The Hanged Man

by P. N. Elrod

  A short, savage cry drew her attention back to the sniper’s building. The two men were against the low wall, their rasping breath audible as they slammed fists like pugilists who’d forsaken the rules of the ring.

  One gained an advantage unseen in the distance and dark, locked his hands around the other’s throat, and then flung himself backward—over the wall.

  The second man was dragged along, but managed to grab the edge, taking the weight of both for two heartbeats before his grasp slipped. They struck the entry roof with a sickening thud, and momentum carried them down to the street. Alex heard the muffled pop of bones breaking.

  The flying squad man landed on his much larger adversary, who lay still. The man moved feebly and fell away, struggling for air, having apparently had all his breath knocked out. His clothing was torn from the fight, one sleeve gone from the sweater and the balaclava askew over his face. He groggily pawed at it.

  “I’m with Colonel Mourne,” she said, kneeling over him. “Let me help.”

  He wheezed and attempted to push her away, but she got past his waving arm and pulled the covering clear … then rocked so far back on her heels as to go completely over.

  He tried to drag the covering into place but was too late. She’d seen his face and were that not proof enough, then the tattoos snaking over his bare arm confirmed it.

  “Blast and damn,” said Lord Richard Desmond, his pale eyes glaring at her. Then they clouded, and he collapsed, chest heaving as he fought to recover his breath.

  Alex scrambled backward, awkwardly getting to her feet. In an instant she understood the appalling fear she’d picked up from Mrs. Woodwake; Alex felt it seize her as well. Impulse struggled with intellect, neither offering enlightenment for the impossibility before her. Hardly aware of the action, she raised her Webley, pointing it at Lord Richard.

  He glanced her way and captured enough air to speak. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  She made no move, peripherally aware of the others as they dealt with less extraordinary matters. A man eased next to her and placed his hand over hers to gently persuade her to aim elsewhere.

  “I’ll see to him, miss,” he said briskly. “Are you unhurt?”

  His touch conveyed his confidence and exhilaration; the emotions engendered by battle were so strong as to sieve right through her shock. She was wretchedly vulnerable, her internal barriers a shambles. Alex pulled away, keeping hold of her pistol, for its anchoring weight was reassuring.

  “Explain,” she said distinctly and to no one in particular.

  The man ignored her as he checked the body of the sniper.

  Richard, able to sit up, muttered, “For God’s sake, not now.”

  His comrade made a sound, as though in agreement, but suddenly staggered from a blow. The no-longer-stunned sharpshooter burst into violent movement, flinging the man aside.

  Several squad members leaped in, truncheons swinging and slamming with wicked force. Despite the fall and broken bones, he threw off one after another, finally rising to his full height, standing a foot taller than the tallest. He had shoulders like a giant, and there was something wrong with their strange sloping shape.

  Moving with unnatural speed, he slipped a massive arm around Richard’s throat, lifting him. He struggled, but had no success breaking free.

  The tumult brought the tiger back. It paused, seeming to take in the scene, then launched forward in a smooth, crouching movement, like a housecat sneaking up on an unwary bird. But the shootist turned in time to see, dropped Lord Richard, and foiled the attack by meeting the beast halfway.

  Alex could scarce follow the melee as the two rolled and roared, the tiger clawing the shootist’s back to ribbons, the giant strangling the cat with one hand and punching at its belly with the other. A chance reflection revealed the blade of a knife flashing amid the flying blood.

  The great cat twisted and clamped its jaws on the knife hand, ending the torment with a savage shake that severed the man’s arm below the elbow—but the giant’s grip on the tiger’s throat continued. Ignoring his own wounds, he raised it high as though it were no more than a kitten. The animal was weakening for lack of air, tongue thrust forward between bared fangs, paws flailing. It suddenly went slack as a dead thing.

  The shootist dropped his burden and tore a gladius from a fallen fighter’s belt, rounding on Alex.

  At her first clear sight of his face, she froze, unable to accept the exaggerated simian features as anything but a grotesque mask.

  But no mask was capable of changing expression. Wide lips drew back to show inhumanly large teeth. His red eyes seemed to snap with fire and glow with fury, but she felt nothing, absolutely nothing, beating against her internal senses. There was no emotion at all from that huge body, no hint of pain, no shred of anger. It might as well have been a wisp of fog—

  A ghost.

  Her heart faltered, recovered, catching up with her mind as it hurtled toward an improbable but inevitable conclusion. With no solid evidence, only surmise crossed with emotion, she knew beyond all doubt that this was her father’s killer. However monstrous it appeared, it possessed the wit to creep in and—

  The images in her mind’s eye of what had followed in that quiet Harley Street room were fleeting and vicious; she blotted them out, not wanting to see.

  Lord Richard began to stir again. He groggily felt for his own weapon, but his belt had been lost in the fight. The giant uttered a short snarl as though dismissing Alex as a threat and turned toward him.

  Half an arm gone, bleeding in pulses from the stump, it bore down like a machine, as inexorable and no more conscious of itself than a locomotive. Its fingers were much too long even on that huge knotted hand. Wrapped clumsily around the short sword’s grip, they angled the blade to gut Richard like a fish.

