CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dr. Hoffman was walking across the city. He had been called to the house of August Daren, one of Essenwald’s richest businessmen, who had demanded his presence immediately. Daren’s wife had been attacked in the street by a mob of delinquents, who had pulled her from her carriage. He was furious, demanding the criminals be brought to a rough, instant, and painful justice. He ranted so much about the perpetrators that he forgot to mention any of his wife’s injuries, and Hoffman had no idea which instruments and medications to bring. Hurriedly, he had shoved a handful of this and a handful of that into his stoutest Gladstone bag. It would not do for him to get on the wrong side of August Daren, especially now that his life had taken such a turn towards prosperity.

The Touch, or “Fang-dick-krank” as it had become known, was sweeping the city. It was said that it first came from the touch of miracle: the laying on of hands, the purification of the unclean and the malformed. Then it turned malevolent, eccentric, and dangerous. Qualities of kindness were exchanged for vengeance. Some who had been outcast because of their disability had turned malicious after they were healed, and their magic touch was passed on as a curse. They fingered the healthy, and the healthy became impaired; they then carried the taint, not knowing if their touch would injure or aid. It cut them off from their families and friends, making it their turn to become outcasts. A terrible fear of contact spread through the city, locking its inhabitants into themselves, hands in pockets, walking quickly away from all others.

The Touch had become so random that it reached fanatic proportions, causing a plague of the injured and the healed to spread chaotically throughout all of Essenwald. It wreaked havoc among the promiscuous, ruined families and made treatment virtually impossible. It changed social decorum on all levels, and in a city based on commerce, where guilds and classes were firmly demarcated by etiquette and formal social meetings, things started to fray when the niceties were removed. The shaking of hands was no longer a reasonable form of greeting; more arcane forms of meeting were now fashionable: Bowing and heel clicking had returned, as had arm crossing the chest with a clenched fist, which had not been seen in civilised communities since the Roman Empire. A Teutonic rigidity had returned to this far-flung outpost of a long-dead empire, one that had until then prided itself in stepping away from stiff ancestral history and revelled in its “modern” outlook.

The blacks and the poor were devastated by the Touch. Their ranks exchanged overnight, the sick becoming bright, the clean becoming ill. A great madness rose out of the confusion, and the growing wave of paranoiac fear was far greater than the actual number of those genuinely injured.

Hoffman had become quite the authority on the Touch, the causes and possible treatments. He told his patients, the Timber Guild, and other municipal authorities that he had carried out extensive research in his private laboratory and was making steady progress towards a cure of the dreadful blight. In truth, he had carried out a few botched autopsies, treated some of the afflicted with prodigious doses of barbiturates, and questioned some chained prisoners that the police—whom he was now working closely with—brought to him to be examined. His major discovery was that the phenomenon was in decline. This he told nobody, but doubled his extensive efforts to find a cure. He even injected some of the “carriers” with a serum of his own design and had them released into the community to help stave off the flow of the malicious disorder. With his usual cunning, he would ride his unexpected nag home to a glorious victory of science over evil. He had always been lucky with outsiders, and this one was made of gold.

His status in the community was growing steadily, and he no longer needed to practise the little bits of unorthodoxy that used to perk up his income. In fact, the less said about those, the better. They, and his business with Maclish, nagged at him. Such practices were yawning bear pits along his successful path of achievement, and he wished they could be spirited away or else be filled in with some amnesiac aggregate. The Tulp girl’s knowledge of the Orm had rattled him; it was a step too close to downfall. The subsequent fiasco with the wretched creature they had mistakenly dragged out of the Vorrh had made the whole situation even worse. The Lohr woman was very well connected: A word in the right place could dislodge all his achievements. He knew it was only the concealment of their one-eyed friend that kept those words from being spoken. His knowledge of the cyclops’s existence protected him.

