Worming the Harpy and Other Bitter Pills

by Rhys Hughes

  I headed over the Pyrenees, to a small territory partly in the kingdom of Aragon and partly in Castile. I sold blood to a barber and earned enough to cross into Portugal and take ship from Lisbon to the remote Azores. But even on those storm-battered islands, far out in the Atlantic, the hellish chins caught up with me. I returned to France, rented an apartment in Calais (the most anonymous of towns) and called myself Otranto Van Helsing (the most unobtrusive of names). Still was I discovered. I crossed the Channel on a packet-steamer, roamed the streets of London and learned to cough green bile. No peace: in Soho they loomed out of a different flavoured fog, lopsided figures like harps, tongues lolling. I fled north; always north flee the desperate, the forlorn, the abominable. South is for travellers with donkeys, three men in a boat, gypsies and missionaries. The pole beckons to those who keep glaciers in their hearts. An arctic breeze played upon my cheeks that hinted of chills, brown ale and Yorkshire pudding: a foretaste of those icy regions to which I was advancing.

  Finally, I found surcease of sorrow in the town of Whitby. Here, on the bleak northern coast, I was left in peace. I started up again as before (most definitely I did not become an estate-agent or solicitor) though eventually I grew affluent enough to give up parapsychology. The devils never harried me again, and I did not leave the environs of the town; for I knew they were out there waiting for me. It may seem strange to some that Whitby is so effective a sanctuary against the forces of darkness. What is it about the place that discourages evil fiends from entering? What is so awful about Whitby that even the lords of suffering shun it? There is no mystery. The answer is simple: a long-toothed gentleman with whom I became well acquainted.

  I have resided here for nearly twenty years. My indenture is now rapidly drawing to a close. My tailoring business is doing well; I have replenished whole rooms with glass globes, rusty suits of armour and skeletons. I have written letters to Mina imploring her to come over and join me; I hear she is involved with a lycanthrope in Paris. I refuse to grow bitter, but I plan revenge on many. The one thing that troubles me is the thought that when the twenty years are over the devils will have to offer up their souls to me. And what will I do with them? I could imprison them in my glass globes but devils in bottles are passé. I have an idea. I shall lay the souls out like fine cloth and make waistcoats of them. These garments I shall send to my enemies in the post. Carnacki shall have one and Otho shall have another; I must not neglect von Landshort. And Mina? At the very least it will confirm what I always knew—these individuals have diabolical dress sense.

  The Forest Chapel Bell

  As Bishop of Debauchester, my duties included adding the final touches to our great cathedral. Twelve generations of labourers had toiled under angry skies to construct the most astonishing edifice in the whole land. Their bones, ground to dust, had been mixed with their blood to form the cement that held stone to stone.

  And now all that remained was to cast a suitable bell for the belfry. I had a very definite idea as to what such a bell should sound like. Any note it might strike would have to take into account the character of the building. For me, the cathedral stood out as a beacon of hope in our ravaged city.

  Naturally, the local forges were unable to produce such a bell. The craftsmen of Debauchester were no longer equal to the task. Their Guilds had grown surly and incompetent. A sign of the times, no doubt. It was obvious that I would have to seek elsewhere. I would have to take to the road.

  Accordingly, on the first day of spring, I set off with an armed retinue and unlimited Church funds at my disposal. I was fairly confident my quest would not be futile. This land is large enough to accommodate all manner of fantastic and improbable things. All dreams and nightmares can take form here; we live in the dusk between ecstasy and terror.

  Our first stop was the neighbouring city of Bismal. The wary inhabitants of this town had sought to avoid the plague by locking their gates to most visitors. Instead, they had shut it in. I bribed my way past the guards and towards the famed smiths of Iron Street, a cobbled alleyway choking with fumes and resounding with the clang of hammer on anvil.

  Here we found many willing to help us but few capable of keeping their promises. At the sign of the Black Orchid, a sweaty smith claimed to have just the bell we were looking for. He led us into a room empty save for an enormous mass of metal that hung suspended from a stout wooden cage. He tapped his nose with a grimy finger and rolled his bulging eyes.

