Tonight’s painting is based on the movie Demons directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento. Lot of fun imagery in the movie to be inspired by!
I haven’t posted on here in a bit as I’m not making much work right now. I teach at university and that has most of my attention. I mostly use twitter at the moment. I have been trying to get back to watching more movies. Here are some that I’ve watched lately.
This one was recently awarded 'Best Occult Detective Short Story" in the 13th Annual Occult Detective Awards, so I'm pretty happy about that. It was on my Ko-Fi, until recently. I've decided to repost it here, for your enjoyment.
“So you say you found the bones here?” Charles St. Cyprian asked, as he took a pull on his cigarette. He crouched at the edge of a peat bog, staring into the muddy waters.
“Rain’s flooded the excavation I made, but it’s down there right enough,” Gavin Kittredge replied. He sounded tired. St. Cyprian glanced at him, taking note of the other man’s dishevelled appearance, the bags under his eyes, and the tremble in his hand as he tried and failed to light his own cigarette. By his own account, he hadn’t been sleeping well.
St. Cyprian rose. Unlike his host, he might’ve stepped from a Leyendecker canvas. A slim man, he was dressed as if for a hunt or a weekend hike. He wasn’t sure which this was, just yet. He reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and produced a lighter. “Allow me.”
Kittredge stooped gratefully. He was a handsbreadth taller than his guest, and built like a farmhand. But he was an academic, not a labourer. Kittredge was an archaeologist with a half dozen papers to his name, mostly concerned with the Mesolithic history of the Fen Country. He straightened, puffing dolefully on his cigarette. “I shouldn’t have removed them,” he said, after a moment. “I knew better.”
“You thought they were a hoax,” St. Cyprian said, looking out over the bog. The Fenlands were a lovely sort of place, at the right time of year. This wasn’t the right time of year, unfortunately. It was autumn and everything was wet and grey and cold, save the grasses that were the colour of fire in the light of the setting sun. “Anyone might have made the same error. The question now is, how are we to rectify the matter?”
“I was rather hoping you might have some ideas in that regard, old man,” Kittredge said, hopefully. “Sort of your line, ain’t it?”
St. Cyprian nodded. “That it is. My privilege and duty, you might say.” Among his responsibilities was the psychical wellbeing of His Majesty’s subjects. Phenomena of the sort Kittredge had described to him earlier, when he’d come to meet St. Cyprian at Langrick Station, fell well within the purview of the Royal Occultist.
The office had a fine pedigree, stretching back to Doctor Dee and the rule of Good Queen Bess, but few, if any, of His Majesty’s subjects had heard of it. Which was even as it should be, St. Cyprian knew. Some things man was not meant to know – unless he was extremely unlucky.
St. Cyprian clapped his hand together. “Right, well, soonest begun is soonest done, as they say. Let’s go have another look at these bones of yours.”
The walk back to Kittredge’s cottage was a difficult undertaking, along a rough dyke. The cottage lay at the edge of the fens, almost halfway between the village of Langrick and the hamlet of Dogdyke. It was a modest stone affair, with an artfully thatched roof and a sloping chimney that puffed smoke into the wind. One could see it easily in the distance, as it was the lone dwelling in the area.
They were within sight of the cottage when Kittredge suddenly stopped, an uneasy expression on his face. “I say, can you feel that?”
St. Cyprian, who considered himself more than a bit psychically sensitive, did not. Then, given the phenomena in question, perhaps that was to be expected – it already had its quarry in its sights; newcomers need not apply. “Tell me,” he said, softly. He looked up. The day was slipping away, and the night came on fast out here.
“Something is watching us.” The words came out haltingly. Hesitantly. The words of a man who fears he will not be believed. “Or someone.”
St. Cyprian turned. There was nothing for miles, save a few trees in the distance. Nowhere for anyone to hide, save below the dyke. “Can you tell where they are?” he asked, leaning close so that the wind would not whisk his words away.
Kittredge shook his head. “No. I don’t see anything. I just – I feel it. Like something crawling up my spine.” He shivered. “It was like this last night as well, and the night before. But never this early. The sun’s not even down yet. It’s like it’s…getting stronger.”
“Not unusual when it comes to this sort of thing, I fear. It’s rather like a man freed from long confinement. Stretching the old muscles, and remembering how to run.”
Kittredge looked at him. “And what happens when it does?”
St. Cyprian patted him on the shoulder and gave a wan smile. “Well, let’s hope we can settle things before then, what?”
A fire had been lit in the kitchen hearth, and warm air gusted out as they entered. A young woman, dressed like a day labourer, sat at the table, meticulously reassembling a heavy Webley-Fosbery revolver. “Enjoy the hole?” she asked, without looking at them.
“As holes go, it was tip-top,” St. Cyprian said, stripping off his coat and hanging it by the door. “And what about you, Miss Gallowglass? All quiet on the front, as they say?”
“Bones haven’t moved, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said brusquely, snapping the revolver closed and sighting down its length, out the window.
“Anything else? Sudden drops in temperature? Strange sounds?”
