Enchanted Forests (31 page)

over their shoulders- The child, eyes livid and mouth gaping in

rictus, lay spread upon the flattened vegetation, a great stake

driven into his chest. Blood was everywhere: matting his hair,

rimming his distended mouth, soaking his shirt so wetly the

torchlight gleamed on it. "Good Christ," Dalton whispered. Be-

hind him, someone was being sick.

"Do you realize what you have done?" Dalton couldn't tell

who was speaking. "Can you see now what you did?"'

"I've killed a monster." Burke's voice was flat beyond exhaus-

tion. "Look at the blood around its mouth: it's long dried."

Dalton looked, but the surrounding details were beginning to

come clear to him, even as the horror at their center beggared

IN FEAR OF LITTLE NELL        203

notice. The journalist had ignited me scrap of leather on me tip

of his stake, which he now held point down so that the flame

licked over the wood, producing a vile stench. Burke stood pant-

ing, his leather apron slick with blood. The parson, face white as

a sheet, was in tears.

Dalton looked down again. "He's right," he said after a mo-

ment "God help us." The child's lips, drawn back in agony, dis-

closed teeth black with old blood. His clothes, filthy and

blood-soaked as they were, were churchgoing best: nothing to

wear while wandering at night A white scrap was caught on a

trouser button, which Dalton numbly recognized as material from

a winding sheet.

They stood staring for a second. Then Burke said, **Right,

then. Let's be about it."

With the journalist scribbling and the parson mumbling

prayers, Burke brought out a palm-sized block of paraffin, then

cupped one hand behind the creature's neck. "Mind those teeth,"

he told Dalton, who had gingerly grasped the jaw. The flesh was

cold, and felt like the skin on old oatmeal.

Carefully they took an impression of the child's dentition. This

body was lain in the grave, Dalton thought, and felt the skin of

his fingertips creep.

"Got it," muttered Burke. He raised the block to the light, then

frowned. Somewhere below a dog was barking. Suddenly afraid

of discovery, Dalton grasped the child's shoulder and tried to pull

him off the path. The small body twisted before encountering re-

sistance, and with a sudden nausea Daiton realize that the stake

had pinned it to the ground.

"We must get out of here," the journalist said.

"We have to dispose of the body," Dalton replied. Hands shak-

ing, he grasped the stake and tried to pull it free.

"We will take it down for Christian burial," said the parson,

his voice quavering.

"Like hell," said Dalton, suddenly angry. "It's had a Christian

burial. Spode wants to see it—"

"Oh, Christ," said Burke.

"—But I wouldn't transport it for a peerage. We're going to

saw off its head and bury it in the woods."

"Oh, Christ."

"What is it?" cried Dalton.

Burke held up the paraffin block, as though it were a page

from Revelation. "This isn't the same vampyre," he said.

204                     Gregory Feeley

Birmingham glowed at night like coals in a grate, scattered or-

ange and red in the smoking darkness. Licks of flame appeared

atop smokestacks, and the tall windows of factories blazed like

lurid canvases hung against the night sky. The highway ran past

districts governed by mills and foundries, which flared through

the carriage windows like seeping fissures in the earth.

Dalton had expected me journalist to be up studying this spec-

tacle, but it was the parson whose eyes were open, dim whites

unblinking in the dark interior. Although they had all slept most

of the day, Burke and me journalist were slumped in the far

seats, as though fled from the jagged shards of consciousness

into Morpheus' enshrouding fog. Dalton wondered if he would

ever sleep again.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked the parson.

"Eternity," the man replied, surprising him. "That child had

died—I acknowledge that now—and been brought back, or his

release hindered, by the curse of vampyrism, whatever that be.

Did we deliver him in destroying his body?"

"Reverend, I am a naturalist, or once was. I don't think that

spiritual corruption is spread by contagion, like the plague. If it

makes you feel better, I believe mat there is a scientific explana-

tion for what we saw last night, and all me Slavic stories about

crosses and holy water are but superstitions."

The parson shook his head. "I appreciate what you're trying to

say, but I know enslavement when I see it, and it is not some-

thing suffered by nature. That child had been enslaved by some-

thing evil, and we must think as much of his slaver as of its other

victims. You must have thought of this."

Dalton sighed- "Something made little Harry into what we

saw. It is no longer in that village, else we would have seen a

vampyre scare like those in Hungary in the last century. So we

nave a mobile agent."

"A traveling vampyre."

Dalton winced. The image of an undead monster ranging

through the Midlands, perhaps taking the same highways as they,

felt worse the more he thought of it.

He ordered his thoughts before speaking. "An adult vampyre,

a canny one, could feed without making the kind of attacks that

attract attention. Feed upon helpless victims, like the infirm ...

or children."

"And if he fed carefully?" the parson asked quietly.

"They would not die quickly. But if they were children, they

would ... waste away."

IN FEAR OF LITTLE NELL        205

The two men were silent

From the opposite comer the journalist spoke. "The school-

master, Mr. Marten. Who moved to the village of Tong."

"Yes," said Dalton.

"Who took a solicitous interest in that itinerant girl, whose

name I should not mention."

"Yes."

"We are riding to Wolverhampton, because of an old report

there, but you intend to continue to Tong, now, don't you? Be-

cause he is there. Where he has charge of a school full of chil-

dren."

"Yes," said Dalton. "This is so."

"Mister Marton remains schoolmaster, but has given up his

other duties as clerk," the clergyman told mem. "He has led a re-

tired life since the unhappy events of last winter."

The parson nodded politely as he walked beside his colleague

through the ruin of a church, which seemed to have been decay-

ing steadily since its construction sometime during the Crusades.

