Ghosts in the Making, Part II
Hopkins:
"Murcher!"
The big PC ambled over, exactly like one of the bears at the zoological gardens. Johns, his partner of three months on the Force, followed in his steps like an anxious babe learning to walk. The other PCs continued to stand around the small pile of leather and canvas that made up their salvaged luggage. Behind them the distant string of rectangles and squares that made up South-Dartmoor's share of the Western Line continued to sink.
Lestrade could see better in indirect light, and he was gloomy at the sight of all those nice, safe men, women and children of the line getting themselves bundled up into canvas-covered wagons, borrowed coaches and cabs for the warm, dry beds waiting them in the understated village of Tame.
"I'm going to do my best not to be a spoilt little brat about this," Hopkins grumbled behind Lestrade's ear (odd how Hopkins sounded 20 years older and at least 50 years' more frightening when he was angry) "Because civilians belong in a place called Tame, do they not?"
"No idea." Lestrade confessed. He decided he was too weary to be clever. "The Tame...isn't that the stream that almost drank us?"
Hopkins muttered something that sounded more like "It looks so, sod it," than "you're fashin' mad, Lestrade."
Crack.
Crack-a-thack-a-thack-a-BOOM.
A third and final sally of the burgeoning storm lit about their heads. Not a single man resisted the urge to flinch as the Heavens revolted. Half the PCs hit the grass with their knees, a product of their superstitions as much as natural human fear (Greenwood because he was formerly Army and reacted the same way to anything that reminded him of cannon).
"It's not much, gentleman." A blocky Rail man with a large mustache and red complexion had to lift his voice to be heard over the sudden tumult. He had to talk fast: they could hear the storm headed right for them, a wall of water that pattered like a million feet on the long grasses. It was just clearing the rise of the slope and headed down. "But it's all dry, and solid, and we can-" A wall of air smelling of the moors—strange flowers, sour soil and tea-coloured pools-struck them like a fist just before the rain did. The air went dark and the Rail Man had to shout at the top of his lungs to be heard by Hopkins, who was less than arm's length away. No one else had a prayer, but they could see Hopkins nod in frantic agreement.
….. ….. ….. …..
A man in wooden shoes led them along a winding sheep-trail to the top of the slope. From there he bade his leave and pointed the right path with a brown finger. Years ago someone had tried to maintain a sign, but it had wilted from wood to rot with time, and all that remained was a drystack stone pillar in the heart of the ancient trod.
It was a cross-roads of a sort; three paths scratched lightly in the thin soil or dug out of the granite that rested just beneath their feet. Funny little sticks lined the way for many long minutes. They were tied with bits of rag hung straight down in the rain, silently dissolving with the elements. Tiny animals made of cloth and bits of sheep's-wool and pasteboard dangled on wool yarn, sodden out of shape and losing their soft colours from endless exposure. Hopkins knew the looks of old prayer-sites as well as anyone, and often took comfort at the quiet acts of faith and prayer. Yet in this clouded watery world, the sight was poignant and sad. They were mostly sheep, goats and some ponies, the natural beasts of the moor, and it was clear that many of them had been fashioned by children.
Small prayers by small people for their beloved pets, Hopkins realised, and suddenly began to shiver. He could not stop his shivering. Lestrade said nothing, but paid him a worried glance, and tried to quicken their clumsy pace.
They were now in the moorlands, and it was hard to pay attention to anything besides the skill of placing one step before the other. Once in a while one could hear, over the roar of the rain, the grumbling of the Bobbies who hadn't really wanted this trip to the country to begin with, and why hadn't the Christopher Gang been so considerate as to get themselves arrested in London where they'd all met?
"I'm more worried that they couldn't find all of the Christophers," PC Harding bawled back at Murcher over the ding-ding-ding of water bouncing off his helmet.
Which, truth be told, was why the police had gone to the criminals, and not the other way around. With twenty hardened—not to mention bloody—former convicts, but nine policemen of varying rank, it was simply cheaper to take the smaller group to the larger. PC Greenwood pointed this out—he meant to be calm about it, but no one sounds calm when they're screaming to be heard.
"Right now, I'm more worried that we'll all die of the headache before we get out of the rain," Johns snarled—a sentiment that the un-helmeted Inspectors had been pondering. It was bitter enough going with their hard-crowned bowlers, but the felted crowns were more like a wooden shingle than the heavy tinned roof that represented the poor Bobbies. Sometimes the rain grew even more fierce, and tiny fountains erupted from the tops of their metal heads in concussion. Hopkins couldn't recall a more miserable day, and he had been trapped in the fens a time or two in the past.
Lestrade and Hopkins were helping Gregson with his shaky leg as Bradstreet led the way with the farmer—or crofter—or whatever it was the man did. But Lestrade was quite tired. Rescuing Gregson from a horrid death had not improved his nerves.
