The Black Country tms-2

by Alex Grecian

  “Peter!”

  No answer. Her leg didn’t hurt much. No broken bones. She’d live. She pushed aside the smallest branches near her, and a bird’s nest fell out of them and rolled to a stop at her feet. It was empty, useless. She kicked it aside, and it bounced off an oddly shaped bundle trapped in the branches three feet from her. She made her way to it and reached out, touched it. It was white and soft, like a pillow. Like a pincushion. Bennett Rose was on his side, resting on the floor of his inn, his apron pulled up over his head. Countless thin branches, none of them any bigger around than Jessica’s thumb, had skewered him through his chest and abdomen and throat. Blood, more than she had imagined could be in a person’s body, had trickled, was still trickling, down his body, pooling on the floor, shiny and black. She rolled him over, the branches resisting her, and pulled the apron from his face. One scraggy branch had been driven through his eye, and something clear oozed from the corner of it down the side of his nose. His other eye rolled and looked up at her and she screamed.

  Rose twitched his hand as if to reach out to her, then he went slack by degrees. His legs never moved, but his hands fell loose, then his arms, then his upper body seemed to relax and his head lolled on his neck and the scraggy branch plucked its way out of his eye socket and whipped a spray of blood at Jessica.

  She backed away and bulled her way through the top of the tree, headed toward the murkiest part of the room, the smokiest, where she thought she had last heard Peter. The tree had settled and shifted, rolled slightly to one side, and she no longer knew where she was in relation to anything else, but the smoke was her guide.

  The inn had never seemed so large to her before.

  She pushed on a branch and it sprang back at her and struck her across the eyes. She cried out and felt tears welling up, running down her cheeks. Where was Peter?

  “Miss Jessica?”

  She turned at the sound of his voice and looked up. Peter was balanced on the huge branch she had fallen from. He was practically hanging there, his good arm wrapped around an overhead tree limb, shirtless and grinning down at her with his hair wild and smoky, his face and his furrowed chest smudged, like some wild boy from the jungle. His shirt had been tied around his neck and made into a sling to support his damaged arm.

  “Peter? How did you. .?”

  “He sent me for you. Because I’m smaller. It’s easier if you go this way. The branches are more broken over here.”

  He grinned again and scampered along the giant limb. Jessica followed him and, gradually, the branches did thin out and she began to smell fresh air. She hadn’t realized how warm she was until she felt a lovely cold draft against her wet cheeks.

  And then she was outside.

  The far wall of the inn was completely gone, vanished under the crushing weight of the centuries-old tree, buried in a tunnel somewhere beneath her. Peter ran past her, his feet bare in the snow, and stopped at the side of a man who stood with his back to her, slightly stooped under a weight. The man turned and she was relieved to see that it was Dr Kingsley. He was cradling the small still body of Anna Price. He looked at Jessica and then down at Anna and he smiled.

  “She’ll be all right,” Dr Kingsley said. “We were lucky the tree knocked us out of there before it did its nasty work on your inn.”

  “How did. .?”

  “The branches really are somewhat sparse over there. I was able to get to young Peter, but he was very brave to find you.”

  “He made this out of my shirt,” Peter said. “My arm feels better.”

  “Is anyone else still in there?” Kingsley said.

  Jessica shook her head. She didn’t know whether Peter had seen Rose’s body and she didn’t want to say anything out loud. The children had already been through enough.

  Kingsley nodded. She watched his breath drift away on the breeze. “Well, then,” he said, “the boy has no shoes and the girl has had a shock. We ought to find shelter for them. And quickly.”

  There was another tearing sound from the inn and some part of the tree invisible to Jessica crashed down, sending a shower of sparks into the night air. A portion of the wall caved inward, and fire sprang up to take its place.

  “The fire will take this whole road,” Jessica said. “Everything on it.”

  “The detective will help,” Peter said. He beamed at her, his eyes glittering in the firelight, and Jessica did her best to smile back. Then she saw what he was pointing at. Two shadowy figures struggled toward them holding lanterns aloft.

