Attack of the Nightgaunt
THE NIGHTGAUNT HAD ARRIVED SILENTLY, WHILE Holmes and I were busy spying upon the farmhouse. Without a sound it had descended beside us, touching down amongst the bulrushes. Its wingbeats were no louder than a breath of wind. It had stalked us from on high with all the lethal stealth of an owl.
I did not want to turn.
I dared not turn.
I had to turn.
I turned.
Turning brought me face to face with it – or rather, face to no face. The nightgaunt’s featureless visage loomed over me, black and smooth with a kind of rubbery, oily sheen. The creature canted its head, as though regarding me with curiosity, much the same way the woodcut image in the Necronomicon had. Its wings were outstretched, spanning some fifteen feet from tip to tip. Even in my state of abject terror I noted the small nick in the lower edge of the left one, where the nightgaunt had caught itself on the shard of windowpane at Bethlem.
Now a hand came up, each finger twice the length of a man’s and crowned with a wickedly curving talon, as shiny as obsidian. The nightgaunt brought one of these talons to my trembling cheek and dragged it slowly down the skin. The action was somewhere between a scratch and a caress, both gentle and painful. The talon scored a furrow just deep enough to draw blood.
The sting of the wound galvanised me. I had been frozen, too scared to move, but the banal reality of pain had a rousing effect. I stumbled away from the nightgaunt, almost colliding with Holmes.
The creature made no effort to pursue me. Rather, it raised its hand to that empty oval face and examined the bloodied talon. I say “examined” because that at least was what it appeared to do. Whether it was looking at the talon, sniffing it, tasting it, or even listening to it, I have no idea. How a nightgaunt perceives the world is a mystery.
“Watson,” Holmes whispered in my ear, “I am unprepared. I have the means to stop this creature, but I need time to get it ready.”
“How much time?”
“Five minutes should suffice.”
He did not need to say any more. He was asking me to buy him those five minutes. Somehow I had to distract the nightgaunt for that long. And somehow I had to manage to do so without getting myself killed.
While Holmes delved into the portmanteau, I delved into my jacket pocket. Out came my service revolver. The gun was slippery in my grasp. Before crossing the river earlier I had transferred it temporarily to the portmanteau, which Holmes had taken care to hold above the surface of the water. Thus had he kept the revolver and everything else in the bag dry. Since then, however, the gun had resided in my pocket once again and had picked up some of the moisture that permeated my clothing.
I prayed that the cartridges in the cylinder were unimpaired. The last thing I needed was for the powder to have become damp and cause a misfire.
I was already fairly certain that the rounds – standard Eley’s – would be unable to penetrate the nightgaunt’s hide. Holmes himself had averred as much that morning, before we left Baker Street for Purfleet. He had added that no method of necromantic doctoring, such as daubing them with a Seal of Unravelling, would enhance their effectiveness against this particular monster. At best the bullets would cause it pain and give it pause for thought, but in all other respects the nightgaunt – unlike, say, a byakhee – would be impervious to them. Its sole weak spot was the membranous skin of its wings, as proven by the tear inflicted by the shard of glass, but a gunshot wound there was hardly likely to be mortal, or even debilitating.
All the same, the revolver was the only defence I had, and the only means of offence. There was no doubt in my mind that I must use it.
“Come on, you abomination,” I snarled at the nightgaunt. “Come and get me.”
I darted clear of the bulrushes, giving the creature an open invitation to follow by tossing a few further choice insults its way. The nightgaunt hesitated. It seemed to be trying to decide which of us to attack. Holmes was directly in front of it and making no effort to flee. I, on the other hand, was running away and doing my utmost to antagonise it. The creature was nonplussed. Should it go for the easy, stationary prey or the noisier and more active?
I made up its mind for it. I aimed at its chest and fired.
The bullet ricocheted off that leathery torso, whining past Holmes, mere inches from his head. He cast me a look of reproof, then resumed pulling items from the portmanteau.
With the echoes of the gun report rippling across the marshes, the nightgaunt swung towards me. I cannot pretend that I saw anything even approaching an expression upon its obscenely blank face, but I inferred that it was irritated. An assault that would have ended an ordinary man’s life had, at the very least, piqued it. Now it had no alternative but to retaliate.
It came at me, and it was fast, so fast! Propelling itself into the air with wafting wingbeats, it closed the distance between us, body parallel with the ground, taloned fingers to the fore.
I reacted purely on reflex. I threw myself flat on my face.
The nightgaunt whirred above me, borne by its own momentum. I rolled over and came up to a crouching position, resting on one knee. The nightgaunt swerved in mid-air and darted back. Sighting down the gun barrel, I gave it a bullet straight in the face. The creature recoiled at the impact, deviating to one side.
Without a moment’s delay I sprang upright and took to my heels, racing to the edge of the farmhouse’s rise. The nightgaunt gave chase. I knew I could not outrun it, but ahead lay a thick, stunted tree – an alder, I think – behind which I was able to take cover.
From this vantage point I got off two more shots. One rebounded off the bony portion of one wing. The other passed straight through the same wing’s skin, leaving a clean, bloodless hole.
The nightgaunt settled upon the tree and began clawing at its leafy boughs, tearing them apart as though they were made of spun sugar. It was not so much trying to get at me as offering a display of raw might. What it was doing to the alder, it could likewise do to John Watson. The one was as easy for it to rend limb from limb as the other.
By wounding the nightgaunt, however slightly, I had succeeded in making a deadly otherworld beast, already irked, downright enraged. Whereas before it might have been content with simply slaying me, now the nightgaunt wished me to suffer. My death at its hands would be prolonged and messy.
Had I had the leisure to pat myself on the back, I would have.
Instead, like the gambler I am, I elected to double down. I loosed off my last two rounds at the creature, aiming up through the thrashing tree branches. The range was no more than five yards, and bulletproof or not, the thing did not enjoy being hit twice at such proximity. If it had had a mouth, I imagine it would have screamed.
The nightgaunt swooped down from the tree and padded towards me with an air of unmistakable menace. The setting sun was at its back, so that the creature became a silhouette of pure blackness, a demonic cameo.
I retreated, fumbling in my pocket for spare cartridges.
That was when I remembered that the box was still in the portmanteau. I had neglected to retrieve it when taking back the revolver.
I was out of ammunition.
“Oh, you absolute dolt, Watson,” I murmured.
Had I given Sherlock Holmes his five minutes yet? I did not think so. I reckoned I had side-tracked the nightgaunt for two minutes only, three at most. Now I was facing it unarmed, vulnerable, and with still a couple of minutes left until Holmes could implement his method of stopping it.
One might think that, under the circumstances, I would have fallen prey to despair.
One might be right.
