Magistrates of Hell (7 page)

The most recent of such surrogate sons, Asher had gathered, had been a young Hungarian equally devoted to the study of folklore and to the righting of his nation’s wrongs at the hands of the Austrian Empire. His name – Matthias Uray – had vanished quite suddenly from the old man’s letters, and Karlebach had not spoken it at any time on the voyage. Presumably, thought Asher, he had deserted Karlebach for the Cause, just as he, James Asher, had deserted him, first to serve Queen and Country with the Department . . .

And then to partner with a vampire.

Would Karlebach have come to China at all, Asher wondered, had his wife still lived? Had he not felt himself deserted and alone?

He considered his former teacher now, as the old Jew nudged his skinny Australian ‘whaler’ close to the sergeant’s mount, and asked, ‘Have you heard of other dangers in these hills, besides irate natives?’

‘You mean bears or suchlike, sir?’ Both troopers looked blank at the question, though the younger one – Barclay – cast a nervous eye at the double-barrelled shotgun that Karlebach carried in his saddle holster. ‘There ain’t been bears ’ereabouts for – Lord, not ’undreds of years.’

And Gibbs added, ‘Ye’ll scarce be needin’ the ’eavy artillery, sir.’

‘Ah.’ Karlebach patted the smooth-oiled stock. ‘One never knows.’

The shotgun bore the mark of Kurtz – one of the premier gunsmiths of Prague – and, Asher could see, its trigger and guard had been specially modified to accommodate the old man’s arthritis-crippled fingers. For six weeks on shipboard, he had watched his mentor practice with this formidable weapon, and he knew that each of the cartridges that distended the pockets of that rusty old shooting-jacket were loaded, not with lead, but with silver deer-shot, enough to tear a man or a vampire to pieces.

Karlebach’s pockets clinked also with a dozen phials of distillations which he had concocted from the grimoires that were one of his major occupations – silver nitrate combined with those things inimical to vampire kind: garlic, whitethorn, wolfsbane, Christmas-rose.

‘Don’t you worry, sir,’ added the older trooper cheerfully. ‘We’ll get you there safe as ’ouses.’

Movement in the trees below the road drew Asher’s attention, but as always, when he looked, there was nothing to be seen.

Mingliang village lay some four miles back from the Hun Ho river, where a smaller gorge widened out at the foot of a shoulder of hills. The Lutheran mission stood at the top of the village, which was a maze of gray mud-brick
siheyuan
, the compounds bunched tight together with only a snarl of alleyways between. Many of these, Asher noted as they climbed the narrow ways up the hill, were deserted. Empty gates opened into courtyards filled with the dust of many winters. A number of the village shops, down near the bottom of the hill, were closed up.

Still, the terraced fields along the stream – wherever there was an inch of soil to spare – were all brown with the stubble of millet and dry rice; no land was yet gone to waste. The familiar stink of chickens and pigs, of charcoal fires and night soil drying, hung in the air above the smells of pine trees and the river; and a man who’d been checking bird traps in the woods, as the little cavalcade came around the last turn of the track, ran ahead of them, up the twisted streets and into the neat brick building beside the white church, calling out ‘
T’ai-t’ai! T’ai-t’ai
. . .!
’

A woman who had to be Christina Bauer emerged, shading her eyes.

Asher dismounted at once and removed his hat. ‘Frau Doktor Bauer?’

‘I am she.’

Bavarian German, sing-song and slurred.

‘Please allow me to introduce myself.’ He extended the letter of introduction that Sir John Jordan had written for him the previous morning. ‘I am Professor James Asher, of New College, Oxford. This is my colleague, Professor Doctor Karlebach, of Prague.’ Sergeant Willard had sprung down immediately to help Karlebach dismount, and steadied him as he limped stiffly to Asher’s side and extended his hand.

‘
Gnädige
Frau . . .’

Had she remained in Germany she’d have been a stout
hausfrau
surrounded by young grandchildren. China had made Dr Bauer thin, and had weathered a pink complexion to dusty brown, but she still had the broad hips and shoulders of her ancestry and the smiling calm of a peaceful heart in her eyes.

‘We are here to speak to you about the creature you found last spring in the hills,’ said Asher. ‘The thing you said the villagers called a demon, a
yao-kuei
.’

