The Society of Blood

by Mark Morris

  And saw her.

  She was standing in the snow, not close to the house as I’d expected, but further back, beside the hedge. She was wearing what she had worn every other time I’d seen her – a thin white nightshirt printed with a cherry design, the short sleeves edged in lace. Yet despite her lack of clothing she didn’t seem cold; she was smiling at me, her soft blonde hair blowing in the wind, her delicate hands interlaced over her bulging belly. This was Lyn, my ex-partner, as I’d known her over five years ago when she’d been pregnant with Kate. She’d been beautiful then, and sane. Now she was not. Lyn was still alive – or at least, she had been on the day I’d left the twenty-first century. But this version of Lyn was a ghost of happier times.

  It was only my reluctance to wake up the rest of the house that stopped me banging on the window, calling her name. I raised a hand – Wait there! – then ran out of the room and across the hallway to the front door.

  My hands were all thumbs as I fumbled at the locks. As soon as the door was open I catapulted outside, the cold hitting me like a slap. My instinct was to veer immediately left and keep running, through the snow and around to where I hoped Lyn would be waiting. However, I knew I had to be careful. This might be a trick, designed to draw me out, or destabilise me into leaving the house open to attack.

  Feverishly I tugged the door closed behind me, trying not to bang it, and twisted the key in the lock. Then, ignoring the instinct to sprint, I moved swiftly but cautiously around the side of the house, keeping close to the wall, my head darting back and forth as I peered in to the shadows that clustered around and beneath each clump of foliage, trying to cover every angle at once.

  Reaching the corner of the house, I sidled around the wall, clutching my howdah. Although I was pointing the pistol at the ground – she might have been an apparition, but I didn’t want Lyn to see me aiming a gun at her – I was more than prepared to jerk it into a shooting position if need be.

  As soon as I rounded the corner, I looked across to where Lyn had been standing, and a plume of breath jetted from my mouth as I groaned in despair. She had gone, slipped away, before I could fully connect with her. It was as if she wasn’t properly anchored to this world. As if she was an errant radio signal, elusive, easily lost.

  But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of movement, white against the grey-white of the snow. My head snapped round, and the lurch that my heart gave this time was one of joy, because there she was, drifting around the next corner like a winter spirit.

  I hurried after her, half expecting one of the men watching the house to emerge from hiding to check I was okay. I wondered, if they did, whether they’d be able to see what I was seeing, or whether Lyn was visible only to me, my own personal phantom.

  Again I wondered whether this was a trap. Since my first encounter with the shape-shifter I’d lived in a world of suspicion. I rounded the second corner, aware I was at the back of the house now, where it was darkest. The glow of the streetlamps, which filtered through the trees and bushes that bordered my property, was so dim it was almost negligible. For a moment I couldn’t see anything but blurred grey shapes on a dark background. I narrowed my eyes, hoping it would bring things into focus, and partially it did.

  Lyn was standing two-thirds along the length of the back wall, close to the house. Her head was a pale oval blur above the paler, more voluminous glimmer of her nightshirt. She was facing me, though her right arm seemed to be pointing at the house. Even though I was wary, even though I was clutching the howdah in an icy grip that made my hand ache, I felt a sudden, unexpected pang of longing. At that moment I wished more than anything that I could turn back time, return to that blissful period when Lyn had been sane and beautiful and radiant with life. Back then the two of us had been completely in love, completely happy, and our life together had seemed so simple, untroubled, full of promise.

  And then he had come. The Dark Man. Lyn’s personal demon. He had stepped into our perfect world and torn it apart.

  Less than six years ago that had been. And yet from this vantage point it seemed like forever. Lyn wasn’t dead, not physically, and yet the Lyn that I had known was dead. She’d been my one true chance of happiness, and she’d been taken from me. Everything else was damage limitation.

  At once I felt angry, resentful. I stepped forward, more than prepared to fight, if a fight was what was coming.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I said gruffly. ‘Why do you keep tormenting me?’

