by RA Williams
Produkt von Deutschland.
‘Right, they’ve gone.’ Climbing from the water butt, Mahmoud cracked the gate.
‘Leave your rucksacks,’ Balthasar instructed. ‘We got to get a move on.’
She tucked the memento into her bag and left it inside the gate. Returning to Swain’s Lane, she had a look around. The Home Guard had moved off and, aside from the distant sound of ack-ack, it was quiet. Across the lane stood a Gothic chapel, stone buttresses and parapets blackened by coal smoke. No light shone from its lancet windows.
‘Nobody home?’ she asked.
‘The gateman, but he maintains blackout regulations,’ replied Gaele as he beckoned them to follow him under a Tudor-arched gateway between the chapels.
‘Is it me,’ Elle asked, eyeing their weaponry, ‘or do we look suspicious?’
‘Monsieur pays the gateman a few bob to look the other way,’ Mahmoud explained.
Gaele pushed in a gate, hinges offering a familiar creak.
‘I donate four litres of black-market petrol a month for him to keep schtum.’
Closing the gate behind, Gaele led them across a semi-circular courtyard, sinuous ivy vines disguising the arches of a crescent-shaped colonnade.
‘The groundskeepers have joined up,’ Gaele said, as if apologising for the neglected look of the grounds.
‘Rubbish,’ the Persian disagreed as they ascended a set of stairs. ‘The West Cemetery has been grotty for years.’
Making their way deeper into the cemetery, a path led them into a necropolis of headstones drunkenly leaning this way and that. Sinister shadows rose as the bombers’ moon became partly banished above a canopy of yews and weeping willows. Terrible things lurked amid sorrowing angels and draped urns. Flashes from the distant bombing lit a maze of rising terraces choked with forgotten tombs and vaults.
Despite the crump-crump-crumps rolling up the heath from the city below, Elle felt removed from the war. Passing a mausoleum, she noticed a weeping angel staring sadly back at her, protective wings lost among the brambles. She thought of Emiliana then, her own shame returning, reminding her of the terrible things in which she had already partaken.
She had strayed from who she thought she was. She couldn’t have guessed it was possible to be so fearless. But the tapping of her finger on the trigger guard suggested otherwise, the adrenaline, which had kept her unafraid for a while, now subsiding. Her thoughts elsewhere, she stumbled over a tree root jutting out on the uneven path.
Balthasar caught her. ‘Steady as you go.’
‘Couldn’t have picked a creepier place, could you?’ she mocked anew, trying to shake off her nerves.
‘Courage,’ he said, ‘is just fear holding on a moment longer.’
Was her fear so obvious?
‘There’s something else,’ she blurted out without meaning to. Thankfully, Balthasar didn’t reply. She didn’t want to say it. Underneath her fear was a frisson of pleasure. It worried her.
‘Fancy humming that song again, Mahmoud?’ she said instead.
He smiled thinly. ‘You mean like whistling through a cemetery?’
‘It wasn’t always a cemetery,’ Balthasar said, pausing at an intersecting avenue.
‘Something more you’ve neglected to tell me?’ she asked as she stopped in her tracks. ‘If you expect me to lug about this useless peashooter, you can fill me in.’
Mahmoud and Balthasar looked at one another, resigned.
‘Highgate is a petit massif,’ Gaele said, returning from tabbing ahead. Casually shouldering Henry, he lit a cigarette. ‘A little mountain,’ he translated.
‘Hampstead Heath is the other.’
They all looked at her.
‘I’m well familiar with the lay of the land. I attended the Chiltham School for Young Ladies just down the road in Hampstead.’
‘Then you know the city below is an enormous flood plain,’ Balthasar continued. ‘Over the centuries, the River Fleet, like all the others flowing down to the Thames, became open sewers.’
‘An incubator for all manner of plague,’ the Persian added, leaning against the edge of an overgrown tomb.
Sensing their more relaxed demeanour, she rested her weight on an old statue, ferns sprouting from its cracked limestone. ‘What does a river’s source have to do with Crimen?’
‘The ponds of Hampstead and Highgate, the Fleet’s source, were a refuge,’ Mahmoud continued.
‘You have to understand: not all plague is bubonic by nature,’ Balthasar said.
