The Dulwich Horror & Others

by David Hambling

  “Midships!” shouted Hall, joining the rush back to the cabins.

  Hall half saw movement ahead of the mob as he came down the ladder again and glimpsed a retreating form. But with the swinging lamps behind him it was hard to tell what was movement and what was just shadow, and by the time the crew had stormed through there was nothing to see. A couple of doors swung loose as the ship rolled, but there was no sign of intrusion as the crowd of armed sailors milled about, searching for an outlet for their sudden violence.

  Butcher, pushing through the crowd, gripped Hall by his shoulder.

  “What are you doing, Hall? Answer me!” he demanded.

  “There were some men,” Hall stammered out. “Men, down here.” He retrieved the lamp from where it had fallen.

  “What men—who was it?”

  “Strangers,” said Hall weakly. “A pack of them—hideous—did you see them?” he asked O’Neill, who had led the charge behind him.

  “I didn’t see anything,” said O’Neill slowly.

  The others looked away or shook their heads as Hall went from one to the other. None of them had seen anything, or would admit to it; nor would they meet Hall’s eye. Those with knives had sheathed them; the others held on to their makeshift weapons awkwardly.

  “Hideous strangers,” said Butcher. “Men like fish, eh?”

  Hall started to say yes, but stopped when he saw the look on Butcher’s face.

  “All hands—back to your quarters!” Butcher shouted. “Boy’s made a mistake.”

  “Chief,” said Podmore, sticking his head through a cabin doorway. “The savage is in his cabin, but Crocker has gone.”

  “Form search parties,” said Butcher, His voice was steady, but his face was like thunder. “Podmore, take two men and go aft. Singleton, two men for’ard. Nilsen, take two men and search these cabins proper.”

  Hall was sent back to his watch while the rest of the crew combed the vessel from end to end, to look from the deepest hold to the deckhouse for any place where a madman might be hiding himself. Both had been locked in their cabins, and Yang swore that he had turned the key after delivering the evening meal. But the key was in the door, and anyone might have unlocked it; some even claimed that a skilled man could have turned the key from inside if he had a few tools. As usual, more or less wild speculations and theories were batted around as the men went about their task.

  Hall, still on watch, saw the little groups moving about their assigned missions. Crocker had gone missing on his watch, or at least the escape had been discovered then. So it was his fault.

  The search parties combed the ship for Crocker, stem to stern, and found no sign of him. They could not see how his door had been opened, but a piece had been torn away from the door to Matthew’s cabin that you could put a hand through. They could see Matthew inside, curled up beneath the porthole in an attitude of extreme terror, but he would not respond to their shouts.

  When they broke in they found why: he was stone dead.

  After a while the search parties all returned to the forecastle, and Hall had the deck to himself again.

  “Hall!” Butcher loomed beside him. “Now you tell me straight out exactly what you saw.”

  Swallowing, Hall went through the events again: his sensing someone moving nearby, the glimpse of a back disappearing down the hatchway, and those six upturned faces looking at him with their round eyes and open mouths. He tried to make them sound more like ordinary men seen in bad light than monstrosities, but Butcher pressed him for the details. Swallowing again, he described their wet grey-green skins and the faces that were more frog than human.

  He half expected a slap across the face for lying, but Butcher was thoughtful rather than angry.

  “Whatever you saw, it’s gone now,” said Butcher. “And you’re a plucky one for raising the alarm. Take this.”

  He passed Hall a flask, and Hall sipped the raw rum cautiously.

  “Drink like a man,” Butcher snapped, and Hall duly swigged and broke into a fit of coughing. Butcher took a pull from the flask himself. “If you talk about this in the forecastle, you’ll make a fool of yourself. If you stay silent, you can be as wise as Solomon. You understand me, Hall?”

  Hall nodded, his eyes streaming as the rough spirit lit up his whole throat and chest.

  “And look forward, not back,” said Butcher. “Men go mad thinking about what they might or might not have seen.” He paused a second to see that his words had sunk in, then turned on his heel to return to his post in the wheelhouse.

