Necessary Monsters

by Richard A. Kirk

  "I'm taking Imogene with me," said Moss.

  "I had a hard time waking her. She still has a fever and she was talking in her sleep. When she woke and saw me, she started to thrash around. I got her to take a sedative. Eventually she calmed down and slept. I couldn't have her carrying on like that with Morel hanging around."

  Moss turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom. Imogene sat near the hearth staring at the embers of a coal fire. Her eyes were sunken and her skin pale and clammy.

  "You're cold," he said. "I am sorry about that. Irridis doesn't feel the cold the way we do. It can be very irritating actually. Are you still sick?" Imogene shook her head. Not wanting to provoke her annoyance by contradicting her, he busied himself with the grate, stirring the embers. Sparks jumped onto the hearth and smoke rolled up the wall. "Not my area of expertise." He turned his attention back to Imogene. She was trembling.

  "I didn't tell you everything," she whispered. "Look." She pulled her blouse up to reveal a scratch, a puckered and raw diagonal line across her stomach.

  "What happened?"

  "Not what, who. Her name is Elizabeth," said Imogene distantly. "A girl that never ages. She rides a dog. She is a witch." Imogene stole a glance at Moss. "She claims that the traveling bookcase belongs to her and she is obsessed with its return. She scratched me before I came to see you. She confronted me in the market. I escaped, but not before she did this to me. I think it's what is making me sick." She covered the wound.

  "Why not just give it to her then?"

  "Precisely because she wants it so badly. It's evil, Moss. You didn't see her eyes. They were horrible, piercing. There was a terrible want in them. I can't properly convey how they made me feel, but everything in me rebelled against giving in to her lust for the bookcase. I knew in an instant that with the knowledge in those books, she would be capable of great evil. I could not live with myself if I submitted to her will."

  "I am going to help you. Can you walk? We must leave."

  "Why, what's going on?" she asked.

  Moss took a deep breath. Imogene was obviously delirious. A rumble came from the other room as Moss's trunk was dragged across the floor. It was followed by a thump. A hoarse voice, which Moss guessed to belong to the cab driver, negotiated a transaction.

  "They'll be gone in a couple of minutes. And then we have to go too."

  "Answer my question."

  "I can't right now. No time." More thumping punctuated his words. "Can you move?"

  "I don't know. I feel so weak."

  Moss retrieved her boots and worked them onto her feet. She emanated a heat that made Moss want to bury his face in her stomach.

  Imogene closed her eyes. "Oh, I really am not well."

  "Let me help you." Moss picked her hands out of her lap and pulled her to her feet. She stood, swaying.

  "I'm so cold. She'll find me again. I can feel her near. I simply don't feel like I can run again. I don't have the strength."

  "We'll have you somewhere warm soon." Moss thought back to the first time he had seen Imogene, mischievous and quick in the halls of the museum, lethal and wicked in the tunnel. The thought of someone who could change her so quickly gave him pause, and then anger, as he recognized a begrudging admiration of those earlier qualities.

  "I'm not a child, Moss," she whispered.

  "No," he said, "you're not."

  He needed to get her moving. He could not afford sympathy now, not with Seaforth on the way. Somehow he needed to motivate her.

  "We're going to another house," he said. "In another part of the city, out of the way. Lamb, or this Elizabeth, won't know about it. We'll drop out of sight, but we only have a few minutes. Come on, there's a cab downstairs." Moss cleared his head of the image of the girl and the dog by taking Imogene's arm more roughly than intended. He led her from the room. Irridis, the trunk and the bookcase were already gone.

  "What's the matter, Moss? Are your troubles catching up to you as well?" Imogene said, her voice mocking but faint.

  "Keep walking," said Moss.

  Imogene did not resist as he guided her out of the apartment. In the hall, she turned toward the elevator but Moss shook his head and steered her to the staircase. They descended. Tightening his grip on her arm, Moss kept her upright, knowing that if she sat down he would not get her up without a struggle. When they reached the main floor they heard Morel above them.

  "I see you. Stop there!"

