The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  As to why Cosimo Damiano wanted a faculty for his parish priest to perform an exorcism, the old man would be anything but specific. His cracked old brain was cracking wider now under the strain of—of what? Of something bad, of bad things, things which were very, very bad: and happening to him. And to his sick old wife. Charms were not enough, amulets and talismans not enough, holy water and prayers and Latin Psalms: not enough. Any more. Cornuto, usually efficacious against the strega? Not enough.

  “But … Sir … do give me an example?—a single sample?”

  Almost as though not so much obeying or answering his former pupil as being made a thrall by something else, in a second the body of the old man twisted and the face of the old man twisted and the voice of the old man changed … swift, sudden: movement, sound: frightful … Eszterhazy tottered back. Another second and the old man was as before, and trembling with terror. With a stifled croaking wail he scuttled off.

  The aged females of the Tartar Section were wending their ways to their homes, each with a portion of mutton-meat wrapped in a huge cabbage-leaf. Eszterhazy paid no attention. In the face of the old man a moment ago, in the body of the old man then, in the grum, grim voice, he had for one second, but for a significant one, recognized and been horribly reminded of the same frightful features of his own recent nightmare … if such they were … the phrase psychic assault came to his mind. What was there in his clean, well-furnished laboratory to help them all against this? Eszterhazy muttered, “Aroint thee, Satan.” And he spat three times.

  And all these … these assaults … against himself, against the old man and the old wife … why? Merely affront and pride? Because, come down to common denominators, what were they? What was it? It was the ring of Duke Pasquale, that antique family heirloom with which the aged couple would not part. Was it indeed because he coveted the jewel as part of a set otherwise incomplete, that the current enemy was setting these waves of almost more than merely metaphysical assault? Could he not obtain, with his own wealth, a replica of real silver, real gold, real diamond? And … yet … if that was not why he wanted the Pasqualine Ring … then why did he want the Pasqualine Ring?

  As long as he lived, Eszterhazy was never to be entirely sure. But he was to become sure enough.

  * * *

  And still the assaults continued.

  About ten A.M. and there was Colonel Count Cruttz. Unusual. For one thing; for another, what was it the older man was muttering to himself? It sounded like Saint Vitus. An invocation? Perhaps. Perhaps not. In Bella—

  The Hospice of Saint Vitus in Bella at the time of its founding had been just that—a hospice for pilgrims seeking cure for what might have been (in modern terms) chorea, cerebral palsy, ergot poisoning, certain sorts of lunacy, or … many things indeed. By and by most people had learned not to bake bread from mouldy rye, and the rushing torrents of the pilgrimages had slowed to trickles; still, the prolongedly lunatic had to be lodged somewhere, it being no longer fashionable to lose them in the forest or lock them in a closet: and so, by the time of King Ignats Salvador (the Empire did not yet exist), the Hospice had become the Madhouse and St. Vitus’s Shrine its chapel. It was quite true that besides the common enclosures there was a secluded cloister for insane nuns and, far on the other side, one for mad monks and priests; it was not true, common reports not withstanding, that there was also one for barmy bishops.

  “Good mid-morning to you, Colonel Count Cruttz; very well, then: Fritsli.”

  “Mi’ morning, Engli. Say, you are a gaffer at St. Vitus, ain’t you?”

  “I am one of the Board of Governors, yes.”

  “Well, I want a ticket. Morits. One of my footmen.” The colonel-count looked haggard.

  Dr. Eszterhazy reached out from a pigeon-hole a dreaded “yellow ticket,” a Form For Examination Prior to Commitment: sighed. “Poor Morits. Well, this should get him seen to, promptly;” he signed it large. And, did he not, “poor Morits” indeed might gibber and howl for hours in the public corridors, waiting his turn on standby. “What has happened to him? Morits, mmm. Pale chap, isn’t he?”

  Master confirmed that man was indeed a pale chap. That was him. What had happened? Man had gone mad, was what happened. In the night, not long before dawn. Screams had rocked the house—and it was an old house with thick walls, too. Insane with terror, Morits. “Mostly he just screamed and tried to hide himself in his own armpits, but when you could make out what he was saying while screaming, why, it was always the same thing. Always the same thing. Always.” Cruttz turned his haggard gaze on Eszterhazy.

