Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

Bartholomew knew right away when they had entered the Docklands. The smell of fish and muddy water seeped into the carriage. The streets became wider to accommodate the colossal iron steam-mobiles that hauled the freight, and there were no longer houses on either side-only warehouses and forests of masts, their tips just peaking over the rooftops.

“Wapping,” Mr. Jelliby said, and no sooner had the words left his mouth than the carriage came to a halt in front of a great stone building. It looked to Bartholomew like the huge train stations he had seen, like Paddington and the station in Leeds, only more desolate, without the din and the engines. It had large sooty windows and a low tin roof adorned with points and spires. It had a single wooden door some thirty feet across at its front. A thick metal cable extended up from the roof into the sky. His gaze followed it, up, up, up. .

Next to him, Mr. Jelliby gave a low whistle.

There it was. The final address. Hovering three hundred feet above the quay like a brooding storm cloud was an airship. Its envelope was vast, sleek, blacker than smoke and crows, blacker than everything else in the gloomy sky. A trio of propellers whirred slowly under its cabin.

“Three hundred feet,” Mr. Jelliby said quietly. “That’s where he’ll be safe when the door opens.”

They climbed out of the carriage and approached the warehouse slowly, still staring at the airship high above. The warehouse stood in a very quiet, shadowy part of the quays. Rubbish lay in heaps against the foundation. Newspapers and handbills skittered across the cobblestones. No dockworkers were about. No one but a grizzled old sailor sitting on a barrel some ways down the street. He had a pipe in his mouth. He was watching them.

Mr. Jelliby waved the carriage away and walked along the front of the warehouse. Bartholomew followed, glancing around warily. They tried to look in at one of the windows, but it was impossible to see anything. The glass was completely dark, as if someone had painted over the inside with black paint.

“We’ll have to break in,” Mr. Jelliby said matter-of-factly. “This is where Mr. Lickerish will have his portal open. It has to be. Perhaps it’s that door right there. The door to the warehouse.”

Stationing Bartholomew at the corner of the building to keep watch, Mr. Jelliby slipped down the alley that ran along the warehouse’s north wall. A hook lay on the ground some ways down it, half hidden under a heap of slimy, staring fish. He snatched it up and tapped it against a pane in one of the warehouse’s windows. He tried to strike gently, without making much noise, but on the third tap the pane burst inward. Glass clattered in the space beyond. He threw a questioning glance back at Bartholomew. The boy nodded, signaling it was safe to proceed.

Mr. Jelliby peered in through the broken window. The interior was very dim. He could just make out wooden crates rising in cliffs and towers toward the roof. In the shaft of light from the hole in the window, he also saw that the floor was scarred black, as if from fire.

He hissed loudly for Bartholomew. “ Psst. Bartholomew? Bartholomew! Come on!”

Bartholomew threw one last glance around the quay. Then he too came darting down the alley.

“We’re going in,” Mr. Jelliby said. He lifted the hook and began breaking more of the window, scraping the glass away with its tip. When there was a hole large enough to crawl through, he pushed Bartholomew up onto the ledge and then climbed up after him. They both dropped down into the warehouse.

Everything echoed inside. The space was vast and dark, and every shuffle, every breath flew up to the roof on metal wings. When they heard the sounds again, they were eerie and far away, as if other things were sliding through the trestles, whispering.

Bartholomew took a few steps forward. An odd smell tickled his nose. Hooks were faintly visible in the gloom above, pulleys and long chains. Somewhere at the far end of the warehouse he could hear water lapping against stone.

“It’s a loading dock,” Mr. Jelliby said. “The warehouse runs right into the Thames. The dead changelings. . They must have been dumped into the river here.”

Bartholomew shivered and stepped closer to Mr. Jelliby. Hettie. He looked around, straining to see something in the blackness. Is she here somewhere? Is anything here?

Suddenly he clutched Mr. Jelliby’s arm, so tightly the man jumped.

“What in-!” he said, but Bartholomew didn’t loosen his grip.

“Someone’s here,” he said in a small voice. He raised a finger, pointing toward a narrow gap that ran like a passageway into the wall of crates.

Someone was there. Far back in the shadows stood a plain wooden chair. A figure was reclining on it. It sat very still, slung across the chair. One hand hung down limply, fingertips brushing the ground.

Mr. Jelliby’s heart skipped a beat. He tried to swallow, couldn’t. He signaled for Bartholomew to stay where he was.

“Hello?” Mr. Jelliby called out, taking a step toward the figure. His voice tolled in the darkness, cold and hollow like a watery bell.

The figure in the chair remained motionless. He looked almost to be sleeping. His legs were stretched out in front of him. His head was thrown back over one shoulder.

Mr. Jelliby took several more steps and froze. It was the doctor from the prison in Bath. Dr. Harrow of Sidhe studies. His eyes were open, staring, but they were no longer blue. They were dull and sightless, gray as a sky of rain. Dr. Harrow was dead.

Mr. Jelliby backed away, horror and revulsion gripping his throat.

“Who is it?” Bartholomew whispered from behind him. “Mr. Jelliby, what’s-”

Mr. Jelliby turned. He opened his mouth to say something. Glass shattered on the floor. The window we climbed through. He spun toward it. The window was empty, but something had been there a moment ago. A few bits of glass tinkled to the floor.

“Bartholomew?” he hissed. “Bartholomew, what was that?”

“Something came in,” Bartholomew whimpered. He was looking around frantically, trying to distinguish shapes in the shadows all around. “Something’s here.”

Just then, an orange glow lit the edge of a stack of crates. It grew steadily, spreading across the surface of the wood. Then a figure stepped into view. The glow came from a pipe. The pipe was pinched between the scabbed lips of the old sailor. He had followed them.

The sailor shuffled along slowly, head to the ground, the glow of his pipe flaring with every breath. Then he stopped.

Something shifted in the darkness behind him, and suddenly he went limp like a flag when the wind has died. A writhing mass of shadow mounted his shoulder, pin-prick eyes sparking out of the dark.

Child Number Ten, a voice said inside Bartholomew’s head.

The pipe fell from the sailor’s mouth, but not before Bartholomew caught a glimpse of the thing that had spoken. What he saw made his skin crawl. The parasite on the back of the lady’s head, the shadow in the attic, the shape racing across the cobbles in Old Crow Alley-now it was a mass of rats. It had no feet other than the scuttling claws of rats, no hands but what it twisted together out of fat brown rats’ tails. Its misshapen face seemed to be stretched across their matted hides like a mask.

Mr. Jelliby snatched Bartholomew’s arm and pulled him down behind a huge iron winch, just as the creature’s gaze swept toward them.

“Hide,” Mr. Jelliby mouthed. Bartholomew nodded, and they both sidled back into the ravine of crates.

No use running, boy. I can feel you.

Bartholomew kept his eyes on the ground and walked. Whoever it was propped up on the chair at the end of the passage, he didn’t want to know anymore. He could smell the death in the air and it terrified him.