She pulled her cloak tighter around her and bent her bonneted head down into the driving rain. It was a walk of over three kilometres, but the life of her son was at stake, and she thought nothing of it. She was even gratified to notice that the rain was slackening. And then, with eerie suddenness, it stopped, the curtain of rain slipping from its rail and collapsing to the ground, leaving only the persistent, chiming trickle and splatter of the water running through the drowned streets. Without the racket of the deluge, the streets seemed preternaturally quiet; and the moon emerged fully to paint everything in shades of steel.
Yet there was a creeping sense of dread in Alista’s breast, and it began to gather slowly as she tramped along the wet pavement. Something was wrong, something... but she couldn’t place her finger on it. A frown settled on her frumpish, weather-beaten face as she tried hard to think what it might be. She had never been very bright or educated, and she was frankly in awe of those who were; so she blamed her own slow wits for failing her, and was becoming increasingly frustrated when suddenly it struck her.
She stopped in the light of a dripping lamp-post. Yes, she heard it. She began walking again, listening hard. It was still there. Could it be a trick? An echo? Perhaps, but something told her that it was not. A chill was worming into her marrow.
For every two steps she took, she heard three footsteps.
She stopped again, looking behind her. Once more, the third footstep succeeded her two, a quick noise as if someone had been following her and had been caught out by her sudden halt. Like someone was trying to walk at the same rhythm as her, and failing. There was nobody on the street.
She watched for a time, but only the splashing of the run-off water came to her ears, and nothing crossed her gaze.
Wasn’t there something, something she heard? About this? Why did it remind her of something? Ah, curse her muddled head. No time now, anyway. She had to get to Doctor Roach.
She set off again, but the sound was still there: step, step(step), step, step(step). Was it something flapping about her right ankle? Or the tail on her coat? Experimentally, she tried grabbing and holding different parts of her clothing as she walked, so that she was sometimes comically holding one edge of her skirt as she went, sometimes her boot. After a time, she gave up. If there was anything flapping about her person and making that tapping sound, it would not be silenced by her grip.
Another glance over her shoulder at the long, well-lit street she walked along, and once more there was nothing there. There was something nagging at her, an old rhyme Tomas’s mother had told her once, harrying her insistently, but in amid the chill of her strange, creeping fear and her concern for Jip, she could not recall it. With a snort, she turned back and continued on. But the fear and the nagging would not go away, and indeed increased, and there was something she ought to remember, but she could not for the life of her think what. And that damned footstep was still there, seeming louder now, almost as if someone was walking right behind her.
She could not resist a third look over her shoulder, and it was her last.
Lucinda Watt was a severe-looking woman, bird-like in her movements, pecking at her stenograph with her fingers or scratching with a pen at some paper while her head bobbed about like a sparrow’s in an attempt to see what she was writing. She was the receptionist, secretary and personal assistant to the head doctor at Redford Acres, and she expected to be treated with the respect and dignity that she felt her position afforded her.
Redford Acres was an unpleasant place to be after dark, but at least one night in each week Doctor Pyke would require her services, and usually more. She was handsomely paid, and dedicated, and had little else in her life to distract her but her small flat in Islington and her two cats, both called Cat—her imagination was as limited as her flair for fashion. During these night vigils she would accompany the Doctor on his rounds, as he walked from one dingy cell to another in the lower vaults, making observations on the patients’ nocturnal activities in a low, dry voice as the screams and laughter and gibbering echoed up and down the dank and mouldy stone walls. Mad eyes glared out from tiny windows in the steel doors, sometimes whispering obscenities which Miss Watt would not have wished upon the ears of the most common street whore. The Doctor seemed not in the least perturbed by the insanity that surrounded him, but Miss Watt had to firm her chin and quell the horror that crawled from the semi-lit darkness of the vaults to nibble and gnaw at her.