  Who asked, “And what was that? This … ‘the same thing’…?”

  Cruttz wet his lips. Repeated, “‘On the ceiling! On the ceiling! The witch-man! On the ceiling!’”

  “The … ‘witch-man’? Who and what was that?”

  Heavily: “That is who and what and which the people call this Hellhound, Melanchthon Mudge.”

  Silence. Then, “Very well, then. One understands ‘the witch-man.’ But. What and what does he mean by ‘on the ceiling’?”

  A shrug. “I am damned if I know. And I feel that just by knowing the fiend I might be damned. And so poor Morits has been screaming, struggling, be-pissing himself for hours now, and brandy hasn’t helped and neither has holy water nor holy oil and so I’ve come for the yellow ticket. See?”

  Eszterhazy saw only scantly. “Had the man … Morits … ever before showed signs of—?”

  Reluctantly: “Well … yes … sort of. Nervous type of chap, always was. Which is all that keeps me from shooting down that swine like a mad dog with my revolver-pistol.” That, and—the Emperor having indicated a keen dislike for having people shot down like mad dogs with revolver-pistols—that and the likelihood of such an action’s being surely followed by a ten-year exile to the remote wilderness of Little Byzantia, where the company of the lynx, the bear, and the wild boar might not suffice for the loss of more cosmopolitan company.

  Colonel Count Cruttz took up the “yellow ticket” and as he was doing so and murmuring some words of thanks and farewell, his eyes met Eszterhazy’s. The latter felt certain that the same thought was in both their minds: was Mudge punishing the house in which he had been humiliated? Was Mudge doing this? Was Mudge not doing this?

  And, if so, what might Mudge not do next?

  * * *

  One was soon enough to learn.

  Quite late that morning as he was being examined in St. Vitus by the Admitting Physician, pale Morits not only ceased struggling, but—upon being instructed to do so—had stood up. Quietly. Dr. Smitts applied the stethoscope. And Morits, pale Morits, gave a great scream, blood gushed from his nose and mouth, and—“I caught him in my arms. The stethoscope was pulled from my ears as he fell, but I had heard enough,” said Dr. Smitts.

  “What did you hear?”

  “I heard his heart leap. And then I heard it stop. Oh, of course, I did what I could do for him. But it never started again. No. Never.”

  “Never.…”

  Was this what Mudge had done next?

  Eszterhazy thought it was.

  * * *

  Later, some years later, Eszterhazy was to acquire as his personal body-servant the famous Herrekk, a Mountain Tsigane, who stayed on with him … and on and on.… But that was later. This year the office was being filled (if filled was not too strong a verb) by one Turt, who had qualified by some years as a barber; and if experience folding towels well enough had not made Turt exquisite in the folding and unfolding of and other cares pertaining to Eszterhazy’s clothes … well … one could not have everything. Could one? Turt awoke him; Turt brought, first, the hot coffee, and next the hot water and the scented shaving-soap. Next Turt would bring the loose-fitting breakfast-gown and on a tray the breakfast, which—perhaps fortunately—Turt did not himself cook. Turt meant to do well, Turt clearly meant to do better than he did, and it was not Turt’s fault that he breathed so very heavily. Turt (short for Turtuscou) was a Romanou, and it was a fact
of social life in the Triune Monarchy that sooner or later one’s Romanou employee would vanish away on what the English called “French leave”: and return … by and by … with some fearsome story of dreadful death and incapacitating illness amongst far-away family; if/when this ever happened, Eszterhazy had determined to terminate Turt’s service. But Turt, though not bothersomely bright, was bright enough, and either saw to it that all his near of kin stayed in good health or else he simply allowed them to die without benefit of his attendance in whatever East Latin squalor pertained to them around the mouth of the Ister.

  On this morning Eszterhazy, dimly aware of great pain, was more acutely aware of Turt’s breathing more heavily than usual. Had Turt gasped? Had Turt cried out? If so, why? Eszterhazy sat bolt up in bed. “Dominů, Dominů!” exclaimed Turt.

  “What? What?”—heavily, anguished.

  For reply Turt pointed to the floor. What was on the floor? Turt’s Lord looked.

  Blood on the floor.