“No.” Ebe Gallowglass put her revolver down on the table and turned in her seat. She was small and dark and somewhat feral looking, with her only concession to fashion being the razor-edged bob of her hair. A battered flat cap sat on the table beside her pistol, and it was rare she went without either. “Maybe it buggered off.”
“Somehow, I do not believe that to be the case.”
She shrugged and went back to fiddling with her revolver. “We’ll see.”
“That is why we’re here, yes.” St. Cyprian looked at Kittredge. “How are you feeling? Still got that crawling sensation on your back?”
“You’re welcome,” Gallowglass said, without looking up from her pistol. Kittredge looked at her in puzzlement. St. Cyprian cleared his throat.
“While you were showing me where you found the bones, my assistant was readying our defences for the evening,” he said. “Raising the metaphorical palisades, what?”
Kittredge looked around – and paused. “Did you smear ash on my windows?”
“Witch-marks, innit?” Gallowglass said, tipping her chair back precariously. “Keep out uninvited guests. I did the door posts as well.”
“Chimney as well?” St. Cyprian asked.
She glared at him. “What do I look like? ‘Course I got the chimney.”
“Only last time you said you got it, but you’d forgotten and then something with very long arms and very strong grip tried to throttle me.”
She snorted and turned away. “But it didn’t, so what are you whinging about?”
“I just wanted to check that you’d remembered.” St. Cyprian looked at Kittredge. “Let’s take a peek at these bones, then, before we lose the light.”
Kittredge led him into the smallish, somewhat cramped sitting room. Another fire burned here, in a stone hearth that was likely older than the current cottage. On the floor, atop a patchwork blanket, was a skeleton. Kittredge had brushed most of the mud from the bones, and sluiced them with water to break up any unsightly deposits.
The bones had been broken, whether intentionally, or by misadventure, St. Cyprian couldn’t say. In all aspects save one, they resembled the brown bones of a man long dead. But where the round skull of a human ought to have been, there was instead what resembled the lean, angular skull of a wolf. Scraps of hair still clung to the bones in odd places, resembling patches of moss. St. Cyprian crouched beside the dead thing.
It had been a shock the first time. The second time, it was a curiosity. Careful not to touch it, he let his hands drift over the bones, trying to spot any obvious fakery. Kittredge pulled up a chair and sat heavily, his eyes going everywhere but to the skull. “I was so sure it was a fake – something left behind by a circus, or travelling show of some sort.”
“And why might they have done that?” St. Cyprian asked, still studying the bones.
“To scare the locals. Or maybe the bones were stolen.”
“Are they?”
“No,” Kittredge said, softly. “I made inquiries. And I did my own cursory examination. I can tell when bones have lain in the same earth for a long time. And as far as I could tell, these had lain in that peat bog for centuries.”
“Including the skull,” St. Cyprian said, looking at it. It wasn’t quite like that of a wolf – too wide in spots, too narrow in others. There was something of the simian about it, as well as the lupine. The combination was enough to make him feel faintly ill. “Lincolnshire has its share of stories, of course. Black dogs and the like. Beastly shapes, haunting the fens.”
“Those are just stories. It’s nineteen-bloody-twenty-six, and there is no such thing as werewolves. Or ghosts.” Kittredge pounded on his knees with his fists. “I don’t know what this thing is, but it can be neither of those.”
“And yet here it is, and here we are. Funny, that.”
“What is it?” Kittredge asked. “Can you tell me that?”
“It could be any number of things. A few years ago, in Derbyshire, we encountered something similar. And as I said, there are stories…” St. Cyprian glanced at Kittredge with some sympathy. At times he forgot that not everyone dealt with such matters on a regular basis. He’d become somewhat inured to the weird and the strange, even as he’d gotten used to the dull thunder of artillery strikes during the war.
He pushed himself to his feet. “But what it is, or what it ain’t, can wait until after tea, I think. We brought cheese and bread from Langrick – a good Lincolnshire Poacher, some plum bread and coffee as well. Strong coffee, to keep our eyes open and wits sharp.”
Kittredge swallowed convulsively. “You think it’ll come again tonight?”
“I think we should be prepared. Come, let me show you something.” St. Cyprian led him back into the kitchen and retrieved a battered Gladstone bag from under the table. He dropped the bag on the table and opened it. Inside, on top, were several bundles of herbs.
“Herbs?” Kittredge asked. “Are we making stew?”
“In a sense…rue, yew and hellebore – the prescription for what ails you.” St. Cyprian set the three bundles on the table. “We’ll hang these from the weak points – windows, doors and chimneys.”
“Like the marks you already made,” Kittredge said.
“An extra ring of protection.” St. Cyprian tossed the bunch of yew to Gallowglass, who rose and began to hang it from the windows. “The witch-marks are fixed elements – hard points. The herbs are soft points; we can move them, scatter them, burn them, brew them…whatever is needed.”
