Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

Taking a deep breath, he ran straight at the statues. The gargoyle reared, teeth bared. Mr. Jelliby leaped. His foot caught the gargoyle in its mouth and he vaulted over it, through the air and onto the grass beyond. The gargoyle let out a grating roar, but it was too heavy to turn with any speed. Mr. Jelliby struck the garden wall at a run. He began to climb. His toes found a trellis, his hands buried themselves in the ancient ivy, and he scrambled up onto the top.

He turned, looking down into the garden.

They were watching him. After a moment the Venus detached herself from the others and came to the base of the wall. She stared dolefully up at him with flat stone eyes.

“This is your home,” she said. “You will have to come back someday. And when you do, we will kill you for all the wrongs you have done us.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Mr. Jelliby cried. “I didn’t carve you without arms. I didn’t hammer the nails into the floorboards or paint the pictures wrong!” But the Venus wasn’t listening to him. It simply stared, its voice droning on about all the wicked things it was convinced he had done.

Mr. Jelliby swore and dropped down onto the other side of the wall. A narrow alley ran along it, a crooked chasm between the other garden walls. It was deserted. Wrought-iron gates and doors in peeling greens and yellows opened into it at regular intervals. Rain had fallen, and the moon shone down brightly on the slick pavement, turning it into a path of cold silver. Drips of water fell, echoing, from branches and drainpipes.

Mr. Jelliby looked back at his house, dark and waiting behind the garden wall. A lamp bloomed in an upstairs window. Then voices, muffled behind the glass. The police would arrive soon, bells clanging. They wouldn’t find anything. Nothing but a willow bed, slashed portraits, and stabbed tables, all still as could be.

Pulling his dressing gown tightly around him, Mr. Jelliby hurried off into the night.

Bartholomew didn’t wake up because he had never truly gone to sleep. He had felt the coal scuttle slip from his hand, heard it fall and bounce, one long clear note going on and on inside his skull. He had fallen, too. Dull pain had stabbed his arm, and something inside his eyes had gone on, and he was able to see again, blurry and indistinct. The raggedy man stood at the window, a smudge against the light, waving out. Then the window had gone black, and the wings had filled the alley outside. But it had all seemed so far away. It had been as if Bartholomew were curled up, deep inside his stiff and hurting body, and what happened out in the world did not really concern him anymore.

It felt like he lay there for years. He imagined dust settling over him, and Old Crow Alley descending into ruins around him. But eventually he did feel himself drifting up, filling his body like a puddle spreading through a rut. It was bright outside. Sunlight fell through the grimy panes of the kitchen window and stung his eyes. He sat up and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

Hettie is gone. It was a slow, hollow thought. The lady in plum has come and stolen her away, just like the nine others before her. Just like my friend. I wasn’t the one they wanted. I am just a silly little boy who didn’t realize the danger until it was too late, who thought it was all about me, and going to London, and being important. And now Hettie is gone.

Bartholomew pulled himself off the floor with the help of a table leg. His clothes were scaly with ash, but he didn’t notice. He went to his mother’s bed. She was just as he had left her, fast asleep, her breathing regular, peaceful. Sometimes she would smile a little, or snort, or roll over the way she did when she was normally sleeping. Only she wouldn’t wake up.

Bartholomew grasped her shoulder. “Mother?” he wanted to say, but only a cracking sound came from his throat.

In a daze, he wandered out of the flat, listening at the neighbor’s doors as he passed them. All was quiet. No crying children, no footfalls on the bare old boards, not even the smell of turnips. He went upstairs, downstairs, through the whole house, and everywhere it was the same. All he heard were snores now and then, what sounded like the creak of a bedspring. Even the hobgoblin who kept the door to Old Crow Alley was asleep on his little stool, a string of spit glistening on his chin.

“Hello,” Bartholomew said. “Hello?” A little louder this time. The word flittered up the staircase, through silent passages and squares of sunlight. It echoed back to him, “Low, low, low. .”

Everyone was asleep. Every soul under the roof but him. The bells of Bath were ringing twelve o’ clock noon. He went outside and stood in the alley, numb and staring, wondering what to do.

Clouds were drawing in, but it was still bright. He felt the sun on his skin, but it didn’t warm him. A ring of mushrooms had grown up among the cobbles. They were few and far between, and when Bartholomew walked into their middle, the air didn’t even stir. He stamped on them, one by one, and smeared the black liquid across the ground.

After a while he caught sight of a man working his way up the alley. The man wore a dirty white suit with a blue collar. Bartholomew thought he must be a sailor. He was only a few steps away when he noticed Bartholomew. His eyes went wide and he crossed himself as he passed, scraping himself along the wall and hurrying on around the corner. Bartholomew watched him go, a dull, cold expression on his face.

Stupid, stupid person. Suddenly Bartholomew hated him. Why should he cross himself and stare? He isn’t better than me. He’s just a stupid, dirty sailor, and he probably can’t even read. I can read. Bartholomew’s teeth began to ache, and he realized he was clenching them. His hand knotted into a fist at his side. In his mind he was hitting the man over and over again, punching his face until when he looked down it was no longer a face at all but a round broken pot with red stew dripping from it.

“Oi! You there!” a rough voice said behind him. A hand grabbed Bartholomew’s shoulder and spun him violently about.

He found himself looking into a round, pockmarked face like an old pancake. The face belonged to a thick, small man practically bursting out of his tattered military coat. A peddler’s backpack was on his back, but all the hooks where the spoons and pans and dollies should have been were empty.

“What d’you think you’re doing, eh? Whispering enchantments at people’s backs? What kind of witchcraft are you up to, boy?” The little man drew Bartholomew up by the collar until he was only inches from his dirty, stubbly face.

“Ah, a devil’s child, are we,” he wheezed. “A Peculiar. Tell me, devil boy, did your ma raise you on dog’s blood instead of milk?”

“N-no,” Bartholomew rasped. His mind was no longer dragging. It was blunt and quick with fear. Don’t get yourself noticed, and you won’t get yourself hanged. Don’t get- He had gotten himself noticed.

“Your lot is being murdered right now, did you hear ’bout that? Oh, yes! Being fished out of the river, all dripping and cold. I hear they have red marks up their arms, on their skin. And they’re just. . empty, floating like cloth in the swill.” The little man laughed gleefully. “No guts! Ha-ha! No guts! Whada you think ’bout that, hmm? Do you have red lines up your arms, all a dancin’ and a whirlin’?” He tore at one of Bartholomew’s sleeves. His piggy eyes went wide, then narrowed slowly. When he spoke again his voice was low and dangerous.

“You’re goina be dead soon, devil boy. You’re marked. You know the last boy who died? He was right from around here, looked like you. Binsterbull or Biddelbummer or sommet like that. And they just fished him out o’ the Thames, they did. In London. And he had just the same marks as that. Oh, yes. Just the same.” The man’s breath stank of gin and decaying teeth. Bartholomew began to feel sick. “Watcha been up to, eh, devil boy?” the man whined in his face. “Why they gonna kill you? Maybe I should kill you first and save them the tr-”