His association with Maclish was proving troublesome, and it worried at his confidence; the irascible Scot was far beneath him now and unpredictable in his mood swings. Moreover, the thug always blamed him when something went wrong. And wrong was an understatement: They had now used the Orm nine times, and two of those had gone seriously awry. He still believed that the savaging of the Klausen hag had been the Orm’s first outing, and it had led the police straight to his door. All these troubles gnawed at him as he strode purposefully on, towards his undiagnosed patient. His priorities needed to be refocused, and he made his mind up to rid himself of this handful of anxieties as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He was clever enough to silence the women with guile and threat, but the keeper was another matter. That cat would have to be skinned another way.

Maclish was going to be honoured. The guild had invited him and his wife to a special dinner, to mark the company’s increase in productivity; his workforce was the greatest contributor to it, and it was cheaper to give an honour than to award a raise.

Mrs. Maclish hadn’t been to anything quite so formal for a long time, and she was feeling apprehensive. The bulge of new life was just beginning to show, and she was mildly troubled that it made her look plump, rather than pregnant. They were dressing in the bedroom: he, fumbling and cursing with a collar stud; she, turning and glancing at herself in the full-length mirror of the wardrobe.

“William, which do you think: the blue or the green?”

“I only just bought ye the blue one; wear that.”

“Yes, but which do you think is best for tonight? The green is more my colour.”

“Then why did we buy the blue?” he said crossly, as the stud sprang from his fingers and disappeared under the bed. He cursed and crawled after it, his shiny black dress trousers ruffling up the small carpet. She ignored his response.

“It’s a choice between them, though; I only have the two.”

“Thank Christ for that, or we would be here all night!” he said from under the bed, his voice humming strangely in the resonance of the china chamberpot. He found the stud and crawled out to start pulling at his collar again.

Marie Maclish was not normally a woman to engage with such coquettish uncertainty; the rest of her stern life was run on simple facts and basic commodities, but she was enjoying herself. This little charade of choice took her back to the Highlands, to her grandmother’s house and the girls’ play of dressing up in women’s lives.

He had finished with the collar but his twisted tie looked limp and apologetic. He was admiring it, when she laughed.

“What?” he demanded.

“What? Oh, William, look at the state of it!”

“The state of what?”

She put the dresses down and went over to adjust the tie, smiling playfully. He bristled at her touch. The more she pulled, the more he stiffened. As her smile fizzled out, his warmth drained away.

“It was perfectly fine, woman; now it’s a mess,” he said, pushing her fingers away. “We haven’t got time for this—we can’t be late.”

She said nothing and went back to her dresses; they seemed shrunken and indifferent. He looked over his shoulder.

“Where’s the blue?” he said, against the fret of disappointment that was filling the room. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about; it’s not you they will all be watching tonight,” he concluded, grabbing his coat and yanking the door open.

She watched him disappear out of the room. After a few static moments, she dressed and went down to wait beside him for the arrival of the car to take them to the celebration. She looked graceful and quiet, standing in front of the house, her hair and eyes accentuated by the green of the dress, her husband too caught up and curt to notice.

—

The doctor waited for ten long minutes after the headlights of the car had vanished from the road. Then he made his way to the reinforced door of the slave house, letting himself in with a set of keys that nobody knew he had. He put his bag down on the central table and lifted the bundle out. He was just about to strike the gong when he heard a footfall on the metal stair. He turned to see the herald of the Limboia descending slowly, a vacant grin on his face.

“For Orm?” said the herald in flat, dead tones.

“Yes,” said the doctor nervously. He had never been here without Maclish, and the place and these creatures unnerved him. His skin crawled every time he came close to the herald.

“What to do?” it asked.

The doctor explained the specific requirements of the task and how it must be done. “You won’t need a scent or a trace this time,” he insisted, and the herald seemed to agree.

“This time seeing one stays, stays till after.”

The doctor thought for a moment, nodded, picked up his bag, and left. The herald tenderly picked up the bundle and held it to his chest.

That was that. Now he would talk to the insolent Tulp girl and hush her defiance; she was in no position to argue, not in her condition. He made an appointment to call on her and was surprised at the address. He had never been to 4 Kühler Brunnen but knew of it; he had conducted business by association and at a distance with it. Why did she live there? Surely it was not a property owned by her father or some other member of her significant family?