  ‘This is a very special bell,’ he said. ‘It is a bell that only the most cultured and intelligent members of society can hear. To fools it remains silent.’ Wiping his palms on his leather jerkin, he took hold of the bell-rope and pulled with all his strength. The bell swung in a ponderous arc, rattling its wooden frame and casting a monstrous shadow over the wall in the flickering torchlight.

  Nonchalantly the smith stepped back and leant against the door-jamb. The soldiers in my company nodded at each other and closed their eyes in rapture.

  ‘Such a sweet tone!’ they cried. ‘Such a pure note! This is the bell for us! Our quest is over. Let us take this one!’

  ‘Very well,’ I agreed, stepping towards the smith. ‘I have this for you in return.’ As the fellow bowed in gratitude, my hand moved from my purse to my sword. With a single blow I sent his head rolling into a dark corner. Blood gouted purple on the walls. The body swayed and toppled in a heap, hands clasping cold stone.

  ‘Come.’ I resheathed my sword while the bell hissed its contempt overhead. ‘Let us leave this pit to the rats. There is work to be done.’

  As we rode back out through the gates and left the city behind, I explained myself to my companions. ‘The bell was unfinished,’ I said. ‘It had no clapper. It is an old, old story.’ I was generous enough not to laugh at their embarrassment, but I would not forgive their cowardice.

  Thus began the first misadventure of many. We travelled the length of the land and listened to a great number of bells. Yet I was never satisfied. As I have already said, I had an exact idea of the note I desired. I removed the heads of all those who tried to cheat me and a few who did not. I pushed my companions to ever greater feats of endurance.

  In the middle of the Aching Desert, we chanced upon the monastery of Soor. The plague had spread its wings even here. The Abbot listened gravely to my request and then arched an eyebrow. He was a thin hollow man, a scarecrow in which the crows had made their nests. His idols were Grunnt and Drigg and the one legged god, Hopp.

  ‘You have come to the right place,’ he croaked. ‘We have suffered much lately. It is difficult to get the staff these days.’ With an obscene chuckle, he gestured at his neck. The black boils of death were already swelling. ‘But you are in luck. We have just such a bell.’

  ‘Really? Then I demand to hear it!’ I jangled the coins in my purse with one hand while I raised a perfumed handkerchief to my mouth with the other. My voice came as a muffled sob. ‘Perhaps three hundred gold coins will help to ease your passage to the other world?’

  ‘Oh, considerably!’ He threw back his head and howled. ‘Stand out there in the courtyard. It is almost time for matins. We have little to give us hope here. The bell will not be our salvation, but it might deceive some of us for long enough.’

  We moved through a low arch into the courtyard. The fountains had dried up; sand drifted across the flagstones. As the sun rose above the horizon, the bell began to toll. The sound was a sensual hand that crept up the spine to massage the neck. From the inside. I shuddered under my ermine cloak. Tears burned the edge of my eyelids.

  When the final echo had completely dissipated, I stalked back to the Abbot. Like my own men, he was writhing on the floor. His eyes were full of joy. Once again, I moved my hand to my purse and then, frowning, further across to my sword. I did not have the strength to hack at his sinewy neck, however. The bell had sapped all my anger.

  Placing the point in the centre of his throat, in the centre of a pulsating boil, I leant with all my weight on the hilt. H
is blood was too thin to spurt, but as I wrenched my weapon free, it stained his saffron robe a pale, anaemic orange. I collapsed in delicious agony as the final echo of the bell returned on a sudden desert breeze to sing against my blade.

  Afterwards, when we had all recovered, we slaughtered the rest of the heathen monks and set fire to that hive of corruption. ‘The sound was far too pleasurable,’ I explained, as we raced off into the Aching Desert. ‘Not at all appropriate for our purposes. Our city may be a symbol of decadence, but our cathedral most certainly is not. It is our one redeeming feature.’

