The Express Diaries

by Nick Marsh

Neville nodded. ‘I’ll take care of it. For now, we would just like to retire for the night.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Anything at all,’ he repeated as he moved quietly away.

  Milos was, true to his word, sitting where we had left him, upon the trunk, balaclava in place on his head and the bulky gun on his lap. His eyes narrowed with suspicion when Doctor Hagge entered.

  ‘Søren Hagge,’ the tall doctor said, raising his top hat and smiling at Milos.

  ‘The doctor?’ Milos said. His eyes flitted to the silver badge on the doctor’s lapel, and then down to the black cane the doctor used when he walked. ‘What rank were you?’

  ‘Captain,’ the doctor replied. Milos nodded, but asked nothing more.

  ‘He wants to help,’ Grace said. ‘He saw... Violet. I’m so glad you’re all right, Milos.’

  Milos grinned and patted the gun on his lap. ‘Nothing gets in this trunk. This is the safest place on the train, Grace.’

  He shuffled up the trunk, so that Grace could come and sit next to him. She did so.

  Luxurious and spacious though they are, the Orient Express passenger compartments are still crowded with five people and a large trunk in them, even with the beds folded up into seats. We sat down where we could, each as far away from the window as we could manage, as the train rattled back into life and resumed its journey to Constantinople.

  ‘So,’ said Milos, ‘a serious business, eh? It looks as if the creature has decided to take what it wants.’

  Neville and I nodded. ‘What is in the trunk?’ Doctor Hagge asked.

  ‘Pieces of a statue,’ I said. ‘It’s a long story, and we really don’t have time. But the thing that... took Violet, wants it.’

  ‘I see,’ the doctor said, rubbing his grey hair. ‘And what do we know of this... thing?’

  Milos snorted. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  Grace and Neville looked at me, reminded of the conversation over dinner before the creature attacked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I agreed. ‘But I have a way of contacting someone who may be able to help us.’ I paused. ‘The duke.’

  Neville and Milos jumped to their feet. I thought for a dreadful moment that Milos was going to turn the gun on me. ‘The duke?’ Neville shouted, incredulous. ‘From Lausanne?’

  I nodded. ‘The Duc d’Essientes.’

  ‘Are you crazy, woman?’ Neville said. ‘He attacked us! He killed Professor Moretti!’

  ‘A misunderstanding,’ I said.

  ‘Misunderstanding!’ Neville roared. ‘He set us on fire! He wants the statue as badly as the creature does! How can you--’ he spluttered, speechless and beetroot-faced.

  ‘Mrs Sunderland,’ Grace said, quietly, ‘please don’t tell us you have been in contact with that man.’

  ‘I have,’ I said. I lowered my head. ‘I... I was worried about what was happening. We are out of our depth, you all know it. I thought that maybe the duke would be able to--’

  ‘He’s one of them!’ Neville cried. ‘A bloody cultist! One of the skin lot!

  ‘Don’t you raise your voice at me, Neville Goodenough!’ I said, loudly. ‘We don’t know he’s a cultist, not for sure. And what other plan do we have? Keep blundering on until we’re all dead?’

  ‘It’s your bloody fault we’re in this mess in the first place!’ Neville shouted. ‘You’ve gone too far this time, Betty!’

  ‘Please, Neville, stop shouting and listen to me,’ I said. ‘I have told the duke nothing that he couldn’t have worked out by himself. Yes, I agree, it’s likely he’s mixed up in this cult. But who would you rather talk to? Humans, or that other thing, the one that just butchered poor Violet?’

  Neville opened his mouth and closed it a few times.

  ‘Calm down, Colonel,’ Grace said. ‘We should at least hear what she has to say.’

  ‘Took my bloody eye,’ Neville muttered as he sat back down. Milos slowly sat back on the trunk as well. I took a deep breath.

  ‘After we started to realise we were being followed by... that thing, especially after Venice, I knew we were up against something more than we could deal with. The duke had seemed the most civilised, and reasonable, of the foes we encountered so far.’

  Neville made a strangled noise deep in his throat, but I glared at him and continued.

