James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

“Here now!” shouted the man, not wasting words, and he slammed Drake on the nose to the general encouragement of the crowd. Kraken pushed toward the erupting mêlée, shouting happily to see the color of Drake’s blood. The industrialist flailed like a windmill, utterly ineffectively, so far gone was he in his anger and loathing.

Kraken hoped to get in a blow or two of his own, but his hopes were dashed when, with sudden inspiration, he shouted: “That’s the man who murdered the child!” at the top of his lungs, pointing past the circle of Drake’s tormenters into the millionaire’s face. A cry of disgust and abandonment arose, and before Kraken could have a go at him, Drake disappeared beneath a monsoon of whirling fists. “Get him!” cried Kraken, but the suggestion, he quickly saw, was unnecessary. He pushed along toward the blimp, hugging his box.

Ahead of him, two dozen or so men scrambled to string ropes around the craft, cordoning it off against the possible rush of the masses. But the London populace, apparently, harbored suspicions, fears, and perhaps reverence, for they hovered round the perimeter of an oblong patch of ground on which sat the blimp, the corpse in the chair, and the starship. Parsons directed the roping efforts, arguing all the while with both the Captain and St. Ives. Captain Powers grew more heated by the moment, shouting that Parsons had no “jurisdiction.” Parsons attempted to ignore him, but cast meaningful glances at St. Ives, as if to encourage the scientist to calm his bellowing friend.

St. Ives, however, was distracted by a scuffling and shouting off to his right, beyond the bonfire, which blazed now with increased ferocity, fed by a hail of limbs and forest debris tossed by the enthusiastic mob. St. Ives stepped along toward the scuffle when he saw amid it the head and shoulders of Theophilus Godall. Bill Kraken sprang into view just then, hurrying toward St. Ives, carrying his Keeble box like a trophy.

Willis Pule writhed and grunted, heaving in a tangle of grasping fanatics that included Shiloh the New Messiah. Godall circled round, intent on the box that Pule clutched. Jack Owlesby circled gamely beside him, looking for an opportunity. Pule shrieked; the box jumped out of his hands and was snatched by a beefy young man in a soiled robe. Shiloh hauled the box away from the man and lurched toward clear ground, jabbering excitedly, having no earthly idea which of the many strange boxes he possessed, but certain that the lot of them were somehow holy and somehow rightfully his.

Jack Owlesby strode along after him. The several parishioners who made as if to stop Jack found themselves peering at the business end of Godall’s pistol. Jack reached past the old man and snatched the box, leaping away toward the blimp. Shiloh turned, an unuttered shriek stretching his mouth. Godall, smiling calmly, thrust the Pinkle into the old man’s outstretched hands.

“What!” cried the evangelist, setting in to pitch the thing away. He saw it clearly for the first time even as he threw it. His eyes, yellow in the light of the fire, seemed to expand like balloons. He checked his throw, warbling out a little deflating cry. But it was too late. The Pinkle threw out a spoonful of sparks that whirled around the thrusting rubber head and flew in a wheeling arc into a stand of shadowy bracken and broom that muffled the strange noises and lights emitted by the orb.

The evangelist stiffened, his mouth going suddenly slack. Jack was beyond his reach. The bird he’d had momentarily in hand had flown. But here was another in the bush. He turned, ignoring Godall, who made no move to stop him. In a second he was gone, creeping through the dark shrubs on his hands and knees, as unheeding of the apocalyptic gyrations on the Heath roundabout him as if he’d been one of Narbondo’s ghouls.

The evening, in the space of five minutes, had begun to look very satisfactory to St. Ives. Here was Jack Owlesby, toting a recovered Keeble box. Here was Bill Kraken, toting another. There was Theophilus Godall with yet another. St. Ives smiled at Jack and reached out to shake the lad’s hand. Evil, it was clear, was fairly literally being pummeled. Jack grinned, the flames roared, the Captain shouted, and Bill Kraken, with in alarming suddenness, pitched forward toward the edge of the fire.

