The Wanderer in Unknown Realms (9 page)

It was about seven or eight inches in length, its body armored like that of a lobster. Its carapace was a milky red, as though it had somehow survived being boiled in a pot, and I counted twelve pairs of jointed legs, each leg spurred with a vicious curving spike at the first joint. The pincers were at the rear of its body, increasing their resemblance to those of an earwig that had first struck me back at Maulding's house, but the multiple eyes at the other end were more like those of a spider: two large black orbs were positioned above its jaws, with a cluster of smaller organs scattered around them in what seemed like a random manner. The jaws themselves were lined with twin rows of small, sharp teeth that curved inward, and around them, corresponding to the main points of a compass, were four clawed extrusions for cutting and tearing.

I was reluctant to touch the thing, for small, translucent hairs covered its frame, and even in death they seemed to be releasing a milky fluid that I felt a profound desire to avoid. Heat was coming off it, too, as strong as the flame on a stove, although it was gradually decreasing in intensity. I moved it so that I could look more clearly at its mouth, and I thought I glimpsed something caught behind those curved teeth. A knife and fork lay on a dirty plate on the kitchen sideboard, and I used them to force the creature's jaws farther apart to examine more clearly what lay within. It was white but with hints of color, almost like a small egg, almost like . . .

I dropped the knife and fork and stumbled away from the creature, my gorge rising. Having seen so much that was awful in life, I was surprised at my capacity to be revolted by anything, but revolted I was.

Caught in the creature's mouth was an eyeball, and I could only assume that it had once belonged to the unfortunate Maggs. I looked again at the corpse in the chair and the creature on the floor. I felt again its diminishing heat, and smelled the stink of burning from the eyeless sockets in Maggs's head, and the twin channels that had burned through his brain. I had thought that something like a hot poker had twice been forced into his skull, but now I feared I was mistaken. Was it possible instead that something hot had worked itself
out
of his head, burning as it went, until at last it emerged into the light?

But why had he not moved? Why had he not struggled against it? Why was his body sitting upright in a chair, his hands placed on the table before him like a man waiting patiently for his evening meal to be served? And this thing, this awful beast, was too big to have been accommodated by that narrow channel. Could it have grown so much already, swelling in its new environment? But how could such a creature grow? It must have shed its skin. Somewhere on the floor, perhaps. If I looked closely . . .

I was about to return to my knees, ready to find proof of my theory, when I paused. There were
two
holes in Maggs's head, two channels burned through his brain. This creature, if it had emerged from inside the book scout, having somehow implanted itself in his brain, could only have created one of them, which meant—

Which meant that there was another of these horrors somewhere in Maggs's rooms. I froze and listened carefully for the telltale sound of it. Using the broom, I poked in the corners of the kitchen and under the sideboard. I then made my way into the main living area and searched it carefully, even dragging the sheets from
the bed and stripping the mattress from its base, but I could find no sign of a second creature. It was not among the piles of books, nor was it hiding on the top of the dusty shelves. If I was right about the source of the second injury to Maggs's skull, then, somehow, the creature had escaped.

I returned to the kitchen. Maggs had not moved, nor would he ever again, and the money was still in its envelope. So, another narrative, linked to the first: Maulding approaches Dunwidge & Daughter, and they, in turn, introduce him to Maggs, although now Maggs is working on their behalf and is not a lone operator. Maggs either finds the book that Maulding is seeking, and in return receives a finder's fee from Dunwidge & Daughter; or, more likely, he convinces Maulding that the book is in his possession, Maulding brings the money, and once the money is safely in his hands, Maggs disposes of Maulding for the Dunwidges and gets paid five hundred pounds for his efforts. But where did the creature and its now-missing twin come from, and how did a similar creature come to be in a bathtub in Lionel Maulding's house?

I looked at Maggs, as though he might give me the answer.

And Maggs, it seemed, tried to do so, for his mouth began to move. His chin shifted, and his lips parted, but instead of words a quartet of claws emerged, forcing his already stiffening mouth wider, and I heard his jaw cracking with the force of it. The head of the second creature appeared from the maw, its own mouth pulsing redly as it chewed on some unidentifiable fragment of Maggs's innards.

I attacked it with the broom handle, striking at Maggs's face so hard that I felt his teeth shatter under the impact, and the broom itself broke in two. Maggs's body toppled and fell to the floor, landing on its back. The blow had caused the creature to retreat into his mouth, seeking the safety of his gullet, but I was not to be denied. I could see its dark eyes gleaming in Maggs's throat, so I took the sharp end of the broken broom and forced it again and
again into the dead man's mouth, beating at it until his palate and tongue were reduced to so much meat, and his teeth had been knocked entirely from his head, and the mess of the creature inside him was barely distinguishable from the general ruin.

And then I wept.

I DON'T
know how long I stayed that way, seated in a corner of the filthy kitchen with Maggs's body lying in front of me on the floor. During that time, it seemed that I fell in and out of my earlier life—no, not life but
lives
, for in each one was a different man: a son, a husband, a father, a soldier, a patient, and now a soul adrift. I felt and heard again the broom handle striking Maggs's flesh, and then it was no longer a broom handle but a rifle, and the bayonet at its tip was lodged so hard in the breastbone of the man in the mud before me that I had to place my right foot on his chest in order to pull it free. I was crouched down at Crucifix Corner, beside the pitted figure of the tortured Christ, High Wood in the distance, Death Valley before me, with the shelling, the endless shelling. I was standing over a crater on a September morning, watching as the first of forty-seven men from the London battalions was interred in the gray mud, which enveloped their forms so that they became part of it, presaging the greater decay to come.