  “Hallo!” Inspector Day said.

  Jessica gave a great sigh of relief. Her legs disappeared from under her and she toppled into the snow. Before she lost consciousness, she heard the inspector shouting out orders.

  “Henry, can you carry the schoolteacher? I’ll get the boy. Good gracious, he has no shoes.”

  60

  Hammersmith trudged forward through the snow, driven as much by the nothingness behind him and all around him as the desire to catch Oliver Price’s killer. He passed through his own exhalations, his warm vaporous breath freezing in his eyelashes, gluing them together and threatening to drag his eyes closed. His mouth was sealed shut by a crust of snot. He could not have opened it if he tried, but he didn’t try. He thought of nothing.

  The Black Country was different than Wales had been, and they did things differently here, but a coal mine was a coal mine and Hammersmith looked without thinking for the familiar signs. He did not think of his childhood, not of the ponies clopping through the long, dark tunnels, not of the rats crawling over his legs, not of the silence or the loneliness. He simply followed the depressions in the snow of Sutton Price’s boots and looked for the dark shape of a pit.

  And, eventually, there it was, a snow-covered mound, a scabbed-over black maw that had recently been scraped open. The snow around it was trampled and had been smoothed back over by a fresh accumulation. Hammersmith ducked and entered carefully. He listened, but heard nothing. He backed slowly down the wooden rungs and into the mouth of the seam. It was warmer here, and he sank down, rested with his back to the dirt wall, gave himself a few minutes.

  He was in no shape to deal with a murderer and he knew it.

  61

  The train depot had sunk five inches into the tunnels beneath Blackhampton. Each tremor had driven the small building another inch into the ground. Calvin Campbell and Hester Price were inside when the first tremor hit, moved out into the snow before the second tremor, but had stayed inside since then. The building was solid and unadorned, and there was nothing inside to fall on them, except the ceiling. There were no shelves or statues or lamps, just three squat benches bolted firmly to the planks of the floor. And so they sat inside and listened to the earth tremble and the wind howl. Hester nestled against Calvin and he put his arm around her, and they stayed like that through three successive tremors, riding the depot as it sank.

  “The train should have come,” Hester said.

  “It’s the storm,” Calvin said.

  “Will it still come tonight?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  He took his arm back and stood, stretched, and went to the tiny window, the glass shattered and crunching underfoot, snow piling up on the sill. There was nothing out there, no sign of an oncoming train. Only snow.

  And, somewhere on the periphery of Calvin’s vision, a glint of metal.

  –

  The old horse was dead. Frozen solid, standing upright in its tracks. The American steadied his Whitworth against its back and took aim at the tiny black square in the front wall of the depot. The horse was already cold, and the fingers of the American’s right hand were stiff and tingling. He rubbed them against the leg of his trousers, but the friction only made them sting. He lowered the rifle and turned toward the young horse. Its black eyes followed him as he reached out and put his hand against its warm belly. It snorted, but didn’t stamp its hooves, didn’t move. Maybe it couldn’t. He supposed the beast was warmer on the inside a
nd thought about cutting it open, but he needed that horse to get away from the village once Campbell was dead.

  His fingers were limbering up a bit. They still stung, but he could move his trigger finger easily and that was all he needed. He withdrew his hand from the young horse’s belly and set the Whitworth back across the dead old horse’s back, pointed it at the depot, hunched down, closed his eyes, and made himself still. He opened his eyes and stared down the sight at the depot’s window and saw the blank white face of Calvin Campbell staring back at him.

  The American pulled the trigger.

  –

  Another tremor hit the depot and the boxlike building bucked and swayed just as Hester Price rose from her bench in the middle of the room and approached Calvin Campbell. The big Scotsman was staring hard out the window and, when the building began to sink into the earth, he grabbed the windowsill. Hester heard the crinkling of broken glass and she drew in a last sharp breath, worried that Calvin had cut himself.

