Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure (2 page)

Madman Subdued
in Victoria

On Monday
afternoon a near-tragedy was averted at a small public school in
Victoria. A man with an axe entered Queen Elizabeth Primary School
in the mid-afternoon. He apparently tried to enter the first
classroom he came to, but a quick-thinking teacher, Mr. Hainsley,
pushed the door shut from the inside and held it, exhorting his
students to flee by the window.

The attacker
was attempting to batter the door open with his axe when he was
apprehended by a group of teachers and a janitor. No students or
staff were harmed in the attack.

The attacker
was taken into police custody. He has been identified as Roderick
Garman of Victoria. The motive for the attack is not known.

Colleen stared
at the newspaper, baffled. Uncle Rod had taken an axe and attacked
a school? She didn't know him well, but he'd always been gentle,
amusing, and patient. It made no sense.

She checked the
date on the paper. May 1, 1921. The day before the telegram. Uncle
Rod should have been in police custody. How had he died?

She was
exhausted and disgruntled when she finally walked down the
gangplank of the Vancouver-Victoria ferry and stepped onto
Vancouver Island. She had never been so far from home, but she was
in no mood to enjoy the sights. She hoisted her suitcase and
trudged down the dock.

"Colleen?"

Colleen looked
up. A woman of about forty stood before her, smiling uncertainly.
She had brown hair drawn up in a bun, and wore a modest blue dress
and an uncertain smile.

"Yes?"

"Oh, it is
you!" the woman gushed. "I knew it! Your uncle has- I'm sorry, had
a picture of you in his house. I'm Jane Favisham. I was your
uncle's friend."

"How do you
do?" Colleen said automatically, and Jane shifted a parasol to her
left hand so she could shake Colleen's hand. "How did you know I
was coming?"

Jane smiled.
"There's only one ferry each day from Vancouver, and I live quite
near here. When I didn't get any replies to my telegrams I decided
I'd come by each day starting today, for a few days at least. And
here you are, on my very first day. You must have really
hurried."

Colleen nodded.
"Thank you for meeting me. I wasn't expecting it."

"Well, anything
I can do. Rod was terribly fond of you, you know."

Colleen closed
her eyes for a moment. She wasn't aware that she'd made much of an
impression on her uncle. He had a picture of her?
Oh, Uncle Rod,
I never had a chance to properly get to know you.

"Do you have a
place to stay?" Jane interjected.

"No. I guess I
didn't plan this trip very well."

Jane patted her
shoulder and smiled. "That's all right. It must have been a
terrible shock. I know it was for me. I'm afraid you'll have to
check into a hotel. Your uncle's house, well, it's been damaged.
And I stay in a boarding house.

"The Empress is
the best hotel in town. It's really something, but expensive, I
fear. I recommend the Queen Anne. It's not too pricy, but it's
respectable. The best part is, it's not far. My, that suitcase
looks heavy. Can I help you carry anything?"

The Queen Anne
Hotel was a two-story building a block from the docks. By the time
Colleen was checked in the sun was setting and her head was
spinning. Jane smiled sympathetically and said, "You look done in,
dear. Why don't you rest, and I'll come see you tomorrow
morning."

Colleen slept
late and rose still feeling tired. She was finishing breakfast when
Jane arrived, the parasol dangling from her hand. The sky was
overcast. She would need the parasol more for rain than sun
today.

They made small
talk as they strolled through the streets of Victoria. Colleen was
not an experienced traveller. She hadn't realized her country had
so much variety before this trip. Toronto, she now realized, was a
bastion of industry and commerce. She'd been surprised that the
smaller prairie cities were so different, built of wood and
sandstone instead of brick. Now she was in Victoria, the most
elegant city she'd seen so far. The heart of the city was filled
with elaborate Edwardian architecture and somehow felt distinctly
British.

The buildings
became less ornate as they walked. Soon they were on the outskirts
of town, surrounded by clapboard buildings. Jane put her hand on
Colleen's arm. "We're getting close to Rod's house. I'm afraid it's
been burglarized."

"Really?"

