The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie)

by Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Squire dove across the kitchen, toward the sink. He grabbed the handles of the two small doors under the sink and yanked them open. Even with what light there was in the kitchen the patch of shadow was deep and black. He ducked his head inside the cabinet and his shoulders were too broad to fit.

  "Shit," he whispered, glancing back.

  The Corca Duibhne had thrown their injured brother to the ground and were trampling over him. Even as he looked, Squire saw one of them stomp on the cleaver buried in the creature's chest, driving it deeper. Putrid blood ran in rivulets across the floor. The nearest one laughed as it spotted him.

  "Where do you think you go, now, ugly turnip?"

  Squire sneered. This guy was calling him ugly?

  And then he pushed. His bones popped out of their joints, his arms folding in upon his body, and he drove himself inside the cabinet and into the patch of shadows within. One of them snagged at his foot and he kicked its claws away and with one last, solid plant of his boot on the interior of the cabinet, thrust himself into the shadows.

  The shadow-paths opened before him. He could feel them, sense each walkway around him. His eyes were open but there was no color, only levels of its absence. Squire felt at home here, much more so than he ever did in the other world. This was where he belonged. He was not small here, not ugly or freakish. He was not a monster. Here in the shadows he was agile, graceful, and strong.

  There was no time for him to pause and reflect now upon Morrigan's attack and what it might mean. There was time only to move, to walk the shadows. He had survived. Now it was on to his second priority.

  The darkness rushed past him, caressed him, as Squire hurried along the shadow-path to his first stop. He could feel Conan Doyle's house around him, navigated by instinctual awareness of the ways in which the real world entwined with the shadow world. Moments after he had disappeared inside the kitchen cabinet he reappeared inside another, much larger enclosure on the second floor of the house.

  The weapons closet.

  Hobgoblins could see better in the dark. Squire looked around and felt a surge of grim pleasure as he surveyed the swords and daggers, the bows and battleaxes, the maces and morningstars, and the more arcane weapons, his favorite bits and bobbles. Poison dueling pistols. Ectoplasm garrotes.

  Beyond the doors of the weapons closet, which allowed only a sliver of light to enter, he could hear the thumping of the Corca Duibhne's incursion. Glass shattered and doors slammed. Morrigan must have been aware that he was a shadow-walker, but still they were searching for him, or trying to find out if anyone else was in the house. There were animal growls that went along with the Night People's movements through the house, but Squire was no longer listening. He was in a hurry now.

  He began with his favorites, unbreakable blades and enchanted arrows, others that he had relied on over the ages. As quietly as he was able, Squire filled his arms with weapons and slipped back into darkness, stepped into the shadow-paths, and made his way into Conan Doyle's garage. Nothing was darker than the trunk of the limousine.

  Emerging inside the trunk, he paused to listen but heard neither grunts nor footfalls nor clattering of vandalism that would have accompanied the Night People into the garage. Still he was careful to be quiet as he laid the first stash of weapons down at the back of the spacious trunk.

  Then he went back.

  Quiet. Careful. Swift.

  Squire made jaunt after jaunt from weapons closet to trunk, slipping along the shadow paths and retrieving blades and poisons and blunts. He was many things to Arthur Conan Doyle — valet and chauffeur and confidante — but the most vital part of his service was as armorer . . . as squire. It was his duty to care for the weapons, to supply them when needed, to see that Conan Doyle and his comrades were never unarmed. It would have been simple for him to escape the house, to leave Morrigan behind, but he was not going to leave the weapons.

  On his seventh trip into the weapons closet, he heard voices.

  Squire froze with his hand upon the grip of a scimitar whose blade was engraved with ancient symbols even Conan Doyle didn't understand. He quieted himself, holding his breath, and he listened. They were speaking Danaaini, the language of the Fey. One of the voices belonged to Morrigan and the other, a male voice, to another of her kind.

  So the Corca-dweebs aren't the only ones taking orders from her, Squire thought. He wasn't fluent in Danaaini, but he understood enough to get at least part of the conversation.

  "Prepare," Morrigan said.

  The other Fey muttered some sort of subservient bootlick response that Squire didn't bother working too hard to translate.