  Such were the words I used to encourage my men to further acts of self-sacrifice. They were quite ignorant, of course, of the sort of bell I really wanted to hear. Before I could confess the truth, I had to be sure of their loyalty. No doubt, they saw the cathedral as an object of beauty and considered a beautiful bell ideal. But this is not what I meant when I said that the right sound would have to take into account the character of the building.

  Onwards we journeyed, ever onwards, across a decimated landscape foul with the stench of rotting flesh. My ecclesiastical robes fell to tatters; my mitre crumpled on my head. Our mounts collapsed beneath us, rolling onto their backs and kicking legs in the air like dying locusts. Yet my confidence remained overwhelming. I am a hard man to discourage.

  Slowly, as the months turned to years, and we grew more and more exhausted, this overwhelming confidence began to falter. My companions eventually deserted or, contracting the dread plague, had to be abandoned by the roadside. At long last, I too caught the illness, the boils spreading from my hand until my entire arm and chest was a mass of suppurating sores, bleeding yellow pus down my shrunken flapping stomach to my maggoty loins.

  And then one evening, after I had wandered off the road into a dank tangled forest, I came into a clearing. In the centre of this clearing stood a small stone chapel whose windows had fallen out and shattered on the hard ground. Creeping plants and gaudy flowers now grew over the spaces, forming an adequate substitute for the stained glass, while on the grass verges, fragments of the originals wholly competed with the glow-worms.

  Staggering to the heavy door, I pounded on the oak. Organ music piped from inside. A ghostly whispering rustled on the edge of harmony. After an age, bolts were drawn back and a shrivelled figure peered from the rosy gloom. Froth dribbled down its chin. Its eyes darted an amused and questioning glance.

  ‘My name is Dorian Wormwood,’ I said. ‘Bishop of Debauchester. Plague has brought as unexpected an end to my revels as I have to yours. Yet I wish to complete my quest before I die. I require a bell whose note will do justice to my great cathedral and all it stands for.’

  ‘Indeed?’ The shrivelled figure rubbed its hands together, all four of them. ‘But what exactly does your cathedral stand for? How am I to know that it stands for anything? You are far from home, stranger.’

  I rotated a soft knuckle in a cloudy eye. ‘I am very tired. I am too ill to argue. My city is a festering pit. My cathedral is a beacon of hope. What, then, is to be done? Is it not obvious? This cathedral is a blot on my soul, a stain that must be removed. I have heard that all things have a resonant frequency. I once saw a singer shatter a glass. I need a bell whose note will destroy the very cathedral it is housed in.’

  The figure smiled. ‘Have you noticed how the graves in my little cemetery are all open?’ He pointed at the decaying headstones and weed-choked pits that ringed the chapel. ‘Their inhabitants now form my parishioners. I do not have the bell you seek. But I have one even more remarkable. You will see it in good time. But now you must rest.’ He led me into the nave, past rows of swaying ghouls, towards the altar, where a coffin lay waiting.

  ‘We appreciate visitors,’ he said, ‘though not in the way you think. Sleep now and all will be revealed. Yes, sleep.’ He threw the lid of the coffin back and pointed at the crushed velvet interior. I was grateful enough to lie down and let the dark thumbs of death press on my eyeballs. My mind soared into the vast reaches of space.

  In the morning, I was dragged back into my reluctant body. Sinews and muscles screamed their protest. I knew at once what had summoned me. I fingered the mass of black boils on my chest and sat up. The flesh peeled away in one large sheet, revealing thorax and ribcage. High above, in the half-ruined belfry, my host was swinging from the bell.

  He greeted me with a mock salute as I struggled out of my coffin. ‘You have wandered into the borderland between your own world and Hell,’ he hissed. ‘And you have died. The plague, as you know, spares few. Yet you have seen my power over nature. This bell, needless to say, is one that can wake the dead. It has always been my favourite cliché.’

  I fingered my chest again, reached into the gaping hole and felt that my heart was still. When he came down to join me, my hand reached for my sword, quivered, and then snatched the purse off my belt. I threw him the coins and began to laugh. My dead eyes were bright.

