Hounds of Autumn (15 page)

Chapter 24

O
nce they were home, Chloe
unfolded her copy of the map. Her eye caught on the place where she had marked the stone circle. Two days had already elapsed, and she dreaded defying Ambrose and going out without him. But this task was different. She opened up
A Dartmoor Companion
and double-checked her locations. The hound had visited the Aynesworth house and the bog where Camille had been found. It had also visited the dress shop, which, according to Mr. Lydford, was next to his shop. That was on the opposite end of town from the churchyard and far from the Hammond residence. Even so, crossing town was not too difficult on foot if you had the time.

There were no abandoned mines in or near the triangle created by drawing lines between the bog, town and the Aynesworth house. But if she added the Granger home as a fourth location, one mine came close.

The next morning, she and Ambrose drove out to the mine. A quarter of a mile away, they had to stop the steamcycle and leave it. The road to the mine was long overgrown and would have to be traveled on foot. Chloe pulled a lantern from the back basket and unwound the protective cloth that she had wrapped around it to keep it from rattling or breaking. She threw her satchel over one shoulder.

They passed scattered mortar stones in the grass and the ruins of an ancient blowing house, where tin was smelted in centuries past. The entrance to the mine was clear of rocks or debris and the interior was cool and shady, if a bit musty.

Ambrose motioned for the lantern and lit it. “I’ll go in first.”

Many of the mine’s overhead support beams were splintered or broken and in some cases, missing completely. The lantern threw lurching shadows on the walls and floor. They stepped around rocks, large pieces of rusted metal and other rubble. They ducked beneath a low-hanging beam and Ambrose stopped.

“It forks up ahead.” His voice sounded startlingly loud in the silence.

He lifted the lantern, and the outlines of two equally black caverns emerged from the darkness. She did not want to go into either of them. They were already far underground, and the dark and the silence unnerved her. Besides, sometimes people disappeared in mines.

“Let’s take a look around before we go any further,” said Ambrose.

He examined the ground for tracks, and Chloe wished she had brought a second lantern. She glanced back the way they had come, and thought she saw something. But the light danced and waved in her husband’s hand, and she couldn’t be sure.

“Bring the lantern here. I think I see something. There appears to be a spot where the wall breaks off,” she said.

She took the lantern. They retraced their steps until they came to a spot where a wide, flat board the size of a small table leaned close against the wall. It was as dark as the surrounding area, and with all the other debris, was easy to miss. Underneath it was a newspaper, partially torn, an empty can and some rocks.

She handed Ambrose the lantern and unfolded the paper. It was torn in various places.

“Do you think this is the paper that the hound used when it left those scraps at the bog?” asked Ambrose.

“I can’t tell. I don’t recall any dates on the scraps. Here’s the date. This paper is a week old. But without the scraps, I can’t compare.”

“Do you remember any of the pictures or text from the scraps?” he asked.

“No.”

“Neither do I,” he sighed.

She wished she had taken the scraps when she had seen them. But it was too late now.

“The pages are torn, seemingly at random,” he said.

“True. It could be the hound. Or rats could have torn it to make nests.”

“No, rats would have nibbled at the outer parts. This was opened and then torn.”

“It still leaves the question of who brought it here,” she said. She folded it and put it in her satchel. “Let’s just go down one of the forks a little bit. We’ll turn back in a minute or two.”

He paused, and she knew he was weighing his own desire to keep her safe, his own dislike of the mine and a burning curiosity. Curiosity won.

“Left or right?” he asked.

“You pick.”

They moved to stand between the two forks and Ambrose smelled the air at each side.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing if one is fresher. It means there would be an air hole somewhere. A second way out. If I were a creature hiding, that’s what I would want. A rabbit warren always has a secondary egress in case the animal is trapped.”

Chloe sniffed with him, but only detected the dusty, dank scent of old earth. They tried the right tunnel, but after the first turn, it was blocked by a cave-in. They turned back and went down the left tunnel.

An old rail track appeared a few yards down the tunnel, and they walked down the center, careful not to trip over the rail ties. Up ahead, a ceiling beam had fallen and blocked the path.

“We should go back,” said Ambrose. “If the beams have broken, it could cave in.”

“One moment,” said Chloe. “May I have the lamp?”

