by Jeffrey Ford
I teetered for a moment on the edge of the cliff and when I fell backward, only then did I realize what was happening. There came a fleeting instant of overwhelming disappointment as I clawed the air for purchase. I hit the ground before I knew it with a jarring jolt and although my body came to rest, I continued to descend into the blackness within my rattled head.
I couldn’t have been out long as the next thing I knew I was gasping for breath. My head and ribs hurt and I had sand in my mouth. I believe the little lout who pushed me over the edge had come along for the ride and landed on me before running off. I tried mightily to move my legs. They only tingled but didn’t stir, and I feared I’d been paralyzed. If that was the case, my desperate thinking went, I would borrow Ahab’s pistol and shoot myself.
Slowly, feeling returned to my lower half and bit by bit I began to move my legs. Eventually I was able to bend my knees and get the soles of my feet flat on the ground. Still the pain in my back and head was fierce. It was somewhere during my attempts to get to a sitting position that I discovered that my writing satchel was gone. I found a match in the pocket of my vest, thumbnailed it into life, and looked around to see if the bag had flown off in my fall. I saw the fid sticking point down in the sand a couple of yards away, but the satchel was nowhere in sight.
“I bet that little fuck knuckle took it,” I whispered as I got to my feet and dusted myself off. Where to go now was the pressing issue. Looking up, I could see only the silhouette of the top of the hill against the star-studded sky. The precipice was too steep for me to dream of climbing. Beyond that I was limping. I knew the river was close by. A few feet off I could make out the dead weeds and scrub of autumn lining the bank. The battle, if it still raged, was too distant to discern or blocked out by the whistling of the wind. I wasn’t sure what to do next.
I’ve been robbed, beaten, and could have been killed, I told myself. With that thought stewing in the back of my mind, I headed south, back toward the New Rose Inn, sticking to the shoreline as a guide in the dark. “The Jolly Host,” I said, tripping over stones and stumbling along. “Jolly Horseshit.” I was certain this was good-bye to Ahab, the mawkish lunatic. I’d already collected a treasure trove of story ideas for articles. The manticore alone I could milk until spring. The captain’s navigation was swiftly leading us to tragedy, the best intentions run aground. It was most certainly time to abandon ship.
As that decision was made, I heard his very voice, bellowing my name in the night. “Harrow!” And the captain’s cries were followed by those of Madi. They were a hundred yards north of me, and my first inclination was to hide. I, with my limp, was moving slower than Ahab across the lumpen ground. I tried to put on some steam, but my knee ached and my shoulder was in agony. Eventually I stopped walking and called out to Ahab. In return I heard, “Ahoy!” I got a sudden chill and shook my head. Before two minutes were up the captain and Madi appeared out of the night.
The African had a welt on the side of his face as if he’d been struck by a blackjack, and Ahab’s coat had been sliced by a straight razor, in three places. The two of them were out of breath.
“Did you desert us, Harrow?” said the captain.
“I battled three of them and took one over the cliff with me,” I said. “I landed fifty feet down next to the river, nearly broke my ass.”
“We barely escaped with our lives,” said Ahab. “The scallywags had knives and clubs. It was all I could do not to shoot one.”
“Where’s Fergus?” I asked, looking around.
Madi said, “Fergus is dead,” in a grave tone that matched the look of grief on his face.
“Shivved in the kidneys by a cute little tyke with hair the color of snow,” said the captain. “When he hit the deck, another came along with a bat and cracked Fergus’s skull open. We left him in his death throes, one eye hanging out by a stem.”
I stared at Ahab in horror, aghast at his calm reaction to a man’s demise. “Christ, Ahab, you’re lethal. This evening’s outing was utterly pointless,” I said.
“No,” said Madi. “We now know where to find Malbaster.”
“Was it worth your friend’s life?” I asked.
“To think of it as a trade, one for the other, is frivolous. I will find the guilty party.”
“We’re all guilty,” said Ahab.
