Enchanted Forests (30 page)

Twelve hours earlier, thought Dalton, Burke would have dis-

dained the offer, but now he grasped the bottle and drank off half

in a draught. When the journalist (who seemed slightly unnerved

by this response) offered the remaining spirits around, Dalton

took a swallow himself.

The road narrowed, and in mid-afternoon turned sharply

downward, descending on a narrow, pathway into a woody hol-

low. The houses of a small village appeared fitfully between the

trees, already in shadow although the summer sun would linger

for hours.

The four men looked at each other warily. The journalist

twitched alertly as a hare sensing danger, while the parson tried to

put on a brave face, and Burke looked as though he were riding

a tumbrel to execution. Dalton wondered at Burke's nerves; did he

expect the vampyre to drop from the trees like a leopard?

With a pull on the reins the driver drew his horse to a halt. The

wagon came to rest at an overgrown switchback, the village un-

seen below them. "Far enough," he said shortly, not turning.

They climbed out stiffly and lowered their gear to the ground.

"We'll be needing to speak to the vicar," Dalton told the driver.

"Nay," he replied, and lifted his reins.

"Wait!" Dalton cried. "I appreciate how we cannot ride into

the green like a pack of rat-catchers, but we shall have to

interview—"

The horses started forward, and the wagon rattled down the

path without either occupant turning his back. The four men

198

Gregory Feeley

watched it disappear around a turn, then stooped to pick up their

equipment

"Better get off the road," said the journalist. "Don't want that

one's cousin coming round the bend to wonder at us,"

They pushed into the wood like Spanish guerillas, taking care

to make as little noise as possible. Dalton worried about encoun-

tering a village boy hunting squirrels, who would nm back and

raise an alarum. Eventually they found a footpath and followed

it, although it increased the chances of encountering someone.

The crate rattled and was difficult to carry down the slope, so

they stopped and untied the rope that held down its splintered

lid, and shoved the thirteen stakes into their belts.

"Look at Burke," muttered the Journalist as he and Dalton

bent over the crate, "You would think he'd been drinking a

week." And indeed the shorter man was pallid and sweaty, his

thin hair plastered to his brow. "And do you know why? It came

to me a minute ago: this landscape looks like Bohemia, at least

to judge from engravings. Burke is reliving his last journey to

Europe."

From the last stand of trees they studied the village. At the far

side of the green/oddly empty for a late summer afternoon,

stood a small Norman chapel beside an overgrown church-

yard. Taking care not to be seen, they crept around to the vicar-

age, where they composed themselves before knocking at me

back door. When the door opened and a wizened sexton peered

suspiciously out, it was the parson who spoke, and gained them

entry.

"A horrible business," the man muttered as he conducted them

along the rear passageway. Whether he meant the village's trou-

bles or the strangers' presence was uncertain, for when the par-

son ventured to reassure him, the sexton only hunched his

shoulders and rapped on a door before disappearing, leaving the

vicar to look out in bewilderment at the four strangers that

crowded his hallway.

"Mr. Palor," said the parson, "I am Reverend Cobum- Profes-

sor Spode has told us of your crisis."

The vicar stared, then cried, "Thank God," at once anxious

and nearly faint with relief.

He led them through the churchyard, as though too agitated to

fit them into his small study. The parson elicited the man's story,

which added only incidentally—the names and particular virtues

of the victims; local horror and alarm—to what they already

knew. Dalton had hoped that the Professor had explained mat-

IN FEAR OF LITTLE NELL

199

ters, but finally decided that he would have to ask the pertinent

questions himself.

"Reverend Palor," he said. They were walking in high grass,

scuffing their toes against sunken fragments of stone that might

have marked graves in the last century. "Has anyone come to the

village in the past year?"

The vicar gave him a confounded look. "No, no one. We have

not even had a new schoolmaster since the last one left the past

year. Mr. Burdock, who was a solicitor's clerk in London as a

young man, has attempted to fill Mr. Marten's shoes, but he is

really not fit for the position. It is a shame that Mr. Marton left

us, but he never really recovered after poor little Harry wasted

away and died."

Dalton, who had only half-listened to this disquisition after the

first word, looked suddenly up, "Wasted away and died?" he

asked.

"Indeed, it was a sad business." Mr. Palor gazed dolefully to

a comer of the churchyard as the other three men glanced

sharply at Dalton. 'The Little Scholar, he called him. The

schoolmaster visited him every day, but the lad faded like a cut

lilac. And truly, the village has not been the same since."

Dalton looked hard at the parson, who spoke up after a mo-

ment. "Do you suppose you could show us the grave of this

young unfortunate?"

The moon was not full that night, and would moreover be late

in rising above the wooded hills. Dalton sat smoking, one hand

shielding the pipe's glow from the eyes of any villager glancing

uphill at the ruined cottage they inhabited, while the journalist

stood looking over a collapsed wall into the rustling darkness-

The sexton had sullenly led them to the place, which looked

upon the village and the slopes beyond; and after establishing

that the monster had not made its nest there, they had fallen upon

the ground directly after making plans and slept till dusk. The

parson yet breathed in the rhythms of sleep, while Burke, invis-

ible in a far corner, was utterly silent.

"What did you think of the grave?" asked the journalist very

softly,

"Of little Harry? Just what I expected—a disordered plot, fre-

quently dug up for the graves of new children, so the fact that

the ground had been disturbed troubled no one. And the coffin,

I'm sure, had been laid no more than three feet down. It would

200                       Gregory Feeley

be interesting to disinter it, but some things aren't done by day-

light."

