Текст книги "The Bedlam Detective"

Автор книги: Stephen Gallagher

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Which in itself would have been a comparatively happy outcome, had the boy not been dragged from the shallows unconscious. A first examination found no visible harm. But when his shirt was opened, a spreading contusion under the skin below his ribs signaled some profound hidden injury.

We were crouched on the riverbank beside the child. Sir Owain had his arms around his wife, who was holding the boy’s hand.

Sir Owain said, “What treatment can you recommend?”

I do not think that I have ever felt so helpless as I did in that moment. I said, “None that wouldn’t risk doing a lot more harm.”

“Nothing is impossible for a resourceful man,” Sir Owain said.

At which point I lost all restraint.

“You call on your resources and conjure me a hospital, then,” I said, “and I’ll give you any treatment you’re looking for. What do you imagine you’ve done, here, Owain? You’ve cut us off from all that’s civilized.”

“Please, Somerville.”

“There’s bleeding inside. All I can hope to do is drain it and hope that he bleeds no more.”

He said, “I’ve every confidence in you.”

“Then it’s misplaced!” I shouted. “I’ll do my best, but I’m no surgeon. No more of your sunny reassurances, Owain. We’re up against it now.”

We set up one of our two remaining tents and draped our last net to keep the insects out. I went around all the camaradas to see who had the sharpest knife. I sent some of the Indians out to search for leaves and bark with reputed healing properties. Everyone was looking at me as if I had some idea of what I was doing. I did not. I had these few materials and the hope, with no belief, that I might do some small measure of good with them.

My ignorance was medieval. All I could offer were the rituals of medical attention, with no significant expertise at the heart of it. I turned the unconscious child onto his side and made a cut to let out the blood, which came out thick and dark, and very slowly. When that stopped I placed him on his back and applied the healing poultice to the wound.

I feared to see him moved. But I could foresee no good outcome if we did not get him into the hands of someone more skilled.

I left him with his parents and went and sat by the river. I felt despair. After a while Sir Owain emerged from the tent and came over to me.

“He opened his eyes and spoke my name,” he said. “I do believe he’s stronger already. Well done, man.” And he clapped me on the shoulder.

Through all our trials, he seemed to have learned nothing. If we can assume that Owain did not imagine them, those few words were the last his son would ever speak.

It hardly mattered whether my crude surgery had been in any way effective, because an infection quickly set in around the wound that I’d made. At the same time, Sir Owain drew my attention to the fact that the boy’s mother was ailing as well.

“My dear Bernard,” he said to me. “Could you take a look at Mrs. Lancaster? I’m not sure I like her color.”

SOMERVILLE PAUSED. Sebastian was aware of the superintendent’s deputy taking out his pocket watch and checking the time.

The botanist said, “Would it endanger my privileges if we were to continue my story tomorrow? You must agree that I have been a willing witness.”

“Is there much more to tell?” Sebastian said.

“No, but what remains is the most important part,” Somerville said, “and I am beginning to tire. I do not mean to be uncooperative. I only wish to do the story justice.”

Sebastian looked at Evangeline. She offered no argument. All but the botanist rose to their feet. The deputy superintendent’s relief was palpable. Sebastian said, “Can it be arranged?” and the deputy agreed that it could.

Evangeline said to the botanist, “Do you know why you’re here?”

“I know what they’ve told me.”

“Which is?”

“That I flew at my sister in a moment of madness. But I love my sister dearly. It’s inconceivable that I would ever want to do her harm.”

“And yet you did.”

“I cannot explain it. Trying to makes it worse. So all in all,” he said, indicating the small room into which they were all crowded, “I would rather she was safe from me, and I was here.”

Sebastian said, “In that moment between sleep and waking. What did you take her for?”

Somerville shook his head.

“Who knows what I saw then?” he said. “I truly don’t.”

AFTER MAKING ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE NEXT MORNING AND taking his leave of Evangeline at Waterloo Station, Sebastian made his way home. There were no messages for him at the pie stand. He hesitated at the street door to his apartments, knowing that he ought to take down or replace the wreath. Until he could afford the headstone, it was Elisabeth’s only memorial. He had no mourning suit, and to be seen in a black armband was bad form on any man not in the military.

He’d deal with it another day.

He found Robert waiting at the top of the stairs, eager to give him news. Frances was in the back, preparing their evening meal.

