Weird Detectives

by Neil Gaiman, Simon R. Green, Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “Let me just say that as I waited for night to fall, I was starting to have an inkling as to the nature of the bogle.”

  “I began the evening by setting up the pentagram in the child’s bedroom. I was by no means sure that any such defenses were necessary but discretion is usually the better part of valor. I overlaid the electric pentacle on the pentagram, attached it to the battery, and settled down to wait, eschewing the child’s chair this time, preferring to sit inside the pentagram on the hard wood floor.

  “And once again I did not have to wait long. I was still on my first pipe when the air chilled and soft footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. I do not know whether it was the presence of the pentagram or not, but this time the mist that came through the doorway seemed more solid, more in a shape representing a human figure. And there was something more—the faintest hint of a high heady perfume.

  “The mist entered and again paid no heed to me. As it drifted over to the child’s bed the azure valve brightened slightly, but there was none of the blazing intensity I would have expected had the apparition been less than benign.

  “The odor of the perfume grew stronger still, and beneath that, something else I recognized; the dank dead smell of the grave.

  “Whispers came from within the mist as it loomed over the bed, and I had to strain to make out the words.

  “ ‘It was mine by right,’ a soft voice said. ‘Mine by birth. She shall not have it again.’

  “As the figure turned away from the bedside it brushed against the outer edge of my electric pentacle. The azure valve brightened and at the same instant the mist thickened until it had taken the form of a tall, painfully thin figure. A woman stood looking sadly back at the small bed. She was dressed in a long black robe of a thick velvet, and a hood partly obscured her features so that all I could see was a flash of white at her cheek and a thin, aquiline nose. As she turned further the robe encroached on my defenses. She jolted as if struck, the hood fell back, and by Jove I took one heck of a fright I can tell you.

  “It was not the empty stare from the eyes that shocked me, nor the cold gray tongue that looked like a piece of old stone. No, the thing that took me aback and near robbed me of my senses was the red scar that ran clear round her neck just above the shoulders . . . a scar that still wept blood down her chest.

  “I shuffled backwards across the pentacle, but she showed no sign of approaching me, nor of trying to breach the defenses. She had one last look at the bed, and whispered again.

  “ ‘Mine by birth. She shall not have it.’ ”

  Carnacki sat back in his chair and smiled.

  “I do believe I have given you quite enough clues now,” he said. “But please, let me finish the story. It is time now for you chaps to recharge your glasses for the final push.”

  By this time I was also coming to some conclusions as to the nature of Carnacki’s bogle, and I was keen to see if I had guessed correctly. I believe everyone present felt the same, for we refilled our snifters in record time and were soon ready for Carnacki to continue.

  “She left the room, footsteps fading along the corridor. Silence fell but I sat there a while longer before rising, pondering my next move. I knew it would cause consternation in the household, but the way ahead was clear to me. I had to persuade the laird to return to the house, and to bring his daughter with him. For only by direct confrontation could this business be finished once and for all.

  “Getting the man back to the castle was easier said than done. It required a series of terse telegrams between the post office in Forfar and London which caused a great deal of chatter in the town and cost me several guineas in bills for a carriage to and from Glamis itself. Finally we reached agreement, and all I could do was wait for their return.

  “That was to take more than a week, during which time I took in a trip around the Perthshire Hills and met an adversary who was much less benign. But that is a tale for another evening. Suffice to say I spent the time fruitfully and on the day the laird arrived from London with his retinue I was at the door of the castle waiting for him.

  “A child I guessed was Lisabet held him tightly by the hand, but as they approached the door she let go and ran past me, heading inside.

  “ ‘She seems to have forgotten all about the bogle,’ the Laird said as he shook my hand. ‘Perhaps it is best to keep it that way?’

  “ ‘I doubt that very much sir,’ I replied. ‘I have some questions I need you to answer, then you will have a decision to make.’

  “He nodded curtly and went inside.