‘Crimen.’ She worked through it. ‘They are plague?’
‘Of a sort. Those with wealth fled London for Highgate’s healing waters.’
‘We’ve a Lord Mayor of London to thank,’ replied Mahmoud, gazing down the path as a flash lit the sky. An instant later came a whumpf as a bomb exploded. ‘That was close.’
‘That’s another mis-drop,’ said Gaele.
‘Sir William Ashhurst,’ Balthasar continued to explain, disinterested in the bombing, ‘Lord Mayor of London, was so taken by Highgate’s healing waters, he built an estate here in the seventeenth century.’
‘Ashhurst House,’ said the Persian.
‘Never heard of it,’ she answered.
‘It wasn’t always a cemetery,’ Balthasar repeated. ‘Highgate flourished.’
The breeze shifted, carrying the choking odour of cordite and smoke. ‘Until a plague like none London had witnessed before.’
‘Gruesome mutilations began to occur all along the river’s course.’
‘Wilderzeichen?’ she asked.
‘We tracked a Sentinel upstream,’ Mahmoud explained.
‘To Highgate?’
‘We found the banshee. She consumed Sir William’s heir.’
‘And what, became Lady of the manor?’
The call of a night bird caused Balthasar to half cock an ear, and then he looked back at Elle. ‘His valet became her Sentinel. Together, they fed on the household staff.’
‘Collected your butcher’s bill?’ asked the Belgian coolly.
Balthasar didn’t bother turning to him. ‘We scythed the lot of them.’
‘But not Siobhan?’ Elle asked, already knowing the answer.
The bird called again from the darkness. The Belgian panned the ivy-strangled tombs with his torchlight. Perhaps Elle’s colleagues were not as at ease as she presumed.
‘No, not Siobhan,’ answered Balthasar. ‘She abandoned the manor. It soon fell into decay.’
‘Came as rather a surprise to us when the grounds became Highgate Cemetery,’ said Mahmoud, his torchlight joining Gaele’s.
‘Desecrated before it could be consecrated,’ she said.
‘This hollow has been dormant a hundred years.’
‘The murders in the newspapers,’ she realised.
Mahmoud nodded. ‘The mutilations, and where they occurred.’
‘Along the course of the Fleet.’
Mahmoud got to his feet, alert. Torchlight leading, he inspected a Greek-revival tomb hidden beneath tentacles of ivy. Sliding Henry from his shoulder, Gaele joined him. The tomb’s iron double-leaf door was cracked. A blood-smeared handprint on the door.
Gaele looked to Balthasar, who gave him a nod.
‘Take a butcher’s at it,’ he told the Belgian.
Turning, Gaele pushed the door in just enough to squeeze through, his voice echoing from deep within the tomb.
‘Wild signs.’
Elle crouched for a look.
‘Don’t bother with it,’ advised Mahmoud. ‘A lot of dusty old bones.’ Ignoring his caution, she went in. The smell of mortality greeted her, sweet and sticky. Distant bombing lit the subterranean vault through a skylight in the roof, revealing upturned caskets. On the ground of the tomb lay an eviscerated corpse, its chest cavity glistening. A fresh kill.
‘Is that your man?’ asked Balthasar.
‘It is,’ Gaele replied sadly, before slinging his Winchester.
‘How recent?’
‘Going in or coming out?’
‘By the smell of him, I’d wager coming out of rigour.’
‘Eight to twelve hours ago, then,’ deduced Mahmoud.
Elle exited the confines of the tomb. The others followed. She watched Gaele have a long look around. An ethereal canticle broke the silence. High-pitched and pure.
‘They are here,’ the Belgian whispered.
Balthasar’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the vine-choked trees. It came again. A distant, sweet melody of angelic voices. ‘Indeed.’
‘Siobhan?’ asked Elle, instinctively patting the Risineum in her thigh pocket.
‘War provides the banshee fertile ground,’ he replied, turning to the Belgian. ‘There’s nothing more to see here.’
Cautiously, they continued along the gravel path, making their way deeper into Highgate, the Belgian walking ahead. Balthasar followed, with Elle close behind. Mahmoud minded their flank.