He had mentioned the Tulps, and indeed the Lohr family, while treating August Daren’s wife, who, it transpired, was a victim of the Touch, the right side of her body being mildly paralysed, as if by electric shock. It was then that he had the idea of treating the afflicted with generated bursts of galvanic energy. It had worked for Mesmer; why not for him? A combination of shock and barbiturates would have them flapping their pocketbooks at him like performing birds; all that wonderful equipment he would be able to buy to furnish his experiments: Van de Graaff generators; spinning wheels; sparks and the scent of ozone; copper wires, glass wires; porcelain resistors like giant shining pearls. His laboratory would look magnificent. As soon as he got these distasteful matters out of the way, he could begin.

“The Tulps are new blood, second-generation merchants made good,” Daren had told him. “Lowlanders from Leiden, or maybe Delft originally. Good businessmen with an ambition to become burghers. Three generations away from gentry, if we let ’em. Now, the Lohrs are quite different; here before mine, they were; old wealth. Comparable to emperors, they were; unlimited funds.” Daren sat back in his chair in awe of that amount of worldly ownership, believing that the Tulps probably viewed him with a similar reverence. He roused himself at the thought of the Lohr family demise. “A bit gone to seed now, though,” he added, with the tiniest relish of spite. “Just that strange daughter to run all that wealth and influence here in the old country.”

The doctor was absorbing every word, weighing every gram of possibility.

“Did you know she was born blind?” asked Daren.

“I have had some knowledge of her case, but I am unable to speak of it, you understand,” lied the doctor.

“Oh yes, of course!” said Daren, without a moment’s doubt, his finger coming to rest on his closed lips.

Maclish had relaxed his strict social rules and accepted some wine in the name of self-congratulation. After many dry, disciplined years, he drank it in toasts to various companions, who stood and drank to him in return, with words of extreme gratitude. Nobody had ever said such things, and he had no defence. He swam in the flood stream of it, basking after the third glass and hugging his wife ferociously after the fifth; at least he thought it was his wife. By brandy, he was slipping back into his origins, where all sorts of vermin and jokers waited to greet him. Marie had been escorted to a seat four rooms away and sat in the middle of her worst nightmare, with the herd of directors’ wives. She had nothing in common with the women and nothing to say, and they all knew it. What was more, she feared William was on a steep decline, and she was not with him to steer the outcome. She hoped he might collapse, that he might pass out before his long-sleeping fangs came out. The prospect snapped her to sense and she acted without stopping to think, cleverly approaching the most senior Frauen.

“I do apologise, but I am afraid that my husband has not taken his medicine,” she announced in such a strong, music-hall Scottish accent that it surprised even her. “Please, I must go to him.”

Allowing a wife to intrude on the gentlemen’s part of the evening was unheard of, but it seemed a matter of severe need, so a maid was called and told to take Mrs. Maclish to the hall of the gentlemen’s room. Marie bowed, fluttering and thanking those present until she was outside the room. Then she clicked into action, running through the corridors with the astonished maid in tow. Outside the smoky door, she told the maid what to do and made herself scarce. The lowly accomplice waited for her to leave, then knocked at the heavy door. Eventually, a bleary man opened it, seeming surprised to find anybody there.

“Please, sir!” the maid said. “Mrs. Maclish has been taken poorly; she needs to talk to her husband about her pills.”

“Missus who?” spluttered the man.

“Mrs. Maclish, the guest wife.”

“Oh, oh, of course,” said the man, vanishing back into the room. After a prolonged time, during which the sound of moving furniture and broken glass fanfared his arrival, the soggy head of Maclish came around the door. There were no fangs, just a stupid grin. His concealed wife peered around the corner to make sure the coast was clear; then, at her command, they both pounced and dragged him out of the door and across the hall. Mercifully, there was no resistance, and the three of them staggered towards the entrance and the waiting automobile.