  "We must be very careful if we are going to open —" Several words he did not understand followed this. And then: "Tell the skulkers to keep an eye out for Conan Doyle. I want to make certain he receives a proper welcome when he . . .

  "What is that smell?"

  Squire grunted in annoyance. Like humans, like the Fey, hobgoblins had their own scent. He couldn't smell it himself, of course, but Eve had often told him he smelled like rotten apples. And who would know better?

  Silence had fallen in the room outside the weapons closet. The Fey could walk without any noise at all if they wished to, but Morrigan did not bother. Squire had an image in his mind of her sniffing at the air, of her pausing to glare at the doors to the closet. He heard her footfalls on the hardwood as she marched toward him.

  With deep regret Squire glanced around at the weapons that remained, trying to choose what he would rescue for his final trip. There really was no question, however. There was a longbow on the wall that had belonged to Ceridwen, a gift she had given to Conan Doyle before he had left Faerie. Squire snatched the bow off the wall just as the closet doors flew open and Morrigan stood silhouetted in the light from the room beyond.

  "You should have run further than this, wretched thing," she snarled, the red scarf that had covered her hair now down around her neck. Her nostrils flared. "Go on, hobgoblin. Choose whatever weapon you like." With a flourish she gestured to the armaments that remained in the closet.

  The light from the outer room reached deep inside the closet. Morrigan had him trapped. Or so she thought. For the wicked bitch had barely noticed that she cast her own shadow, and it was as black as her heart.

  "Sorry, babe," Squire said, taking a single step toward her. "I'm a lover, not a fighter."

  And he dropped away into the shadow on the floor, her scream of rage following him down into the darkness.

  In the living room at the Ferrick house, Clay stood behind a high-backed chair with his arms crossed. Eve sat at the edge of the chair, resting her hands on her knees, and when she spoke she sounded more earnest than Clay had ever heard her. On the sofa, Danny Ferrick stared at her, brows knitted beneath the little nubs of his horns. He was slouched down as though he might sink into the cushions, baggy black pants hanging on his legs like curtains. The boy's mother was so pale Clay thought she would either vomit or faint within the next few seconds.

  She surprised him. The woman was stronger than she looked.

  "You're lying!" Julia Ferrick said, her chest rising and falling quickly as though she was trying to keep from hyperventilating.

  Clay put both hands on the back of Eve's chair. "No, Mrs. Ferrick. I can assure you that she's not."

  Beside her, on the couch, the boy she had always thought of as her son began to laugh softly. Clay was unsure what to make of that laugh and he narrowed his eyes as he studied the boy, who kept rubbing the soles of his red Converse high-tops on the carpet. Danny Ferrick shook his head and reached up to run his fingers over his small horns again. He sighed, glanced at Clay, and then focused on Eve. He was a teenaged boy and Eve was every teenaged boy's dream of a woman, and so he trusted her.

  "Seriously. You're not just messing with me?"

  Eve shook her head. "No, Danny. No way."

  The kid frowned again, narrowing his eyes. "So who is this Doyle guy again?" He turned to his mother. "How did
you meet him?"

  Mrs. Ferrick gazed at her son as though another word from him would shatter her like a china doll. She fidgeted with her hands again, and for the first time, Clay noticed how short her fingernails were. A couple of them were ragged. The woman had clearly been stressed even before all this lunacy had come into her life. Danny's mother gnawed her lower lip.

  "I don't suppose either of you has a cigarette?"

  No one responded. Mrs. Ferrick shook her head. "Just as well. I quit." Then she lowered her eyes. "Mr. Doyle came to see me a few years ago. Just showed up on the doorstep one day while you were at school. Your . . . your condition had already started to show up. Your skin. But only just. I . . . I'm not even sure you had noticed it yet, but I had, just at the back of your neck one morning at breakfast.

  "Mr. Doyle rang the bell. He was so polite, and so well-dressed, I thought he must be selling something or . . . or trying to convert me or something." She uttered a tiny laugh of disbelief that sounded very much as though she were choking on unshed tears. "He said —"

  The woman shook her head. Clay wanted to go to her, to sit with her and comfort her, but he knew there would be another time for that. For now, the truth was what mattered, and he did not want to interrupt the telling of it.

