Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl (7 page)

Gideon looked at him. “I must go, Mr. Stoker. Home. I must go home and think about things.”

Stoker nodded, and Gideon stood like a sleepwalker and walked toward the West Cliff, and the coast road to Sandsend.

4
The Shadow Over Faxmouth

Peek let Gideon in to a house that seemed to be full of children, though they didn’t sit still long enough for him to count them. Except Tommy, drawing with his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration.

The cottage was filled with the smells of cooking, and Gideon’s stomach rumbled. “Sorry to interrupt you at teatime.”

Peek shrugged. “It isn’t ready yet. You’re not interrupting.”

Gideon looked over Tommy’s shoulder at the pencil drawing of a gull on a breakwater. Very lifelike, and evidently drawn from memory. The boy was astonishingly good. Gideon felt a momentary pang of sadness. Tommy’s talent would not be nurtured; that didn’t happen in Sandsend. Not through malice, but because its inhabitants didn’t know anything else. He would fish, like his brothers, like his daddy, like everyone.

“I won’t keep you long,” said Gideon at last. “I’ve come to tell you I’ll be taking the
Cold Drake
out as soon as possible. Day after tomorrow, perhaps. I need to look over her, and get some supplies.”

Peek screwed up his eyes. “What’s changed your mind?”

Is this what Trigger would do? It didn’t matter. Gideon Smith was not Lucian Trigger, nor would he ever be. Despite the salutation at the start of each story—
This adventure, as always, is utterly true, and faithfully retold by my good friend, Doctor John Reed
—real life was never as neat as the stories. Trigger never failed; he was never turned away from his adventures by anything as
ordinary
as a death in the family. Trigger was impervious to personal tragedy, or if he wasn’t, then he gamely adventured on regardless. Gideon didn’t have that luxury. He needed to put food on the table and pay the bills, and neither searching for what ever truth lay out there about his father’s death nor hunting for Bram Stoker’s vampiric nobleman would do that. He said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

“Peter’s ready when you are, and I’ve spoke to the others and their dads.”

Mrs. Peek, who had thinning hair and a look of perpetual, ingrained exhaustion, appeared at the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She nodded at Gideon. “Sorry about Arthur. He was a good man.”

Gideon nodded. Peek said, “So you’ve given it up? All this talk of investigations? And your . . . noises? At Lythe Bank?”

Gideon shrugged. “I told Constable Clarke. It’s his business if he cares to look into it.”

The look that passed between the Peeks was not so brief that Gideon didn’t catch it. His eyes narrowed. “What?”

Peek said, “Clive Clarke’s . . . missing. He started his rounds, called in on Mrs. Higginbotham, as is customary, then . . . well, no one saw him after that.”

“Maybe he’s out of the village,” said Gideon. “Called to Whitby, or Staithes.”

But Peek glanced out the window, at the darkening sky, and Gideon saw in his furrowed brow that same look he’d had the day after the
Cold Drake
was lost. He said quietly, “Old Mrs. Higginbotham said he’d been planning to go to Lythe Bank. Check out a
report
he’d had.”

There was a moment of awkward silence, then Mrs. Peek said, too brightly, “You’ll stay for tea, Gideon?”

“No. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

“He’ll turn up,” he said. “Clive Clarke.”

“Yes.” Gideon nodded.

They both looked at their feet, then Gideon said his goodbyes and left, heading down the hill toward the beach. On the horizon a thin, pale line was advancing, indicating another sea mist was going to crawl inland. The last time it had come, the sea mist had claimed his dad. Gideon wondered what fresh terror this new incursion would herald. In truth, he had been famished and would have gladly sat at Peek’s table, but he had suddenly felt so very sick to his stomach. He had sent Clive Clarke off to investigate those noises from Lythe Bank . . . had he sent the police officer to his death? Had whatever overwhelmed the
Cold Drake
insinuated itself into the tunnels beneath the cliffs, awaiting more victims? Bram Stoker said it couldn’t be his fanciful vampire crawling in under cover of the sea fret, so it must be something more solid . . . and much, much worse.

“Why’d you say that to him?” asked Mrs. Peek as she dished up the stew. “About Clive? You said yourself he’s apt to be a little away with the fairies. Who knows what he’ll make of that?”

Peek dipped a hunk of bread into the brown soup. “He’d have found out anyway. Better he can put this sort of thing into . . . oh, what’s the word, Harold? When something looks one way or another depending on what sort of place you’re at when you looks at it?”

Peek’s son Harold, who was a whiz with his spelling, shrugged. “Perspective?”

Peek considered. “Sounds right. Better he can put this sort of thing into
perspective
while he’s in a sensible frame of mind. Even if Clive is missing in Lythe Bank, and God knows no one wants that, at least Gideon’ll be able to see it’s just one of those things and not one of his mysteries.” He winked at Harold. “Perspective. Bloody good word, that.”

“Well, he looked half starved to me on top of it all,” said Mrs. Peek. “I bet he hasn’t had a square meal since his daddy died. After tea you can take a bowl of stew over to Gideon.”

Peek sighed and Tommy perked up. “I’ll take it.”

Mrs. Peek was about to protest, but her husband held up his hand. “Aye, let the lad. It’s only five minutes.” He turned to his son and waggled his spoon. “No letting him fill your head with nonsense, mind. I know you’re almost as much of a bugger for those penny dreadfuls as he is.”

Before Gideon returned to the cottage, there was a ghost to lay to rest, a more looming presence than Stoker’s Transylvanian phantoms or the disappearance of Clive Clarke.