  While he was something unknown and inspiring fear, this bestial thing was an abomination.

  Raising her Webley, Alex surged forward.

  Her own hand was rock steady, a sure and certain extension of her will—and unlike the grotesquery before her, she felt rage. It roared forth from her small form like living flame as she fired point-blank.

  Her last bullet crashed through its skull. Blood and brains exploded out the other side. The body spasmed forward, falling heavily across Richard. The blade struck hard, the point ramming between the cobbles an inch from his head. It stayed there, a truncated version of ancient Arthur’s sword in the stone.

  A dazed Lord Richard pushed clear of the madly twitching body, gaped at the quivering gladius, and then at Alex standing over him, smoke from her revolver drifting in the still, cold air.

  “Explain,” she repeated, this time specifically addressing him.

  He tried that pale glare again, but this time she stared him down.

  He finally nodded. “My word on it.”

  Brook loomed before her. He’d been one of those thrown around by the all-too-corporeal ghost and was the worse for wear with his clothes torn and a swelling, blackening eye.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, anticipating the same question from him.

  “What about yourself?”

  “Alive and standing.”

  Her gaze fell toward the tiger, lying on its side on the cobbles. It coughed pitifully, limbs and body shivering, dying in agony from all those knife wounds. The poor beast … she cast about for another gun to put it from its misery.

  Limping, Lord Richard got to it first. Instead of keeping a safe distance, he knelt next to the wounded beast, putting a hand on its flank, bending close to one ear.

  “Come on, you old fool, wake out of it,” he ordered roughly. “Come on!”

  It coughed again, opened its vast green eyes, and gave a long groan.

  “I know, but you can do it. I still owe you five shillings. Don’t let me get away with that.”

  The animal shuddered and seemed to shrink. Alex could not follow exactly what happened, for it was swift and dark and whatever it was that impressed upon he
r brain was quickly rejected. One instant there lay before her a dying tiger, the next Colonel Mourne was in its place, shakily sitting up.

  “Dickie?” he said in a thin voice.

  “You’re back,” Richard assured him.

  “Blood, I smell blood.” He gave a start, his hand sweeping across the front of his clothes, which were covered in the stuff.

  “Most of it’s yours. Give yourself a minute to remember.”

  “That’s the worst, I do. What in God’s name was that thing? All I wanted was to kill it, whatever the cost.”

  “I know. We’ll find out later. Catch your breath.” So saying, Richard straightened and followed his own advice, then moved on to check the others.

  “Miss Pendlebury…” began Brook, but he seemed unable to finish.

  “Indeed. The world’s gotten just a bit madder. But they do seem to be on our side.”

  “So far.”

  * * *

  At some point, Brook led her from the immediate area and indicated that she should stay until his return. She had no objection to standing quietly for the few moments. She wanted to think, but was unable to do so. Nothing, in all her varied experience of the world, had prepared her for such as this.

  Brook came back bearing the carpetbag and her reticule, which he had to place in her hands. It felt heavy, then she remembered her lock picks and the box of cartridges.

  Reloading her Webley did not require thought. She broke it open, ignoring the blood that had spattered her hands and sleeves when she’d blown that unholy beast into perdition. Clearing the chambers of spent shells, she shoved in fresh ones, noting, with a small portion of astonishment, that her hands did not shake. She thought they ought to, considering.

  “You’re rather composed,” Brook observed.

  “This is shock. Why aren’t you screaming? I want to.”

  “What’s the point? These other chaps … well … there they are. Knocked about a bit, but soldiering on, a whole side of the Service I expect few know about. I doubt we were supposed to see any of that. The question is, what will they do with us?”

  A number of possibilities came to her, departing swiftly. “Lord Richard owes me his life. I will use that for all it’s worth.”

  The ambulatory members of the flying squad searched the area to make sure it was clear; the Black Maria was brought back. They removed their one surviving prisoner, the squad’s injured were loaded in his stead, and it departed for St. Bart’s, the nearest hospital. The enemy dead, including the monstrosity Alex had killed, were dragged inside the gate and left on the ground. The men moved as though they’d drilled for such macabre work.

  She did not participate. Alex lacked their physical strength and had no wish to touch the dead lest she Read their last moments. Her barriers were unsteady and brittle in the aftermath. Brook contributed by taking up the shootist’s air rifle, which had fallen from the roof. The weapon looked much like the others, but she noted differences that begged for closer study.

  A squad man by the open gate whistled sharply, motioning that they should hurry. They crossed the road with two other stragglers, entering the paved yard of a sizable building. Dirty snow was piled high in dim corners, shrouding the bones of cast-off machinery, broken crates, and other debris. The tall structure in the middle was cheerless, coated with decades of soot, and its iron barred windows might well have been bricked over for all the light the filthy glass allowed in or out.

  One of Colonel Mourne’s riders trotted past, his horse restive and snorting when it came close to the dead shootist. As soon as they cleared the gate, two men locked it and remained on watch.

  Alex wanted a closer look at her kill.