  "What did he say, Mom?" Danny asked, trying to get his mother to look up at him. "Did he tell you . . . what Eve just said?"

  "No," Mrs. Ferrick said, catching her breath. "All he said was that . . . that someday I would want to ask him some questions about you, and that when the day came I should call. And he gave me his card and he . . . he just left. I thought he was some nut. Some . . . some asshole, thinking he knows something about my son that I don't."

  Eve sat back in her chair and lifted her chin, appraising Mrs. Ferrick. "But you kept his card."

  The look the woman shot at Eve was full of venom. "Yes. Yes, I kept the card. He's my son. I brought him up myself. Everything I've ever done has been for him. I'd do anything for Danny. So, yes, I kept the card. Now you come telling me he's some . . . some demon child, some changeling baby, whatever the hell that even means."

  "I explained what it —" Eve began.

  "I don't want your explanations!" Mrs. Ferrick said, her voice on the edge of hysteria. She brought one hand up to her mouth, gnawing a bit on her thumbnail, oblivious to their attentions.

  "Mom," Danny said, his eyes revealing his pain, and he touched her arm to try to calm her. She grabbed his hand and held on tight.

  "Now you come telling me that he isn't my son? That Danny isn't my boy at all? To hell with both of you and your Mr. Doyle, too." Mrs. Ferrick glanced at Danny. "He's all I've got."

  Eve began to say something more but now Clay leaned down and touched her on the shoulder and she closed her mouth. For a long moment the Ferricks, mother and son, just sat there holding hands, both of them staring at their unwelcome visitors. They were a strange sight, the woman in her suburban mother uniform of khaki trousers and white blouse, and the boy in his baggy, unbuttoned shirt with the bright orange surfing tee underneath. Clay focused on Danny. The boy seemed not to want to look at him, but at last he did. Clay nodded gently. Danny swallowed and licked his lips, baring his needle teeth, if only for a moment. He took a deep breath and turned to his mother.

  "Hey. Mom. Look at me."

  Mrs. Ferrick studied his eyes.

  "No. I mean look at me."

  Defiantly, she continued to stare into his eyes.

  "It's killing me, what I see in the mirror, y'know?" Danny said, and the anguish in his tough-guy voice was enough to force Clay to glance away a moment. "But, well, what they say makes sense. Sucks, but it makes sense. And if it's true . . . God, if it's true I'm sorry, 'cause that means the kid you had in the hospital . . . he's somewhere else. I don't know where. But you're my mother. And you're the best. Seriously. You are.

  "But if it's true . . . and I can't lie to you, it feels true. If it is, it means I'm not a freak. I'm not some fucked-up kid who doesn't fit in anywhere, 'cause I don't have to. I'm not one of them. One of the nasty little pukes I go to school with. If it's true . . . and I think I want it to be. That would be better, I think. Better than the way things have been."

  Mrs. Ferrick recoiled from her son, stood up and turned her back on the sofa, on her guests. She was quivering and hugging herself, and when she turned again, there were tears streaming down her face and she had bitten her lip hard enough that a small trickle of blood went down her chin.

  "How can you . . . how can you say that?" she whispered, sniffling, wiping away tears and blood. Then she shook her head again, with finality, and stared at Eve and Clay. "I don't believe it. I won't believe in it. I've never believed in angels and demons, no heaven or Hell. That's all bullshit. None of it is real."

  Eve began to stand, but Clay was faster. He moved around the chair and strode toward Mrs. Ferrick. She flinched as though afraid he might attack her. Clay passed her and went to the window, then quickly drew back the curtain.

  "Have a look, Mrs. Ferrick. You've seen what's going on out there. Are you telling me none of that is real?"

  She hesitated a moment, then joined him at the window. Clay looked with her, and together they gazed out at her neighborhood, overrun with a crimson fog, at the sun blacked out by an eclipse, at a swarm of mosquitoes that clung to a car as it careened down the street, tires squealing, only to bump up over the sidewalk and crash into a minivan parked in a driveway just a few houses away. The shattering of glass and crump of metal upon metal made the woman flinch.

