by Alex Grecian
“Here you are,” she said. “A fresh glass of water.”
Virginia had just opened her mouth to speak when Peter rushed forward and grabbed the glass from her. “No,” he said. His voice was loud and shrill. “I mean, she asked for milk, not water, didn’t she?”
“Of course she did,” Jessica said. “My mistake.”
She took the water glass from him and stepped aside while the housekeeper handed the little girl her milk. Jessica turned and started to walk toward Hammersmith, who held his hand out for a glass. She put her left foot in front of her right and let it drag, tripping herself. She went down in a heap. Miraculously, one of the glasses landed on its bottom on the floor. Water splashed up and out, but the glass remained half-full. The other glass spun away and rested on its side against the baseboard across the room, a trail of water curled behind it in decreasing arcs. Jessica had planned her fall and tried to land gently, but there was a loud popping sound from somewhere in the vicinity of her hip and a flash of yellow behind her eyes. She found herself rolling about on the floor, sopping up the spilled water with her favorite dress. There was no graceful way to recover, and she was mortified when she discovered that she was being lifted up, firm hands beneath her arms, and she turned to see Hammersmith.
“Are you quite all right?” he said.
Jessica shook her head, unable to talk just yet. She had done the right thing, she was sure of it, but she had done it in the wrong manner and injured herself. She tested her weight on her right leg and it held her. It seemed she hadn’t done any permanent damage.
She snuck another peek at Hammersmith and saw that he was concerned. He was standing just on the other side of her, uncomfortable and useless. It embarrassed her to see how pale, sweating, and disheveled he was, and yet he was the one worried about her.
She took a deep shuddering breath and was surprised to find that the entire world seemed to shudder with her. She glanced at the upright water glass at her feet and saw that the liquid inside was vibrating. There was a screeching, rending noise that came from everywhere at once and echoed in her ears. The housekeeper grabbed little Virginia around the waist and pulled her to the side of the room, pinning her against the wall. The two older Price children moved to the wall nearest them and braced themselves. Jessica reached out toward Hammersmith, who seemed confused. They stood in the middle of the room as the house bucked and shook and seemed ready to come to pieces around them.
31
Inspector Day stopped at the telegraph office. He inquired within and found that there was a message waiting for him. The message was surprisingly long, and it took him some time to read it all. He read it again, folded the paper and slipped it into his breast pocket, then continued on his way.
He suddenly had a lot to think about and so he took his time. The sky was still a uniform grey, no sun, and snow was falling faster, decreasing visibility to just a few feet ahead of him. But the cold breeze had died down and he left his overcoat open, enjoying the fresh air. The path wound along slightly uphill around slag heaps and old covered coal pits. His feet slipped from under him and he caught himself before falling. He slid forward, one foot, then another, making slow but steady progress. The town revealed itself to him a bit at a time through the snow. It looked much different in the grey daylight than it had in the predawn night, remote and ominous and unnaturally empty.
He came around the familiar bend in the path and was struck anew by the beauty of the church. It was an immense building, constructed entirely of river rock and giant rough-hewn timber. There was no pretension on display; everything about it seemed functional, but a great deal of thought had gone into its structure and its preservation. Small iron-rimmed stained-glass windows ringed the high walls, and the shingled roof gave way to a clerestory that, in turn, gave way to a tall bell tower with a spire atop. The rock walls were stained with ash, and the building had obviously settled and sunk over time, its foundation cracked and repaired, but it had been kept up marvelously, the windows sparkling, the metalwork gleaming. The snow and fog wrapped it like a blanket, and the isolation he had felt walking through the rest of the village was different here, cozy and welcoming.
There was a wide porch that swept across the entire width of the front wall, simple stone steps and a rock-capped rail. On the topmost stair, the giant bird-watcher Calvin Campbell sat waiting. He rose and took a step down toward Day.
“How odd,” Day said. “I was only just reading about you.”
“Were you?” Campbell said.
“There’s much you haven’t seen fit to share with us.”
“I’m not the sort to share.”
“I think you ought to try anyway.”
“I will, if you insist, but first there’s something I’d like to show you, if you’ve a moment,” Campbell said.
“What’s that?” Day said.
“Follow me.”
Campbell walked toward the woods beyond the church and turned. He waited to see if the inspector would follow. Day hesitated. To follow this strange man into the frozen woods seemed like suicide, particularly given what he now knew about the supposed ornithologist. But detective work was about finding things, learning things, and Day had the bug. If there was something out there, he wanted to know it, needed to know it. Curiosity had killed the cat, but the cat had clearly been a detective. In the end, he’d really had no choice.
But Day wasn’t stupid. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his Colt Navy. He showed it to Campbell and raised his eyebrows. Campbell nodded, message received. Day would go along, but Campbell had better watch his step. Without a word spoken, Campbell turned and walked past the tree line. Day followed along, the gun down at his side, held loose but ready.
“Ow bist!”
