Necessary Monsters

by Richard A. Kirk

  "Respect is important," said Lamb. "It's the only thing we have to prevent us from tearing each other apart like animals, no?" He waved at the book. "Take it. I've no use for books. It was simply to draw you here." Moss lifted his eyes from the pendant.

  "Please," said Lamb. Moss returned the book to his bag.

  "Now then, Mr. Moss, respecting your time and mine, let's get to business."

  "I don't have any business with you," said Moss.

  "But I have business with you. Do you know who I am?"

  "I have an idea. You said your name was Lamb."

  "Yes, they call me Lamb, but I meant in a broader sense." He clasped his hands behind his back, straining the buttons down the front of his coat.

  "I know who you are," said Moss.

  "Now, you know who I am, and I know who you are. So when I say we have business, I don't expect you to waste my time with your—" Lamb hesitated, "obfuscation."

  Moss was angry and afraid. Now that he had the book, he could run, but somehow these people knew him, knew how and where to find him. How long had they been watching him? There was no choice but to listen. He had first become aware of Lamb in prison. Lamb was one of those storied creatures of the underworld that everyone whispered about but few had seen. He was nicknamed partly as a reference to the birth defect that had left him with tiny bead-like eyes and a face elongated like a sheep's. There was also irony in the name. Lamb was a lion, and not to be trifled with. He was rumored to be an assassin for the Red Lamprey.

  Lamb continued. "I'm a believer in straight talk, Mr. Moss, so I won't dance around the issue. We must discuss your obligation." The man pointed to the fox.

  "My obligation?" This was not the first time Moss had seen the pendant.

  "You know what that is?"

  "Where did you get it?" Moss was far from sure he wanted to hear the answer.

  "I've carried it in my pocket for many, many years," said Lamb. "As a reminder." He felt around the table, picked it up and settled it in his palm. He turned it with practiced ease, like a gambler with a worn charm. It vanished into his sleeve. "It belonged to a little girl. You knew her by the name of Memoria. In fact, you gave her this as a gift, didn't you? You were in love with her."

  "Who told you that?" asked Moss. The cicada-like sound in his head threatened to split his skull.

  "I didn't get the little fox from Memoria," said Lamb, as though he had not heard Moss. "I got it from a man who owes me a large sum of money. A man named John Machine."

  "I can't see what this has to do with me," said Moss. "Memoria is dead and I haven't seen John since she died."

  "Let me be clear. She did not die; she did not drown. It was a fluke, but she survived the ordeal."

  "I've thought about her fall nearly every day since it happened," said Moss. "The ocean was wild. I see no way she could have survived."

  "I know for a fact that she did so. She was caught up in the chain of an old, unexploded mine. It buoyed her up, even though she was unconscious. Later, the low tide deposited her on the mudflats. That's where the mudlarks found her, more dead than alive. I can't imagine that she would have lasted long if they hadn't. So, make no mistake, Memoria is still alive now, a grown woman obviously. But nobody seems to know where she's gone and there's the rub. I desire to find her, as soon as possible."

  "Why?" Moss's mind raced as he tried to process the implications of what he was hearing. Lamb's swaying ceased.

  "When I saw her beauty, the things she could do, I knew without question that she was that most exquisite of beings. A true supernatural being, a light, a cleansing spirit, that could lift me from the dross of this world." His voice dropped to a growl. "She's my property. I bought her from John Machine and he cheated me."

  "What do you want from me?" asked Moss, sickened by Lamb's delusions.

  "It's simple. I want you to find her. You know her nature; the places she is likely to frequent."

  "That's unreasonable. I knew her as child."

  "You will do this discreetly, and once you have verified her whereabouts you will report it immediately."

  "And why the hell would I do that?"

  "Because if you do not, I will see that you are sent back to Brickscold Prison for the rest of your life. I have many associates inside its walls, not all of them inmates. It would not be an easy time, Moss." The man chuckled, but the resolve underlying the threat was unmistakable. "Your task, when the time comes, is to provide the information to Oliver Taxali, the antiquarian book dealer. You know this man? I am told you do. He will see it safely to me. This is Oliver's obligation."

