I watched him work, fascinated. I’d never seen this part of his investigations before. My involvement had inevitably come during the monsters-and-screaming portions, and it was a pleasant change to see his talents at work in this fashion.
Finished with the bedroom, he moved to the largest room, examining the drawers, which had been yanked free from the desk. “Look at these scratches,” he said, pointing at the face of one of the drawers. Deep gouges marred the wood to either side of the pull.
“Was it locked, perhaps?” I asked, although the marks seemed in an odd location for someone trying to force the drawer open.
“This type of desk doesn’t lock,” he replied, putting the drawer aside and examining another, which bore the same sort of scratches.
“Er, should we…summon someone?” I suggested weakly.
“The only law in Threshold is the Pinkertons, and they work for the very company which didn’t want the photographs published,” Griffin replied. “We will alert Elliot, of course, but not until after we have an opportunity to look around. If you would, please go through the papers and make certain there’s nothing of use to us. If anything seems at all relevant, take it now and we’ll read through it later.”
I went to the scattered papers and picked them up, hoping to find some sort of order. “My dearest pudding pie,” I read aloud.
“Yes, my little turnip?”
“Hilarious,” I muttered. “If you ever call me anything of the sort again, we shall have words. There is a great deal of correspondence here, but it mainly seems to have been saved from their courtship.” I scanned a few paragraphs at random as I sorted through the papers, and the tips of my ears grew hot. “It, er, mostly describes the liberties she hoped to take with his person. Dear lord, the man must have been an acrobat if she hoped to accomplish that!”
Griffin cleared his throat. “Please stop reading the licentious affairs of others and return to the matter at hand.”
“Oh, er, yes.” I blushed again and hurriedly put the letters aside. Unfortunately, the other papers consisted merely of mundane items such as receipts of sale and recipe cards. Nothing connected with our investigation, and no photographs of any kind.
Griffin finished his inspection and beckoned me outside. Dropping to his knees again, he peered at the muddy marks on the porch. “Odd,” he murmured.
“What?”
He sat back and point to the prints our boots had left. “Do you see the general roundness of a footprint? There is an oval shape, even when scuffed or smeared. These are more like crescents.”
“What does it mean?”
“No idea.” He rose to his feet in a single, graceful move. I trailed him off the porch; he inspected the soft ground in front of the house, then moved around to the side. When we came to the area beneath the bedroom window, however, he let out a soft hiss and dropped into a crouch. “Whyborne! See here!”
I hurried to his side and mimicked his posture. In the soft mud beneath the window was pressed a single…well, it wasn’t a footprint. Rather, the crescent shape more resembled the claw of some gigantic crustacean.
~ * ~
Griffin and I reported the Webbs’ disappearance to Elliot. Clearly disturbed, he promised to investigate, although I doubted he’d uncover anything more than Griffin had already. Not knowing what else to do, we returned to the hotel. While Griffin updated Christine, I went to my room, intending to change back into a comfortable pair of oxfords, as opposed to clunking about the hotel in thick-soled boots.
As I approached my room, one of the hotel maids let herself out, no doubt having just finished her work of straightening up. She shot me a nervous glance as we passed in the hall, but with her uniform of a black dress with white collar and cuffs, and a plain white headscarf, it took me an instant to recognize her.
“Mrs. Hicks!” I exclaimed.
She froze, like a startled deer. “Sir?”
“I had no idea you worked at the hotel.” Although there was really no reason I should have; I’d merely assumed she’d referred to her duties as a housewife when she’d spoken of getting back to work during our previous conversation.
“Yes, sir. Please, I’ll be in trouble if I don’t get my work done quick enough.”
“Oh, er, of course, please forgive me.” But as I started to turn away, I realized she didn’t carry anything I would expect a maid to need in the course of her normal duties. No feather duster, or dirty linens, or anything of the sort.
She had already started to leave. “Stop!” I called.
