by SA Sidor
“I might offer him help. I think I spied blood. That can be a sign of a dangerous condition.”
“But you are not a medical doctor,” Cassi replied.
“True,” I said, looking to Evangeline to offer me support in this, her line of inquiry.
“Dr Hardy saw what looked like strange meat. Perhaps your brother ate something he should not have?” Evangeline reached out to comfort Claude, but he wanted no human touch and drew himself into a tighter ball. He continued moaning. His hiccups had started again. “Water might do him some good,” she suggested. “Would you like a sip of water, Claude?”
He waved her away.
The Adderly parents had drifted to the far end of the trophy room. It might have been the smell or the embarrassment that propelled them there. Oscar was talking animatedly to McTroy, pointing to landmarks outside the windows in the silvered mountainous dark, and Vivienne engaged with Yong Wu. I guessed she was quizzing him about his knowledge of unusual creatures. Child, where did you learn such things? Wu seemed nervous. Vivienne determined.
I wanted to intervene, but the servants had arrived with buckets and mops.
“Strange meat?” Cassi asked. “We had roasted quail for dinner. I ate it too. So did my parents. I hardly think the birds were tainted, or we would all be feeling unwell.” She smiled as she guarded the towels. “Really, Rom and Evangeline, I appreciate your concern, but you are overreacting. The situation is shameful enough for us. Claude drinks too much. He knows it. Our family knows it. I am mortified that you, as our guests, had to witness this untidiness. Claude is an irrepressible boy at times. We hope he will outgrow it. He’ll be fit in the morning. You’ll see.”
“You dined on birds?” Evangeline asked.
“Quail, as I said. Father shot them. He never misses a chance to shoot things. You two should be on your guard while you’re here.” She laughed, making a light but mirthless sound.
Our awkward vying for a peek at Claude’s vomitus ended when the servants bundled up the soiled towels and dropped them with a wet thump into a bucket, removing them from the scene. Steaming hot soapy water sloshed over the boards. I felt better even though we lost our argument. Evangeline did not appear chafed. Claude requested the water he had earlier spurned.
“The howling has stopped,” I said.
“It went quiet after he got sick,” McTroy said.
“I still maintain that the wind plays a weird symphony on these peaks,” Oscar said, but he did not pretend to believe what he said was true. “We have a hunt tomorrow. It is best we get to our beds, especially my drunken son, whose head will feel like a cannonball that has landed on his shoulders in the morning. But he will live.”
“I may not live,” Claude said, hiding his face.
We laughed. Cassi ran over and kissed his white bandage.
“I’m afraid we have a bit of a full house with more new guests arriving,” Oscar continued. “Evangeline, you will have your own room, next to Vivienne’s bedroom. Dr Hardy and McTroy will share a room. And your Chinese boy can sleep in the servants’ quarters.”
“Wu stays with me and Hardy,” McTroy said. “Send someone into Raton for our horses.”
“There are no spare beds. But he may make a pallet on the floor. I’ll have my man bring an extra blanket to your room. The stable boy will collect your horses before dawn. I always find the hunt begins long before the hunt begins. Do you agree, McTroy?”
“I don’t think about it.”
That is how the first night ended. The Nightfall Lodge killings started the next day.
9
Orcus
Wu and I took the beds. McTroy slept on the floor. Despite the hours of train and coach travel, and my exhaustion, I rested fitfully, tossing on my mattress – which was too soft, giving me the sensation of sinking into mashed potatoes – and fighting with my pillow, which was too firm and put a crick in my neck. I kept thinking I heard that howl again, but, when I sat up, it was always nothing. (Wind twisting round in the crannies of the pinewood paneling or strumming the cracks of the manmade cave which surrounded us. My own blood shushing in my ears. Or a dry, coarse rasping from where McTroy lay heaped against the wall like a half-shrouded corpse awaiting the coffin-maker.) Wu was a quiet sleeper. But that disconcerted me as well. I crept forth from my blankets and held the back of my hand above his lips to check if he was breathing.
He was.
So I climbed back into bed.
