The List of Seven

  Larry and Barry sat up on the floor and tried unsuccessfully to keep from laughing out loud. Doyle was unable to resist joining them.

  “I’m sure there’s been some terrible misunderstanding. Can’t we discuss this reasonably?” said Stoker, retrieving the shredded corpse of his bowler.

  “If a move to the other inn is no longer in order, Mr. Sparks, what is your alternate plan?” asked Eileen.

  Sparks glowered at her, but she proudly stood her ground. When Doyle snorted, trying to stifle a laugh, Sparks shot him a venomous look.

  “Sorry,” said Doyle, turning the laugh into a cough. “Perhaps staying on here is not such a bad idea, Jack.”

  “You will have your opportunity to contribute, Miss Temple,” said Sparks, ignoring Doyle entirely. “Only with the understanding that I entirely absolve myself of further responsibility for your safety.”

  “Understood,” she said, and thrust out a hand. Sparks stared at her hand for a moment as if it were a lobster claw and then shook it, once, hard.

  “So what will we do then, Jack?” asked Doyle.

  “The brothers have during the afternoon each made a most interesting discovery,” said Sparks, moving away to the window.

  Both men had by now climbed back to their feet, hats in hand. Barry, Doyle noticed, had a good deal of difficulty removing his eyes from Eileen.

  “Train pulled into the station, three o’clock sharp,” said Barry, turning on the charm. “Webb Compound and one passenger car. Special from Balmoral. Royal seal.”

  “Was there a royal on board?” asked Doyle, alarmed.

  “Just the one: Prince Albert—”

  “Young Eddy?” asked Stoker, aghast.

  “Himself. He was met by carriage and driven off to the southeast.”

  “You’ll recall that Sir Nigel Gull, former physician to the prince, is one of the List of Seven,” Sparks reminded Stoker.

  “What could he be doing here? Do they plan to kill him?” asked Stoker.

  “There’s the waste of a perfectly good bullet,” said Eileen.

  “And are you acquainted with the prince personally, Miss Temple?” asked Sparks.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” she said, rolling another cigarette. “I spent an evening in Eddy’s company last year after he saw me perform Twelfth Night in Bristol.”

  “One can’t fault him his taste,” said Barry gallantly.

  “The man’s got the mind of a Guernsey,” said Eileen. “Put a pint in him, and he sprouts more arms than an octopus—”

  “Thank you for that edifying report,” said Sparks.

  “Not at all,” said Eileen, and held up the finished cigarette. Both Barry and Larry rushed forward with lit matches before Doyle could even get one out of his vest.

  “Larry, would you care to share with us what you’ve found out today?” said Sparks, with a disapproving schoolmaster’s tone.

  “Right, sir,” said Larry, blowing out his match as Barry had beaten him to Eileen. “Goresthorpe Abbey is mysteriously deserted, no one about these three days past, as Mr. Stoker has so astutely sussed out. So how do we finds the Right Honorable Bishop Pillphrock and where he’s got to? A grocer and his goods; that’s the life’s blood of any household. I spent the afternoon chatting up the dollies in the local shops—mind you, I’m no Barry, but I get by—and following outward along the lines of supply, I learn the Bishop has repaired to a secluded slice a’ heaven down the coast where, judging by the considerable volume of provisions purchased and delivered, he must be, as we speak, playing the country squire to a goodly number of guests.”

  “The Bishop’s own estate?” asked Doyle.

  “No, Sir John Chandros’s,” said Sparks.

  “Correct, sir, and as it happens, sharing the grounds of this same estate is a factory that produces—”

  “Mother’s Own Biscuits,” said Doyle.

  “You’re miles ahead of me, sir,” said Larry modestly.

  “What is the name of the estate?” asked Doyle.

  “They call it Ravenscar,” said Larry.

  “And it’s to the southeast, past the ancient ruins,” said Doyle.

  “Correct once again,” said Larry.

  “Where Prince Eddy was likely taken from the train station,” added Sparks. “And adjacent to Ravenscar is the tract of land General Drummond purchased from Lord Nicholson.”

  “We must go there immediately, Jack,” said Doyle.

