by KW Jeter
The appearance of the dog suggested a remedy to my situation. I had, back in the borough of Wetwick, noted the seeming twins of this creature, busily engaged in leading the denizens of that area on some common errand – just such high pitched yapping and darting about had guided the remarkable-looking figures. Perhaps Fexton's dog was eager to return me to some place in that district? Now and again, it nipped my clothing and tugged, as if attempting to pull me to my feet. If that were so, then from Wetwick I could find my own way home. My own little shop and bed upstairs were the only images of safety and rest that my fatigue-addled brain could conjure.
"Very well," I spoke aloud; the dog barked in reply. "See – I'm standing up." I tottered on the muck's slippery footing. "Lead on, then." The dog pranced away a few feet, then back to make sure that I was following. Thus, with weary and confused steps, I made my way up from the edge of the river, in the depths of which I had so shortly before been immersed.
The dog led me to a flight of stone steps set into the embankment wall. Grasping the iron mooring rings, I pulled myself along; at the top, I was gratified to find good solid cobblestones under my feet once again. On either side warehouses reached upward to form a narrow corridor; these were obviously abandoned, the gaps in their doorways' planks revealing empty, cobwebbed space beyond and roofs sagging open to all weather. I stumbled after my barking guide.
A murmur of voices, faint in the distance, quickened my steps. The dog pulled me around the corner of the last of the warehouses, and I saw, faintly outlined by the dim light spilling from its windows, the unmistakable form of a small church. Of classical, Wren-like proportions, with a thin spire cutting a wedge from the night's darker background; no more welcome refuge could have arisen out of the gloom. A troubling fragment of memory, as though the edifice embodied some painful recognition, passed through my thoughts, but I was too close to exhaustion to puzzle over the matter. With the dog dancing before and after my heels, I hastened towards it.
As I came closer, I saw a carriage positioned close to the church, a figure in priestly vestments beside the vehicle; I could not see his face, that being obscured by the shadow cast by the pillars of the church's portico. Here at last was succour and refuge from my assailants. Murmuring a prayer of thanks, as a combination of relief and fatigue drained the last of my strength, I stumbled the last few yards along an overgrown pathway, and collapsed into the priest's arms.
"Jesus H. Christ," I heard an oddly familiar voice say. "What the hell are you doing here?"
I opened my eyes and found myself looking up into the blue-glass spectacles of the confidence man and would-be burglar Scape.
My old nemesis… Laying down my pen upon the desk, and massaging my brow creased with the effort of composition, I see yet that sharp-pointed visage. As, once during my rural childhood, having witnessed a ferret taking a barn rat I had been transfixed by the creature's image of low cunning, ferocious greed, and self-congratulating conceit; so I remember the man, less as Man, and more as Nature – unreasoning vivacity, no more doubting himself than does the lightning stroke that splits the tree and sparks the field into flame.
And what if Scape's self-proclaimed knowledge of the Future is correct, and some day all men will be such as he is? (And do we not see that transformation already commenced?) Men with duty but to Self, and with erratic Ambition fuelled by the combustion of their own Intelligence – they will be fearsome creatures indeed.
That day is, I fervently hope, yet a ways distant. I sit in my small, safe harbour, and unfold again a snippet extracted from an Edinburgh journal and sent to my attention by a friendly correspondent. The piece contains information from far-off communities in the Scottish Highlands; a man with blue spectacles, disfigured by both limp and burn scars (fellow veteran! – we all bear our scars, inside or out), has passed amongst them, leaving a turbulent wake…
We were startled equally. Outside the little church to which Fexton's terrier had led me, my legs failed me, and I would have dropped into the puddle of riverwater that had collected around my feet, if Scape had not grasped me under the arm and held me upright. The tone of his words made the incongruity with his
clerical garb complete: "Shit – did Bendray send you here? He must have. That sonuvabitch; never tells me a goddamn thing…" The face surmounting the white collar flushed with a barely suppressed anger.
I did nothing to correct whatever supposition he cared to make concerning my presence. My travails had left me too short of breath, and scattered of thought, to summon words of explanation. Beyond this, I had no way of knowing whether Scape, already known to be guilty of the assault on my assistant Creff and the attempted burglary of my shop, might not also be in league with the murderous ruffians who had deposited me in the river. If some confusion amongst them gave me temporary safety (was this Bendray some chief over the conspirators?), I was willing to let the situation stand uncorrected. Soon enough, when my strength had returned and Scape's attention was diverted, I could make my escape unnoticed.
"Christ, look at ya." He drew back to examine me. "You're sopping wet; been swimming or something?"
"I– that is–"
"Forget it, man." Scape's hurried interruption rendered the fabrication of an excuse unnecessary. "Don't have time for it now. Things are gonna be cracking around here pretty soon." He tugged me towards the church door. "Come on, we can find you some dry stuff inside." The dog trotted along behind us, until Scape spotted it. "Shoo – get outta here." He stamped his foot; the dog, with great reluctance, slunk back outside. "Goddamn bell-dogs." I had no idea what he meant.