  She said nothing. I couldn’t see her face. After a moment she seemed to drift backwards, to melt into the darkness.

  ‘No you don’t,’ I said, rushing forward, but it was already too late. I knew I was being rash. Hurtling onwards with no notion of what might be waiting for me.

  Yet I kept going. Pushing through the darkness. Until eventually I was standing where she had stood moments before. There was no evidence she’d even been there. No footsteps in the snow, no lingering scent on the air. All was silent and still.

  So why had she come?

  Then I remembered how she had been standing, her right arm extended outwards from her body. I looked at the window she’d been standing beside – and my breath caught in my throat. There were not just fingerprints covering the rime of frost coating the glass this time, but words.

  I tilted my head, trying to make them out in the gloom. The light that filtered through was the faintest of gleams, yet by moving my head back and forth, I could just make out what Lyn had etched into the frost with her finger.

  Like a child learning to read I spelled out each letter, whispering to myself as I formed them into words.

  ‘T… E… M… P…’

  By the time I’d deciphered the entire message, I’d given up all hope of sleep.

  NINE

  THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY

  ‘Tempting Treats,’ I read, looking at the warped and peeling sign above the soot-blackened, mud-smeared window. ‘Is that meant to be ironic, do you think?’

  Hawkins grunted, his gaze flickering left and right. ‘I wouldn’t know, sir. But I suggest we enter the premises before our presence here attracts the attention of undesirables.’

  The words Lyn had scratched in the frost on the window – or at least, that she’d drawn my attention to – had been not a message, but an address. I’d thought ‘Tempting Treats’ might turn out to be a coffee shop, or a place that sold sweets or cakes, but it was a narrow, filthy junk shop in the centre of a decrepit row of buildings.

  The shop was in Seven Dials near Covent Garden, which in my day had evolved into a maze of quaint streets full of trendy retail outlets and buzzing with tourists, but which in this era was still part of the St Giles rookery, a notorious hive of appalling poverty and criminality, whose squalid, sagging buildings were studded with broken windows patched with wet paper and old rags. The residents of the area, who moved around us through streets coated with a slime of decomposing garbage, rotting food and human waste, looked more bestial than human, their bodies hunched and shuffling, their clothes ragged, their blank eyes staring from dirt-encrusted faces.

  Although I knew Seven Dials had a reputation for occultism and strange practice, there was no evidence of that here – not unless you counted the fact that the place could have been mistaken for a reeking corner of Hell. Certainly it was hard to believe that these streets had been the birthplace for such grandiose and mysterious organisations as the Freemasons, the Swedenborg Society, the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Golden Dawn.

  At Hawkins’ words I glanced about and saw we were beginning to attract attention. There was a gin palace further down the street, shrieks and raucous laughter spilling from its shattered windows. When we’d arrived, a minute or two before, the crowd gathered around its doorway, squabbling and smoking and knocking back jars of gut-melting liquor, had numbered no more than a dozen. Now twice or maybe three times that many had drifted outside to gawp at us. Maybe most of it was curiosity. There might even have been a fe
w of my watchers among the crowd. But it was just as likely several of the onlookers were sizing us up to have our noses slit and our purses pinched. Course, if they tried it they’d get a lot more than they bargained for, but even so it was advisable to avoid trouble wherever possible.

  ‘Point taken,’ I muttered to Hawkins, as I strode up to the black-painted door of ‘Tempting Treats’. I was about to turn the handle when I noticed there wasn’t one, so instead I put both hands on the door close to where the handle should have been and shoved. At first I thought the door was locked, but then it juddered inwards, as though scraping across a carpet of rubble. As soon as the gap was wide enough I slipped through it, at which point I noticed my hands and realised the door wasn’t painted black, after all; it was simply coated in soot.