Robert said, “Doctor Percival took me to the natural history museum.”

“Just you?”

“And Frances.”

“Ah,” Sebastian said. “Good for him.”

He did not know Dr. Percival. All of his dealings had been with the brother, Dr. Reginald. Because of all their early correspondence over Robert’s education, the Langdon Down family had stayed in touch. They had even sent a representative to Elisabeth’s funeral.

Robert said, “I love the museum. I could spend forever there.”

Frances chipped in at that point, appearing in the doorway. “Spend forever?” she said, wiping her hands on a white towel and smiling to show that this was no complaint. “I was beginning to think he was planning to. We never got beyond the east wing.”

“You should go sometime, Father,” Robert said. “I’ll take you. There’s a pavilion with all the creatures from Buenos Aires we’ve been talking about.”

“I doubt that you’ll find Sir Owain’s creatures in any museum. Not in this world, anyway.”

“But the Indians say that makes no difference. I like the idea that spirits can pass back and forth between life and dreams. Because it means that Mother’s still somewhere close, even if she’s nowhere we can see.”

Sebastian caught Frances glancing at him. He briefly met her eyes and said, “Do you dream of her often, Robert?”

“All the time,” Robert said, almost cheerily. “You should, too. Then you’d know she’s always right here and you wouldn’t have to be so sad.”

To which Sebastian had no ready answer; and so with a change of subject that was like a crash of changing gears, he said, “And are those hands clean?”

Like a child ten years younger, Robert held his hands up for inspection.

Sebastian gave them a critical look and said, “I’d say they could use a wash before supper.”

Robert looked bemused, but he didn’t argue. He went off into the next room and ran the scullery tap.

Sebastian said to Frances, “Depending on what I learn tomorrow, I may have to go back to Arnmouth and finish my business there.”

“All right,” she said.

Belatedly, he realized what he’d be asking of her. She’d have sole charge of the household, and sole charge of Robert, for several days. Yet they’d had no discussion of such matters. Selfishly, he’d given such future arrangements no thought at all.

He said, “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” she said, and added a reassuring little smile. “Leave me the rent and five pounds. Shall I pack a bag for you?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve given you enough to do.”

He went into the bedroom alone. At the foot of the bed, Elisabeth’s old cabin trunk did double duty as a linen chest. He crouched before it and raised the lid. Then it hit him all at once: the scent of Elisabeth, of lavender and roses, from a sachet bag that she’d put in with the sheets and occasionally replenished with a few drops of her own perfume.

He was unprepared and, for a moment or two, incapable of anything. The sense of her returned presence was overpowering. All purpose was briefly dashed out of him.

He recovered quickly, but with his wounds refreshed. Under the lid was a secret compartment with a double-latch lock. Originally meant for the jewelry that Elisabeth had sold to buy their steamer tickets, the recess now contained a pocket-sized revolver wrapped in an old shirt, the gun’s cleaning kit, and a box of ammunition.

Sebastian took out the revolver and checked it. He’d bought it from a pawnbroker to replace the Bulldog pistol that he’d carried in his Pinkerton days. In England he’d had little use for it.

The last time he’d handled a pistol had been during the siege at the children’s ward. The day of Elisabeth’s murder, if only he’d known it. Seated on the bed with the empty gun in his hand, he suddenly found himself all but robbed of the strength to rise. He put his hand over his eyes and waited for tears that threatened, but did not come.

He wasn’t sure how, but his sister-in-law’s ready kindness had disarmed him. Perhaps he could take this one moment for himself. One moment to let out a little of the pain, and with that pressure vented he’d be able to go on.

He hadn’t heard Frances come in. But then he hadn’t been aware of the sound he must have made, either.

She knelt down before him and took his hand in her own.

“Sebastian,” Frances said. “Don’t fret. She said that all would be well. I do believe she’s with us, and she still intends it will.”

“Frances,” he said, recovering as best he could. “Aren’t you the strong one?”

Releasing his hand, she stood up, crossed the room, and closed the bedroom door. Then she moved back to sit on the bed beside him.

“We must have a serious talk about Robert,” she said.

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong. Doctor Percival thinks highly of him. He asked if we had considered what steps might be taken toward giving Robert his independence.”

“Independence?” Sebastian said. “I know he has a strong and capable mind, but he thrives with the support of those who love him.”