Kittredge, no stranger to folkloric practices, nodded. “So the rue…”
St. Cyprian held up the rue. “Burning rue can banish evil spirits. Yew, placed near gateways – or doors – can prevent evil from crossing the threshold. And hellebore can protect one from evil spirits.” He passed the latter to Kittredge. “Scatter this around the bones, if you would.”
Kittredge looked at the herbs. “You think it’s after the bones?”
“As I said, we should be prepared. From what you told me earlier, the presence tried to enter your home. We won’t know why unless we let it in, and I, for one, think that might be a rather bad idea.” He smiled. “Unless you’d like to give it a whirl…?”
“No, no, keeping the blighter out of doors sound good to me,” Kittredge said hurriedly. “I’ll just scatter these, shall I?”
“You do that, and I’ll see to the coffee,” St. Cyprian said, heading for the stove. A few minutes later, the coffee was perking, and all three of them were sitting around the table, enjoying a meal of bread and cheese.
Conversation was sparse as they ate. The light outside diminished, the orange warmth of dusk sinking into the cool grip of evening. The wind picked up, and if he strained, St. Cyprian thought he could hear the reeds of the dyke rustling. Kittredge was talking about a dig in North Yorkshire he’d participated in. “Jobson was a veritable Boadicea on that one, chivvying us all first one way, then the other,” he said.
“Miss Jobson is quite the genteel tyrant,” St. Cyprian said, with a chuckle. He’d encountered the redoubtable Bella Mae Jobson of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society on several occasions. “She’s the one who recommended my services, I take it?”
“That she did. I sent her a telegram as soon as I found those blasted bones. And quick as you like, she sent one back demanding I get in touch with you.” Kittredge sighed, and looked out the window. “I should have done so sooner.”
“Probably,” Gallowglass said. She stuffed a slice of bread into her mouth, chewing noisily as she added, “When does the bugger usually show up?”
“Any time now,” Kittredge murmured, his eyes fixed on the shadows outside. “It starts small. Little sounds, then…a snuffling. Like a dog following a scent.”
“And then?” St. Cyprian asked.
“Then a scratching at the door and the windows. Sometimes all at once, sometimes separately.” He flinched slightly as he spoke. “Then…”
There was a clatter from the sitting room. Kittredge jolted in his seat. St. Cyprian gestured for him to remain sitting. “Miss Gallowglass…?”
“Right.” Gallowglass stood, revolver in hand. As she prowled into the sitting room, St. Cyprian picked up the bunch of rue and stoked the fire in the stove. When the embers had turned cherry-red and the fragments of wood were popping, he tossed in some the rue. Not all of it, though. They might need some later.
Kittredge still sat in his seat, looking at nothing. Waiting, St. Cyprian thought. “Breathe, man, breathe,” he said. Kittredge blinked and nodded, swallowing convulsively.
“Maybe it won’t come tonight,” he said, hopefully.
Gallowglass returned. When the two men glanced at her, she shook her head. “Not so much as a tibia out of place,” she said, sounding almost disappointed. She made to slide her pistol back into its shoulder-holster, but froze. Her eyes were on the window.
St. Cyprian and Kittredge turned, like men in a dream. On the other side of the glass, something glared in at them with a flat, yellow gaze. But no breath fogged the pane. A paw – a hand? – reached up and clawed fingertips pressed against the glass, but only for an instant. The paw vanished, and there was a strangled sound – not quite a howl – as the dark visage vanished. The witch-mark had done its job.
Kittredge expelled a shuddering breath. “It’s here.”
“Yes, but safely outside for the moment.” St. Cyprian rose and stoked the fire. “Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”
“What is it?” Kittredge asked, still staring at the window He tore his eyes away, and fixed St. Cyprian with a pleading look. “For God’s sake, what is it?”
“Lupus est,” St. Cyprian said, softly. “Something of the wolf, some remnant left behind when whatever that was in your sitting room died.” He closed the stove and turned. “We must – hsst. Listen.”
Somewhere, a window rattled in its frame. There followed a guttural whine, as of a frustrated animal. Gallowglass turned, following the sound with her eyes. “How long before it tries to come through the roof, do you think?” she asked.
“Depends on how smart it is,” St. Cyprian said. “And on what it wants.”
“The bones,” Kittredge said. “It must want the bones.”
“Maybe. Or maybe the bones are simply a – a focus, of sorts. A lodestone, drawing its energies here.” St. Cyprian looked at the door. It was quivering slightly, as if some great weight were pressed against it on the other side. He gestured for silence, and carried the last of the rue to the door. He brushed it across the wood in a certain way – a ritual gesture, learned from a certain elderly woman in Lancashire – and the pressure on the other side of the door instantly abated.
It hadn’t gone far, however. He could hear it prowling about outside, scraping its claws against the exterior of the cottage. It was moving quickly – faster than any flesh and blood creature could move. It tried the windows, each in their turn. Its growls grew in volume as it found no easy ingress.
“Angry bugger, innit?” Gallowglass said, softly.
“Yes, rather,” St. Cyprian said. He retreated to the table and looked at the others. “Doesn’t seem to be much give in the fellow. I’m afraid we’re in for a long night.”