  "There are . . ." she began weakly, "there are explanations for it. All of it."

  Clay sighed. He stepped in front of her, forcing the woman to look at him. "All right. All right. Give me an explanation, then, for this."

  He reached out and touched her hand and in an instant of painfully shifting bones and flesh that flowed like mercury, he became Julia Ferrick, right down to her gnawed fingernails and her white peasant blouse. The woman blinked and gasped for air, breath hitching in her throat as she stared at the mirror image of herself that he had become.

  And then she fainted, tumbling so quickly toward the floor that Clay did not have a chance to catch her. He was only grateful that the living room was carpeted.

  "Mom!" Danny called, running to her, kneeling beside her. The kid twisted his face up into a terrible grimace and when he spoke again it was in a rasping whisper. "I'm sorry. Sorry I'm not what you wanted."

  Clay decided to give the boy a moment to collect himself. He stepped back, then looked over to where Eve was unfolding from her chair.

  "That went well," she said.

  Before Clay could respond to her sarcasm he heard the squeal of tires yet again from outside the window. He turned, peering through the glass into the darkness beyond, and saw the limousine barreling through the suburban neighborhood. Its brakes screamed as it skidded to a halt in front of the Ferrick home, and then slowly turned into the driveway.

  "Eve," Clay said. "Trouble."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tom Stanley stood above the grave of his recently departed mother and wept, hot scalding tears streaking his round, cherubic features. It was this way every time he visited, a deluge of sorrow for the woman who had meant the world to him.

  He crouched upon his mother's grave and used the elbow of his jacket to rub imaginary fingerprints from her gray marble headstone. It had been set in place earlier that week by the groundskeepers of the Mount Auburn Cemetery, and Tom could not escape the certainty that they had marred it somehow. He paused, studied the gleaming marble, and then shook his head, buffing the stone again. His mother had been gone for a little more than two weeks, and already it felt like forever.

  Strange shadows moved across the ground and Tom gazed up from his routine of sorrow, troubled by something he could not put a name to. The cemetery was strangely deserted this day, perhaps because the weather was so odd. Far off in the distance he heard what could have been the faint rumble of thunder.
He wished that he had bothered to listen to a weather report before leaving the house. The sun was partially obscured by weird, shifting, gray clouds and a strange, reddish fog drifted just above the gravesites.

  Like the red tide in the ocean, he thought. What the hell is this? Biologicial warfare in the city of Cambridge? He chuckled to himself, a bit giddy, a razor edge of hysteria bubbling just under the surface, as it had since his mother's death.

  His gaze shifted back to the headstone. Loving Mother, he read through teary eyes, and couldn't have agreed more with the simple inscription. He doubted there had ever been a mother more dedicated to her child's happiness than Patricia Stanley.

  Tom removed a silver flask from his coat pocket and had another jolt of whiskey. He had been indulging more since his mother's passing, to help ease the pain of her loss, and was beginning to worry that a problem was developing. That's all I need, he thought, helping himself to another large swig before screwing the cap back on and returning the flask to his pocket, another problem.

  Widowed not long after his birth, she had always been there for him, playing the role of both mother and father. He could still hear her voice as she defended her only son from accusations that he had been responsible for the deaths of some neighborhood cats and dogs. These were echoes of a past that seemed only yesterday, but in truth was so very long ago. That was the nature of time, though.

  Time was a teasing bitch, and he wished that he could treat it like all the other teasing bitches who thought they were better than him.

  How dare you accuse my Tommy! his mother had wailed. To think my little boy could be responsible for such a thing is a sin!

  He was sure she had always known that he had killed the pets. But she wasn't about to let them ruin her son's good name. And besides, they were only stupid animals, what harm had he really done?

  Tom wished that she had been as understanding about the other killings.

  Once again tears filled his eyes and he wondered if he would ever feel happy again, or if there would only be grief for him now, forevermore. He had been coming here every day since her burial, hoping to experience some sense of closure, but all he felt was the gaping hole left by his loss.