The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  “Presently, all of the chain was in, and the big man took up the anchor and let the boat drift a ways. The white-haired gent leaned over the side, making little passes of his hands, and I thought I saw a blue light burning. It was as if he had set fire to something, except that the flames burned upside down, if you see what I mean – under the water, instead of on it. There was mist or smoke above, swirling about as if trying to make a shape, before it blew away. This operation was repeated two or three times, and at last the white-haired gent hissed some instruction to the big man, who cast the coils of chain over the side again, and let the boat drift again before hauling in the chain – again with no luck, which made the white-haired gent pretty unhappy, I think.”

  “You had plenty of time to see all this,” Brunel said.

  “I was safely in the shadow of a jetty, for it’s around about obstructions to the river’s currents that I most often find what I’m looking for, and I sat still and watched a good while. Not daring to move, you see, in case they spotted me. I’m a strong rower, but that big man, he could have out-pulled a frigate, to my reckoning. So all I could do was watch, until after an hour the white-haired gent slumped back, and the big man took up the sculls and rowed off.”

  Brunel said, “In what direction?”

  “He was rowing against the current, and going faster than any boat I’ve ever seen. If I had made a run for it, he would have caught me before I’d gone more than a few lengths.” Jake Mullins drained his pint. “Well, that’s my tale, gents, and I hope it was worth your time and your money.”

  As we walked back through the dusky street toward the yard, Brunel said thoughtfully, “Where do they go?”

  I understood him at once. “I do not send them anywhere. I simply give them rest.”

  “You have no misgivings about what you do? Some would say that it is very like murder.”

  “They are not souls, Mr Brunel; if they were, it would not be my place to send them on. What people commonly call ghosts are not souls with some unfinished business that delays their passing over, but shells cast off at moments of intense, concentrated emotion. It is true that many are cast off at death, but not all who die cast off a ghost, and not all ghosts are cast off by the dying. Most are not long-lived, and almost all are damaged or deformed representations of the people who produce them. There are very few with whom you could hold a sensible conversation, and even fewer which would not feel relief at the moment of dissolution. They are poor frightened creatures that cling to a familiar place or a familiar person. Most often they haunt the person or the body of the person who cast them off, and those last often become attached to whoever finds that body. I believe that I am able to make a guess at Mr Jake Mullins’s occupation, even without your mention of ‘inquest money’.”

  “He is a river finder. He and his kind dredge for all kinds of things by day – coal, animal bones, pieces of metal. They ferry contraband from one place to another, too, usually items of cargo from ships waiting to be unloaded.”

  “But at night, Mr Mullins and his fellows look for bodies of the drowned.”

  “He gets the reward, if there is one, and in any case five shillings from the police. Was he much . . . inhabited?”

  “I should say that he has been pretty successful in his searches.”

  “I should have warned you. I did not think.”

  “None of them were harmful. They were mostly pathetic scraps. It was the number that astonished me.”

  Brunel laughed. “A few days ago, I would have thought myself mad if I had found myself in the middle of a conversation like this.”

  “A few days ago, you would not have considered attending a seance.”

  “Perhaps I am mad,” Brunel said thoughtfully. “The dreams were certainly bad enough to be the dreams of a mad man. I suppose it would be too simple to think that I am haunted by the ghost of Ulpius Silvanus?”

  “There was no ghost that I could detect. Of course, there are lesser creatures than ghosts. Imps of delirium and madness, and the like . . .”

  Brunel looked at me from beneath the brim of his stovepipe hat. “What is wrong, Carlyle?”

  “I have been a fool. There are creatures lesser than ghosts, and there are greater creatures, too. Something has been awakened, I think. Something very old, and once possessed of great power. Think, Mr Brunel. What kind of stone commonly becomes the focus of human desires?”

  Brunel had the quickest mind of any man I have ever met. After only a moment, he said, “You think that Dr Pretorius is searching for an altar.”

