by Mark Morris
Then I almost laughed out loud. Of course not; it was water. Waves slapping gently against what I guessed was a harbour wall. Which meant we were close to the Thames.
Over the next couple of minutes the gradual thickening of the fog, rolling in with the chill from the river, confirmed that fact, as did the garbage, oil and briny mud stink of the river itself.
The ground beneath our feet changed, the pavements giving way to cobbles, the bumpiness of which I could feel beneath their covering of snow. I looked around uneasily, but could make out even less of my surroundings now than ever. Even so, I got the impression the buildings around us were vast and, at this time of night, unoccupied. I guessed they must be factories or warehouses. One of them we trudged past seemed to possess a huge set of gates barring its entrance; another stank of fish.
We passed through a stone tunnel beneath a bridge or viaduct, the slimy walls, half obscured by fog, giving us a couple of minutes’ shelter from the snow. When we emerged from the other end the slapping of waves and the stink of the Thames ambushed us. But despite being close to the river, we still couldn’t see it. Ahead of us was simply a solid wall of fog, across which swirling snow twitched and flickered like static.
Halfway between us and the river our guide came to a halt and started peering about. There was a crust of snow on his shoulders and the brim of his top hat.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
He answered without looking at me. ‘Blyth’s Wharf.’
I was none the wiser. This wasn’t an area of London I knew well, not even in my own time.
‘For what purpose?’
He turned and strode back towards me, holding out his hand.
‘The rest of my money, if you please.’
I scoffed at him. ‘For what? You’ve brought us to the middle of nowhere. You said you’d lead us to the Society of Blood. So where are they? In a secret base beneath the Thames?’
‘They’re here,’ he said. ‘This is where they… congregate.’ He glanced about nervously.
‘Have a caution, sir,’ Hawkins said, making no attempt to lower his voice. ‘I smell a rat.’
Agitated now, the man pointed to his left.
‘Twenty paces that way you will come upon a docking bay, from which a ramp ascends to a manufacturing warehouse. Ascend that ramp and you will find what you are looking for.’
I shook my head, as much in pity as denial.
‘You expect us to believe that?’
‘It’s true!’
‘Then lead the way.’
Our guide looked not just nervous now, but scared.
‘Why should I? I have no wish to become involved in your dispute.’
‘Who said anything about a dispute? For all you know, we and the Society are the best of friends.’
‘Clearly he knows we are not,’ Hawkins said conversationally, then he turned to fix the man with one of his penetrating stares. ‘How much did they pay you to bring us here?’
A few moments ago Hawkins had said he smelt a rat; now the man looked like a trapped one. His eyes darted about as if looking for an escape route. Then he changed tactics, gave a sudden cringing smile.
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’
Hawkins sighed. ‘Then the opium must have addled your brain. Did you believe we didn’t mark you as a wolf in the fold from the outset? And know that you were leading us into a trap?’
For a moment our guide seemed caught out; then he began to bluster.
‘If you suspected a trap, why did you follow so willingly?’
‘Because sometimes,’ I said, ‘to get what you want you have to take risks.’
I gave him the biggest, craziest grin I could muster. I’m a tall, thin, moody-looking bloke, and I’ve been told in the past that when I flash my teeth in a smile it can sometimes be alarming. The man standing in front of us certainly seemed to think it was. He took a couple of stumbling steps back, his expression suggesting it was starting to dawn on him that maybe he was out of his depth.
‘You’re mad,’ he muttered. ‘Stark staring mad. I want no further part in this.’ He rooted in his pocket, pulled out the three ten pound notes I’d given him and tossed them on the snowy ground. ‘Keep your money. I don’t want it. I don’t n—’
The attack came without warning. It was so brutal, so swift, it was nothing but a blur.
What I saw – what I thought I saw – was a huge black tentacle, attached to something above and behind us, come lashing out of the murky sky with the speed and ferocity of a whip. It must have been ten or fifteen metres long, and thick too – thicker than a man; too thick for my hands to have met if I’d wrapped my arms around it. Although I only caught a glimpse of it, I got the impression the tentacle was tipped by a flat diamond-shaped appendage edged with long, curved spines. Before our guide could finish what he was saying, even before he could scream or widen his eyes in alarm, the razored appendage had sliced him clean through.
