The Harvest Man

by Alex Grecian

  “Blackleg?”

  “Here.” A moment later, Hammersmith heard the scritch of a match against a striker and saw the orange flare of a lantern being lit. Blackleg closed the shutter and swung the light in Hammersmith’s direction.

  “Keep coming, bluebottle. It’s over here at the other end.”

  “We’re liable to run into something. Or fall. This floor’s probably rotten all the way through.”

  “It’ll hold you. It holds me just fine, and you figure to weigh about as much as one of my arms, boy. Look.” The lantern jiggled and swayed about, creating chiaroscuro patterns across the walls and in every corner of the room.

  “Are you jumping up and down?”

  “Aye,” Blackleg said. “Showin’ you the floor’s solid.”

  “Well, all right, then.”

  Hammersmith shuffled carefully across the room. He pretended he was wearing skates, but the floor wasn’t as smooth as an icy pond. Floorboards had warped and buckled. They stuck up at odd angles here and there, as if peeled away and discarded by some angry carpenter. If he tripped, Hammersmith was certain he’d get a face full of splinters.

  Eventually he made it to the far wall, where Blackleg waited with the lantern. The criminal nodded at him and produced a key from his waistcoat, which he held up in the flickering light. He bent and inserted the key into a hole in a door and turned a knob and the door swung open, disappearing as it moved away from them. Darkness exploded at them, an eruption of wings and high-pitched screeches. Hammersmith ducked and covered his head. In a moment it was over and Blackleg grabbed his arm, pulled him forward.

  “Bats,” Blackleg said. “They won’t hurt you. C’mon.”

  They moved together into more darkness.

  “There’s stairs here,” Blackleg said. “Might be slick with bat shit. Watch yer step and stay with me.”

  “Oh, I’m following you. No plans to run off on my own.”

  “See that you don’t. I wouldn’t wanna have to try to find you in here.”

  Hammersmith kept one hand on the wall and put his other hand on Blackleg’s shoulder and they started to move down.

  “Wait,” Hammersmith said. “Give me a moment, would you?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t . . . well, it’s tight spaces. They bother me.”

  “Well, they should, too.”

  “And I don’t like to go below ground level if I can help it.”

  “Who does?”

  “And I don’t care much for the dark.”

  “You’re not alone in that.”

  “It’s just . . . I need a moment.”

  “We can turn back,” Blackleg said. “Wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway.”

  “But what’s down there? What are you so intent on showing me?”

  “I seem intent to you?”

  “Perhaps a bit.”

  “I could tell you what’s down there. But it’s better to see it. Besides, if I tell you, you’ll wanna see it anyway, I think, so I say we either go on ahead down and I show you, or we go back and forget the whole thing.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Blackleg said. “You’re the only bluebottle I know of who might give a good goddamn and I wanna show you what we got down there. But you don’t owe me nothin’ and I don’t owe you nothin’ and you can come take a look if you want to, but I ain’t gonna force you. That’s that. It’s your mind to make up as you please, isn’t it?”

  Hammersmith took in a deep breath, filled his lungs with stale musty air, then blew it all out until he felt hollow inside. “All right,” he said. “But take it slow. It’s hard to breathe, isn’t it?”

  “Not particular hard, no. There’s air down in there same as there is up here.”

  Hammersmith gritted his teeth and took shallow breaths through his nose. He could see swirling dots of light from the corners of his eyes, but when he moved his head, they weren’t there. His skull felt like it needed to be oiled, like it had rusted in place at the top of his spine. He moved slowly down the stairs, grateful that Blackleg was maintaining an unhurried pace ahead of him. The criminal blocked most of the lantern’s light with his body, but Hammersmith could see the walls on either side of them as they slid into view below and then passed out of their bubble of light behind them. Blackleg’s silhouette moved with confidence, as if he had traveled this way many times before. Hammersmith heard nothing but the sounds of their feet on the stairs and it occurred to him that he really did trust the barrel-shaped criminal. While it was entirely possible he was leading Hammersmith into some kind of ambush, it seemed unlikely. The dread that Hammersmith felt came only from the darkness and the closeness of their surroundings.

  When they reached the last step, Blackleg asked Hammersmith to stand still while he hunted up another lantern. A moment later, there was the scrape of a shutter and a flare of light and the combined illumination of the two lamps shone all round the dry stone walls of a small chamber. The wall behind Blackleg was filled by a wide black mouth. It was the only possible exit, aside from the stairway they’d just come down, and Hammersmith felt the air pressing in on him from all sides. The lattice of scars on his chest ached. He looked up, but the solid stone ceiling did nothing to assuage his fears. If anything, it seemed much too heavy to remain where it was. He felt suddenly certain it was going to fall on him, crush him, fill his mouth with dirt and pulp his eyeballs, break his bones and bury him there forever.

  “You’re all right,” Blackleg said.

  “How do you know?”

  “If I’m all right, you’re all right. And I’m all right. Nothing’s happened to me here, and I’ve been down in this cave dozens of times.”