  It was a confusing exchange, and Hall chewed it over. He had expected punishment for the false alarm and the tale about the fish-men, which was now beginning to seem foolish even to him. At the time they had seemed so real, but now they were more like a dream than a memory. He had not dreamed it, he was sure: he had gone through the hatch and dropped the lamp there. But those creatures did not belong in the ordinary, waking world. What had Podmore said about mermaids being things which could be glimpsed in the distance but never met close-up?

  Most troubling was that final jumbled glimpse of the ruck of bodies.

  An hour later the sky lightened again and the sea fell, as though Amaryllis had sailed into harbour and left the gale behind. Singleton arrived to relieve him of his watch, but when Hall went back to the forecastle he found it in disarray. The straw mattresses and blankets on the lower bunks were soaked with seawater. Hall had an upper bunk, but tonight it was occupied by a snoring O’Neill with the cat curled up asleep on his chest, high and dry. Hall knew better than to disturb the Irishman. He lay in his clothes on the wet bed, and presently he slept.

  “Stone dead, but still warm,” were the first words he heard the next morning. Podmore was recounting his discovery. The smell of seawater had been pushed aside by tobacco as the men warmed themselves with a morning pipe. “No blood or nothing.”

  “What did he die of?” asked O’Neill.

  “God knows,” said Podmore.

  The day was a hard one. Butcher pushed the men to make good all the storm damage on top of their usual work. All were short of sleep and bad-tempered, and the false alarm had jangled them. They were restive and complained to one another in their working groups. Learning of the loss of the Ly-ee-Moon had unsettled them to start with. The sudden storm had rattled them more, throwing them about and damaging the ship. The death of the native Matthew was another blow, and the loss of Crocker. The predominant view was that he had broken out in the storm and killed Matthew in his madness, taking the gold jewellery—which had not been found—and leaping overboard to go back to Dorset.

  More than one suggested that Hall had been infected with the same madness as the other two and that he ought to be watched.

  They had been through the ordeal and it was over, but as a crew they were not proud. A good crew would not have let a little storm harm the ship, or allowed madmen to run loose. But there was plenty of the course still to run, and they could make the Amaryllis shipshape again and redeem themselves.

  The mood took a darker turn when Singleton brought something out on deck, keeping it at arm’s length as though he were holding a poisonous snake. The metallic plates flashed like golden fire in the sun.

  “It was hidden under Matthew’s bunk,” he said.

  Golden extensions trailed from the headpiece like the arms of a jellyfish, hundreds of tiny scales held together by the finest of gold chains. It was as big and heavy as O’Neill said, a king’s ransom in gold.

  “Throw the damned things overboard,” said O’Neill, backing away. “That’s what brought the curse on the Ly-ee-Moon, and on us.”

  But Nilsen and two of his firemen were on deck, getting some air between stints at the boilers, and they would have raised an outcry. Sailors are subject to a harsh rule of law, and Singleton handed the linked gold pieces to Butcher, who scowled at them and took them off to the old Man. The sailors muttered among themselves that the bad luck was still on board.

  III

 
; Hall was last in line at the midday meal. As the others filed out of the galley he tarried over breaking his biscuit into small pieces over the thick stew Charley had ladled into his tin dish. The black cat rubbed round his calves.

  “Eat it hot—it’s no better when it’s cold,” said Charley.

  “I’m not hungry,” said Hall.

  “Everyone is worried,” Charley said unexpectedly. “They don’t show it, but they are.”

  Hall looked up at him.

  “Of course they are,” Charley went on. “They ain’t stupid and they ain’t blind. But they don’t say anything. Not out loud. It’s just hard for you because you don’t know the rules yet, what you say and what you don’t say.”

  “Do you think…?” Hall started, but could not finish the question. Charley tossed some utensils into a bowl, stacked bowls, waited for him to go on.

  “Some things are bad luck, everyone knows that,” said Charley. “Ly-ee-Moon was an opium ship once, and Yang can tell you how those are cursed. Having a dead man on board is bad luck too, and that piece of gold—well, nobody is going to sleep in the forecastle until it’s gone. The old Man can’t do something just because sailors say it’s bad luck. He can’t go throwing valuable private property overboard for no reason, no, the company rules would not allow. But he can take measures, you savvy?”

