The Black Country tms-2

by Alex Grecian

  “What do you know?” Campbell said.

  Day stopped walking and took a step backward. He felt the comforting weight of the Colt Navy at his side. He was confident that he’d be able to draw it before Campbell could reach him.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “You know me?”

  “I know the name you’ve given me.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “What should I know about you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing that has any bearing on the disappearance of Oliver Price.”

  “Do you know where he is? Where the family is?”

  “I do not, sir.”

  “Mr Campbell, I’m here to find a missing family. To rescue them if possible, to avenge them if they’re already dead. Your behavior makes me more suspicious with every moment that passes. If you’ve killed those people or hidden them away, I’ll find out. And I’m not alone. If you plan to kill me here and leave my body in these woods, you’ll have to kill Mr Hammersmith, too. He won’t be easy to kill. And neither will I.”

  “I have no wish to kill you.”

  “Good. I have no wish to be killed.”

  “Please believe me when I say that I mean no harm to anyone, that I only want to find Oliver alive and well.”

  Campbell bit his lower lip and looked off to the side. He raised his head and opened his mouth to speak, but his eyes rested on something over Day’s shoulder and a look of alarm suddenly appeared on his face.

  Day whirled around and scanned the woods. He saw nothing but dark trees and thickets. He turned back in time to see Campbell disappear. The big man faded back into the trees and was gone without a sound or any trace.

  “Campbell,” Day said. “Campbell!”

  There was no response. Day drew his Colt Navy. He stood in place and turned in a circle. There were trees behind him, in front of him, on every side, and they all looked the same. Grey and brown and black and, occasionally, a bit of the starry night sky high above. There was no indication of which direction to go. He realized that the comforting trail of footprints in the snow had been false. Here there was only damp underbrush; no snow had made it down through the canopy to the ground. It had all been caught by the branches above and melted away.

  What had frightened Campbell? Was there something in the forest or had it been an act meant only to distract Day long enough for the big man to leave him? Had he abandoned Day or was he setting the inspector up for an ambush? Could Day count on Grimes to find him? Or was Grimes cooperating with Campbell? Had Hammersmith been abandoned, too?

  There were too many questions. Anything was possible, and Day decided that conjecture was useless. The best he could do was be cautious and be brave. He thought of Claire and his unborn baby.

  He drew his compass from a pocket in his vest and opened it, waited until the needle pointed north. When he had got his bearings, he started walking.

  13

  As he lay half asleep in his bed, Peter Price caught sight of movement from the corner of his eye and turned his head. A spider lowered itself from the ceiling above his chest on a glistening thread. It was the size of Peter’s fist, and he could see each of the wiry hairs on each of its writhing legs. For a moment he lay unmoving, simply watching the thing draw closer, and it seemed to him that its gestures were deliberate, as if it were communicating something lovely and terrible to him.

  Then he sprang from the bed and lit a candle. In its unsteady glow, he searched the air above the bed. He pulled the covers from the mattress and threw them on the floor, picked them back up and shook them out. Nothing. There was no spider. Just to be sure, he patted himself down and ran his fingers through his hair.

  The sound at the door was soft, and had he been asleep, it would not have awakened him. He padded carefully across the room, carrying the candle and watching for spiders the whole way. He opened the door a crack. His sister Anna stood in the hall, small and shapeless in her nightgown. Her bare feet stuck out below the hem of the gown, and Peter noticed, for the first time, that her toes had the same squared-off appearance as his own. He wondered whether little Oliver’s toes had looked like that.

  “Did I wake you?” Anna said.

  “I wasn’t sleeping.”

  “May I come in?”

  Peter nodded and moved out of the way, and his sister stepped inside, closed the door behind her. She hurried across the room and sat on the edge of Peter’s bed, drawing his rumpled blanket over her lap. She stared at the window over the foot of the bed, but Peter was sure there was nothing to see. Candlelight reflected against the darkness there, swaying and jumping across the rippled glass.

  “Is Virginia asleep?” Peter said.

  Anna nodded. “Asleep and snoring,” she said.

  “Why does all of this bother us so much more than it does her?”

  “She seems to have put it entirely out of her mind.”

  Peter shook his head and leaned against the wall. He set his candle on the low table by the door. He glanced at the floor, looking for spiders, but saw only bare polished wood. He didn’t look up at his sister when he spoke.

  “How can we do that?”

  “Forget, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s very young. She’s only a child.”

  “Aren’t we children, as well?”

  “We’re practically adults.”

  “And yet we still shout at Rawhead in the pits.”

  “Everyone does.”

  “Everyone who’s a child.”

  “I didn’t say we were adults yet, only that we’re practically grown. We’re still allowed to do childish things.”

  “Except forget about Oliver.”

  “Or what was done.”

  “Have the policemen found anything? Have you heard?”

  “Where would I hear? I’ve been in all the same places as you today.”

  “Sometimes you find out about things.”

  Anna nodded solemnly. “I do pay more attention than you. But nothing’s been said. I imagine they’re out in the woods or perhaps down in the mines, looking for everybody.”