"Yes, it
happened right after the, that is, right after your uncle was
arrested. I went by the house to pick up a few things for him and
the door had been pried open. There it is up ahead."

Uncle Rod's
house was a small, stand-alone structure with peeling paint and a
sagging front porch. It was surrounded by similar buildings. Fresh,
unpainted wood showed on the door frame where it had been repaired.
Jane unlocked the door, then handed Colleen a small brass key.

"I guess this
is yours, now. I haven't cleaned anything up. After Rod- after
everything happened, I was just too upset. I called the police and
got someone to fix the door, and that's all I did."

"Thank you for
doing that," Colleen said. "Thank you for everything. For caring
about Uncle Rod. For looking out for me."

Jane smiled,
her lip trembling, and Colleen turned away, stepping into the house
before both of them broke down in tears. She found a light switch
on the wall and flicked it on.

The house was a
shambles. Colleen stared around the front room, her hand over her
mouth, aghast. Padded chairs had been slashed open. Tables were
overturned. A hutch stood open, the floor around it covered in
smashed dishes.

Colleen moved
through the house, shocked at the destruction. Every shelf, every
drawer, every cupboard had been emptied onto the floor. Uncle Rod's
mattress had been slashed open, the stuffing strewn around the
bedroom. She could barely take a step without treading on his
shattered possessions.

She realized
she'd been looking forward to this, to seeing where Uncle Rod had
lived. She'd wanted to get a sense of who he was, what sort of life
he'd led out here on the coast. To get a sense of connection to
him, if possible.

Instead she was
surrounded by rubbish and ruin. This was no longer her uncle's
home. Colleen hurried from the house, and stood outside taking deep
breaths, trying to compose herself. The street was mostly empty,
for which he was grateful. A man was loitering on the far side of
the street, but he looked away as Colleen looked at him, giving her
privacy to blink away her tears.

Jane came out
of the house and stood beside her, mute and sympathetic, patting
her shoulder. After a minute Colleen locked the house.

They walked
back to the hotel, silent at first, each woman lost in her own
thoughts. Finally Colleen blurted, "I don't understand. What
happened? Why was he at that school, with an axe?"

Jane pressed
her lips together and shook her head. "I wish I knew. It was very
unlike him. He was the gentlest man you'd ever want to meet. You
know that."

Colleen nodded,
although she didn't really know Uncle Rod well enough to be
sure.

"I saw him the
day before, and he was agitated. He kept going on about some book
he'd read. He had a collection, artifacts and antiquities from
around the world."

Colleen smiled,
remembering. Some of his get-rich-quick schemes had involved
treasure maps, or hunts for lost cities, lost treasures, lost
temples.

"I don't know
what book he meant," Jane continued. "I can't remember what he
said, exactly. But he kept going on about how it couldn't be true,
it had to be lies, there was nothing that could be done. He was
acting so strange, I told him he was scaring me. I left, I said,
come and see me when you've calmed down." She looked down at her
feet. "That was the last time I saw him, before he, he went
mad."

"It's not your
fault," Colleen said. "I don’t know what happened to him, but it
sounds like something you couldn't have stopped by talking to him
about it."

Jane
nodded.

"I know he was
arrested," Colleen said carefully. "I don't know how he died,
though."

Jane turned to
face her, her face haunted. "He killed himself," she whispered. "I
don't want to go into the details. But he killed himself in his
cell."

They continued
in silence, and stopped in front of the Queen Anne Hotel. "I have
to go to work," Jane said. "They've been very understanding, but
I'd better put in some hours soon, or their patience will run
out."

"I'll be all
right," Colleen told her. "I'm not sure what I'm doing next. Did
Uncle Rod have a lawyer?"

"I don't
know."

"Maybe I'll try
to find that out. Thank you so much, Jane. I don't know what I
would have done if you hadn't met me at the ferry."

The two women
hugged, then Jane said, "I'll come by this evening after work.
Maybe about seven. I live at Mrs. Rosebottom's boarding house on
Tanner Street if you need to reach me." And she hurried away, a
slim, lonely figure in blue soon lost in the crowd.