“Don’t mistake me,” she said, “I love Robert as much as you, but we need to face the fact that he’ll outlive us both. And when we’re gone, what then? An institution, Sebastian, to see out his days. He has no other family here.” She glanced down at the revolver. “You spend your days in pursuit of lunatics, some of them dangerous,” she said. “He’s lost one parent. If he loses the other, how will I support him alone?”

Sebastian was lost for a reply. The challenges surrounding Robert had always been immediate ones. Questions of the longer term had never arisen.

He said, “What do you propose?”

Frances said, “Doctor Percival has observed Robert’s phenomenal powers of analysis. He says that in the matter of employment you’ve set your sights far too low. With your permission he wishes to explore the possibility of finding Robert a placement in one of our scientific institutions.”

Sebastian could not quite believe it. “When was this discussed?” he said.

“This afternoon. At the museum. It was one of the purposes of the visit. Imagine it, Sebastian. He might even progress to an income and rooms of his own. With a housekeeper to take care of his needs, of course.”

“Does that mean you would leave me too?”

“No, Sebastian,” she said. “But I’ve been Robert’s faithful keeper for long enough. I can hope someday to be his loving aunt. I would not leave you. Unless I understood that you wanted me to.”

For Sebastian it was as if doors were opening and his life, after hurtling along blindly in the wake of Elisabeth’s death, were being pushed to make a necessary turn.

“Can we discuss this again?” he said.

“We will,” Frances said, and rose to her feet. She steadied herself with a touch on his arm, and he responded with a supporting hand. There was a surprising solidity to her; her looks had always been so delicate that he’d imagined her to be almost without substance.

“Thank you,” she said, and squeezed his hand before she stepped around him to leave.

ON HER WAY HOME THAT EVENING, EVANGELINE STOPPED AT A post office and spent a penny-farthing on a letter card to inform her employers of a continuing indisposition. If they suspected her, let them dismiss her. She might forgo their good references, but she had wits enough to get around the problem without resorting to forgery.

The next day, she met Sebastian Becker at Waterloo Station and they made their second journey out to Broadmoor.

The same deputy superintendent met them in the carriage yard between the gates, and from there they passed on into the asylum proper. The enclosing wall was topped with spikes and broken glass. Within it stood a central hall with residential wings to either side of it, and a terrace walk for fresh air and exercise. One wing contained a women’s prison, where it was said that most of the inmates had been committed for the murder of their children.

Somerville was waiting in his cell with the door open. This time he seemed pleased to see them. The tale that he had begun in reluctance had become his unburdening.

Sebastian said, “Are you ready for us, Doctor?”

“I believe I am,” Somerville said.

He began—

I CAN’T SAY what it was—grief, fever, some parasitic invasion from her dousing in the river—but before long both mother and son were dying together. I was tempted to believe that the boy was dead already, rotting and breathing in some collapse of the natural order. Neither could be moved. The woman threw convulsions, and screamed if anyone touched her.

Since Sir Owain never speaks of his wife now, I shall.

I cannot say I knew her. No one on the expedition did. Most thought her aloof, and some were critical of her for bringing a child into a hostile wilderness without any grasp of what life in a wilderness entailed. But to my mind, her only crime had been to obey her husband, whose determination to treat this far-off place as but a distant corner of his own domain had led to all their sufferings.

He had to know it. When a man who demands his own way in all things is faced with the disastrous consequences of his actions, he has to know who brought them on. But can a man’s mind bear up under such knowledge? I don’t believe that it can. I stand before you as a living example. I may present myself in a rational manner, but I have found myself capable of acts outside my own control. Sir Owain is no different. And I believe we saw the proof of this in the days that followed.

At night, we heard those animal sounds outside the camp again. Sir Owain took his hunting rifle, and with no thought of personal danger he struck out into the darkness.

“Show yourself!” he’d call out. “You won’t have them! Don’t think you can hide from me!” And we heard him for some time after that, as he stumbled deeper and deeper into the jungle.

That became a routine for the next few days. I don’t believe that Sir Owain slept at all. By day he sat in the tent between his dying wife and child. At night he was out there at the first sound, blaming all of his ills on that which he could not see, seeking to confront and defy it, but never being given the chance. The rifle was always in his hand, and all of us stayed out of his way; no one wanted to be mistaken and shot.

