A meeting in the devils.., p.22
A Meeting In the Devil's House, page 22
“Very well,” Walters said, perplexed, slipping the man a crumpled banknote by way of an apology. He thought about heading back to breakfast, but his irritation with Higdon’s bad behavior had settled in his stomach like a knot, with no chance now to exorcise it. Better, he thought, to return to the compartment, retrieve the book, and return to his studies whilst the train chugged onward. His course decided, he nodded to the porter and made his way through the car.
But still, Higdon’s disappearance nagged at him. Where could the man have gone? Surely he hadn’t jumped from the train between cars, and yet, he'd evaporated as surely as water left on a hot stove. The whole thing felt unreal, the train and everything on it suddenly taking on the cast of ephemeral phantoms as solid as smoke.
The steady thrum of the train’s wheels sang counterpoint to his internal debate as he passed out of the car and on to the next one, a buzzy hum that made stringing together complex thoughts impossible.
The new car was mostly empty, at least--the side route through Bratislava was not the most popular, he knew--and the absence of fellow travelers was a relief. Even the porter of this car had abandoned his station, no doubt for one of the innumerable cigarette breaks that were as much a part of Eastern Europe as crumbling signs of Turkish occupation.
A couple of old men drowsed at a table by a window, neither of them conscious of the scholar’s passing. He gave them a nod as he trudged forward, bracing himself as the train threw itself around a curve and into a long, level straightaway.
As it did, the humming grew stronger, a low, insectile sound that persisted underneath the normal clank and bustle of the rolling stock. Walters could feel the sound now as well as hear it, could sense it climbing up from the carpet and through the soles of his shoes. Shaking his head, he took another step forward and immediately regretted it. His left foot felt leaden, his right tingled uncontrollably to the point where it went numb, and he lost his balance. Pitching forward, he caught himself with a splayed hand against the doorframe, which proved to be a mistake.
Instantly, his palm felt as if he were grasping a handful of angry hornets. Sting upon sting upon sting bit into his flesh in rapid succession. The sensation crawled up his arm, climbing nerve to nerve until everything below the shoulder was a nest of agony. The force of it was enough to drop him to his knees, driving the breath out of him in a singular grunt. He held there for a moment, unable to make the muscles of his arm work well enough to pull his agonized fingers away before the torment crept up his legs as well. Marching forward like jungle ants, the feeling crawled along every limb, meeting and twisting together in the space around his heart. Slowly he sank to the floor, his vision blurring as the buzzing grew louder and the pain crept up his spine to electrify the very base of his brain, and then ...
... then suddenly, he wasn’t on the train at all. With no wall to brace against, he toppled down into thick, oozing mud. The painful tingling in his arms and legs had stopped, however, and after a moment of wondering exactly what had happened, he pulled himself up out of the muck.
Kneeling--he didn’t quite trust himself to stand--he wiped mud from his face with his good hand, marveling at the clingy qualities of the thick, black stuff. It was not the mud that truly startled him, though; it was what was growing out of it.
He saw now that he knelt on a small island or tumulus in the middle of a vast swamp, one that positively thrummed with life. Gleaming insects in iridescent green and blue and gold swooped and swarmed, dragonflies cutting the thick, steamy air with doubled wings and a steely sense of purpose. Everywhere, plants rose up out of the discolored water, an explosion of greenery reaching upward to a thick canopy that nearly shut out the sky. These were not trees, though; instead, they could only be titanic ferns or cycads, whose golden trunks speared up from black water to disappear in the canopy overhead. Some, he guessed, were over two hundred feet tall.
Which implied that the creatures swooping among them were huge as well, surely too huge to fly. And yet there they were, larger than birds, wings beating the thick, rich air.
Now that the visual shock was done, the sounds of his surroundings had a chance to assault his ears. And what sounds they were: the buzzing of those titanic insect wings, the thick sounds of muddy water flowing, the croaking of frogs, and in the distance, the wet bellows of massive beasts yet unseen. But just as disturbing were the sounds that he did not hear. There was no birdsong, no scuttling of squirrels in the “trees,” or mice in the ferny undergrowth.