  “Tomorrow’s business,” said Sparks, looking out the window at the falling snow. “Tonight we pay a visit to the ruins of Whitby Abbey.”

  “You can’t be serious—in this weather?” asked Stoker.

  “Your attendance is not required, Mr. Stoker,” said Sparks, picking up the shotgun. “However, I should like to borrow your gun.”

  Barry, all this while, had been taking the opportunity to size up Eileen as she smoked her cigarette, towering a good five inches above him.

  “I’ve seen you someplace before, haven’t I?” he said with a confident grin.

  Eileen cocked an amused eyebrow at the little man. Perhaps Barry’s reputation is not overstated after all, thought Doyle.

  Armed with lanterns, a shotgun, one pistol, and five sets of snowshoes procured from the inn, Sparks, Doyle, the brothers, and Eileen—Stoker having elected to exercise the better part of valor—set out in the dark for the ruins of Whitby Abbey. The bulk of the storm had passed, and the wind had expired; snow fell straight down and more gently now, to depths in excess of a foot and a half. Thick clouds obscured the moon. Smoke poured uniformly from the chimneys of the huddled houses they passed; curtains drawn, almost no light escaping to the ill-defined streets. The night was broken by nothing but the soft crunch of snowshoes on fresh powder and the vaporous columns of their breath. Navigation was problematic at best; the travelers felt sealed in a mute, hermetic sphere of white.

  Slogging up the hill demanded patience and stamina. Sparks took the point, consulting a compass to maintain their bearings against the sheer cliffs to their left. Barry and Larry kept a rear guard with the other lanterns, while Doyle walked beside Eileen in the middle. She wore pants, boots, and a coat borrowed from Sparks’s wardrobe. Her stride was long, steady, and brisk, and the climb seemed dismayingly less arduous to her than to Doyle himself, who welcomed each of Sparks’s frequent pauses as an opportunity to reclaim his wind.

  Half an hour passed before they reached the cold, dark contour of Goresthorpe Abbey; no change in its lack of occupancy was evident. A formation of curious rectangular shapes studded the snowfield before them. Doyle realized it was the heads of the cemetery’s gravestones peering out of the drifts. Following the turn of the rectory grounds, they moved through a stand of trees and were soon confronted by the craggy black outline of the ancient ruins looming on the crown of the hill above. As devoid of life as its sister building below, the old sepulcher emanated a visceral menace considerably more threatening than life’s mere absence.

  “Nasty-looking piece of business,” said Doyle quietly.

  “All the better to strike fear in the hearts of poor, ignorant parishioners with, my dear,” answered Eileen in kind.

  Sparks waved them forward, and they attacked the final leg of the ascent. The slope was steeper here, and it more than once required the collective efforts of the group to pull each other up and over the sharpest inclines. With the last of these banks surmounted, they found themselves on a flat plane level with the ruins. Their lamps bled a pallid light on the crumbling walls, which were black and harrowed with age. Its doors and windows had long since been ravaged by time, and in many areas even the roof had fallen victim, but the overall impression imparted by what remained of the abbey was one of tremendous sturdiness and power. A slow circum-ambulation of the structure revealed both its impressive scope and its builders’ fantastic indulgence of detail. Every ledge, cornice, and lintel was adorned with nightmarish Gothic statuary, embodying every imaginable species of night-dweller: kobold, incubus, b
asilisk, and hydra, lich, ogre, hippogriff, gremlin, and gargoyle. This fearsome menagerie had suffered far fewer insults from the passing centuries than the walls they swarmed over, each now patiently collecting a mantle of snow that did nothing to diminish their dread presence. Placed here to ward off demons, not to welcome them, remembered Doyle from his history books. Or so one hoped. He couldn’t keep from regularly glancing over his shoulder to see if any of the creatures’ dead eyes were tracking them.

  Sparks brought them back around the ruins to their starting point, completing the loop of their footprints in the snow, trailing away in either direction into darkness.

  “Shall we have a look inside?” asked Sparks.

  No answer came, but when Sparks walked through the open doorway, no one lingered behind. Because of the remaining irregular ribs of roofing, snow had not gathered to the same depths inside. They removed their snowshoes, leaning them against a wall. Sparks led them into the next room, a grand, vaulted rectangular space with uniform rows of broken stone running across the floor. A raised deck at the far end of the nave identified the room’s original function.