The door to the courtyard was curiously open. With no servant to show him in, Hoffman walked himself to the front steps of the house and rang the bell. Almost instantly, Ghertrude was there, shaking his hand and inviting him to enter. The interior was blank, without sign of individual arrangement, yet the proportions were pleasant and well kept.

“Is this your house, Mistress Tulp?” he asked.

“No, Doctor, it belongs to a friend,” she answered, with a modest smile.

She took him through to a reception room that smelt a little musty and unused. He stood in the centre of it, smiling uncomfortably.

“May I offer you a sherry?” she asked.

“That would be delightful!” he said, tucking his Gladstone behind the chair while she went to the cabinet. It was in his best interests to keep the bag and its contents out of her way.

“Please, take a seat,” she said, returning with the brimming glasses.

He settled himself and enthusiastically took the sherry. “I have often walked past this house and wondered who lived here,” he fished. “It must be one of the oldest houses in the city.” He sipped his sherry and looked around admiringly.

“Yes, it is one of the older properties,” she answered, without much interest. “The basement is even older; it still has the old well.”

“Hence its name,” he said.

“Yes, hence its name.”

There was a pause of silence, while she fingered her delicate pearl necklace and he stared into his diminished glass. She poured him another and sat back.

“What may I do for you, Dr. Hoffman?”

Her directness pleased him: He could have this matter cleared up in time for dinner.

“Firstly, my dear, I wanted to apologise for that distasteful business at the slave house. I am afraid my colleagues are not the brightest of men.” He paused for a moment to truly engage her eyes. “And your description of your curious friend was a little, shall we say, vague?”

She showed no expression and sipped from her glass. He drained his in a single gulp and set it noisily on the glass top of a small side table.

“Anyway, it’s all taken care of now, and we can begin again to look for…Ishmael, was it?”

“Thank you, Doctor, but that’s not necessary. Mistress Lohr and I no longer wish to engage your services.”

Hoffman bristled. How dare she speak to him like a common tradesperson? He was just about to comment when she continued.

“We no longer feel it necessary to go searching for him; he will surely make his way out of the Vorrh in his own time.” The doctor was speechless, and she decided to use his silence to press the point. “We were curious, though, Doctor: How did you manage to get such a monster out in the first place?”

“We went to a lot of trouble for you, some more specialist lengths,” he said, his neck beginning to flush.

“Using the Orm, Dr. Hoffman?” she asked. “What is that, exactly?”

This was all going extremely wrong. It was meant to be he who had the upper hand. “Well, Mistress Tulp, why don’t you tell me? You seem to know all about it,” he said in a churlish tone.

“I know that you and the keeper have some power over the Limboia and that you sell it as a service to anyone who can pay; I know that Cyrena paid you a great deal of money to be confronted by that creature.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “We did our best to help you. It was you who came to us.”

“Best?” she asked, her lip curling sceptically.

There was a silence, as if the air itself had been chopped short, a segment of it removed from the room. After a shallow, gasping time, the doctor sidestepped and said, “How is Cyrena?”

Hearing her friend’s name spoken in such casual terms inflamed Ghertrude even more. “Mistress Lohr is still recovering from the humiliation that you and that brute put her through.”

Hoffman had had enough and snapped back. “I did not come here to be insulted by you, young woman!”

“Then why did you come here?” she said, as quick as a flash. He was caught off guard again and searched fruitlessly for the right words.

“I…came here…to…”

“Yes?” she quizzed insolently.

“I came here to encourage your silence about our business together.” It was Ghertrude’s turn to be disarmed.

“I came to advise you that our assistance was given as a favour, out of respect for you and your families, and that it would greatly benefit you if the whole business were immediately forgotten.” She took in his thinly veiled threat and countered with her own.

“I think our families would be very interested to know about your favours, don’t you, Doctor?”

He had been flushing near to scarlet, but a livid whiteness began to creep through his broken veins. He took a step towards her, his voice rising. “You dare? You dare to threaten me?! If you utter one word to implicate me or my associate in this matter, I will not hesitate to spread the truth about your secret friend; about him fucking you and that Lohr slut, and about everything else! The house, everything!”