  "There's the cab coming," said Moss under his breath. "Ignore him and keep moving. Don't stop." Moss pushed open the front door of the apartment building, timing their exit to the arrival of a dilapidated taxi. The driver, cigar wedged in the corner of his mouth like a woody growth, took note of Moss and Imogene and then looked away to leaf through sheets on a clipboard. Imogene hesitated. Moss collided with her.

  "What are you doing?" he asked. He fought his irritation, knowing it was the harbinger of panic. The driver looked toward the apartment entrance, squinting through smoke, as though impatient to be away. "Let's go." Moss started, but Imogene pulled her arm free, stopping him.

  "Where are you taking me?" she asked, confusion in her eyes.

  "I told you, to a house." He clenched his lips and shook his head. Only specific information would dislodge her from the vestibule. "It's a house in Hellbender Fields."

  "Your house?"

  Moss hesitated. "No, of course not. Do I look like someone who could afford a house in Hellbender Fields?" His voice rose.

  "Whose then? Lamb's house?" Imogene's lips blanched and her hands tightened into fists.

  "What? No," said Moss, astonished. He wondered if the effect of the scratch was making her paranoid. "I told you, it's a safe place. It belongs to someone that Irridis knows. They're out of town for the next few months. The place is empty. Nobody will know we are there. You can rest and we can sort out what to do next." He hoped his smile was more encouraging than it felt.

  "She's found me again," said Imogene. She looked around as though she expected the strange girl to leap from behind a planter. "Echo is with her."

  Desiring to be anywhere else, Moss shot a glance at the cab.

  "Why do you think she has found you?" he asked. He never received an answer. A second, newer car, covered in dust and crusted insects, lurched onto the curb behind the waiting taxi. A rear door flew open and a lean man with swept-back grey hair and black-framed glasses fought his way over suitcases and climbed from inside. He jammed a hat on his head as he emerged and pulled an expensive-looking overcoat after him. The hat cast a shadow over his face but it did not hide the angry set of his jaw. A radio patrol car marked with dents and bullet holes pulled up behind the first, and a second man jumped from the passenger seat. His gloved right hand held a revolver. The first man was Habich Seaforth; the other, judging from his gun and weather-stained raincoat, had the air of a plainclothes detective.

  Moss swore and grabbed Imogene around the shoulders. He forced her into the shadow of the vestibule. Telling her not to move, he dropped to his knee and pretended to lace his boot. He was banking on his beard and the presence of a woman as his disguise. Although Moss knew Seaforth's face well, his employer had not seen him since the trial years earlier. Both men rushed past. Seaforth bumped Moss's shoulder.

  "Out of my way," Seaforth said, as he pushed against the interior door. Then the two men were gone, thundering up the stairs in a cloud of dust.

  Moss stood and grasped Imogene's sleeve.

  She tore herself free. "Don't touch me."

  "We have to go, now," he said. "They'll be back any second."

  "Who are they?"

  "We don't have time for explanations," said Moss.

  "Who are they?" she insisted.

  He lifted his hands. "Look, the one with the glasses owns the apartment. The other one is a cop." Feet rumbled on the stairs, accompanied by muffled shouts. "They're looking for me."

  "He had a gun," said Imogene, dazed.

  "Come on," Moss said. He grabbe
d Imogene and dragged her from the vestibule. She moved with him in an awkward dance. The sound of feet on the stairs was like a racing heart. The men were coming back down. Morel cried out at the top. Fits barked in hoarse whoops. Moss prayed that the man did not think to slip the dog from its leash. The vestibule door closed behind them. Moss and Imogene lurched forward. Halfway between the door and the curb she stopped. Her face was stricken.

  "Where are the drawings, the books?" She reversed her steps. "I have to go back for them."

  "No, Imogene, no," yelled Moss. "Irridis has them." The two men appeared in the doorway. Moss reeled back across the cobbles toward Imogene, arm outstretched. The detective drew aim with his revolver. A shot cracked in the narrow lane and a slit, like a red thread, opened across Imogene's throat, sending her pendant flying over the cobbles. Moss grabbed her as she slumped. As he eased her to the ground a bullet tore through the collar of his shirt making a sound like the slap of a flag. Imogene was on the pavement, still and pale. Moss held the sides of her head and shook. "Imogene, get up," he shouted. A third shot hit the ground beside her head and sprayed her face with sparks and shards of cobblestone. He lifted her eyelids but the pupils were unmoving.