  ‘This is exactly the bell I want!’ I cried. ‘Have it taken down. I wish also to hire some of your parishioners to help me convey it back to Debauchester.’ I grimaced. The decaying corpses in question were shuffling in for the morning service.

  The figure scratched its head. ‘I thought you wanted a bell whose note would make your cathedral collapse. Not one that can wake the dead!’

  ‘Is it not for sale?’ I knitted my brows.

  ‘Of course it is! Is not everything in this Universe?’ He shrugged. ‘I am a very minor demon. I will ask no more questions.’

  ‘That is wise.’ Slavering, I slapped him on the back and belched. The belch left my stomach through my wondrous hole. I was beginning to grow proud of my exposed organs. They were so diseased they were a delight to behold.

  Later, sitting atop a covered wagon, flicking a whip over each gibbering corpse who wrestled to pull the load in its harness, I peered down at my prize. At last I would be able to fulfil my duties as Bishop. At last I would be able to add the finishing touches to our great cathedral. Here was the bell whose note would cause the entire mass to topple onto the heads of my fellow citizens.

  After all, a bell that could wake the dead would surely have a startling effect on a building whose stones were held together by a cement made from . . .

  Well, bones and blood, of course.

  Flintlock Jaw

  When Robin Darktree takes to the road, he carries two flintlock pistols, a blunderbuss, a rapier and a bag of ginger biscuits. It is best to present a formidable appearance when on the road. He also carries a spare tricorne hat. It takes only a single seagull to ruin a formidable appearance.

  His mount is an elderly roan with the bumbreezes. He is too fond of her to consider a replacement. Thus he is given to wearing a black silk handkerchief even when not travelling incognito. His cloak is sailor’s garb, filched from a Portsmouth market. His fine high boots were made by Alberto’s of Sienna.

  Darktree loves the mountains, the clear streams and wild flowers. When he goes into hiding it is usually here that he flees. He distrusts the forests—dank, horrid affairs —and positively loathes the marshes. He feels neutral about the sea, all but his wistful eye.

  When the government sends a pack of hired hands on his trail, Darktree tries to enjoy the chase. On moonless nights he can thunder down the roads, hooves pounding, a wild laugh caught at the back of his throat.

  At such times, full of gin and confidence, he often doubles back and trots past his pursuers with a polite nod. The true art of disguise, he maintains, is more a matter of poise than looks. He has never been caught.

  Darktree at sunset: waiting behind a clump of bushes for the Holyhead mail. A solitary figure slightly bowed, but not devoid of dignity. Darktree during a mad gallop over the heath: foolishly romantic, arrogant, profoundly sad and almost comic. Darktree asleep: muffled.

  Times are hard, he decides, as he puffs on his churchwarden pipe. The coaches are becoming fewer with each passing day. He feels like a fisher who has over-exploited the resources o
f his bay.

  Once he considered his smiling eyes to be hook and line enough for the ladies. Now even nets of flint, steel and smoke do not suffice. I am growing old, he thinks, and imagines himself as an ancient man, snug in the hearth of some old coaching house. Muffins and ale. White hair beneath crow-black hat. Nose aglow, gnarled as a bole. But no, who will really look after him in his dotage? His mother?

  When Darktree’s friend, Nick Cooke, was captured near Highgate, Darktree dressed himself as a woman in order to witness the execution. Although poise is the thing, there is also pleasure. Nick made a few jokes, sang a bawdy song, was fondly cheered by the crowd. Darktree shed a single tear.

  And real women? Darktree can scarcely lay claim to a single meaningful relationship with a member of the opposite sex. He has tried, God knows, but it has all been so difficult. They never want to settle down with a highwayman: why should they? Always working nights, away for weeks on end, no guaranteed income. And all that opportunity for philandering, never washing his socks. No.

  There is a girl called Lucy who lives in Epsom. Whenever Darktree passes through the town he turns crimson. Lucy remains blissfully unaware of either his true identity or his infatuation. Darktree will often conduct long detours to avoid Epsom, or race through at high speed, eyes lowered.