  Moss opened his mouth to protest, when something stung his neck. He slapped at the spot and felt his hand come away wet and already numbing.

  "We are finished talking now. You will speak of this conversation to nobody. I hope it will not be necessary for us to meet again, but do not make the error of thinking you can leave your obligation unfulfilled. Enjoy your book." Lamb walked into the darkness of the tunnel.

  Moss turned to see the woman backing toward the tunnel entrance. In her hand was an apparatus consisting of a needle and a deflating rubber bulb. A pressurized stream of milky fluid sprayed toward the ground, turned to a dribble, and stopped. The tunnel darkened. Moss's knees buckled. He dropped to a squat and mumbled an entreaty to the woman now blurred in front of him. She spoke to him in a reassuring tone, but the words were jumbled. He lifted his hands and they flailed in unexpected directions. He spoke but the words were wooden blocks in his mouth.

  Moss opened his eyes in a strange bed. The pillow smelled of dust and cinnamon. Something warm and heavy lay across his feet. He propped himself on an elbow and looked down the length of his naked body. A purring cat looked back with glowing, impassive eyes. Moonlight fell through a skylight, washing the scene in blue. The room was just large enough to contain the bed. His weight tilted toward the center where the woman who had stolen his bag lay, also naked, snoring gently. Her body was covered in scrolling tattoos, fantastical creatures: demons, trolls and fairies. Realizing his stare had lingered, Moss turned away, head swaying as though it contained an unbalanced brick. A flick of his foot sent the cat on its way. Holding his breath, he rolled out of the bed.

  He found his stiff clothes hanging on a wooden drying rack in the adjacent room. They smelled faintly of puke. His bag, with the book in place, lay between the legs of a chair. A kerosene lamp burned low on a kitchen table where three smeared glasses sat amid empty liquor bottles and spoons. He picked up a glass and smelled it. Absinthe. It was then that he noticed the tattoo on the inside of his wrist, a coiled red lamprey eel. He touched the center of the design, a yawning mouth filled with tiny teeth. An elongated body spiraled counter clockwise. Raw skin surrounded the tattoo. Of all the indignities that Moss had experienced in the past few hours, this was the most infuriating. He started for the bedroom door, but stopped after two steps. Memoria was alive. Whatever had happened here, however unsettling, was irrelevant before this possibility. He needed to sort his head out, privately.

  Moss dressed, jamming his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, haphazardly buttoning the front. He pulled on his pants and stuck his bare feet into muddy shoes, not wanting to waste time looking for socks. Once he had fastened his coat and pulled the bag strap over his head, he checked the bedroom. The woman was still asleep, with the cat nestled into the small of her back. He pulled the door shut, trying to ignore the raw tattoo on his forearm. Before leaving, he piled kitchen chairs in the doorway and stole her shoes.

  When he pulled the outside door open, the kerosene lamp fluttered. He stepped onto the landing of a wooden staircase. The apartment was located on a mezzanine overlooking a large interior space. Moonlight, filtered through a row of filthy skylights, revealed a room almost as large as the central hall in the Museum of Natural History. Although it was difficult to differentiate the jumble of objects spread out below, Moss thought that he could make out the form of an elephant. Shaking his head in wonderment,
he threw the shoes as far as he could.

  METEORITES AND MOTHS

  Moss left the building and followed a line of linden trees to a nearby street. Concealed in shadow he looked back at the Cloth Hall, a landmark building that faced the sea. It was miles from the Museum of Natural History. During the day it served as a busy market, but at night it was less hospitable. Three men in butcher's aprons smoked below an entrance arch. Fresh fish were being unloaded from a truck some distance away, the clanking of the activity reaching Moss's ears with a dreamlike lag. Seeing the building did not stimulate any memories of the past few hours. Somehow the woman had brought him across the city. The third glass suggested she had help.

  Leaving the building had felt like an escape, despite there being no sign that he was being held. After descending the stairs from the mezzanine apartment, Moss had navigated through the attic of the Cloth Hall, winding through centuries of clutter. The sound of running water and a cold glow from elsewhere in the room had piqued his curiosity, but there had been no time to investigate. His purpose had been to get out of the building. The woman could have awoken at any time and he was too disoriented by the narcotic to confront her. Another time, he promised himself. Instinct had led him to a stairwell.

