John Loughborough Pearson stood surveying Bristol Cathedral on a blustery day, his assistant, George Merryweather, hunched over a notebook marking down the gnomic utterances of his master. Pearson’s long beard was whipped to the side and his hat was in danger of being blown away. He was unaware of the wind however, all his concentration fixed on his task.
“Merryweather, are you paying attention?”
“Yes, Mr Pearson.”
“Then why do you keep looking at the roof?”
“I thought I saw someone up there, Mr Pearson.”
“On a day such as today? Inconceivable.”
“Yes, Mr Pearson.”
It opened Its hand and the bird flapped away, tossed upon the wind like a discarded piece of paper. Below It, the two men briefly caught Its attention before Its awareness jumped into that of the bird in flight.
Merryweather looked at the cathedral, its buttresses, its gaping windows, and suppressed a shudder. He didn’t like it, it seemed to watch him, brooding. His master, the architect, had made a declaration when he first saw it.
“It has yet to be balanced, Merryweather. The lines are all wrong. Badly, dangerously wrong.”
Dangerously? he had thought at the time, really? And yet now when he looked at its looming bulk, its imp and skull carvings gurning from the walls and the soft lascivious stone it had been carved from, he was unsure. It might well be dangerous. When he looked at it he found himself staring, his eyes straining across its face, looking for movement, and he didn’t know why. Maybe it was because every time he looked away the hairs at the back of his neck seemed to twitch and he couldn’t shake the feeling that some inimical presence was staring back.
Later in the Hatchet, whilst his master was in his lodgings, Merryweather spent the evening sharing drinks and stories with some locals.
“It’s proper queer, the cathedral,” said the first, an old sailor, when Merryweather said that he was in town to work upon that building. The sailor had just finished a long, rambling tale about a wreck in the Bristol Channel some years past of a French steam ship piloted by ‘automatons and sorcerer’s fancies’ and insisted that ‘odd tracks were seen upon the mud.’
“Something crawled from that wreckage before any man set eyes upon it. Something that were never found. It was a rum occurrence too, a ship like that foundering in the channel, on a clear night. Look here, I kept the newspaper cutting.”
Merryweather read the short article about the ship being found already wrecked. No-one seemed to know why it had gone aground and there were no eyewitnesses until fishermen found the vessel. The fishermen told the tale of seeing tracks ‘Like as unto a man, but smaller, like a child, yet deep, as though whatever made them were heavy as lead.’ As he was reading, a younger man, a labourer with teeth gone to rot from too much sour rum, chipped in.
“Strange things, in the darkness, I seen strange things.”
“What sort of strange things?” asked Merryweather.
“‘Tis said that a hunched-over creature lives in the belfries,” the labourer said. “I seen it, on the roof catching birds, when we was working on the nave.”
“Hunched over? A man with a deformity?” asked Merryweather.
“Tain’t a man that climbs those walls,” the dentally challenged one muttered.
The old sailor spat, and got up to leave. “You’d best leave well alone,” he said, before walking out into the stormy night.
The next day Merryweather tried to raise the issue with his master. “Utter poppycock,” was Pearson’s opinion.
The pair were surveying the cathedral in order to finish it off. Pearson planned to create two towers on the principles of sacred geometry. They had been in Bristol for a few days now and Pearson was almost finished taking his measurements and drawing the building. Merryweather was glad they were returning to London; the cathedral was giving him the creeps. Today the windows seemed to wink manically at him as the late October sun glinted from them, going dark when small clouds covered the sun, like an Indian with a blanket making smoke signals. When the building was in gloom he thought he spied a small figure bobbing about on the roof, but when the sunlight returned there was nothing. His sense of being watched increased, and the wind whistling past the building sounded like an indrawn breath, followed inevitably by a small sigh, like a child’s dying gasp.
He knew they’d have to come back to recruit the labourers and craftsmen required for the building work. Tomorrow was the last day of this visit and they were to climb to the roof. He wasn’t looking forward to that at all. What if there was actually something that lived there? Pearson dismissed such fears as superstitious nothings, but Merryweather couldn’t help feeling that the lurking presence was real, especially when the cathedral was wreathed in darkness. His minds-eye had conjured images straight from Bedlam to his sleeping brain last night so that he’d woken several times, heart racing, sweating, straining to hear what it was that woke him and hearing nothing but the pigeons cooing and the rats scuttling below his window, looking for scraps. Yet every time he drifted off he saw hypnagogic dwarves leering and rubbing their child’s hands over his body. Once during the night he woke feeling stifled, and threw open the window, disturbing a rat which reared up onto its hind legs and bared its teeth at him. He swiftly closed the window again with an atavistic expression of disgust.
When he finally drifted off again he dreamt that the moment just before the rat leaped away, it had been bruxing and boggling, its small liquid eyes like over-ripe berries bulging in and out, a strange golden gleam barely noticeable behind them. Today, shaken and hollow from lack of sleep, he swore off Bristol rum forever. His night terrors seemed just that, a product of drink and sleeping in a strange house.