  “I do indeed. And because the remains we found are almost certainly those of a Roman soldier, I believe that it is an altar that was dedicated to some pagan god long before Christianity enlightened these shores. Pretorius spoke of stones under the city. And is the city not built, layer upon layer, upon its own past, like one of the coral reefs in the warmer seas of the Antipodes?”

  “But what use would Pretorius have for an ancient altar? And what does the skeleton have to with it? I confess that I find this business baffling. The more we know, the less clear it becomes.”

  “I believe that the poor man whose bones we found was sacrificed on the stone Pretorius seeks. His head was chopped off, and no doubt his blood was used in some dreadful rite. Just as the fingerbones led us to the skeleton, so the skeleton could lead to the stone. It is, after all, still missing its skull.”

  “But did not Pretorius say, as a parting shot, that he had already found—”

  Brunel broke off because the old fellow who guarded the gate of the yard at night was running down the narrow street toward us, slinging his rattle around his head and yelling murder.

  The door of the shed had been smashed to kindling; only a few splinters still clung to its bent hinges. Brunel quickly ascertained that nothing had been taken but the skeleton, and closely questioned the watchman before giving him an address and instructing him to tell someone called Withers to find the Dowling brothers and bring them straight here within the half-hour.

  As the watchman hurried off, I asked Brunel what he was planning. He put a match to a lantern, closed the glass on the yellow flame, and said, as much to himself as to me, “The lock of the gate is untouched, so it’s quite plain how they came here, and how they left with their prize,” and strode off through heaps of construction material toward the riverside edge of the yard.

  I caught up with him on the wharf, where the boat with the canvas-covered load rocked on the greasy swell. I said, picking up from his absent-minded remark, “Pretorius saw me enter the tunnel with you. I should have guessed his vantage point after hearing Jake Mullins’s tale.”

  “We always come back to the river,” Brunel said. He gave me the lantern, climbed down into the boat and began to undo the rope which lashed the canvas over what was soon revealed to be some kind of boiler: a pair of upright, conjoined cylinders cast from heavy, dull metal. The summer twilight had quite faded from the sky now, and lamps on moored ships and along the far side of the river were twinkling in the dusky blue.

  Brunel began to fold up the canvas. “There’s no question that he has some need of those bones,” he said. “He tried to find them and failed, and then waited for us to haul them up. I am grievously at fault, Carlyle. I should have had the bones taken to a safer place.”

  “The Tower might have done it,” I said, “but anywhere else might not have withstood Dr Pretorius’s determination. Your watchman was lucky that the theft was accomplished before he started his shift; we already know that Pretorius will murder to get what he wants.”

  Brunel looked up at me. “I am determined to see this affair through to the end, and quickly. I would be grateful of your help, but I will understand if you feel that you have discharged your obligation.”

  “Would it not be better to go to the police?”

  “What would I tell the police? The truth is too fantastic, and anything less would not stir them to any great haste. Yet speed is of the essence now that Pretorius
has his prize. He seemed very anxious to get hold of those bones, did he not? I do not think that he will waste time, now that he has them.”

  “Do you propose that we break into his museum, then?”

  “That’s what he wants us to do. Or at least, that’s what he wants you to do. Why else would he have been so careful to tell you where it was? I think he needs you as much as the bones, Mr Carlyle, and I also think that his choice of the location of his establishment was quite deliberate. It must be somewhere above the grave of this famous stone, for his neighbour mentioned the noise of construction work, which was no doubt the noise of excavation work.”

  “Dr Pretorius has been digging down toward the place where the stone is buried.”

  “Exactly. And that is his Achilles heel. Ah, here they are at last.”

  An eager young man in a brown suit, with a bowler hat perched on red curls, was leading two labourers down the wharf. The red-haired man, Roger Withers, was Brunel’s assistant in his gaz experiments; the labourers, Thomas and William Dowling, were from the corps d’élite of men who had worked in the frames of the tunnelling shield. Brunel climbed out of the boat and briefly told them what had been stolen from him, and why he thought it important that he get it back. He introduced me as an antiquarian, made no mention of the supernatural part of the story, and concluded by saying that this was dangerous work, and if anyone wanted to jack now he’d think no worse of him.