  With his back to a tree, Moss searched his bag. Most of his possessions were there, but somebody had emptied his wallet. With no money for a taxi he had little choice but to walk. He set off, cold and angry, through the empty streets. At dawn he reached Judge Seaforth's apartment house, where he had held a live-in position for the previous three months. Passing through the foyer he was conscious of every creak in the ancient wood floor. It was Moss's habit to conceal his activities and he did not want his arrival noticed. Overcome with tiredness, no doubt another lingering effect of the drug he had been given, he climbed the main staircase, forcing each step. At the top landing, he dug out his key and entered the judge's apartment. He closed the door with care, as the familiar smell of books and antique furniture enveloped him. A grandfather clock ticked, but the apartment was otherwise silent. Without removing his shoes and coat he passed through the richly appointed suite to the servant's room in the back. He collapsed on the bed amid a thrumming of springs. Ten dreamless hours later he woke thinking someone had whispered his name, but it was only the distant vibration of an airship's propellers that seemed to recede forever.

  From the warmth of the bed he listened to the rain against the window. As he often did upon waking, he lay still, reconstructing the recent past from memory. Three months. It seemed much longer ago that he had responded to an advertisement in the paper for the position of a live-in academic instructor. He had appeared at the office of Seaforth's solicitor with a secondhand briefcase filled with false references. He had not expected to be hired. It was curiosity that motivated him. He wanted to know more about the man who had sent him to prison on circumstantial evidence. The solicitor made no attempt to disguise his impatience. He conducted the interview in a harried manner, giving the impression that the task was a waste of his time. He might also have been a little drunk. He had seemed to have an almost conspiratorial willingness to be taken in by Moss's act of convivial good manners and cardboard backstory. To his surprise, and dismay, Moss had left the interview with a contract, the key to Seaforth's apartment and an advance on his salary. During a contemplative drink or two in a nearby bar, Moss's determination to drop the key into a public toilet gave way to a dangerous plan. Later that night, Moss let himself into the empty apartment.

  The solicitor had told Moss to settle himself in preparation for the family's eventual return from their country estate. From the three rooms put at his disposal he had picked a former maid's bedchamber. It was smaller than his prison cell. With the family absent, he could have slept in Seaforth's large bed, or even the children's. Instead, he preferred the close walls and the firm mattress of the domestic's room. He had not intended to stay. The plan had been to explore the apartment, search for Franklin Box's book and perhaps empty a bottle of brandy or two in the process. It was an opportunity to fulfill his far-fetched promise to Box and indulge in a bit of childish mischief. But there had been no sign of the book. One morning he looked in the mirror at his gaunt, bearded face and realized that he looked nothing like the man who had sat in Judge Seaforth's courtroom. Moss's plan sprouted a new branch. He would stay, play the role he had taken on, and eventually learn the whereabouts of The Songbirds of Nightjar Island. Time passed. Moss became comfortable in the apartment, and then, three weeks ago he had come across the museum's Deed of Gift in the middle drawer of Seaforth's dressing table.

  Moss's thoughts also led him to the events of the previous day. He rested in the furrow of the bed, with a single-action revolver tucked under the blanket near his thigh. He tried to piece events together, beginning at the point when he had stolen the book, but his memories were confused, their sequence untethered. The drug the woman had injected into him had been pharmaceutical grade. She could have lopped off a limb and he would have been none the wiser. He lifted his arm. The muscles beneath the tattoo rippled as he unfurled his fingers. Not what I would have chosen, he thought. He let it fall and squinted in the dust produced from the mattress.

  The Red Lamprey. John Machine had been a member. Lamb's comments confirmed what Memoria had somehow known many years ago. Moss sat up as a realization struck him. Lamb must have been the man that John Machine had taken Memoria to see, the cause of the argument on the seawall. Moss cursed himself for not picking up on what should have been obvious from the moment Lamb showed him the fox. Memoria said that John had taken her to see a man who had spoken to her through a woven screen. He had remained hidden but at the end of the conversation put his eye to the weave. Its gaze had disturbed her. And what about Memoria? Could Lamb be right? Moss had thought of nothing else during his long walk from the Cloth Hall.