Dalton, who had been introduced as a student of church architec-

ture, followed a step behind them, pausing frequently to peer

about at the recesses and crannies of the chill stone pile.

"You mean the death of the little girl, Nell," he said.

The clergyman sighed. "Although she lived in our parish for

but a few scant months, she won a place in the hearts of the

townspeople that may never again be filled. Those last weeks—

when it was clear she would not live to hear the birds sing—cast

a pall on the hearts of all who knew her."

"It must have been a terrible blow to Mr. Marton," the parson

observed.

"It was hard—very hard," the clergyman admitted with a mel-

ancholy air. "But he has responded by throwing himself into his

work, and has shown such devotion to his duties that the child's

memory must shine in the light of heaven. To some of his stu-

dents he has grown especially close."

"I see." The parson did not glance back. "And the poor girl—I

assume her body was returned to her original home?"

"Oh, no. It rests within this very church."

"Indeed?" Dalton looked up at this. "Within the church it-

self?"

The clergyman led them into a tiny chapel, where the statues

of medieval knights rested supine atop stone coffins like Egyp-

206

Gregory Feeley

tian sarcophagi. Dalton looked about him in bewilderment:

clearly no one had been interred in this chamber in centuries.

"Nell is laid to rest beneath this pavement-stone," said the

clergyman, looking down upon it. Several lines had been carved

into the stone, unreadable in the dim light.

Dalton looked down with interest. The stone, and an adjacent

one, had plainly been taken up recently, while the mortar lining

the others bore the undisturbed grime of decades. "You buried

someone beside her?"

"Her grandfather," the clergyman explained. "He survived her

only by a few months. After her death, he would come and sit

right here, all day long, alone with his beloved granddaughter."

"I see." Above the clergyman's lowered countenance, the two

men exchanged a long stare.

Buike had spent a night and a day in Wolverton, and was of

dangerous countenance when he met them at the inn a few miles

from Tong. "Children dying every day." he said, raising his tan-

kard and glowering at them. 'Tiny bundles laid on wagons. A

vampyre could live forever in a mill town and no one would ever

suspect."

"Never mind that," the journalist told him. "We found our Mr.

Marton."

The three men listened as the journalist described his inter-

view with the schoolmaster. "His hand is cold, and he withdrew

it quickly from mine, which I had rubbed with garlic juice. His

garden is small; villagers say he gives away many of his vegeta-

bles, I think he gives them all away. He keeps his cottage dim,

but can see well in it; he avoids daylight as an owl does. And

one of his students is ailing.'*

"He never died and was buried," the parson interrupted. "The

clergyman, who hired him, has letters of recommendation from

his school days."

The journalist shrugged. "A victim may die alone, and lie ne-

glected until he rise a vampyre. He may, indeed, not know him-

self for what he truly is."

"We will tell him ere we strike off his head," Burke said.

Dalton spoke up then. "No, that we cannot do," he said as the

other two started in alarm. "It is one thing to decapitate a mon-

ster that everyone thinks in its grave; it is another to kill a

schoolmaster. I have written the Professor this evening, and we

will wait on his reply. I suspect he will want the schoolmaster

taken alive—if that is the proper term."

IN FEAR OF LITTLE NELL        207

Burke actually growled. "A vampyre is not a Bengal tiger to

be caged and studied," he said. "If you will not act, I—"

"Stay," said Dalton, raising a hand. "We shall have our answer

in two days. If you want to hunt monsters tonight, we have

scented another." And when the journalist turned to stare at him,

Dalton added, "The girl, your Little Nell. She is in the church it-

self."

They picked the sexton's lock silently, then stood within the

softly-closed door for long minutes, letting Ac stillness return

like a startled animal. Only after ascertaining that nothing was

moving within the church did they begin to advance, in single

file, slowly up the aisle.

They entered the old chapel as cautiously as if it were a bear's

cave, though Dalton was certain that their quarry did not sleep

here. He satisfied himself by putting one foot on either side of

her pavement-stone (as he could not do when the clergyman was

present) and shifting his weight back and forth. After a minute he

nodded at Burke, who was standing with his stake gripped like

a butcher's knife: the stone was not loose in its setting.

They had slowly filed out of the chapel and stood uncertainly

in the darkness when Dalton heard it. A faint scratching, oddly

amplified, echoed in the dim expanse, its point of origin un-

knowable. The four men froze. Dalton raised his face, like a

blind man seeking the sun's warmth, and sought its source.

It's echoing off the chancel ceiling, he thought. So it is not at

this end of the nave. He slowly began to step down the aisle,

straining so hard to hear that his arched eyebrows began to ache.

The parson touched his sleeve. "Where is it?" he whispered

into Dalton's ear. "The belfry?"

The thought of the creature being above his head was almost

too horrible to entertain, but after a second's reflection Dalton

shook his head. The tiny belfry lacked space for concealment.

The scraping came a bit louder, distorted by its own echoes.

**Sounds as though it's coming from the bottom of a well," the

parson whispered.

"Good God," said Dalton, softly but aloud. "The well!"

He ran toward the narthex, and was slowly pulling open a

heavy oak door when his colleagues caught up with him. A

musty exhalation breathed forth from the crypt below, and the

sounds grew immediately louder.

"The well is old, and dry at the bottom," Dalton said. "It's

covered by a few boards. What a fool I've been."

208                    Gregory Feeley

Burke was unshouldering his canvas bag. With a scratch, a lu-

dfer flamed into life in the journalist's hands. "Can she see

that?" whispered the parson, glancing down die stairwell to see

how far the weak light penetrated.