“Nonsense,” said Madi.
We made our way back to the inn and caught the last coach to the city proper. By the time we docked at James Street, it was well past midnight. Ahab headed directly for his bed upstairs. Luckily, Misha was still awake, and I asked her to make up the couch in my study for Madi. After she finished the task, she ran into me in the kitchen.
“He’s colored,” she whispered.
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” I said and shrugged.
She swatted at me. “Were you in some kind of fight?” she asked.
“Don’t make me think about it,” I told her. “I’ll need a new writing satchel. Can you go over to Liberty Street tomorrow and get me one?”
She nodded. “I’ll go after breakfast.”
“Take whatever money you think you’ll need from the cigar box.”
She made her way to her little room at the back of the house. I stole into my study and sitting in my desk chair while Madi sawed wood on the couch, I poured myself a drink, lit a cheap cigar, and quietly rocked. My companions were both exhausted and badly beaten. Not to mention poor Fergus, whom I was just beginning to appreciate. Now his wife had one fewer child and no husband. We’d have to alert the police to his murder. This was sickeningly serious business and my mind was ablaze with ways to extricate myself from it.
Every time I moved to pour another drink my ribs ached and my shoulder screamed. I thought the best thing to do was to keep drinking until I passed out in the chair. In the meantime, I decided to record our adventure at Dutch Hill. I took a new notebook from my drawer and began straightaway to write as was my custom. As Garrick had told me, “Hesitation is the impotent father of untold stories.” The movement of the pen across the page helped me to forget my aches and pains better than the drink could.
In the telling, I changed our names (save for Ahab’s, of course) and monkeyed with the circumstances to engender our anonymity, but the battle with the Jolly Host was recorded blow for blow, with plenty of bloody teeth flying, fists cracking skulls, and the depiction of my fall from the cliff described in such glorious detail I might instead have been flying to the moon. I knew my usual readers would lap up those scenes of violence awash in melodrama. Oh, yes, and I changed the fact that we’d battled a horde of downy-haired children to a hardened gang of degenerate men.
I lose a sense of time when I’m writing, so I don’t know how long I was at my task. It could have been an hour. It could have been three. Near the end of the piece, though, weariness worked its spell on me. I was nodding in and out, and my penmanship became erratic. I admonished myself, slapped my own face, and sat up straight to finish the article. When I was done, I cut the pages out and put them in an envelope for Mavis, who was due to arrive in the morning with more money from Garrick.
After applying the Gorgon’s Mirror seal, I stowed the envelope in my inside jacket pocket and eased back into the chair. My injuries let me know they’d not gone anywhere, but eventually I found a comfortable enough position. The fire had burned out, and soon I’d settled into a deep sleep. It seemed that only moments had passed before I was awoken by the sound of an insistent rapping at the front door. I opened my eyes. It was still dark. I checked to make sure I had the article in my pocket. The project of getting out of the chair was full of pain, but I struggled through it.
I stopped to light a lantern we kept in the foyer, and holding it aloft, answered the door. There was no one there. I held the lantern out as far as I could but the street was empty. Looking down, I saw a lumpen thing on the second step of my porch. Before I could bring the light to it, I knew it for a dead cat. I lowered the lantern, though, and that dead ca
t became my satchel lost at Dutch Hill. I froze with fear and knew somehow that I was being watched.
I quickly brought the lantern up and peered out again into the street. There was someone there, dressed in dark clothes. Despite the darkness of the night, I could have sworn it was Ahab’s son, Gabriel. He held himself as if he was about to speak. I left the porch and went into the street toward him. “Gabriel,” I said.
He turned away and walked farther down the street toward the river. Fully understanding what a bad idea it was, I followed at a slight distance. A few paces along and I heard someone approaching from behind. I spun around to find Madi. He caught up to me and I told him I thought the figure ahead of us, just barely out of the range of the lantern’s glow, was Ahab’s son.
“We’re inviting an ambush,” he said.
