The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachmann

  The lady shied away again, away from Mr. Lickerish. “I thought I was sure last time,” the voice said. “I was sure. And yet— No. There will be no more mistakes, Sathir. I will make doubly certain this time. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

  Mr. Jelliby’s leg twitched. It was only a very tiny twitch, of a muscle or a sinew, but it disturbed the cabinet. The padded bench creaked such a little bit. Mr. Lickerish spun.

  “Did you hear that?” he whispered, eyes darting around the room.

  Mr. Jelliby blanched.

  “Yes,” the voice said. “Yes, I heard it.”

  Mr. Lickerish took a step toward the cabinet, his lips pressed so tight they were bloodless. He lifted his hand, long fingers reaching for the handle. He was too small to see through the little glass pane, but it made no difference. Another step and he would open the door. He would see Mr. Jelliby cowering in the darkness and then—

  A spasm passed over the lady’s face, a flicker under the surface of her skin, and suddenly her expression was no longer blank. Her eyes fixed on Mr. Jelliby’s through the glass. He could see them now, shining bright and full of pain. Then her red lips parted and she was speaking in a creamy soft voice that held the faintest hint of an accent. “It is only the woodwork, my lords. It expands in the heat of the day.”

  Her voice stopped, but she continued to stare at Mr. Jelliby, and her mouth continued to move. It formed two words. Two soundless words, just once, but they rang clear as crystal in his head.

  Help me.

  CHAPTER VII

  A Bad One

  “MUMMY, do you have pennies behind your eyes?” Hettie didn’t even look up as she asked it. Her bony hands were wrapped around a chipped mug of broth, and she was staring at something at its bottom.

  Mother said nothing. She was stabbing a woolen stocking with a long needle. Her mind was far, far away.

  “Do you have pennies behind your eyes?” Hettie asked again, louder this time.

  Bartholomew looked up from his own broth. Normally he would have laughed at her. He would have pinched her under the table and repeated her question in a high, foolish voice until she giggled. But he didn’t think he could do that anymore. He felt old now, and frightened, and laughing and pinching seemed such long-ago things.

  The red symbols were not healing. Mother had bathed them in hot water, rubbed them with smelly leaves, packed them with poultices, and wrapped them in the cleanest linens that could be found, but even now, days later, they looked much the same. The flesh around them was not as swollen as before, and oddly enough he only felt them when there was a piercing noise like the creak of a floorboard or the cry of a bird. But they weren’t fading; they weren’t scarring or growing scabs. They were just there, a pattern of bloodred lines whirling across his skin.

  “Mother!” It was Hettie.

  The needle pricked Mother’s finger just below the nail and she brought her head up with a little gasp. “Hettie, what are these strange ideas you have?” She sucked her finger. “Why would I have pennies behind my eyes?”

  Hettie sank her face into her mug. “Someone told me you did,” she said, and her voice echoed. “He said I should pick them out and buy brown-sugar toffee with them.”

  Bartholomew sat up. Mother was going to scream at Hettie now, cry and weep, and beg that it wasn’t true, that Hettie hadn’t been talking to strangers. But Mother hadn’t heard the last bit. Instead her eyes lit up with a rare twinkle and she asked, “Oh, and what sort of someone would that be? A little prince, perhaps, upon a wild boar?”

  Hettie looked at her reproachfully. “No. A raggedy man.”

  “A raggedy man?” Mother knocked her wounded finger once against the table, as if to make sure it was still functioning, and then hunched back over her stitching. “That’s not very enchanting.”

  “Of course he’s not enchanting, Mummy, he’s a raggedy man.” Hettie was being very sullen this morning. What did she have to be peeved about, Bartholomew wondered. She hadn’t come within a hairsbreadth of being hanged. She hadn’t had her friend stolen, or been magically written on, or had a dead faery screech at her some nonsense about hooves and voices.

  Mother looked at Hettie sadly. “Oh, deary.” She dropped her needlework and gathered Hettie into her lap. “Deary, deary, deary. I do wish you could have real friends. I wish you could go into the street and chase after the wood sprytes and run errands to the market like other children do, but— Well, you just can’t. Folks out there, they don’t— They would . . .” Mother trailed off.

  They would kill you, Bartholomew thought, but Mother wasn’t going to tell Hettie that. She wasn’t going to tell Hettie that she would never be able to play in the street, or go to market, or chase after the wood sprytes. Not in Bath. Hettie would be snatched up and hanged faster than you could say “gentleman jack.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll just have to make do with made-up friends for a while longer” was all Mother said.

  “Mummy, the raggedy man is not my friend,” Hettie corrected her sternly.

  Mother lifted Hettie off her lap and set her squarely on the floor.

  “Well, why did you invent him then?” she said shortly, and by the sharp way she jabbed her needle into the stocking it was clear she didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Hettie couldn’t see that, though. “I didn’t!” she said, going to the wash pot next to the stove and drowning her mug in the cold soapy water. “He came by himself. He comes every night, through the keyhole in the door.” Her voice became quiet. “He sings songs to me. Long, sad songs.” The mug hit the bottom of the pot with a thunk. “They’re not pretty songs.”