He came back to the camp on the second morning, after roaming abroad all night, and tried to tell me a tale.

“Somerville,” he said. “You must listen. You must. It was a revelation. I’ve had a revelation.”

He was wild-eyed, and close to the brink of madness. He spoke of a confrontation with the beast that had been following us and that threatened all our lives. But the details kept changing, as if he were speaking of a dream and did not realize it.

He saw it now, he said. We had ventured into the midst of a land where creatures roamed unseen, where all the things that threatened us had forms and names but stayed beyond human perception.

“So …,” I said. “What exactly did you see?”

“Nothing!” he said excitedly. “Because they’re only there when you don’t look!”

I told him that he was making no sense.

“They’re waiting,” he insisted. “When my guard’s down, that’s when they’ll strike.”

His wife and child slipped away that afternoon, within half an hour of each other. The first I knew of it was when Sir Owain closed up the tent and went to sit by the river. His hunting rifle was in his hand. He stood it upright with the stock against the ground and the barrel pointing up at the sky.

Everyone looked to me. I entered the tent and checked both bodies for life. When I came out, the others were watching and the news must have been written on my face. I sensed a ripple pass through the camp. Not of sorrow, but of relief. It was done. Now we could leave.

I walked over and sat by Sir Owain. I eyed the gun and tried to judge his mood. He was gazing out at the spot where the two rivers met, where turbulence had capsized his vessel. I said nothing. It was minutes before he spoke.

He said, “Were they in any pain? Do you think?”

“You saw them,” I said. “They were sleeping.” And then: “We need to think about moving on.”

“One of the boats can serve as a funeral barge,” he said. “This must be done with all possible dignity.”

It took me a moment to register what he was saying.

“No, Owain,” I said then. “You can’t take them with you. We’re not yet halfway home. There’s no dignity in what a few days in this heat on the river will make of them. Do I need to explain?”

“What’s my alternative?”

“You’ll have to bury them here.”

“No!”

“If the very idea is too painful then you can leave it to others.”

“I won’t leave them in the dirt of some foreign land.”

“Then they’ll rot in your arms. Is that what they’d want?”

It was harsh, but it did the trick. He closed his eyes, and all the fight seemed to go out of him.

“No,” he said. “I can’t leave it to others. This is my family. I shall be the one to deal with it.”

He got to his feet. He took a deep breath and he straightened his back. Then he turned and walked back toward the camp, calling everyone together.

He stood before us all, and made a speech.

“I’ve decided that we shall continue downriver,” he said, “as soon as my wife and child have received a fit and proper burial, as befits good Christians in a heathen land. I trust no one considers this unreasonable.”

All eyed the way that he hefted his hunting rifle, and agreed that, despite dwindling supplies, creeping sickness, uncharted hazards, and invisible beasts, this was not at all unreasonable.

“Good,” he said. “I shall begin my design for the tomb.”

HE HAD the surveyors looking for the best site. He had it cleared of vegetation, and set our camaradas to dig the hole. Wherever they dug, after a foot or two the hole would fill up with water. The second choice of site was no better. The men worked, wanting to be done with this and on their way.

Meanwhile, Sir Owain had our Indians hauling flat stones out of the river, including one so heavy that it took all of them working together. Once it was on the bank, he had them hammer in wedges to split it. With a charcoal stick, he drew his funereal designs on each flat surface and set them to chipping away at the rock, flaking it down so that his designs slowly rose up in relief.

I managed to catch him alone for a moment. I said, “Owain, I’m concerned. Someone’s moved our supplies.”

He seemed unworried. “No one’s taking more than his share,” he said. “I’ve made sure of that.”

“It was you?”

He’d a gleam in his eye when he looked at me.

“If they can’t find the food,” he said, “they can’t desert me. I hired these men fair and square. In the time that I’m paying for, I expect them to do whatever I require of them.”

I watched in dismay as, over the next few days, order steadily broke down. A few hours for a funeral was one matter; the construction of some mockery of a Highgate-style sepulchre, with control of the food supply as a means to compel obedience, was something else altogether.

The Indians responded by feeding themselves. They cut open flowering bamboo stalks and ate the grubs to be found inside. Work all but stopped on the stone carving after that, as the Indians lay around and were of little use. I guessed that there was more in the grubs than mere nourishment.