“Good! Do it. Say whatever you please; you know nothing about this house, and our indiscretions are nothing to your crimes.”

He was astonished; this should not have been happening. He had never met a woman as impertinent and disrespectful as this. “I warn you…,” he growled fiercely.

“With what?!” She laughed, challenging the last reserves of his restraint.

“With your life!” he snarled, grabbing her throat and tilting her face painfully up towards his. “You open your mouth and I will shut it permanently; I will have the Orm hollow out your soul and deposit it on my dissecting table, and I will cut that bastard out of your cunt. I will…”

His words tailed off as he found himself moving up and out of the room, weightless and undirected. His ring caught on her necklace, breaking it as he flew away from her, the pearls shot-gunning in all directions. She grabbed at her throat and the remnants of the string, her eyes wide and staring at something behind him. He watched, oddly detached, as the girl’s shivering figure diminished and he moved towards the door, the tiny white orbs bouncing and dancing around her feet. He had no idea what was happening and was still thinking of what to say when the door opened and he was catapulted out into the cold night air and down onto the shining black cobblestones.

He looked up to see Mutter standing over him. He attempted to stand, but the old man kicked his legs away from under him.

“All right, all right,” he said angrily, waving his hands in the air. “Your point is made. I have calmed down now; I won’t hurt her.”

The next blow totally confused him; he did not see it coming and it felt like he had run headlong into a wall. He remembered doing that as a child; the shock of the solidity against the speed of his intention. But he was not running now.

A light came into the courtyard: Ghertrude was at the door, the beam from the house streaming across the standing and kneeling figures. Hoffman squinted and saw that Mutter had a manuscript in his hand, a tight scroll of paper, some kind of accusation. He would have this peasant crucified for this outrage. He might even do it himself, maim him, as he had once maimed his son.

The servant went to the door and held up a protective hand, gesturing to the girl to go back into the corridor, before shutting her and the light firmly inside. Mutter returned and took a short run with his second blow. The scroll was not paper, but a two-foot length of lead pipe. With the anticipation of its impact, the doctor understood everything.

“No! No!” he cried.

The third blow cracked his skull; he heard it go, or it might have been his teeth shattering against each other. He tried to protect his head with a flailing hand, but Mutter kicked him over and stamped on it, his solid weight and hobnailed boot crushing the bones and mangling the gold ring flat and into the flesh. The next blow fell across his ear, sending him rolling across the yard, screaming. To stop the noise, Mutter swung the heavy, inert pipe up under his jaw, flipping him over and making him bite through his tongue. He was on his hands and knees, whining like a lost dog as he vomited part of his tongue, along with the recent sherry and the remains of his lunch.

“Pleth fof jodds sek sthup!” he choked pitifully.

He bled and gagged onto the cobbles. The next blow crunched down into his head and removed the top of his fractured skull, which hung to the side of his head by a few long strands of wet hair. His bright laboratory with all its new electrical equipment splashed out, his triumph and genius trickling onto the night-black cobbles, where vivid sparks bounced like white pearls. Mutter hit him once more, and his eyes rasped and split over the broken bones of his collapsed face.

Mutter dragged the body to the stables and loaded it into the smaller cart. Hosing down the yard, he swept the bits of memory and hope into the sewer.

Ghertrude was cold, numb, and uncertain. She had heard the sounds straining through the thick oak door, as the broken string from her necklace hung in her hand. Mutter had not wanted her to witness the conversion of a man to waste, but she had heard every part of the process, and what she had done to that puppet in the basement swiftly paled to insignificance in comparison. She rested her back against the door and felt the weight of the future gather on her shoulders: It would be a long time before she could fall asleep.

The iron hooves of the tin clock stampeded into his dense and sweated dream. He fisted the shrillness into silence and swung his aching legs out of the bed. He fought against an odd, familiar sensation, trying to plan the day ahead, when he realised what was wrong: He was drunk. He had not been like this for more than two years, and he cursed his stupidity at sliding back. It was all so familiar: the dizziness, the smell, the pain in his head; the feeling of utter failure and that smug, crouching, “fuck ’em all” version of himself, poised deep inside, looking up and out of his face.