  Mother set down her needlework slowly. She was watching Hettie, staring at her back. “Child, what are you talking about? Who is this person?”

  Bartholomew saw the fear in the lines of her face, heard it in the lowness of her voice. And then everything Hettie had said snapped together in his mind. A stranger . . . comes through the keyhole . . . comes in the night.

  He jumped up, scraping his stool noisily. “That was a fine breakfast, Mother. Don’t mind Hettie, she’s just playing pretend. Should we go find you some sand from behind the house? Should we, Hettie? Come on. Now.”

  Mother picked up the stocking again, but she was still eyeing Hettie. “Sand. Yes. Go and get me some. But Bartholomew . . .” His mother’s hands were tight round the wool, so tight her knuckles poked up. “If anyone even looks at Hettie you run her back here, d’you hear me? Straight back through that door, sand or no sand.”

  “Yes, Mother. We’ll be all right. We’ll be back before you know it.”

  Mrs. Kettle did laundry for the few people who could afford not to do it themselves, the few people she could trick into believing she had a proper laundry service and didn’t trundle their nighties and undergarments into the depths of the faery slums in a green-painted wheelbarrow. She bought the lye from peddlers, but it had always been the children’s job to dig for scrubbing sand in the little courtyard behind the house.

  Hettie tied her hood under her chin and went to Bartholomew, ignoring his outstretched hand.

  “Let’s go!” he said under his breath, taking hold of her shoulder and bundling her toward the door. He unbolted it, peeked out to make sure no one was there. Then he crept into the passage and motioned for Hettie to follow. As soon as they were out of earshot, Bartholomew pulled her into a hollow under a flight of steps and knelt down next to her, whispering, “Where does he live, Het? Can he fly? Was he very nice?”

  Hettie looked at him dumbly. “Nice?” she repeated. “We’re supposed to get sand. Why are we under the stairs?”

  “Yes, and when was the first time you saw him? And what were you thinking, startling Mother like that?” He gave her shoulder a shake. “Come on, Hettie, tell me!”

  “The day before yesterday,” she said, shoving his hand away. “And Barthy, you don’t need to joggle me. You’ll shake my head loose.”

  The day I built the faery dwelling. B
artholomew scrabbled out from under the stairs.

  “Run back quick as you can, Hettie, we’ll get sand later.”

  Mother would clout him for leaving Hettie by herself, but he couldn’t be bothered with that right now. His invitation had worked. It had worked. He ran down the passage, up another staircase, taking the steps two at a time. And for one bright moment as he flew up the steps, he was happy. Completely and utterly happy.

  Then he pulled himself into the attic and the dusty darkness, and he thought of how the faery had only shown itself to Hettie and not him, and a little thistle of envy buried itself between his ribs. She shouldn’t have seen it first. It was his faery. It should have come to him.

  He stole across the floor and squirmed into his secret gable. The faery dwelling was exactly as he had left it. The shriveled cherries were still tangled in its walls. The salt he had sprinkled over its roof sparkled in the sunlight like snow, undisturbed. The last few days, Bartholomew had come up there every chance he’d gotten, searching the little room for the slightest change, the slightest hint that his faery had come. Each time there had been nothing. And there was still nothing.

  He went down on his knees, huffing, blowing a cobweb back and forth, back and forth. What could that mean? If the invitation had been successful, why hadn’t the faery eaten Bartholomew’s offerings? He had spent enough time collecting them for the stupid thing. And shouldn’t it have announced itself? His breathing slowed. The happiness of a few moments went out like a candle. How long will I have to wait?

  He thought back to the words in the tattered book, about the faery and how it was supposed to have followed its summoner home. He hadn’t seen any faery. Hettie had. And if it could follow him home from a stream in some wild wood, it ought to be able to find its way down a few flights of stairs.

  But what if the faery didn’t want to make itself known? What if that was not how house faeries worked, and Bartholomew had to be nice to it first and gain its trust? The book had been very vague on all that. He supposed he could try it. He could write the faery a letter, ask it a question or two, place the paper inside the faery dwelling, and hope upon hope it would answer him. He didn’t know if domesticated faeries could even read. But he could think of nothing else to do.

  His first question would be what the patterns on his skin meant. They were words, he was sure of that, but in what language? They looked a lot like the writing he had seen on the floor of the room with metal birds. Not nearly as complicated, though. In fact, they appeared to be just two or three of the same symbols, repeated over and over again.

  One of his old books had a blank page between the cover and the title page, and this he separated from the spine, very carefully so as not to crack the glue. He was not especially good at writing. When he was very small—what seemed like ages ago—a young man who wore garish waistcoats and looked perpetually ill had lived in the flat next door. He was a poverty-stricken painter who, for some unfathomable reason, found the filthy streets and leaning houses of the faery districts picturesque. He hadn’t been like other people. When he had spotted Bartholomew running up to the attic, he hadn’t been afraid of him or buried him under an elderberry bush. He had told Bartholomew stories, taught him how to read. He had given him the books Bartholomew now kept behind the stove. He had been rather like a friend. But then he had left in a pine box and Bartholomew had forgotten much of what he had taught him. No, Bartholomew was not very good at writing. But he did it anyway.