  Instantly the pain flared up. Instantly, Eszterhazy remembered. He had been sleeping soundly and calmly enough when something obliged him to wake up. Some dim light suffused the room. Some ungainly shape was present, visible, in the room. Something long, attenuated, overhead. Something overhead. Something barely below the ceiling. Something which turned over as a swimmer turns over in water. Something with a human face. The face of Mr. Mudge, the medium. How it glared at him, with what hate it glared down at him. Its lips writhed up, and, The ring! it said. The ring, the ring! I must have the ring! It made a swooping, scooping gesture with one long, long, incredibly long lengthened arm. That was the first pain. What was it which the hand now held and showed to him? It was a heart which it held and showed to him; a human heart. And, whilst the words echoed, echoed, Ring! Ring! the fingers tightened and the fingers squeezed and that was the second pain. The third. The—

  It had been a dream, a bad, bad, dream; a nightmare dream. Only that, and nothing more. In that case, why this dreadful pain upon his heart? And why the blood upon the—

  “A nosebleed,” he heard himself say. And heard Turt say, “No, sir. No. Not.”

  “Why not?”

  Turt began making many gestures, the burden of them being that, for one thing, there was no blood upon his master’s nose and none upon his master’s sheets. That, futhermore, blood dropping from the side of the bed to the floor would have left a stain of a certain size, only. And that this stain was of a larger and a wider size. Which meant that it had fallen from a greater height. And as Turt’s hand went up and pointed to the ceiling, the hand and all the rest of Turt’s body trembled; the Romanou are of all the races of the Empire of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania the most superstitious by far, and their legends teem and pullulate with accounts of uampyri and werewolves and werebears and werebats and werecats; and of ghoulies and ghosties and things which do far worse in the night than merely go boomp.

  —then why this fearsome pain? Eszterhazy started to sit up, cried out, gestured towards the cabinet, gasped, “The small blue bottle—” The elixir of foxglove made him feel better, then (Turt supplying this next bottle unbid) the spirits of wine made him feel better yet. Then he gestured to the still red stain, directed, “Clean it up.”

  Turt, so often metaphorical and metaphysical, chose now to be literal. And simply sopped a corner of the napkin in the still-steaming coffee, stooped, wipe, wipe: ‘twas done. He made the dirtied cloth vanish. Straightened up. Smoothed his sallow face. “My Dominů’s coffee,” he said. Soon afterward he brought the shaving-water and the scented soap. Eszterhazy had for a while little to do and much to think about (there was not, considering his beard, much to shave, either: the neck and the cheekbones; but Turt trimmed also).

  Eszterhazy, while his servant scraped and clipped, considered his own peril. Presumably, Mudge was anyway somewhat in fear of him, whereas he had been in no way afraid of poor Morits. Presumably, he himself was therefore … safe? Well … safer.…

  But for how long?

  He recalled that face, high up, hateful. To prove the cheat of the servers of the Idol of Bel at Babylon, Daniel had scattered ashes on the floor; would it now be necessary to scatter them on the ceiling?

  * * *

  Eszterhazy was in bed. Bed. Boat. Boat. As he drifted by in the darkness he heard the sound of the district watchman rapping the butt of his staff on the flagstone pave at the corner. Presently he would hear it rapping on the other corner. He did not. He was not there. He was somewhere else. He knew and did not know where. It was in a great yard somewhere, an open waste of rubble and huts. The South Ward, somewhere. Behind a mouldering tenement. Between it and a riven old wall. Up there in that room, that room there, with the broken shutter banging aslant, lived an old man and an old woman, there, there in the night, Here, down here, concealed in a half-sunken pit, someone was hiding and biding time. Someone tall and sleek and grim. Someone muffled in a cloak. Was waiting. The cracked old bell began to toll in the tower of the Madhouse of Saint Vitus. Someone chuckled. It was not a nice sound. At once Eszterhazy knew who it was. I am the brother of the shadow of the slain, the vanguard of the shadow of the living. I am the medium, Mr. Mudge. As well.