Another figure in priest's garments turned towards us as we approached down the nave. To my further astonishment, I recognised the person as Scape's companion, Miss McThane. She had pulled and pinned her hair back for the masquerade, but had neglected to scrub off her face paints, thus producing a rather brazen and disturbing appearance. Her eyes widened when she saw me. "Where'd he come from?"
"Can it, will ya?" Scape, still gripping my arm, propelled me faster. "Bendray's filled him in on the whole deal." His agile mind, ever impatient with mere fact, had embroidered the erroneous assumption into a complete picture. "He sent you here to help us out on this thing, right?" He glanced at me for confirmation.
"I–"
"Right." He thrust me forward. "Come on, we gotta get going; those funny-looking fuckers'll be here any minute now. There's some more of these highbutton nightgowns in the what-d'ya-call-it – yeah, the vestry – get him decked out, will ya? I'll get the rest of the stuff." He turned and strode quickly down the nave.
Smiling, Miss McThane folded her arm into mine. "Sure thing," she said. "Jeez, you're all wet. Don't worry; I'll take care of you."
I was still too weak to resist as she guided me towards a side door beyond the altar. Within moments I found myself in a dimly lit room, the air thick with that peculiar mustiness that comes with spaces too long shuttered. Miss McThane closed the door and leaned back against it, surveying my forlornly dripping figure before her.
"Here." She took a long priest's robe from a wall hook, raising a cloud of grey dust from the fabric, and draped it over the back of a sagging chair. Stepping close to me, she deftly undid the buttons of my waistcoat, then those of the sodden shirt underneath. My breath caught in my throat as she laid her pale hand upon the bare skin of my chest. "You're just about frozen," she whispered. I remembered the smile she gave me from the incident in my shop. "We better get you thawed out…"
I backed away, toppling a candle-stand and a stack of mouldy breviaries behind me. "That's… that's not necessary," I said feebly. "I assure you – I can manage quite nicely, thank you–"
My avenues of escape – were blocked by the debris cluttering the small room. Miss McThane, advancing dauntless, soon had me cornered between a small pump-organ and an upended pew bench. The eyes of my pursuer glittered with a disturbing avidity; the organ gave a despairing wheeze as I leaned back, my hand braced against its yellowed keyboa
rd. Her voice was a lewd pianissimo counterpoint: "Come on, you sonuvabitch…"
What! I had thought was a curtained wall behind me parted, allowing me to fall back on to the floor of a small alcove. Above me, when I looked up, was a face that trembled my heart even more than had that of Miss McThane: the smooth, porcelain and wax visage of a clockwork choirboy, one blue eye staring open at me, the other sealed by a rusty spring as though· winking at my undignified circumstances.
Miss McThane loomed over her prey, but I was scarcely aware of her. With rapidly mounting horror, I realised where I was and why the small church had seemed so oddly familiar to me. Though I had been here only once before, the terror engendered on that occasion had impressed the building's aspect permanently on my memory. I had been led from the river straight to the portals of Saint Mary Alderhythe, the site of the disastrous, even blasphemous resurrection of Dower's Patented Clerical Automata. That which I had taken to be a curtain was in fact the robe of the chorister whose mock-cherubic face now leered at me; rising up on my elbow and twisting about, I could see a whole row of the mechanical creatures, lined up in the alcove like soldiers on parade; beneath me was the brass track set into the church's floor to guide the singing mannikins on their appointed circuit through the church; A mocking fate had led me to the precincts where my meddling ignorance had unleashed those scenes of clattering, spring-driven chaos. Not just painful to my recollection, but the source of angry loathing from such as the crippled pastor (his injury the direct result of that dread evening) who had chased me from his desk only a day previously.
"Good God." I gazed up, stricken. "All I feared has come upon me."
"For Christ's sake," Miss McThane knelt down and grasped my shirt in her small fists. "It's not gonna be that bad. Sheesh–"
At that moment, the the vestry's door flew open; the church's light fell across us. "Not now;" said Scape, seeing us. "Goddamn it; you can do that later. We gotta get this friggin' church ready." He dumped on the floor an awkwardly shaped bag, which immediately split, spewing its contents. "Come on," he ordered as he strode back out the door.
Miss McThane stood up, tucking a few disordered strands of her auburn hair behind her ears. "Next time," she assured me, straightening out her vestments. She picked up the other garments and tossed them to me.
When she had gone to join her larcenous companion, I quickly completed the undressing she had commenced and scrambled into the musty-smelling robes – the damp and chill of my own clothes had seeped into my bones. Any escape from this ill-favoured place would be as easily accomplished rigged out as a peripatetic priest, as it would be for a dripping, sneezing near-corpse traversing the night streets.
For escape was now even more firmly centred in my mind. As I fastened a dust-grey reversed collar about my neck, I took stock of my predicament. That Scape was using the church of Saint Mary Alderhythe for some criminal purpose – if not technically sacrilegious, the building having been hastily de-consecrated after my own ignominious experiences there – of this I had no doubt. (I had already perceived, at this early stage of acquaintanceship, that none of Scape's activities were free of illicit intent.) They were "getting the church ready" – for whom? What ritual was planned? It did not seem to have anything to do with the Clerical Automata my father had built and installed here; I investigated further into the room's various niches, and found all the figures, some with cobwebs filling the angles of their mechanical limbs, undisturbed since the aftermath of my own botched attentions upon them.