  “It was my turn to mind my manners, and I held my peace through a fine supper of salmon and pheasant, washed down with some excellent port. I waited until everyone else had retired, and we were sat in armchairs around a fireplace before I broached the matter at hand.

  “The laird seemed surprised at the questions I put to him, but not as much as I would have thought. He poured us a snifter of brandy each, and it seemed he was buying time to muster his thoughts, as if deciding what to reveal to me.

  “ ‘There were rumors,’ he finally said. ‘Tales that an attempt such as you describe had been made. You have seen the window . . . you know already that this place has a history in such matters?’

  “I nodded in reply.

  “ ‘But what in Jesu’s name is my daughter’s part in all of this?’ he asked me. ‘She is only a child, and innocent of any hurts done in centuries past.’

  “ ‘The coincidence of the names at least is obvious,’ I replied. ‘But answers may only become clear in time. It may be something in the child’s future that has brought this attention on her.’

  “The laird looked pensive at that, but said nothing.

  “ ‘With your permission,’ I said softly. ‘I would like to give the lady some rest. I think you will agree that she deserves that at least?’

  “It was his turn to nod in agreement.

  “We made our way to Lisabet’s room and found the child examining the chalk markings I had made on the floor. She was most excited when I brought out the electric pentacle. Her father gave her a stern warning to haud her wheesht and she fell quiet as I first repaired the defenses, then set the pentacle to work.

  “The three of us sat, pressed close together

  “ ‘What is it we are waiting for?’ Lisabet asked.

  Her father replied for me.

  “ ‘A princess,’ he said. ‘Just like you.’

  “He ruffled her hair, and at that very same moment the soft footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. We smelled the heady perfume even before she walked through the doorway.

  “This time she was almost fully formed. The black velvet robe looked like a hole in the very fabric of space itself, her pale face hovering like a moon above it. The dead eyes turned and stared at the child.

  “ ‘You took it,’ she whispered. ‘It is mine by right, and you took it from me.’

  Lisabet stiffened but did not cry out, merely stared back at the thing before her.

  “ ‘I do not know you, madam,’ she said, so prim and proper that I had to stifle a laugh. ‘Kindly be so good as to introduce yourself.’

  The robed figure loomed over us. Once again the only activity from the pentacle was a slight brightening of the azure valve.

  “ ‘Madam,’ I said softly. ‘This is not your sister. She has been dead these three centuries and more. There is no place for you here.’

  “The darkness thickened slightly and the blank eyes turned towards me. Bloody tears ran from them.

  “ ‘Go?’ she whispered. ‘That is my dearest wish. But I know not how.’

  “ ‘Let me help,’ I said softly, and uttered the prayer of passing.

  “ ‘Adjuro ergo te, omnis immundíssime spiritus, omne phantasma, omnis incursio satanæ, in nomine Jesu Christi.’

  “She broke apart, like smoke taken by wind. At the last, a wispy tendril reached towards the child.

  “ ‘Lisabet,’ came a whisper.

  “Then
she was gone.

  “ ‘What did that lady want with me?’ the girl asked as I packed away the pentacle and cleaned the chalk from the floor.’

  “ ‘She was dead, but did not know it,’ I replied. ‘And she thought you were someone she knew a long time ago.’

  “ ‘Well I’m not going to die,’ Lisabet said loudly. ‘I shall live till I’m a hundred.’

  “And do you know something, chaps? I do believe she might just do it.”

  Carnacki sat back in his chair, a wide grin on his face.

  “Before we get to who the apparition might have been, I suppose I had better tell you how it came about.

  “You chaps all know that I do not believe in the soul as such,” he continued. “And at first, this bogle almost made me doubt my own convictions. But having thought long and hard, I believe I may have the truth of it.