And, of course, no sounds of men. No thunderous engine, no clack of wheels over well-laid tracks, no voices calling or axes cutting into ancient, unfeeling wood. The entire scene sounded unfinished, absent so much of what Walters realized he took for granted. All evidence of mankind was absent, and he was utterly alone.
Or nearly so. He looked around at the island he stood on, a hummock a few hundred feet across rising up out of the muck and yet made largely of muck itself. Too many steps in any direction would lead him off its edge into the turgid waters, and his imagination quickly conjured the sorts of creatures that might dwell under the surface in a place like this.
And yet, in the mud he saw footprints, shod ones. They circled his position, he saw, then led away toward the water’s edge. Treading carefully, he followed.
The prints were deep, deeper than his own, which implied a heavier man had made them.
Higdon had been larger than he, Walters recalled. And his shoes might have made tracks very much like these.
Six feet from the water, the tracks stopped.
More accurately, they vanished, wiped out by a greater disturbance. The ground had been torn up here, obliterating any record of the man’s passage. Instead, there were great sharp gouges dug into the earth, ones that looked suspiciously like the work of massive claws. And there was a familiar scent here, too, coppery but faint. He started to kneel down for a closer look, but some primal sense of danger stopped him, some unsuspected clue that told him he was in terrible danger.
The insects, it seemed, had found him.
He turned as a gleaming battalion of dragonflies plunged toward him, gleaming mandibles clacking with hunger. Questions of where he was became academic as he threw himself down to the ground, just under the first wing of swooping predators. They buzzed past as he rolled to his knees, wheeling about in obscene formation to come around for another pass.
Then they were upon him, diving for his face and the tender softness of his eyes. Crouching down, he swung wildly at them, hoping to drive them away. One fist connected with a shocking thwock, the sound of wood on wood, and a monstrous bug spiraled down into the mud. Quickly, he smashed down with his fist and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch of chitin and a spray of foul-smelling innards. But that was just one of hundreds, and even as it twitched its last more swarmed to the attack.
One fastened on his forearm, its mandibles plunging down through the fabric of his shirt to pierce the meat underneath. He flung it away, but there was fresh blood in the air now, and more and more insects converged on him. Swinging, flailing, he was blinded by the cloud until, inevitably, he lost his balance, falling back into the warm, wet mud. He tried to escape, but the sucking, gooey muck held him tightly. The insects, sensing their prey was helpless, dove in for the kill. Hetherington shuddered as the ravenous jewels descended upon him.
And then, from somewhere close, a monstrous, bubbling roar split the air.
The dragonflies reacted instantly. They froze, holding position like a deadly curtain of the aurora while the roar sounded again. Then there was a sudden, sharp crack, and one of the dragonflies disappeared in a cloud of foetid vapor. A second sound, and another one burst, and then they were flying in all directions, a frantic explosion of vanishing color.
Desperately, Walters pulled free from the muck, and scrambled to his feet to face the new danger. What he saw defied rational description. Rising up out of the water was a creature, green-skinned and rubbery, with a rough slash for a mouth that extended halfway around its bulbous head. Its front two feet rested on the island itself and they were heavy and clawed, barely supporting the beast’s pendulous belly. It chewed, its lower jaw cycling in an odd, circling motion as what was undoubtedly one of the dragonflies crunched between its teeth. From nose to tail, Walters estimated, it was at least twelve feet long.
The real monster sat on its back.
It was huge, a wet gray cone that rose up to a series of four odd points. What only could be described as tentacles drooped from these, and Walters could not fail to note that the two extended in his direction ended in lurid claws clutching odd silvery objects. A third blossomed into a cluster of bright red mushrooms, while the fourth was festooned with bulging, inhuman eyes. They stared at him for a moment, during which time Walters got the shuddering sensation that the thing was studying him as he himself had studied amphibious specimens staked out in dissecting trays, pondering where to make the first incision.