The top half of his body, his hat still attached to his head, was scooped into the air by the force of the blow and flung to one side, trailing a streamer of blood and innards and the tattered remains of the astrakhan coat.
Even after the fog had swallowed the top half of the body, the lower half, the legs, remained standing for a moment, as if startled to find themselves left behind. Then they folded at the knees and collapsed like a faulty deckchair, a bright red froth of blood and guts spilling from the waist and fanning out across the virgin white snow.
I was so stunned by the abrupt, savage death of a man I’d been speaking to only a moment before, that for maybe ten seconds I couldn’t move, think, even breathe. All I could do was gape at the grotesque sight in front of me while my mind replayed what I’d just seen. If I’d had to defend myself at that moment I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I was like a bird I’d once seen on a garden wall with a cat stalking towards it, so immobilised by terror it looked like it had been frozen into place.
I don’t remember seeing the tentacle retract; don’t remember anything else until Hawkins touched my arm and said, ‘Sir.’
It was his touch and his voice that snapped me back to myself. I turned my head to blink at him, and that was when I heard them.
All at once I realised they were all around us, closing in, clicking and whirring and buzzing, slithering and scuttling and blowing out steam.
I whirled, looking around, but I couldn’t see them in the fog and the snow, not clearly anyway. They were smears of approaching darkness, suggestions of nightmarish forms. They were coming from all directions; there was no escape.
Surely, though, this was what I’d wanted? To find the Wolves, confront them? It’s ironic, isn’t it? I spend all my time and energy trying to track my enemies down, and when I do finally manage it my shock and horror kicks in, and my only instinct is to turn tail and run. Maybe it would have been different if I hadn’t seen a man killed in front of me as casually as anyone else might kill a fly. Or maybe it’s just human nature to blunder blindly into a potentially lethal situation and not think about the possible consequences until it’s too late.
Although I’d previously convinced myself that, for whatever reason, the Wolves, or the Society, or whatever they called themselves, wanted me alive, right now, with the guts of a dead man steaming in the snow at my feet and monsters coming at me out of the fog, that theory seemed as flimsy as tissue paper.
It was for this reason that instead of waiting to confront the Wolves I grabbed Hawkins’ sleeve and screamed, ‘Run!’ It was for this reason too that I ran in the only direction it was possible to run – towards the impenetrable blanket of fog on the far side of the quay, from beyond which came the rhythmic slap of water against stone.
With Hawkins beside me, I ran as fast as I could, until suddenly, sickeningly, the ground was no longer beneath my feet. Arms and legs pedalling frantically, I felt myself plunging into fog and blackness. If I hadn’t known primal terror before that moment, I knew it then: the sense
of being out of control, of feeling I might fall forever – or worse, that my fall might be broken not by water, but by stone or steel, by something that might smash and rip my body apart.
But my fall wasn’t broken; it was simply cancelled, mid-plunge. I was plucked from the air like a cricket ball – though at first, when the vine-like tentacles curled around my chest and limbs like a dozen writhing fingers, I thought it was the tightness and coldness of my own fear; thought it was my nerves, my thoughts, my consciousness, shrivelling inwards, retreating into themselves, bracing themselves for impact, for pain.
Then I was rising, going backwards, and I realised with a new horror that something – presumably the same monstrous creature that had killed our guide – had snatched me from the sky, and I was now being pulled back into the nightmare.
However much I writhed and screamed, there was no escape. I had been captured by the Wolves of London, by the Society of Blood, and nothing and no one could save me.
Even as I was being reeled in, I spared a thought for Hawkins, my friend and companion – and faintly (although it might have been my imagination) I heard a distant splash. Then the air was rushing past me with such speed and force I couldn’t breathe. And the next thing I knew I was lying on the hard, cold, wet ground, and the tentacles around me were loosening, retracting, snaking away.