Up against the wall and hidden by the fallen beam was a crate. Ambrose pulled open the lid. Chloe held the lantern up and smiled.

“There we are. More coins, paper scraps,” she pushed things aside. “Is this a can of that solvent?”

Ambrose took the can and opened it. Inside was a dark powder, though she could not tell the color.

“It needs liquid to reconstitute it,” he said. “Do you want to take it with us?”

“No. Let me take a sample though.” She pulled an oily rag from her satchel and tapped a small pile of powder into it. She knotted the cloth and put it in the satchel. “If the hound comes back, I don’t want him to get frightened off if his hiding place is disturbed.”

“Do you think it would behave like that?”

“I don’t know. I see that it is applying a repetitive behavioral pattern to new situations as it encounters them. And it is choosing to place objects in consistent hiding places.”

“You are saying that the hound is thinking.”

“No, this is different.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. It just is.”

She was about to pull an old cloth out of the crate when she realized that something was wrapped inside. She unwound it and gave a low whistle.

“What is it?”

“Do you recall the object that Inspector Lockton showed us? I can’t be certain, but I think this is the other part of it.”

They exited the mine and rode home. Once in her temporary laboratory, Chloe pulled the curtains wide open, flooding the room with afternoon light. She set aside the handkerchief with the powdered solvent and set her tool kit on Ambrose’s desk.

She put on her magnification spectacles and turned the knob at the corner. Lenses dropped down, one by one, until she had the correct level of magnification. She turned over the mechanical piece.

Ambrose appeared and set a cup of tea at her elbow.

“I hope you don’t mind me using your desk. The light is better,” she said.

“Not at all. Have you learned anything?”

“It’s definitely the other part of Inspector Lockton’s piece. The components and workmanship match up perfectly. But this one wasn’t in the bog. No dirt inside.”

“The hound could have washed it. Submerged it in a stream perhaps.”

“Maybe, if it could hold it in its mouth. But more likely, it never fell into the bog.”

She turned it over, and thought she caught a flash of green from within. None of the parts were that color. She turned it slowly, and heard the softest sound, as of a broken piece sliding. She unfastened a few screws and pulled the piece in half, then turned the bottom piece back and forth.

“Here we are,” she said. She grabbed a pair of tiny pincers from her tool kit and pulled the green object out from where it had been nestled.

“A piece of glass?” Ambrose leaned in.

She set down the glass shard and searched through the mechanical piece but found nothing more. She flipped a few lenses on her spectacles back up and held the object at arm’s length. She imagined Inspector Lockton’s piece with it, and the whole joined together in her mind.

“Zoetrope,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“I think this was a zoetrope. A wind-up rotating glass cylinder that has a gaslight inside. People have them as novelties, as decorations.”

“I’ve seen them. My sister had one when she was a girl. Our mother would light it and wind it and Rose would watch the colored light dance on the walls when her room was dark.”

“And did she take it with her when she married?”

“My God. Do you think it could be?” He reached to touch the piece, but then withdrew his hand.

“There’s no way to know for sure. It’s an older piece and it’s definitely a zoetrope. But those are common enough household objects. And many families have older ones.”

“You’re sure of what it is?”

“Completely sure. If I had both parts, I could put it together myself. All we’re missing is the mechanism casing, the gaslight and the glass cylinder.” She reassembled the piece and wrapped it back in its cloth.

“No, just the mechanism casing and the gaslight,” said Ambrose. “The glass cylinder was broken. There were glass bits in the hiding place by the bog, remember?”

“You’re right.” She picked up the wrapped piece of the zoetrope and put it in one of her open crates.

“You said in the mine that the hound hiding pieces of things or attacking human replicas wasn’t thinking. What did you mean?”

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know.” She took out Giles and pulled off his cover. She needed to see why he had chosen to destroy the garden. “I think there’s a difference between thinking in the sense that we do and a creature applying repeating behaviors to situations that have similar characteristics. The hound seems to be finding patterns in unstructured environmental information and then deciding on behaviors. That’s low-level data usage and organization. It’s not really thinking.”

“I fail to see the difference.”

“It’s like this. Imagine if I think of a word. The first part is a grass-eating bovine, and the second part is a young male human.”

“A cowboy.”