The camaradas roasted monkeys when they could get them and eyed Sir Owain murderously, but made no direct approach to him. He was armed at all times, and, more intimidating to our Portuguese-speaking labor force, he showed repeated signs of an increasing mental unbalance.

The bodies of his wife and son remained in the tent, sewn into canvas but getting riper and riper. At night, when he wasn’t searching for beasts, Sir Owain sat with them, a handkerchief tied to cover his mouth and nose. I could hear him talking to them. Well, not so much talking. Raving.

The next morning, we found that one of the boats was missing. Five of the men had taken to the river and gone, taking their chances without any food, no doubt hoping for more plentiful and less wary monkeys downriver. There was almost a rebellion after the discovery was made, with Sir Owain firing into the air to restore order.

The European contingent held a secretive meeting and tried to persuade me to distract Sir Owain while they seized his gun and restrained him. They seemed to think I was the only person in the company that he trusted. I could not imagine how they’d reached this conclusion.

I agreed that grief and duress had affected his reason, but argued that we faced enough dangers without adding to them.

At the end of that day, we found that Sir Owain had somehow hidden the remaining boats.

SIR OWAIN asked me to perform a burial service. The tomb had been completed late that afternoon, and sunset approached. By now there was good reason not to keep the bodies from their final resting place for one hour longer than was necessary. I borrowed a Bible, chose a few readings, and concocted a service of sorts. I’d thought that it might be difficult to find bearers to fetch the bodies from the tent, but there was no shortage of volunteers. The sooner it was done, the sooner we’d be on our way.

The tomb—what can I say about the tomb? Think of those great stone monuments of our Victorian fathers. Picture the most Gothic of them, and then strain it rough-hewn through a madman’s nightmare. It had four solid sides and a great slab to top it. But its angles were all wrong, its proportions strange, its decoration of urns and columns a strange mix of the primitive and the classical. A temple of skulls and bones, a pirate’s tomb. And yet, entirely recognizable as what it was meant to be.

After my piece we sang “Abide with Me” and the Indians hummed and Sir Owain made a rambling, but touching speech. Mad though he was, his heart was truly breaking. He ended with a promise that our journey would resume in the morning, and revealed where he’d hidden the food. The daylight was all but gone as the camaradas dragged the top slab into place and we all dispersed.

Sir Owain sat alone in his empty tent, by the flickering light of a monkey-fat candle. I let him be for a while and then—cautiously, for he’d not set down his hunting rifle at any point during the service—made my way in to join him.

He acknowledged my presence. I produced my rum flask. Even a madman deserves a wake.

I said, “A sad day in a week of sad days. My condolences, Owain.” I unscrewed the cap and offered the flask.

He looked at the ground, and sighed. Then he accepted the flask and took a hefty swig. He made a face as the rum went down. “You were right to be hard on me,” he said, offering it back. “I should never have brought them here. What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking that all the world must be tameable,” I said, waving the flask away, “because you’d already succeeded in taming so much of what you could reach.”

“No,” he said. “I truly believe there’s a malevolence at work. They were taken. This jungle took them.”

“Yes, Owain,” I said, because there’s no arguing with the deluded. “And nothing can bring them back. So now we have to look to the welfare of the survivors. Tell me. How did you manage to hide the boats?”

“I didn’t,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “For boats that aren’t hidden, you concealed them very well. Some of the men have been sneaking off and scouring the riverbank for as far as they could walk. Not one of them’s found a sign.”

Sir Owain just sat there looking at me, and offered no explanation. Suddenly I understood. Or believed I did.

“You sank them, didn’t you?” I said. “They’re sitting out there on the riverbed waiting to be raised and refloated. You crafty dog.”

But I saw nothing in Sir Owain’s eyes.

“Well?” I prompted.

He said, “I untied the lines, and shoved the boats out into the river where they were carried off.”

Was he joking? Surely he was joking.

He was not.

“They’re gone?” I said.

He shrugged. “I wish I’d thought of your bottom-of-the-river trick,” he said, and tilted his head back with the flask tipped high, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he downed the rum like so much water.

I persisted.

“So we have no boats,” I said.

“No,” he said.

WHEN I AWOKE the next morning, it was to find our campfire extinguished and our camp deserted. Europeans, Indians, camaradas … all were gone. They had taken what remained of the supplies, and abandoned us.

