"Hello, kitty cat. What'cha doing here?"
Mr. Limp. What was he doing here?
"I see you found Mr. Ferris. We've been keeping peculiar company since last night, me and him." He sat on the top step and took a flask from his pocket. "He talked like a book, that one, always calling me a border ruffian. Wobbled his chin about President Tyler and the guv'ment so much, a body couldn't think. So I heshed him up. But he still makes noise." He swallowed, sliding his Adam's apple along his throat. "You know what I'm talking about, don't you? I can see it on your face. You heard it, too." When he unscrewed the lid and took a drink, I sneezed and dropped the eye. I recognized the smell at once from Shakey House and the plateau of Fairmount Water Works. Eddie sampled the occasional dram of hard alcohol, but none carried this strength.
"I see corn liquor's not to your satisfaction." He grinned. "That Abbott fella didn't like it either, 'specially when I spilt it on him in the tavern. Damn fool had it coming, though. Made me drop the old bat's eye afore I could give it to Mr. Ferris. I looked under the bar for the damned thing, but never found it. What else could I do? I had to steal another." He took a sip and grimaced. "Hoo! Mother's milk to a miner, ain't it? Also comes in handy for washing blood off knives and hands…and such." He laughed louder and longer to himself than he should have.
Mr. Limp had changed since rescuing me in the park. And it wasn't the alcohol. Madness had overtaken him, dimming his eyes, turning them dark. "I declare. This new leg a mine's giving me terrible blisters." He tucked the flask away and pushed up his pant leg to reveal a shiny metal prosthetic with springs at the knee. This had caused the change in his cadence, different from the night we'd met. "Like it? The invalid who owned it afore just laid in bed all day." He let the hem drop, covering the limb again. "What call did he have to use it? None, I tell you. None."
I slunk across the plaster mound and picked up the eye again. Light from the candle shone down upon his jacket collar, illuminating the red stain I'd seen that night at the park. I'd initially thought it my own blood. But now I realized it had come from the poor woman he'd killed earlier that day. I'd found my murderer, or rather, he'd found me.
"What'cha got there, kitty cat?"
I took the bottom steps, thinking to dash past him when I reached the top.
"If that's what I think it is, I can't let you leave." He stood and held out his arms to grab me.
We stared at one another.
Then I ran.
I darted between his legs and into the kitchen with the precious evidence still in my mouth. He rattled and squeaked behind me on that metal contraption, gaining momentum in the hallway. By the time I reached the parlor, only a few paces separated us. Freedom, however, was mine. I leapt for the window, hit the glass, and fell back to the ground.
"Closed it when I got home," he said with a wink.
Still clutching my proof, I flew past him and up the stairs, thinking the climb would slow him down. And it did, just long enough for me to secure the last bedchamber on the hall. Even more barren than the first floor, the second held no furnishings in which I could hide. What's more, I'd begun to salivate, making the eye that much harder to hold. Rounder and fuller than its glass counterpart, it occupied my mouth to the roof.
Thud, clack, thud, clack. "Here, kitty, kitty," Mr. Limp said. He laughed again—a maniac's laugh—as he strode hallway.
Frantic, I scaled the drapes, cleared the curtain rod, and dove—physics be damned—onto the candelabra that hung from the ceiling. I wobbled and kicked with my back legs, depositing my bottom in the shallow brass bowl that formed the fixture's base. My luck, however, did not hold. A single taper fell to the ground with a clatter.
Mr. Limp entered and spied the candle at once. He lifted his gaze. I swung several lengths above his head on a most precarious perch. Mr. Uppity's ceilings were higher than those in the Poe house, and they provided my salvation. He jumped, missing by a comfortable margin. "We're gonna dance now, you and me." He jumped again. His fingertips grazed the lower arm of the fixture and swung it round, making me queasy. But I held fast, each claw grasping as it never had before.
"Think you can outsmart me?" He grinned, flashing pointed canines. "Mr. Ferris thought he could outsmart me, too. Just 'cause I'm a poor coal buster from the Allegheny don't mean I can't think for myself. Don't mean I can't fall in love with the young lady of my choosing."
How I longed to understand Mr. Limp's arguments, the last to grace my ears for eternity. For despite my peril, I wanted to know why he'd killed those women. I trilled, prompting him to speak again.
"Hesh up, now. I wasn't born a murderer." He rubbed his face, thick with blond stubble. "The whole thing was Mr. Ferris's idea. Paid me to cut those women and take their eyes. 'Look for the petite ones,' he said. 'Look for the ones with the smallest sockets.' I didn't want to at first, but after I met his niece…" His gaze drifted to the floor. "I couldn't refuse an angel like that. No man could." After a moment's reflection, he sat down and began unstrapping the artificial leg from his misshapen thigh. "I tell you, once a body starts killin' it's hard to stop. Mr. Ferris shore found that out."
Mr. Limp pushed himself to standing using the prosthesis as a crutch. Slowly and carefully, so as to maintain his balance, he lifted the metal limb and stood below me on his one good leg. He had more control of his muscles than I'd thought possible and didn't sway, as one would expect. "The old man had no call to stop our courtin'. No call! 'Owen,' he said, 'leave Caroline alone. She's a Ferris, and she's not for you.' And now he's mocking me from the Great Beyond." He rubbed the blisters on his stump and grimaced. "I know you heard it. Bump-bump, bump-bump. That's his heart beatin' beneath the floorboards. Don't know how, after I cut him up, but it keeps a goin'."
I cocked my head. He must have heard the rats, too.
"Bump-bump, bump-bump. That's why you can't leave with even one piece of that man before I can send him to hell. If you do, he'll haunt me till I'm old and gray."
I should've waited for Midnight. I should've waited for Eddie. I should've done a great many things that were no longer possible, now that I dangled from a brass lamp.
"Don't you see? To stop that infernal sound, I have to burn the house down. With or without you in it, kitty cat." He shouldered the metal prosthesis. His intentions couldn't have been clearer. "Now give me that eye!" he growled.
That I understood. I would've given it to him, too, if I thought he'd let me leave without harm. But he'd sunk too far into his mania. I held my breath and waited for the shattering swing of the leg. And it would have come, had it not been for the front bell.
Tail's End
Idropped the eye into the lamp base and yowled for Eddie with all my being, hoping to breach the windowpane. He must have noticed me missing after his return from Shakey House and left straightaway to find me. The fact that I'd gone to Mr. Uppity's home must have been an easy one to deduce for a man of his intellect. I screeched again for good measure.
Mr. Limp strapped on his leg and paced the bedchamber floor, slapping the side of his head at each turn. "What do I do? If it's the constable, I should escape. Sprout little bird wings and fly away. Ha, ha! But how? And what if it's nice Mrs. Bellinger from next door? Do I ask her in? Do I kill her? Do I serve her for supper? Ha, ha! The three little pigs will be next. I'll huff, and I'll puff…" His speech devolved into a stream of gibberish that sounded less human the more I listened.
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