On alert, Elle’s senses came alive as grim statues rose and fell around her, the crunching of gravel under her boots thunderous to her ear. Ahead, from the encroaching mist, she picked out an enormous Pharaonic arch in all its gloomy splendour.
‘We go through there,’ directed Balthasar. ‘Through the Egyptian Avenue.’
Elle shone her torch up at the ivy-entwined lotus pillars flanking the entrance. Victorian society had been mad about Egyptian symmetry. A wrought-iron gate hung by a single hinge. Passing between the pillars, they entered a narrow, sloping avenue lined with vaults.
Gaele halted before a cast-iron door emblazoned with an inverted torch; symbol of the flame of life, extinguished.
‘Toule,’ Elle said, reading the familiar name engraved into the limestone above the door. ‘You’ve a vault in Highgate as well?’
‘Necessity,’ Balthasar replied. ‘I needed access to the wine cellar.’
‘The cemetery has a wine cellar?’
‘It wasn’t always a cemetery, remember?’
While the other vault entrances were web-bound, the door to the Toule vault was clear. The Belgian pushed on the door. Inching it open, he thrust his torch inside. After a moment’s hesitation, he turned to Balthasar.
‘You go first.’
Mahmoud scoffed, opening the door further. Iron protested against stone. Raising his Thompson, he warily made his way in. Balthasar followed. Gaele raised his arm, blocking Elle until all was declared safe.
‘Clear,’ came the Persian’s voice from within. They entered. The vault was unimpressive: a damp brick-lined cell containing four lead coffins.
‘The Sentinel didn’t pass this way,’ said Balthasar.
‘How can you know?’
He tapped a web-smothered coffin, undisturbed.
‘Who’s inside?’
‘A Marks and Sparks dummy,’ Mahmoud replied.
Elle would have laughed, were she not so scared. Shouldering their guns, they shifted one of the lids, and true to his word, a plaster mannequin stared out at her, its painted smile macabre.
Gaele lifted it out and tossed it into the corner.
‘So then,’ said Balthasar, climbing inside. ‘Into the rabbit hole I go.’
Elle watched as they reset the lid.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked.
A dull thunk set unseen mechanics in motion, the floor beneath her boots vibrating.
‘We wait,’ replied Mahmoud.
Gaele shifted on the lid of an adjoining coffin. ‘We may find nothing out of the ordinary down there, Elle.’
‘There’s been nothing ordinary about this night thus far,’ she replied, wiping years of dust away from the coffin’s lid before sitting beside him.
He nodded. ‘Or we shall have to deal with eleven things that go bump in the night.’
She sighed. ‘Got any more of your giggle juice?’
Reaching for his flask, he took a swig before passing it to her. ‘In a scrap, if you cannot finish off a Crimen with a spike, blow its brains out.’
Elle took a nip, the brandy steadying her nerves. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
‘If inopportune, try to crush their spine,’ he added. ‘Huntians do not heal quickly unless they have fed.’
‘These Crimen in this hollow,’ she asked. ‘They haven’t fed?’
‘Not for a century.’
Mahmoud shifted the coffin’s lid, revealing it to be not only empty, but seemingly bottomless. Elle stood, looking inside. Narrow stairs spiralled into nothingness. The Persian called into the darkness. Balthasar’s distant voice begged them to follow. Elle found him at the bottom, chopper pointing off into darkness. Her torchlight lit giant cogs and cords, identical to those beneath his vault in St Emiliana. Gaele gave an iron lever a tug, and the mechanics began to whir anew.
‘Ingenious, no?’
‘Ingenious, yes,’ Elle agreed.
‘Roentgen’s gizmos.’
She turned to Mahmoud. ‘Abraham Roentgen? The cabinetmaker?’
‘David, actually. His son.’
‘How?’
Cogs clinked, the thud of the false bottom of the coffin sealing itself in place unsettling.
‘With the price of a Roentgen secretary being close to that of a small estate, David threw in these conjurer’s tricks for free.’
‘It niffs down here,’ Gaele said.
Elle sniffed, detecting only an earthy smell to the air.
‘They have been released,’ said Balthasar. ‘Mssr Gaele, you will mind Elle?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Mahmoud and I shall tab ahead.’
‘How do you know they’ve been released?’ she asked nervously.