  “This was the church,” said Sparks.

  Sparks moved forward toward the altar. Larry and Barry fanned out with their lanterns, and the room grew more evenly illuminated. Snow continued to fall through the open ceiling. The air felt as dense and ponderous as the glaze on a frozen lake.

  “There used to be witches used this place for sport,” said Larry.

  “You mean nuns,” corrected Barry.

  “Nuns wot had lost their way is wot he said.”

  “Feller told us in some pub,” said Barry to Doyle and Eileen—mostly Eileen.

  “That’s wot he said. Whole convents’ worth, the lot of ’em, went chronic, over to the other side. Devil dodgers one day, consortin’ with the Prince of Darkness the next. That’s why people put the torch to the place.”

  “People from the village?” asked Doyle.

  “That’s right,” said Larry. “Took matters in their own hands. Killed and tortured and otherwise beat the devil right out of them nuns, right here in this room, that’s what we heard.”

  “Tommyrot,” said Eileen.

  “That’s the jimjams,” agreed Barry. “The fella was wonky wit’ gin.”

  “I’m not sayin’ it’s the virgin Gospel, I’m just sayin’ it’s what he—”

  “Bring the lanterns!” shouted Sparks.

  Barry and Larry scurried to the front of the cathedral, bearing the light. Doyle and Eileen quickly followed. Sparks was standing over a closed and weather-beaten crate lying in the altar area on a loose pile of dirt.

  “What’s that then?” asked Larry.

  “It’s a coffin, idn’t it?” said Barry.

  Doyle thought of Stoker’s account of the old sailor’s story and the night cargo he saw brought ashore from the ship.

  “The nails securing the lid have been removed,” said Sparks, kneeling down with one of the lanterns.

  “Didn’t the old man say they brought two coffins up here?” said Doyle.

  “Yes,” said Sparks, looking at the wood.

  “So what’s inside the bloody thing?” said Eileen.

  “Only one way to find that out, isn’t there, Miss Temple?” said Sparks, and he reached for the lid.

  As Sparks’s hand made contact with the wood, a chilling howl went up from just outside the building: the cry of a wolf, almost certainly, but the timbre lower, more guttural than any Doyle had ever heard. They froze as the sound echoed away.

  “That was very close,” whispered Doyle.

  “Extremely,” said Sparks.

  Another animal answered back an identical howl from the other side of the abbey. Then a third sounded, at a greater distance.

  “Wolves?” asked Barry.

  “Doesn’t sound like springer spaniels, does it?” said Eileen.

  “Turn very slowly around and face the room,” said Sparks.

  “No need to turn slowly, guv,” said Larry, already facing that way and pointing to the center of the cathedral crossing.

  A dizzying welter of blue sparks was spinning in a loose circle around a still point two feet above the floor. As it continued to gyrate, the circumference of the circle expanded, first horizontally, then vertically, until it equaled the span of the broken stone pews. The air crackled with a noxious energy. Doyle felt the hairs on the back of his neck elevate.

  “What the bloody hell—” muttered Eileen.

  The blue sparks faded as a shape emerging out of them defined itself: five translucent, cowled figures kneeling in prayer, knees resting a foot off the floor, as if supported by a spectral prayer rail. Issuing from exactly where it was impossible to determine, but the room was suddenly alive with a chorus of soft, whispery voices. The words were obscure, but the harsh, fervent tone of the invisible chorale penetrated sharply the ear of the listener, a heavy, distressing blow to the conscious ordering of the mind.

  “Latin,” said Sparks, listening carefully.

  “Is it a ghost?” Doyle heard himself ask.

  “More than one, guv,” said Larry, crossing himself.

  “See, there’s your nuns,” said Barry, who seemed not the slightest bit discomfited by the sight.

  Upon longer examination, the figures did project as aspect more feminine than monkish, and the high, insinuating voices that swirled around them did nothing to alter that perception.

  Eileen grabbed Larry’s lantern, stepped fearlessly down off the altar, and started directly toward the apparitions.

  “Miss Temple—” protested Doyle.

