by KW Jeter
“You exhaust my patience, sir.” Summoning my strength, I forced him backward, off the doorstep and into the muddy courtyard. “There is a constable in the village–” In actuality, there was no such office-holder. “I would just as soon not call his attention to your unwanted persistence here. But if you insist…”
“No need aw that; no need!” His obsequiousness nearly bent the man double, his head little higher than the level of his knees as he backed away. “Nivver bothurr the awthor’ties – it’s all guid!” A keener and cleverer spark lit up his yellowy eyes. “‘Tis foin place, too foin for likes o’ me – ye’re correck about that. I’d only disgust yer el’gant patrons – of which ye have a great many, I’m shurre. Ye do, don’t ye?” The emptied smile split his face as he gazed studiously up at me. “A great many – all sorts comin’s and goin’s…”
“Whatever are you talking about?” I still held onto the poker, ready to employ it if need be.
“Only, Mr Dower, whut village-folk told me about – nowt more’n that. Watchful like, an’t they? Sees all sorts o’ things, they do. Those as come ‘ere for lodgin’, and… for othurr purposes.” One of his eyebrows inched upward. “Very strenge viz’turrs, the village-folk regard ‘em; very strenge indeed.”
“Your meaning is obscure – if you have any. Leave me, at once.”
“Ah, well; so be it.” The unpleasant individual made a show of resignation, consisting of a shoulder-heaving sigh and a pigeon-like shuffle from one foot to the other; the leather of his ancient boots was split enough to reveal the blackened rags inside. “But if ‘ave it in y’art, p’raps cud jist tell me like…”
I should not have responded – already I’d had more conversation with the person than I desired – but I foolishly did so. “What is it you would have me tell you?”
“Yer viz’turrs – as did munshun – I’ve a pow’ful cur’osity on those. Fair mad-dund on subjict, I be. Sich a kindniss be doin’, ‘f tell me ‘bout ‘em – ye ken the wuns I mean.” He angled his head close to sideways, intently peering into my face. “Th’wuns come round when ‘tis dark… bringin’ thairr liddle messages…”
A sudden apprehension seized my thoughts. He knows – of this I was certain; there could be no other meaning to his words. Whoever the person was – and I had thought him until now to be no more than a wandering tramp, his odd actions and remarks the product of long indulgence in cheap alcohol, and worse – he possessed some awareness of events about myself and my circumstances that indicated a darker agenda on his part. Whether this came through his spying upon me – entirely possible, as the crags surrounding the inn afforded ample scope for stealth and concealment – or by some other avenue of revelation, it little mattered.
I realized more. All of his sly words and feigned curiosity – their purpose was this: he had wanted me to know I had been the subject of his scrutiny. For how long? And by who else? What other incisive gazes fixed upon me, even at this moment?
A violent passion stirred my limbs. Outraged, I lunged forward and swung the iron poker in a slashing downward arc. I would have been a murderer if the man had not sprung aside with surprising agility. The poker struck the ground with sufficient force to bury its hooked tip inches deep into the mud. I was thrown off-balance, the velocity of my errant blow nearly tumbling me forward.
By the time I regained my upright stance, the target of my fury had scurried several yards away. Safely beyond my reach, he turned about and jeered at me, his weathered face radiant with delight, relishing my discomfiture.
“Foin host y’arre, Mr Dower! Ever so gray-shus!” He drew himself to his unimpressive full height, as though surveying the battlefield he had strode across as victor. “Seems news come late t’yer ear – well, ‘ere’s anutherr fer ye chaw on. There be more – yea, there will! There ‘asn’t bin last letter to come to yer hand – not by long shot. Anuther there be, soon enow!” His coarsened voice cracked into a shout. “And whun comes, then – then ye’ll be asking questions o’ me! Ye’ll see!”
Turning on his heel, the figure strode off and was quickly vanished, the dirt of his shabby garments concealing him in the landscape even before he would otherwise have been out of view.