The rain had briefly stilled while she was making ready to leave, but it had only been pausing for breath, and with a bellow of thunder it unleashed its full might upon the capital. Miss Watt had, in her meticulous way, a spare umbrella in a cupboard beneath her desk in case she should be caught out like this. A flash of lightning stunned the foyer into a white bas-relief as she emerged from her desk with the black umbrella in her hand. Gazing out at the rain, she considered it a sensible idea to call for a cab, but no sooner had she picked up the earpiece of the upright telephone than she heard the creaking of wheels outside. Puzzled, she opened the great front doors of Redford Acres, and there, just beyond the porch, was a dark carriage pulled by a black stallion and a white mare.
The driver, hunched up against the elements and wearing a top hat and high collar to protect his face, raised a hand as she emerged.
“Miss Lucinda Watt?” he called over the chatter of the rain.
“I am she,” came the reply.
“Carriage for you, madam.”
“I ordered no carriage,” she said, peeking into the darkness on either side of the lighted porch. A yelping shriek from one of the inmates on the upper storeys was accentuated by a fresh flash of lightning to the south.
“I believe it was called by a Doctor Pyke,” he said. “Am I mistaken?”
Miss Watt glanced back at the stairs that led to the Doctor’s office, where he was compiling reports at this very moment. It was certainly out of character for him to be so thoughtful, but he was capable of such things from time to time. “No, you are not mistaken,” she said, opening her umbrella for the short few metres between the lip of the porch and the carriages door, which the driver now reached down and opened for her.
“Bad luck to open an umbrella inside, madam,” the driver offered, for Miss Watt had not yet stepped on to the porch, but was pulling open the front door fully with her free hand.
“Pish posh,” she replied, closing the door. “I don’t believe in such superstitious nonsense.”
The driver’s hidden eyes followed her all the way to the door, where she got inside and folded her umbrella as she drew it in after her, like a black flower retreating into its bud.
Inside, the carriage was cold but blessedly dry, and she settled back into the comfortable seat as the driver urged the horses into action. The Doctor would have given him a destination, so she had only to relax. It had truly been a beastly night, and this carriage was a stroke of good fortune. She settled in, listening to the roaring storm outside as it gathered in strength, and was thankful that she was in here and not out there.
It was only as the carriage began to slow, creaking to a halt, and she knew they could not possibly have gone even half the distance to Islington, that she began to feel the first inklings of trepidation.
“I say, driver,” she called, opening the carriage door. She was immediately struck by the sense of space around her, unfamiliar to one used to the narrow streets and lanes of London. It was some kind of heath they were on, or a park, but the obscuring rain made it hellishly difficult to see to the edge of wherever it was. There was only the path they rode on, and the endless grass, and a few ghostly trees.
“I say!” she repeated. “Why have you stopped?”
There was only silence as her reply.
She called once again, and received no answer a third time, before deciding to open her umbrella and step out into the rain. Part of it was a desire to give this so-called driver a piece of her mind, another was fearful curiosity as to what was occurring.
“Should this be some kind of joke,” she said sharply, as she got out, “I can assure you that you will not be employed much longer.”
She walked around to the driver’s bench. It was empty.
For a few moments, she did not know what to do. She was alone, in the midst of this great expanse, surrounded by the dashing rain that was already soaking into the hem of her dress. She cast a few quick glances about herself, her neck turning left and right with the speed of a starling, and then took a short step backwards. The horses stamped and snorted restlessly, shaking their manes in a shower of moisture.
“Driver?” she called.
Nothing. She stood, indecisive, for a few moments. She did not know London well enough to guess where she was, and she could not see far enough to discern any kind of exit or direction. Distantly, she heard the drone of an airship as it ploughed through the night, no doubt heading for a safe port from the storm.
Profoundly disturbed, she decided to climb back into the carriage and wait for help or for the driver’s return. Walking on a night like this would be inviting pneumonia.
