“Mister?” he called softly. “You awake?”
Something pale and indistinct then moved at the top of that room’s doorframe, as if it had been waiting, waiting for him, a blur against the darkness. It slid down into view and hung there, upside down, looking at him with huge black eyes. Charlie stared back, uncomprehending. And then slowly, very slowly, the thing bared its long teeth, and something shifted in Charlie, a terror, and he opened his mouth to cry out for Mr. Coulton, or Mrs. Harrogate, anyone, but no sound came.
He stumbled back. The litch dropped scrabbling to the floor and righted itself, the torn ropes swinging at its wrists and ankles.
Then it leaped.
Charlie took off. He threw himself down the stairs four at a time, sliding and stumbling, rolling when he reached the main floor of the house and righting himself and stumbling for the parlor and shutting the door behind him. He could hear nothing. Where was Mr. Coulton, Mrs. Harrogate? Were they okay? He’d fallen over himself, was crabwalking backward away. He fumbled for the sofa, tried to stand. For a long moment there was nothing; he told himself he was being foolish, his senses had deceived him.
Then the door thumped. Once, twice. In the sudden silence the hand-pull was drawn slowly downward, and the hinges creaked open, and then Charlie watched in horror as the gray litch crawled like a humanoid spider up the wall to the ceiling moldings and there peered down at him, cocking its head to one side, clicking its teeth.
Before anything else, before he could cry out for help, or fumble for a weapon of some kind, it had launched itself, lightning fast, and collided with him in a crashing of potted ferns and pier tables and splintering furniture. It was clawing at his throat, tearing at his hands where he fought it, the torn ropes in a blur of thrashing, the litch leaning its face down close and snapping its jaws. Charlie fought silently, wordlessly. He worked his knee up under it and kicked hard and it flew off him, eerily light, smashing against the far wall. Charlie was on his feet in a flash. He caught a glimpse, just a moment, of that strange fetus in its jar. It seemed to be staring at him, pressing its malformed hands against the glass in recognition. But when the litch came at him again Charlie lifted the jar over his head and shattered it in a great reeking crash over the litch’s head.
The stillness that followed was terrible. The litch, stunned, lay in the foul matter turning its face this way and that, slipping over the glass, lifting the slimy thing in its claws. Charlie didn’t stay to see more: he threw open the door and crossed the foyer and was outside, stumbling and catching himself and running onward for the iron gate, unlatching it, swinging it shut with a clang behind him. Then he backed up and stood on the dark rain-slick cobblestones of the street and stared at the darkness.
Already the rain had plastered his shirt to his skin. He didn’t know if the thing could get through that gate but he didn’t think so.
But then he heard a shatter of glass. It was the big bay window, in the parlor. Through the black rain he saw a pale figure clinging to the side of the row house.
Charlie ran. He ran sliding between the bollards and across the cobblestones and turned into a dark alley, stumbling over a pile of broken crates. There were figures in the doorways, turning, raising their faces in the gloom, but he didn’t stop. He crossed a small court and turned down a lane past a little park with benches and a statue looming in the gaslights and then he stumbled halfway down a flight of crooked stairs and stopped. It had got ahead of him, somehow: the litch was hunched on the lowest stair, peering up at him, making that weird clicking noise with its teeth.
In the rain Charlie’s forearms and chest were on fire where the litch had scratched at him, trying to get at his throat. He was gasping. The pain was strange to him, not like normal. He stood in the wet with his shoulders heaving, feeling his strength ebb, feeling his terror rising.
And then the thing scrabbled sideways and came at him, running up the stairs on all fours, very fast, the torn ropes at its wrists and ankles slapping against the cobblestones. Charlie turned, ran back up. There was an iron dustbin at the top and he seized its lid and turned and swung with all his might and he felt the lid smash into the litch, catching it under its jaw, and the thing screeched and spun off sidelong into the shadows. And then Charlie was running again, leaping the cobblestoned stairs, making his way out onto a road shining in the weak gaslights.
The river was just ahead of him, a molten darkness of orange lights and strange shapes, boats, skiffs maybe, and he saw a bridge off to his left and made for it. There was no one else about. His footsteps clattered off the cobblestones, into the gloom. He was halfway across the bridge when he stopped and looked back. He didn’t see the litch. He wet his lips, breathing hard, and thought about it, and then he hurried to the stone railing and leaned out and saw it.
The litch was racing along the stone undercarriage of the bridge, upside down, a blur of gray in the darkness. Charlie started to run but he hadn’t gone more than ten feet when it crawled up over the railing in front of him and crouched in a pool of hazy gaslight and it cocked its head and studied him.
“What do you want?” Charlie cried in the rain. “What?”
The litch crept forward. Its mouth was open.
“Get away from me!” he shouted. “Go on, get!”
The litch paused. For a long moment nothing happened. And then it leaped, its claws out, its teeth clicking, and Charlie, expecting it this time, fell sideways away, so that the creature only caught him a glancing blow in the side, and he struck at it with his fists as it went past, lifting it, so that it struck the stone railing at height, and went over. He could see it twisting there, dangling out over the gap, scrabbling at the bridge for purchase, finding none. Charlie was clutching his side, gasping, sobbing. He watched as the litch swung horribly out over the river and plunged down into the darkness of the Thames.
Then he slid down with his back to the freezing stone, in the very middle of the span, under a faint halo of gaslight in the rain, and he started to shake, he was shaking and shaking, and he didn’t know if the water in his eyes was the rain or him crying or what.
7
EVERY STRANGER IS A NEW BEGINNING
Alice Quicke left Remington in the graying light with the shining boy half-asleep under a blanket in the wagon, reins looped around her thick wrists. Rain was misting in the gloom, a red glow fanning up over the tree line. The shadows were long when they rode through Merville and Oaks Hollow and they slept that night in an abandoned barn on the side of the road and in the morning they went on. They saw few riders. The next night Alice lay fully clothed in the bed of the wagon with the boy curled against her for warmth, and the night after they crossed into Indiana she slept in the dirt with her back upright against an iron wheel, her chin dipped, her boots kicking at the coals of the fire as she dreamed.
In Lafayette it took her two days to sell the horse and cart. She bought third-class tickets south to Carmel and from Carmel they shared a compartment with an old lady and her lapdog all the way through to Columbus, Ohio. And nine days later Alice and the boy were in Rochester, New York. She signed the leather-bound register under the name Mrs. Coulton while the rains came slantwise against the porch, the kid dripping beside her. Under a candle-wheel chandelier the whores leaned out, their balcony in shadow, silk fans folding and unfolding in their gloves like the wings of birds.