He glanced at his wife, who seemed to have avoided the screeching siren of the alarm clock, and lifted the bedsheets to observe the growing ripeness of her belly, which accentuated the strong curve of her hips. He dearly wanted this child, and he hoped for a son. At last, he would have something to pass on—and not just the alcoholic temper and selfishness his father had bestowed on him: He was the first Maclish in history to be looked up to, to have done something worthy of others’ praise.

It was then that he saw the bruises on her arm and tasted bile in his mouth. He steadied himself and quickly pulled the sheet up, so he could not see her at all. Floundering into the bathroom, he washed in cold water. He hoped the shock of it would cut away the blunt, grey weight that he was carrying so awkwardly. He knocked the cup of toothbrushes and combs into the noisy, skidding sink while trying to retrieve his razor and stared at their spiky divination contrasted against the porcelain. What had he done and said last night? How could he have let this happen? Why had she not stopped him? He leant against the cold wall and pissed wearily in the general direction of the toilet.

Today, he would oversee the exchange of the Limboia, the exhausted ones for the eager, the train loaded with their stupid bodies. They would travel with one extra this time, and the idea of spending the journey with Loverboy, crated up so that he might be returned and set loose, made the keeper’s head pound harder. At least he would find a place to sleep: That was inevitable. He wanted to crawl back into bed there and then, back to his wife’s warmth and the lingering perfume from last night, but he dared not. Without him, there would be no exchange, no train ride, and the horror would stay hidden in the slave house for another day.

They had moved Loverboy into the basement of the building after the Limboia’s interest in his shouting and barking had reached dangerous levels. Admittedly, it might have been his acrid stench: Even after they had hosed him down, it still permeated everything around, and Maclish was even beginning to think that he might be bringing it home; he could smell it on himself, and it would explain why his wife had become so distant again.

His thoughts turned again to Loverboy; his captive was definitely getting thinner. His colour had changed, the old ivory, creamy yellow of his skin having faded to a sallow grey. Maclish couldn’t understand it; he had been given the same food as the others, and they had never complained. The kitchen staff always prepared the rich, nutritional mix of dried beans, cornstarch, and ground meat the same way. Maclish had done a particularly good deal with the local knacker’s yard, getting almost-fresh meat delivered every week. The workforce needed to keep their strength up, and he had argued it well with the Timber Guild, who now paid a substantial amount for their sustenance. Good meat, of course, would have been wasted on them—they were unable to tell the difference—so he managed to feed them well and make a tidy profit on the side, thus keeping everyone happy; everyone, that was, except Loverboy, who repeatedly threw the bowls of steaming gruel back at his captors. The Chinese cook who ran the kitchen had refused to go back into the cellar after the third ungrateful attack.

“Let the fucker starve!” Maclish had said to his men after the third abortive attempt at the monster; and he would have, but the effect it might have had on the Limboia was unknown, and he could not afford any unhappy impacts on his production rate. “Keep ’em happy, keep ’em keen” was his motto, and it kept everybody else’s prying snouts out of his business. For that reason, Loverboy was going back today, hangover or no hangover.

After his third cup of coffee, he began to feel more alert. He buttoned his uniform and pulled on his shining boots in the quiet kitchen, leaving by the back door and walking up the narrow hill towards the slave house. It was just before seven o’clock, and his wife listened to the kitchen door being closed and the sound of his steps on the gravel outside. She opened her eyes and allowed a small sigh to escape from her lips, relieved to finally be released from her feigned sleep and the suffocation of his presence.

—

They got the crate and the Limboia to the station without much incident. The horses had shied a couple of times when Loverboy had gotten frisky, but Maclish’s hammering on the crate with the metal base of his whip had soon subdued the monster’s cavorting. After placing the crate on a flatbed near the passengers’ coach, they loaded the eager, empty men into the train. The keeper gave the signal and they steamed off to be absorbed into the Vorrh.

