The Magnificent Lizzie Brown and the Devil's Hound (12 page)

“Stay together,” Lizzie whispered, thinking of Becky. “We need to check Becky's father's grave first.”

When they arrived at the graveside, Lizzie instantly saw what she'd been dreading. The flowers she had left were nowhere to be seen. “They've been here,” she said, suddenly feeling very cold.

“They robbed his grave?” Becky's voice trembled. The fiery confidence flooded out of her in a rush of tears as she sank to her knees. “How . . . how could they?”

“If they're here, we'll catch them,” Lizzie promised.

Becky clutched handfuls of freshly dug earth and squeezed them. She rocked back and forth, crying. Anyone could see she was in no state to take on the grave robbers.

“Why don't you wait here?” Lizzie said, giving her a hug. “We'll go and hunt for the men who did this.”

Becky just nodded weakly and let loose a fresh flood of tears.

I should never have let her come
, Lizzie thought.
She's brave, but she ain't in strong enough shape for this.
It was hardly surprising as the farm girl had only just recovered from smallpox.

Moving quickly, the three of them — Hari, Dru, and Lizzie — crept through the cemetery toward where they'd seen the two men before. Dru grabbed Lizzie's arm and silently pointed out a dark shape passing between the trees.

“Is that them?” whispered Hari.

As if in answer, a low and angry growl came from a nearby clump of bushes. Lizzie barely had time to register how close the hound was before it loped out, terrifyingly huge against the night sky.

“The Devil's Hound!” Lizzie gasped.

The beast was right next to them. Lizzie knew it would do no good to run. Last time she'd had a head start, and the enormous dog had still caught up with her. This time, there was no way she could outrun it.

The moon came out from behind a cloud. Now she could see it clearly, a beast like a Great Dane, almost as tall as she was and as black as the night sky. Lizzie stood paralyzed with fear. The phantom dog snarled, then ran and leaped at her.

Hari's voice rang out, firm and clear. “Down!”

The dog stopped in its tracks. It looked at Hari and cocked its head, confused.

“Down,” Hari repeated.

Lizzie couldn't believe it. The dog was bigger than any of them, and yet Hari was speaking to him as if he was in charge. Hari's face was calm, showing no fear at all. Slowly, hesitantly, the huge dog sank to the ground.

“Good boy,” Hari said instantly. “Well done.” He threw the dog a piece of fresh meat from his pocket. Eagerly, the dog gobbled and chomped it up.

“You liked that, didn't you?” Hari crooned. “You poor thing. I bet nobody's fed you anything for a long time, have they?”

As he spoke, Hari bent down and ruffled the dog's fur as if he had every right to. To Lizzie's amazement, the dog let him.

“He's doing what he does with the lions!” she whispered to Dru. “He acts like he's the boss, so they treat him like the boss.”

Within minutes, the dog was rolling on his back and licking Hari's face. “He's showing me his throat,” Hari explained. “That means he's submitting to me. In his eyes, I'm the pack leader. We can be friends now.”

“I dunno,” Lizzie said nervously. “You didn't see how he went after Malachy.”

“That wasn't his fault,” Hari said. “He's been starved.”

“So he was trying to eat Mal?” Lizzie exclaimed.

Hari laughed. “No! He thought he was driving off a rival. He's used to getting by on scraps, so any stranger is a threat who might take his food away.”

Dru dropped to a squat and patted the hound experimentally. “He seems tame enough now. Like a different dog.”

“Most animals don't want to hurt people. They just need to be treated right.” Hari stood up and held out the back of his hand. The dog sniffed it, then licked it.

“He isn't a ghost dog, that's for sure!” Lizzie said, finally managing to smile. “Not one of Ma Sullivan's ‘coo shees' either.”

“We just need to find his owners now,” said Hari. “And with all respect to Ma Sullivan, I doubt either of them is the devil.”

“How do we find the owners?” Lizzie asked.

“We follow the dog,” Hari said. “Go on, boy! Home!”

