The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02]

by By Kim Newman

  It was too late to think about that.

  Slick and wet, the man-fish moved faster than anything its size should. No sooner had it grasped the chains than it had climbed them, deft as a sailor on the rigging, quick as a lizard on the flat or a salmon in the swim.

  It held on, hanging just under the ring in the ceiling, head swivelling around, eyes taking in the room.

  Dick and Ernest were backed against the door, taking Violet with them.

  She was less spooked than the boys.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur le Fantôme de la Mer,” she said, slowly and clearly in the manner approved by her tutor, M. Duroc. “Je m ‘appelle Violette Borrodale... permettez-moi de presente a vous mon petit cousin Ernest... et Rishard Riddle, le detective juvenile celebré.”

  This seemed to puzzle the sea-ghost.

  “Vile, I don’t think it’s really French,” whispered Dick.

  Violet shrugged.

  The creature let go and leaped, landing frog-like, knees stuck out and shoulders hunched, inches away from them. This close, it stank of the sea.

  Dick saw their reflections in its huge eyes.

  Its mouth opened. He saw row upon row of sharklike teeth, all pointed and shining. It might not have had a proper meal in a century.

  “Scuze mee,” it said, extending a hand, folding its frill-connected fingers up but pointing with a single barb.

  The wet thorn touched Richard’s cheek.

  Then it eased the children aside, and considered the bolted door.

  “Huff... puff... blow,” it said, hammering with fish-fists. The door came off its hinges and the bolts wrenched out of their sockets. The broken door crashed against the opposite wall of the passage.

  “How do you know the Three Little Pigs?” asked Violet.

  “Gur’ nam ‘Ooth,” it said, “ree’ to mee...”

  “A girl read to him,” Dick explained.

  So not all his captors had been tormentors. Who was ‘Ooth? Ruth? Someone called Ruth fit into the story. The little girl lost with the Sophy Briggs. Sellwood’s niece.

  The sea-ghost looked at Violet. Dick deduced all little girls must look alike to it. If you’ve seen one pinafore, you’ve seen them all.

  “‘Ooth,” it said, with something like fondness. “‘Ooth kin’ to mee. Ree’ mee story-boos. Liss in Wonlan... Tripella Liplik Pik... Taes o Eh Ah Po...”

  “What happened to Ruth?” Violet asked.

  “Sellwoo’ ki’ ‘Ooth, an’ hi’ bro tah Joh-jee,” said the creature, cold anger in its voice. “Tey wan let mee go sea, let mee go hom. Sellwoo’ mak shi’ wreck, tak ever ting, tak mee.”

  Dick understood. And was not surprised.

  This was the nature of Sellwood’s villainy. Charges of smuggling and espionage remained unproven, but he was guilty of the worst crime of all—murder!

  People were coming now, alerted by the noise.

  The sea-ghost stepped into the passage, holding up a hand—fingers spread and webs unfurled—to indicate that the children should stay behind.

  They kept in the dark, where they couldn’t see what was happening in the passage.

  The man-fish leaped, and landed on someone.

  Cries of terror and triumph! An unpleasant, wet crunching... followed by unmistakable chewing.

  More people came on the scene.

  “The craytur’s out o’ thic Hole,” shrieked someone.

  A very loud bang! A firework stink.

  The man-fish staggered back past the doorway, red blossoming on its shoulder. It had more red stuff around its mouth, and scraps of cloth caught in its teeth.

  It roared rage and threw itself at whoever had shot it.

  Something detached from something else and rolled past the doorway, leaving a trail of sticky splashes.

  Violet kept her hand over Ernest’s eyes, though he tried to pick at her fingers.

  “Spawn of Satan, you show your true colours at last!”

  It was Sellwood.

  “Milder, Fessel, take him down.”

  The Brethren grunted. The doorway was filled with struggling bodies, driving the children back into the cell. They pressed flat against the wet, cold walls.

  Brother Milder and Brother Fessel held the creature’s arms and wrestled it back, towards the Hole.

  Sellwood appeared, hefting one of his fossil-breaking hammers.

  He thumped the sea-ghost’s breastbone with all his might, and it fell, sprawling on the flagstones. Milder and Fessel shifted their weight to pin him down.

  Still, no one noticed the children.

  The creature’s shoulder wound closed like a sea-anemone. The bruise in the middle of its chest faded at once. It looked hate up at the Reverend.

  Sellwood stood over the wriggling man-fish. He weighed his hammer.

  “You’re devilish hard to kill, demon! But how would you like your skull pounded to paste? It might take a considerable while to recover, eh?”

  He raised the hammer above his head.

  “You there,” said Violet, voice clear and shrill and loud, “stop!”

  Sellwood swivelled to look.

  “This is an important scientific discovery, and must not be harmed. Why, it is practically a living dinosaur.”

  Violet stood between Sellwood and the pinned man-fish. Dick was by her side, arm linked with hers. Ernest was in front of them, fists up like a pugilist.