Over in his tent Sir Owain slept on, snoring in a noisy rum coma, much as I’d left him the night before. After a sleepless week, the liquor had kicked away his supports and he’d fallen hard.

Now this. Our situation was bleak. I contemplated my own with dismay. The others had seen me as Sir Owain’s man, to be abandoned along with him. Such were the consequences of my caution and sympathy. I picked my way around what remained of our camp, looking for anything useful that the others might have left behind. When I came to the grave site, an appalling spectacle awaited me.

The stone tomb, so carefully and solidly built, had been pushed over by some terrible force. How had I slept through this? The slab had tipped and its walls had fallen, and the rotted bodies had been dragged out onto open ground and mauled.

At least, I believe they’d been mauled. I am no expert in the work of explosive decay.

Their canvas shrouds had been ripped head to toe. Surely the others had not done this out of spite before they left? Although as an explanation, it did occur to me before any other. But the force of it, and the fury.…

I felt helpless. What was I to do? Take my own chances in the jungle, and leave Sir Owain to make this discovery alone?

I had intended to walk away. My alternative was to stick with a madman, which would mean facing the odds with an added handicap. I’d be like a conjoined twin in a drowning pool, with the weight of a dead brother pulling him down.

Then from behind me I heard, “Holy mother of all mercy,” and I knew that my opportunity to choose had already gone.

Sir Owain had risen, and came to stand beside me now. He did not blink or look away; he bore the unbearable.

We could not think of restoring the tomb. Between us we had not the necessary strength, and besides, it was irreparable. One of the side slabs was cracked, and the other completely broken. We remade the shrouds as best we could and dragged the bodies back to their hole. We placed flowers in the grave all around them and then piled on every one of the stones that we could move, plus a few more from the river. This time there was no service, no ceremony.

After that, with only the clothes we stood up in, we set off to follow the river onward as best we could and eventually, God willing, to walk out of the jungle.

WE KNEW OF only one reliable food source. Like our Indians, we were reduced to cutting into flowering bamboo and eating the grubs we found inside. Though trained in botany and able to identify some of the more extreme poisons, I had little useful knowledge that I could apply to living off the land. Disgusting though the bugs were—and we ate them alive—they sustained us and did us no harm. Whereas our one experiment with berries left us violently sick and shaking for most of a day.

Though some of the time he’d walk along for hours in an introspective silence, at his worst Sir Owain was a raving companion. At night, he would pick out sounds and identify them with total certainty as the cries of beasts that were calling to one another, plotting to capture us. By day he’d point to their traces, which I actually believe to have been made by some of our former companions moving ahead of us. It seemed only logical to assume that they would be following the river, as we were.

One time, as we rested in exhaustion after a hazardous descent beside a waterfall, Sir Owain suddenly gripped my arm and pointed across the river, saying, “See. There one goes.”

All I could see was the fog of spray at the base of the falls, and the rainbow that it made.

“I see nothing,” I said.

“I see the spaces where they’ve been,” he said. “The space retains the shape. Until it fades.”

Make of that what you can.

I began to understand why our Indians had turned so lazy. The bamboo grubs, which habit made easier to stomach as the days went by, inclined us to lethargy and fueled the most strange and vivid dreams. Taken early in the day, they induced a daze that lasted for hours. One time I stepped on a sharp rock and did not realize until much later that it had split my boot and my foot was bleeding badly.

At night, we’d pile up fronds to make a bed. Sleep came easily. Exhaustion and bamboo grubs saw to that. One morning, at daybreak, I awoke to find Sir Owain shaking me.

“Bernard,” he said, using my given name for only the second time. “I’ve done it. I’ve killed one.”

I blinked and yawned and raised myself. “What do you mean?”

“I followed it and killed it. Look.”

He showed me his hands. There was blood on them. On his hands, on his clothes, everywhere. And on my arm, where he’d touched it.

I said, “Show me.”

He led me down to the riverbank. I was limping. It was the start of an infection that would come close to losing me a leg.

Sir Owain was chattering away.

“I saw its eyes before anything else,” he said. “They were yellow. And they shone, Bernard. Lit from within. I swear to you they shone like lanterns!”

Pain lanced up my leg from my wounded foot as I tripped over his hunting rifle. The weapon was lying in my way, discarded and undischarged. Had he fired a shot during the night, bug juice or no bug juice, I’m sure the sound of it would have woken me.