The creature’s mount opened its obscene mouth and roared, the sound echoing out of its fleshy gullet. Then, step by ponderous step, it lurched forward. Its claws reached for him amidst a storm of excited clicking noises. He threw himself back as best he could as the horror plunged closer until ...
... he found himself on the floor of the compartment he shared with Professor Madison, who was staring down at him with raised eyebrow.
“Good heavens, Walters, you’re filthy,” the professor said. Walters tried to answer and found himself gasping for air, but Madison waved him off. “Go wash up and change, for God’s sake. I think you’ve got a story to tell me.”
An hour, one shower and several brandies later, Walters found himself seated across from the professor, who gazed at him with keen interest. He’d been through the story of what he’d seen, or at least most of it: the swamp, the insects, the titanic cycads. The rest, though, he kept to himself. It was a vision too far - monstrous insects were one thing, actual monsters were another, and there was only so much a man of science like the Professor could be expected to accept.
“You’re hiding something,” Madison finally said, “But it’ll be out in due time. Now this vision of yours--what do you think you saw?”
“I didn’t see it, Professor, I lived it,” Walters protested. “The mud, the blood--”
“The bites and the ichor all over your clothes, quite convincing, yes. So what did all that say to you?”
“It said to get home in a hurry,” Walters replied, and took another swig of brandy. “That it was no place for men.”
Madison nodded. “If pressed, I’d say it sounded like a swamp of the Carboniferous Era. Which, coincidentally, is some of what I’m having you study. Are you certain this isn’t some charade to get me to assign you more reading on the late Cretaceous?”
“Professor!” Walters was ready to rise out of his seat in protest until he saw that Madison was chuckling.
“Easy there, young friend. I have no reason to doubt your story. The evidence-“and he pointed to the muddy footprints that now dominated the compartment - “is most compelling. Besides, even if you’d faked the other bits, your materialization on the carpet was most impressive. But it adds another mystery to the ones we were already investigating.”
“Other mysteries?”
Madison ticked them off on his fingers. “The fireman who went mad. The disappearing Mr. Higdon, Esq. And now your sojourn. I find it worrisome in the extreme.”
“So you think they’re connected?”
The professor nodded. “It seems likely. Speaking of which, what do you think really happened to the poor Magyar?”
Walters rubbed his aching head. “The conventional wisdom is that he went mad, yes?”
“You saw him. We’re long past the conventional. But why mad now, and why on this train? He’d done the run, with that same fellow that he attacked, dozens of times before. And don’t forget, he said something about the coal.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
Madison smiled thinly. “Never mind. I think it may be time I made some inquiries. And it’s definitely time you lay down and got some rest.”
“But I can help.”
“Rest,” said Madison. “There’ll be plenty of time to help later, I’m sure.” He ushered Walters into his bunk, pulled down the shades and then left. His footsteps echoed down the corridor as the young man sank back into his pillow, gradually merging with the relentless thrum of the train’s progress.
Muzzily, Walters closed his eyes, counting in a dreamy four-four time as the wheels below rolled and clicked, eventually dissolving into a comforting, buzzing hum.
There was something about the hum, he realized. Something that he should recognize.
It was getting louder now, and he forced himself to open his eyes. All around him he could see the berth in the dimming light, the now-familiar brass fixtures gleaming with sunset glints. But there was another world there as well, a green haze settling over everything. Beyond the walls, he could see vast trees and vaster differences, could almost hear distant bellowing, and in his fingers and toes he felt a familiar tingling.
The shock of it jolted him to full consciousness. Professor!” he shouted, and threw himself out of bed. The impact with the floor dimmed the vision for a second, but as he rose to his feet it returned with a vengeance. Half-guessing where the compartment door was, he staggered after Madison. Every step yielded the wet squelching sound of ancient mud. Ever blink overwhelmed the ornate decor of the train with lush walls of primal green. “Professor!” he shouted again as he stumbled forward.
