What Moves the Dead (15)
“Sounds like a disease,” I offered. Please, God, let there not be a rabies outbreak up here, on top of everything else.
“Not rabies. Rabies doesn’t make them watch you.” The farmer leveled a finger at me. “And they watch, all the time. Not the way hares stare at you and bolt if you move. They’ll come up to you and watch. The missus saw one down here once, came right up to the dairy and stood and stared at her. She knew it was one of the ones from up by the lake by how it moved.”
I rocked back on my heels, startled by this sudden flurry of words.
“I followed one once,” said the son. “It’d get to walking pretty good and then it would miss a step and fall over and kick. It’d see a jump and it’d have to stop and think about how to go over it. Sometimes it didn’t jump, just walked through the ditch. I just kept on to see where it was going.”
“And where was it going?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” said the son. “Got to the lake and fell in. Couldn’t seem to figure out how to swim. Just laid down on the bottom and drowned in three inches of water.”
* * *
These were strange thoughts, but there was little that I could do about them. If some strange disease was afflicting the local hares, that was a job for a veterinarian rather than a veteran.
I was half asleep and headed for three-quarters when I heard a board creak in the hallway. It might not have registered except that a second board creaked a moment later, close enough that whoever was setting the boards creaking was moving very slowly indeed.
Someone was creeping down the hall. I catapulted into consciousness and reached for my sidearm on the nightstand.
There are people who sleep with a loaded gun under their pillow and I’ve nothing much to say about that, except that I would not choose to share a bed with them. When I was nineteen and had seen a few battles and thought myself very hardened and worldly, I myself slept with my sidearm under my pillow. This lasted until the night that the damn thing discharged under my ear. If I’d been sleeping with my head on the other half of the pillow, I would probably not be telling you this story now, but I escaped unharmed. The pillow exploded into a blizzard of feathers and the bullet took out the lamp and buried itself in the closet door. I had just enough presence of mind to grab my luggage before I was thrown out into the street by the proprietress, who screamed at me for five minutes straight. Unfortunately for her, I was completely deafened and so missed the nuance of her diatribe, but the hand gestures were very clear. My tinnitus probably dates to this particular episode, and thus I cannot blame anyone for it but myself.
I opened the door a crack and peered both ways. No one … except for an instant, I thought I saw a white form trailing out of sight around a corner.
I have, as I have told you, reader, the psychic sensitivities of mud. It did not occur to me that I might be hallucinating, or that I might be seeing a ghost. Someone was walking through the halls at night and that someone must be real and alive.
And yet, having said this, I must admit that something must have been acting on my nerves, because why else would I have gone in pursuit, holding a loaded pistol? It was more than likely a servant. Servants are up at all hours, making sure that everyone’s shoes are blackened and the fires are laid. Granted, I had so far only seen one servant, but presumably there were more. So why did I automatically assume it was an intruder?
I moved as stealthily as I could, which was not very. The black boards creaked and yawned underfoot. I might as well have hired a brass band to play a march. When I rounded the corner, there was no one there.
Doorways lined the hall, and there was a stairway down to the lower floor. The person might have gone anywhere. I strained my ears for the creak of floorboards, and instead got a wave of tinnitus ringing over me. (My own damn fault. Listen too hard, tense the wrong muscles in my jaw, and it kicks off every time. Which you’d think I’d know by now.)
The ringing faded. I stood in the dark with my pistol braced against nothing, and then crept back to bed, feeling foolish indeed.
CHAPTER 5
I slept late the next day. Butchering a cow is no joke. I rode out on Hob, and Denton joined me on his gelding, which resembled a piece of overstuffed furniture with ears. I had the pleasure of introducing Denton to the redoubtable Miss Potter, who was taking a spore print of a mushroom.
“Ah,” she said, leaning on her furled umbrella. “A doctor, are you?”
“Of medicine, not mycology, I fear,” I said. Denton had the grace to look abashed. Miss Potter generously forgave him both this failing and his poor luck to hail from America, with its spurious claims of underwater mushrooms.
“Here attending Usher’s sister?” she asked.
If Denton was surprised at the speed at which gossip carries across the heath, he did not show it. “For all the good I do,” he said. “It is God’s hands, not mine. Perhaps not even His.”
If this impiety shocked her, Miss Potter gave no sign. She nodded gravely and changed the subject. Admittedly, she changed it to fungi, but I was willing to accept it. Denton also requested a demonstration of the stinking redgill, and this time, I stayed very well back and held the horses.
No pantomime players could have improved upon the play—Miss Potter, resolute, Denton staggering backward and throwing his sleeve across his face as if struck by acid. I enjoyed it enormously.