  Thomas Dowling, his vigorous black hair pulled back in a sailor’s pigtail, said that it couldn’t be worse than working the shield; his brother, a stocky man with a broad, ruddy face framed by mutton-chop whiskers, added that nothing could be worse than that. I saw that these rough, uneducated men had a deep respect for Brunel, and would have made a good fist of digging to the centre of the earth if he had proposed it.

  “We’ll use the Lady Sophia,” Brunel told Withers. “Have Thomas and William fetch carbonate of ammonia and sulphuric acid, and let them break out tools they feel most comfortable using. I’ll prime her, and if you’re not back in five minutes I’ll be gone without you. Oh, and bring my pistol, and a bottle of brandy.”

  As Withers and the two labourers dashed toward the shed, Brunel clambered back into the stern of the boat and began tinkering with the valves and levers of its curious boiler. There was a sharp, distinct chemical smell, and water gurgled through copper pipes that groaned and cracked as they took up their burden.

  “I must suppose,” I said, after I had climbed down, “that this is one of your gaz engines.”

  “It is the only gaz engine we have,” Brunel said, laying a hand on its pipes. “No doubt you have noticed that it has two condensers. One is warmed by circulation of hot water, and the other is cooled by passing cold water through its tubes. I am running the engine on a closed, inefficient cycle to establish that important differential. At full power, gas expands in the heated condenser and is held in its condensed state in the other, giving a difference of some thirty-five atmospheres. That provides the motive force to drive a longitudinal paddle wheel beneath the stern. If we could but scale it up, we could get a man-of-war up to twenty knots.”

  “As it is,” Withers said, appearing at the edge of the wharf above our heads, “it’s a miracle we haven’t blown ourselves to kingdom come, and most of Rotherhithe with us. Here are the carboys, Mr Brunel. I reckon we’re about as ready as we’ll ever be.”

  “And my pistol?”

  “I have it here, Mr Brunel. May I say that I am not happy to bring it along.”

  “We may need the advantage of a little surprise,” Brunel said. “Get everything aboard, Mr Withers, as quickly as you can.”

  The carboys, cradled in wicker baskets packed with straw, were carefully lowered to the boat. Brunel siphoned heavy, oily acid from one, while Withers scooped gritty white powder from the other into a hopper. The two brothers settled in the bow, packed in tight with an armoury of picks and crowbars, and a long-shanked maul. The pipe-bound double cylinder of the gaz engine began to emit an urgent rattle and a high-pitched whistle that quickly climbed beyond the range of human hearing. A red needle moved by distinct jerks across the calibrated face of a pressure valve. The oiled brass and steel elbow of the driveshaft crank lifted and jammed; Brunel whacked it smartly with a spanner and it began to pump smoothly up and down. He took a cigar from a waistcoat pocket and lit it from the lamp, watched the trembling needle creep toward zenith, and at last declared that we were ready to go.

  Thomas Dowling cast off at the bow, and Withers cast off at the stern. The little boat thumped against the pilings of the wharf, and then Brunel engaged the driveshaft and the boat shook itself and shot forward into the main current of the river.

  I shall always remember that short voyage upriver. Driven by the gaz engine, the brave little boat cut a fast and sure path against the current. Waves stood at right angles on either side of its bow, and a wide foamy wake beaten by the paddle wheel spread behind, glimmering on the river’s black flood. Brunel stood with his cigar jammed in the middle of a broad grin, one hand clapped to the brim of his stovepipe hat, the other on the wheel which was connected by a jointed shaft to the rudder. Darkness was thickening in the air, and long constellations of lights twinkled on either side of us. We passed through the central arch of the five white stone arches of London Bridge, passed beneath the span of Southwark Bridge’s ironwork causeway, and overtook a string of barges, quite startling the lighterman at the tiller, who stood up and shouted and waved his cap at us as we sped past. The necklace of gas lights strung along Blackfriars Bridge quickly drew near. At Brunel’s instructions, Withers opened a valve, exhausting pressure from the condensing cylinders in a series of sharp retorts, and the Lady Sophia’s speed dropped to less than a knot.