Kittredge made a small sound in the back of his throat. He was staring at the door. St. Cyprian followed his gaze and saw splinters of wood being pushed out of the frame. As if something were trying to pry the door and its frame loose of the stone wall. “Back at it again, the persistent devil,” he said, reaching for the rue.
The scrabbling ceased. A yellow eye peered at them through a crack in the frame. St. Cyprian heard a rough panting, followed by a low, eager whine. He lifted the rue and approached the door. He could smell a faint animal stink on the air – a musky, wet odour, like that of a dog caught in a storm. He thought of an animal, looking for shelter, but banished the idle thought. Whatever this was, it was no animal.
“Get thee hence, spirit, back to whatever field or furrow did hold you,” he intoned. The scrabbling began again, more frenzied than before, and he raised an eyebrow. He turned to say something to the others, but the words died in his throat as he saw what loomed in the doorway of the sitting room.
The dead thing hunched in the doorway, brown bones twitching in the light. Hellebore blossoms fell from its claws as it grasped either side of the doorway – why hadn’t the flowers stopped it? The question was rattling in his head as Gallowglass spun, pistol raised.
A fleshless limb smashed down, knocking the revolver from her hands. Surprised, she fell onto her rear and scrambled backwards. St. Cyprian snatched up a chair and sprang past his assistant. Like a lion-tamer, he jabbed the chair at the dead thing, trying to hold it back. It leaned against him, skull thrusting forward, brown teeth snapping at his face.
Behind him, he could hear the door thudding on its hinges. Were there two of them – or just the one, a bifurcated entity – spirit and bone? He braced himself against its weight, using the chair like a shield. It was heavy, for a dried-up bag of bones. “I could use a hand,” he shouted. Gallowglass scrambled to her feet and snatched up another chair. Quickly she joined him, and together they fought to force it back into the sitting room.
Kittredge was still sitting frozen in his chair. St. Cyprian kicked at him desperately. “Kittredge – get up, man! See to the door, I can hear the hinges popping!”
Kittredge lurched to his feet and flung himself at the door with a gulping cry. He crashed against it, even as it began to bulge inwards. He pressed his back to it. “I can’t hold it,” he cried. “I thought your blasted herbs were supposed to keep it out!”
“They were – if it’s an evil spirit it shouldn’t be…” St. Cyprian trailed off. “Oh bugger. We’ve got the wrong end of the bloody stick.” He looked at Gallowglass. “On my mark, drop your chair.”
“Are you mental?” she demanded, glaring at him.
“Possibly. Only one way to find out.” He risked a glance at Kittredge. “Kittredge – when we drop our chairs, get out of the way, quick as you can.”
“It’ll get in!”
“Exactly. On my mark…one…two…three!” St. Cyprian dropped his chair and leapt back. Gallowglass followed his example. Kittredge, slower on the mark, was knocked sprawling as the door came off its hinges and slammed down against the floor. Something black with yellow eyes crouched in the doorway.
It did not look like a wolf, or a man. It did not look like anything. Just an amorphous presence, given personality only by its flat, predatory gaze. But it was not looking at them – not at Kittredge, gawping on the floor; not at Gallowglass, who’d retrieved her revolver; and not at St. Cyprian, who’d gone for rue, just in case he was wrong.
The newcomer had eyes only for the bones that stagger-stepped into the kitchen, jaws clacking and vertebrae rasping. An instant passed. Then, with something that might have been a sigh, or a whimper, the shadow-shape flowed to envelop the bones.
The conjoined shapes shuddered. For a moment, St. Cyprian thought he could see what it had been, while alive. A yellow gaze met his own, just for a moment. Then it was striding past them with a curious loping gait, out the shattered door and into the night.
No one spoke, for a time. St. Cyprian and Kittredge manhandled the door back into place and made temporary repairs. They stoked the fires, as much against the cold as against whatever might be lurking out in the night.
“Why didn’t the rue work?” Gallowglass asked, after Kittredge had fallen into a fitful sleep. She and St. Cyprian sat at the table, sipping reheated coffee and eating the last of the plum-bread.
“Because it wasn’t an evil spirit. Not as we understand it. It was something else altogether.” He nibbled at the bread and stared into the fire. “Something lost and lonely, looking for what had been taken from it.”
“Where’s it buggered off to, then?”
“I have an idea, but I’d rather wait until morning to see whether I’m right.” He finished his coffee and lit a cigarette. “It won’t be safe out there, until then.” As if to emphasise the point, a howl echoed over the fens – a cry of relief, and yes, perhaps even joy. The cry of a wild thing, freed from a long confinement.
Of something remembering how to run.
When morning came at last, and Kittredge had woken, all three of them made their way back to the peat bog, and the site of the excavation. St. Cyprian looked down into the mud and nodded to himself. “There we are. As I thought.”
“The bones,” Kittredge said, in a hushed voice. “They’re back.”