  The detective attempted a tackle. Some animal instinct alerted Moss and at the last second he rolled to the left, smacking his forehead against the ground. For a second the white pain blocked all other sensations, and he came close to losing consciousness. A hand on his ankle kept him scrabbling across the pavement. He rose to his haunches and kicked the cop square in the face. There was a stomach-churning pop as the man's septum split. The detective buried his face in his hands and shrieked, rocking back and forth as blood spurted between his fingers. Moss staggered to his feet. With a last glance at Imogene's unmoving form, he fled.

  He barged through the crowd that had gathered. Hands grabbed at his clothing. He lost the remains of his shirt collar. Someone tried to trip him. He landed on the side of their ankle. The bystanders pulled away, shouting. A sharp pain from his left calf told him that another bullet had found its mark.

  BLACKRAT BAKERY

  The land behind Seaforth's building was a warren of alleys connecting scrubby railyards, gardening allotments and crumbling buildings from centuries past. Moss knew that his best chance of escape lay in that direction. He had made a point of walking and internalizing the main arteries in his first few days in the neighborhood. If his leg held out, he could slip away unseen into the ever-narrowing capillaries of nameless access lanes and canals.

  His calf burned as he limped along a wall in the shadow of a fire escape. Intersecting alleys channeled excited shouts. The pop of gunshots continued, which confused Moss. Who were they shooting at now? He paused and looked up at a hinged fire escape ladder, trying to block the image of Imogene's expressionless eyes. It was too much. He rolled the back of his head against the brick, his own eyes tearing with the pain. The agony he felt at having to leave her became one with the pain in his leg and head.

  He cursed and kicked at the wall. A single thought ate at him. What if she wasn't dead? What if he had made a mistake and abandoned her to Seaforth and the detective? In the moment, he assumed a bullet had caught her from behind, but had he actually heard a second shot before she fell? Events had unfolded too quickly. If she had survived, she would be held complicit. It would go hard on her. He winced as he looked for options through sweat-smeared glasses. More than anything he wanted to double back and check on Imogene, but it would be suicide after what he had done to the policeman. He lifted his glasses and rubbed grains of pavement from his eyelashes. The elegant pants were now soaked with congealed blood. Pink foam rose through the weave. His knees were rubber and his vision swam.

  A boy rounded a corner, running so hard that his shoes threatened to fly off his feet. He was coming from the direction of Seaforth's house. It was Andrew.

  "What are you doing here?" asked Moss. "Go away, you shouldn't be here, it's dangerous."

  "I saw what happened," said the boy, breathing hard to catch his wind. "They're right behind me."

  Moss groaned. It was impossible to think that he could outrun his pursuers in with an injured leg. He grabbed Andrew's shoulder. "Andrew, I need somewhere to hide. Can you think of anywhere, nearby?"

  The boy thought for a moment. "Follow me," said Andrew, pulling at Moss's jacket. Moss followed, reasoning that the boy would be familiar with every bolthole in the neighborhood. "It's not far. Hurry, over here." They had entered an alley beside a large blackened building. It looked familiar to Moss. Andrew ran to a recessed coal cellar door. It opened with a dry metal rasp. Without a second thought, Moss hobbled across the road. He patted Andrew on the shoulder and ducked into the black opening. The boy slammed the doors behind him, loosening a shower of wood and rust. Moss slid down a steep chute and landed in a pile of coal with a violence that winded him. He lay on his back in the dark, sucking in the dust raised by his entrance. A group ran past in the street above. Their voices and footsteps waned. For some time, a dog pawed and whined at the cellar doors, but nobody seemed to notice or care, and then it too stopped.

  Moss worked into an upright position. The room had a floor of packed earth and walls constructed from a jigsaw of stone. A wooden crate sat to one side and a stack of clay tiles to the other. In the center of the room a mound of coal and straw formed a bed for a pale lettuce-like growth. It was as unpleasant a place as any, but he was happy to be in it. He stood, testing his weight on the injured leg. The pain was excruciating. A few minutes later he gathered the nerve to pull up his pant cuff. His calf was cut on the inner side. It was raw, but not life-threatening. The bullet had not pierced an artery or shattered the bone. He squeezed a flap of skin over pulped flesh and dry heaved as the pain throbbed through him. The wound was not bleeding as it had been, so he lowered and tented the material. It was a mess, but it could have been much worse.