  There was a whistling sound and then a faint pop from somewhere far away, and Hester’s knees gave out and she fell.

  –

  Calvin heard the distinctive whistle of a hexagonal Whitworth bullet and ducked, though he knew it was too late. If you heard the whistle, you were already dead, you just didn’t know it yet. But the tremor was shaking the ground hard, and he hoped that might be enough to throw off the shooter’s aim.

  He let go of the windowsill and turned and saw Hester falling, the top of her head open like a bowl full of gore and Calvin fell, too, fell toward her, reaching out, trying to put himself in the path of the bullet that had already passed him.

  He went down on his hands and knees and scrabbled across the floor, grabbed Hester up in his arms, leaving some essentials of her behind, and crabwalked with her to the wall. He didn’t cry out, didn’t make a sound, but his mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, as wide as it would go. His throat was tight, unrelenting, and it kept his grief bottled in his chest. He cradled Hester, protected her, and waited for Grey Eyes to come and finish the job.

  Waited for his death and welcomed it.

  –

  The American immediately understood that he had missed. The bullet had passed right by Calvin Campbell and on into the building. He tried to adjust for the next shot, but the ground was shaking under him and he couldn’t hold the rifle still.

  The young horse whinnied behind him, and he turned just in time to watch it disappear, pulled all at once down into the ground. The old horse toppled toward him and he tried to move, leapt to the side, but he wasn’t fast enough. He hit a high drift, sending spumes of snow into the air, and the horse fell against him with a loud whuff, pinning his leg and hip.

  He couldn’t tell if anything was broken; there was no sensation at all, he was so cold. He pushed out against the old horse, but stopped and turned his head at a wrenching sound nearby. The back wheels of the carriage sank into the ground, and then its long wooden tongue lifted up and the entire thing tipped back and rolled away, out of sight somewhere below.

  The American panicked and hit the old horse, beat his fists against it, reached for the Whitworth and smashed its butt against the horse’s back, but the beast didn’t budge.

  He was surrounded by a roaring sound, as if he had stumbled into the fast-moving stream of a waterfall, plummeting blind through the churning foam, and then he was actually falling and the horse was falling with him and the world went dark around him and the sky receded.

  He hit the floor of the shaft below him, hit it hard, and the horse came a second after. It landed heavily on his right foot. The foot jounced violently to the side, twisted like something strange, some inanimate thing that wasn’t connected to him, and there was a crunching sound and a blinding flash of pain that ended deep in his right shoulder.

  He looked up and saw a mountain of ice and snow and dirt funneling down at him, on top of him. His open mouth filled with it, and his eyes shut automatically.

  62

  Day was worried about the boy’s bare feet. He had taken off his tattered gloves, shoved them on the ends of Peter’s feet, but he doubted they did any good. Still, it had made the boy giggle to see that he had monkey paws, and he had not complained about the cold.

  Dr Kingsley also seemed to be struggling, carrying the girl through the snow. She hadn’t awakened yet, and that worried Day, too. Henry was the only one of them who seemed to be doing all right. Jessica had woken up and asked to be put down, but Henry had refused. He trudged along with her, polite but stubborn, his large body hunched over the schoolteacher as much as possible to protect her from the blowing snow.

  The tremors hit them hard. Both Day and Kingsley fell down, dropping the children. Day heard a rifle’s report, but the crack of it echoed back and forth around them and he couldn’t locate it. He motioned to the others to stay down. Henry stood where he was, unaffected by the tremor, sheltering Jessica with his arms.

  The girl, Anna, woke up, sat in the snow, looked around at them all. She opened her mouth to speak, but Peter shushed her, watching Day’s face to see what he should do next. Day smiled at the boy and listened for another rifle shot.