  “It starts in the late sixteenth century, with an attempt by a Scottish alchemist to revive a dead lady. Now I have studied the Great Work to some degree, and have already this evening commented on the amalgamation of the microcosm with the macrocosm. What no one, not the alchemist, nor I, had considered, was what effect the transformation would have on a body already dead. What was transformed was not capable of ascension to the Outer Realms, the macrocosm. It was forced to remain, rooted to its earthly plane, doomed for eternity to roam, seeking something it could never find.

  “And you came along and freed it?” Jessop piped up.

  “Freed her,” Carnacki said softly. “For there was still something there of the lady she had once been.”

  “And who was she exactly, Carnacki?” Arkwright said. “Lady Macbeth?”

  Carnacki laughed loudly at that.

  “No. Not that one, but the lady I sent to her rest was also of noble birth. Come, chaps. Have I not given you enough clues? The date of the journal alone should give you some idea? And the place, the seat of an ancient Scottish family? If you have not the wit to work it out for yourself then I have not the inclination to enlighten you. All I shall say is we should look out for the name Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in the years ahead, for I believe she has a destiny that the whole country will come to understand in time.”

  At that Carnacki rose from his chair, the time honored signal that our evening was over.

  “Out you go,” he said jovially at the door.

  As we left Carnacki whispered just one word in my ear, but it was enough for me to consider on the way back along the Embankment. By the time I reached home I had confirmed my own earlier guess as to the identity of the Beast of Glamis.

  Carnacki’s whispered word stayed in my mind even as I drifted to sleep.

  Fotheringay.

  William Meikle is a Scottish writer now resident in Canada. He has fifteen novels published in the genre press and over two hundred and fifty short story credits in thirteen countries. More of his stories featuring William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki have been collected in Heaven and Hell. His work appears in many professional magazines and anthologies and he has recent short story sales to Nature’s science-fiction section Futures, Penumbra, and Daily Science Fiction among others. He now lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales, and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at www.williammeikle.com.

  The Case: The McCarleys, a family of five, are found brutally slaughtered and partially eaten. It looks like the work of vampires.

  The Investigators: Molly Everhart Trueblood, an earth witch; Jane Yellowrock, a shape-changing Cherokee skinwalker and sometimes vampire hunter with other special talents; Paul Braxton, retired from the New York City PD, now a sheriff detective in North Carolina.

  SIGNATURES OF THE DEAD

  Faith Hunter

  It was nap time, and it wasn’t often that I could get both children to sleep a full hour—the same full hour, that is. I stepped back and ran my hands over the healing and protection spells that enveloped my babies, Angelina and Evan Jr. The complex incantations were getting a bit frayed around the edges, and I drew on Mother Earth and the forest on the mountainside outback to restore them. Not much power, not enough to endanger the ecosystem that was still being restored there. Just a bit. Just enough.

  Few witches or sorcerers survive into puberty, and so I spend a lot of time making sure my babies are okay. I come from a long line of witches. Not the kind in pointy black hats with a cauldron in the front yard, and not the kind like the Bewitched television show that once tried to capitalize on our reclusive species. Witches aren’t human, though we can breed true with humans, making little witches about 50 percent of the time. Unfortunately, witch babies have a poor survival rate, especially the males, most dying before they reach the age of twenty, from various cancers. The ones who live through puberty, however, tend to live into their early hundreds.

  The day each of my babies were conceived, I prayed and worked the same incantations Mama had used on her children, power-weavings, to make sure my babies were protected. Mama had better-than-average survival rate on her witches. For me, so far, so good. I said a little prayer over them and left the room.

  Back in the kitchen, Paul Braxton—Brax to his friends, Detective or Sir to the bad guys he chased—Jane Yellowrock, and Evan were still sitting at the table, the photographs scattered all around. Crime scene photos of the McCarley house. And the McCarleys. It wasn’t pretty. The photos didn’t belong in my warm, safe home. They didn’t belong anywhere.

  Evan and I were having trouble with them, with the blood and the butchery. Of course, nothing fazed Jane. And, after years of dealing with crime in New York City, little fazed Brax, though it had been half a decade since he’d seen anything so gruesome, not since he “retired” to the Appalachian mountains and went to work for the local sheriff.