  Hammersmith swallowed hard. His face felt hot with shame.

  “I understand,” Blackleg said. “Lucky Eddy was in the mines afore he came over and made hisself a shofulman. You know shofulman?”

  “Counterfeit money,” Hammersmith said. His voice was shaky. “A counterfeiter, right?”

  “Aye. That. Wanted to put his operation down in here, but he couldn’t stomach it. He’d pass out and wake up screaming.”

  “Did it get better for him?”

  “If it did, he can’t tell us about it now. Got picked up by the rozzers and died in jail six months back. Don’t matter, nohow. You can put up with bein’ down here five more minutes, I think. Long enough to see what we got.” He jerked his head and swung the lamp in an arc, turned, and beckoned Hammersmith toward the great black hole in the opposite wall. “When it started, we didn’t know it was gonna be more than one, but we knew it were possible. So we brought her here. The first one. She was alive then, but not for long.”

  He stopped and Hammersmith almost bumped into him. They were just inside the hollow in the stone wall, twelve feet across and ten feet high and eight feet deep. A long bench, carved into the rock, filled the niche. Three women lay on the bench against the wall, their feet pointed out at Blackleg and Hammersmith. The women were wrapped in rough blankets, their hair plaited in braids, their eyes closed, and their hands crossed on their breasts. The fingernails on the nearest girl’s left hand were broken and jagged, black beneath the tips. Hammersmith could see dark splotches on the blankets, deeper black at their centers, fuzzing out near the edges. Inky liquid that had soaked into the fabric, spreading out and drying in irregular patterns.

  “Blood?”

  “Aye, it’s blood,” Blackleg said.

  “What happened to them?”

  “Kilt. Somebody came on ’em at night, up there on the street, and cut ’em up bad. Left ’em there.”

  “And you brought their bodies down here?”

  “I didn’t. Some of ’em that found the girls brought ’em down here. Like I say, the first girl was still alive when they found her. They didn’t know what else to do.”

&nb
sp; “Tell the police. Get a doctor.”

  “We got a doctor. Got our own man what won’t go spreadin’ rumors. Knows how to keep a thing or two to hisself. Nothin’ he could do by the time he got to her.” Blackleg pointed to the woman in the middle. She looked to Hammersmith to be about nineteen years old, but the skin was slack on her cheeks and neck and he could see old bruises on her arms.

  “But the—”

  “We don’t go to the rozzers,” Blackleg said. “They come to us and it’s never good when they does. Present company excepted, ’cept of course you ain’t one of ’em no more, which is the only reason I care to show you this.”

  “Surely you should have turned their bodies over to authorities after a time.”

  “How long a time? We’re still decidin’. Been a year since this happened the last time, ain’t it? And the rozzers didn’t catch the bloke then, did they?”

  “When did these new murders happen?”

  “Been happening for three weeks now. One a week. Every Sunday morning in the wee hours, like a sorta blasphemy. Lotta the girls are scared to go out anymore. It’s just like it was.”

  Hammersmith understood what he meant. It was like the summer of 1888 when Jack the Ripper stalked the alleyways of the East End.

  “Come closer,” Blackleg said. He stepped up to the bench and moved the blanket from the nearest woman’s torso. Hammersmith averted his eyes, ashamed for the poor dead woman, but Blackleg caught him by the elbow and pulled him over. “It’s all right. I’m keepin’ it decent. Just looka what he done.”

  Hammersmith sighed and glanced at the corpse. Blackleg had kept the blanket bunched over her breasts and thighs, but had exposed her abdomen. In the lantern light it resembled an eclipse of the sun, ragged yellow flesh ringing a black maw.

  “What, what am I seeing here?”

  “He took it all,” Blackleg said. “Took all her insides. Scooped ’em out whole. They’re gone.”

  “This wasn’t the first one, the one who lived?” Hammersmith was horrified by the thought that anyone might survive for even a moment with such terrible wounds.

  “No. That one he was gentler with, but he gets worse with every one he does.”

  “I don’t want to look at any more.”

  “This is the worst of ’em. I just wanted you to see.”

  Blackleg moved the blanket back over the hole in the woman.

  “What were their names?”

  “Their names?”

  “Yes,” Hammersmith said. “Who were they?”

  “Well, this ’un’s Betty. Little Betty, they called her. There’s another girl named Betty who’s a good bit heavier. That one’s alive and well, thank the Lord. The one in the middle here’s called Alice. Nobody knew her much. Only been around for a few weeks and kept to herself. And that one at the end’s a complete stranger to us, but we took ’er down here with the others anyway. Still might be somebody who steps up and says they knows ’er.”

  “You knew these other two, though?”

  “Aye. I knew ’em. Knew Little Betty quite well, at that. I wanna say, it’s good of you to ask their names. Decent of you. Like they was people.”

  “Of course they were people.”

  “Not how rozzers usually treated ’em, though, even when they was alive.”

  “Yes,” Hammersmith said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your business to be sorry. Let’s say no more about it.”