  ‘I was worried that we were all going to get killed. I know that this whole trip is my fault, but surely you all see what is going on here! This statue,’ I pointed at the trunk, ‘is powerful. Very powerful. Men are willing to kill for it. Are we all willing to die for it, like Violet? Like Alphonse?

  ‘Despite what you may think, I am not a fool. I know that the duke is no good either, but he thinks that we can be manipulated. So long as we keep that in mind, perhaps we can outwit him. Surely you must know, Neville, that you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer still! And you can be sure he doesn’t want to see that statue in the hands of the creature any more than we do!’

  ‘So what do you think the Brothers of the Skin will do with it when they have it?’ Neville asked. ‘That thing is dangerous, Betty. Professor Smith was desperate not to let it fall into their hands!’

  ‘Quite right, too,’ I said. ‘And we’re not going to let it, either. But that doesn’t mean the duke has to know that. And right here, right now, we need to come up with a plan for surviving the night. Maybe the duke can help with that.’

  ‘This is dangerous,’ Milos said. ‘I do not like it. There will be a price to pay. The duke killed Moretti. He is not stupid either.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I snapped. ‘But has anyone got any better ideas?’

  The cabin fell silent apart from the clattering of the wheels on the tracks.

  ‘You say you have a means of contacting him?’ Neville said, eventually. ‘How?’

  * * * * *

  ‘A little magic of the mind, he called it,’ I said. The five of us huddled around the half-burned candle that I had placed on top of an upended suitcase in the middle of the compartment. ‘I light the candle, and I speak the words, and somehow, he hears me.’

  Milos, obviously uncomfortable with the whole situation, muttered something in Czechoslovakian. He gripped his gun tightly – Milos is very much a man who trusts in what he can see.

  ‘And you have done this before?’ Neville said. ‘You have spoken to him before?’

  I nodded. ‘Only once.’

  ‘Were you planning on telling us at any point?’ he growled.

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. But if you want another argument, perhaps it can wait until after we are ripped to shreds by this creature?’

  Doctor Hagge, who had been silent until this point, said ‘Colonel, let us just see what happens.’

  ‘Fairy stories,’ Milos muttered.

  ‘Nay-vah-rho,’ I said, lighting the candle. ‘Nay-vah-rho.

  Ta-la-rho, Ta-la-rho.’

  Just as before, as I spoke the words over and over, I began to hear them echoed back to me in another’s voice. At first it sounded far away, but with each repetition the voice became louder, and clearer. Soon enough, it stopped chanting.

  ‘Mrs Sunderland, so good to talk to you again.’

  The voice of the duke seemed to come directly from the candle. The flame flickered and faded as he spoke. The doctor’s forehead creased in surprise, but for the others I suppose this minor miracle was nothing compared to the other strangeness they had witnessed.

  ‘Duke,’ I said.

  ‘Please, please, call me Jean.’ The voice dripped with honey, but I have never been taken in by that. The malice behind the false charm was all too obvious. But, as I had said, what choice did we have?

  ‘Of course, Jean, but I am afraid we have no time for pleasantries.’

  ‘Do you have the head? You have the whole thing now, yes?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Jean. There has been a setback.’

  ‘Setback?’ the voice said, dangerously calm. ‘Of what kind?’

  ‘The cult attacked the un
iversity. They took the head.’

  ‘Ahh,’ the duke said, sounding relieved. ‘Well, perhaps--’

  ‘And then,’ I continued, ‘the creature that has been following us took it from them. It killed them all.’

  The candle burned silently for a moment.

  ‘I see,’ the duke said. ‘And where is this... creature now?’

  ‘It seems to have run out of patience,’ I said. ‘It has killed Violet. It will not be long before it takes the rest of us too. We need help.’

  ‘Hm. You’re certain this thing has the head too?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And soon it will have the rest of the statue! Unless you help us, now!’

  ‘Hm,’ the duke repeated. Neville opened his mouth, but I raised a silencing finger. It would be better if the duke still believed he talked to me alone.

  ‘If I help you,’ the duke said, ‘then will you agree to our bargain?’

  The others looked at me, but I ignored them. ‘Yes. If you save us now, we will give you the statue.’