  Hall did not savvy.

  “Do you think they’ll come again?” Hall asked. He regretted the question as soon as it was out, but it could not be helped.

  “You sit down there now,” said Charley, indicating a water butt. “Eat your food. And I’ll tell you about it.”

  Hall sat down obediently, the cat attentive at his feet.

  “What you mean to ask is, ‘What are we going to do?’” said Charley.

  Hall nodded, chewing the stringy meat.

  “The old Man now, he’s a very practical man,” said Charley, “And Butcher, you may think he just cares about rules and suchlike. But he’s been at sea a long time and he’s a very practical man. And your shipmates, well, they’re very practical men too. Even the firemen.

  “When there’s a risk to the ship—a storm that blows up from nowhere, or a reef that’s not on any charts, or maybe, maybe ‘slimy things that crawl with legs upon the slimy sea’—practical men don’t wave their hands about and say ‘What is this thing? I don’t believe it!’ Practical men find a practical answer to the problem. When you raised the alarm, you saw we were ready with our practical tools.

  “I’m just the cook, and the old Man only asks me about the provisioning and suchlike matters. But he’s got all sorts of practical knowledge. If you ever see inside his stateroom he has a whole wall of books, books this big”— Charley sketched a thick volume in the air—“all bound in leather, like a whole library. All practical books. And in his head there is more than all those books. Not just winds and tides and steam pressure, other things, deeper things beyond you and me.”

  Hall nodded again, still chewing and swallowing, the cat looking up at him.

  “The old man has all this practical knowledge,” Charley concluded. “He has to be the ruler in this kingdom, captain of this ship, he has to know everything. You can always trust him to know better than you or me.”

  “But are those fish-men real?”

  Charley laughed at Hall’s earnestness.

  “I tell you, I’m just the cook! I’ve caught and scaled and gutted and cooked every type of fish that swims the seas. Ask me about baked fish, fried fish, boiled fish, steamed fish, grilled fish—but not fish-men.”

  Seeing Hall’s disappointment, he went on.

  “All right, all right. I’ll tell you this one time, and after that—” Charley mimed sealing his lips. He leaned closer confidentially and lowered his voice as though not wanting to be overheard. “Mermen, fish-men, sirens, sea-devils, deep ones, water-apes—they call them all different names. All the same ugly thing. Sailors know this.

  “You know Noah’s Flood? They say fish-men are sinful men who did not go on the Ark. They made a deal with the Devil who gave them gills like fish, but they want to come back to the land.

  “Another man says they’re drowned men who Davy Jones lets live, if they worship him. They start like men but they slowly come like fish.

  “And another—a man of science, a German supercargo—said all things on land come from the sea. And he says whatever breeds with human is human. They want our women—and our seed—to keep their blood fresh so they don’t turn back into fish. He says one day when their god says the time is right, they will come back on to the land again and fight us for it. That’s what he said.” Charley spread his fingers out in front of him. “I don’t know. I set these things out for you like a bouffay, so you can pick and choose what you like. I don’t say it makes too much sense.”

  “So the fish-men are, sort of, degenerated human beings?” said Hall.

  “I just tell you what I’ve heard,” said Charley. “You saw what you saw. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I wonder—” Hall started, but Charley cut him off.

  “Don’t wonder,” said Charley. “It’ll make you crazy.”

  “How’s that?”

  “If a man thinks about falling off the rigging all the time, one day he falls. If he thinks, ‘I’m thousands of miles from home, how will I ever go back?’ he goes crazy. If he thinks about millions of fish-men down there, he goes crazy. Bad meat rots in your stomach and makes you sick. Bad thoughts rot in your head, and you get sick in the head. That’s why I said I’d only tell you once. Now forget it.”

  “How can I not think about something?” asked Hall. “If you try to not think about something, you think about it.”