  Hawkins followed me into the building, the door making the same juddering scrape as he pushed it closed behind him. As I wiped my sooty hands on a handkerchief, I peered into the gloom, trying to make sense of the shop’s interior. The filth coating the bay window, which looked out on to the street, was as effective as a blackout curtain. Neither did it help that the darkness inside the shop was teeming with dust. I sneezed twice, and then, because my handkerchief was black with soot, wiped my nose on my sleeve.

  ‘Look out, sir!’ Hawkins shouted as I was lowering my arm.

  I tensed, then something huge and black swooped at me out of the darkness. I flailed at it blindly, and was aware of Hawkins at my shoulder swinging his cane in a defensive arc above our heads. There was a passage of air, a faint musty smell, and then, with a raucous screech, our attacker – which I realised must have been a bird – was gone.

  But where? Was it readying itself for another attack? In a half crouch, my arm held defensively in front of me, I peered around, searching for the creature in the gloom.

  My vision was adjusting enough now for me to see that the room was long, narrow and very cluttered. Sideboards, chairs, tables, trunks, lamps, paintings, ornaments and other paraphernalia were stacked against the walls on both sides in tottering, seemingly haphazard piles. If there was any order to the place it was difficult to work out what it was because of the gloom, and the fact that the air was grainy with swirling dust motes.

  At the far end of a narrow passage snaking between the room’s stacked contents came a rasping chuckle. I flapped at the dust and narrowed my eyes to make sense of what I was seeing. Admittedly I wasn’t at my best. Although I’d finally managed a couple of hours of pre-dawn sleep in the armchair before the fire, my eyes were gritty and I felt as though a tight steel band around my head was constraining my thoughts. The impression I had now was of staring through the wrong end of a telescope, of watching distant shapes at the end of a dark tunnel. I could see what looked like the glow of a lantern and a shadowy form half concealed by what might have been books stacked on a desk. I rubbed my face as though my tiredness was a brittle glaze that could be removed like old varnish.

  Behind me, Hawkins called out, ‘Who’s there? Show yourself!’

  The dry cackle came again, sharp-edged and mocking, before evolving into a voice. ‘Show myself, is it? And who are you to give me orders in my own establishment?’

  Hawkins stepped in front of me. ‘This may be your establishment, sir, but when you attacked us you forfeited your entitlement to our respect.’

  ‘I, attack?’ said the voice in astonishment. ‘I attacked no one.’

  ‘Your creature then.’

  ‘My “creature”, as you call her, is old like me, and merely curious. Tell me, did she wound you?’

  ‘She did not. Though she might have done, and my master too, had I not used my cane to deflect the possibility of such an outcome.’

  The shop owner made a dismissive sound. ‘You are a stranger here, are you not?’

  ‘What has that to do with it?’

  ‘Oh, a great deal, I should say. If you were from hereabouts, you would know of old Satan and her ways.’

  ‘Satan?’ I muttered.

  ‘My crow, sir. Named for her plumage, not her demeanour. If I was to name her for her demeanour I would have to call her Saint, for she is the sweetest natured bird that ever took wing. The folk around these parts love her, sir, the nippers especially. Takes tit-bits out of their hands, she does, and never scratches nor pecks the skin. Gentle as a lamb is old Satan.’

  The man’s voice was getting closer, as was his bobbing lantern. I stepped up beside Hawkins and touched him briefly on the arm, tacitly instructing him to stand at ease.

  Eventually the shop owner was close enough for us to make him out. They say that people grow to resemble their pets, which was certainly true in his case. Peering at us from behind the glow of his lantern was an old man. He was tall, scrawny, hunch-shouldered, his threadbare layers of clothing wrapped around him like a suit of matted black feathers. His hands, encased in fingerless black gloves, were long and talon-like, and his face was long too, the chin sharp, the cheeks hollow, the eyes a watery greyish yellow in the lantern light. His grey hair was sparse, straggling across a domed forehead that resembled a scaly egg, and drifting in cobwebby wisps about his narrow shoulders. The most remarkable thing about him was that his crow, Satan, was perched on top of his head like a bizarre hat.