  The memory of her fall, though relived countless times, had lost none of its horror. It seemed impossible that she could have survived. How many times in his fantasies had he imagined seeing her? The sea had been too powerful, too cold, that day. The submerged rocks had been like giant molars. Yet it was clear that Lamb believed what he said. Why else would he threaten Moss in person? Producing the fox had been a skilled manipulation. Lamb knew the gesture would be more powerful than words. Memoria had never known her real birthday. So they had made one up, September 7. Moss had given her the fox to mark the day. It had a flaw in the silver, where the eye should have been. In the tunnel Moss had noticed this detail immediately, even though he had not thought of it in years. Still, the fox's reappearance was hardly proof that she was alive. Moss had always wondered what John had palmed that day. Now he knew. The fox had broken free in the struggle on the seawall. Lamb had not been interested in providing proof. His intention had been to catapult Moss back in time, where emotion was the most intense, to clear his mind of all else.

  It worked. He wanted to believe. The sadness of Memoria's death was a burden he had carried for years. The thought of that intelligent, mischievous child missing out on life was a heavy weight. He berated himself for not being able to fend off John long enough to prevent the accident. Everything had happened too quickly. Now, he felt foolish for being manipulated by Lamb, who had found his weakness. Moss had never been able to let Memoria go. His inability to change the events of that day had wounded him in a way that no amount of rationalizing could heal. He fell back on the bed. Maybe now there was a chance to change that.

  Facing a cooler part of the pillow, Moss wished he had a hit of sinispore. It would have sharpened his thinking. He had started using the drug in prison to focus his mind on study, and a wall of defense against the tedium. Once it took hold it proved a tenacious foe to dislodge. Sinispore would have taken the edge off his nerves, but the thought of leaving the apartment to find it was a strong deterrent. He had taken the last of his supply to amp his clarity for the theft at the museum. Leaving Seaforth's apartment required him to be an impersonator. He had trained hims
elf to adopt the character of Joseph Woods, but it took concentration. The craving for sinispore was perilous and distracting. It compromised his ability to watch the critical details. In a fragmented state of mind, a casual glance on the street felt like an interrogation. A casual encounter with the police could be catastrophic. Ironically, the effects of the sinispore would help him to fall back into the role of unassuming Joseph, but he had none. Moss closed his eyes and drifted into a restless sleep.

  Moss woke late in the afternoon surprised to find himself feeling somewhat restored. The effects of the woman's drug had retreated from his muscles and joints. He cast the blankets aside and sat forward on the edge of the mattress. He was distressed at the thought that Lamb might have others looking for Memoria as well. A man like Lamb would have many contacts and numerous associates who could access places and produce results where others could not. If there was truth in Lamb's words and Memoria was alive, Moss had to find her first. The nature of Lamb's obsession was not clear, but it was hard to imagine it would end happily for Memoria. Watching the stirring drapes over the window, Moss was vexed, knowing that the urgency he felt was what Lamb intended.

  He looked at the aged wristwatch he had taken to wearing. It had once belonged to the real Joseph Woods. From it, Moss had crafted his ruse. He had found the watch a day before his interview with the solicitor, pawing through a box of clutter at the flea market in the Cloth Hall. Its faint inscription had led him, by way of the Hall of Records, to an overgrown plot in Hellbender Cemetery. There, on the steps of a small mausoleum, he had written an imaginary biography for Joseph Woods in his notebook, and committed it to memory. From that point on, Lumsden Moss, escaped convict, had become Joseph Woods, an introverted literary scholar who supported himself as a private instructor. The reflection in the watch crystal revealed that Moss had slipped out of character. His beard was untrimmed and his tangled hair needed to be washed. He thought about taking a shower but settled on washing his hands and face instead. In the bathroom he let tepid water pool in his fingers. He poured it over his head and leaned over the drain as it streamed from his face. The grandfather clock ticked. He knew what he had to do. He had known since he had opened his eyes.