  ‘Good,’ the duke said. ‘Very good. You are making a wise decision, Mrs Sunderland. I hope that your friends appreciate that you are saving their lives.’

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ I muttered.

  ‘I have... associates in Constantinople. They will contact you when you arrive,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. The creature? Can you help or not?’

  ‘Not directly,’ the duke said. Neville folded his arms. ‘But I can perhaps give you some valuable information about it. I have been investigating through certain channels open to me since you told me of the creature’s presence.’

  ‘And what have you learned? The candle is burning low, Jean.’

  ‘The creature which follows you is centuries old, perhaps millennia. I think, though it is hard to believe now, that it was once human.’

  ‘Human? What happened to it?’

  ‘I cannot say. Its origins are lost in the fog of history. The creature is careful to cover its tracks. Somehow, many years ago, it acquired the Simulacrum. The whole Simulacrum.’

  ‘Why would it want the thing?’

  ‘The Simulacrum has many minor powers. One of them is to allow a creature such as this to return to its original form. To blend with, and return to, the human society that it was once a part of. I do not know how it ended up with the statue, but once in possession of it, it posed for many years as a certain count in Paris.’

  ‘Fenalik,’ I whispered. ‘The Comte Fenalik.’

  ‘Correct,’ agreed the duke. ‘But its perversions did not go unnoticed. It became careless, and the statue was taken from it. And then the corruption set in.’

  ‘Corruption?’

  ‘If one has truly owned the statue, for many years, one forms a connection with it, a connection that can never fully be broken. If the statue is lost, you become corrupted. Your flesh will twist, and warp, until you are reunited with the thing. This corruption would kill any normal human.’

  ‘But not Fenalik,’ I said.

  ‘Not Fenalik,’ agreed the duke. ‘Bent and broken though it is, it survives. You can imagine how much it wants the statue back. It will kill every last one of you to get it.’

  ‘But why use us to get it at all? Why not just take it for itself?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the duke said. ‘Perhaps it finds it easier this way. Or... found it easier. As you say, it seems to have run out of patience. Being so near its goal – it must be maddening for the creature.’

  Neville began pointing impatiently at the candle. I saw that it was almost burnt down to the stub.

  ‘This is all very interesting, but how does it help us?’

  ‘Fenalik is a powerful creature. Extremely powerful. Normal weapons will do almost nothing to it, except perhaps slow it down.’

  ‘But... normal weapons are all we have!’ I said.

  ‘Not so, Mrs Sunderland. You have, in your possession, most of an extremely powerful ancient artefact.’

  ‘The Simulacrum?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Sunderland.’

  ‘But... that isn’t a weapon! What are we supposed to do? Club it to death with an arm?’

  The duke was silent. It became apparent that this was exactly what he expected us to do.

  ‘You can’t be serious! The creature... it wiped out a cavern full of people! How are we supposed to--?’

  ‘We have no more time, Mrs Sunderland. I cannot help you any more from here. I wish you my best, my very best. You must not let Fenalik gain possession of the Simulacrum again!’

  ‘But...’ the flame dimmed. The candle was almost spent.

  ‘My associates will meet you in...’ the duke said, and his voice faded into nothing as the candle dissolved into a pool of wax.

  ‘Well then,’ said Grace. ‘We’re all going to die.’

  Colonel Neville Goodenough’s Personal Notes, Wednesday, November 18th, 1925

  The plan was, of course, insane – using pieces of an ancient statue to try to bludgeon a thousand-year-old feral killer to death – but we had no other choice, except to sit in the cabin and wait until Violet’s fate overtook us all.

  I was very disappointed in Betty, and I trusted the duke about as far as I could lift up the train. What if he was somehow in league with this creature? On the face of it that made no sense at all, but it was clear that there was much more to this than met the eye. Betty seemed to feel the mad conversation through the flame of a candle cleared everything up, but the rest of us were far from convinced.