  The bird itself was large and sleek, though her feathers were tattered and dusty at the edges. The old man had described her as sweet natured, but she regarded us with arrogance, even hostility – which I suppose wasn’t surprising, considering that Hawkins had tried to whack her with his cane.

  I stepped forward. ‘Good morning, Mr…’

  The old man narrowed his eyes, as though weighing up the consequences of revealing the information. Then he muttered, ‘The name’s Hayles, sir.’

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Hayles. I apologise for the misunderstanding. My friend and I were startled, you see.’

  The old man peered at us a moment longer, then his expression softened.

  ‘I do see, sir,’ he conceded. ‘I see very well. I suppose it is queer to have a bird flying around the place, but the folks round here is used to her.’

  ‘She’s a fine specimen,’ I said. ‘Where did you get her?’

  ‘I found her on my doorstep, sir,’ said the old man. ‘She was lying there, like a gift from the heavens. A mere scrap of a thing back then, she was. And her left wing was broke something grievous. I think it must have been a cat what done for her, sir. Vicious brutes they are round here. I took her in and fed her on beetles and grubs, and nursed her back to health. And she hasn’t left my side since.’

  I smiled. The shop and the old man might have been grotty, but it was a heart-warming story.

  ‘Mr Hayles, my name is Alex Locke. Am I familiar to you in any way?’

  The old man scratched the side of his head. ‘Can’t say you are, sir. Should you be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Your address was… given to me in unusual circumstances. May we look around?’

  ‘Be my guests,’ said Hayles. ‘Everything here is for sale, and all of it the finest quality.’ He threw up his left hand in a flourish that startled the crow and sent it flapping into the air with an indignant squawk. It circled the room and came to rest on a battered writing bureau perched atop a pile of other furniture, where it glared at us like the raven in Poe’s poem.

  For the next ten minutes Hawkins and I moved around the dim and dusty room, examining the haphazard stacks of furniture. We peered under and over and around the backs of things. We looked inside cupboards, and pulled open drawers, and rooted through boxes of depressing, worthless junk. We disturbed mice and spiders, one of the latter of which, swelled by a coating of dust, scuttled across my hand, making me jerk in fright. This startled Satan from her perch again and set her swooping and gliding around the room like a small, dark ghost.

  It would have helped if Lyn could have told me what was so significant about this address before doing her vanishing act. Could it be that the heart was hidden somewhere am
ongst this clutter? Or was Hayles himself the focus? Perhaps the shop owner, or even his bird, were more than they appeared?

  Eventually, coated in dust and dirt, I asked, ‘Where do you come by your stock, Mr Hayles?’

  The old man frowned suspiciously. ‘Here and there.’ He seemed to consider his own words for a moment. ‘Yes, I would say here and there just about covers it.’

  ‘And how often do you come by new items?’ Looking around it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the contents had not altered for the past ten, even twenty years.

  ‘There is what I would call a “steady flow” coming in and going out. I buys ’em and sells ’em cheap, purely to keep things moving, you understand.’

  ‘Though not without some profit for yourself, I’ll be bound?’ said Hawkins drily.

  The old man, who had put the lantern down on a nearby table, spread his black-gloved hands. ‘A small one, sir. Though it’s barely a profit at all. Just enough to pay the rent and buy a few wittles for Satan and me. We has modest needs. But we all has to live, sir.’

  ‘Indeed we do,’ I said. I put my hand into the pocket of my trousers and jangled the coins in there.

  The old man’s head jerked round. His eyes fixed on my pocket like a bird of prey homing in on a scuttling mouse.

  ‘What would you say to the chance of adding a bit more to your profit, Mr Hayles?’

  Hayles licked his lips, but did his best to sound casual. ‘I would say that I might be interested, sir, if the circumstances was favourable. Is it a business proposition you is offering?’

  ‘I simply seek information,’ I said. ‘But it would have to come with a guarantee of loyalty. Is that something you think you can provide?’

  Cautiously Hayles said, ‘I am the soul of discretion if that is what you are asking, sir.’