The logs in the fireplace crackled as they burned to embers. It was black as a tar pit in the room after that. Still I could not sleep. My mind teetered on the edge of dreams like a climber dangling from a precipice. The chasm of sleep yawned beneath me. But my mind refused to fall.
I heard the clop of hooves on the cobblestones. There were no windows to detect any natural light inside our section of the tunneled-out mountain lodge. I struck a match, lit a lamp – turning the wick down low – and checked my pocket watch, seeing it was just after three o’clock in the morning. Yes, still dark out. How did the sounds penetrate several dozen feet of solid rock? Did they snake a path to our quarters through the eccentric architecture of Nightfall? I had no answers.
Maybe I had fallen asleep and was dreaming this assortment of nocturnal disturbances.
But no, I hadn’t.
Perhaps a few errant drafts of air were turning the whole house into a kind of elaborate instrument – wheezing in the corners, gasping little breathy puffs, and murmuring softly like patients wandering the halls of an asylum. Sometimes they cried, “Oooooo.” Other times it was a dull, repetitive “Uhuhuhuh.” Then they fell silent. My raft would drift down the river Lethe to the caves of Hypnos until they started up again, and I’d awaken bewildered, disheveled, and questioning things anew.
It was probably just gusts blowing down the fireplace flue, I said to myself. Or rats. Yes, mansions often had rats. Now there was a nasty thought: a hungry rat in my bed, searching under my blankets for a tasty morsel to chew on. I crossed my legs and had another nasty thought: might someone (Oscar?) be lurking inside a hidden passage in the wall peeping at the sleeping guests?
I was not sleeping. Not here. Not tonight.
I threw off my blankets. I was always imagining too much, thinking too much.
Why wouldn’t my brain slow down when I begged it to? I was so very tired.
In response, my brain asked: Isn’t Oscar the owner of the Starry Eyes saloon? And didn’t we escape the fire through a secret passage? And isn’t Oscar’s dead zoo solely for the watcher’s pleasure? How different is it then for him to look at you, friend Hardy, instead of a stuffed hippo?
I cupped my ears and listened. Faint sounds, far-off rooms – it was like reaching for objects just beyond my fingertips. Like a blind bat, I probed the semidarkness with my ears.
Then I clearly heard something that I recognized.
There is no mistaking the sound of a horse walking.
A single horse – obviously ridden by the stable boy who was leaving to collect Moonlight, Neptune, and Magpie: the horses belonging to McTroy, Evangeline, and Wu. I presumed McTroy had the forethought to bring a horse for me, although I hadn’t asked him about it. Unfortunately, my last ride met an untimely fate in the Gila Desert. What if McTroy hadn’t brought an extra for me this time? Would I have to saddle up two-to-a-pony with Wu? I suddenly felt the desire to ask McTroy immediately about my horse. Sitting up in bed, I leaned over to see if McTroy was asleep.
He was.
I sighed. I would not bother him. My question could wait until the morning.
Being the only one awake was a lonely prospect. Like being a ghost, I supposed.
How long I sat there in the dark I cannot say.
Then sound of the hooves on the cobbles came again. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clippety-clop.
Surely I had not fallen into a slumber sitting up? It was too soon for the stable boy to be returning from Raton, and certainly he would not have
returned alone. McTroy’s horses would be following, tethered in a line. I should be hearing a parade of iron shoes clicking on cobblestones.
I harkened more closely to the beats.
They matched the way a man would walk. Two-legged, rather than the looser, compounded sound of a horsey four-legged stride.
Two legs, yes, but hooves? No man has hooves.
The devil does.
Don’t be silly, I told myself. Yet I knew the stories of witches summoning devils late at night. Wasn’t Vivienne a witch?
I had to stop and think here.
Boots may sound like hooves. Might the sound be coming from inside the lodge?
That made sense. Boots, not hooves. Inside, not outside.
But I had heard hooves clicking on cobbles earlier. I was sure of that. And the cobblestones were decidedly outside. I was confusing myself. I shut my eyes to listen better. Does that even work? It felt like it helped… just not enough to satisfy my gnawing curiosity.