Hopkins slipped once in the soupy muck and went down, hard, against a projected granite stone that the sheep had sensibly circled. He yelped in pain, clutching at his right ankle.
"Bloody hell, now there's two of us!" He shouted (shouting was more masculine than screaming one's head off from the pain).
The rest stopped, and gradually, Gregson laughed. It was a low, soft, thoughtful chuckle against the fates.
"Gregson, stop it. You sound like Mr. Holmes." Bradstreet warned.
"Oh, sorry to give you a scare, Bradstreet. It's just that the humour of the situation's come to me."
"I am not going to ask." Lestrade vowed under his breath. He knelt over Hopkins, the action sending a new wave of water over them both—not that it mattered at this point. Hopkins was still gnashing his teeth. "Nice sprain you have there. Good thing you changed to your walking boots after the hearing." Hopkins shuddered at the idea of taking his best shoes (court and chapel) into this slowly freezing muckland. Lestrade pulled off his sodden gloves (with great difficulty) and pressed around the injured part. "You fellows keep going. We'll catch up."
"Can't see a man twenty feet away in this rain." Gregson pointed out.
"Don't need to see you, just need to see the trail." Lestrade answered quietly.
Hopkins wondered at the odd look between the older Yarders—one of those eerie means of communication he didn't—quite—understand. On top of the shame of his injury, he was feeling quite inadequate to his badge.
"All right, then." Gregson said at last. Then he grinned, unpleasantly. His breath steamed from his smile, a tow-headed dragon. "We'll move slow."
"I do appreciate that, Gregson." Lestrade answered evenly.
….. ….. ….. …..
"Bloody hell."
Hopkins and Lestrade were close of a height, and they both kept their eyes feverishly upon the trail. The grasslands were silvering with endless beads of water-drops in the fading grey light. Night would come quickly, and no one wanted to be caught in it.
"Keep up the language if it makes you feel better." Lestrade advised.
"Not sure it does." Hopkins sighed. "Quite a balancing act here, two men, three legs, and two satchels between us."
"I'm still surprised we remembered our luggage." Lestrade pointed out. "I'm sure we didn't get it all, just the most important bits."
"I think I can live without my tooth-glass for one night." Hopkins tried to make light. "But my comb? That'd be a problem."
"I'll loan you my knife...you can carve a new one while you're off your feet." Lestrade stopped, and Hopkins leaned against him gratefully, catching his breath. Lestrade mumbled something under his breath and changed direction, moving still further up the slope. Hopkins thought he saw two of the PCs standing in the view, but when they closed in, the men were stone pillars, grey as the sky.
"Well, what do you know?" Lestrade stopped, and for no good reason Hopkins could see, studied the stone men.
Hopkins couldn't see anything particularly odd about two lumps of stone, save they were far taller than the living men, grey, and softening with time and lichens. Rain slid through the labyrinth curls of lichen, and dripped silver off the waist-high carpet of moss growing its way to the top. About them the mist swirled and chapped with their steaming breath, no longer reeking of yellow coal-smoke or scorched metals, but growth and tanbark, and that strange scent that only came from very cold air.
Hopkins waited for some sort of enlightenment, but all he caught was the steady drum of rain as it hit their bodies, their hats, the tall stones and the soft leaves of the shrubbery at their feet. The world was made of rain, and there was no sign of it ever ending. And yet, Lestrade might have become one of the stone men, for all the animation he was showing.
Then, as quietly as it began, Lestrade shook his mood off, and he tightened his grip about Hopkins. "Let's go." he said firmly.
Hopkins later wondered if Lestrade had been here before—he acted familiar with this strange land, and he set one foot before the other patiently, ignoring the unpleasant squash of the soaking earth. Heather clumped about their ankles, stroking their tough canvas spats along with small bushes with tiny, tight oval leaves that burned red as coals. Hopkins caught glimpses of colors and shapes in the grey mist: Rowan and bilberries, what looked like wild gooseberries and currants (he wasn't a botanist outside of his childhood fens), and peculiar things with leaves like dark green feathers, that grew close to the earth and clustered around the open, flat dishes of stone that caught quicksilver pools of water.
Lestrade sighed out loud and Hopkins looked where the other man was staring. Birds were out, splashing in the small pools, hunting for worms and insects. Hopkins didn't have to be a Fen-man to know what that meant. When the birds stopped sheltering and went to hunt food...it meant the weather was going to stay exactly as it was...and for a very long time.
"All right." Lestrade sighed again. "We're almost there."
"Almost where?" Hopkins wondered. "I can't see a thing."
"That's Murcher up the way," Lestrade nodded his head at something in the shimmering grey curtain, but Hopkins would have to take his word for it. "Come on, we can get your foot propped up in a few minutes." A white mist was forming at the edge of the earth, soft and white, and for some reason, Hopkins felt uneasy at the way it curled, octopus-like, along the moor.
….. ….. ….. …..