I half expected her to flee, but she seemed to realize the futility of it. I disliked the way her shoulders hunched, though, as if she thought the order would be followed with some show of physical violence.
“You left the note in my room,” I said, careful to keep my voice down. “And you’ve just left another, haven’t you?”
“Sir, I…”
“Stay here. Please.”
I ducked swiftly into my room. As I’d thought, a small, folded note lay atop my pillow. Snatching it up, I went back out, before unfolding it. In the same childish handwriting as before, it said:
Mr. Kenkade weren’t himself.
Don’t trust those as have gone to the wood.
Signed,
A Friend
“My daddy was a house slave,” she said unexpectedly. “When he was a little boy, he’d carry the master’s son’s books to school, then sit in the back and listen. That was how he learned to read and write, even though it weren’t legal, and he passed it on to me.”
Although her voice was soft and she didn’t raise her eyes to my face, her shoulders tilted defiantly, as if she felt she had to explain her literacy but couldn’t quite suppress pride in her father.
A sort of horror washed over me, quite unrelated to the case. Books had been my salvation as a child; I could not imagine what might have become of me without them. And although I was perfectly aware many of my own race were unable to read, to have it actually be illegal to even attempt to learn seemed a monstrous injustice.
No doubt Griffin would call me a fool, to think this the worst thing humans had done to one another. And I knew he would be right, yet, somehow, this instance struck home and made things real to me in a way other examples might not.
“I see,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “Well. I, er, hope you will pass along the skill to your own child.” Or would it be allowed to attend the town’s school? I didn’t know.
She gave me a quizzical look, but some of the fear had eased from her face, at least. “Please, Mrs. Hicks,” I said. “I don’t understand what ‘going to the woods’ means. If you can shed any light on what’s happening in Threshold, help me.”
Her teeth flashed white against her lower lip, worrying it uncertainly. “I don’t rightly know the extent of it myself, sir. Just what Rider told me. But you seen for yourself the truth of it. Those Kincaid boys wouldn’t have run off and left their mama and daddy in such straits. Certainly not to become robbers and murderers, without any cause at all. They went into the woods, and now they ain’t…them anymore. And Mr. Orme is the same.”
“What?” My heartbeat quickened. “Mr. Orme?”
Mrs. Hicks nodded. “My cousin is a maid in the operator’s household. After all this started, with the black stone and the yayhos and such…Mr. Orme, he changed. Turned cold. Not mean, just…different.”
A chill walked up my spine on spider feet. I wondered suddenly if the Webbs would return, the sly photographer replaced by a man with Orme’s reptilian gaze. And the Kincaid brothers—hadn’t I noticed their icy demeanors?
“That was when Mr. Orme ordered Rider arrested,” she went on quietly. “And why Rider ran. Because them as go to the woods and come back different don’t mean us any good.”
“Mrs. Hicks, please. The only person who seems to know anything about what is happening is your husband. I swear to you, I mean him no harm whatsoever, and will do everything in my power to protect him. If
you know where to find him, tell me, I beg you.”
She trembled, and, for a moment, I truly did not know whether she would speak or not. “I leave a cache of food and suchlike for him every few days,” she said, her voice so soft I had to strain to hear her, even as close as we stood in the hall. “He can’t be far from it.”
She told me the location of the cache; her directions meant little to me, but I repeated them back dutifully.
When she finished, she took a step away from me. This time, I let her go. “Thank you, Mrs. Hicks.”
Her eyes were sad and frightened. “Help Rider, if you can, sir,” she said in a small voice. Then she hurried away down the hall, leaving me alone in silence.
~ * ~
Naturally, I rushed back downstairs immediately to inform Griffin and Christine. I repeated the directions to the cache back, before I forgot them entirely. Griffin listened intently.
“Yes,” he said. “Give me a half an hour, then meet me at the livery stable.”
At least I’d never gotten around to taking off my awful boots.