I stumbled across the bag Scape had deposited in the middle of the floor. Bending down, I saw that the spilled contents were books, the bindings tattered with use: they were the church's breviaries and hymnals gathered up as though by a purloining bibliophile and cached here. I began to wonder if Scape's actions were perhaps governed more by insanity than dishonesty.
As I peered round the vestry door, hoping to see a clear path to the front of the church and the freedom of the darkness beyond, I was instead spotted by Scape, as he hurriedly lugged another bag down the nave. He signalled me over to him.
"You look sharp, man; really." He pulled the bag up against the hem of my vestment. "Start putting these out, okay?"
"Pardon?" I said. I wished him to go on believing that I had somehow been recruited into this conspiracy by another the better to lull any suspicions and thus make an unhindered exit when the opportunity came – but his rapid speech skittered past before I could comprehend it.
"The pews, man–" He shouted over his shoulder, already bolting towards the church door. "Stick 'em in the pews!"
I opened the bag and found more books inside. But not of a religious nature; instead, in such varying editions and states of wear as to indicate they had been salvaged from every penny bookstall in London, copies of Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler. For a moment, I did not doubt Scape's sanity as much as my own. The dream-like nature of my adventures again impressed itself upon me; events had gone from puzzling to ludicrous, as they are wont to do when our sleeping visions course to a confusing end, all resemblance to waking nature abandoned. Surely I was about to raise my head from my pillow, blinking at the morning light, eventually (and with relief) to find no evidence of strange visitors and disastrous excursions? My thin breakfast and placid life restored to me? The notion gave comfort.
I glanced up from the dog-eared volume in my hand. From the corner of my eye I had seen where Miss McThane was arranging something upon the altar. The mock priest smiled and raised a hand signal consisting of her thumb and forefinger brought together in an O, the meaning of which eluded me. I turned away and, as instructed by Scape, began distributing the Anglers, dragging the bag between the pews and placing a copy of the Walton tome in each wooden rack or, when such were missing, on the seat itself.
This task had scarcely been completed when I heard the approaching clatter of another carriage outside the church. With the empty bag wadded in one hand, I made my way back through the pews to the nave, where I encountered a gesticulating Scape in company with another man. The latter was a gentleman considerably greyed and thinned by age, his wraith-like figure distinguished by the elegant, if somewhat antique, cut of his suit, and by the haughty bearing exhibited in his step and the angle of his head. He gave me a cursory glance as he passed by, like a lord of the manor reviewing his household staff, while absently listening to Scape's voluble description of the preparations that had been made.
"There, that's done," spoke Miss McThane at my elbow. "Hope this old bastard likes it." I looked round to where she had been busily engaged while I was setting out the books, and saw that the altar, in the manner of those rural churches that display notable examples of the parishioner's crops at harvest time, was here festooned with fishing tackle. Rods and creels, lines and barbed hooks, all formed a decorative arrangement in place of the expected cross and chalice. Dream upon dream; I felt quite giddy to see that more of the impedimenta of angling had also been strewn about the church, beneath every window and entwined about the rail.
No sooner had I perceived this bizarre transformation of the little church, than a murmur of voices came from outside. "Come on!" shouted Scape, sprinting down the nave. He grabbed my arm and Miss McThane's, and hustled us towards the vestry. "They're here – Bendray thinks it'll make a better effect if they don't see us yet."
We were soon installed in the vestry's darkness, with Scape peering out through the crack of the door. Standing behind him, I could see over his head where the elderly gentleman – the mysterious Bendray, I presumed – was waiting at the church's entrance. Miss McThane, exhibiting every sign of boredom, had placed herself upon the bench of the pumporgan, and was examining the condition of her fingernails. "Here they come," whispered Scape at last. "Christ, they're an ugly-looking bunch – give me the flippin' creeps."
I saw them then, peering apprehensively around the open church doors. The elderly gentleman raised his arms wide in a gesture of benevolent welcome. Slowly with anxious glances around
the building's interior, the odd looking residents of that district to which I had been delivered at the start of this nightmare filed in, caps in hand. The people of Wetwick had arrived.
"Just look at those bug-eyed suckers." Scape shook his head as he peered through the narrow aperture. "Whoops – now they're getting excited, all right."
From my position, leaning over his bowed back, I could see Bendray turn grandly about, his arms spreading wider, his gesture obviously inviting the goggling crowd to inspect the church's premises. Indeed, some of the Wetwick residents had already filtered through the pews, and had excitedly picked up copies of The Compleat Angler from the hymnal racks. Their extraordinary eyes grew even larger as the books were excitedly handed around. Others, with strangely accented cries, had discovered the fishing tackle draped at various points; their jabbering grew louder as the barbed hooks were brandished before each face. Soon the church was filled with their voices as a group of them ran down the nave towards the tacklestrewn altar.