  “Don’t you hurt my friend the Monster,” said Ernest.

  Sellwood’s red rage showed.

  “You see,” he yelled, “how the foulness spreads! How the lies take hold! You see!”

  Something snapped inside Milder. He rolled off the creature, limbs loose, neck flopping.

  The sea-ghost stood up, a two-handed grip on the last of Sellwood’s Brethren, Fessel.

  “Help,” he gasped. “Children, help...”

  Dick had a pang of guilt.

  Then Fessel was failing into theoubliette. He rattled against chains, and landed with a final-sounding crash.

  The sea-ghost stepped around the children and took away Sellwood’s hammer, which it threw across the room. It clanged against the far wall.

  “I am not afraid of you,” announced the Reverend.

  The creature tucked Sellwood under its arm. The Reverend was too surprised to protest.

  “Shouldn’ a’ ki’ ‘Ooth a’ Joh-jee, Sellwoo’. Shouldn’ a’ ki’.”

  “How do you know?” Sellwood was indignant, but didn’t deny the crime.

  “Sea tol’ mee, sea tel’ mee all ting.”

  “I serve a greater purpose,” shouted Sellwood.

  The sea-ghost carried the Reverend out of the room. The children followed.

  The man-fish strode down the passage, towards the book-room. Two dead men—Maulder and Fose—lay about.

  “Their heads are gone,” exclaimed Ernest, with a glee Dick found a little disturbing. At least Ernest wasn’t picking up one of the heads for the office wall.

  Sellwood thumped the creature’s back. Its old whip-stripes and poker-brands were healing.

  Dick, Violet, and Ernest followed the escapee and its former gaoler.

  In the book-room, Sellwood looked with hurried regret at the crates of unsold volumes and struggled less. The sea-ghost found the steps leading down and seemed to contract its body to squeeze into the tunnel. Sellwood was dragged bloody against the rock ceiling.

  “Come on, detectives,” said Dick, “after them!”

  * * * *

  VII: “Dhqrmjkjp Bnqryjp Ibjffsqqd’’

  They came out under Ware Cleeve. Waves scraped shingle in an eternal rhythm. It was twilight, and chilly. Well past tea-time.

  The man-fish, burden limp, tasted the sea in the air.

  “Tanks,” it said to the children, “tanks very’ mu’.”

  It walked into the waves. As sea soaked through his coat, Sellwood was shocked conscious and began to struggle again, shouting and cursing and praying.

  The sea-ghost was waist-deep i
n its element.

  It turned to wave at the children. Sellwood got free, madly striking away from the shore, not towards dry land. The creature leaped completely out of the water, dark rainbows rippling on its flanks, and landed heavily on Sellwood, claws hooking into meat, pressing the Reverend under the waves.

  They saw the swimming shape, darting impossibly fast, zigzagging out into the bay. Finned feet showed above the water for an instant and the man-fish—the sea-ghost, the French spy, the living fossil, the snare of Satan, the Monster of the Deep—was gone for good, dragging the Reverend Mr. Daniel Sturdevant Sellwood with him.

  “.. .to Davey Jones’s locker,” said Ernest.

  Dick realised Violet was holding his hand, and tactfully got his fingers free.

  Their shoes were covered with other people’s blood.

  “Anthropos Icthyos Biolletta,” said Violet. “Violet’s Man-Fish, a whole new phylum.”

  “I pronounce this case closed,” said Dick.

  “Can I borrow your matches?” asked Violet. “I’ll just nip back up the tunnel and set fire to Sellwood’s books. If the Priory burns down, we won’t have to answer questions about dead people.”

  Dick handed over the box.

  He agreed with Violet. This was one of those stories for which the world was not yet ready. Writing it up, he would use a double cipher.

  “Besides,” said Violet, “some books deserve to be burned.”

  While Violet was gone, Dick and Ernest passed time skipping stones on the waves. Rooting for ammunition, they found an ammonite, not quite as big and nice as the one that was smashed, but sure to delight Violet and much easier to carry home.

  <>

  * * * *

  Angel Down, Sussex

  I: “too late in the year, surely, for wasps”

  The Reverend Mr. Bartholomew Haskins, rector of Angel Down, paused by the open gate of Angel Field. His boots sank a little into the frost-crusted mud. Ice water trickled in his veins. He was momentarily unable to move. From somewhere close by came the unmistakable, horrid buzz of a cloud of insects.

  It was too late in the year, surely, for wasps. But his ears were attuned to such sounds. Since childhood, he’d been struck with a horror of insects. Jane, his sister, had died in infancy of an allergic reaction to wasp stings. It was thought likely that he might share her acute sensitivity to their venom, but the reason for his persistent fear—as for so much else in his life—was that it was his stick, poked into a pulpy nest, which had stirred the insects to fury. As a boy, he had prayed to Jane for forgiveness as often as he prayed to Our Lord. As a man, he laboured still under the burden of a guilt beyond assuaging.