We did as he asked, taking the opportunity to grab a bite of dinner before leaving the hotel to meet him. The air remained stubbornly humid, even after the setting of the sun. At least there was a breeze now, although it was accompanied once again by the distant grumble of thunder. Apparently, evening thunderstorms were the norm here in the spring, rather than the exception.
I’d hoped I’d mistaken the intent behind Griffin’s suggestion we meet outside the livery stable, but as we approached, the light of the lantern he held limned his handsome face in gold—and gleamed in the eyes of the three horses tied up behind him.
I came to a halt, but Christine strode directly up to the beasts. “Oh, excellent. I’d worried you meant to hike about in the dark. Have you selected one for yourself?”
“The black, I think,” Griffin said, patting the creature in question.
I took a tentative step closer. “You can’t mean for us to…to ride about, can you?”
Griffin frowned at me. “Surely you can ride, Whyborne.”
“Well…yes. I’ve ridden before.” My childhood friend Leander had loved horses, and insisted I join him on little tours around his estate. Of course, I hadn’t been on one of the beasts in a decade, instead riding in cabs, like a civilized person.
“Then mount up!” Christine exclaimed. She swung easily into the saddle, as if she did such things all the time. No doubt she rode horses and wrangled camels as a matter of course in Egypt.
I stared at the remaining creature. I could barely make it out in the dim light, but I thought it was brown in color, with a white blaze on its forehead. What was more obvious was it was very tall and very large.
“Do you need help adjusting the stirrups?” Griffin offered kindly.
“No! Well, yes.”
Griffin assisted me up onto the towering monster’s back and adjusted the stirrups to fit my long legs, before stepping back with a grin. “Don’t fret, my dear—you’ll be fine.”
I rather doubted it. Griffin swung up onto his mount with the same ease Christine had shown, and I remembered his tales of chasing train robbers and the like across the west. Of course he was an accomplished horseman. No doubt Elliot rode like a cowboy as well.
Griffin’s steed responded to a light touch of his knee and headed away from the livery stable at a brisk walk. Mine followed, more or less by default, as I’d done nothing to encourage it I was aware of.
“Buck up, Whyborne!” Christine called from behind me. “They can sense fear, you know!”
Wonderful. I’d be trampled to death by midnight.
Griffin led the way up along the cleared area, avoiding the bulk of the town. I clung grimly to the reins, every step—trot—whatever—of the horse jarring my spine. As we approached the woods, Griffin glanced back and me and winced. “Try to sit more loosely,” he advised. “You’re bouncing along like a sack of wet laundry. Move with the horse.”
“Oh, yes, why didn’t I think of that?” I muttered under my breath. As for what he even meant to begin with, I hadn’t the slightest notion.
Thunder growled over the mountain, louder now, and my horse let out a worried snort. I rather shared the sentiment. The wind picked up, rattling the trees as they closed around us, and bringing with it the scent of rain. The temperature dropped quickly, the oppressive feeling of the air giving way to something wilder.
I looked about worriedly, but the tossing trees already blocked the scattered lights of Threshold. Cloud rack covered the sky from horizon to horizon now, and our lanterns seemed to be the only points of light in all the world.
Griffin slowed his horse and cast about. “Listen,” he said.
“I don’t hear anything except the wind.”
He nodded. “Exactly. The frogs and whippoorwills have fallen silent.”
My skin crawled, and the horse seemed to agree, snorting and tossing its head, tugging at the reins in my clenched hands. We surely couldn’t have penetrated far into the forest, but in the dark I had no idea which direction would lead us back to Threshold and which deeper into the hollow.
“How much further?” I asked. Surely Mrs. Hicks wouldn’t have journeyed too deep into the countryside, given the dangers lurking in the woods.
“Not very—did you hear that?”
The wind howled down off the mountain, and the trees thrashed, branches rubbing together with obscene moans. But underneath it all, nearer at hand, there came the sound of something moving over the forest floor, snapping twigs and crunching leaves.