  He wiped the tacky blood from his fingers on his clothing as he pieced together what might be happening outside. There was no sound to suggest that anyone remained near the chute entrance. Andrew seemed to have drawn off Moss's pursuers, but how long would it be before they backtracked?

  He had to alert Irridis to his disastrous exit from Seaforth's. If Andrew returned, he would have the boy take a message to Irridis at the Cloth Hall. The boy would find him. Moss had full confidence in Andrew's resourcefulness, if not necessarily his forthrightness. As soon as possible Moss had to find out what had happened to Imogene. If she was alive, he needed to know so that he could devise a way to help her.

  He sat on the crate and rested, head in hands. It seemed his luck had grown worse with every move. He pulled back his sleeve and rubbed the red lamprey tattoo as if he could erase it with his thumb. Had Lamb tipped off Seaforth? Maybe Lamb had somehow discovered that Imogene had gone behind his back and was punishing them both. If Moss had not escaped, the result would have fulfilled Lamb's promise, a return to prison. Moss dismissed the theory. Using Seaforth as an unwitting participant was too indirect for Lamb. A man who would set fire to another man's house would not work in such an elliptical manner. The money was on Gale. The collector had the most to gain. Exposing Moss would make Gale a hero to Seaforth. In Gale's fantasy, Seaforth would no doubt be more than willing to reward him for his diligence, with a prized book or perhaps a rare drawing. Having arrived at a plausible theory, Moss lay down on the crate. The straw smelled of cat piss, but he fell asleep as if were fresh cotton.

  Scratches against the wall woke him. He had slumped to the ground with his head at an uncomfortable angle. He straightened his neck, which felt as though it had a thick, resistant wire at its core. The realization of his predicament returned. He hawked and spit into the corner while he pulled at his clothing. He deplored the damp. It penetrated the cloth and covered his skin with a clammy sheen. His hands smelt like mushrooms. Flexing his fingers, he resolved to wait no longer. Anything waiting beyond the door was better than becoming a medium for the rank growth in the cell
ar. As if to underscore the point, three rats, no doubt the source of the scratching, ran along the wall in single file. They stopped every few seconds to sample the air, whiskers twitching. They were accustomed to his presence, a disconcerting reminder of how much time might have passed. A curse sent them skittering over each other, but not as far as he expected, or would have liked. How long had he been lying on the ground? Thick sinuses and heavy limbs suggested hours, but he knew that isolation and discomfort could fool the body.

  Using the chute for support, Moss pulled himself to his feet. Ambitions of climbing to street level were put to rest. Even if his leg was fine, the chute was too steep, too dusty. He looked for an alternative and found a rough door where several coal bags sat in a line. Five steps would get him there, five determined steps. He took a deep breath, filling his mouth with acrid dust. Five steps. He lifted a leg to take the first, and swore, pressing a fist to his forehead.

  "Yeeeeooow," he yelled. Flaring his nostrils, he pitched himself toward the wall and gripped the stone. The pain from his calf flared and knocked inside his head in a way that made him hesitate, eyes wide, waiting for something of surpassing neurological awfulness to follow. When it did not, he exhaled and shuffled toward his goal, using the wall as a support. The calf muscle eased but the pant leg peeled from the friable wound and blood ran down his ankle. He persevered and reached the door. Yellow light shone through the gap beneath it, but listening, an ear pressed to the wood, he could not hear a thing from the next room. One, two, three. He seized the latch. The door opened like a gummy mouth. Warm kitchen air enveloped him.

  Generations of baker's slippers and a permanent dusting of flour had worn the floors to a surface that undulated like a limestone riverbed. Walls of the same stone used in the cellar were cluttered with blackened pots and pans. Knives, rollers, spatulas, spoons and ladles were hung in untidy rows or scattered on the ground. A cast iron coal range was set into a brick fireplace that was taller than Moss. Its numerous small doors, grates, and pipes twisted away with biological complexity. It was a gargantuan troll with multiple mouths, and its febrile breath was the source of the heat on Moss's cheeks.