“Hence my motto in these situations,” I said. “‘Be ready to run.’”
The words had no sooner left my lips than the figure we followed, Gabriel of the shadows, stepped off the street and through the broken-down doorway of a dilapidated wooden warehouse, near the dock, which had once stored cotton from Apalachicola, Florida, bound for the northern mills.
“Here’s where I turn back,” I said.
“Give me the lantern then,” said Madi.
I handed it to him but did not leave. I followed into the darkness of the warehouse. The glow of the lantern was a godsend, allowing us to avoid holes in the wooden floor and fallen timbers. There was, of course, no sign of the boy. In those moments we stood still, I called out his name. In response, the pigeons in the rafters flapped their wings. We had passed from the large room at the entranceway into a smaller room that opened into a hallway. I called Gabriel and heard a voice echo as in a dream.
“Do you hear that?” I asked Madi.
He nodded.
From off in the distance but still within the ruined warehouse, a voice wended its mellifluous way to us. It rose and fell in an incantatory rhythm, and although my head succumbed to the beauty, my body sensed the danger. My heart was racing.
“Got to get out of here right away,” I said. Madi knew nothing of the manticore, but he did get a good look at my face. That seemed to be enough to convince him that I was in earnest. We turned hastily to retrace our steps to the entrance. As we did, something leaped down from above and landed on the floor in front of us.
I barely got a glimpse of it before what appeared to be a snake with a face that came to a needle point swept through the air, broke the glass of the lantern, and impaled the flame at its core, nipping the wick, and plunging us into total darkness. Through my fear, I realized it had been the scorpion tail of the creature. At any second, I expected its poisonous barb to lodge in my heart.
I scrabbled frantically for the way out and saw it ahead of me. Dawn was coming on, and the rectangle of my escape was dimly lit. All else around me was black. I called out to Madi and realized what a mistake that was, giving away my location in the dark. I turned and saw the creature’s light blue eyes aglow mere paces behind me. Up ahead, I saw Madi’s shadowy form slip out through the faint rectangle. I had almost reached it, when I saw another figure step through the entrance. I bounded through the opening, passing Mavis, who had her pistol in her hand.
As I hit the street, the gun went off and then Mavis was close behind me. We followed Madi back to my house. I slowed only to snatch my satchel off the step. Once we were inside, I locked the doors and we tumbled into the study.
12
“Harrow, what was that? I saw it with my own eyes but I don’t believe it,” said Madi.
“At first, I thought it was a wolf,” said Mavis. “I saw you two sneaking up the block, following someone. So I decided to follow.”
“I’m glad you did,” said Madi, who extended his hand toward her.
Mavis introduced herself. Good thing, as I was too busy reaching for the gin. “Did you see the face of the monster?” I asked each in turn.
“I saw the eyes. The face was human. I think there was blood on its lips,” Madi said, shaking his head as if to deny the image in it.
“I only saw it bounding after you, George. Saw it best in the spark of the shot,” said Mavis.
I was about to offer my guests a drink, now that I’d already drained one, when Misha stepped into the room, still in the act of putting on her robe. “It’s six in the morning,” she said. “What’s the ruckus?”
“We’re under attack by a mythical creature,” I told her.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s part of that business I’m mixed up in with Ahab. We’ve riled up an unsavory element and now they know where I live thanks to my satchel. By the way, it’s returned. No need to go to Liberty Market.”
Misha left the room and presently Ahab descended from upstairs. Bleary-eyed, he looked around at us. “What have I missed?” he asked.
Madi and I exchanged a brief glance, and from it I deduced that telling Ahab we’d seen his son might be detrimental to the overall enterprise. For as much as Ahab was to whatever degree a devoted father, he was equally a lunatic of the first water. Finally, Mavis, who sat rolling a cigarette, said, “There was a beast we ran from.”
“A beast?” said the captain.
