“I’m no archaeologist, but it looks like an avocado stone with a chunk missing.”
“Trust me, I’m a doctor,” Jackie said. “This used to be beating inside a human being.”
“But how does it fit into the case? This is centuries old, right?”
Jackie nodded again.
“Bear with me. Yesterday this was inside a skeleton we brought up from the dig.”
“A skeleton? Did anybody call the cops?”
“Hundreds of years old…remember? We brought it straight here for analysis. These things are fragile and need to be handled with care.”
Mike looked down at the strewn bones.
“Looks like someone forgot that bit.”
“And if I find out who, I’ll rip them apart in the same way,” Jackie said. “Someone tore the skeleton to bits looking for something. They found this heart…and the bite is fresh…it was done sometime in the last twenty four hours.”
Mike began to pay attention.
First he had to try very hard to lift his eyes from Jackie’s shirt. The top three buttons were undone. She showed off an impressive expanse of cleavage. It seemed as if Mina’s voice played in his head.
Looky, but no nooky.
He smiled at the memory, and then realized that was the wrong thing to do, given where he was staring.
She saw him looking and gave him a thin smile back.
“Tell me when you’re coming over next time…I’ll wear a bikini.”
“I didn’t…”
“Yes, you did.”
She pulled at the shirt, covering the view as best she could.
“Look, I’m sorry…”Mike started.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She pointed back at the heart. “This is what’s important.”
“Does your boss, North, think so?”
“He hasn’t seen it yet. Nobody’s seen him today.”
“I’ve been trying to track him down myself,” Mike said. “We get suspicious when somebody who knew the victims disappears just after a murder.”
“You think Dick’s a suspect? No…You’re wrong there. Dick’s a pussycat. A very weird, focused pussycat.”
“Weird in what way?”
Jackie suddenly backtracked.
“Oh, I didn’t mean…”
Mike had seen it in witnesses many times. They say a bit too much, realize they might have implicated a friend, and then try to repair the damage. It was time for the softly, softly approach.
“We just need to contact him,” Mike said. “To make sure he’s okay. If we’re to find him it would be good to know his habits.”
“Dick has many habits, detective. Most of them bad.”
She went back to staring at the dried up heart.
“He’s a bad boss? A bit of a tyrant?”
She shook her head.
“No. But he’s got high standards. And he takes his subject very seriously. He believes we can’t understand archaeology unless we experience what the people we’re studying have experienced.”
“How does he manage that?”
Something tickled at the back of Mike’s mind, his cop instincts kicking in at the sniff of a lead.
“Take last year for example,” Jackie continued. “We were down in the Yucatan cleaning up after an oil company almost flattened a three-thousand-year-old Mayan mausoleum.
“Dick deciphered some writings that showed the indigenous people ate the genitals of bulls raw to give them strength. Next thing we know he’s down the local market haggling over a pizzle. Later, after he’d chopped it up into little pieces, he tried to get us all to have a taste, telling us it was a local delicacy.”
“Did anybody take him up on it?”
“No. Everybody knew his tastes for the exotic. We were all suspicious. That didn’t stop him from wolfing the lot down though. He said it was delicious. He swore it did actually make him stronger.”
Mike looked at the dried up piece of flesh. The tickle was stronger now.
“Did you ever see him eat anything else that was exotic?”
Jackie saw where he looked.
“No,” she said. “You can’t think…?”
“These aren’t the only bite marks I’ve seen today,” he said.
He took out his cell phone and hit his speed-dial number for Mina. She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, big boy.”
He’d forgotten to turn the volume down…her voice came through loud and clear. He saw the smile that curled on Jackie’s lips.
“Big boy, huh? Consider us even.”
He walked away from the trestle to the far end of the lab.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“About to head home for a shower,” she said. “Care to join me?”
“Hold that thought till later,” he said. “I’m still working. Any ID on the biter yet?”
“Nope. The search came up blank. Either he’s not been in trouble before, or he’s not from around here. Jon’s checking out the national database, but that takes a while.”
“I’ve got something that might speed things up. Can you bring some pictures of the wounds and meet me at the campus Archaeology department. I’ve got something you need to see.”
“A match?”
“Maybe.”
Mike’s radio crackled. It was the precinct. The voice at the other end sounded concerned, maybe even panicky.
“Mike? We’ve got a situation developing at Hunter’s Dock. We need you over there ASAP.”
“What’s going down?”
“Nobody knows yet. But we need you out there.”
“Mina?” he said into his phone. “I’ve caught a call. Come over here anyway. My spider senses are tingling…I think we’re on to something. You’ll be meeting one of the archaeologists, Jackie Donnelly. She’ll show you what you need to see. I’ll catch up with you later.”
He hung up on Mina and looked towards the far end of the lab. Jackie Donnelly stood, hunched over the finds.
“Did you get any of that?” he asked.
“Only the gist. Who’s Mina?”
“She’s in forensics, in charge of the bod…of the deceased. She’ll need to see the bite marks.”
“The bodies were bitten?”
Mike nodded.