The next day over breakfast Merryweather made the mistake of saying that he was nervous about working on the roof.
The rat stood very still, nose twitching, its brain telling it to run and hide, but the small golden cap it wore over-rode this instinct. Its eyes looked out of the rat’s eyes, Its ears heard what the rat heard.
“You’ve never been afraid of heights before.”
“No, Mr Pearson. I’m not afraid now, I just have this uncanny sense that something’s going to happen, something’s going to go wrong.”
The rat moved on at some unseen signal. It had heard enough, It had a few scant hours to get ready for visitors.
“Stuff and nonsense, Merryweather. There is no such thing as premonition. You are merely trying to get out of an honest day’s work. No, I won’t hear any more of this superstitious twaddle. We will complete the job we are here to do, and return to London tomorrow.”
When they arrived at the cathedral they were startled by a small scruffy dog that latched onto them and followed as they approached the building. Merryweather attempted to shoo it away. He knew Pearson disliked small dogs. Their yapping annoyed him and, fastidious about his appearance, he didn’t wish muddy paw prints or hairs on his clothing.
“Careful, Merryweather,” Pearson cautioned. “I strongly suspect that this mutt is a street dog and probably crawling with vermin and disease.”
It seemed to watch Merryweather with an intelligence beyond its small size. It was beginning to make him nervous. A well-aimed kick got it to run off but then he heard it coughing around the corner, vomiting maybe. When he rounded the corner to investigate there was a small pile of tiny cogs and wheels and other clockwork parts, but, curiously, no dog. Merryweather carefully wrapped the machine parts in his handkerchief and placed them in his pocket, intending to show Pearson, but something in Pearson’s expression stopped him when he returned round the corner.
“Enough distractions, let’s get to work,” his boss ordered, cutting short any attempt to raise the matter.
Merryweather had reluctantly been the one to open the door leading to the roof. Scattered around and sheltered from the wind was a pile of pigeon feathers, golden threads and what looked like watch parts.
“What do you make of thi
s?” asked Pearson, using his pencil to sift through the odd machinery. Merryweather looked all around, his line of sight across the roof unbroken. Nothing could be hiding up here. He patted his pocket, thinking that he should tell Pearson about what he’d found earlier. It seemed so silly though. He didn’t want his boss to view him as a superstitious simpleton. He decided to take the parts to someone who would know about such things and not bother Pearson about them. Someone had probably just dropped a watch and the birds had collected the parts; the two sets of parts were close enough together to be linked.
“Perhaps a bird has been collecting shiny things?” he said, suppressing a shudder as he thought of the cooing that had accompanied his nightmares the previous night.
“Well that could explain it, Merryweather. Damned odd, though…”
The two men split up and went about their different tasks. Merryweather felt chilled, and from more than the inclement weather. Every time his glance fell upon the task in hand he felt he was being watched. On more than one occasion he glanced up, to see Pearson absorbed in his work and no sign of another soul. Soon he came across a very small hatchway that lay in his path. He felt an instant and acute aversion to it. Looking at it, the hatch seemed rather plain, well used even. However it drew his eye fearfully and he fancied it exuded malevolence. It filled him with disgust, partly at his own superstitious weakness but also from the spattering of pigeon shit around it. He became convinced that if he glanced away from it, it would open and some verminous horror would spring forth. His glances across to the hatch grew ever more frequent as he got closer. It was no good; he had to talk to Pearson about it. He strode across to Pearson.
“Sir? I think that it would be much better if you were to do that side. I can do over here.”
“Whatever do you mean Merryweather? I have apportioned our tasks for utmost efficiency. Is there a problem?”
“Not as such sir, but I have a bad feeling about the area I’m doing.”
“Stuff and nonsense Merryweather, a bad feeling indeed, stop being such a ninny and get on with your work.”
Merryweather sighed “Yes sir” and with a heavy heart and prickling palms walked back over towards the hatch.
Realising he would have to physically cross the hatchway, he broke out in a cold sweat. He fancied that the cooing that he had heard all across the rooftop was concentrated here. That pigeons with their filthy wings, their pink feculent talons, their black and red demon eyes, would burst forth and surround him. That he would breathe in their stink, that he would be bombarded in a miasma of feathers and other filthy matter. He felt physically sick; salivating wildly, he had to stop and spit several times as he fought to keep control of his stomach. Taking several deep, gulping breaths, he crossed to the hatch.
Once he was athwart it, all senses telling him to run, he fancied he heard a faint whistling, like a steam kettle. Spending as little time next to it as possible and having to move on with his survey, he thankfully and quickly put the hatch behind him, the skin crawling on the back of his neck. As he threw many a glance over his shoulder, he became aware that the cooing was getting louder. He thought it came from in front of him, yet he could see no pigeons.