  “You should think about practical things instead,” said Charley, taking the empty dish from him and putting it down for the cat to lick clean. “For example, there is a locker in Butcher’s cabin with six rifles and two revolvers, with ten wooden cases of bullets packed sea-tight. Very practical for a certain situation, I’m sure. For me, a cleaver is a practical thing to have. You think about your own practical way to deal with things.”

  “Another thing,” said Hall, rubbing the cat’s head as it butted his ankles. “Why is a black cat called Snowball?”

  Charley laughed out loud. “You don’t know? It’s ’cause it makes Nilsen wild!” He imitated the Scandinavian’s accent. “‘Vy is a black cat called Snowball? Ziss is not the logical name for a black cat…’”

  Hall laughed too, and the cat purred.

  An hour later Podmore was cutting away the last of the seaweed fouling the rails. Great thick braids of it, tangled as though woven together, trailed from the railings like ropes. Singleton was cleaning the deck beside him with a holystone in desultory fashion, scrubbing patiently but without energy. He was tired and distracted.

  “We should fling the blamed gold overboard and be done,” said Singleton, looking out over the rail where mattresses hung out to dry.

  “That’s the old Man’s decision to make,” said Podmore. “He knows the regulations better nor us, he knows the way.”

  “It’s King Neptune’s necklace you said,” said Singleton. “Let King Neptune have it, I say, and leave us alone. Render unto Caesar.”

  Podmore thought about this for a long minute.

  “I’m a Christian,” the old sail maker said at last. “I don’t hold with pagan gods, or making sacrifices to ’em. ‘In thee do I put my trust, o Lord,’ that’s what it says in the Bible.”

  As he said it he tested the blade of his knife with his thumb. Podmore was a steadfast man, but he was doubting now. Between his faith in God and the old Man, and his sure knowledge of things that lurked beneath the water.

  “You believe the same as the rest of us,” said Singleton at last. “I don’t want that thing on board another night longer, not after what happened to the Ly-ee-Moon. No more do you.”

  “What are you dawdling here for?” demanded Butcher, who had approached silently. “What a crew of
old women I have, talking fast and working slow.”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Podmore briskly. “Is Dublin hurt badly?”

  “That fool of an Irishman should be in music-hall with his acrobatics,” said Butcher. “He’s just sprained an ankle, that’s all. The idiot says he saw a face at the porthole while he was fastening it. Frightened of his own ugly reflection! I hope a shellback like you knows not to join in with rumours, Podmore. They’re silly with them already.”

  “No, sir,” said Podmore.

  There was a bump and rattle at his feet. It was a lead weight, shaped like a rough pyramid. Perhaps it had been caught up in the weed Podmore had just cut free, and moved with the roll of the deck. But to all three men it looked exactly as though it had just been thrown on board from the sea.

  Podmore looked away and said nothing. Butcher picked the weight up, scrutinising it sourly.

  “Reckon it’s a message,” said Singleton. “Miller said that New Englander captain used to drop messages down below with a sinker. We’re being hailed: it’s clear as day.”

  Butcher slipped the lead weight into his pocket without a word and went below to see the old Man.

  Podmore and Singleton watched him go.

  “There’s going to be another blow tonight,” said Podmore slowly. “A strong one. There will be more weed to clear tomorrow.”

  They looked at the rail, and an unspoken thought hung in the air. If half a dozen fish-men might climb aboard by stealth on ropes of weed, how many hundreds might come if they were determined to board in force? The kingdoms of the sea are vast, and no man can number the legions of the deep. Every sailor has seen shoals of fish vaster than herds of reindeer on the tundra or buffaloes on the prairie. Every sailor knows there are more things down there than fish, even if he has never seen them.

  Butcher was on his way to another duty: helping the old Man with the autopsy of the dead man. They followed the instructions laid down step-by-step in the Ship-Captain’s Medical Guide. Butcher read out the instructions and the captain reported his findings for Butcher to take down in his big, square handwriting. Word was passed down from Yang, who had read Butcher’s notebook, that Matthew was not strangled, and had no external injuries at all. It seemed that he had been weakened by the exertions of the previous few days, and his heart had given out in an extremity of fear and panic.