Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure (12 page)

I put the
lantern down slowly. “I’ve come to help.”

Even as he
approached from out of the murk, well before I could see him clearly, I
wondered whether I had misjudged the situation. He moved more like a panther
prowling towards a tethered goat than a friend, and in the last two steps, when
the lamplight caught him, I knew that everything was wrong.

I don’t
know anything about the inner workings of Palingenesis or what had caused it to
go so far wrong. The lamp revealed an enormous, shambling figure that looked
like a reflection in a fairground mirror or a distorted human shape seen
through wavy glass. He was more a monster than a man. But at first, the only
things that struck me about him were the size of him and, as I saw his face,
the utter insanity in those eyes.

There was
no reason, no sense, no spark of human recognition—only the look,
perhaps, of a starving man presented with a plate of roast beef. With an
inarticulate cry, he reached out for Chun Hua with one misshapen hand.

After that,
things happened quickly. My recollections are a collage of vivid fragments that
I have pieced together as best I may. What follows would not satisfy any
serious commentator on the art of pugilism, but it is the most accurate I can
manage.

Chun Hua
screamed shrilly. I took hold of the monster’s wrist—as thick as my
biceps—as he reached for her, and I pushed it away.

He was so
focused on the girl that he had hardly noticed me. It took him a second to
react. If I had been quicker, I might have done something more decisive at that
moment, but I still had hopes of avoiding a fight.

He struck
at me with his other hand; I blocked it. He inexpertly flailed, breaking my
grip on his wrist, and we sprang apart. We squared up to each other. The
monster focused on me for the first time; the two halves of his face did not
seem to join up properly. He peeled his lips back in a snarl, revealing too-big
teeth.

He was big,
the biggest I ever fought. When he stepped forward, I was in his shadow, and it
was like having a storm cloud towering over me. It was not his size, though,
but his jerky, insect-like movements and his horrible parody of a human form
that sent cold fear through me. I slipped my hands quickly into the
knuckle-dusters.

He was not
in any sort of defensive posture, and I loosed a straight left to his midsection.
The monster just let out a little huff, and that was all. It was like punching
the heavy bag, or a side of beef; his flesh was that unyielding. I had my first
inkling that, contrary to appearances, this was not a living thing. He was
animated by some force other than normal vitality, and it would take more than
usual effort to knock him down.

He moved as
smartly as a living man, though, and when he hit me back with his oversized
fist, the blow caught my shoulder. The force of the impact almost overbalanced
me.

I skipped
back, and his next two blows stirred the air. I moved better than most boxers
my size, and there was plenty of room for me to circle round and keep away as
the monster tried to close to striking distance.

The
knuckle-duster is a much-misunderstood item of weaponry. To the uninitiated, it
is just a set of brass rings that you wear over your fingers, and the popular
belief is that all the effect comes from striking your opponent with metal
rather than bare knuckles. If that were really the case, you’d break your
fingers when you used them.

Real brass
knuckles have a T-shaped extension that fits snugly into your palm,
transferring the force of the blow into your hand rather than your fingers. You
can hit much harder than you can with unprotected fingers.

In
addition, a knuckle-duster gives weight to the blow. Weighted gloves are a
notorious topic in boxing circles. I’ve sat through many an argument about
whether Jack Dempsey had plaster of Paris on his hands when he won the title in
’19 or, even more improbably, had an iron spike inside his glove. Even the
extra few ounces of a little plaster make a big difference. With a pair of
solid twelve-ounce brass knuckle-dusters, I could take on Jack Dempsey or any
other boxer with padded gloves. They are classed as a deadly weapon and rightly
so.

After the
incident with the Chinese wrestler, I had carried them and had practiced using
them a couple of times. That saved my life in the underground chamber. The
monster came forward, both hands stretched out towards me. In the poor light, I
couldn't judge distance accurately. I did not stop to consider that one false
move would see me dead. I stepped in and delivered a combination,
left-right-left-right, against his chest and abdomen. One blow was fouled by
his arm, but the others all connected with the solid thud of a sledgehammer on
wood.

I fell back
as one hand right hand caught hold of my coat. He pulled me into a clumsy but
extraordinarily powerful left hook. It was like being hit by a tram, and I
momentarily lost consciousness. Luckily, the coat tore as I fell backwards;
otherwise, he would have kept hitting me, and that would have been the end of
Harry Stubbs.

I stumbled
back into the wall but somehow kept my feet. I did not know where I was or what
was happening, but I knew I was in a fight, and I could see enough to throw out
the next combination, high and low.

His mouth
was open, and white fragments showered from his teeth where the metal had
struck. His head went back—as well it might; the blow was strong enough
to crack the skull of any normal human—and I pressed on with a series of
simple jabs, left or right, to get through whatever guard he had.

A pale
shape moved upwards at the edge of my vision—Chun Hua disappearing over
the top of the ladder. The monster kept pressing forward, and I had to keep
circling around until I found myself cornered and had to back through an
archway into pitch darkness. The only light was from the archway. From the
echoes of my hobnail boots on the stone floor, I knew it was a spacious
chamber, but my only concern was to get past the thing and back to the pit.

The absence
of light did not trouble the thing I was fighting, and he moved directly
towards me. In the deep gloom, I saw that his skin was faintly phosphorescent
like a corpse glow or the light from a radium clock face.

He was not
so light on his feet, and when I feinted left and darted right, he was
wrong-footed enough for me to slip past like a schoolboy evading a clumsy
beadle.

I dashed
through to the pit, but I doubted I had enough lead to get up the ladder before
he grabbed at my ankles. Instead of climbing, I turned and, in a moment of
inspiration, dropped low as he rushed towards me.