So they did want me alive.
But for what?
I was aware of movement around me. Sound. I had a vague, horrifying sense of being in the middle of a web as monstrous creatures scuttled around me. Then my jangling senses started to stabilise. I realised snow was falling into my eyes. I blinked it away and looked up.
A face loomed over me. Long and white, puckered with scar tissue, its hair burned away. Its eyes were glass discs that seemed to reflect nothing but fog. Its lipless mouth was wide and red and wet.
Tallarian.
The doctor who’d given Hope her metal arm; who’d created a menagerie of sickening horrors in his basement. As a man he’d held me captive three months ago, until, with Hawkins’ help, I’d managed to overcome him. And as a part man, part machine – perhaps a product of his own hideous experiments – I’d encountered him twice in the future, once in Incognito, and once in Queens Road Cemetery, when Benny Magee had betrayed me and Frank Martin had rescued me from his clutches.
This was a different Tallarian again now, though. This was a Tallarian who was partway between the two. He’d clearly been rescued from the fire that had destroyed his laboratory, although not without cost.
We can rebuild him, I thought crazily. We have the technology.
I heard a ratcheting whirr and something moved into my field of vision. It bisected Tallarian’s ruin of a face as he held it up to show me.
I realised it was one of his fingers, from the tip of which projected a syringe full of some yellowy-orange liquid.
‘You see what I’ve become, thanks to you?’ he said, a hissing buzz underpinning his voice, as though it was a recording on an answerphone.
‘Fuck you,’ I said – or tried to. I’m not sure the words actually left my mouth.
Before I could say it again I felt a sharp, quick pain in the side of my neck, and that was the last I knew for a while.
FOURTEEN
THE SANDMAN
I’m somewhere in the room watching, though I have no sense of myself. It’s as if I’m paralysed. As if I exist as consciousness only.
Clover’s sitting beside Hope on the bed, reading a storybook. It’s a big one with a bright cloth cover, but I can’t make out the title or image. The room’s lit by yellow light from the lamp on Hope’s bedside table. It’s a shadowy scene, but cosy. The light gives the impression of warmth, and the girls look relaxed.
Clover’s sitting on top of the eiderdown, her stockinged feet crossed at the ankles, whilst the lower half of Hope’s body is under the covers. They’re both propped up by plump white pillows, which are stacked against the headboard behind them. I can hear Clover’s voice, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. Her voice is a soft, soothing burr.
I want to speak to them, attract their attention, but I can’t. Even though I’m in the room – or feel I am – I’m as distant from them as if I’m watching them on TV. Despite the domesticity of the scene, I have a sense of foreboding. When the wardrobe door on the other side of the room creaks open I feel dread, and also guilt, as if just by being here I’ve caused what’s about to occur.
Hope presses into Clover’s side, looking scared, and points at the wardrobe with her good arm. Clover pauses in her reading and follows Hope’s pointing finger. I see her smile and tilt her head towards the girl. She speaks to her, and even though I can’t tell what she’s saying I know from her tone and the expression on her face that she’s offering words of reassurance.
Hope’s voice when she replies is jagged, slightly shrill, but I still can’t make out what she’s saying. Clover redoubles her efforts to soothe Hope’s fears. She strokes her hair gently, then leans to the side and plants a kiss on the top of Hope’s head. There’s a quick exchange of conversation, then Clover closes the book and lays it aside. When she stands up and walks over to the wardrobe I follow her progress as if I’m turning my head, or at least swivelling my eyes. I feel tense as she reaches the wardrobe, grabs the handle and pulls the door wide. But the wardrobe is empty, and my tension eases.
Then Hope screams, and as Clover turns, so my vision swivels back to the bed. Sliding out from the shadows beneath it, its movements nightmarishly fluid, as if I’m watching a film in reverse, is a figure in a patchy, dusty harlequin costume. Streams of black sand pour from the empty sockets in its withered grey face and from between the long, rotted teeth in its gaping mouth. As Clover cries out and moves towards the figure, it cups a skeletal hand beneath its chin and then with a flick of its arm hurls the sand it has caught into Clover’s face.