Jackie suddenly looked pale, eyes sunk back farther in her head. Mike thought she might faint on him. He had already stretched out a hand to steady her when she pulled herself together.
“How…?”Jackie started.
“Listen, I don’t have time. Mina will bring you up to speed. I’ve got to go.”
“Go then, I’ll wait for your friend…big boy.”
He let her have that one; he was in too much of a hurry.
Five minutes later he was in his car, heading at high speed for the docks.
* * *
Cole sat at the rack in the corner of his room trying to tune in to the police band. Something was going on; he’d heard the sirens, watched the cops speed past just below his window.
He had two choices; chase them on foot and possibly lose them, or find out where they were going.
The radio unit crackled. He’d bought it at a UFO conference years ago. “It picks up everything,” the seller had said. “Police bands, Air Force, hell, I’ve even heard broadcasts from the Black Helicopters over Dreamland.” Cole knew at that moment that he had to have it, just as he also knew it was illegal.
For most of the time he was afraid to use it.
But this is the big league now. Time to step up to the base and take a swing.
He swung the dials. He got air traffic control from JFK, a pilot tug out in the harbor waiting for instructions, and a traffic cop calling in a fender-bender in Times Square. Finally he found the dispatch frequency he looked for.
“All units. Please be advised. A security situation is in progress on Hunter’s Dock.”
Security situation, my lardy ass. After last night it can only be more of the same. Somebody else is going to get
taken!
He got an extra sweater and his winter coat from the wardrobe before heading for the door. He stopped to double check that the journal was still in his satchel.
No way am I letting you out of my sight. No way, Jose.
He’d left the television running. Just as he opened the door, a special bulletin interrupted the rolling news.
“Reports are coming in of freak weather conditions in the docklands area. At present details are sketchy, but it seems that abnormally low temperatures are being experienced over an ever-widening area. More news as we get it.”
Not if I get there first, Cole thought. He left the apartment.
Five minutes later he was in a cab heading for the dock.
“Hunter’s Dock,” he said. “There’s an extra ten bucks in it if you can get there in ten minutes.”
“Ambulance chaser,” the driver said. “Am I right or am I right? I heard there was something big occurring. Cops, ambulances, frigging Special Forces helicopters for all I know. And what does it say on the radio? Abnormal frigging weather conditions, I’ll tell you something for nothing…when I was a boy we never had no abnormal friggin’ weather. I blame the A-bomb myself. All you have to do is look at the temperatures since. When I was a boy…”
Cole tuned him out. Cab drivers were like little old ladies. They never really expect an answer. They just have to talk to remind themselves that they are still alive.
He checked the contents of his satchel for the third time since leaving the house. The journal was still there, alongside his notebook and a digital camera.
Just in case.
He’d never been so excited. His breath came too fast. His head felt light and floaty. He let out an involuntary moan.
“Hey. You all right back there?” the driver said. “You ain’t gonna die on me or nothing are you? I had somebody die on me once. Big guy, looked like a footballer. Coughed once and keeled over. I was balls-deep in paperwork for a month. Do you like lawyers? I hate the scumbags. I had that OJ Simpson in the cab one night. I can tell you a story or two. I remember when…”
Cole tuned him out again. He took the journal from the satchel and opened it, having to peer in the dim light to read the small neat writing.
* * *
Taken from the personal journal of John Fraser, Captain of the Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Entry date 17th October, 1605. Transcribed and annotated by Dick North, 17th March.
Once I made my escape from the privy I was too afeard to risk a look backwards. If I had seen the Pastor’s fate I do believe I may have given up my soul to the Lord there and then. But all I could see in my mind was the roaring heat of the fire, a beacon calling me to safety. I was close enough to hear the crew singing:
“There was a young lady from Brest,
Who had an enormous chest
You could place a whole city
On each of her titties
And hide a small hill in her vest.”
I mouthed along with the words. Although I was afraid to speak them aloud, the very nature of them, reminding me of home and the fireplace around the inn on the harbor of a summer’s evening, gave me what strength I needed to keep moving.
I had a bad moment when my feet slipped, and threatened to give way under me.
In my mind’s eye I saw something reach for me, something foul and cold from the worst nightmare of my childhood. I felt its cold, dead breath on my neck. I thought that my Maker had finally called for me.
I do believe I screamed, alone there in the dark. I may have lain there, unable to move if I hadn’t at the very moment thought of you, my dearest Lizzie. It was the memory of you on the dockside that got me moving. I managed to scramble away and I burst like a fury into the tavern.
Some of the crew turned and, on seeing me, laughed. But there must have been a fell look in my eyes, for their laughter died on their lips. The room fell suddenly quiet.
“What has happened, Cap’n,” the First Mate called.
I had no time to answer. I turned and slammed the oak door behind me as soon as I was full inside, but even then I felt the cold seep through the wood to my hands.
“Stoke the fire,” I called out.
No one moved. They were all stuck immobile by the shock of my sudden entrance.
I backed away from the door as a silver sheen of hoar frost ran across its surface.
“Where’s the Pastor? Where’s Bald Tom?” the voices cried.