“Right. The hound, given enough information on its data spools could puzzle that out. It has a two-part puzzle that is easy to organize and solve in a linear fashion. Now, if I give the hound a pencil and ask it to draw something beautiful and something ugly, it cannot. The only way it could understand such concepts is through examples of each, which it would then apply in a repeating pattern.”

“Then why do you treat Giles as if he is alive? You call him ‘he’ instead of ‘it.’”

She shrugged. “Because he has the form of an animal with a sex? Because he behaves as if he is alive? You know, he likes windowsills and high places and dislikes the dark. He has memory and movement, which makes him different than a simple assembly of components. He doesn’t seem like an ‘it’ to me.”

“So he occupies an interstitial space between living thing and a non-living thing? Do you say he is a living thing or not?”

“That’s your area of expertise, dear.” She gave him a little smile. “Besides, what I call something has no effect on what it is. You can call the hound a murderer or a monster, but it is simply a mechanical. A wonderful, beautiful, clever mechanical. But a mechanical, all the same.”

After a minute of Chloe working silently on Giles, Ambrose headed toward the door. He paused and turned back. “Is there any way we can know if the zoetrope was Rose’s?”

She glanced at the crate that held the bundle. “I believe so, but you should probably do it. It involves talking with William.”

He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and sighed. “My sister is a difficult topic between us. We’ve avoided it so far on this visit, and thus have remained cordial.”

“If family peace is at stake, I can do it myself.”

“As long as you don’t stir up any ill feelings.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Chapter 25

C
hloe promised herself that this
would be the last time she kept something from Ambrose. But she would be home before it got too dark and with luck, he wouldn’t notice.

She regretted that she had needed to cut short her visit to Lydford’s Mechanical Shop. Mr. Lydford ran a clean shop, with decorative and household mechanicals filling the shelves at the front of the store. He was more than willing to chat about the machines and had even invited her to visit the back of the shop where he was repairing a few mechanicals and also had some projects of his own. Mr. Lydford had been disappointed that she had not brought Giles along for him to examine. Their time had passed too quickly and Chloe had needed to excuse herself.

Greater needs called her forth and she had to attend to one last, but vital, thing. She drove down a bumpy road, and then another until she was certain she was close to her destination.

She stopped the steamcycle and pushed its bulk down a little slope, just enough so that it would not be visible from a distance. Anyone close up would not miss it. She hoped that anyone else who was coming to the stone circle would be travelling on foot, and coming either from the side of the Aynesworth and Granger houses to the south, from town to the northeast or from the L-shaped road linking them. She put away her goggles and driving gloves and straightened her head scarf over her hair. She made sure the lantern and the flint lighter were in her satchel. She would need them later.

It was close to sunset and she hurried. She did not need to check her copied map as she covered the distance between herself and the stone circle.

She looked behind her often as she went, memorizing the exact path from the steamcycle. She would need to retrace her steps in low light. This area of the moors had more rock and grass than marsh and there were no bogs or fens that she could detect. She was grateful.

She hurried, becoming winded but pushing on. Time was short. As she crested a hill, the stone circle came into view. It was not as large or impressive as she had expected. The entire circle couldn’t be more than a mere twelve yards across. Nine standing stones circled the perimeter, but there was no flat center stone, as she had anticipated. The stones were lumpy and irregular, like contorted dancers. They had no cross-stones resting between their tops, like the ones she had seen in pictures of Stonehenge. Aside from being ancient, the circle was neither particularly impressive nor intimidating. Nevertheless, she did not approach it.

She circled a little way around it until she found a hill to one side, a bit farther away than she liked, but high enough that she could see the circle. She lowered herself to her stomach, poking her head over the top of the hill and adjusting her position until she could see every part of the circle.

She had a moment of alarm when she heard snatches of voices and could not determine their direction. She turned behind her, but the area below her was empty. Spinning back around, she relaxed when she saw two men and a woman come from the direction of town. The woman cradled a white bundle against her body that appeared to be a baby. The group looked to be in conversation and just then, another snatch of sound carried to her. It was strange how the air currents worked here.