“Back in the earth, where they belong.” St. Cyprian studied the brown bones, nestled once more in the muddy peat. Soon, they would vanish entirely, covered over by the land. “Hallowed ground comes in all forms. Not just the sort blessed by vicars.” He clapped Kittredge on the shoulder. “You were right, you know. It only wanted its bones back.”
“What now?” Kittredge asked.
“Now? Well…a full English, and some more coffee, for starters.” St. Cyprian started back towards the cottage, the others following. “Then, maybe we’ll come back with shovels and see that our friend down there can sleep undisturbed for another century or two. There are certain rites that’ll ensure that, if nothing else.”
He glanced back at the bones, a smile on his face.
Author's Note: For a time, I was doing annual free Halloween stories for readers. Always Royal Occultist stories, always based on my favourite horror films. This is one of the best, I think, both because it's so ridiculous and because I managed to write it in under an hour.
“Right-o, then. Did anyone happen to see a loose brain slopping about anywhere? Possibly with a spinal cord still attached? Anyone? Check your trouser cuffs,” Charles St. Cyprian said, looking about the dingy garret flat, hands clasped behind his back. The reason for the question was obvious, even to the most inobservant of those gathered there.
The body of Warwick Figgins lay half off of the blood-soaked bed, arms and legs askew, as if its death throes had been particularly violent. The top of the skull was peeled back like a flower, bone and all, exposing the pink and gray cavity which the dead man’s brain had once occupied. Said brain, however, was not in evidence. Nor was there any sign that it had ruptured, or otherwise succumbed to whatever explosive force had done for Figgins. Instead, it was simply...missing.
“Someone procure a bucket. We shall need a bucket, when we find it,” St. Cyprian went on, turning about in a circle. One among the bevy of uniformed constables currently occupying the flat headed for the door, a look of queasy relief on his face. The police had responded with admirable speed to the reports of strange lights, weird smells and blood-curdling screams which had precipitated their arrival to the garret in Seven Dials.
The moment the eagle-eyed among them had spotted the unnatural paraphernalia that occupied the flat, and the strange designs which had been chalked on its floor and walls, they had rung round for someone better qualified. Now, however, the lot of them clumped about nervously, waiting either for some explanation, or for someone higher in rank to show up and take over.
“If we find the brain,” Ebe Gallowglass, St. Cyprian’s assistant, said. She gently spun the cylinder of the Webley-Fosbery revolver she had cracked open on her knee as she perched on the flat’s only other piece of furniture, a dingy writing desk. She wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Soho dive or a smoke-filled betting shop. In contrast, St. Cyprian looked as if he had been about to step out for a late dinner at the Savoy. Which, in fact, he had been, until a breathless looking constable had caught him leaving his Cheyne Walk flat.
“Well, it’s not like it ran off, now is it?” St. Cyprian shot back, as he tried to ignore the hollow feeling in his stomach. He hadn’t even had time to snaffle a humbug before he and Gallowglass had been whisked to the scene of the crime.
“Rats, innit?” Gallowglass said, with a shrug. She snapped the revolver shut.
“Yes, but...a whole brain?” St. Cyprian gestured. “They’re quite big, your average brain.” He looked around. “And I don’t see any rat holes,” he continued, with the surety of a professional. That surety was born of often painful experience gained in the investigation, organization and occasional suppression of That Which Man Was Not Meant to Know—including vampires, ghosts, werewolves, ogres, fairies, boggarts and the occasional worm of unusual size—by order of the King (or Queen), for the good of the British Empire.
Formed during the reign of Elizabeth the First, the office of Royal Occultist had started with the diligent amateur Dr. John Dee, and passed through a succession of hands, culminating, for the moment, in the Year of Our Lord 1921, with one Charles St. Cyprian and his erstwhile assistant, Ebe Gallowglass.
“What could have done it, sir?” one of the constables—Annandale, he thought the man’s name was—spoke up. “What could have done that to a man? Just peeled him open like a tin?” St. Cyprian looked at him. The gathered policemen looked nervous, as well they might. Annandale was in charge, by dint of being the most experienced of the lot. The constable was no stranger to eldritch occurrences. St. Cyprian had seen him at other, similarly outré crime scenes more than once, including the nasty business with the Slug-House of Shaftsbury Avenue, the year before.
“I have no idea, Constable. But I intend to find out, post haste.” St. Cyprian scratched his chin and peered about, examining the small flat and the odd paraphernalia which cluttered it. Besides the bed and the desk which Gallowglass occupied, there was a small fireplace, its stone facing smeared with ash. Strange machinery, full of diodes and dials, littered the floor and corners in half-finished states. Incense plates sat on every available surface, filled with sludgy char.
He couldn’t tell what the dead man had been burning. The smell was strong, for all that it had faded. There were books and loose papers everywhere, the latter covered in illegible scrawl. He recognized some of the books—treatises on spiritualism, psychokinesis and telekinesis, Theosophy, as well as outré mathematics and, inexplicably, carpentry.