I drew the poker out of the mud; brooding, I struck it against my boot, knocking away the clots of earth. As quickly as it had flared, my temper was now abated – somewhat.
An odd sentiment came to me. If my life had been otherwise, less coloured by irruptive chaos, I might have been rattled by this disagreeable person’s threats and warnings. But if the world about me were to once more transform itself into an engine of encircling mystery and imminent disaster–
Then I felt strangely at home.
I turned myself about and headed back into the inn, to await whatever sinister event came next.
FOUR
Mr Dower Accepts an Unusual Invitation
Through all the next day, nothing of note happened. This came as something of a disappointment to me – as might a soldier feel when summoned, musket loaded, to his position of battle, only to discover that the long-awaited enemy had unaccountably decided to turn about and go home.
* * *
I awoke the following morning, if not restored, then at least grimly determined.
Any further revelation was held in abeyance by the simple expedient of leaving the letter in the inside pocket of my jacket, the one which I wore most often by the combined force of poverty and habit. That the missive I had received so eerily from the jelly-ish courier contained much more information than its immediate predecessor’s two words – Found him – had been indicated by my cursory glance across the torn but thickly lined sheet. When securing the letter, my intent had been to read it in full at a later time, with the contents of my skull relatively less exhausted, so I might study it in depth, wringing all possible meaning and possibilities from the words inscribed by that distant, unknown person. And so I had commenced upon that plan, the day after my confrontation with the direly insinuating vagrant – but something had stayed my hand and eye from further action. My wife – for so I still fondly and foolishly thought of her – was so lately in the ground; what further tarnishing of my memories of her could I endure? If there were further secrets to be exposed, let it not be on this one day more – such had been my decision at last. Refolding the letter, I had deposited it inside my jacket, its unexamined narration a constant weight upon my thoughts, like a wound from which we hesitate to remove the bandage, for fear that it would be far from healed.
When night came, once more I fitted myself to the couch near the grate, fireless this time; I remained fully dressed and shod, anticipating that I would be roused by some urgent situation, impossible to foresee, and requiring all haste on my part to confront. The evening light, grey and pallid, faded as I allowed my eyes to close…
* * *
I dreamt, knowing that I was dreaming all the while.
Miss McThane – younger, as I had known her – turned to me, smiling as she did so.
What see you there, Mr Dower?
I made no reply, fearing that if I spoke, I would wake.
In her hands was the box, softly ticking. She tilted back the lid, and showed me the interior.
What see you?
There were no letters, no scraps of worn, much-read paper, but only a starless dark, vaster than the world’s night.
I bent down, to discern what I could.
And fell…
* * *
I was still falling, when I started awake.
Gripping the threadbare back and cushions, I stared wide-eyed at the ceiling above, my heart pounding in my chest. That all I had just seen were but the mind’s phantasmata, with no more substance than ghosts and other imagined afflictions, was no comfort to me.
The last traces of the dream – Miss McThane’s voice and smile – ebbed away and were gone. In their place came a sound, distant and haunting, though contained in this more solid world–
It was the post-horn, the
simple brass instrument affixed to an aqueous courier, such as had announced the arrival of the one which had visited me before. How many times must I have slept oblivious to that small, hooting note, while my wife had lain awake beside me, waiting for its call!
I swung my legs from the couch and stood up. If my slumbers before had kept me deaf to the courier’s wavering note, now I was exquisitely attuned to it.
This night was blessedly free of the rain that had pelted me on the previous occasion. A faint luminescence greeted my eye as I stepped out to the darkness. Some distance away, on the rock-strewn path winding to the courtyard’s gate, sat another of the gelatinous messengers – or perhaps the same one as before; I thought I recognized the marks inscribed across the glistening surface turned face-like toward me.
I was still yards away from the courier, when the night was cracked with the sharp report of a rifle being fired – I glimpsed, from the corner of my eye, the flash from its muzzle out somewhere in the surrounding hills. At the same moment, a shrieking cry assaulted my ears, its high-pitched noise overwhelming the echo of the shot.