I tiptoed toward the door. I did not want to wake my roommates so I did not bother to dress. I wore my long woolen underwear and that seemed sufficient. My bare feet caught the stony chill seeping up through the floor. What kind of a madman builds a castle in a mountain?
I turned the doorknob and went out for a look.
Voices. I heard voices whispering. Who is it? What are they saying? What reason did any sane person have for being up and walking around at this hour?
Extinguishing my lamp, I felt my way along the wall and headed for the entrance hall.
I spied a glow in that direction. Faint, yellow, flickering – a candle.
Ahead of me – I heard the Oooooo and the uhuhuhuh.
Also I perceived not the clip-clop of hooves but a scratching. Yes, a definite scratching. More like claws than hooves. How many animals were traipsing in the hallways tonight?
The scratching moved on ahead of me.
I chased after it.
At the archway where the guestroom corridor intersected the entrance hall, I paused and peered ever-so-slowly around the closest wood beam. Its roughness dug into my cheek.
The entrance hall was empty.
But the candle-glow flared stronger. It was coming from Oscar’s gallery of dioramas.
Warily I sneaked past the Indian woven baskets and under the painting of the Apache hunting party on the buffalo skin. Oh, the great buffaloes – we had murdered them into near oblivion. They were little more now than that pile of skulls in Oscar’s ossuary. Our whole country would eventually turn into a pyramid of bones if we weren’t careful. Look at the Egyptians… and the Sumerians and Akkadians before them… all the ancient tribes who inhabited this continent we call ours. Where had they gone? The way of the buffalo… I feared it was the way of humanity.
But enough with history!
Up! Up, Hardy! You are creeping in the dark. Stay in the present.
The candle stood on the floor in one of the dioramas – the pair of lions – and shadows lurched violently upon the opposite wall.
Two figures lay in the African grasses. I watched their shadows and listened to their now unmistakable cries. Cries of passion. Muffled but unable to be silenced. The shadows intertwined. A head thrown back, a torso twisted. A silhouetted leg kicking out in a spasm of pleasure. The figures melded and pulled apart. Pressed together again. I heard a low but clearly feminine chuckle, and a throaty growl. Then playfully loud kisses and more chuckling.
I slid my cold feet along the boards, inching closer.
Although I should have – I could not stop myself.
My brain ticked off the arithmetic of whom I might be spying on. I was an intruder on their privacy. But was this a private place? Not really, I told myself. And, more importantly, Evangeline was in Nightfall. I didn’t even know where her bedroom was. But might it be her? And entangled with whom? Claude? Oscar? I shuddered at the thought. Yet she had every right.
Shamefully, I thought: I am the lurker in hiding, the one who spies on others in the dark. But that did not stop me. I flattened my back against the wall and edged farther along. The couple lay to my left beside their guttering candle. Their bodies cast weird forms on the wall. But distortions made it impossible for me to identify them, unless I turned my head into the gallery space and looked upon them directly in the diorama where they sprawled naked; yes, I could see a jumble of their clothes so near I might squat and steal them. But in the gloom I could not discern whose clothing it was. A gown, a robe, a silk nightshirt? I was not sure.
I detected a scent of roses, of wild fruit, clover, and licorice-flavored tea. Was it the candle or a woman’s perfume? I did not get close enough to tell. The odor of a sulfur-based pesticide lingered near the lions. I assumed Oscar used a powder to keep his animal hides from being eaten by bugs. I would have to rely on my eyes and not my nose.
Turn around, the better half of me said. This is not your affair, Hardy. Go back to bed.
The lovers remained oblivious. They would never know if I looked in at them.
I molded myself to the wall and stuck my neck out… only to see the spiky branch of a fake thorn tree in front of my eyes. I crouched lower and tried again. This second attempt was blocked by a huge stuffed black dog Oscar had set on his African plain. I stretched out my arm to see if I might push the dog aside. As I was about to touch its fur…
The dog blinked.