  “All right, ladies, that’ll be quite enough of this prattle,” she said in a strong, projected voice. “Vespers are done for the evening, now run along; back to whatever hell-place you came from with you.”

  “Barry,” said Sparks, a command.

  Barry immediately jumped down after her. Larry pulled his knives and moved to the right, while Sparks drew a bead with the shotgun.

  “Be gone, stupid spirits, fly away, disperse, or you’ll make us very angry—”

  The ghostly voices suddenly stilled. Eileen stopped ten feet away from the penitent wraiths.

  “That’s better,” she said approvingly. “Now the rest of you girls just trot on off as well. Go on.”

  The ghostly figures lowered their hands. Barry slowly moved after Eileen, only a few strides behind her now.

  “Miss Temple,” said Sparks, loud and clear, “move away from the center of the room, please.”

  “We run into ghosts in the theater all the time—” she said.

  “Please do as I say, now.”

  She turned back to Sparks to argue. “There’s nothing to worry about, they’re perfectly harmless—”

  Moving as one, the ghostly figures threw back their hoods, revealing hideously deformed and hairless heads that looked half human and half predatory bird. They let loose a shrill, paralyzing shriek and rose up above Eileen to a height of ten feet or more, preparing to strike. At that moment, two huge wolves sprinted into the nave from either side of the apse, growling ferociously, making straight for Eileen. Barry dove forward and tackled her to the floor as the wolves leapt to attack. Sparks fired the shotgun, both barrels, knocking the lead animal backward off its airborne course; it hit the ground with a hard thump and lay still, ruptured and bleeding. In the same instant, Larry let fly his knives; there was a loud yelp as the second animal came down on Barry, handles of the knives protruding from its neck and upper chest. The beast still had enough ebbing strength and instinct left to tear into Barry, the arm he’d raised to fend it off gripped in its ripping jaws. Barry reached around, pulled the knife from the wolf’s side, and plunged it decisively into the back of its skull. The animal spasmed and fell back, dead before it landed.

  “Stay down!” cried Sparks.

  But Eileen jumped to her feet, grabbed a lantern, and hurled it at the phantom figures towering above her. The lamp exploded on contact; the image
s combusted, disintegrating into a shower of silvery sparks and red smoke.

  “I hate nuns!” shouted Eileen.

  Doyle heard a low, feral growl behind him and turned cautiously. A third wolf stood beside the crate, a few feet behind Sparks, his back completely exposed to the animal.

  “Jack…” said Doyle.

  “My gun’s not loaded,” said Sparks quietly, without moving. “Is yours?”

  “I’ll have to reach for it.”

  “Do that, would you?”

  Doyle undid his coat and slid his hand delicately inside. With fiercely intelligent eyes, the wolf looked slowly back and forth from Doyle to Sparks. This was by far the biggest of the three brutes: six hands high, at least ten stone. As it inched forward, Doyle pulled out the pistol, but instead of attacking, the king wolf took two running strides and in a high arc leapt out one of the open windows behind the altar. Doyle got off one errant shot and rushed to follow it. Looking down, he saw the drop from the window was at least twenty feet to the cushion of drifts below. He held out a lantern, but the animal had already disappeared from view.

  Eileen and Larry attended to Barry, whose lower left arm had borne the brunt of the wolf’s attack. Blood ran freely down his hand as she guided his arm gingerly out of the sleeve.

  “Not too bad, is it, old boy?” asked Larry.

  “Coat took the worst of it,” said Barry, testing his fingers, the movement of which was not impaired.

  “Ghosts, can you fancy that?” said Eileen, with the calm neutrality of a practiced nurse.

  “Seen worse,” said Barry stoically.

  “I hate nuns,” said Eileen. “I’ve always hated nuns.”

  “These woolly sheep-eaters were real enough, weren’t they, though? No hocus-pocus here,” said Larry, leaning over to kick one of the corpses and then retrieve his knives from its hide.

  “All right then, Barry?” asked Sparks, reloading the shotgun with shells from his pocket.

  “Ugly as ever, sir,” said Barry, with a toothy smile for his ministering angel as she examined the puncture wounds on his forearm.

  Doyle’s heart rate was just coming under control again when he glanced back out the windows.