Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl Read online

  Peek screwed up his eyes. “What’s changed your mind?”

  Is this what Trigger would do? It didn’t matter. Gideon Smith was not Lucian Trigger, nor would he ever be. Despite the salutation at the start of each story—This adventure, as always, is utterly true, and faithfully retold by my good friend, Doctor John Reed—real life was never as neat as the stories. Trigger never failed; he was never turned away from his adventures by anything as ordinary as a death in the family. Trigger was impervious to personal tragedy, or if he wasn’t, then he gamely adventured on regardless. Gideon didn’t have that luxury. He needed to put food on the table and pay the bills, and neither searching for what ever truth lay out there about his father’s death nor hunting for Bram Stoker’s vampiric nobleman would do that. He said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Peter’s ready when you are, and I’ve spoke to the others and their dads.”

  Mrs. Peek, who had thinning hair and a look of perpetual, ingrained exhaustion, appeared at the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She nodded at Gideon. “Sorry about Arthur. He was a good man.”

  Gideon nodded. Peek said, “So you’ve given it up? All this talk of investigations? And your . . . noises? At Lythe Bank?”

  Gideon shrugged. “I told Constable Clarke. It’s his business if he cares to look into it.”

  The look that passed between the Peeks was not so brief that Gideon didn’t catch it. His eyes narrowed. “What?”

  Peek said, “Clive Clarke’s . . . missing. He started his rounds, called in on Mrs. Higginbotham, as is customary, then . . . well, no one saw him after that.”

  “Maybe he’s out of the village,” said Gideon. “Called to Whitby, or Staithes.”

  But Peek glanced out the window, at the darkening sky, and Gideon saw in his furrowed brow that same look he’d had the day after the Cold Drake was lost. He said quietly, “Old Mrs. Higginbotham said he’d been planning to go to Lythe Bank. Check out a report he’d had.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence, then Mrs. Peek said, too brightly, “You’ll stay for tea, Gideon?”

  “No. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  “He’ll turn up,” he said. “Clive Clarke.”

  “Yes.” Gideon nodded.

  They both looked at their feet, then Gideon said his goodbyes and left, heading down the hill toward the beach. On the horizon a thin, pale line was advancing, indicating another sea mist was going to crawl inland. The last time it had come, the sea mist had claimed his dad. Gideon wondered what fresh terror this new incursion would herald. In truth, he had been famished and would have gladly sat at Peek’s table, but he had suddenly felt so very sick to his stomach. He had sent Clive Clarke off to investigate those noises from Lythe Bank . . . had he sent the police officer to his death? Had whatever overwhelmed the Cold Drake insinuated itself into the tunnels beneath the cliffs, awaiting more victims? Bram Stoker said it couldn’t be his fanciful vampire crawling in under cover of the sea fret, so it must be something more solid . . . and much, much worse.

  “Why’d you say that to him?” asked Mrs. Peek as she dished up the stew. “About Clive? You said yourself he’s apt to be a little away with the fairies. Who knows what he’ll make of that?”

  Peek dipped a hunk of bread into the brown soup. “He’d have found out anyway. Better he can put this sort of thing into . . . oh, what’s the word, Harold? When something looks one way or another depending on what sort of place you’re at when you looks at it?”

  Peek’s son Harold, who was a whiz with his spelling, shrugged. “Perspective?”

  Peek considered. “Sounds right. Better he can put this sort of thing into perspective while he’s in a sensible frame of mind. Even if Clive is missing in Lythe Bank, and God knows no one wants that, at least Gideon’ll be able to see it’s just one of those things and not one of his mysteries.” He winked at Harold. “Perspective. Bloody good word, that.”

  “Well, he looked half starved to me on top of it all,” said Mrs. Peek. “I bet he hasn’t had a square meal since his daddy died. After tea you can take a bowl of stew over to Gideon.”

  Peek sighed and Tommy perked up. “I’ll take it.”

  Mrs. Peek was about to protest, but her husband held up his hand. “Aye, let the lad. It’s only five minutes.” He turned to his son and waggled his spoon. “No letting him fill your head with nonsense, mind. I know you’re almost as much of a bugger for those penny dreadfuls as he is.”

  Before Gideon returned to the cottage, there was a ghost to lay to rest, a more looming presence than Stoker’s Transylvanian phantoms or the disappearance of Clive Clarke.

  He hadn’t set foot on the Cold Drake since the crew was lost, had barely had the stomach to look at it. He wanted to run from it, in fact. But Trigger wouldn’t do that. Trigger would face the beast in its lair. He walked with measured footfalls along the rickety pier until he was alongside the ship. The other trawlers were moored farther along the beach, black shapes in the dying day. Why didn’t they look as foreboding as his father’s ship? Why didn’t they fill Gideon’s gut with butterflies? They just looked like gearships wound down for the night, awaiting preparation for tomorrow’s fishing, once the sea mist had lifted. The Cold Drake looked like something else. Something other. Gideon could see, now, why none of the more seasoned fishermen of Sandsend would take to the sea with her, why trawlermen were so superstitious. A pall hung over the Cold Drake like a cloud of flies. She was cursed, plain and simple. There were no rules about these things, nothing written down, no guidebooks. But Gideon knew the Sandsend fishing community would not put up with the abandoned ship moored on the beach for long. It was bad for business, bad for morale. Bad for Sandsend. There was only one way the curse of the Cold Drake could be lifted, and that was by Gideon taking her out as though nothing had happened. Only he could break the hold the black shape of the Smiths’ trawler was exerting on Sandsend.