As predicted, the train took his wakefulness after twenty minutes. He sank into a dreamless sleep that curdled and fell, amplifying rather than soothing his hangover. Large, abstract masses bumped against him, rubbing at his extremities and dampening his elementals. The train seemed to be crawling at a sluggish pace, and the voice of the crated horror grew louder and louder in his semiconscious skull.

He was woken by a jolting stop and shook his head to try to gather his senses and possessions. His whip was strangled by the vines growing out of the luggage rack and would not come loose when he tugged at it. He knew this kind of thing happened, but this time he was unprepared; unable to dislodge it, he decided to get a knife from one of the others.

He put his head out of the window to yell and was shocked to find no platform. The train had not reached its destination, and it stood at a standstill in the middle of the forest. Looking down its length, he saw smoke and steam rising from the stationary, panting engine. He called out, expecting one of his men to report information on the holdup, but nobody came. His headache had intensified and he rubbed the back of his neck before opening the carriage door and jumping down onto the gravel of the track.

He walked along to the Limboia slave carriage—it was empty. So were the next three. He unbuttoned the flap of his holster as his boots crunched loudly on the stones. His steps and the engine’s puffing heart were the only sounds in the forest; even the birds were hushed. When he came to the flatbed truck and saw that the crate was open, he pulled out his revolver and looked around warily. Nothing moved, and the trees seemed to have lost their motion, their leaves hanging outside of any breeze or growth.

“Engineer!” he bellowed towards the back of the train. It felt reassuring to shout such a matter-of-fact word amid the absence and stillness. “Engineer!” He heard a titter from behind the passenger carriage. He swung round and climbed up onto a flatbed to reach the other side. There was a small clearing at the edge of the forest, as if a straight line had been shaved out, and the Limboia were all there, side by side in a line, looking, he thought, like a ragged regimental parade, waiting to be inspected. He spat and jumped down to their side, his pistol alert and ready. There was more girlish tittering from the line. With a pounding head and a growing nausea, which he could only put down to the previous motion of the train, he approached them, trying to hold back his rage.

“What the fuck are ye doing out of the train? Get back in!” he bellowed.

The tittering stopped and they closed their eyes in a slow, simultaneous movement. Then the breathing started: the same unified breathing that he and Hoffman had heard that first night.

“Stop that! Stop that, right now!” he yelled.

The breathing doubled in volume. He was suddenly lost and obviously outnumbered. The Limboia were stationary, while their chests moved in unison. The only individual movement came from the centre of the line. There stood the herald, holding something to his chest, stroking it with slow, intense gestures. Maclish made a beeline for him, closing on him, the pistol held level with the man’s face.

“Tell them to get back on the train,” he demanded, seeing a way to retake control.

Then he saw what the herald had in his hands. The loose strips of cloth had been peeled away, and the near-naked thing rolled in the manipulating hands, its lifeless limbs flopping back and forth with the movements. Maclish wanted to pull the trigger and end this, but he knew it was already over.

The eyes of the dead, aborted child opened and stared into his. The breathing stopped, and something else rustled between the Limboia. Something was weaving itself between their ranks, rattling their place on the earth with no speed, but a vast momentum. It nudged him like the movement on the train, and he passed out; in a second, every organ in his body had halted, as if they had never moved at all. Every cell gave up in the presence of the Orm. Only his mad eyes flashed in the dead head, as his body slid to the ground.

The Limboia pointed at their hearts and dispersed into the depth of the forest with their prize. An hour later, the engine would give its last sigh, and its firebox would run down to cold ashes.

The frantic, moving eyes in what had been Maclish stared at Loverboy, who had been standing behind the Limboia all along, patiently waiting. He had been busy. Even in his weakened condition he had retained enough purpose, energy, and skill to gather some small branches and vines and construct a basic sledge. He dragged his creation towards the corpse: He was taking Red Fur home to meet his people, and one of his stomachs was already rumbling.