I caught
him low about the waist and, using his own momentum and my strength, heaved him
up and over, not as neatly as the wrestler had thrown me but just as
effectively. He crashed down like the proverbial ton of bricks. Unlike the
wrestler, I was ready to take advantage when he landed with one arm outstretched.
I jumped on his elbow, full force with both feet and all my weight and with the
stone floor beneath. Going for the weak points. The impact would have snapped
the arm of a living man like a dry stick, but the monster barely reacted.

As he
raised himself on his other arm, I gave his head a mighty kick that laid him
flat. Hoping it would take him a minute to recover, I turned to the ladder.

The ladder
was gone. I was trapped with the monster.

I looked
left and right, thinking I had got turned around, but the ladder had been
pulled up.

The monster
was stirring, heaving himself into a sitting position. I stepped over and gave
him a roundhouse punch that would have embarrassed my trainer but was just the
thing against a dazed opponent, and it put him back down again. Knuckle-duster
notwithstanding, the blow left my hand singing.

He would
not stay down for long. Nothing I could do would inflict any real damage on the
thing. With a decent cleaver, I might have been able to do more, but not with
bare hands.

The ladder
was gone, but the length of cord that had bound Chun Hua was still there, at
least twelve feet of it. The pit was barely ten feet deep. Doubling the cord
over, I took the best run up I could, and, jumping high, succeeded in looping
it over one of the balustrades above. I dangled for a second, my feet a foot
above the ground, then awkwardly hauled myself up.

As I did
so, I was all too aware that D’Onston was above me, the monster was below me,
and there was no telling which was more dangerous. My main preoccupation was
stopping the doubled rope from slipping through my fingers and wondering how
high I was above the ground.

Behind and
below me, the animate corpse gave a howl—and I felt his hand tighten on
my foot and drag me down. The cord tightened like a bowstring.

The next
thing I knew, my foot had slipped out of the boot, and I was scrambling upwards
like a monkey up a palm tree, pulling myself onto the floor at the upper level
while the monster howled behind me.

Chun Hua
stood there in her white dress; then I saw that she was being held. Howard had
her two wrists firmly in one hand. He looked down at me with amused contempt.

“May I ask
how you discovered my retreat?” he asked.

“It’s a
long story,” I said, getting up slowly, a little battered and awkward on one
bare foot, but sound enough. I felt for the charm Arthur had given me and
realised I had dropped it somewhere in the pit.

He looked
at me.

The human
gaze is a funny thing. You can feel the pressure of it when someone is watching
you, even from behind. There is a certain electricity when you look into
another’s eyes. My belief is that the evil eye is nothing but an extension of
the same effect, a sort of sympathetic influence turned bad. It crosses the
gulf between individuals and allows the mind of one to wreak havoc on the body
of another.

Looking
into D’Onston’s eyes was like looking up at the mouth of a well as I fell
slowly down it, gently as thistledown. At the same time, I felt myself exhaling
forcefully through no volition of my own, as though my breath was propelling me
away, and all my vitality was flowing out into the air.

I did not
have a clue how to fight it. I tried to wave my arms, move my legs, turn my
head away, but I was completely disconnected from my own body. D’Onston had
charge of the whole engine, and he knew the way to shut it down.
 
If only I could shut my eyes or will
myself blind to cut off that stare.

I focused
my willpower, my determination, my whole strength into trying to reverse my
fall. My descent may have slowed a little, but the world continued to grow ever
more distant. My breath was all gone, and now I heard the rush of blood in my
ears and the thud-thud-thud of my heartbeat slowing down, slowing down.

It was
infuriating that this pudgy little man was standing a few feet away, just out
of my reach, and I could do nothing. I could see him exerting his will, and the
strain was starting to show on him.

The
pressure on me eased. I felt myself drifting back upwards towards the world,
and I took half a breath before D’Onston redoubled his effort again, and I was resubmerged
in the void, drowning slowly. I was proving hard to kill, no doubt a much
tougher specimen than Powell but still no match for D'Onston.

Even the
toughest chicken gets its neck wrung if you twist hard enough, and D’Onston
could twist very hard indeed. My heart went thud… thud… thud… then missed a
beat.

I must have
blacked out because when I came to, I was panting heavily, gasping in great lungfuls
of air. Someone was standing between me and D’Onston, blocking his line of
sight, cutting off the lethal beam of his gorgon stare. I was looking at the
back of an immaculately tailored, oyster-grey, raw-silk suit. Mr Yang was
facing D’Onston.

“The Si Fan
cannot be flouted with impunity,” Yang said. “You can never escape.”

“If the
Divine King in Yellow’s cohorts can’t kill you, I certainly can,” said
D’Onston, unperturbed. “Call yourself a Taoist adept, eh?”

D’Onston
raised a hand. I am certain the words he spoke next would have paralysed Yang
or done some other mischief—had not Yang coolly shot him in the chest
three times before he could get the words out. Chun Hua flinched as the bullets
passed inches over her head.

“Taoist
magic,” Yang murmured as the echo of the shots died away.

D’Onston
looked shocked. Then his face gradually twisted. It was an expression of pain
but also in a transfiguration, as when an actor steps out of one role and takes
up another, adjusting his features to the character he is playing. The new
actor looked about in confusion and dismay, not understanding what had happened
to him, before taking half a step and toppling to the ground.

Yang had
fired at D’Onston; but when the body died, it was occupied by Howard. Yang
confirmed that the man was dead. Chun Hua was shaking and clung on to my hand
for dear life but was unscathed.

Mocking
laughter sounded from the pit beneath us.

“The
situation is not necessarily to our advantage.” Yang gestured me over to the
deal table, where a book lay open beside an oil lamp, and pointed to the place.
“We must be quick. Can you read this?”