  Steeling himself, Gideon placed a shaking hand on the strut of the wooden pier and jumped.

  No earthquake split the land when his feet hit the deck of the Cold Drake. No tidal wave consumed Sandsend. The sky did not fall; fire did not rain from the heavens.

  No dragon appeared to eat the sinking sun.

  There was no clue as to what had happened. Gideon’s fingers trailed along a series of shallow gouges in the decking. Were they fresh, or had they always been there? It was difficult to say. A belt buckle rusted by the bow. Had it been lost by one of the crew that fateful night, or had it sat there for months? Gideon completed another circuit, walking clockwise as though he might ward off any bad luck clinging to the trawler. He had not ventured belowdecks, and did not intend to as the sun dipped redly over the rooftops. That was enough for one day. As he made to leave, though, the last of the sun’s rays bounced off a reflective sliver by his feet, hidden by the long shaft-brake. Arthur Smith’s gutting knife, the blade sunk a half-inch into the plank. Gideon pulled the knife from the deck and inspected the point of the blade. The knife had pierced and fixed to the decking what appeared to be a small square of dirty white cloth. Gideon plucked it from the end of the blade. It was cloth, though as dry as paper. It crumbled to dust in his fingers and was whipped away on a sudden and unexpectedly cold breeze playing over the Cold Drake, chilling Gideon into a hurried exit from the trawler and a rapid return up the hill to his cottage. He did not dare to cast a single look over his shoulder.

  Gideon closed the windows against the advancing fog and sat in his father’s chair, leafing through his copies of World Marvels & Wonders by candlelight. He was just thinking how hungry he was and how good Mrs. Peek’s stew had smelled when he heard a startled cry, followed by the crash of something breaking. The fog was thick and he could see nothing from the window, but then the air was rent by a scream that could have been dragged from within Gideon himself. A small boy, calling for his dad.

  In seconds Gideon was out of the front door, and his scalp crawled as he saw Tommy Peek half lyi
ng on the path outside Gideon’s cottage, a pot in pieces around him, the brown gravy from his mother’s stew soaking into the dry earth. But the boy was moving, wide-eyed and drawing breath for another cry. Gideon squatted at his side.

  “It was a monster!” Tommy hissed. “It came out of the fog. Its teeth . . .”

  Monster? Teeth? Was it Stoker’s Count Dracula after all? “Inside,” Gideon said. “We’ll get you cleaned up then get your daddy.”

  A shape loomed out of the curling white fog, and Gideon’s heart raced, but it was only his nearest neighbor, a crippled old fisherman who had not been out on the sea for a decade.

  “Go get Peek,” said Gideon, his mouth dry. “Tell him Tommy’s had a bit of a fright, but he’s all right.”

  Inside the house Gideon gave Tommy a cup of water and sat him in the chair. He remembered the portrait of Count Dracula he’d seen in one of the books in the library. “Did the man have a long nose? A jutting lower jaw? A thick black mustache?”

  Tommy shook his head. “It wasn’t a man. It was a monster.” He put his hands to his face and burst into tears again.

  Gideon hushed him. “Can you describe him? It, then?”

  Tommy looked at his hands and sniffed. Gideon thought for a moment and said, “Can you draw it?”

  He fetched a notepad and a pencil and went to make some coffee while the boy haltingly began to sketch. The water was about to boil on the stove when there was a hammering on the door and Peek let himself in.

  “Tommy!” he said, glaring at Gideon. “What happened?”

  “It was a monster,” said Tommy.

  Peek shook his head. “You’re as bad as Gideon for your tales. You dropped the pot and now you’re trying to cover it up with some daft story. Your mother was right. I shouldn’t have let you out in this fog.” He turned to Gideon. “Thank you for looking after him. I’ll take care of it now.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. “We’ll think of something to tell your mammy, don’t worry.”

  Tommy nodded and Gideon marveled at the resilience of the young. Either he really was lying, or he was more scared of his mother than he was of Count Dracula. Gideon saw them out and returned to the chair, where Tommy had left the sketch.

  At first he took it for the product of an overactive imagination—It takes one to know one. It was technically very good, as were all Tommy’s pictures. But the subject matter . . . it really was a monster, thin and wiry of body, ragged strips of cloth wound around its chest and festooning its arms, gnarled but viciously clawed hands. The thing had a bulbous, bald head into which were set bulging round eyes without pupils, giving them the appearance of milky orbs. Tommy had managed to make its skin look dry and thin and seemingly stretched over its ball-like skull. But the true terror lay in its mouth: thin lips, curiously elongated and froglike, and rows of pointed, black fangs slavering with clear, viscous fluid.

  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.