  I met Evan’s gray eyes, seeing the steely anger there. My husband was easygoing, slow to anger, and full of peace, but the photos of the five McCarleys had triggered something in him, a slow-burning pitiless rage. He was feeling impotent, useless, and he wanted to smash things. The boxing bag in the garage would get a pummeling tonight, after the kids went to bed for the last time. I offered him a wan smile and went to the Aga stove; I poured fresh coffee for the men and tea for Jane and me. She had brought a new variety, a first flush Darjeeling, and it was wonderful with my homemade bread and peach butter.

  “Kids okay?” Brax asked, amusement in his tone.

  I retook my seat and used the tip of a finger to push the photos away. I was pretty transparent, I guess, having to check on the babies after seeing the dead McCarleys. “They’re fine. Still sleeping. Still . . . safe.” Which made me feel all kinds of guilty to have my babies safe, while the entire McCarley family had been butchered. Drunk dry. Partly eaten.

  “You finished thinking about it?” he asked. “Because I need an answer. If I’m going after them, I need to know, for sure, what they are. And if they’re vamps, then I need to know how many there are and where they’re sleeping in the daytime. And I’ll need protection. I can pay.”

  I sighed and sipped my tea, added a spoonful of raw sugar, stirred and sipped again. He was trying to yank my chain, make my natural guilt and our friendship work to his favor, and making him wait was my only reverse power play. Having to use it ticked me off. I put the cup down with a soft china clink. “You know I won’t charge you for the protection spells, Brax.”

  “I don’t want Molly going into that house,” Evan said. He brushed crumbs from his reddish, graying beard and leaned across the table, holding my eyes. “You know it’ll hurt you.”

  I’m an earth witch, from a long family of witches, and our gifts are herbs and growing things, healing bodies, restoring balance to nature. I’m a little unusual for earth witches, in that I can sense dead things, which is why Brax was urging me to go to the McCarley house. To tell him for sure if dead things, like vamps, had killed the family. How they died. He could wait for forensics, but that might take week
s. I was faster. And I could give him numbers to go on, too, how many vamps were in the blood-family, if they were healthy, or as healthy as dead things ever got. And, maybe, which direction they had gone at dawn, so he could guess where the vamps slept by day.

  But once there, I would sense the horror, the fear that the violent deaths had left imprinted on the walls, floor, ceilings, furniture of the house. I took a breath to say no. “I’ll go,” I said instead. Evan pressed his lips together tight, holding in whatever he would say to me later, privately. “If I don’t go, and another family is killed, I’ll be a lot worse,” I said to him. “And that would be partly my fault. Besides, some of that reward money would buy us a new car.”

  “You don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Moll,” he said, his voice a deep, rumbling bass. “And we can get the money in other ways.” Not many people know that Evan is a sorcerer, not even Brax. We wanted it that way, as protection for our family. If it was known that Evan carried the rare gene on his X chromosome, the gene that made witches, and that we had produced children who both carried the gene, we’d likely disappear into some government-controlled testing program. “Moll. Think about this,” he begged. But I could see in his gentle brown eyes that he knew my mind was already made up.

  “I’ll go.” I looked at Jane. “Will you go with me?” She nodded once, the beads in her black braids clicking with the motion. To Brax, I said, “When do you want us there?”

  The McCarley house was on Dogwood, up the hill overlooking the town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, not that far, as the crow flies, from my house, which is outside the city limits, on the other side of the hill. The McCarley home was older, with a 1950s feel to it, and from the outside, it would have been hard to tell that anything bad had happened. The tiny brick house itself with its elvish, high-peaked roof, green trim, and well-kept lawn looked fine. But the crime scene tape was a dead giveaway.

  I was still sitting in the car, staring at the house, trying to center myself for what I was about to do. It took time to become settled, to pull the energies of my gift around me, to create a skein of power that would heighten my senses.