‘By the odour,’ said the Persian simply.
‘I’ve smelled it before. What is it?’
‘Mould,’ he replied.
‘Old fabric,’ Balthasar explained, before making his way along a brick undercroft.
The Persian followed after.
‘Their clothing,’ said Mahmoud. The smell of it. It’s a Crimen’s dry-rotted and mouldy clothing you are smelling.’
Raising her torch to the groined ceiling, intersecting arrises choked with spiders’ busy work, she realised no one had ventured down here for ages.
‘Is this Highgate?’
‘No,’ Balthasar said, pointing out a wide ascending stairway backfilled with spoil. ‘When the manor was razed, the entrance to the undercroft was simply covered over.’
‘Fortunately for us,’ added Mahmoud.
‘The wine cellar survives. A suitable hollow.’
‘Heathens,’ muttered the Belgian from the rear.
Their torches fell on row after row of buttresses engraved with inverted doves, weeping willows and the usual skulls. Not even the cemetery matched the gloom of the undercroft.
‘Balthasar,’ Elle whispered, drawing his attention to her torchlight as it panned the packed earth, revealing a tangle of footprints, some soled, others barefoot. It was as if they had just missed a ghoulish dance party. Although sweating cobs, Elle felt a sudden drop in temperature.
‘Feel that?’ she asked.
‘Ja,’ replied Gaele.
Balthasar halted, his torchlight picking something organic out of the darkness. Torches converging, a ghostly shape emerged. Turned away from them, against a buttress, it remained stock-still. Elle squinted, discerning black breeches and long hose covered in grey dust.
‘Oi,’ the Persian whispered. ‘You all right there?’
Slowly it turned, gaunt face glaring at them, mouth agape. It pushed out a raspy breath as though it needed a long drink of water. But it thirsted for something else.
Elle swallowed her fear. In the Fleet, she had not the time to process fright. Adrenaline propelled her on. But here, as they cautiously moved through the undercroft, her mind lingered on the awful beasts, and she was terrified.
‘Huntian,’ cautioned Balthasar, moving towards it. It was anaemic, with pat
ches of scruffy hair clinging to its ashen head. It watched them approach. Curious but dumb, it raised its arms, not to reach out but to shield itself. Lifting his gun barrel, Balthasar prodded the fiend’s swallow-tail livery, silver buttons torn open. The beast offered only a torporific snap.
‘It has not fed,’ Balthasar said, parting its waistcoat to expose a bruised puncture to the left of its sternum. ‘Second footman. From Ashhurst’s household staff.’
‘Where’s its spike gone?’ asked Mahmoud, pushing the fiend against the buttress.
‘How many are there?’ Elle asked, eyes darting to Balthasar.
‘Ten,’ he replied. ‘Ten in this hollow.’
‘How many Sentinels?’
‘One. And we put him down in the Roman bath,’ replied Mahmoud, the beast lurching lethargically at him.
‘It’s docile,’ said Elle.
‘It’s famished for flesh.’
Taking hold of her hand, Balthasar pulled off her glove. The plaster covering her cut finger was now stained red with clotted blood. Even with eyes crazed by cataracts, the fiend zeroed in on the bloodied plaster, bolting towards her.
‘Enough of that.’ Mahmoud shoved the Huntian against the wall. It cooed, with hardly enough strength to protest. Removing a spike from the front pocket of his anorak, Mahmoud plunged it into its chest. Unlike the Sentinel, the starved beast hardly gasped. Spindly legs buckling, it collapsed to the ground, foul gas hissing from its mouth as the Jungfräu transformed to its liquid state, spreading like the roots of a great oak.
‘These Huntians,’ Elle asked, watching the pathetic beast’s limbs curling, parched skin tightening against bone. ‘All of them will be like this?’
Balthasar nodded, motioning towards the far end of the undercroft. ‘So long as they haven’t fed.’
Leaving the desiccated beast behind, they made their way to the far end of the undercroft, slowing as their torches picked something else out of the darkness.
A clutch of Crimen emerged. Huddled together, their heads bobbed rhythmically, their respiration laboured. Before Elle could withdraw a spike from her pocket, the others descended upon them, silently puncturing each Huntian. They collapsed without protest into a heap of reducing mush.