The latter began to make more sense, the longer he studied the proportions of the garret. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling, had had extra boards added, giving the whole room a distinctly rugose appearance. Figgins had papered over the corners, crafting a continuous curve. It put him in mind of an alembic, though he couldn’t say why.
The whole garret felt...wrong, somehow, as if the air were tainted. "By their smell can men sometimes know them near," he muttered. He glanced at Gallowglass. "Can you smell that?"
"Foul, innit?" she said, waving a hand in front of her face. "Like rotten cabbage."
"It's rather more than that, I should say." St. Cyprian frowned. "Did I, or did I not, give you Harzan's monograph on the detection of ab-human manifestations?"
"Was that what that was?"
He sighed and shook his head. "Sometimes I despair of you, Miss Gallowglass." He closed his eyes, concentrating, and traced the sacred shape of the Voorish Sign in the air with a finger and let his inner eye flicker open. The spirit-eye, some called it, though his acquaintances in the Society for Psychical Research insisted that it was merely a very focused form of extrasensory perception.
Whatever it was, it had taken him several years to learn how to utilize it safely. Humans were, by and large, as sensitive to the paranormal as animals were to earthquakes. They simply couldn't process it as well. Humans needed reasons for things which animals took on instinct. The inability of the human mind to correlate all of its perceptions was one of humanity’s built-in defences against the many, many predatory malignancies that swam through the outer void.
But sometimes, you were forced to shuck those evolutionary blinders first thing, otherwise you risked being snapped up unawares. As the unfortunate Figgins had discovered, to his cost. He’d attracted the attention of something, and paid the price.
The smell grew worse as he let his senses expand. The formula on the walls and floor seemed to glow with a pale violet light, as did the terrible wounds on Figgins’ skull. He let his inner-eye close, and his senses recede as he opened his physical eyes. “Has anyone spoken to his landlady?” he asked, looking at Annandale. He’d taken note of the woman as he was ushered up the stairs. She hadn’t looked happy. “Did Mr. Figgins have an interest in home repairs? Carpentry, perhaps?”
“She did allow as he was prone to hammering all hours of the night, when he wasn’t praying,” one of the constables said, hesitantly, when Annandale nudged him. “He paid his rent on time, and she never had no other trouble with him, so she let him be.”
St. Cyprian looked at him. “Praying, or chanting?”
The constable shrugged. “She said praying.” He shifted nervously. “Lots of praying.”
“The question is, to what?” St. Cyprian looked at Gallowglass. “You see it, of course.”
Gallowglass nodded without hesitation. St. Cyprian waited. Finally, she shook her head. He sighed, and gestured to the walls. “He’s made the garret into a Faraday Cage. Of sorts, at least. But not for electricity.” He ran a finger along one of the walls. “Subtle alterations to the space, likely devised according to some formula we’ll find on these loose pages, in order to conduct and channel...what?”
St. Cyprian looked around. The walls, where they weren’t plastered with paper, were marked by chalk. He tore some of the papers down, and squinted at the markings. Gallowglass perked up. “Oi, anyone hear that?” she asked. St. Cyprian noticed the sound a moment later. A somewhat muffled harsh, wet grinding noise.
“Whoever is chewing so loudly, please take it elsewhere. I’m trying to ratiocinate,” St. Cyprian said, flapping a hand at the constables. Gallowglass stood up and paced in a slow circuit, her keen eyes scanning the garret. St. Cyprian traced the markings on the wall, trying to understand. The formula which were scrawled there like magical sigils were mathematical in nature, but it was of a type he’d never before seen, outside of theoretical texts on hyperspace and Non-Euclidian space. He glanced at the body. “What were you trying to do?” he murmured. Of course, a better question was, had their unfortunate mathematician succeeded?
St. Cyprian hesitated, as a thought occurred to him. Chewing, he thought. “Oh bugger,” he said, softly. The noise grew louder. St. Cyprian turned, a warning on his lips. Something blurred in the air above the head of the closest constable.
Before St. Cyprian could call out, the man was jerked from his feet and hoisted into the air, as if snagged by a lariat. The policeman clawed at his neck, and his legs flailed, scattering the others. His helmet was knocked from his head by an unseen force and clattered across the floor. Men reached out to grab him, and he spun in a circle, gagging, his face changing colors. The noise swelled in volume, as the unfortunate constable began to scream. The air about the man’s head blazed violet for a moment, before it swirled like a kaleidoscope. Then, abruptly, the policeman went limp.
His body tumbled to the floor. His skull had been cracked like an egg, and pried open. Blood and brain matter oozed down the back of his neck, and puddle on the floor. Before panic could set in, St. Cyprian snarled, “Everyone out!” He stepped over the body, one eye cocked towards the ceiling, and hustled the surviving policemen out of the garret. “You as well, Miss Gallowglass, at the quick, if you please,” he called out, waving for Gallowglass, who had her pistol trained on the ceiling, to follow him.
As she hurried past him, she hissed, “What was that?”