PC Murcher had a sense of duty harder than the granite outcrops. He stood under the roof of the thatch, half out of the wet, half in, but warm as toast in his heavy woollen uniform. Like the other PCs, steam coiled off his broad shoulders; he looked like an operating boiler from a distance.
Behind him in the darkness, his fellows were sparing their breath and stacking sodden luggage in the far corner, where it could drain on the uneven floor without adding to their damp any further. Gregson's hands were white as bone—the cold always hurt him more than most men, but he pulled out his trick cigarette lighter and with a few tugs of the hydrogen, got a brick of peat burning in the stone fire-pit. Bradstreet sniffed loudly.
"Smells like home." He pronounced.
"Home smells like coal, you big..." Gregson gave it up, and winced as he held his miserable hands over the flame (careful not to extinguish it with the water running out of his sleeves). "Where are Hopkins and Lestrade?"
"Almost here, sir." Murcher couldn't wait any longer, and he hurried back out in the wet, returning with Hopkins leaning between himself and Lestrade. That he had left the first shelter in what felt like ages impressed them all.
Hopkins tilted his head up, too astonished to speak. Over their heads a snail's spiral of flat stone coiled, and thatch rested over the centre. Weights hung off the drystack walls, and rushlight tapers. A messy jumble of things loomed in the gloom, like wooden crates and canvas bundles.
"What is this place?" He wondered.
"Great Heavens." Lestrade gasped, and looked surprised at himself for pulling air into his lungs, instead of more frozen water. He coughed that water up just then, hacking into a sodden sleeve. Nearby, one of the constables trailed water from the top of his pot, to the bottoms of his watery soles. Water squeezed out of his clothing with every step, every movement. He looked like a policeman's version of a river god—a being comprised of moving water. His whiskers had the worst of it, draining down the front of his brass buttons until it was a wonder they weren't jingling.
"Thank the mercies John Milton was a man of Broad Street," Bradstreet commented. "Because if he'd been from here, the poetry'd been less pleasant."
Lestrade blinked at him, and decided he was too tired, too stiff, and far too dull to understand what his closest friend was talking about. Then again, Bradstreet liked poetry enough to read it.
"Look at this, will you." Murcher picked up a scrap of wooden box that had been broken for fuel. NEHEMIAH'S NAPTHA read in dark stencil. "There's a Naptha distillery here?"
"Close by, at the very least." Lestrade mused. "This is Dartmoor. You can't fall flat in any direction without hitting a seam of peat."
"Don't recall the name of this one." Gregson frowned. "Betting you it's one of the scores of attempts that collapsed or was bought out by the larger distilleries."
"No doubt." Bradstreet agreed. They was still dripping water as if there was no tomorrow. The plainclothes men were glad that the weather dictated they all wear wool coats and stockings—it would save their health. Johns' sharp eyes found hooks in the walls, carved of the precious wood of the moorlands. As efficiently as they could, they peeled off wet layer after layer. Greenwood also found a stack of mattresses wrapped in canvas. They would do for dry furniture.
"Can you believe that?" Bradstreet marveled as he held up an arm-length of dry clothing. "My Hazel swore this was a waterproof satchel! I didn't believe her!"
"Thought she said it was 'Scotland proof?'" Lestrade asked hoarsely.
"Same thing."
"Good on you, everyone see if anything's dry enough to wear while the rest of our wardrobes dry..." Lestrade blinked. "Gregson, what are you—oh, Dear Heavens, are you making tea?"
"As strong as I can." Gregson retorted. "And don't worry. Whilst the two of you were sightseeing and birdwatching on the moors, I was rinsing this pot in the rainwater. Filled it up three times in five minutes."
"Your tea is poisonous on a given day! If you're trying to make it strong..."
"Trying to save our lives, Lestrade." Gregson wouldn't belittle Lestrade in front of the Constables...not too much. "We need a good strong cup of tea to get our hearts back up."
"So long as it does that instead of run off without us..." Lestrade muttered unkindly.
Hopkins thought a cup of tea—even Gregson's—would be Heaven on earth. "Everybody, find your tea-cans." He directed. "Add it to that pot Gregson's got on the fire. We'll have hot tea soon!"
The words were magic. Lestrade watched them sardonically, saving his can for last. Hopkins recalled that the man wouldn't drink sweet tea if he were dying of thirst, but perhaps he could make a concession.
Now that he was sitting down, the strain of the journey showed Hopkins out. He sank down and closed his eyes. The wet was still a part of him, soaking him to the very bone, but it was dripping slower down his skin now. It was a great comfort. Behind him something whistled, a soft, high-pitched cry like a wild animal, or perhaps a slip of the wind sighing through stone. A ghostly sound, he thought wearily, then corrected himself. No, not ghosts. Ghosts wouldn't sound like that, would they? Stuff of fairy tales...He was still thinking this when he fell asleep.