"Care to try now?"

"Why bother? If he's what we're looking for, we'd find an

empty kist, broke open from within and the loose earth above it

pushed out then carelessly replaced. But we're not gathering ev-

idence, or a story—" here he looked sharply at the journalist,

"—we're hunting the creature. We catch him, we don't need to

poke further."

"The story may go further," the journalist noted mildly.

"There was that boy down in Kent, the fat sluggish fellow. 'I

wants to make your flesh creep'?"

"You weren't there," said Dalton firmly. "I don't think he was

a vampyre at all. He seemed in some ways a victim—assuming

some monster was keeping him as a cow instead of simply

slaughtering him—but we never found anything. You are multi-

plying entities in pursuit of a story."

"Perhaps. But what was that name the vicar gave us?" The

journalist sang softly:

Up the airy mountain,

Down the Dingley Dell,

We dare not go a-hunting,

For fear of Little—

"Shut up!" Burke cried hoarsely from the darkness. Both men

jumped. Burke lurched to his feet in the darkness. "Speak the

name of one, and you think its fellows can't hear?" His breath

puffed sourly in Dalton's face.

The journalist made to answer, but Burke shoved past, and

was over the threshold and out amid the underbrush, where he

could be heard thrashing for a minute before the sounds faded.

Dalton stood still, wondering whether the parson would wake,

but after a minute heard only the journalist sigh.

"Burke is a riotous man," the journalist remarked. "Did he

grow up in Europe?"

"Hardly. His father was a Luddite, and came to a bad end for

it. Burke lost a sister to some fever, of the sort that goes sweep-

ing through mill towns when men are out of work and children

hungry. I suspect he went to France a fugitive, and traveled east

to put more distance between himself and England. Until he saw

a vampyre, I doubt he ever met anything he hated so much as a

foundry."

IN FEAR OF LITTLE NELL        201

"And Spode engaged him for the same reason he did you? For

his acquaintance with unnatural phenomena?"

"I do not know the particulars of Professor Spode's arrange-

ments," Dalton said rather stiffly. "I work with him because I

would rather assist in first-rate researches than mount second-

rate ones. Burke plainly considers his work here important."

The journalist, unfazed, looked after Burke speculatively. "I

bet he's thinking what I am," he said after a moment.

"And what is that?"

"How many there are, of course. Don't all the accounts state

that the vampyre's victims mm vampyres themselves?"

"That's nonsense, else the living would be outnumbered by

them. Only a few must succumb to the contagion, or else only a

few escape their graves, while the rest remain buried, to die for

a second and final time."

"But you think you've got one here," the journalist stated.

"That may be so," Dalton admitted. His gut was certain: it

contracted at the thought. "Spode saw the evidence, and he

doesn't jump at shadows. And he sent up that box of stakes, after

we had set out. I wonder why he did that?"

"There's something on 'em," the journalist said. "Can't you

tell? Keep one under your shirt long enough and it starts to get

ripe. He has some poison on the tips, I warrant you."

"Really?" said Dalton, turning round.

**Take care not to be jabbed. I have the points of mine impaled

on bits of strap leather, and recommend the same to you."

Dalton was about to examine his when a thin shriek cut

through the night. Both men started up: it sounded like a vole be-

ing struck by an owl, but came from one of the whistles Burke

had handed out. They scrambled outside, Dalton pausing to

shake the parson. The night an- sang with crickets and soughing

leaves, and the sound of their own hard breathing.

"The path," the journalist whispered. The two men started

down it, Dalton (without intending it) in front. A wooden mallet

thrust in his bell banged hard against his hip as he blundered

down the narrow trail, striving to combine haste with silence but

managing (he was certain) neither.

They nearly ran into Burke, who crouched in the path with an

arm upraised- "Listen," he murmured. The two men stood there,

trying to still their heaving chests as the parson came up behind

them, and strained to hear something as a low breeze rustled

through the hollow.

A faint keening—was it the wind bending a laden bough?—

202                    Gregory Feeley

seemed to waft from the ground ahead. Dalton tried to order his

thoughts: Burke had laid garlic across every footpath leading to

the village but one, which they hoped to compel the creature to

use. But was this the path? He hadn't thought so.

The wind shifted, and for a second Dalton could hear it

plainly: a thin wail, like a cat in heat or mewling puppy- He

pushed past Burke, who had gone suddenly nerveless, and ad-

vanced slowly on the path, achieving at last a measure of stealth

as his night vision grew stronger

The child was standing before the post Burke had driven into

the ground, balked like a waif who can't manage bis way past an

obstruction. Its shoulders were shaking slightly as it sobbed, and

Dalton could see that its garments were torn and dirty. As he

stepped forward, the child turned and looked up at him,

Its dirty face white beneath me filth and smeared with tears,

me child—it was a boy, Dalton noted, hair knotted with twigs—

opened his mouth in a forlorn wail. He looked at Dalton for a

moment, then raised his arms in entreaty and took a few halting

steps forward.

Dalton bent down, and someone shoved him aside. "No!"

cried Burke as Dalton fell against a tangle of brush. There was

a scuffle and a sudden high scream. The others were crowding

past, and Dalton had trouble recovering his footing. A struggle

was taking place on the path, curses and thrashing branches. Dal-

ton scrambled to his feet. "For the love of God, Burke!" some-

one cried.

The sound thrilled his blood; the unmistakable thud of a mallet

pounding wood. The three men were bent over something, fall-

ing against each other. Suddenly mere was a light, and they all

stood back, aghast.

Eyes watering in the glare, Dalton pushed forward and looked