Back inside, she shook off her umbrella, cursing roundly at the carriage driver. She could be stuck out here all night, in this foul rainstorm. What had the man been thinking? What had—
Her eye fell on what was lying on the opposite bench of the carriage, something that had not been there before. It was a piece of paper, with a crude sketch drawn on it, of a many-tentacled thing within a circle. Reaching over, she touched it reverently with her fingertips, as if to see if it was solid.
“Chackh’morg,” she said to herself.
She turned sharply as the door of the carriage opened, and threw herself back in her seat with a thin cry of terror. For it was he, Stitch-face, the ghoulish effigy of a sewn-up corpse gaping from beneath the wet strands of lady’s hair that stuck to the grey sacking of his skin. A glistening knife was held in one hand, tiny droplets of water gliding along the blade.
She was paralysed as he closed the carriage door behind him and sat opposite her, picking up the sketch as he did so. Slowly, he leaned forward and scraped the tip of his knife along her trembling throat; with the other hand, he held the sketch up in front of her eyes.
“Chackh’morg,” Stitch-face said, and having expected a hollow death-rattle to emit from that mouth, she was surprised that it sounded perfectly normal, though there was a chill edge to it that terrified her as much as the knife. He leaned further forward, until his mouth was so close to hers that it seemed he might kiss her.
“You know who it is that is killing in my name,” he whispered huskily. “Wont you tell me, Lucinda Watt?”
THE FIEND IN THE SEWERS
A TRICK TO TRAP THE WYCH-KIN 12
It was approaching dusk of the following day when Thaniel and Cathaline found themselves in the company of the simple giant Armand and the elderly Grindle, descending down a rusty ladder from amid the rubble of a collapsed pumping station. They had slept through the night, exhausted after their flight from Crofter’s Gate, and there had been no visitation this time. Alaizabel slept soundly, under the alternating watch of her companions. It appeared that the charm she had been given was working, at least for now.
Alaizabel they had left in the care of Crott, for there was no sense bringing her on a wych-hunt; she would only be in danger.
“Thaniel?”
He looked up. They stood in a dank antechamber, with a circular manhole above them through which the light from the pumping station spilled down the rungs of a rusty ladder and splayed across the bare stone room, illuminating a single archway that led to a downward slope.
The voice had been Cathaline’s. “Pardon me?” he said.
“I asked if you had any ideas on what the wych-kin might be,” she replied lightly. “Though evidently your thoughts were elsewhere.”
“Sorry,” he said. Armand said sorry, too, in a thick, dull voice heavily slurred and tinted in French. Grindle poked him and told him to be quiet.
Thaniel raked his hair back and chewed his lower lip in contemplation for a moment, then looked back at Cathaline. “Well, from the description Crott gave us of those who had seen the thing and lived, and the necrotic state of those who did not; I would say it was a wight.”
Cathaline smiled to herself “And how do we deal with wights?” she said.
“Is this a test?” he replied.
“You never stop learning, Thaniel,” she grinned.
“And you never stop teaching, it seems,” he replied. “Wights exist only in light; they cannot harm you in total darkness, but too much light destroys them. It takes a lot of light, however.” He frowned. “Actually, I have never dealt with a wight. Do we drive it out into daylight? But how can we do that, if they do not come out till dusk?”
Cathaline rattled the heavy bag she was carrying. “We make our own daylight.”
Crott had told them earlier that day about the sewers beneath the Crooked Lanes. What lay on the surface of the Crooked Lanes was only one-third of the whole; beneath the streets there was a labyrinth of old vaults, hideouts, and a network of sewers and half-finished tunnels for the underground trains. Each of the four gangs had their territory and held it jealously, for underground was where the real fortresses were. The Crooked Lanes were all but unassailable if the Peelers or any other force should for any reason decide they wanted to reclaim the streets. Underground, it was a warren, with dead-ends and sealed doors, hatchways and crawl-spaces, even traps. And like the wych-kin, the beggars could only be driven back, never defeated; they would always return in greater numbers. The begging trade was a prosperous one in these days of industry and wealth, as evinced by the feast they had witnessed, and they would not give up their niche easily.