Day turned, his gun coming up without any conscious direction from him. A young man was racing toward them. The first thin trees, outliers of the woods, were between them, and visibility was low, but Day lowered his gun. As he drew near, the young man’s features came into focus and Day recognized Dr Denby. The doctor appeared to be out of breath and stopped a few feet away from Day. He put his hands on his knees and breathed hard. Day glanced back and saw that Campbell had stopped and was patiently waiting farther back in the trees.
Denby held up a finger, then he coughed. He turned his head to the side and coughed again, a deep barking sound that came from somewhere deep inside and didn’t make it all the way out. His whole body spasmed, and Day thought he could see a fine red mist spray from the doctor’s lips. There was a long moment of silence, and Denby took a rattling breath and stood up straight. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and came toward Day with his hand out. Day moved the gun to his left hand and shook the offered hand.
“Sorry. Saw you from the window,” Denby said. “Terribly sorry about all that.”
“Are you quite all right?”
Denby grinned sheepishly and pushed his hair back from his eyes. “Hazard of being a doctor, I suppose. The humors are always out of balance. But never fear, I recover quickly.”
“I certainly hope so.”
The doctor looked over at Campbell, who was still waiting. “Mr Campbell. Good to see you, sir.”
Campbell nodded, but said nothing.
“I heard you’ve brought in another doctor,” Denby said. “Someone from London?”
“We did.”
“I hope I didn’t give the wrong impression last night. I’m completely at your disposal, you know, whatever you should find. Of course, I do hope the Prices are safe and well, but I’m available should the worst come to pass.”
“Thank you. We mean no offense. We’d arranged for Dr Kingsley to join us here before we ever arrived ourselves. It was no reflection on you or your abilities. Perhaps the two of you could work together. You know the people here, after all.”
“Oh, absolutely. Very wise of you, actually, bringing h
im along. My hands are rather full. We’ve lost another two people in the night to this illness.”
“Lost them?”
“They were older. It’s unfortunate, but their bodies couldn’t withstand treatment as well as some of my younger patients.”
“What treatment is that? I don’t . . .” Day was interrupted by a shuffling noise. He turned and nearly bumped into Calvin Campbell, who was standing directly behind him.
“Dr Denby,” Campbell said. “You might be useful.”
“Sorry?” The doctor appeared to be nervous, and Day understood why. Campbell was intimidating. Quiet and commanding and subtly dangerous. Like the military man Day now knew him to be.
“I was going to show the inspector something I found out here, and you might be able to say something about it if you come along.”
“Say something about what?”
“Come.”
Campbell turned and walked away into the dappled shadows, leaving no time for argument or refusal. Denby shrugged his shoulders at Day and meekly followed along. Day breathed deeply through his nose. He took his flask out, uncorked it, and took a sip. The heavy brown liquid warmed his chest. He looked around at the trees and then up at the featureless sky. He already missed his wife. And he was reasonably certain he was getting nowhere with the current case. He worried that he would never make it home to her.
He recorked the flask, stuck it in his pocket, and plunged into the woods close behind the doctor and the surly giant.
32
Hammersmith felt like a stranger in his own body. Like someone small and tired inside someone larger, looking out through the larger person’s eyes at a place he’d never been and didn’t understand. Across the room, a framed drawing, pen and ink, fell off the wall and the glass smashed. A cabinet walked itself sideways and toppled forward, narrowly missing Jessica Perkins. The chandelier above Hammersmith swayed back and forth, slowly, then faster until it began to twirl in ever-widening circles. The rug under his feet bunched and crept about the floor, only anchored by his own feet.
But he didn’t fall.
In fact, Hammersmith couldn’t feel that anything unusual was happening to the house. He could see the evidence of some seismic shift all around him, but he couldn’t feel it. He stood rock-steady, or so he thought, as everything around him went utterly mad.
The Price children all sank immediately backward against the walls and slid to the ground, covering their heads with their forearms. The housekeeper disappeared somewhere back in the shadows of the hallway behind her. Jessica pushed Hammersmith away from the center of the room, and he fell backward against the sofa. Jessica rolled across the ground and fetched up against the tips of his shoes as the chandelier came loose from the ceiling and crashed to the floor where Hammersmith had been standing only seconds before. Teardrop-shaped crystals smashed against the rug, came loose from their wire fasteners, and propelled themselves outward in every direction. One of them hit Hammersmith in the knee. He thought it was beautiful the way it caught the light and reflected it back in a spiral.
And then everything stopped moving.
The Price children stood back up, all at once, as if this were part of the normal course of daily events. The housekeeper reemerged from the back hall with a broom and began sweeping up glass. Jessica picked herself up and brushed off her skirt. She tested her leg, put weight on it and winced. She smiled at Hammersmith as if embarrassed, then quickly looked away.
“Are you quite all right?” Hammersmith said. He still felt like a prisoner in someone else’s body, and his voice came to his ears like a distant echo.
“Yes, thank you,” Jessica said. “This sort of thing does happen.”
