The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (32 page)

“Look,” Conan Doyle said. “There’s a boat.” He pointed to a small rowboat drawn up on the mud flats.

“A boat? At this hour? In this fog and darkness? I tremble at the thought of taking a steamer on the sunniest of days.”

“We merely have to row out a dozen feet and the thing cannot pursue us.”

Wissssshhhthump … wissssshthump …

The monster was getting closer with each slumping step.

“Oscar, come. We must.”

“No!”

“But it’s our best hope.”

“Out of the question.”

“Why ever not?”

“I fear the water.”

“More than the thing pursuing us?”

“I cannot swim, Arthur.”

“What?”

“I never learned to swim. Shocking, I know. At last, something Oscar Wilde is not accomplished in. Gloat, if you must.”

Conan Doyle laughed ironically. “Drowning is the least of our worries. One mouthful of Thames water is pure poison. You won’t have time to drown.” He grabbed Wilde’s sleeve and urged him toward the boat. “Come along!”

They left the cobbled road, crunched across a gravel brake and onto the muck-slick foreshore, instantly sinking to the ankles. Feet slipping and sliding, they slogged through the shoe-sucking mire to the boat. Each grasped a side and heaved. Instantly, they discovered why someone had been careless enough to leave a rowboat in plain sight. The boat was ancient, its timbers waterlogged from years of service—too heavy to be stolen. They groaned and heaved and strained to drag it the short five feet to the water, but the rowboat proved immovable.

Wissssshthump …

“Push, Oscar, push!”

“Ugh, why did we have to choose the heaviest watercraft in history? I suggest we look for another.”

Wissssshthump …

The dead thing raked the gravel with its feet and shambled onto the mud, feet slithering drunkenly before it found its footing and lumbered closer. Soon, it was mere feet away. It raised its arms and plunged toward Wilde, who was pushing at the stern of the boat.

“Pusssshhhhhhhh!”

Muscles quivering, both gave a final mighty heave. The boat sucked free of the muck with a
scccchhhlurrrrrp
and slid into the icy Thames. As it floated free, Conan Doyle sprang aboard, reached back, grabbed Wilde by the front of his coat and dragged him over the transom. He tumbled into the boat, which rolled alarmingly, almost tipping the pair into the water. As the vessel pitched and heaved, Wilde clambered to find a place on the seat while Conan Doyle scrambled to gather up the worn and splintery oars that had been left rammed beneath the seats.

They looked back. The thing that had once been Vicente stood at the water’s edge, a silhouette of impotent rage, watching them drift away.

“We’re safe … we’re safe…” Conan Doyle breathed exhaustedly, reaching forward to clap a hand on Wilde’s knee. Both men shook hands, gasping with effort, laughing with relief.

“You have paddles sorted out, Arthur?”

“Yes.”

“Then I suggest you use them. The beast is following us into the water!”

To their horror, the monster waded out to its knees and stood watching the rowboat. Conan Doyle slipped the oars into the rattly oarlocks and began to row, pulling with all his strength. With each stroke, the heavy rowboat, riding perilously low in the water, plowed clumsily ahead. As they moved farther out, the monster and the shore disappeared in the murk. Soon Conan Doyle found himself rowing blindly into a featureless void. Finally, he ceased his efforts and raised the dripping oars, catching his breath as he strained to look around. “Can’t see a blessed thing. I have no idea what direction I’m rowing in.”

“We’re in the very middle of the Thames. I fear we could be run over by a steamer.”

“I doubt it. No captain is mad enough to venture out in this fog.”

“And yet here we are, seasoned sailors, out for a moonlight paddle.”

“Look about, Oscar. I need a point of reference. A church steeple. A streetlamp. Anything.”

As if obliging, the moon slid from behind a scrim of cloud, lighting the circle of water about them.

“I still see nothing,” Wilde said. “Do you know which direction we’re heading?”

“If I keep the moon to my right shoulder, we should reach the west bank of the Thames.”

“Or row all the way to the channel.”

Conan Doyle fell to the oars and pulled with all his strength. Soon he lacked any breath to argue, locked into a rhythmic pulling at the oars. Overhead, the moon sailed through thickening clouds, vanishing and reappearing. Wilde crouched in the back of the boat, eyes sifting the fog. Finally, he announced, “Arthur! I see something! Keep going. Straight ahead.”