  “All right. But this woman whose name you don’t know. She’s a stranger, you say. But she wasn’t the first one killed?”

  “No. She was the middle one in order of the killing.”

  “Was there anything else unusual about her?”

  “Nothin’ I can see.”

  “Where were they found?”

  “Here and there. Round and about.”

  “Would you show me exactly where?”

  “If you think it’ll help.”

  “I have no idea. I’m no detective. It would be better if Inspector Day were here with us.”

  “But you’re all we got here. So you’ll have to step up and be the detective now, won’t you?”

  Hammersmith pursed his lips and glared at Blackleg. “Then show me the murder scenes. Where you found all three of them. I want to visit every spot.”

  “I’ll do it, but might be better to wait until there’s light out. Not gonna see much right now.”

  Blackleg smoothed the blankets over the three women and recrossed Little Betty’s arms over what was left of her chest. He looked down at her still form, then kissed his fingers and touched her forehead. It seemed to Hammersmith that the criminal’s eyes were moist when he looked back up, but Blackleg shook his head, warning the former sergeant to be quiet. He marched past Hammersmith with the lantern held high and led the way back up the steps to the city, where there was fresh air and a wide-open sky above.

  Hammersmith wondered how he kept finding himself underground. He hoped there would be no need to visit those three sad bodies again.

  16

  He was glad he’d thought to bring a lantern this time. The air was the deep green of underwater algae. It smelled of clean rot and fresh growth. Birds and squirrels and insects competed with one another in song. He looked down at his feet sometimes to make sure he was clear of roots that might trip him, but mostly he kept his eyes up and peered as far as the lantern light reached into the branches above him. The trees gently swayed and occasionally revealed the moon, a bright sliver in the darkness. He wondered whether the children were still there or had moved on. If they had left the wood, he might never find them. He hoped they had no better idea than he did about where they might hide in the city.

  An hour passed, two hours. He thought about stopping, thought about bringing Hammersmith to help in the search again. But finding the children was his responsibility, not Hammersmith’s, and he needed to succeed, to get his nerve back. He hefted the lantern higher and moved slowly on through the trees.

  It was after midnight when he reached a silent place in the forest. It took him a moment to realize that he couldn’t hear squirrels chittering at one another anymore, or birds calling. The only sound remaining was the violin chirp of crickets. The breeze had not changed, but he heard leaves rustling somewhere nearby. He couldn’t pinpoint where the sound was coming from, but he already knew where to look. He stopped moving and cast the lantern about in an arc, watching above him for movement. The rustling sound stopped and the wood became still.

  “Simon?”

  He listened for a reply or for the leaves to rustle again, for some indication that the boy had heard and reacted. But there was nothing.

  “Robert?”

  Again he listened. Again there was no sound.

  “I know you’re up there, boys. I’m not going to hurt you and I’m not going to chase you up a tree, but I’m not going to leave, either. I’m a policeman and I want to help you. I’m going to wait here until you acknowledge me.”

  He looked around him and found a large stone. The ground near it had been disturbed; something else as large as the stone had recently been moved, leaving behind a muddy expanse of forest floor where there was no grass or brush. He went and sat on the stone and waited, his cane propped up next to him.

  His mind wandered and he thought about Claire, thought about how he’d snapped at her. He had acted like a child. He winced at the memory. But he could still apologize to Claire and she would forgive him. Worse than his tantrum was the way he’d acted in front of Leland Carlyle. The man was an ass, but there was no reason to sink to his level. There was much he’d have to do to smooth things over when he got back home.

  He looked around at the trees and smiled. Here it was peaceful. A man could disappear and never be found again. Lost and gone forever. That certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing he could do. Simply vanish and never h
ave to deal with the emotional consequences of anything he’d said or done. He reached for his flask and remembered that he hadn’t refilled it before leaving the house.

  “Go away!”

  Day jumped. His head snapped up and around. The voice had come from somewhere overhead, shrill and frightened. The voice of a child. He’d been right. The boys were hiding up above, in the treetops.

  And they were alive. They were safe. He smiled at the trees.

  “I’m not going to go away,” he said. “And I’m not going to hurt you.” He waited again, but there was no response. “Boys? Simon, Robert, my name is Inspector Day. I’m a policeman. I’m here to help you.”

  More rustling from above. He stood and waved the lantern about over his head, trying to find them up there, but he only succeeded in casting crazy confusing shadows everywhere around him. He used his free hand to still the lantern and he closed his eyes, listening.

  “Don’t you want to come down from there and go home?”

  “No!”

  “Be quiet, Simon!”

  Both of them had spoken. The first voice was higher pitched than the other. The youngest boy had less control and the older boy didn’t want him to speak. Simon, therefore, was the one to talk to, the one who might answer back.

  “Why don’t you want to go home, Simon?”

  “The birdie man is there!” The little boy’s voice echoed down and around Day, lost and forlorn, coming from every direction at once.

  “The birdie man?”

  “He ate Mother and Father and he—”