  She’d shot game before, to protect herself or to provide food, and afterward usually felt a letdown for taking a life, but not this time. Unconnected to any sense of revenge for her father, her heart swelled with a fierce pride of accomplishment. She’d removed something that was wrong, a thing that should not exist.

  Though it wore outsize clothing, little about it was human other than its general form. The red eyes were faded and dulling, the large jaw sagged, and there was a flatness to the body she recognized. Call it soul or spirit, when that departed, the physical remains were strangely reduced.

  Brook, not concealing his revulsion, said, “Seven foot tall if it’s an inch. How could anything that big, looking as it does, slip around London unnoticed?”

  “An excellent question. I would suggest powerful friends.”

  “Who could be friends with that?”

  “Lord Hollifield. He directed us straight into a trap.”

  Brook shook his head. “He found an old address. He couldn’t know what was here.”

  “He didn’t have to, just see to it that we were followed or send a message ahead.”

  “He’s your friend. Why would he wish you harm?”

  She had no answer to that. The idea that Hollifield could be involved in this devilish business was absurd, unthinkable. But not impossible, and if so, then something very nasty is afoot.

  “It makes no sense.”

  “We will find the sense, Mr. Brook. Obviously more information is required.” She started to reach toward the creature, then hesitated. Her psychical barriers were badly in need of shoring up, but she had no awareness of the thing on that level; what harm could befall by touching it?

  None, she discovered as she went through its pockets. All were empty.

  “He had a knife.…”

  “Over there.” Brook was content to just point at the lower half of the arm the tiger had bitten off. One of the men had placed it in the general area of its original attachment. The unnaturally long fingers still grasped the weapon.

  She pried them away with difficulty and examined the blade. Nothing remarkable: a folding clasp knife, and though large, such could be purchased from any number of shops. The maker was British. She would have liked a closer examination with a pocket lens, but such minutia could wait. She put it back and extended a hand toward the rifle Brook carried.

  “This,” she said after a moment, “is a conspicuously superior weapon to the one we took to Lord Hollifield. The air reservoir is heavier, so it would hold a more powerful charge, and there’s rifling in the barrel, more accurate, as that creature demonstrated.”

  “But shooting its own men?”

  “We’ve no proof that they’re linked beyond being in the same spot at the same time.”

  “No proof, but possible. You dislike coincidences; so do I. But this thing … I’ve read about gigantic apes running loose in the depths of Africa—could this be one of them?”

  “This is no animal. Not in the common definition of the word, anyway.”

  “Perhaps a human aberration, then, only this one was not displayed in a circus. It doesn’t look intelligent enough to do what it did, though.”

  “This thing is not human. Look at the structure of its hands. Even the apes in zoos have a greater anatomical similarity to us than what we have here. This is neither fish nor fowl. Whatever their outward appearance, people and animals alike have feelings. This…” She removed one glove, stretching her hand forth, along with her internal senses.

  Nothing.

  “Well?” said Lord Richard, from a few paces behind her.

  She’d sensed his approach and didn’t jump.

  “Like a hole in the air,” she said. “I should feel something, but cannot. Yet the horse reacted to it.”

  “That’ll be the blood, I expect. The smell of it is … not right.”

  She lifted her arm to sniff the stains there.

  “You won’t catch the difference.”

  “What is it, sir?” Unspoken was the thought And what are you?

  If he picked up a hint of the second question, he ignored it. Despite his torn clothes and general disarray, he looked as imperious now as he did in the coach on Harley Street with his ramrod posture and frosty manner. “I cannot say. The one fact I know is that the instant I clapped
eyes on the thing I wanted to kill it. Instinctive reactions that bypass thought are placed within us for a reason, usually to ensure our survival. You have my congratulations and gratitude for your timely intervention, Miss Pendlebury. I will not forget it.”

  “My duty, sir, though…”

  “Yes?”

  “I felt the same. This thing is wrong.”

  “Agreed. Have you studied it sufficiently for the present? Then come.”

  He led the way in. The building’s double doors were apparently locked but a smaller one on the side was in use and gaslight dazzled her a moment when it opened.

  The interior was bright, indicating that work went on here at all hours of the day and night. If not as tidy as a hospital, it had the same look of controlled efficiency and organization. Long rows of workbenches filled the barnlike space; machining apparatus and other tools she could not identify were everywhere. The smell of oil, hot metal, and sweat hung heavy in the stuffy air. The plank floor glittered with embedded brass filings.

  “It’s an air gun manufactory,” she whispered, taking in sturdy bins holding long barrels and other parts.

  “There’s hundreds—thousands of them,” said Brook.

  To the left was a partitioned-off area. Wood walls about nine feet high framed it, but it was open at the top. Within were drafting tables covered with papers and other clutter.

  In the center, bound tightly to a chair with his arms behind him, was the captured horseman. His back was to the door. His fingers clenched into fists and opened again as he strained against the ropes.

  Mourne’s lean form bent close; he spoke quietly to the prisoner, who kept shaking his head. Lord Richard remained without, close enough to listen, but not participate.

  Alex spared them a single glance, then attacked a stack of unopened mail on a table outside, having spied something on top. With a rush of satisfaction she showed Brook the card she’d ripped from a familiar cream-colored envelope.