For a moment, I had involuntarily ducked low, as though attempting to evade the unseen marksman. When I raised my head, I saw that I was not his target; instead, the aqueous courier had been struck by the bullet. Before me, but still beyond my reach, the creature flailed upon the ground, its various appendages in a writhing paroxysm; the shrill note I heard was emitted by the ragged tear widening through the jelly-ish substance, as might a child’s inflated rubber balloon whistle when punctured by a hat-pin.
The sound from the shredding laceration faded in pitch and volume until all was silent once more. That diminution took but a few seconds; when finished, the creature was but an empty, transparent sack, weighted to the earth by the leather harness it had borne while alive, festooned by the small brass horn.
I took but a single step forward, my hand reaching for the pouch, uppermost on the collapsed and motionless form – but the instinct for self-preservation overrode my desire to secure whatever letter might have been contained therein. Another shot rang out, and sparks flew up from a stone close beside me. Whether the shot had been meant to kill me as well, or merely warn me away from the deflated corpse ahead, the effect was the same in regard to my actions. I dove from the path, taking refuge in the shallow ditch at its edge. The person with the rifle, hidden in darkness, might still have had me in his sights; I could not be certain if I had managed to sufficiently obscure myself from his firing another bullet. Thus it seemed the wisest course to crawl as hurriedly as possible, away from the spot and back toward the inn.
This I accomplished, without injury; either I had somehow managed to elude the other’s searching gaze, or he considered that his goal of driving me away from the fallen courier had been accomplished. I risked lifting my head and looking over my shoulder to the spot from which I had fled. The moon’s faint radiance seemed to have brightened a bit, enough that I could just discern a shadowed figure, rifle in hand, stooping over what remained of the aqueous courier, and lifting open the flap of its harness’s leather pouch.
I took advantage of the person’s attention being fixed on obtaining that which I also had desired; I sprang from the ditch and ran, not halting until I had slammed the inn’s door behind me, my back pressed to its timbers.
At least I now had the advantage of being on my home turf. True, my only weapon was the iron poker that I at once seized from where I had left it propped beside the door, but I would be able to employ it from any number of hiding places close at hand, striking the miscreant if he were so bold as to enter the premises familiar to me, unknown to him.
My defensive preparations proved unnecessary; I heard no approaching step from outside. I took to the stairs, heading to the storey above so that from one of the upper windows I might better survey the landscape.
I saw nothing of the murderous individual, but I did ascertain the cause of that greater illumination that had previously silhouetted the man. Whereas before, during my previous encounters with the aqueous courier, the creature’s faint radiance had made it appear as a softly amorphous moon fallen from the sky and mired upon the ground below, now that same silvery-blue light was multiplied many times over. From my vantage point, I could scan across a considerable expanse of the landscape, to that point on the path winding away, where the courier had been slain by rifle-fire, and some distance beyond to the clashing sea. This territory had been transformed, so that I could see it in as much detail as if it were blanketed with the last crepuscular minutes of the fading day. For where I had once seen one lunar-ish form, now I saw many; all along the path, and over the hills and crags, there were more such apparitions, their innate luminance combining to a glow seductive to the eye. I was captivated, breathless for a moment, by such uncanny beauty. And they were not rooted to those places where first I saw them; they were slowly moving, with that slow, lumpish grace that one might expect from ocean-going entities stranded for the moment on the relatively dry land. Nor were they silent; to my ear came a multi-throated keening, the horns affixed to their wobbling flanks sounding notes deeper and more mournful than the call I had heard when the first of their number I encountered, nights ago, had announced his arrival.
Slowly, the straggling ranks of the aqueous couriers – so many of them! – made their way to where their slain fellow lay, a dark and flaccid form on the path. A number of them assembled about the corpse; their appendages were not made for lifting such a pliant shape, but they managed to pull it up from the mud and drape it across a pair of their rounded, bell-like masses. The dead courier seemed like a ragged banner there, trailing the torn edges of its fatal wound.