Conan Doyle pulled until his arms and shoulders burned with fatigue; he lifted the oars momentarily to look for himself. “Yes. I see it, too. I think we’ve done it. I think we’ve reached the far shore!”

“And look, there’s someone there!”

Wilde stood up in the rocking boat and waved both arms. “Hallooooo! Can you hear us? Hallooo!”

The boat drifted closer to shore and a moment later both men cried out in horror.

“It’s him!”

In the drifting fog, Conan Doyle had rowed in a huge circle and brought them back to the precise place they set off from. Now he wrestled with the oars again, paddling backward with one and forward with the other to spin the boat.

“Look!” Wilde shouted.

As they watched, the dead man waded farther into the Thames. Knee deep. Waist Deep. Chest Deep. A final plunging step and the gruesome face vanished beneath the black water.

The two men stared at the surface of the river with anticipatory dread.

Flat water. Calm. Silence.

“Thank goodness,” Wilde exclaimed, “the thing has drowned itself!”

A sudden commotion of bubbles broke the surface. And then something burst up from the water, arms flailing like steamboat paddles, driving straight at them.

“My God,” Conan Doyle said. “It can swim!” He snatched up the oars and heaved, rowing for all he was worth. Slowly, gradually, the swimming figure dropped farther and farther behind. Abruptly, the swimming stopped and the monster sank beneath the surface.

“It’s gone under. Surely this time it has drowned?”

They watched the surface. A few stray bubbles broke here and there and then … nothing.

“I think you’re right, Oscar. I think this time it has—”

Something exploded in the water beside the boat. A pair of hands latched onto the gunwale, tipping the rowboat precipitously as a waterlogged shape began to drag itself aboard.

“Look out!”

“It’s climbing in!”

With no other weapon to hand, Conan Doyle struggled to wrestle an oar from its oarlock. As it came loose, the monster already had an arm and a leg inside the boat. He swung the oar with all his might. It connected with the creature’s head with a hand-wringing WHACK but failed to slow it down. The sodden form flopped into the boat and struggled to its feet. Conan Doyle shifted to an overhand grip and brought the oar crashing down on the monster’s head. THUD! It was a mighty blow and the creature staggered backward, off balance. Conan Doyle flipped his grip, holding the oar like a lance. Wilde guessed his intent and latched hold. With their combined weight, they speared the blade into the monster’s chest and pushed with everything they had. The monster let out a bestial roar and toppled backward over the gunwale, cannonballing into the Thames and sending up a huge geyser of water.

The two friends stood trembling in the middle of the wildly pitching boat, looking at the dark water with dread anticipation.

Silence.

A few stray bubbles. And then nothing.

“I struck it two good blows about the head,” Conan Doyle said. “Surely it’s done for—”

There was a tremendous crash and a seismic shudder as something drove up through the rotten timbers of the hull and a hand clamped upon Conan Doyle’s ankle with a bone-crushing grip. Water gushed into the boat through the hole.

Conan Doyle shouted with pain and tried to prise the fingers loose, but the iron grip was unbreakable. “Oscar, it has me!”

Wilde snatched up the dropped oar and swung at the monster’s hand. The blade missed, smashing into Conan Doyle’s shin, making him bellow with pain.

The heavy boat began to rapidly fill with water and Conan Doyle knew it would soon sink.

“We’re sinking, Oscar. It will likely let go of me once we go under. You must swim for it. Cast off your coat, it will only drag you down.”

“My coat? This coat? Never!”

“Don’t be a fool man! Don’t drown for the sake of vanity!”

“I can think of no nobler cause to die for!”

“Get ready to jump and remember to keep your mouth closed. The river here is rank with every form of filth and poison.”

“I shall be sure to keep your sage advice in mind whilst I am drowning.”

Conan Doyle and Wilde continued to grapple and pull at the monster’s fingers, but its death-grip was inhuman.

Soon, black Thames water surged over the gunwales and the boat filled with water. At the last second, Wilde leapt and struggled to swim away from the sinking boat. He looked back to see Conan Doyle’s agonized face as the boat dragged him beneath the water. Huge bubbles erupted for long moments, gradually thinning to a trickle, and finally stopped.

Wilde was suddenly and terribly alone in the water. Conan Doyle had drowned.