The hound looked quizzically at Hari, then padded off through the cemetery. As they hurried after the hound, moving as silently as they could, Lizzie wondered if the dog wasn't leading them into a trap even now. They were heading deeper into the cemetery than they'd ever gone before. She didn't recognize any of the huge urns, tombs, and memorials that they passed.

“Stay out of sight,” whispered Dru. “The grave robbers could be around any corner.”

All three of them used the tombs for cover, darting quickly from one to the next, and only moving on when they knew the coast was clear. The hound seemed unconcerned as he trotted ahead of them. In the darkness, it was hard to keep track of where he was going. Lizzie just hoped Hari could keep him calm for long enough.

From the corner of her eye, Lizzie noticed Dru passing a length of rope from one hand to the other. Did he really expect to leap out of the shadows, take the grave robbers by surprise, and tie them up? They weren't dealing with pantomime villains here. These were men desperate enough to dig up the dead and steal from them.

“I think he's getting close,” whispered Hari. “Good dog.”

Lizzie strode out into the dark. In the next moment, her foot caught on something. She fell forward and stifled a yelp as she landed heavily on her hands and knees on the cold, wet earth.

A fierce pain was shooting up from her ankle. She felt around with her hands and found the temporary grave marker she'd tripped over. As she pulled herself up to sitting, something slimy grazed her hand. Lizzie recoiled in horror, but when she looked down it was only a worm, burying itself deeper into the soil. She shook her head. This cemetery was playing tricks on her mind.

Lizzie wobbled to her feet and wiggled her ankle around. It was still sore, but she could walk on it. “Hari? Dru?” she whispered into the darkness. She looked around, trying to get her bearings. “Dru, if you're playing games again, it's not funny!”

No answer came. The boys obviously hadn't heard her stumble and had moved on. There was nothing to do but to find her own way, Lizzie decided. Her friends couldn't be much further ahead. She set off in the direction the dog had been headed in.

The cemetery was like a labyrinth. All around, stone faces stared at her with blank eyes. Statues that the sculptor must have thought would be comforting now looked sinister and strange. They reached out to grab her with cold marble hands.

A scream rose in Lizzie's throat, but she choked it back. No. She couldn't scream. She mustn't. If the grave robbers were here, it would draw them straight to her. They'd had no luck drowning her, but Lizzie knew they'd be happy to get rid of her with shovels instead.

Pull yourself together, girl! A graveyard's just a piece of land full of stone statues and monuments
, she scolded herself.
All you have to do is find your way through it.

Lizzie took a deep breath, slow and steady. Feeling calmer, she strained to hear the others. She thought she could hear someone whispering just past a tomb with a lion on top of it. She started in that direction, but the next moment a vision took hold of her. It was more powerful than anything she'd ever felt while she was reading palms.

Becky was looking up from the bottom of an open grave. She was out of her mind with fear. She let out a terrified scream.

The same scream, coming from across the graveyard, ripped through Lizzie's vision. What she was seeing in her vision was happening right now!

A figure loomed over Becky, a grim shadow in the night. One of the grave robbers? No — the figure was winged. It was an angel statue, holding out its arms as if to embrace someone. Lizzie fixed it in her memory.

A lid slammed shut over Becky. Now there was only total darkness and the knowledge that the girl was trapped. Becky banged on the lid, but she couldn't get out. She couldn't breathe.

As the vision faded, Lizzie desperately sucked in lungfuls of the night air. The vision was so vivid it had felt like she was suffocating too. Somewhere out there, Lizzie knew, it was happening to Becky for real.

“Hold on, Becky!” she said. “I'm coming!”

Lizzie set off through the cemetery at a run, heading in the direction Becky's scream had come from.

Before she got far, something black burst out of the shrubbery, with Hari close behind. Lizzie yelped and nearly jumped backward into the bushes. It was the hound, but to her amazement, he was whining, not growling. When he saw her, he barked happily.

“Good boy!” Hari said. “You found her!”

“Huh?” Lizzie said.

“The dog got upset when he realized you weren't with us,” Dru piped up. “He ran around in circles and shot off back the way we'd come. And then we heard you scream.”

Hari ruffled the dog's fur. “He must have followed your scent. Good job, boy.”