Christine pulled her rifle from her shoulder. “There’s something moving in the woods.”
Fear prickled along my arms, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Every shift of the trees seemed to herald an attack. Griffin drew his revolver, guiding his nervous horse in a circle with his free hand.
The edge of the lantern light fell across something moving toward us.
My blood froze in my veins at the sight. The shape was poorly lit, but I could just make out its general outline: huge and menacing and utterly inhuman. There were multiple legs, and wings, and what might have been a pyramidal snout in place of a true head. The reek of ammonia gusted over us, strong enough to make me gag. The horses whinnied in terror, their eyes rolling, even as Christine and Griffin both opened fire on the half-glimpsed horror.
Something hard and sharp, like a pincer, grabbed me from behind.
Chapter 14
My horse and I both let out shrill cries at the same instant.
Then my mount heaved under me; I clasped my legs tightly to its sides as it sprang away from whatever had tried to grab us. The cloth of my suit coat tugged and tore, and the lantern fell from my grip as I clung to the reins with both hands.
A better rider might have controlled the horse, but I could only hang on for dear life. It plunged madly away from the creatures, heedless of where it ran. Branches tore at my face and hands, and I bent low over the horse’s neck in an attempt to shield myself.
Thunder roared almost directly overhead, and a deluge opened up. Rain pelted us even through the heavy canopy of trees. The horse’s hooves slipped in the layers of wet, rotting leaves, and the world tilted—
I fell, the leather reins whipping through my fingers fast enough to burn. My shoulder hit the ground, and I found myself tumbling down a steep slope. I grabbed wildly for something—anything—to stop my fall, thin branches striking my face, until I fetched up painfully against a tree.
I clung to the solid trunk, gasping for breath, my head spinning as I tried to make sense of my surroundings. I had no idea how far the horse had carried me, or even what had become of the wretched beast. All I saw was utterly black, except for the occasional flashes of lightning. I was alone, and had no idea if Griffin and Christine were all right, or if the things had—
My heart lurched painfully in my chest at the thought. No, please, no, nothing had happened to them. They had surely fought off the creature
s and even now searched for me. I couldn’t let myself be distracted by fear, not when I was in such a dangerous position myself.
I needed to do something, but what? How could I possibly find my way back to them? And where were the monsters—the yayhos? One could be standing behind me right now.
A hand closed on my elbow.
I spun with a shriek, striking out blindly. They would not take me without a fight, even if a pitiful one.
“Shh!” A hand—a human hand—closed over my mouth, muffling my cry. “Be quiet, you damned fool! They’re all around us!”
I froze. A crack of lightning revealed the man standing pressed against me. I received the impression of a hawk nose and dark eyes, high cheekbones and glossy black hair. Surely this must be Rider Hicks.
Seeing I had calmed, Hicks removed his hand, then pulled me down the slope behind him. Another flash of lightning showed me a low stone wall and a wooden door: the remains of a spring house, almost invisible amidst the stones and fallen branches littering the hillside.
He dragged me inside, shutting the door behind us and pressing his ear against it. I followed suit, although I didn’t know if I’d be able to hear anything over the pounding of my heart. The wood felt damp and slimy against my ear, and the fetid odor of mildew and wet rock choked my nostrils.
I don’t know how long we stood there in the blackness, listening to the rain pound the leaves and the wind whip the trees. It seemed like years, or at least hours, as if dawn should have come and gone a dozen times over.
A branch snapped loudly, as if something had stepped on it.
Probably just the storm. Or even my horse, come to put an end to me with a heart attack, as it had failed to murder me with the fall.
A soft crunching sound, as of feet against the leaves and stones, followed. Not my horse. In truth, it sounded more like a drunken man staggering about than something more sinister. Lightning struck nearby, the flash seeping through the cracks in the crumbling door, and Hicks’s eyes went wide in horror. Then we were in darkness again, and I heard him groping about.
Whyborne and Griffin, Books 1-3 Page 38