She staggers, chokes, throws up a hand as a belated defence. Then her eyes widen in horror as her body starts to stiffen. Within seconds she is paralysed.
Hope is still screaming, but the harlequin figure, the Sandman, throws a handful of sand into her face too. Her screams become splutters and then dwindle to silence, as she too stiffens with paralysis. Unchallenged now, the Sandman moves across to Clover and examines her, tilting his head this way and that, the bells on his three-pointed hat tinkling. From the way Clover’s eyes bulge and glare I know she’s straining every sinew in an effort to move.
The Sandman raises his hand and I see he’s holding a large needle, through the eye of which trails a line of thick black thread. He pushes the point of the needle into Clover’s flesh just beneath her bottom lip and, as blood trickles down her chin and tears of agony leak from her eyes, unhurriedly sews her lips together.
When he’s done he admires his handiwork, nodding in satisfaction, then turns back to Hope. Although she can’t move, her terror of the Sandman, her overwhelming desire to shrink away from him, to run, to scream, is evident on her face. The Sandman slides up the length of the bed until he’s standing right beside her, leaving a trail of black sand in his wake. Once again he holds up his right hand, except this time it’s not a needle and thread pinched between his twig-like fingers but a scalpel, the blade dull and dirty.
I want to scream, to fly at him, to stop him, but I’m as immobile, as helpless, as the two girls.
I can only watch as the Sandman uses the scalpel to cut deep into the flesh around Hope’s eye.
FIFTEEN
BROKEN HEART
My scream of denial ripped me out of there and back into my body. I was aware of my eyelids tearing apart, of the taste of blood, coppery and raw, at the back of my throat. I was breathing too fast, hyperventilating; I squeezed my eyes shut again to stop my vision from spinning, and tried to calm myself, to regulate my breathing. After ten or fifteen seconds my heartbeat, which had been pounding in my ears, began to slow, to quieten. This, though, only made me realise I was surrounded by a mass of stealthy clicks an
d rustlings. Once again, more cautiously this time, I opened my eyes.
The darkness that enveloped me was bone-chillingly cold and stank of the river. Although I couldn’t see anything, I could tell by the acoustics that I was in a large, empty, high-ceilinged room. For a moment my mind was filled with the terrible images from my… premonition? Dream? Vision? Then I remembered Tallarian and his syringe and I reached instinctively for my gun.
Or I tried to. Because it was only when my shoulder muscles twinged as my arm failed to obey what my brain was telling it that I realised I’d been sat in a chair and hog-tied, my arms pulled behind me and my wrists and ankles lashed together with the same rope. I moaned in pain, suddenly aware that my back was aching, and that the muscles in my arms and legs were so taut they were on the verge of cramping. I tried to relax, to fight down the panic that threatened to rise up out of my gut like bile. There was a part of me that wanted to call out, but there was a greater part too scared to draw attention to myself.
I couldn’t decide what was worse – seeing or not seeing the room’s occupants. The prospect of Tallarian’s army emerging from the shadows and revealing themselves in all their grotesque and horrifying detail was terrifying, but so too were the workings of my imagination as it tried, almost against my will, to give form to the insectile whirrings and clickings around me. Even the fact I’d encountered Tallarian’s army twice before didn’t help; if anything it increased my apprehension. Tallarian’s creations were an affront to nature, and the thought of confronting them again was like the prospect of having the still-tender scar of an old wound reopened.
How long I sat there I don’t know, but it was long enough for the collective gaze of the unseen things around me to feel like a physical sensation, as if beetles were crawling over my skin. Although I was terrified, I was nevertheless almost grateful when something stirred in the darkness in front of me.
When the darkness suddenly gave voice to a tortured, metallic creak, though, my balls tightened and goosebumps broke out on my arms and back. The first creak was followed by another, and then another, each new sound accompanied by a clank that made me think of Frankenstein’s monster taking its first steps, its weighted boots thumping the floor.