“What sort of thing was it?”
“The house sank.”
“It sank?”
“Yes, I’d judge that was at least an inch or two.”
“It sank into the ground?”
“Into the tunnels beneath us.”
“You should really stop building houses atop tunnels.”
“Some houses weren’t built atop tunnels,” Jessica said. “I’d guess the tunnels were dug under this house after it was put up. The buildings here and the mines have grown together. They’re intertwined. There’s a relationship in a village that depends on the people, but goes beyond us.”
“Couldn’t the tunnels have been dug around the houses?”
“The tunnels follow the seam. Coal is king here.”
“Good lord.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, thank you. I think you saved my life just then.”
“They shouldn’t have a chandelier in here anyway.”
“You know, I didn’t feel the tremor at all.”
“Perhaps it’s because you’ve been shaking so badly,” Jessica said. “You were shaking just as much as the house was.”
All at once, Hammersmith was no longer a stranger looking out through his own eyes. His body came back to him and he could feel the bitter cold in his limbs and across his chest; he could feel himself shaking so hard that he was driving his own body deeper into the cushions of the sofa, every muscle tensing so that it hurt.
“What’s happening?” he said.
“You’re sick,” Jessica said.
“I can’t be as sick as all that.”
“But you are. You can’t help it.”
“I can’t?”
“No. You must have drunk the water here.”
“What does the water have to do with anything?”
“I think it’s in the water.”
“What’s in the water?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve got to get you to your doctor right away. He’s the one who guessed.”
The last thing Hammersmith felt before he blacked out was Jessica grabbing him under the arms and hoisting him up. He tried to move his legs, tried to help her, but then he was gone.
33
The woods on this side of the village were more lush. The trees were farther away from the furnaces and, therefore, not as blackened. Fewer dead trunks, more new growth. Thick ash hadn’t fallen this far out, season after season, obscuring the ground cover, killing the green. The snowfall was irregular, soft drifting flakes giving way to occasional showers of ice and snow as the leaf canopy bent under the accumulation and let it all go in a sudden cascade of freezing white.
Day moved along quickly, already acclimated to walking in the forest. He followed their faint trail and caught up to the others within a few minutes. Calvin Campbell was moving easily through the trees and brush, obviously used to the terrain, and just as obviously moving slowly so that the others could keep up. Dr Denby was having the most trouble. He stopped every few yards to catch his breath, and Day worried about the possibility of another coughing spell.
“How far is it?” Day said. He had to shout because Campbell was several yards ahead, barely visible through the tangle of branches.
Campbell stopped and turned, waiting for Day and Denby to catch up. “Not far,” he said. “Not long ago, this would have seemed much closer to the back of the church. Where I’m taking you. The undergrowth would have been brittle and the leaves wouldn’t have grown in yet on all these trees.” He pointed up at the tops of the trees, but kept his eyes on Day. Deep shadows emphasized the cruel lines in the giant’s face. “Someone would have needed to come this far in to be sure nobody would see them from the church’s belfry.”
Day turned and looked back the way they’d come. It was hard to be sure, but he thought he might still be able to see the high grey stone walls of the church through the trees. But then he might have been looking at a small slice of the heavy sky.
“See who?” he said. “Who are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Campbell said. “Come, we’re almost there.”
Campbell turned and cras
hed away deeper into the woods. Day and Denby hurried after him. Day listened to the wilderness around him, on alert for some sort of attack. He still didn’t understand Campbell’s motives. But the only thing he could hear was Denby’s heavy breathing behind him. Campbell had left him behind in the woods the night before, and it was entirely possible that it was a habit with the bird-watcher. Then Day swept a springy branch out of the way and found Campbell just ahead of him, squatting down over something in a natural clearing in the forest.
He came up behind Campbell and could see the giant’s muscles ripple and tense, uncomfortable with his back to anyone, but he didn’t move away. Day took a step closer and saw something bulky, something pink and grey and soft, lying near the outer edge of the clearing.
Day reared back and bumped into Denby. The doctor craned his neck to see past Campbell, and Day saw the color drain from his face when he realized what he was looking at. The process of recognition took the doctor a few seconds longer than it had the inspector, but Denby was used to treating burns and scrapes and broken arms and fevers. Day was used to murder scenes and all that they entailed.
The mass of flesh that had been pushed up under some low-hanging branches was once a small pig. That much was clear from the shape of the remaining ragged ear that Day could see when he turned back for a second look. But the pig had been changed by the carpet of maggots that lay frozen in place across its skin and in its many gaping wounds. There was no blood. Not anymore. Animals had been at the body, tearing open the pig’s belly and carrying away most of the juicy internal organs. The brief early spring had helped the denizens of the woods break the pig’s corpse down into its various component parts, but the return to winter had interrupted that process. Still, its hindquarters had been burrowed into, and there were various exit points higher on the corpse where those burrowing creatures had come back up for sunlight and air.
