Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl (8 page)

Something about it was awfully, terribly familiar. Gideon stalked up and down the small living room, his fist to his mouth. Think, think, think. Then his eyes fell on the pile of
World Marvels & Wonders
by the chair. He
had
seen the thing before.

It was one of Gideon’s favorite stories
The Shadow Over Faxmouth
. While a guest of Professor Reginald Halifax in British- American Massachusetts, Captain Trigger is taken to witch-haunted Arkhamville by the enthusiastic professor to see a rather grotesque mummy the academic has found near the Nile. Gideon’s finger found Trigger’s description of the thing: “The grayish skin looked parchment dry, stretched over a hairless skull surely more globular than any normal human’s. The eyes were unnaturally round, and pupilless, staring from the face like gray, smooth stones. The nose was almost rudimentary—merely two nostrils etched in the dry skin— and below it hung a most horrible mouth, froglike in its width and aspect, but with rows of black, cruel-looking teeth as sharp as razors.”

He put down the story-paper and picked up young Tommy’s drawing. Trigger could have been describing the boy’s vision. Gideon finished the story, reading how Trigger was awoken in the early morning by a message from the university where Halifax worked in the Egyptology department. The Professor was near death, having been attacked, his offices ransacked. The mummy, and a valuable ruby locket, had been stolen. But it was no burglar, whispered the gravely injured Halifax. It was the mummy itself, roused from its centuries-long slumber, that had attacked him, grabbed the amulet, and made off for the coast.

Trigger tracked the creature to Faxmouth, a bleak place populated by dour backwoodsmen, He was unable to stop the thing escaping into the cold Atlantic, but stole back the purloined amulet. Halifax died of his injuries, taking the mystery with him to the grave, and Trigger kept the ancient stone, inlaid with enigmatic hieroglyphics, for his trophy room.

The candle on the mantelpiece burned down as Gideon stared at the story-paper on his lap long after completing the tale. Common sense told him there were a million reasons why he should ignore this. Tommy Peek was only a child with an overactive imagination. Tommy had often shared the stories in
World Marvels & Wonders
with Gideon, and it was likely his young, impressionable brain had absorbed
The Shadow Over Faxmouth
. And wasn’t it patently ridiculous anyway, the idea a mummy from ancient Egypt was lurking in the fogbound coastal village of Sandsend, Yorkshire, England?

Perhaps it was the eerie quality the sea mist had lent to the night, perhaps the look of terror on young Tommy’s face. Perhaps it was Gideon’s own predilection for the fantastic. But as he read the story he had felt a shivering
something
grip his spine, and it refused to let go. While the artist’s rendition of the Faxmouth horror wasn’t quite identical to Tommy’s sketch, they were so near alike for the differences to be negligible. Coupled with Gideon’s own feelings of unnameable dread at hearing those strange sounds at the foot of Lythe Bank, the disappearance of Clive Clarke, and the scrap of cloth he’d found pinned under the knife on the
Cold Drake,
Gideon was convinced the thing that had haunted Faxmouth was now just outside his very door.

His first instinct was seek out Stoker, but he paused. Stoker had already made it clear the whole enterprise was research for his latest novel, although Gideon was sure he had not meant to mislead him. It was more that the Irishman got wrapped up in his projects and seemed not to realize others might have more to gain—or lose—by their shared adventures.

And Gideon knew he would get no help in Sandsend. If he started raving about frog-mummies he’d be carted off to the loony bin.

Only one thing was certain. He wouldn’t be taking the
Cold Drake
out, not tomorrow, not the day after. Not ever, if he didn’t find out what had happened to his father and to Clive Clarke. Gideon couldn’t put it all behind him and get on with life. Not when mysteries and the unknown seeped into Sandsend and his mind like the sea mist rolling in with the night. He just couldn’t do it. He owed it to Arthur Smith—and with a sinking heart he realized he owed something to Clive Clarke as well.

Most of all, Gideon Smith owed it to himself to find answers. When the mystery had been solved, then perhaps he would live the life others wanted him to lead. But for now he had to do this, and he couldn’t do it alone.

First thing in the morning, he would go and find Captain Lucian Trigger.

5
A Most Unusual Dinner

As Gideon packed a few provisions and the rest of the money he’d found in a stone jar under his father’s bed, he felt a calm resolve come over him. He just had to convince Trigger to investigate. He, after all, was the hero, not Gideon. He saw Peek’s wagon negotiating the coast road. Gideon ran to the door and hailed him, and Peek squinted up at him and pulled on the reins until his old nag stopped.

“Are you going into Whitby?” asked Gideon. Mrs. Peek was hugging Tommy to her beside Peek; three more of their children were in the back of the cart.

Peek eyed him suspiciously. “Aye. Mrs. Peek wanted to take Tommy to the doctor. He’s not been himself since last night.” Tommy smiled wanly at Gideon, who reached up to ruffle his hair, then handed an envelope to Peek. “There’s a Mr. Stoker staying at lodgings on Royal Crescent; would you take this to him?”

Peek looked at the brown envelope. “I will. But why can’t you take it yourself?”

“I’m going to London.”

Peek gaped at him. “London?”

“Don’t let anyone near Lythe Bank, especially the children,”

said Gideon.

Tommy looked wide-eyed. “Is that where the monster lives, Gideon?”

“Hush,” said Mrs. Peek, glaring at Gideon. “There are no monsters, are there?”

Gideon bit his lip. You couldn’t lie to children, not about such things. They instinctively knew. Instead he just winked at Tommy and said, “I’ll be back soon. With help.”