  Mr. Mudge moved up out of the half-dug pit, and who knew for what gross usage the pit was to have been digged; moved forward, ahead, face intent. Nearer to the tottery old tenement, nearer to the window behind the broken slant shutter, Eszterhazy desperate to stop him, but paralyzed, unable to call out, to move. To breathe. Shutter suddenly springing open. Clap. Bang. Cough. Someone springing out and down. Someone? Something? Dark, dark, very dark. Fluid movement, there in the dark. Warn Mr. Mudge? Why? No. Mr. Mudge not there. Where? His cloak flying, floating, in the blackness night; Mr. Mudge fleeing before it as though, paws on its shoulders, it coursed him through the night. No: Something else coursed him through the blackness night. Scorn and contempt on his face giving way to concentration, concentration to effort, effort to—Run, Mudge, run!—to concern, to care, to alarm, faster, faster, faster, leap and run and climb and clamber and jump and clamber and climb and run and leap; close behind him something followed faster yet and something else for a second flashed and glinted, something else gleamed at or about the neck of … something … as sometimes one sees a glint or gleam where the fond master of an animal has fastened a metal sigil advising of its name and owner; or like some ring on a hand moving suddenly in the dim and flaring lamps—

  —screamed, Mr. Mudge; Quaere: What did Mr. Mudge scream? Responsum: Mr. Mudge screamed for help. Q.: How did Mr. Mudge scream for help and to what or whom? R.: To “Belphegor, Belzebub, Baphomet, Sathanas, à mon aide O mes princes, aidez-moi, à moi, à moi, à—” The prayer, if prayer it was, decayed into a continuous repetition of the broad a-sound as Mr. Mudge fled, leaping; as … something … leaping, coughing, followed after him; a great, sudden, abrupt coughing sound, a great forelimb chopping down Mr. Mudge: and all his imprecations sank powerlessly beneath even the level of derision.…

  Eszterhazy, body spent with having followed the hazards of the chase, awoke bathed in sweat and in bed.

  One thing alone remained still quick within his ears, and though it seemed not to be from this night before, yet perhaps it somehow was. That she-cat has claws, an odd voice said.

  That she-cat has claws.

  * * *

  Dawn.

  Mrash.

  “Your Lordship, that tiger come a-wandering again-time!”

  Eszterhazy lifted dulled, fatigued eyes. “The—? Ah … the leopard? You saw it running along and up the roofs?” What was it he felt, now? It was unbalanced that he felt now. He had with infinite difficulties maintained a stance against attack, assault, terror, pain, and worse. He felt this was gone now. But he was infinitely tired now. Infinitely tired. He dared be infinitely careful, lest he fall, now. What had and what was happening?

  Mrash said, “No, lordship. I seen it running down the roofs. And as I looked, so I seen. ‘Seen what’? Why, seen summat as wa
s not the tiger nor the leopard. Look out the window there, me lordship. Look out, look up. Look up.”

  Where was bluff old Colonel Brennshnekkl, who had hunted leopard in Africa, thinking them more dangerous than lion or tiger which course the level ground alone? Back in Africa, out of which, always something new. So Plautus says. Pliny?

  Mrash again gestured to the window. “My lordship, look,” he said. Added, “There cross the alley, on the roof of old Baron Johan house. On the ridge o’ the roof, by the chimbley; look, sir.”

  Eszterhazy looked; shielding with his hand against the obscuring reflection of the gaslight on the window glass, straining his eyes, wishing—not for the first time—that someone would invent a light, a quite bright light, which could (unlike the theatrical limelight) be cast up or across, across a distance. Well. Meanwhile. Meanwhile, something flapped in the wind, there on the rooftop, on the ridge by the chimney. “What, Mrashko? Some old clothes? Carried by wind—eh?”

  “Nay, my lordship,” Mrash said. “Clothes, yes. Old or new. But I doubt the wind be that strong tonight to—No matter. That be a cloak and a full suit of clothes, sir, and I be a veteran of more nor one war and I’ll tell thee what, Master: inside the suit of clothes does a dead man lie.”

  Mrash was hired to perform only the duties of a man-cook, but Mrash was no fool, he had indeed been in more than one war, nor had he spent all that time cloistered in the cook-tent; nor had his eyes been worn by much reading. His master said, “Sound the alarm.” In a moment the great iron ring rang out its clamor of ngoyng ngoyng mramha mram, ngoyng ngoyng mramha mram. In the very faint glim of the single small gaslamp at the alley’s far end men could be seen running, casting odd and oddly-moving shadows. But what was on the rooftop cast no shadow. And it never moved at all.