Colleen turned
and walked into the hotel. She felt suddenly alone and far from
home, all at sea in a world she didn't understand. She longed for
the sight of a familiar face, a friendly voice. What she wouldn't
give to have Roland come up behind her and call her name!

"Miss
Garman?"

Colleen turned.
The front desk clerk smiled. "We have a message for you,
ma'am."

"For me? Are
you sure?" No one knew where Colleen was except Jane.

The clerk
handed her a folded slip of paper. "A couple of gentlemen dropped
it off, not half an hour ago," he said. "They went to the bar." He
gestured toward the hotel lounge.

The note was
brief, written in a strong, flowing hand:

Mr. Smith and
Mr. Carter would like to speak with you at your earliest
convenience. We will wait for some time in your hotel bar. We have
taken accommodations in the Empress Hotel and can be reached in
rooms 304 and 306.

She thanked the
clerk and walked down the corridor, puzzled. She stepped into the
doorway of the lounge and scanned the room.

Two men sat in
a corner table, glasses before them. She saw a stout man in a tweed
jacket and bowler hat facing her. He had a round, amiable face and
a brown mustache, and he saw her, raised an eyebrow, and spoke to
his companion.

The other man
had his back to Colleen, but she felt her pulse start to race even
before his head began to turn. She stared, frozen, disbelieving, at
his thin face, his intense eyes, his long dark coat. As he rose
from his chair she turned and ran.

A voice in her
head told her she should stop, confront him here with plenty of
witnesses around, but an unreasoning terror had her by the throat
and all she could think of was escape. She burst out the front door
of the hotel, running hard, and didn't look back until she was a
block away.

The man in the
dark coat was loping down the street, half a block behind her.

Colleen fled,
legs burning and breath sawing in her lungs. She grabbed the
tailgate of a moving truck, lifted her feet, and hung there for a
block, gaining precious speed. When the truck slowed for traffic
she dropped off and dashed down a side street. She wove through
crowds of pedestrians and darted around another corner.

She stopped,
panting, her back against a wall. Finally she peered around the
corner, looking back the way she'd come.

There was no
sign of him.

Something
caught her eye, though. A man was staring at her, a stranger in a
dark red coat. She looked at him, and he quickly looked away, but
he was sidling through the crowd toward her, and she was sure he
was watching her from the corners of his eyes.

Also, she had a
dreadful feeling that she'd seen him before. She racked her brain,
and it came to her. He'd been loitering across the street from
Uncle Rod's house.

More movement
caught her eyes. The street was a bustle of pedestrians, people
moving in every direction, but she could pick out two, no, three
people converging on her. In addition to the man in the red coat
she saw a burly older man with a forked beard and a dark-haired
woman in a white bonnet. At first glance they seemed to have
nothing in common, but all three of them were somehow similar. It
was their expressions, she realized. There was something fixed,
intense, almost animalistic in their faces.

Colleen turned
and ran. She was thoroughly lost, running blindly, fighting a
rising panic. She twisted and turned, darting around cars and
wagons and people, and she heard feet slapping the pavement behind
her as the strangers gave chase.

She dashed
through an intersection, flinching as a truck gave her a blast from
its horn. And suddenly she was in another world. The street was
narrow, clapboard buildings looming close on either side. The
sidewalk was far more crowded than it had been, and nearly every
person around her was Chinese.

The strangeness
of it heightened her sense of terror. Strange, spicy smells filled
her nostrils and a babble of incomprehensible voices crashed
against her ears. It was Chinatown, and Colleen lurched down the
street, only too aware that her height and blonde hair made her a
beacon in this crowd.

She glanced
back. The man in the red coat was right behind her, a manic grin on
his face. Colleen threw herself forward. When the press of bodies
in front of her was too much she darted sideways, into an alley. It
was narrow and dirty, but free of people, and she ran faster, her
long legs giving her an advantage over the man behind her.

A man stepped
into the alley ahead of her. He was black, and huge, a
broad-shouldered man with a gleaming bald head, and he grinned as
he saw her. She was running straight at him, and his arms came out
from his sides, blocking her path, his fingers extending, ready to
grab her.