She closed her eyes, and her breath went out of her in a sigh of deepest relief. ‘
Du Gott Allmächtig
. Someone believed me.’

Karlebach frowned. ‘I should think the remains would have convinced them.’

‘Remains?’ Her eyebrows arched as she turned to regard him. ‘That’s the whole trouble, Herr Professor. The remains are gone. Without them, no one will believe . . . Who would? But it means we can get no help.’

‘Help?’ Something shifted in Karlebach’s eyes. Wariness. Readiness.

Not surprised
, thought Asher.
Not even startled
. Afraid with the fear of one who’s seen this coming.

Knowing it for the truth, he said, ‘You’ve seen more of them.’

‘T
his is all that’s left.’ Frau Bauer shut the door of the workroom at the rear of her clinic building, crossed to the single window that looked out on the woods and closed the shutters, putting the room almost in darkness. Her dress was old and hadn’t been made for her – the seams bore faded lines where they’d been let out. Somewhere in Germany, a congregation read her letters aloud at ‘Missionary Week’ and collected clothing for her and her flock.

‘It weighed seventy kilograms when it was brought in. Whole, the relationship to humankind –
homo sapiens sapiens
– was obvious; it even wore clothing that I think it must have stolen from militia troops.’ She struck a match, lit a candle in a tin holder.

Lydia was right. She’ll have to come out here as soon as possible
. . .

‘After the dissection it took me two days to realize that sunlight was destroying the flesh and the bones.’ Dr Bauer unlocked the wooden chest in the corner, lifted out a tin box, of the sort used to carry photographic supplies. ‘When I opened the box the following morning all the flesh and soft tissues were gone. Like a fool I left everything on the table, locked up this room and went out to question everyone in the village. Herb-doctors will pay for old bones, you understand: old writings, fossils, anything ancient to make medicine with.’ She shook her head. ‘Everyone swore they had not touched them and
would
not touch them. The fear in their eyes was real, Herr Professor. The bones showed no sign of decay when I came back that afternoon, but crumbled in the box after I locked them up again.’

She raised the lid, whispered, ‘
Verflixt!
’ and, with a pair of tongs, gently lifted out the contents on to the metal instrument tray. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not at all,’ murmured Asher. ‘This is fascinating.’

The skull reminded him of one he’d seen in London, when one of the fledgelings of the Master of London had been burned. Shrunken and discolored, the very structure of the bone had been unable to withstand the terrible changes that sunlight wrought upon vampire tissue.
But slow this time
, he thought.
Slow and in darkness
. . .

Some of the facial bones had dropped off it, and those that remained attached seemed to have grossly shifted their position and angle.
A softening of the sutures? Is that possible?

Lydia would know
.

He flinched at the thought of her riding that winding track through the hills, with rustlings and whisperings in the gorge below.

The pelvis had shrunk also, and only almond-sized knobs remained of the long bones of arms and legs. Teeth remained in the upper jaw. Not only had the canines developed into fangs – longer than those of the vampire, but as far as Asher could tell exactly similar – but other teeth had burgeoned into tusks as well.

Frau Bauer stirred with the tongs at the fine blackish dust on the bottom of the box. ‘Bits of the ribs remained, only last week,’ she said. ‘I put a few spoonfuls of the dust into two other boxes: one exposed for fifteen minutes to the daylight, one given no additional exposure. Both boxes were completely empty two days later. There seemed to be no difference between the rates of the dust’s decay.’

‘My wife is going to want a copy of your notes, if you’re willing to share them.’ Asher held up the tray, moved it about to further study its contents. ‘She is a medical doctor and deeply interested in . . . cases such as these.’

‘
Cases
?’ Frau Bauer’s eyes widened: shock, dread, eagerness. ‘There have been other such, then? Do you know what these things are?’

‘No,’ said Asher quickly. ‘My wife’s interest is in anomalous deaths: specifically, in cases of spontaneous human combustion, which this rather resembles. You say you’ve seen more of these things?’

‘Not I myself.’ The missionary moved the lamp closer as Asher angled the tray. ‘Liao Tan, the Number One of the village, saw one in the twilight, in the woods at the end of the valley, about three weeks after this one was found—’

‘Where did you come by this one?’ interrupted Karlebach. ‘In your so-interesting article you speak of peasants bringing it to you . . .’