“Dead,” I called out. “As you will be if you do not heed me. Stoke the fire! It is all that will save us now.”
Young Isaac was having none of it. He was one of the ones who had helped clear out the tavern earlier; he’d seen at first hand the slaughter that had happened in this enclosed space.
“I’m not going to be taken like them others. If I’m to die, it will be out in the open,” he called.
Before I could stop him he stepped forward and grabbed at the iron door handle…and was immediately frozen in place, icing-white like a grotesque cake decoration, mouth open in a mix of fear and surprise, his tongue lying like a cold grey stone in the floor of his mouth.
The men stood stock still, staring at what had become of the young deckhand.
“Stoke the bloody fire!” I called out once more. “Are you deaf as well as witless?”
The cold leached through the door and started to reach for me. And still they didn’t move.
“Have you forgotten those that we placed in the earth? Do you want to be like them? Stoke that bloody fire!”
Finally the First Mate had the sense to respond.
“You heard the Cap’n. Stoke this fire, or I’ll throw you on alongside the logs.”
Some of the men at last set to piling the hearthside logs on the fire while the rest of us backed slowly away from the door.
The wood, and young Isaac, were by now covered in a good half-inch of silver-grey ice, glistening red in the reflected firelight.
“Cap’n,” Jim Crawford said fearfully. “What is it?”
“Death,” I whispered. “As sure as eggs is eggs, ‘tis death for us all, if we cannot get warm.”
I heard the First Mate call out for more fuel, but I could not take my eyes from the encroaching edge of the ice.
The extent of it spread even as we watched, crawling along the walls as if laid down by some invisible painter, creeping across the floor towards our feet, tendrils reaching out, looking for prey.
As a man we stepped farther backwards, each of us trying to get closer to the fire which roared at our backs but seemed to give out little heat. In truth I have never felt such cold, not even in the far north where the white bears roam. It was as if my very blood thickened in my veins.
A strange lethargy began to take me. I took a step forward, towards the door, then another. In my head I heard you, my dear Lizzie, calling me in from the field, calling me home for supper.
“Captain!” the First Mate cried. He pulled me back towards the fire, putting his own body between myself and the creeping ice.
“Best warm your hands,” he said. “It’s turned a bit on the nippy side.”
I turned and faced the fire, feeling the heat tighten the skin across my cheeks. A layer of frost that had formed on my hands melted away. My blood began to move again so that I felt I might live, at least for a short time longer.
“Tell me, Cap’n,” Stumpy Jack said. “Is it Old Nick himself come to take us? I always heard tell that fire was more in his line of work.”
“I can’t tell you that, Jack,” I replied. “But there’s more than just Mother Nature working agin’ us this night. Stoke the fire, man. Keep stoking the fire. It’s all that stands between us and a cold grave.”
I helped Stumpy Jack load more wood on the flames. The fire had grown so as to fill the grate. We had to stand back and throw the fuel on, but still the ice crept across the room towards us and we were forced to huddle ever closer together.
“It’s getting right cozy,” Jim Crawford said. “When I drea
mt of cuddling up with a warm body in this tavern, it wasn’t any of you I had in mind.”
“I don’t know about that,” someone called back. “Give me a shilling and I’ll do for you. I’ll even take me wooden teeth out.”
That bought a round of laughter, and raised our spirits. But not for long.
One by one the men fell silent, each lost in his own thoughts.
There was naught to be heard but the crackle of the logs as the fire ate through fuel as fast as we could throw it on the flames.
The spread of the ice slowed.
Finally it stopped, a mere six inches from our feet. It did not retreat, but neither did it encroach any farther. I began to believe that we might yet survive the night.
“Is it over, Cap’n?” the First Mate asked.
“Mayhap. Just pray it does not get any colder,” I said. “And we may yet see the morning.”
And then it came, the thing I had been dreading, the thing that had taken the Pastor.
From outside we could hear shuffling, and a peculiar grunting, like a pig after truffles.
The wind outside rose, from nowhere to a howling, shrieking gale. Heavy sleet lashed like musket-shot against the shutters. The ice crawled once more, began to creep ever faster towards our feet.
“If you have any good ideas, Captain…?”the First Mate said.
“Truly, I can think of none, for what Christian man has ever endured such deviltry?” I replied.
“Mayhap we should ask the Lord for some help?” the Mate said softly.
I asked myself what the Pastor might do, were he still with us.
It took all of my strength, but I took myself farther from the fire. I put my own body between the ice and my crewmen.
“Lads, we are in a dark place,” I started. “I’ve led you into trouble aplenty afore now, and I’ve always brought you home safe. And so I will again. With a little help. The Pastor has gone to join his Lord, but mayhap he’ll turn back and lend us a hand if he hears us calling. Let us pray.”
I led the men in the Paternoster. Their voices were strong and clear, but mine own faltered. I had been watching the ice.
Our appeals to our maker made not a jot of difference. The ice thickened, inexorably, throughout the room. It still crept slowly forward, and had almost reached all the way to the toe of my shoes.
Night of the Wendigo Page 7