  Nevertheless, we quickly realised that nobody else had any better ideas. I opened the trunk, moving a grudging Milos from his post, and began to hand out pieces of the statue, trying hard not to look as foolish as I felt. Betty took the left arm, and I the right. Grace picked up the left leg. Milos refused to have anything to do with such ‘superstitious nonsense’ and said he would trust in his machine pistol, not some mouldering piece of ceramic, so Doctor Hagge took possession of the right leg. We decided to leave the torso, taken from La Scala in Milan a lifetime ago, in the trunk, reasoning that the creature needed the whole statue, so even if it broke into our cabin, a single piece would do it no good without the rest.

  The next question, of course, was how to find it. Grace suggested that we should wait for it where we were, but in the cramped conditions of the carriage the creature would have all the advantages, and we would have no room to swing.

  So, the five of us ventured out into the corridor of the Orient Express in the early hours of the morning. The conductor at the end of the passageway snoozed gently on his small folding seat, saving us some uncomfortable explanations as to what on earth we were doing.

  I took the lead and we slowly began to work our way up the train. The carriages rocked and swayed as the Orient Express sped towards Constantinople, and the air was frigid. We entered the salon car, deserted at such an early hour, the lights dimmed but not switched off completely.

  ‘If anyone feels any strange impulses, anything at all, please say so immediately,’ I said, thinking of Violet’s peculiar behaviour right before she died. ‘The creature might be able to influence us somehow.’ The others nodded, looking around nervously. ‘Remember, this thing will attack without warning. Be on your guard.’

  We spread out into the carriage, all of us nervously eyeing the windows. I looked over our small band, and images of the massacre in the cave welled up into my mind. I began to realise the depth of our peril, and the sheer folly of our plan.

  ‘If this thing attacks,’ Doctor Hagge whispered, ‘what are we to--’

  We never heard the rest of his question, for they were the last words he ever spoke. Before any of us realised what was happening, the doctor was on the floor, screaming and gurgling. The scent of blood filled the carriage and something warm and wet splashed onto my face.

  The thing had been on the ceiling the whole time, clinging to it like a spider, concealed in the shadows. Its claw-like hand, already encrusted with Violet’s blood, now dripped
bright red with Hagge’s. It had slashed his throat open. As the doctor began to claw desperately at the gaping wound, the thing dropped swiftly to the floor. It plunged its razor sharp talons deep into the doctor’s skull, and twisted off his head. Flinging it aside, it laid a gnarled hand upon the leg which the doctor had dropped to the floor, and hissed at us in triumph.

  Then the carriage filled with a sound like a steam hammer, as Milos raised his machine pistol and fired into the thing. Fenalik’s body twisted and jerked with the impact of each bullet, and it staggered a little, but barely slowed. Its long arm flashed across the small space, knocking Milos’s gun from his hand, and sending him flying into the bar. Bottles and glasses shattered at the impact, and Milos groaned in pain.

  At this, I charged the thing, wielding the arm of the statue like a cricket bat. Fenalik turned and looked at me, and I shall take the moment our eyes locked to my grave. Deep in those sunken sockets I read the evil deeds of long ages past, the terrible torture and pain that the creature endured every second of its miserable existence, and the dreadful deep longing for the artefact it had lost over a century ago. Those awful eyes halted me for a second – and a second was all that the creature needed.

  With a flick of its talons, the statue arm was ripped from my grasp, and I fell to the floor beside the window, blood streaming from a gash on my face that I hadn’t even felt. The thing stared at me, the arm in its hand, and gasped out a strained word from its ruined larynx.

  ‘Miiiine!’ the thing cried.

  ‘You want it, Fenalik,’ a voice said, ‘then you can bloody have it!’

  The ravaged visage of the creature turned just in time to receive a swing from Grace that would have put Wilfred Rhodes to shame. The foot of the statue connected sharply with the rotted nose of the creature, and the effect was as if someone had pushed a live electrical cable into its face. Fenalik flew backwards with a startled cry, shattering the window below which I had fallen, and disappearing into the darkness. Noise and wind filled the salon car, and as I struggled to my feet Betty and Grace joined me at the window.

  The thing clung to the edge of the window with one of its claws, whilst the rest of its body bounced and bashed into the side of the train as we rattled through the winter night. Its mouth was open, but its screams of hatred were stolen by the wind.