Behind him, his face bleeding, his right eye shut, his left arm dangling uselessly, crouched a lunatic Kelso Drake. Kraken shouted and threw out his hands. The Keeble box set sail as if shot from a catapult. St. Ives leaped for it, knocking it askew in its flight, saving it from the fire but sending it cartwheeling toward where the enigmatic ghoul reclined in his chair. The box struck him on the chin, snapped his head down onto his chest, and landed in his lap.

With an oath, Drake limped forward, grimacing murderously. But there was Godall, smiling in the circle of firelight, his pistol drawn and mimed at Drake’s chest. The millionaire lurched to a stop, raising his bands.

A cry arose from the crowd. St. Ives turned toward the blimp, expecting a revelation. But the blimp sat silent and dark on the Heath, surrounded by scientists scribbling in notepads, casting looks at the insistent Captain who held the sputtering Parsons by the collar.

Another cry. Hands pointed. It was the corpse in the chair, stirring. His back straightened; his fists clenched; air gasped through his closed teeth. The Captain released Parsons, who goggled at the corpse as it stood upright, dragging the ropes loose from where they were entangled among the springs of the chair. It held the box aloft, almost with reverence.

“Lord have mercy,” muttered Kraken. Jack stood mute. The ghoul shuffled forward, bearing the Keeble box.

“Homunculus!” whispered St. Ives. Godall nodded beside him, his pistol disappeared. In his right hand now was St. Ives’ aerator, in his left was a handful of Pule’s jacket, the murderous student of alchemy slouching beside him like a man stuffed with rags, his mouth agape. Thousands of pairs of eyes watched the dumb show on the heath.

The ghoul hunched toward Parsons, who stepped back, regretting suddenly that he’d gotten rid of the severed head he’d been given earlier. Would this ghoul demand it? Or would it hand Parsons yet another inexplicable item? What, for God’s sake, was in the damned box?

But the ghoul strode past him unhindered, toward the gondola where stood the strident Birdlip. Only Captain Powers had the temerity to follow him. Parsons said nothing. The Captain fell in behind, hearing as he did the incessant demanding voice that jabbered from the Keeble box in the ghoul’s hand.

Dr. Birdlip, suddenly, seemed to shake himself. Those on the edge of the crowd gasped. Was it the wind? A trick of moonlight? Birdlip released his hold on the wheel — a grip he’d maintained without pause for a decade. Finger bones picked at the rotted cords that lashed him to the gondola. The cords fell. Birdlip turned, jerking forward toward the little swinging stile door fallen back on its hinge. Firelight danced and leaped. Parsons gaped. St. Ives barely breathed. Godall stood bemused. The Captain nodded politely to the skeleton of Doctor Birdlip, then bent suddenly and picked something up from the floor of the gondola. St. Ives knew what it was. Birdlip seemed to heed nothing — nothing but the proferred box, which the ghoul relinquished, seeming to deflate almost and stagger just a bit, backwards, stepping toward the stuffed chair as if suddenly fatigued to the point of collapse. Parsons began to step along after him, wondering at the nature of the animate corpse that gaped at him, opening and shutting its mouth like a conger eel.

“Speak, man!” cried the biologist.

The corpse dropped dead into the chair.

Birdlip jerked down onto the green in quick little lurching, stiff-jointed steps, holding the Keeble box, his skull canted sideways as if in perplexity. The dead silence was broken by the utterance of an immense sob, as Willis Pule, taking the startled Godall by surprise, twisted out of his coat in a rush. Pule sailed down on Birdlip, ducking under a murderous blow aimed at him by the stalwart Captain. But Pule, apparently, hadn’t theft in mind as a motive. All such practical pursuits had been abandoned; it was mayhem and ruin he coveted, gibbering destruction, the mindless, drooling desire to tear the weary world to bits.