‘Liao Ho – Number One’s nephew – has a house beyond the others in the village, on the track toward the mine. His mother – Tan’s sister – was a little mad, and in her later years she could not abide the noise of her neighbors. Ho kept the house after her death. He is something of an eccentric himself.’

She half-smiled at the thought of her cantankerous parishioner. ‘He keeps pigs and shared the house with three very fierce dogs. Tan told me the week before that his nephew’s pigs had been attacked in their pen by some animal: wolves, he thought. One night, Ho heard the dogs barking wildly out in the darkness and followed them to the edge of the marsh that lies below the old entrance to the mine. He found this thing there, horribly mangled. Later two of the dogs became sick and died as well.’

Asher’s glance crossed Karlebach’s and saw, behind the small, oval spectacles, the dark eyes fill with tears.

It had once been a man
, thought Asher, setting down the tray with its fragmentary remains.
A man with a wife and probably a child – like Miranda. A man who had loved and been loved, wanting only to get through this life
. . .

And unlike the vampire, he had not chosen to make this change.

Contamination of blood
, Ysidro had said.
They do not seem to retain that individuality which makes me Simon and you James
. . .

‘Ho brought the creature back to me at once.’ With the point of the tongs, Dr Bauer gently touched one monstrous fang. ‘Ho has never believed in demons. He insisted that the things people said they saw in the twilight had some kind of natural explanation. He also insists that the stories that these
yao-kuei
can summon and dismiss hordes of rats from the mines are superstition—’

‘Rats?’ Karlebach looked up sharply.

‘So the story goes. Such vermin are abundant both in the mines and in the marsh below the main entrance.’

‘And how long,’ inquired Asher, ‘has the story “gone” like this, Frau Doktor? I’ve studied the folklore of Hebei Province, and nothing I’ve heard of has ever sounded like this.’

‘No, this is very recent. The villagers call them
yao-kuei
, but most attribute their appearance to the misdeeds of the Emperor and the loss of Heaven’s Mandate for his rule. I first heard stories of
yao-kuei
being seen not long before Christmas, so it has been almost a year.’

She replaced the bone fragments in their box and locked it up again. ‘You understand, my people here go out very little once the sun is down. Aside from concern about ghosts in the darkness, for years now there have been brigands in these hills. Now that Kuo Min-tang militia are forming, it isn’t unheard of for men to be kidnapped into their bands. Poor Mrs Wei swears that the
yao-kuei
took her husband, who was lame and of no use to either the bandits or the Kuo Min-tang.’ She shook her head. ‘One cannot understand people like that.’

Karlebach whispered, ‘A year . . .’

‘It is conceivable, is it not –’ Dr Bauer carefully locked the box back into its cupboard – ‘that a group of these creatures – a little tribe – has been concealed in the caves in these hills, all these centuries? The caves near Nan Che-Ying Village have never been completely explored, and the river that runs through the Kong-Shui caves goes for miles beneath the earth. Such creatures might well scavenge food from the mine workings and from the garbage heaps of the temples.’

‘But in that case,’ said Asher, ‘wouldn’t there be stories earlier than last year?’

‘Let me see its clothing.’ Karlebach’s voice was hoarse.

Dr Bauer pulled back the window curtains, opened the shutters, and fetched another box. Good-humoredly, she said, ‘I have to warn you about these.’

Asher flinched from the smell as she brought out the rags: the remains of a short
ch’i-p’ao
– the straight, baggy, coat-like tunic that for two hundred and fifty years had been standard dress for all Chinese, male and female – and the remains of a man’s
ku
trousers. Both had been torn to ribbons by the dogs and were unspeakably soiled.

‘You read my description of the thing,’ said Bauer quietly. ‘I wish you could have seen it. It must have observed how men wear clothing and put these on in imitation of what it had seen. You saw the skull. The face wasn’t remotely human. It was almost hairless, its spine bent forward, and the hands bore claws rather than human nails. For twenty-five years I have worked here in Mingliang, calling these beautiful souls here to Christ, and never have I heard of anything like these: not in fairy tales, not in legends, not in the stories that grandfathers told the little ones to scare them from going into the old mines. I’ve heard a thousand fireside legends, Herr Professor, and I’ve talked to hunters who’ve been all over these hills . . .’ She shook her head, her eyes filled with anger and fear.