Dimly, he could see other passengers diving into the compartments, alarmed at the madman who now lurched down the passageway toward the end of the car. A figure stood there, perhaps Professor Madison. But the professor had never had claws, had never stretched forth welcoming tentacles, had never wished to ...
“Here, my boy, take this!”
A hand reached out for him, or perhaps a snaking tentacle, and then something cold and metallic was pressed into his fingers. Pocket watch, he thought dimly as he clutched it. He could feel the wheels and gears within, the steady tick of the hands advancing cutting through the haze, and then suddenly, the green vision vanished.
“Professor,” he said, and pitched forward.
Madison caught him as he fell. “Easy there. You’ll want to Keep that with you. It’s the only thing that’ll anchor you, at least as long as we’re on this train.”
“Anchor me?”
“To this era.” Madison regarded him gravely. “I think it is time we put all our cards on the table.”
Weakly, Walters nodded, then pushed himself upright. “There is something I didn’t tell you.” The professor, he saw, was headed towards the front of the car, and he followed. “When I was gone, I saw a…creature. Riding some form of amphibious beast. And I saw it again just now. It was reaching out for me.”
“Hmm.” They got to the end of the car, and a porter opened the door with a brisk salute and a surreptitious sign of the Cross. Madison stepped through, followed by his protege, and they passed into another carriage. “Would this creature have been roughly the height of a man, possessed of four asymmetrical appendages?” He went on to describe the monster of Walters’s vision so precisely the man’s jaw dropped.
“Yes. That’s it. That’s it exactly. How did you know?”
“Not all of my research is approved of by the Royal Museum,” he said grimly. “There are certain books in my possession that my more rational peers frown on. Accounts of pre- and post-human civilizations, vast beasts from the gaps between the stars, ancient demon cults - not the type of thing that plays well on Great Russell Street. And there are mentions of the creature you saw, vague hints at horrors out of time.”
“What do they say?” They passed through another car, moving steadily toward the front of the train. “What do those things want?”
Madison laughed, a bitter sound. “What they want is to remain hidden. So anyone who has knowledge of them, or who might acquire it, such a man would attract their attention.” He stopped and turned. “A man like you, now.”
“Or the dead man?”
Madison nodded. “Quite possibly. Or perhaps he was merely an instrument, used to dispose of evidence.”
“Evidence?”
“Think, Walters. You were drawn back to their time somehow. To the Carboniferous, when the vast beds of coal all around our route were laid down. What does this train run on? What did the man do!”
“Of course! It’s something in the coal!” Walters sprang forward, and now it was Madison who hurried to keep up. “We’ve got to find it before they try again!”
“And you’ve got to be careful, my boy,” Madison puffed. “You’ve drawn their eye. They’ll stop at nothing to silence you. Hold onto the watch. It’s the only thing anchoring you to the now.” Passengers and benches sped by as they ran headlong for the front of the train. “My best guess is that the vibrations of the train, mixed with some strange susceptibility of your own, is what flung you into the past.”
“Higdon! He and I carried the poor man, and then he disappeared!”
“You did, too. Good God! It’s the only thing that makes sense!”
And then, without warning, they were through the last car and into the cramped compartment at the back of the train’s engine, the air thick with smoke and coal dust as two shirtless men shoveled away for all they were worth.
“You there!” Madison shouted. “You’ve got to stop. There’s something in the coal, something terrible.”
The two men straightened and looked at each other. One strode over to Madison, while the other shrugged and returned to his work. “Am sorry, sir. No passengers are allowed here.”
“You don’t understand. There’s something wrong.” Madison’s earnest pleading was almost drowned out. The roar of the flames added hellish counterpoint to the chug of the wheels; the light from the furnace reflected luridly off the stokers’ half-naked forms.