But recently, there had been something in the sewers that had slipped past the talismans and superstitious artefacts traditionally used to keep wych-kin away. Thaniel suspected their talismans didn’t really work, anyway; it was just that the Lanes were so far north from the river that the wych-kin had not reached there yet. Until now. For several beggars had gone missing on a certain stretch of sewer, and their bodies later found in a terrible state. Necrosis, the death of body tissue, came from the touch of a wight. Skin shrivelled and blackened, arteries seized and knotted, decay raced with rigor mortis to see who would gain the body first. It was truly a horrible sight, and for this reason wights were treated with extreme caution by wych-hunters. But if they wanted Crott’s help, then they had to deal with it.
So Crott had sent his men to get whatever they needed, which was presumably what was in the bulging bag that Cathaline carried, and as dusk fell they had begun.
Grindle led them downward, to another antechamber lit by gaslight. This one was circular, with a manhole in the centre, from which protruded a crowbar that had been wedged underneath one of the handles.
“Light yer lamps, if you want to see,” Grindle said.
“Be ready to turn them off the moment I say,” Cathaline added.
“Eh?” Grindle replied, as he was slapping Armand on the shoulder and directing him to raise the manhole lid. “Turn them off? Yer must be mad; its black as pitch down there. I’m not turnin’ nothin off with that thing runnin’ around.”
“Didn’t you listen?” Cathaline said. “A wight is made of shadow; it can’t hurt you in the dark, because shadow needs light to give it shape. If it comes for you, turn out your light.”
Thaniel had already become distracted again, his mind restlessly returning to Alaizabel and prowling round her like a wary wolf.
The sewers beneath the Crooked Lanes dripped and stank and stewed in their own murk. The darkness down here was total; if not for the light from the gas lamps that they held aloft, they would be in a blackness so complete that they would be utterly blind. The sludgy water lapped unceasingly past them, its murmuring a constant background to their footsteps and the scurry of rats. Thaniel found himself thinking back to the Rat King that they had found, and he shivered. There ha
d been numerous sightings of the curious phenomenon that was the Rat King: four or more rats joined together at the tail so tightly that they could not be untangled even in death. It was thought that the combined minds of the conjoined animals formed the Rat King, and they communicated by whatever unpleasant way that rats did. The idea that the invisible scurrying all around them might be coordinated by a verminous intelligence made Thaniel uneasy.
“Could be anywhere up ahead now,” Grindle said. “This is the edge of the cursed thing’s patch, as far as I know.”
“Here, then,” said Cathaline. “We’ll set it up here.”
She placed the bag down on the stone walkway upon which they had been travelling, and unzipped it along its length. Inside, bundles of short sticks jostled with each other.
“ ’Ey, you’re not usin’ dynamite down here!” Grindle cried. “Boom!” Armand said, and laughed at his own joke.
“Not dynamite,” Cathaline said, pawing through the bag with a grin on her face. “Fireworks.”
“Flash bombs?” Thaniel asked. “Lovely.”
“We will set up a network of flash bombs here, and you will be responsible for firing them, Grindle,” Cathaline said brusquely. “Thaniel and I will drive the wight into this spot, using the remainder of the bombs. Once it is here, the bright flashes from all sides should be enough to destroy it as effectively as daylight.”
Cathaline began setting out the flash bombs in sequence along the sewer, trimming the fuses with expert precision. The others could not help without getting in her way so they stood about in the light of their lamps and glanced nervously at the darkness beyond, or covered their noses against the awful stench that hung about the sewer tunnels. Grindle muttered to Armand, who listened vacantly Thaniel blinked and rubbed his bloodshot eyes.
Grindle was getting noticeably more agitated now. “How much longer are yer goin to be?” he grizzled at Cathaline, who ignored him. The elderly beggar held his lamp up and peered warily at the shifting shadows. That thrice-plagued wight could be anywhere; anyone of those shadows might suddenly become something demonic.