Sad golden eyes, skin wrinkled in a frown, and a head the size of a fur-covered anvil – he looked rather disappointed in me. He opened his massive mouth. Out came a pink tongue. Hot damp breath flowed over my fingertips. His teeth felt very close.
“Oh…” I said, uttering an involuntary gasp.
I froze. My gaze switched from this gargantuan dog’s face to my poor pale fingers.
I wanted to pull my hand away immediately but feared any abrupt action might provoke the bestial hound who looked at me balefully and cocked his head first to one side, then the other, as if wondering where this idiot with the pale fingers had come from.
“Why do you tempt my terrible jaws?” he asked me.
As you would be, so was I – taken aback by the voice of a talking dog.
“I- I- I…” Shall I cry out for assistance? Is it best to try and run? Can I fight a hellhound?
“Did you not hear me?” the dog asked.
“I did,” I said. Was that proof of my delusion? A talking dog...?
“Can you answer?”
“I am sorry. I mean you no harm. It’s only that… I’m a bit amazed.”
“You were going to shove me. Were you not?”
“I thought you were stuffed.” Surely this was a trick of some sort. But I dared not touch him. Proof was not worth losing a hand.
“Stuffed with meats?” he asked, licking his teeth.
“No, no, no… I thought you were like these other animals. Hollow?” I hoped not to offend him with any assumptions I had made.
“Ah, a forgivable mistake. But answer this, Undressed Man Who Smells Afraid, why do you wander this lodge at night alone?”
“I thought I heard things.”
“I hear things too,” he said, giving his colossal head a tilt, but never taking his toffee eyes from mine. “You wished to look upon the two coupling in the grass you cannot eat?” His dog brows arched up to emphasize his question.
“I- I- I…”
“I am the guard of this place. I guard all friends here.”
“That is good to know. I am a friend too… friend… Do you understand me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” He stood up now on his stout, muscular legs. His huge head swung from side to side. His pointed ears flicked. “Do you hear something now, Undressed Man Who Smells Afraid?”
I turned and listened. Taking suggestions from a talking dog came more easily than I might have supposed.
“I hear what sounds like hooves on cobblestones, or maybe boots,” I said.
“Yes, it walks on two
legs. But it is not a man. I smell it. No man smells like this.”
“I cannot smell anything. But tell me, friend, how is it that you can talk?”
“I need to go look for the walker. It is outside. But it wants to come in. That is not allowed. It approaches the bones room. Will you come with me?”
“Certainly, I can accompany–”
The dog did not wait for me to finish my reply. He stepped up to the gallery barrier, leaped over, and trotted down the corridor, heading for the trophy room. His claws scratched on the wood floorboards. It was the same scratching I had heard before. I stooped and looked deeper into the diorama. The lovers’ candle remained, but their clothes, and the lovers, were gone.
I snatched the candle and caught up with the dog before I was left alone again.
The trophy room was freezing. The fire was out. I felt the frosty cold pushing at the windows. Where did the dog go? His black coat disappeared in the darkness. I was moving the candle about and illuminating the bones room, but I could not find him.
“Where are you?” I whispered. I was almost hoping to hear no reply. Then I could easily go back to bed and claim I had met up with a ghost dog, or a half-waking dream.
“Here,” the dog said. He sat and watched the last window on the left.
I joined him, but all I could see was mountain, black sky, and our reflections in the glass.
“It’s out there,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“It smells like dead things smell. But it moves fast when it wants to. I don’t like it.” He started up a low, menacing growl that made me shrivel.
“We are friends, you and I?” I asked.
He stopped growling. “I think so,” he said.
That answer would have to suffice for now.
“Are you some sort of… forgive me for asking this… hellhound?”
“No, I am not a hellhound.”
I nodded. “But you are most unusual. How would you characterize–”
“Be silent,” he said. “It comes now. Blow out your candle.”
I blew out my candle.
My eyes adjusted to the tenebrosity. The window gave off waves of coldness like an ice block. I saw nothing in it. But I heard the hooves clicking, no longer on the cobblestones but on rock. It moved closer, stepping along the edge of the cliff. The dog was growling again, a basso profundo rumble from deep inside its barrel chest.