The water was stunningly cold. The Irishman flailed toward the shore but the heavy coat billowed out behind like a sea anchor, pulling him under. Reluctantly, he opened his arms, shrugged his shoulders and let the river take the coat. Wilde had not been completely honest: he could swim after a fashion. After ten minutes of flailing and splashing he slogged up from the river onto the mud and vomited up a gutful of vile water before collapsing to gag and choke.

“Arthur,” he wheezed, lying in a waterlogged puddle. “My poor dear friend. Oh, Arthur.”

He had been lying there, gathering himself for several minutes, when he heard a splash. He raised his dripping head from the muck and looked back at the river. To his amazement, something glimmered on the surface, a foaming of bubbles. And then he saw the head of a swimmer break the surface.

Wilde clambered unsteadily to his feet. The swimmer was moving slowly, methodically toward shore. But was it man or monster?

“Arthur?” he called out, both hopeful and fearful lest it not be. The swimming shape drew closer. “Arthur! Is that you? Please be you. It looks like you. Follow my voice! This way! Keep swimming! You can do it!”

The swimmer came on in a slow but steady breaststroke. The bobbing head intermittently vanishing as it sank and rose, sank and rose. But then Wilde suddenly had his doubts. He stopped calling. Took several nervous steps away from the water. By now the swimmer had reached the shallows and a sodden human figure dragged itself upright, water streaming from its clothes.

“Arthur … is that you? Please, say something.”

The shadowy figure staggered up from the reeking Thames and onto the muddy shore in a series of lurching steps and collapsed at Wilde’s feet. Although barely recognizable, his hair matted with riverweed and filth, it was, indeed, Arthur Conan Doyle.

“Arthur!” Wilde said, falling to his knees and embracing his friend. “I feared you had drowned. The monster had you in its grip. How did you escape?”

Breathless and gasping, Conan Doyle opened his hand to reveal a tiny silver pocketknife. “My father gave me this on my tenth birthday. I keep it in my pocket at all times. It is very sharp. I held my breath as the boat went under. Then my knowledge of anatomy served me well. I reached down and, by feel alone, severed the tendons of the creature’s fingers one-by-one. Even a monster with tremendous strength must have tendons to grip something. As I cut through the last tendon, the grip went slack. I broke free and floated to the surface, though I was on my last breath.”

“Well done, Arthur. You have destroyed it.”

Conan Doyle looked at his friend with sudden concern. “No, Oscar, I did not destroy it. The monster’s arm was thrust through the timbers of the hull. I assumed the heavy boat dragged it to the bottom of the Thames.”

“Then it’s not dead?”

Both men looked up at the sound of splashing. The monster had also swum to shore, and now it stood up in the shallows, water sluicing from the ragged clothing. It paused a moment, as if gathering its dreadful inertia, and then shambled up the beach toward them.

“Apparently not,” Conan Doyle said, dragging himself to his feet. He looked about for a weapon and snatched up a heavy lump of waterlogged driftwood and ran down to meet it, shouting a kind of battle cry. As the creature came sloshing up from the water, the Scotsman swung with all his might and brought the driftwood club crashing down on its head with a mighty thud. Vertebrae cracked, kinking the head upon its neck and staggering the monster. But then it snarled and lunged at Conan Doyle, grabbing him by the coat front and flinging him away a dozen feet. He crashed heavily to the ground driving the air from his lungs, momentarily stunning him. Before he could recover, the monster was upon him. One hand clamped about his throat and began to squeeze. The second hand fumbled to gain a grip, but the severed tendons had rendered the flapping fingers useless. Still the grip of the monster’s single hand was crushing and Conan Doyle found himself being throttled to death.

WHACK! Wilde had recovered the chunk of driftwood and brought it down upon the monster’s head. The blow would have killed a living man, but the creature scarcely noticed. Conan Doyle’s face purpled as the relentless grip tightened and he struggled vainly to pry loose the fingers.

“Oscar!” he wheezed in a strangulated voice. “Hit him!”

THWACK! Wilde’s club came down again, crunching vertebrae, kinking the monster’s neck in the opposite direction.

Conan Doyle was gargling up froth. His vision began to darken and his fingers grew clumsy as his oxygen-starved brain began to sink into oblivion.

THUD! Wilde brought the club down a third time and the chunk of driftwood broke in two. The Irishman looked around and despaired. The foreshore was barren, with nothing left to use as a weapon.