  Dear Mr. Fayrye, he wrote. He was using a quill rubbed in the tar from the window frame. The tar was used to seal the chinks and keep the rain from dripping in, but during the summer months it turned almost liquid under the hot sun. It didn’t make very good ink. It was sticky and difficult to direct across the paper, but proper ink was not to be had.

  I have an important question. I would be very happy and grateful if you would answer it. What do these signs mean?

  Here he copied the markings on his skin as exactly as he could onto the paper. It was much easier than writing in English. It was like a drawing, and he didn’t have to worry about how the letters fit together or what sounds they made. Then he wrote:

  Thank you very much, and good day,

  And signed the whole thing,

  Bartholomew Kettle

  He made a flourish under his name that made him very proud, and pushed the paper carefully into the faery dwelling. Then he went down to the flat and was clouted for leaving Hettie by herself.

  That night, as Bartholomew lay on his cot half thinking, half dreaming about faeries and quills and question marks, he heard a sound. A gentle clicking in the kitchen, like old, rusty metal grinding against itself. The door to the flat. Someone was fiddling with the lock.

  He sat bolt upright. More clicks. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he got up and padded silently to the door of his room. The sound stopped. He knelt down and pressed his eye to the keyhole. The kitchen beyond was eerie, dead. The fire had gone out completely. Mother was fast asleep in her narrow bed, and all the keys were hanging in their place on the far wall: the big toothy key to the flat door; the key to his room; the keys to the soap cupboard and the back gate, all there on a spike in the plaster.

  Something was wrong. His eye made another sweep of room. The door to Hettie’s cupboard bed. It was open, just a crack. And inside, someone was singing.

  His heart dropped into his belly. It was not Hettie’s voice. It was not like any voice he had ever heard before. It was hollow and earthy, and it sang in a thin, pointy language that for some reason made Bartholomew feel wicked for listening to it, as if it was not meant for him to hear, as if he were eavesdropping. But the melody was paralyzing. It went up, then fell, now tempting, now wild, snaking out of the cupboard and filling the whole flat. He was surrounded by it, swimming up through swirling black ribbons of sound. It filled his head, becoming louder and faster until it was all there was, all he heard, all he knew.

  His eyelids had gone heavy as lead. Inky spots bloomed across his vision. The last thing he remembered before his eye fell away from the keyhole and he slid to the floor was seeing the door to Hettie’s cupboard bed open a bit more. A dark and gnarled hand curled around from inside. Then Bartholomew’s head hit the floor like a stone and he was asleep.

  It was the door that woke Bartholomew the next morning. Mother came into the room with a heap of yarn ends, and the worm-eaten wood knocked soundly against his head. He leaped up with a cry.

  “Bartholomew Kettle, what are you doing on the floor? Larks and stage lights, what’s your bed for? Why, I’ve got half a mind to—”

  He didn’t stay to hear what exactly she had half a mind for. He was already running, out the door and up the stairs toward the attic, his legs pumping. Please be answered, please be answered. He had a creeping dread that the faery would just ignore him and he would find everything exactly the way he had left it.

  But this time nothing was the way he had left it. His breath caught in his throat as he crawled under the gable. It looked as if a storm had blown through. His treasure box lay open, its contents strewn across the floor. The string of glass had been tied into a great knot so tight and complicated-looking that he knew he would never be able to undo it. The straw inside the mat had been torn out and stuffed between the tiles overhead. It sifted down now, gentle and golden in the light from the window. As for the faery dwelling, it was in ruins. The twigs he had spent so many months gathering had been trampled into the cracks in the floorboards. The cherries were gone. So was the spoon.

  He took a few steps forward, his mind numb. Something crinkled underfoot. It was his letter, half hidden under a tangle of ivy. He knelt down and unfolded it shakily.

  There was his writing, so crooked and bad he was ashamed of it now, and around it, little dirty fingerprints like those of a small child. On the other side, bleeding into the creamy paper like a stain, was a number. A single number . . .

  10

  And that was all.


  He stared at it, the straw drifting around him, and his mother’s words came unbidden into his mind. The words she had said that day, weeks ago, when the lady in plum had first swept into the shadows of Old Crow Alley and he had begged Mother to let him invite a faery.

  And what if you get a bad one.

  CHAPTER VIII

  To Catch a Bird

  TWENTY minutes after the faery gentleman prodded Melusine from the room like a mangy goat, Mr. Jelliby was still huddled inside the cabinet, eyes closed, blood thumping a tattoo inside his head. He felt he was going mad. His brain ached. He was almost certain it would come sliding out of his nose at any moment, and wriggle away across the floor on tentacle feet.

  The lady in plum had seen him. She had looked straight into his eyes and she had not cried out, or alerted Mr. Lickerish to his presence as one would have expected from the henchwoman of a dreadful murderer. No, she had implored Mr. Jelliby for help. He could still see her lips forming the two words, the desperation in those bright and shining eyes.