  “Bart,” prompted Sam Farrar, the farmer, “what is it?”

  “Nothing,” he lied.

  At the far end of Angel Field was a copse, four elms growing so close together by a shallow pond their roots and branches were knotted. A flock of sheep were kept here. As Sam hauled his gate shut behind them, Haskins noticed the sheep forming a clump, as if eager to gather around their owner. There were white humps in the rest of the field, nearer the copse. They didn’t move. Wasps did swarm over them.

  Hideous, dreadful creatures.

  Haskins forced himself to venture into Angel Field, following the farmer. He kept his arms stiffly by his side and walked straight-legged, wary of exciting a stray monster into sudden, furious hostility.

  “Never seen anything like this, Bart,” said Sam. “In fifty year on the land.”

  The farmer waded through his flock and knelt by one of the humps, waving the wasps away with a casual, ungloved hand. The scene swam before Haskins’s eyes. A filthy insect crawled on Sam’s hand and Haskins’s stomach knotted with panic.

  He overcame his dread with a supreme effort and joined his friend. The hump was a dead sheep. Sam picked up the animal’s woolly head and turned its face to the sunlight.

  The animal had been savagely mutilated. Its skull was exposed on one side. The upper lip, cheek, and one side of the nose were torn away as if by shrapnel.

  “I think it’s been done with acid.”

  “Should you be touching it, then?”

  “Good point.”

  Sam dropped the beast’s head. The seams in his face deepened as he frowned.

  “The others are the same. Strange swirls etched into their hides. Look.”

  There were rune-like patches on the dead sheep. They might have been left by a weapon or branding iron. The skin and flesh were stripped off or eaten away.

  “My Dad’d never keep beasts in Angel Field. Not after the trouble with my Aunt Rose. That was in ‘72, afore I was born. You know that story, of course. Was kept from me for a long time. This is where it happened.”

  The wasps had come back. Haskins couldn’t think.

  “Always been something off about Angel Field. Were standing stones here once, like at Stonehenge but smaller. After Rose, Grandad had ‘em all pulled down and smashed to bits. There was a fuss and a protest, but it’s Farrar land. Nothing busybodies from Up London could do about it.”

  Grassy depressions, in a circle, showed where the stones had stood for thousands of years. The dead sheep were within the area that had once been bounded by the ring.

  It seemed to Haskins that the insects were all inside the circle too, gathering. Not just wasps, but flies, bees, hornets, ants, beetles. Wings sawed the air, so swiftly they blurred. Mouth-parts stitched, stingers dripped, feelers whipped, legs scissored. A chitinous cacophony.

  Bartholomew Haskins was terrified, and ashamed of his fear. Soon, Sam would notice. But at the moment, the farmer was too puzzled and annoyed by what had befallen his sheep.

  “I tell you, Bart, I don’t know whether to call the vet or the constable.”

  “This isn’t natural,” Haskins said. “Someone did this.”

  “Hard to picture, Bart. But I think you’re right.”

  Sam stood up and looked away, at his surviving sheep. None bore any unusual mark, or seemed ailing. But they were spooked. It was in their infrequent bleating. If even the sheep felt it, there must be something here.

  Haskins looked about, gauging the positions of the missing stones. The dead sheep were arranged in a smaller circle within the larger, spaced nearly evenly. And at the centre was another bundle, humped differently.

  “What’s this, Sam?”

  The farmer came over.

  “Not one of mine,” he said.

  The bundle was under a hide of some sort. Insects clung to it like a ghastly shroud. They moved, as if the thing were alive. Haskins struggled to keep his gorge down.

  The hide undulated and a great cloud of wasps rose into the air in a spiral. Haskins swallowed a scream.

  “It’s moving.”

  The hide flipped back at the edge and a small hand groped out.

  “Good God,” Sam swore.

  Haskins knelt down and tore away the hide. It proved to be a tartan blanket, crusted with mud and glittering with shed bug scales.

  Large, shining eyes caught the sun like a cat’s. The creature gave out a keening shriek that scraped nerves. There was something of the insect in the screech, and something human. For a moment, Haskins thought he was hearing Jane again, in her dying agony.

  The creature was a muddy child. A little girl, of perhaps eight. She was curled up like a buried mummy, and brown all over, clothes as much as her face and limbs. Her feet were bare, and her hair was drawn back with a silvery ribbon.

  She blinked in the light, still screeching.

  Haskins patted the girl, trying to soothe her. She hissed at him, showing bright, sharp, white teeth. He didn’t recognise her, but there was something familiar in her face, in the set of her eyes and the shape of her mouth.

  She hesitated, like a snake about to strike, then clung to him, sharp fingers latched onto his coat, face pressed to his chest. Her screech was muffled, but continued.

  Haskins looked over the girl’s shoulder at Sam Farrar. He was bewilder
ed and agoggle. In his face, Haskins saw an echo of the girl’s features, even her astonished expression.