The hound sniffed Lizzie's hand, then gave it a shy lick. Her fingers trembled. “Good boy,” she managed to say. “Are we going to be friends now, then?”

The dog's tail wagged in a great sweeping arc.

“Can you walk?” Dru held out his arm.

“I'm fine!” Lizzie brushed grave dirt and moss from her clothes. The memory of the vision was still burning strong in her mind. “It's Becky we need to go after now. It wasn't me screaming — it was her. She's in danger!”

“What sort of danger?”

“Someone's got her. I think she's in a grave, running out of air. We need to look for an angel statue.” Lizzie mimicked the stance she'd seen in her vision. “With its arms out, like this.”

“I've seen several angels in this graveyard,” Hari mused, “but none like that. Dru?”

Dru shook his head. “Me neither. It could be anywhere.”

Lizzie clenched her fists in frustration. “We need to search the whole place until we find that angel.”

“Are you crazy?” Hari hissed. “Even with the hound's help, that would take hours! Have you seen how big this place is?”

Lizzie hated to admit it, but Hari had a point. There was no way they could search all of Kensal Green cemetery in time. They had to move fast. Somewhere, Becky's life was in danger. She knew it as sure as she knew the beating of her own heart.

Lizzie glanced up at the tomb beside her. Without a second thought, she grabbed hold of the carvings on the corner and began to climb. Even with the pain in her ankle, she quickly scrambled to the top. “Better view from up here,” she called down to the boys.

“See anything?” Dru asked, sounding impressed.

“Lots of gravestones . . . some big urns . . . a sort of temple thing. No angel.” Lizzie shook her head. “There are too many hedges and bushes in the way.”

Dru peered in the direction of the temple Lizzie had mentioned, which was a large building with pillars in the front and a peaked roof. “The cemetery chapel,” he said. “Lizzie, you're a genius.”

“Come again?” Lizzie asked.

Dru was already running. “I can climb up onto the roof. From the top of that, I'll be able to see for miles. Hurry!”

The hound kept pace beside them, but now Lizzie felt safe in his presence. She wondered if Hari was the first person who'd ever been kind to him. Now she thought about it, she'd been a bit of a stray herself when the circus had taken her in. No wonder the dog was feeling loyal to Hari now.

“We've got more in common than I thought, doggy,” she whispered as she ran.

The chapel didn't look like a church. Its pillared entrance loomed up in front of them like something out of a Greek myth. “Classical style,” Hari commented. “It's meant to look like an ancient Greek building.”

Lizzie thought it looked like a tomb for something gigantic.The two wings of the building reached out like arms on either side. She could easily imagine the monstrous remains lying inside — skulls the size of carriages, leg bones as huge as tree trunks.
Ma Sullivan was right about one thing
, she thought.
Give me a quaint little country churchyard any day over this place.

Dru passed the rope around one of the columns, wound it around his wrists leaving some slack, and leaned back. By bracing his feet against the column while gripping with the rope, he was able to hitch his way up as easily as if he'd been walking up a hill.

“Can you see Becky?” Lizzie asked. She was snappy and impatient now. She knew Dru was doing his best, but they were running out of time. The girl's life was at stake.

Dru silently turned his head like a roosting owl. Then he froze. “There's a light. Way across the other side of the cemetery. It looks like a lantern.”

Lizzie held her breath waiting for Dru to speak again.

At last, he did. “I see three people. No — two. The other one's not moving. Two and a statue.”

“An angel statue?” Lizzie asked frantically.

“Yes, I think so,” Dru replied. “Yes! Holding out its arms like it's saying, ‘Come here,
mon amour
.'”

“That's the one!” Lizzie exclaimed. “That's where Becky is! Get down here, fast!”

Dru jumped back down to the lower roof. Using his rope as a brake, he skidded down the column in seconds flat. “Fast enough for you?” he panted.

Together they raced through the graveyard in the direction of the light Dru had seen.
Don't worry, Becky
, Lizzie thought.
We're coming. Please don't be afraid, wherever you are.

When they'd almost reached the light, Dru whispered, “Hari and I will go in opposite directions, and then we'll all close in on them.”