  “Maybe they’ll find Father.”

  “Maybe they’ll find Mother.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Mother’s long gone. At most they’ll find Hester, and nobody wants her back.”

  “I’m sure Father does.”

  “Do you think they left together?”

  “Left us?”

  Peter shrugged, unable to repeat the possibility that they’d been left behind.

  “No,” Anna said. “Hester might leave us. I hope she did. But Father would never.”

  Peter let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding.

  “If they’re in the woods. .” he said. “The policemen, I mean, they might find something.”

  “So what if they do? I don’t think they will. It was well-hidden.”

  “It was hardly hidden at all.”

  “Well, anyway, if they do find it, they still won’t know anything.”

  “They might deduce things.”

  “There’s no use crying about it.”

  “I never cried. I’m perfectly relaxed.”

  “I didn’t say you were crying. I said there’s no use in it.”

  “Well, I wasn’t crying anyway.”

  “If they find it in the woods. . If they find anything out there, it will lead them nowhere, and we oughtn’t get worked up about it. There’s nothing we can do, unless you want to go tramping back through the woods in the dark.”

  “No,” Peter said. He was the oldest and he wasn’t supposed to believe in Rawhead and Bloody Bones, but that didn’t mean he wanted to explore the forest at night.

  “Then I suppose we should sleep.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Virginia can. We should, too.”

  “Anna?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you think there’s something wrong with Virginia?”

  “You shouldn�
��t say that. She’s your sister.”

  “You’re my sister, too, and I don’t think anything’s too terribly wrong with you. Except when you get up to something stupid.”

  “Virginia will be fine once this is all over and the policemen have left and Father has come home and it all goes back to normal.”

  “Do you think it will? Go back to normal, I mean?”

  “It has to, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s just one little boy. Everything can’t change because of one little boy, can it?”

  “I suppose not. He was very little.”

  “Very little. Hardly a speck.”

  “Yes. What about what Hilde found?”

  “The eye?”

  “She showed it to me,” Peter said.

  “She fancies you.”

  “She does not.” But the idea that Hilde Rose fancied him was new to Peter, and he wondered if it was true.

  “She does. She never showed it to me.”

  “It was blue.” He hoped that Anna would allow him to change the subject away from Hilde and her romantic inclinations.

  “Oliver’s eyes weren’t blue, were they?”

  “I think they were green.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “And Hester?”

  “No, her eyes weren’t blue. I would have noticed. Father’s weren’t, either. But I think Mother’s eyes might have been blue.”

  Peter was quiet for a time, watching the candlelight reflected in the window. When he spoke, he wasn’t sure Anna would hear him across the room, but she looked up at him.

  “Do you remember her?” Peter said.

  “Mother? Yes, of course I do.”

  “Virginia’s forgotten her, I think.”

  “Well, she was a baby when Mother. . Well, anyway, she mustn’t be blamed for being young.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t blaming her.”

  “You shouldn’t let it bother you. We can remember her for them. For Virginia and Oliver, I mean.”

  “She wasn’t Oliver’s mother.”

  “Hester hardly counts as a mother. I say we should share our mother with him. The memory of her, I mean.”

  “Anna. .”

  Anna swallowed and her eyes went wide. Peter looked down at his bare feet, confused and embarrassed. She had spoken about Oliver as if none of the ugliness of the past several days had happened. Peter felt alone in that instant, but if Anna wanted to put it out of her head, he would let her. He looked up when Anna cleared her throat. Her face was red.

  “Of course I don’t know what I meant by that. Not at all.”

  “It’s all right. Really, it is.”

  “Anyway, I don’t think Mother did have blue eyes, now that I think about it.”

  Peter smiled. The feeling of isolation lifted a bit. “So whose eye did Hilde find?” he said.

  Anna shrugged. “Perhaps it belonged to someone else. Perhaps the eye doesn’t matter in the slightest.”

  “Wouldn’t that be odd,” Peter said. It wasn’t a question, and Anna didn’t answer.

  She stood and crossed the room to where Peter still leaned against the doorjamb. She brushed a lock of hair from her face and smiled at him.

  “Don’t worry, Peter dear. Soon this will end. The policemen will return to London and Father will come home. He’ll know what to do about Virginia.”

  Peter nodded and attempted a smile, but he knew Anna wasn’t fooled by it. He was the worrier and Anna was the logical one. Between them, they had to take care of their little family, what was left of it. Even if Father did return, that wouldn’t change.

  Anna opened the door and looked both ways down the hall before scooting out and closing the door behind her. Peter listened for her footsteps, but couldn’t hear whether she returned to her room or went the other way to the stairs. He knew that she sometimes slept on the rug by the fireplace when she had nightmares.