Chloe squinted and tried to estimate how long it would be until dark. There was no almanac in the library, so she had just done her best to estimate the time. She experienced another twinge of conscience, remembering that she had told Ambrose that she would visit Lydford’s and return home before dark. With luck, the time between sunset and full dark would be enough for her to see what Mr. Granger and Mrs. Block, the Aynesworth housekeeper, were up to and then ride home before Ambrose was cross with her for traveling alone at night.

Four figures were approaching from the south. Of the group, one woman was plump and another smaller, lithe and thin. Both wore hats that blocked their faces, but she knew them by their shape alone to be Mrs. Block and her niece. The other two figures were not familiar, though they could easily have been two of the Aynesworth servants. There were other homes in the area, and since they were not in servant’s uniforms, she could not be sure. The woman carried a large picnic hamper. The man carried a large cloth pack over his shoulder, like Father Christmas. It did not appear heavy and he moved easily.

The two groups converged and chatted just outside the stone circle. The sun was nearing the horizon when she saw a final figure, stout and male, appear from the south. He used a walking stick and his movements were slow and stiff. He did not raise his hand in greeting when the group hailed him, but gradually met up with them.

The man with the large pack moved to the center of the circle, and Chloe came to attention. He opened the pack and pulled out wood and kindling and set to making a fire at the center of the circle. The others gathered around and the woman with the picnic hamper set it down. Mrs. Block opened the hamper and pulled out a green wine bottle. She uncorked it and poured liquid into a wooden cup, but did not drink. She did not pour any for the others, but stood to the side with the cup, chatting with the woman who held the white bundle. The woman pulled back the covering a few inches and Mrs. Block nodded approval.

Chloe studied the bundle. It was the right size for an infant, though it appeared to be fast asleep and still. The woman held it cradled like a baby and never set it down or handed it to anyone else. But something about the way she held it was not maternal. And who carried a baby with a fold of cloth over its face?

The fire was crackling now and the sun had touched the horizon. At a word from Mr. Granger, the people fanned out in a circle around the fire. The woman handed the bundle to Mr. Granger, and he took it gently. He and Mrs. Block were at opposite sides of the circle, one to the east and one to the west. Once everyone was in place, Chloe saw the pattern. The fire was at the center surrounded by a circle of people who were themselves surrounded by the circle of stones. The symmetry might have pleased her, if her heart were not in her mouth. Why did Mr. Granger have that baby, or whatever it was in that bundle?

Mr. Granger spoke a few words which were lost in the wind. Then Mrs. Block spoke, and then Mr. Granger. They alternated like this for some time, with the other people occasionally responding with a word or phrase in unison.

Chloe thought she heard a scuffling behind her, but it was small and faint, like a mouse or vole in the underbrush. She ignored it.

Mrs. Block poured the cup of wine on the ground and said a few words. Mr. Granger then knelt and placed the bundle on the ground. Chloe raised her head a little more. Mr. Granger said a sharp word and one of the men broke out of the circle and rummaged through the picnic hamper. In his hand, Chloe caught the glint of steel in the firelight. The blade was larger than a kitchen knife, but not by much. Or did it only seem larger? The man handed the knife to Mr. Granger, who held it aloft with one hand. Chloe did not hear him say anything, but the other members of the circle spoke a word in unison.

The little white bundle remained still on the ground.

No, this could not be. She had read of such things in sensational novels and magazine articles, but she had enough sense to not believe them. Most of them anyway. She knew there were primitive tribes that performed cannibalism, and that her own Norman and Saxon ancestors had engaged in brutality of the worst sorts. But this was modern Britain.

The voices below rose in a rhythmic chant, one phrase over and over again. Bodies swayed, and the chant became a song, slow and rhythmic. It would have been pleasing to her ears if not for the knife and the poor creature inside the bundle. Mr. Granger opened the cloth, and in the light of the failing sun and the dancing flames, she saw what looked like a rounded head.

She leaped to her feet, staggered forward and drew breath to shout when something jumped into her field of vision. It passed her by a few feet and then turned to face her.

It was a wolf, no, a wild dog, standing tall and ferocious before her. Its black body was lit from behind, and she could only make out its silhouette and the glint of its eyes which were fixed upon her. It did not growl, but took a step toward her, and then stood, watching. Its complete lack of motion as it stared at her was unnerving. Then, its ears swiveled in a way all too familiar to her.

“My God,” she whispered. “It’s you.”