“Something wholly unpleasant,” St. Cyprian said, as he closed the door. He stepped back warily, as if expecting whatever it had been to attempt to follow them through. When it didn’t, he looked around at the others. The policemen were out of their depth, and to a man, looked frightened and close to panic. That they hadn’t yet, was a testament to the courage of London’s finest. But courage was no defense in a situation like this.
“What was that thing? What happened to Jenkins?” Annandale demanded. Then, in a more hushed tone, “It’s not like that thing in Shaftsbury Avenue last year, is it? Only I haven’t rung the fire brigade yet.”
“I don’t think fire will be necessary this time,” St. Cyprian said, making a calming gesture. He looked at the door. “At least, not a big one.”
“What are you thinking?” Gallowglass said.
“That whatever it is, is likely confined to that room. But it may not stay that way.” He looked around. “I have a theory—not a good one, mind, but until I think of something better, it’ll have to do. Figgins created a sort of...psychic pressure cooker in his garret. Between the additions to his domicile, the incense, the chanting, I can only guess that he was trying to focus his mental energies in a specific way. Maybe it was a harmless experiment, or maybe he got exactly what he wanted...either way, something was born. Something hungry.”
“What do we do?” Annandale said.
“You do nothing, Constable. Taking you and your men back in there would be tantamount to tossing lambs to a hungry wolf. Ms. Gallowglass and I, however, are going back in there. We’ll seal the door from the inside, so that our faceless fiend in there can’t escape,” St. Cyprian said. “We’ll come out when it’s seen to.”
Several of the constables sagged in obvious relief. Annandale shook his head. “And what if you don’t come out, sir?”
“Then remember Shaftsbury Avenue and ring the fire brigade,” St. Cyprian said, as he clapped the constable on the arm. He turned to Gallowglass. “Apres vous, apprentice-mine,” he said, as he gestured to the door.
“Assistant,” she corrected, as she booted it open. When nothing leapt out at them, she stepped through, revolver extended. St. Cyprian followed quickly, and kicked the door shut behind them.
“Keep an eye out, while I lock the cage,” he said, rooting through the debris on the floor for a piece of chalk. “Wouldn’t want our tiger slipping out while our backs were turned, what?” When he found one, he turned back to the door and quickly scrawled out a particular symbol. The Sign of Koth, as it was called, was used to seal doorways and apertures, to prevent the entrance or escape of evil spirits. While what they faced in this room wasn’t likely an evil spirit, in the traditional sense of the term, it never hurt to be careful.
When he’d finished, he tossed the chalk to Gallowglass. “Get the window,” he said. He went to the body of the policeman and checked it over, suddenly glad he hadn’t had time to eat. The man had died in much the same way as Figgins—his skull had been pried apart, and what was within scooped out. He heard a faint chuff of noise, and looked up.
Gallowglass whipped around from the window, her pistol raised. “You hear that?” she demanded, tossing the chalk aside. “That’s the same sound as before.”
“Yes, I hear it. Like hundreds of teeth grinding together, or bone rubbing against bone,” St. Cyprian murmured. He rose slowly to his feet as he scanned the ceiling. He recalled the brief flare of violet light which had preceded the attack. “Whatever Figgins conjured up is still in here. He opened the door for it, but not all the way, thankfully. This garret is a threshold, and our brain-eating friend is crouched on it, half in and half out.”
“That why we can’t see it?” Gallowglass asked, backing towards him. The sound was growing louder and louder, as if whatever it was were becoming agitated.
“Yes,” St. Cyprian said. “I may have something that’ll help with that, however.” He gestured to the fireplace. “Get that fire going. No sense in letting the bugger escape up the flue, if we can help it.”
“You really think fire will hurt it?” Gallowglass said, as she hastened to do as he’d asked.
“We won’t know until we try,” St. Cyprian said. He reached into his coat pocket, feeling through the various amulets and charms which he carried with him at all times. One never knew when one might need an Assyrian demon-whistle, or a silver coin blessed by the Anti-Pope of Avignon, and it was best to have them close to hand, just in case. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to be the tool required here.
He looked around the floor again, trying to make some sense out of that scattered notes of the late Figgins. He sank to his haunches, trying to ignore the slow rustle-scrape of their unseen visitor, as he looked through the papers. “Hesselius encountered something like this, I think, towards the end of the last century. A certain vicar overindulged in exotic teas and accidentally forged a psychic conduit between himself and a rather nasty entity from elsewhere.”
“What happened to him?” Gallowglass asked, as she lit a match and touched it to a twist of paper. She stuffed it into the fireplace and scooted back as the fire took hold. “We need more fuel,” she added.
“Who, the vicar? Oh, he—ah—well, he came to a nasty end, I’m afraid. Rather like our Mr. Figgins, there.” He stood. The sound was becoming too loud to ignore now, and he stared up at the ceiling, trying to pinpoint its source. “And use the books.”
Gallowglass hesitated. “Burn the books?”
“Oh yes, can’t have whatever Figgins was working on fall into the wrong hands. He’s made notes in all of these books. They might as well be the blackest of grimoires,” St. Cyprian said. “And what do we do with grimoires?”