“The Jolly Host knows where I live now. One of them lured us into an abandoned cotton warehouse near the water. Madi and I ventured in with a lantern. Out of the darkness came poetry.”
“The manticore,” said Ahab. “It’s incredible the speed with which word of your address has spread.”
“I think this incident was merely a warning. Mavis came to our aid at the last moment, which was wonderful, but if the creature had wanted to disembowel me and chew my head off, it could have taken me down in the dark in seconds. Its eyes are very strange.”
“Blue as the ocean off Koba-Tatema,” said Madi.
I was certain Ahab was about to barrage me with questions, so I was glad when Misha returned, although it was getting rather crowded in the study. She held up her right hand, clutching a pistol aimed right at my head. “I found my pepperbox,” she said.
“Aim it at the ceiling,” I told her.
The five of us sat staring at one another but not saying a word. I suppose once you encounter a manticore there’s not much left to say. It rattled my head to try to accommodate the existence of the creature. What was worse is that it was stalking me. Frighteningly real yet undeniably impossible. Beneath my fear, I sensed a desire to write about the beast. As horrid as it was, there was something beautiful to it. I couldn’t lose the image of those blue eyes glowing in the dark.
“I have some knowledge about Malbaster,” said Mavis. “The Host call him the Pale King Toad because his flesh is like a toadstool.”
That swept the pall from the room. I sat up and leaned toward her to better hear what she was about to tell. Madi and Ahab did the same. Misha patted the girl’s back and said, “This is a hardworking girl,” to the three of us men.
“Before you start,” I said. “Did Garrick send money?”
“Yes.”
“Does it cover the price of what you’re about to tell me?”
She nodded.
“Proceed then,” I said.
Her eyes were half closed, she took a nip of her roll-up, and her words came wrapped in smoke. “Malbaster has powers of the mind.”
“What does that mean?” asked Ahab.
“I don’t know, but six different people I’d spoken to who have met him used those words.”
“What else?” I asked.
“He’s got an assassin, whose debt he bought to have the man released from the Tombs. A thin, white-haired man with sharp elbows and a dull gaze. The fellow had been hollowed out by life and Malbaster breathed magic into him to make him kill.”
“Charming,” I said. “What about the manticore, anything on that?”
“Mention of it is on the street, but there is more guessing than knowing. I heard a dozen descriptions but none of them fits the glimpse I had
at the warehouse.”
With her mentions of the Pale King Toad, the hollowed-out assassin, and the manticore one after the other, it occurred to me that all the stories I wrote for the Gorgon’s Mirror had polluted reality with their hokum and my efforts to deceive were now coming home to roost. There was no other explanation.
Mavis stood, reached into her pocket, and brought out a slip of paper. She took a step in my direction and handed it to me. “Go to this person and she’ll tell you about Malbaster and the opium.”
Exhausted, I finally fell asleep, sitting right there in my desk chair amid the quiet conversation of the others. When I woke hours later and the room was empty, I checked my jacket pocket for the article I’d meant to give Mavis. In its place was a packet of money from Garrick. There was a sizable amount, which meant that readers were responding positively to the first few stories of Ahab’s plight. Every time I considered cutting the captain loose and just confabulating the remainder of his saga from thin air, I realized that without my participation in his quest, the stories wouldn’t be half as good.
I found Misha and Madi in the kitchen having coffee and joined them for a cup. I asked after Ahab and Misha told me, “He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“He left about an hour ago while you were sleeping. I’m not exactly sure when; he didn’t say a word. I checked upstairs for him, looked in the attic and the basement.”
“I went out and looked along the street,” said Madi. “He’s gone somewhere.”
I was momentarily stunned by this news, picturing Ahab at large in the city, swinging that boarding ax and employing his signature bad judgment. I suggested we look for him over near Mulberry Bend Park. I thought he might have gone looking for Usual Peters to wring more information from the old sot. At the same time, the address Mavis had given me was on the corner of Bayard and Elizabeth Streets, not too far from the park. We could kill two birds with one stone.