  We cut in close to the embankment, puttered past two paddle wheel boats at their moorings, and turned into a wide recess in the slimy stone wall of the embankment, with the bridge’s first arch looming high above us and a great iron grating ahead, half-submerged in the slop of the river.

  The two labourers grappled us tight to this portcullis. A dank fetid breeze blew from the darkness beyond it. I could hear, on the road thirty feet above, the sound of horses’ hooves and the clatter of cartwheels, and snatches of conversation that rose for a moment above the dull roar of the city. My heart was beating in my throat. I had the strange notion that at any moment a policeman would lean over the wall, and raise a hue and cry.

  Brunel directed the light of a lantern over the ironwork. His face was flushed with exhilaration, his gaze sharp. He pointed to a joint, and William Dowling applied the tip of his pick and heaved smartly upward. A whole section of the iron grid swung forward, and Brunel and the labourers lifted it above their heads and Withers lashed it tight.

  Brunel wiped his hands with a bit of oily cloth and said, “My guess is that this is how Pretorius came and went. He cut this through, bolted on hinges, and wired the whole thing shut beneath the waterline. You’ll notice the cuts are fresh, Mr Carlyle, and not yet rusted over.”

  William Dowling was leaning over the side, probing the water with his pick. He reported that he thought we had enough clearance, and we grabbed hold of the sides of the opening and hauled our little boat through. As soon as we had passed beyond the grating, I felt an agitation in my breast pocket. It was the fingerbones, rattling inside their tin. Brunel looked at me when I took it out, his face a pale smear in the gloom, and said, “We must be on the right track.”

  “Where does this lead?”

  “To Hampstead, eventually,” Brunel said. “This is the Fleet River, although it is more sewer than river now. Break out the brandy, Mr Withers. We’ll all have a nip to hearten us before we go on.”

  The brandy bottle was passed around, and we all took our nip, and wet our handkerchiefs and tied them over our noses and mouths against the stench. Adjustments were made to the gaz engine, and we puttered forward at walking pace. Thomas Dowling stood at the bow and held up a lantern, illuminating sli
my brick walls that curved up on either side to a ceiling a good thirty feet overhead, heavy stone arches, and a kind of quay or raised path to our left. Water gushed from side channels cut at different heights in the walls, and dripped from the arched ceiling, where a forest of white stalactites clung. The stench thickened, palpable in the black air. The water was flecked with islands of filthy foam. The bloated carcass of a dog bumped against the side of the boat, dipped and whirled, and waltzed away.

  Brunel told me that this stygian channel had once been the tidal inlet of a tributary of the Thames that rose in Hampstead and flowed south through Camden and King’s Cross. It had marked the western boundary of the city in Roman times – the line of the old wall was to our right. The lower reach, through which we were passing, had been widened and deepened after the Great Fire of London to make a canal with wharves thirty feet wide on either side, but it had quickly fallen into disuse, and a hundred years ago the river between Holborn and Fleet Bridges had been arched over and Fleet Market built on top. The rest of the lower reach had been channelled underground thirty years later, and only a few years ago Fleet Market had been moved, Farringdon Street had been laid out, and the buried river had become no more than a main channel for the area’s sewer system. So the living become transmuted, and diminish when translated to the realm of the dead, and yet still persist.

  We passed between great stone bulwarks: the remains, according to Brunel, of the footings of Fleet Bridge. Farringdon Street was now directly above us. I was quite unable to match our underground thoroughfare with the living street thirty feet above our heads, but as we passed a channel cut through the high kerb on our left, the bones began to rattle even more furiously in their tin. Brunel swung the bow of the Lady Sophia about, and asked the two labourers to check the depth of the channel.

  “There’s a breeze blowing out of it,” Withers said.