And then I was broken, and the world itself became a fragmented place.

Craiglockhart: a nurse was wheeling me into a small private room where a chaplain and a brother officer were waiting, and someone was whispering the impossible to me, tales of a raid by Gotha bombers on 13 June, of a woman, a girl, and a boy buried in rubble.

Finally, I was standing by another hole in the ground, and more bodies were being lowered into it. I had not been permitted to see their remains before the coffin lids were screwed down, as though I had never before seen human beings reduced to raw meat and shattered bone by bombs, as though what I imagined could be any worse than the reality of the damage done to them.

IF I
am not a husband, not a father, not a soldier, then what am I?

Who am I?

I SHOULD
have called the police, but common sense prevailed. Maggs's face was terribly damaged, and I was responsible. The dead creature on the floor had finally cooled. As it did so it turned to a dried husk, and when I touched it with my shoe it fell apart as though it were made from ashes. The one lodged in Maggs's throat had disintegrated in a similar fashion, coating the dead man's mouth and gullet with flakes of dark matter. If the police came, I did not doubt that I would be charged with the mutilation and murder of the book scout. I remembered the girl who had directed me to his rooms. She did not know my name, but she would be able to describe me without any trouble, and I didn't believe that I had paid her enough to buy her silence. Maggs was a scrawny man, and, were we in a more isolated place, I could have carried his body from the house and disposed of it, but I could hardly walk through the streets of Spitalfields and Whitechapel with Maggs's remains hanging over my shoulder.

There came a knocking on Maggs's door. I ignored it, but it came again, and I heard a woman's voice, a familiar voice, calling out from the other side.

“Sir? Sir? Are you all right?”

It was the girl from the laneway.

“Sir?” she said again.

I got to my feet. If I ignored her, she might well take it upon
herself to call the police. I had no choice but to answer the door.

I opened it about halfway: just enough to let her know that I was safe while preventing her from seeing into the rooms behind me. She looked both relieved and puzzled.

“I was worried,” she said. “Mr. Maggs—”

“Has a reputation,” I finished for her. “Undeserved, I might add, or no longer applicable.”

“Is he all right?” she asked. “You didn't have to hurt him, did you?”

“No. Actually, he's a little the worse for wear.”

I made a gesture of drinking, for I had seen the empty bottles of cheap gin piled up in a corner by Maggs's bed. The girl nodded in understanding.

“That'd be him,” she said. “I don't know if he's better with or without it. It's as little as makes no difference.”

“Well, I'll put him in his bed, and turn him on his side so that he doesn't choke in the night, and then I'll be on my way,” I said.

“You look ill,” she said. “Are you sure you're feeling all right yourself?”

“Now that you mention it . . . ”

There was sweat on my face. I could taste it on my lips.

“Why don't you come down to the Ten Bells,” she said. “A whisky will sort you out. It'll be on me, for your kindness earlier.”

I was tempted to refuse, to get as far away from there as quickly as I could, but a drink sounded good, and not the poor stuff that Maggs was in the habit of imbibing. Neither did I want to look in any way suspicious by fleeing the scene.

“You know, I'll take that drink,” I said. “Just let me see that Maggs is fixed, and I'll be with you shortly.”

“Do you want some help?”

“No, I can manage.”

“Right then. I'll wait for you downstairs.”

I smiled and closed the door. I returned to the kitchen and
looked at Maggs. There was nothing to be done about him for now, but we were not far from the river. If I waited until the city was quiet, I could perhaps carry him to the bank under the pretext of his being the worse for drink, as long as I kept his face covered, and then dump him in the Thames. It might be days before he was found, and there was the possibility of the damage to his face being ascribed to his time in the water, or the propeller of a boat. In the meantime, I took the envelope of money from the table and placed it in my pocket.

In case you take me for a thief, let me say that I intended not to keep it but to pass it on to Quayle for safekeeping. It was Lionel Maulding's money—of that much I was certain—and, if it were left in these rooms, it would eventually find its way into the pockets of another. Quayle would look after it. Quayle would know what to do. For a moment, I was almost tempted to seek his help, to tell him of what had transpired in Maggs's kitchen, but I feared that he would not believe me and might even hand me over to the police.

Quayle was cunning and careful, but he was not actively dishonest, or certainly not when it came to the possibility of a killing. I believed it would pain him to turn me in (“He was never the same after the war, poor fellow”), and he might even act on my behalf if it came to a trial, but he would not shelter me if he thought me guilty of murder.

I went downstairs and joined the girl, who told me her name was Sally. I walked with her to the Ten Bells on Commercial Street. The bar enjoyed a certain notoriety for its associations with Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly, two victims of Jack the Ripper, although any number of such establishments might have boasted of a similar connection. It didn't seem appropriate to discuss the murders with Sally, and she didn't bring them up. We talked instead of her life, steering clear of her profession, and I told her a little of myself, but not too much, and I did not give her my true name. After an hour, some women of her acquaintance appeared, and I made my excuses.

By then, Sally was tipsy. She tried to kiss me as I left, and asked me to return to her rooms with her. I declined but promised I would seek her out on another night. She saw the lie, though, and the hurt in her face pained me. She was a good girl, and I had not been with a woman in so very long, not since my other life.

I left money at the bar and ordered a round for her and her friends. She watched me leave, watched me with dark, wounded eyes. I wonder now what became of her, but it is too late. It is too late for all of us.