Mr. Stoker, I am afraid I cannot join you in your research today. I wish I had time to speak to you in person, but that is one thing I just do not have. I now believe the search for your Count Dracula to be a blind alley. There is indeed an undead monster on the loose, but not the one you think. Perhaps the enclosed story-paper might prove illuminating. I have gone to London to engage the services of Captain Trigger. Yours, Gideon Smith.

Also in the envelope was an issue of
World Marvels & Wonders,
folded open to a Captain Lucian Trigger story. Stoker glanced at the periodical and put it unread to one side, pondering over his lunch of dressed crab. He had upset Mr. Smith. He had been careless with his words, given the young man the impression that he was merely on a jolly adventure while for Gideon it could not have been more important.

A story,
Gideon had said, with distaste.
Research. A novel
. He would have liked Mr. Smith’s strong arm at his service, but he had let Gideon down, so it wasn’t to be. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. Bram Stoker was stepping outside the comfortable confines of artifice and fancy, and tipping himself headlong into what he now knew to be a very real, very dangerous escapade. He would make amends. He would track down Vlad Dracula himself, and vanquish him. Stoker smiled as he finished his lunch. He had never felt more alive.

The police had, of course, combed the moors in search of the dog, but they pronounced it gone. And relieved they seemed about it, too, thought Stoker. With murders and mysteries to be solved, a wild hound was low on the constabulary’s list of worries. If it had run off toward the next police division, so be it. Stoker, of course, knew otherwise. The vampire had merely gone to ground and shed its transformed state.

He took a meandering route, making his painstaking way along the beach and scrambling up the rocks. He surveyed the moors rolling away from the coast, the farms and small holdings dotted around the patchwork landscape, any one of them potentially providing shelter—or a hearty meal—for Dracula. But why here? According to Le Fanu’s account, Vlad Dracula was a Transylvanian nobleman of an ancient pedigree, and while the guise of a black hound might be suitable for effecting entry to England, surely rampaging like a rabid dog would not be the count’s style.

Stoker’s path took him back toward the abbey, and he knew from there he could descend the famous 199 steps down to the town. He resolved to sit in the ruins of the abbey and eat his provisions while he pondered his next move.

In the gathering dusk, just a hundred yards from the abbey, came a farmer, openly weeping and dragging a hessian sack. Stoker stopped him and said, “Good heavens, man, whatever is the matter?”

The man simply pulled open the neck of the sack and bade Stoker look inside. He did, then drew back in horror. There was the severed head of a sheepdog in there, the blind, milky eyes of the collie staring up at him.

“My old Shep,” wailed the man. “He’d been missing all afternoon. He never goes missing. I found this yonder, near the abbey. What sort of monster would do that to a dog?”

What sort of monster indeed. His mouth set in a grim line, Stoker strode toward where the farmer had found the remains of his dog. The abbey. He fumbled in his satchel and took out a handful of stakes and his hammer, juggling them at his chest as he also delved in for the crucifix. In the gloom he slipped on a patch of dark wetness, which closer inspection revealed to be blood. His breath caught in his chest. The blood was before a dark opening, just off what must have once been the nave of the church, which led down half a dozen steps to an old cell or storage room. Stoker lit his small oil lamp with a painfully loud match strike. Was there a sudden movement from within? Holding the lamp high in one hand and clutching the stakes, hammer, and crucifix clumsily in the other, he descended, as boldly as he could, wishing he had Mr. Smith with him.

The cell was small and damp, but large enough for what it held: a long box beside one stone wall and a figure, clothed in a black cloak, hunkered down over what could only be the headless corpse of the old farmer’s dog. His hands shaking, Stoker held up the crucifix and, summoning bravery as a bulwark against every other emotion screaming for him to flee the place, he said, “Count Dracula, I presume.”

The shape paused in its repast, noticing for the first time the dim light illuminating the cell, as though it had been eating joyfully and with abandon, eyes closed. It straightened, and Stoker took an involuntary step back, then regained his composure and held the crucifix higher.

“You presume wrongly, Mr. Stoker,” said the figure.

Stoker blinked and swayed with shock, both that the vampire knew his name and at the voice issuing from the creature. The vampire turned and smiled, its teeth the distended fangs of legend, its lower jaw slick with dark blood. But the face was that of a singularly beautiful woman, her complexion as pale as a white rose, her black hair falling about her shoulders in lustrous curls. She fixed him with her shining eyes and said in flawless En glish, “
Countess
Dracula, if you must. But why stand on ceremony?”

She advanced one step and Stoker moaned, the stakes falling from his weakening grip and clattering to the stone floor. She raised an exquisite eyebrow at his arsenal and said, “Call me Elizabeth.” She smiled again, showing those dreadful, bloodstained fangs. “Elizabeth Bathory. And you are just in time for dinner.”

“Dinner?” asked Stoker, looking with horror at the corpse of the dog. “You mean you wish to share your foul meal with me . . . or I am to be your main course?”

Elizabeth Bathory laughed lightly, and it would have been a pleasing sound under other circumstances. She threw a sheet over the body of the sheepdog and took out a white handkerchief to wipe the gore from her chin. “I mean neither, Mr. Stoker. I have a basket with bread, cheese, and wine, if you would care to join me. And you can put down that crucifix; it is a rather pointless endeavor to keep brandishing it at me.”

Stoker looked self-consciously at the cross and lowered it, touching his hand to his collar. “I apologize for my rudeness, Countess. But I must decline your kind offer. My appetite inexplicably deserts me.”