the sight and smell never ceased to repulse him. “Good God in Heaven.”
He pivoted slowly around, casting candle-light into every odious corner. In one of them there was a low truckle bed with a thin, stained mattress on it. Alongside that, a row of misplaced items sat on a narrow ledge: among them there was a necklace, several rings, a brooch, a chewed leather wallet and something broken and bloodstained, which looked alarmingly like a child’s rattle.
“I see he’s still following his natural instincts to raid and pillage,” Charles said tightly.
Annabelle came into the room behind him. “This is not what you think it is.”
“No?” He glanced up and saw the high single window; a heavy steel grille hung loose, having been peeled back like the lid from a tin of bully beef. “No, it isn’t. I see, if anything, that he’s now even more powerful than he was before.”
“That’s because he’s younger and stronger,” Annabelle explained.
It took several moments for the significance of that comment to sink in. Charles whipped around. “What’s that?”
Her face was wan in the candle-light. “I tried to tell you. But of course you weren’t listening.”
“Annabelle …”
“You came in here like some mad preacher, Charles. Holier than thou, determined to lay the law down to us again. And, as usual, you just weren’t listening.”
“Tell me now,” he urged her.
“Will you listen this time? Will you listen and understand?”
A few seconds passed, and he nodded. “I shall endeavour to.”
“Very well.” She halted briefly to touch a small handkerchief to her nose. Though a lifelong resident of this house, there were times when even Annabelle found the odour in this upper room unbearable. “The moment father died,” she said, pausing to restrain her emotions. “The moment father died – which happened just as I assured you it did – the curse or hex, whatever you want to call it, was passed on.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. “Charles, within minutes of father’s death – literally minutes – the same transformation began to afflict Sebastian.”
“Good Lord, no.”
“Yes.” She nodded and sniffled. “The brother who when he was a baby I used to bounce on my knee. Who, when he was an infant, would delight us all at Christmas with his lisping rendition of Winter.”
Charles tried to swallow his horror, but was unsuccessful.
Surely not Sebastian – that lively, intelligent youth: a picture-book image of his sister, young, polite, angelically handsome, and yet so manly, so unquestioningly stoic in the face of the scourge that had befallen his family. Charles made some swift mental calculations: Sebastian would only recently have finished his schooling; he’d be in his late teens now. Under ordinary circumstances, the world would be opening up for him, just waiting to shower him with its gifts and opportunities. What a gut-wrenching time to be bound like some beast. But still, despite all of this, despite Charles’s genuine affection for the young man who would soon become his brother-in-law, there was only one answer.
“Annabelle,” he said, “whether this is your brother or not, as long as you give him refuge here, this terror will go on.”
“But this is his home,” she pleaded.
“You call this filthy roost a home?”
“We only keep him in here at night. In the morning he’s normal.”
“N-normal?” Charles stuttered in disbelief. He strode out of the room and turned right. There, a second iron door gave through to an adjacent chamber, though this one was smaller than the first, and only had space in it for a wood pile and a coal-scuttle, and between those, a large fireplace filled with soot and ashes. Charles grabbed a poker and thrust at the blackened debris. Almost immediately, one of the horrible things he’d been expecting to find came into view: it was a cast-off, a shell, now badly charred, but large and vaguely humanoid around the head and shoulders, though after that all similarity to humanity ended. The head was disturbingly insect-like. It was oval in shape and sloped forward. Two gaping sockets revealed where bulbous eyes must once have been. Between these, black stubs were all that remained of its antennae. Charles struck at it with the poker, and it broke inwards, exposing a hollow interior still shiny with mucus.
“Normal!” Charles said again, with a bitter laugh. He rose to his feet. “Annabelle, there is nothing at all normal about this. Good Lord, how many of these horrors have you people had to burn now? Six thousand? Seven thousand?”
“He’s my brother,” she repeated. “I won’t have him locked in a museum.”
“Annabelle, he’s assaulting people nightly – with ever greater violence. Even now, as we stand here talking, he’s out there running riot.”
Annabelle shook her head. She was properly in tears now. “The newspapers are exaggerating. They even accuse him of murder, but that was an accident.”
Charles took her by the shoulders. He’d been hardened by his experience of war, angered that the respectable family he’d soon hoped to make his own had failed to heed his warnings. But suddenly Annabelle was his gentle fiancée again; beautiful, vulnerable, frightened. Her breast heaved as she wept. Her perfume, as always, was intoxicating. But for the present at least he had to be firm.
“Sebastian may not have killed anyone,” he said, “despite what the newspapers claim. But my dear, at some point he is going to. You must stop thinking of him as your little brother. He’s now a wild, ungovernable thing. And he must be stopped.”
“Indeed he must,” came another voice, this one deep, gravelly.
The couple turned, and Annabelle drew a sharp breath at sight of the imposing figure at the top of the spiral stair. He was elderly but huge, an impression his immense greatcoat only served to enhance. His top hat was tilted at a rakish angle, and he had an enormous pair of
lush, fleecy whiskers. His cat-green eyes twinkled as though he thought this whole business a marvelous joke, and for briefly Annabelle was reminded of the ‘Father Christmas’ character now being immortalised in seasonal sketches. But there was something about this particular fellow that forbade true jollity: the bull-neck under his muffler perhaps; the broad, ape-like spread of his shoulders; the hard set of his mouth.
“Excuse me, sir,” Annabelle said. “Who are you? By what right to you enter my home uninvited?”
Charles put a hand on her arm. “He has been invited, of a fashion … by me. Annabelle, allow me to introduce Colonel Thaddeus Thorpe. The deadliest shot in the whole of the British Empire.”
*
It was a grim story, made grimmer still when recounted with knowledge of the dread events that would follow on from it.
Twenty-two years before the birth of his granddaughter, Annabelle, the eminent archaeologist, Professor Reginald Cyrus-Jones, commenced the most difficult excavation of his career. In the vast grassy wilderness of northeast Abyssinia, then a land torn by warring chieftains, he and his colleagues dug beneath the ruins of a third century Coptic church, having uncovered inscribed tablets that suggested a pagan temple might be found there. They hoped for a positive outcome; it was common practise in the early days of Christianity to construct churches on sites that had once been the focal points for earlier religions. As such, Professor Cyrus-Jones was delighted when he broke into a shallow, underground cave whose walls were engraved with curious symbols, many of which appeared to represent local insect life. The fact that, on seeing this, his native labourers abandoned their work and ran away, did not concern him. If anything, he was encouraged by this; he felt it meant something valuable was in his grasp.
The professor did not understand that he’d opened a shrine to one of prehistoric Ethiopia’s most fearsome deities: Kalengu, the locust god, a completely amoral being whose idle whims could unleash the most devastating forces imaginable in a land entirely dependent on agriculture. Shortly afterwards, as other finds – idols, statuettes, items of pottery – were brought to the surface, a shaman from one of the nearby villages arrived. Alerted by the labourers who’d fled, this respected religious figure insisted that the desecrations cease; the under-temple had to be closed and the trespassers must depart, or a terrible vengeance would fall. Cyrus-Jones, now certain he was onto the find of his career, had the fellow seen off the site.