He hadn’t set foot on the
Cold Drake
since the crew was lost, had barely had the stomach to look at it. He wanted to run from it, in fact. But Trigger wouldn’t do that. Trigger would face the beast in its lair. He walked with measured footfalls along the rickety pier until he was alongside the ship. The other trawlers were moored farther along the beach, black shapes in the dying day. Why didn’t they look as foreboding as his father’s ship? Why didn’t they fill Gideon’s gut with butterflies? They just looked like gearships wound down for the night, awaiting preparation for tomorrow’s fishing, once the sea mist had lifted. The
Cold Drake
looked like something else. Something
other
. Gideon could see, now, why none of the more seasoned fishermen of Sandsend would take to the sea with her, why trawlermen were so superstitious. A pall hung over the
Cold Drake
like a cloud of flies. She was cursed, plain and simple. There were no rules about these things, nothing written down, no guidebooks. But Gideon knew the Sandsend fishing community would not put up with the abandoned ship moored on the beach for long. It was bad for business, bad for morale. Bad for Sandsend. There was only one way the curse of the
Cold Drake
could be lifted, and that was by Gideon taking her out as though nothing had happened. Only he could break the hold the black shape of the Smiths’ trawler was exerting on Sandsend.

Steeling himself, Gideon placed a shaking hand on the strut of the wooden pier and jumped.

No earthquake split the land when his feet hit the deck of the
Cold Drake
. No tidal wave consumed Sandsend. The sky did not fall; fire did not rain from the heavens.

No dragon appeared to eat the sinking sun.

There was no clue as to what had happened. Gideon’s fingers trailed along a series of shallow gouges in the decking. Were they fresh, or had they always been there? It was difficult to say. A belt buckle rusted by the bow. Had it been lost by one of the crew that fateful night, or had it sat there for months? Gideon completed another circuit, walking clockwise as though he might ward off any bad luck clinging to the trawler. He had not ventured belowdecks, and did not intend to as the sun dipped redly over the rooftops. That was enough for one day. As he made to leave, though, the last of the sun’s rays bounced off a reflective sliver by his feet, hidden by the long shaft-brake. Arthur Smith’s gutting knife, the blade sunk a half-inch into the plank. Gideon pulled the knife from the deck and inspected the point of the blade. The knife had pierced and fixed to the decking what appeared to be a small square of dirty white cloth. Gideon plucked it from the end of the blade. It
was
cloth, though as dry as paper. It crumbled to dust in his fingers and was whipped away on a sudden and unexpectedly cold breeze playing over the
Cold Drake,
chilling Gideon into a hurried exit from the trawler and a rapid return up the hill to his cottage. He did not dare to cast a single look over his shoulder.

Gideon closed the windows against the advancing fog and sat in his father’s chair, leafing through his copies of
World Marvels & Wonders
by candlelight. He was just thinking how hungry he was and how good Mrs. Peek’s stew had smelled when he heard a startled cry, followed by the crash of something breaking. The fog was thick and he could see nothing from the window, but then the air was rent by a scream that could have been dragged from within Gideon himself. A small boy, calling for his dad.

In seconds Gideon was out of the front door, and his scalp crawled as he saw Tommy Peek half lying on the path outside Gideon’s cottage, a pot in pieces around him, the brown gravy from his mother’s stew soaking into the dry earth. But the boy was moving, wide-eyed and drawing breath for another cry. Gideon squatted at his side.

“It was a monster!” Tommy hissed. “It came out of the fog. Its teeth . . .”

Monster? Teeth? Was it Stoker’s Count Dracula after all? “Inside,” Gideon said. “We’ll get you cleaned up then get your daddy.”

A shape loomed out of the curling white fog, and Gideon’s heart raced, but it was only his nearest neighbor, a crippled old fisherman who had not been out on the sea for a decade.

“Go get Peek,” said Gideon, his mouth dry. “Tell him Tommy’s had a bit of a fright, but he’s all right.”

Inside the house Gideon gave Tommy a cup of water and sat him in the chair. He remembered the portrait of Count Dracula he’d seen in one of the books in the library. “Did the man have a long nose? A jutting lower jaw? A thick black mustache?”

Tommy shook his head. “It wasn’t a man. It was a monster.” He put his hands to his face and burst into tears again.

Gideon hushed him. “Can you describe him?
It,
then?”

Tommy looked at his hands and sniffed. Gideon thought for a moment and said, “Can you draw it?”

He fetched a notepad and a pencil and went to make some coffee while the boy haltingly began to sketch. The water was about to boil on the stove when there was a hammering on the door and Peek let himself in.

“Tommy!” he said, glaring at Gideon. “What happened?”

“It was a monster,” said Tommy.

Peek shook his head. “You’re as bad as Gideon for your tales. You dropped the pot and now you’re trying to cover it up with some daft story. Your mother was right. I shouldn’t have let you out in this fog.” He turned to Gideon. “Thank you for looking after him. I’ll take care of it now.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. “We’ll think of something to tell your mammy, don’t worry.”

Tommy nodded and Gideon marveled at the resilience of the young. Either he really was lying, or he was more scared of his mother than he was of Count Dracula. Gideon saw them out and returned to the chair, where Tommy had left the sketch.

At first he took it for the product of an overactive imagination
—It takes one to know one
. It was technically very good, as were all Tommy’s pictures. But the subject matter . . . it really was a monster, thin and wiry of body, ragged strips of cloth wound around its chest and festooning its arms, gnarled but viciously clawed hands. The thing had a bulbous, bald head into which were set bulging round eyes without pupils, giving them the appearance of milky orbs. Tommy had managed to make its skin look dry and thin and seemingly stretched over its ball-like skull. But the true terror lay in its mouth: thin lips, curiously elongated and froglike, and rows of pointed, black fangs slavering with clear, viscous fluid.