I had sadly misconceived the nature of these creatures, based upon the brief contact with the one whose slaughter I had witnessed, and the reports which I had previously read. I had thought them to be mere dumb animals, bizarre miscegenations that would never have occurred in nature unaided, but restless human cunning had brought forth to a world overheated both physically and mentally. That they might mourn and retrieve the body of a fallen comrade, being made aware of its death by some subtle etheric vibration – surely this would argue that they were close to being as intelligent and sensitive as ourselves.
As I watched, the blue effulgence that had been cast over the landscape began to fade, just as the greater orb in the sky might diminish through the night hours. The soft procession bearing the dead courier had reached its destination, carrying its deflated burden into the lapping waves. The number of similar creatures visible to my gaze had lessened as well, either by escorting their mournful fellows into the sea-water, or by returning to the hidden paths by which they travelled across the land. Out upon the ocean, the spots of light dwindled, becoming gradually smaller and then disappearing as the luminous shapes returned to the depths from which they had risen.
When all was darkness again, except for the stars and that larger orb with which we are more familiar, I started to draw back from the window… and then held that motion in abeyance. I thought I had spotted something else out in the hills, another witness to the eerie procession I had just watched. A figure wrapped in shadows, unrecognizable, at the jagged crest of the highest stone outcropping that overlooked the fields below – perhaps it was the marksman who had slain the courier with a single bullet. I could not be certain; a dull gleam could have been the reflection of the moonlight off the barrel of his rifle, held slanting downward beside himself. Had he returned in order to survey the scene of his lethal deed? Having thus stolen that which had been meant for my hand, did he have further villainous intentions? I leaned forward, straining to see if I could detect any clue as to his coming movements, whether he would turn and retreat down the other side of the rise, and thus out of my view, or whether he would make his way toward the inn.
I saw neither indication; the figure had disappeared, if he had in fact been there at all; the possibility existed that what I had glimpsed had been no more than a production of
my overwrought nerves, taut as violin strings after so many unsettling occurrences in rapid succession.
Once more, anticipating the worst, I forwent the much desired rest that my bed would have provided. Iron poker in hand, I took up my station, bolt upright on the couch downstairs. If figures wrapped in night were to advance upon me, I would be at least this much prepared for them.
* * *
“Do I have the privilege of addressing the Honourable Mr George Dower?” These words were accompanied by an ingratiating smile, of seemingly unimpeachable sincerity. “A Londoner by birth, but a resident of this locale for some time now?”
I found it difficult to decide which question to answer first – they had fallen upon my ear in such quick succession as to seem like an artillery barrage. Added to my befuddlement were other factors: the first, that I had been roused from sleep by the knocking upon the inn’s door; the second, that being confronted with a cheerful and seemingly well-intentioned countenance, after the hostility and slyness of so many of my recent meetings, was sufficient to take me aback.
The poker was in my hand, ready to wield upon some assailant; I had snatched it up from the floor, where it had dropped when my vigil, seated upon the couch, had been overtaken by exhaustion. The gentleman outside, while still maintaining his smile, gave the implement a nervous glance, as though he were reconsidering the wisdom of arriving here unannounced.
“I am George Dower.” Reluctant to set aside the poker, I held it instead behind my back and out of worrisome view. “Though you err in addressing me with any superfluous honorific – I have few pretensions to gentility anymore.”
My attention was sufficiently awakened as to be able to gather what clues I could from his appearance. He was no booted and tweed-garbed hiker, of the sort who flee the city for a strenuous – and costly – holiday, traipsing about the British wilds. To the contrary, he was dressed in a genteel manner considerably at odds with the surrounding countryside; his gloved hands and finely tailored morning jacket were such that he might well have stepped out of an elegant salon and directly upon my muddy doorstep, if there existed some form of transport capable of instantaneously accomplishing that. Younger than me – as is an increasingly greater percentage of the population – and possessed of one of those ruddy-cheeked faces to which a smile comes naturally; I do not possess the same.