  But there was no other sound and the tremor stopped. Day nodded at Peter and the boy crawled over and hugged his sister. He helped her to her feet. Jessica pressed a hand against Henry’s chest, and he finally let her down. Day gave his lantern to Jessica, held out his hand to Kingsley, and pulled the doctor up. They stood, looking into the distance, seeing nothing.

  “We need to get the children inside,” Kingsley said. “Someplace warm. Or, at least, out of this wind.”

  “I still think the depot’s in this direction,” Day said. “We must be close.”

  “I can see the fire there,” Kingsley said. He pointed to an orange glow on the horizon where the inn blazed away, still busy cremating the bodies of Oliver Price and Bennett Rose. “Which means you’re right, I think. If we just keep going. .”

  “But there’s someone shooting out here.”

  “Surely not at us.”

  “Whoever they’re shooting at, it can’t be good for us. We don’t want to stumble across something. Not with the children.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Anna said.

  “You let us be the judge of that,” Kingsley said.

  “No, thank you,” Anna said.

  “Anna!” Peter said.

  “We’ve done very well on our own, so far.”

  “That may be,” Day said. “But we’re all in this together now and we need to rely on each other. You know this place much better than the doctor and I do. We’d very much appreciate your help in finding the train depot or we’ll freeze to death.”

  Anna looked at Peter. He raised his eyebrows at her. Day worried that if the boy stood in the snow much longer, with nothing but gloves on his feet, he might lose his toes.

  Anna sighed. “Very well,” she said. “I think it’s this way.” And she marched off into the night, expecting the rest of them to follow. They did.

  Jessica caught up to Day and touched his arm. “You’re very good with children,” she said. Her voice was a whisper, barely audible.

  “Thank you,” Day said. “I’m expecting my first at any moment.”

  “I know. You’ll do well, I think.”

  He grinned at her. “I do hope so,” he said.

  Then he fell into a chasm and disappeared from sight.

  63

  Hammersmith staggered through the tunnel, stopping every few feet to rest and to make sure he was still following the tracks in the dirt. He didn’t have a lantern, and so he had to strike a match every time he checked the ground under him. He had four matches left and was just beginning to worry when he saw a dim yellow glow coming from somewhere ahead. He put the matches away and leaned against the wall for a minute, waited for his vision to clear. The blow to the head had affected him more than he’d imagined it would. He’d assumed he’d shake off the effects and be fine, and maybe under other c
ircumstances he would have, but since arriving in the village he had hardly eaten, he’d fallen ill, and had even been drugged. He was afraid the omen of the owl had been more than a silly superstition. That Blackhampton would kill him if he spent another day here.

  He took a deep breath, pushed off the wall, and moved toward the light.

  Four minutes later, he stepped into a large chamber dug out of the rock below the village. The space was lit by a lantern on the floor, and later he would have time to look around and would notice the bedroll, the shovel, the remains of the fire. And he would notice the two dirt-covered mounds against the far wall.

  But when he entered the chamber, the first thing he noticed was Sutton Price, swinging by his neck from a wooden support beam that ran across the length of the cavern’s ceiling. A crate had been upended two feet away from Sutton’s feet, and it was instantly clear that Price had thrown the rope over the beam, tied his knot and stood on the crate, then kicked off and swung free. Sutton’s feet were still moving, kicking sullenly at the air beneath him.

  Hammersmith hurtled across the chamber to the hanged man and grabbed his legs, hoisted him up, creating slack in the rope above. Sutton Price thrashed like a fish in the bottom of a boat, and his voice rasped down at the sergeant. “Keh. . Kawh. .” A broken bird.

  “No,” Hammersmith said. He gasped and held on tight to Price’s struggling legs. “Stop fighting me.”

  Price laughed. The sound forced up through the swollen furnace of his throat, burning the air. “Glad. . glad you’re here. Hear my confession. Last confession.”

  Hammersmith stretched out his right leg, angled his foot, trying to hook the box and drag it over, but it was still inches out of his reach. “I’m not a priest,” he said.

  “Not. . I’m not Catholic,” Price said. “You’ll do.”