He glanced over at Pearson to make sure he was still there, and his horrified glance took in the fact the hatch was now gaping open, like a portal to some shadowed hell. There was a soft scuff behind him, like metal on stone and as he spun to see what it was, there was a sharp stabbing pain in his leg. He looked down and as his eyesight started to spiral down a soporific tunnel he spied a small, hunched golden figure, a curl of steam escaping from its cold, inhuman lips. A slow numbness spread from his leg, feeling like a trickle of cold water inside his skin. He took a step backwards, so slowly he felt like he was moving through treacle. He tried to raise his hands to ward off the thing that stood before his unbelieving eyes and he tried to shout out, but nothing but a strangled croak came out of his mouth, which was as dry as chalk-dust. His eyesight was dimming, his peripheral vision going grey, he felt as though he was shrinking as the world seemed to increase in size around him. He was dimly aware that he had fallen to his knees, panicking but unable to flee, filled with a deep dark dread of what was going to happen next, praying to lose consciousness and not have to experience it. He wondered if Pearson had noticed; if rescue was possible. His awareness slowly receding, the last thing he was conscious of was a flurry of wings beating around him. A crowd of pigeons exploded from the hatch as he toppled slowly sideways.
Pearson was baffled, when he finished his work, to find that Merryweather was nowhere to be seen. He should have told him if he was going inside. When no-one inside the cathedral claimed to have seen him, Pearson became annoyed. Perhaps Merryweather had returned to the lodging for some reason, perhaps he wasn’t feeling well? It was damned insolent not to let him know though. Back at the lodging and still no sign of Merryweather, Pearson’s annoyance was mingled with a little concern. He vaguely remembered that Merryweather had expressed some such presentiment of some indefinable ‘bad thing’ happening which was all nonsense of course. When Merryweather still hadn’t returned for supper he determined to search for him, walking the streets and even visiting a couple of taverns, overcoming his aversion to such places for the sake of his employee. If he caught him drunk there would be all hell to pay. Without finding him, or speaking to anyone who had seen him, Pearson went to bed in foul spirits. His search the next day also proved fruitless, as did that of the local police whom he felt duty bound to involve, much to his distaste. Having to return to London for an appointment, he knew he would come back to Bristol soon, when the building works were about to begin. He determined to spend some time working on this mystery then.
Merryweather sat in the belfry, pulling a glove over his hand to hide the golden threads that covered it. The golden cap was cold upon his head beneath the hat he wore to conceal it, but he had ceased to care about hot and cold. He had ceased to care about anything. Except pleasing It. The small, hunch-backed creature sat repairing the dog, which was missing some of its delicate machinery. The golden cap was off to one side and Its hand probed deep inside the dog’s skull, occasionally placing a new cog or spring where some had come loose. It glanced at Its newest acquisition and expressed pleasure with a small burbling toot like a steam whistle. Merryweather stood and fastened a high collared cloak about his shoulders. He had work to do. The cosy interior of the Hatchet was calling. Gypsies, itinerants and other folk that would not be missed would be his company until It had all the tools It needed. He stepped around the small brass machine the size and shape of a pre-pubescent boy on his way out. It paused in Its work whilst It watched him leave. It looked around the roof space.
It was going to need somewhere larger, pretty soon.
Miss Butler and the Handlander Process
- John Hawkes-Reed -
I was hiding inside my father’s test elephant when they came looking for me. There’s a space between the secondary transfer box and one of the hydraulic pumps where I could sit with my chin on my knees and my skirts gathered under me and contemplate the Jacquard that should control the gait, but doesn’t.
“Olivia Marie Butler! You will show yourself this instant!” That was Mrs Engels, the housekeeper. She, like everyone else, had some fixed ideas about how the youngest daughter of a prominent member of industrial society should behave, and they really didn’t seem interested in what I may have thought about any of them.
I missed the old days when we couldn’t afford fixed ideas and daddy left me alone with the Jacquard in his office, slung up in the eaves of the factory roof like a swallow’s nest, while he paced among the lathes and trip-hammers.
“Olivia Marie Butler, I will count to five and then I will send for your father!” There was a muffled thud as Mrs. Engels slapped the left-rear ankle gear housing.
I sighed theatrically at no-one in particular, pulled myself upright and stuffed my favourite size 0 debugging and knitting needle diagonally into my
chignon. “Coming!”
Some people wear half-moon spectacles so they can see things on the desk in front of them - teeny sprockets, numbers in log-tables, that sort of thing. Others wear them for peering over. Daddy is of the latter persuasion. He was explaining that the reason I had been hauled bodily from my hiding place, and stuffed into a day-dress and uncomfortably expensive boots, was really jolly important. I was trying to look as if I were paying attention while scanning the bookcase behind his head for the fourth volume of Lovelace & Knuth. Apparently, young women of a certain standing in society should not scale their father’s library shelves like a steeplejack. I wiggled my toes experimentally and the new boots creaked back at me. I’d never tried an ascent of the philosophy section in a corset before.
Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion Page 12