“Read ‘em?”
“Well yes, but after that?”
“Try and find a place for them on the shelves in the study?”
“We burn them,” St. Cyprian said firmly. “We are not at home to Mr. Evil Grimoire.” He hesitated. “Unless we don’t already own a copy, in which case we are, but very reluctantly.” He made a tossing gesture. “So burn them, and get that fire going.” He stretched his arms out and flexed his fingers.
“And what are you going to do?” she asked, shovelling papers into the fireplace.
“I’m going to try and cleanse the aetheric vibrations,” he said, bringing his palms together, as if preparing to pray. “Maybe I can convince whatever it is to go back where it came from.” Even as he said it, however, he saw a flash of light, out of the corner of his eye, and knew he would have no time to do so. He spun on his heel, but too slowly. The sound reached a crescendo, drowning out his warning to Gallowglass.
Something slithered about his throat, and tightened like a noose. St. Cyprian was yanked up, loose papers and books skidding beneath his feet as they left the floor. He clawed helplessly at the invisible noose, as it inexorably tightened. Now dangling several feet above the floor, he fumbled in his coat pocket, trying to find something—anything—which might be help. His fingers found a tiny copper vial, stoppered with wax. He recognized it instantly by the feel of the Arabic characters engraved on the surface of the vial.
Seizing it desperately, he flicked his thumbnail across the wax and opened the vial, releasing a small amount of powder into his hand. He withdrew his hand from his pocket and flung the powder out about him in a wild fashion, and the air took on a shimmery haze reminiscent of the open desert at midday. The powder of Ibn Ghazi had the power to make visible the invisible.
“Bleedin’ nora, “ Gallowglass said, as the powder revealed his phantom throttler. He twisted about, trying to see, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The thing resembled a human brain, large and bloated, lobes pulsing with a searing violet light. Strange, feathery cilia rose from its surface like hairs, and a circular, lamprey-like mouth, studded with hundreds of tiny fangs, flexed wetly. A spinal column of rough bone hung down from it like the tail of a serpent, and it was that which had snared him. Its grip on his throat tightened, and it dragged him towards that hideous mouth.
Gallowglass raised her Webley, and he waved a hand in panic. “Don’ shoo’,” he gurgled.
“Stop wriggling,” she snapped, trying to get a bead on his attacker. He spun in mid-air, twisting and thrashing, trying to free himself. She lunged towards him, and grabbed at his shirt, hauling him down. As she did so, she pressed the barrel of her pistol to the bony tail, and pulled the trigger, emptying the weapon.
The bone burst, and St. Cyprian fell to the floor, gasping. A strange, viscous fluid gushed from the wounded limb, and a sound like vibrating glass filled the room. The brain hurtled towards Gallowglass, knocking her off of her feet. Her pistol slid from her grip as she wrestled with the thing.
Their struggles carried them across the floor. St. Cyprian pried the twitching segments of bone from around his throat and hurled them aside, where they instantly began to dissolve, like sugar in the rain. Gasping, he rose to his feet and snatched up a poker from beside the fireplace. Moving quickly, he stepped over to where Gallowglass struggled with the entity, and cocked the poker for a swing. Gallowglass’ eyes widened. “Oi!” she yelped, in protest.
“Like you said--stop wriggling,” he shouted. He swung the poker, and felt a satisfying shiver up his arms as it connected. The vibrating glass sound echoed again, as the brain reared up on its wounded tail like an angry cobra, circular jaws working. St. Cyprian stumbled back as the bleeding stump of the tail slashed out and tore the poker from his hands.
Hands raised, he backed away, towards the fireplace. The brain shot towards him, and he flung himself aside desperately. He caught hold of the bony tail as it whipsawed out past him. The sharp growth of bone cut his palms, but he held on.
The brain was stronger than it looked—impossibly strong—but it hadn’t been expecting him to grab it. Feet planted, he heaved it out and around, as if it were a cricket bat, and let it go. The brain’s own momentum carried it forward, as straight and as swift as a crossbow bolt, into the fireplace. It struck the back of the fireplace with a wet thwack, and tumbled into the fire.
St. Cyprian fell back as the flames surged up, and the brain screamed. The garret window burst as Gallowglass clapped her hands to her ears. St. Cyprian felt as if his teeth would rattle loose from his jaw as the sound spiralled up higher and higher.
Its bony tail lashed out, scattering ash and chunks of burning books, but it couldn’t orient itself to escape. Instead it writhed and flopped grotesquely, bloated lobes throbbing in obvious agony.
“Catch,” Gallowglass said, tossing him the poker. He caught it and rammed it into the brain, pinning it in the fire. The brain fought against him, and he pressed down on the end of the poker, thrusting all of his weight against it. The brain’s struggles grew weaker and weaker as the flames consumed it. Soon, it was nothing more than a charred husk. He stepped back, poker in hand, breathing heavily. He rubbed his bruised throat.
“Well,” he said, looking at Gallowglass, “I guess we can safely say that fire hurts it.”
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