  Peter returned to his bed. He arranged the covers and crawled back beneath them. There was still no sign of a spider. He left the candle burning on the table beside him and watched the ceiling until he settled into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  14

  Day pushed through brambles and stepped carefully over fallen logs. He was conscious of the fact that he didn’t know the local animals, had no idea whether there were actually wolves in the woods. But he hadn’t encountered anything dangerous, except the cold and the wet. He marched ahead, cautious but confident. He felt he should be coming to the tree line any time now. Lone snowflakes drifted down past him from above. Twigs crunched underfoot, and he slipped on a pile of wet leaves, but caught himself before he fell. He had no idea how much time had passed. He felt certain that he hadn’t been wandering in the forest for long, but he had read about men who got lost in the woods and were never seen again, men who spent their remaining hours tramping about in circles, wandering ever farther into the wilderness.

  He hoped that the others were looking for him, that this was all a mistake. Hammersmith would come looking, he knew, but if Campbell had purposely left Day behind, then Hammersmith might be in danger too, and Day had no way of warning him.

  He turned and sat heavily on a fallen log. He took his compass out and checked it again, glad to see that he had been walking in a straight line. He put it back in his pocket.

  A furtive noise, a rustle of leaves and a crunch of snow, caused him to glance up, and he saw a flash of burnt orange as a fox raced past him and disappeared in the underbrush. Day smiled despite himself and looked at the break in the trees where the fox had come from.

  Standing in the trees there, nearly invisible back in the gloom, was a man.

  Day scrambled to his feet. The man tipped his hat and faded back into the shadows. Day rushed forward and plunged into the trees. He looked about frantically, but there was no sign of the other man. Had he hallucinated someone else out here in the forest?

  Day crouched and examined the ground where he thought the man must have been standing. There, at the edge of a clump of brown leaves, was the outer rim of a boot print. Someone was out there, someone was watching. Day stood up and looked all around without seeing any sign of another living soul. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.

  “Hullo!”

  He held his breath and listened, alert for the slightest sound, but heard only the echo of his own voice.

  “Hullo! I saw you! Help me!”

  Again he listened. He heard something, some slight noise behind him, and he turned and stared into the darkness. Two yellow pinpricks of light stared out at him from under a bush. He stepped toward them and they vanished. An instant later, he saw the blur of the fox’s tail disappearing deeper into the bushes.

  He made his way back into the clearing and sat again on the fallen log. He found his handkerchief in one of the inside pockets of his vest and wiped his face. He was certain the man had been no trick of the light or figment of his imagination. But the man’s appearance had been hideous, and Day was struck by the notion that he had not seen a man at all, but rather some spirit, an apparition conjured by the forest. How else to explain what he had seen?

  The man had been dressed all in grey, from his hat to the hem of his trousers. Even the man’s eyes seemed to be grey, though it was hard to be sure. The most disturbing detail of the man’s appearance was that, through the flesh of his jaw, Day had clearly seen a portion of the man’s skull, his exposed teeth bared in a wicked grin.

  He felt suddenly sure he had seen the local children’s nightmares come to life.

  Rawhead and Bloody Bones.

  15

  Hammersmith followed the broad back of Constable Grimes through the forest. He moved his lantern up and down, watching for branches and roots, ice and slippery leaves. Hammersmith wasn’t comfortable in the trees. He had been raised in coal mines and mountains, and more recently he had spent his time in London and its sprawling suburbs.

  But there was a child missing somewhere in the vicinity of Blackhampton, and so he put aside his discomfort
and watched for signs of the boy and his parents. It was difficult because the lantern light didn’t penetrate far into the gloom, but the two men walked slowly and carefully, alert for the slightest anomaly in the underbrush.

  They had traveled this way in silence for perhaps an hour when Hammersmith made up his mind to clear the air.

  “Constable,” he said.

  “Have you seen something?”

  “No, I haven’t. But I may owe you an apology of some sort.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “It was brought to my attention that I may be oversensitive on the subject of child labor and the mines.”

  “Oh. Parents putting their children to work, you mean?”

  “Actually, you said that. I implied that the village itself encouraged that sort of thing.”

  “The village itself?”

  “When I was a child-”

  “Ah, you worked the mines yourself? But it was a different time then, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.”

  “The entire world’s changed since you and I were children.”

  “Child labor still exists.”

  “That it does, Sergeant, but it’s no longer the prevailing way of things, is it?”

  “I wouldn’t think it is.”

  “Then we agree. Of course, putting children to work in the mines is no longer legal. Some parents do still bring their children with them, but those children have nothing to do with hard labor. They perform menial tasks, such as a woman might.”

  Hammersmith didn’t respond. It was clear that he and Grimes were very different people who happened to wear the same uniform. Still, Hammersmith’s attempt at an apology, no matter how clumsy and unsatisfying, appeared to have worked. Grimes seemed a bit more relaxed. The men from Scotland Yard might have another two days to spend in Blackhampton, and having Grimes on their side would go a long way toward a productive investigation.

  Hammersmith opened his lantern’s shutter wider. A more focused light was useful, but he felt hemmed in by the winter woods. He listened for signs of life, but heard nothing that didn’t sound like a small animal. He assumed a lost little boy would cry out for help at the sight of a lantern bobbing through the trees. He didn’t want to think about the alternative, that the boy was dead.