The Claws of Evil Read online

  He felt the sound as much as heard it; the physical manifestation of a soul in torment. The sobbing came from somewhere very deep within the man, or so it seemed to Ben. Beginning with a low growl, it built with each shuddering gasp until it was finally released as a volcano of grief. Ben could almost feel the pressure mounting inside the Weeping Man until there was nowhere for it to go except to explode to the surface.

  There was so much sadness in those sobs. Such pain. Such remorse.

  But there was anger too, and that was what scared Ben the most.

  The howling rage.

  Get out of here, and get out now. That was what the sensible part of Ben’s mind was telling him to do. And not for the first time, Ben wished that once in a while he would listen to the advice that it gave, instead of always following the other voice, the one that insisted on the exact opposite. Don’t be chicken-hearted, it said. Get a closer look. Looking never hurt anyone.

  Mind made up, Ben Kingdom inched forwards in the hope of getting a really good look-see.

  Easy does it, Benny boy.

  He had halved the distance between them when his foot caught against an empty bottle and sent it rattling across the cobbles.

  It wasn’t exciting any more.

  It was dark. It was late.

  And he was alone in a very bad place.

  Fear filled Ben’s throat as he realized what he had done. He glanced around at the tight corridor of the alleyway, filthy tenements on either side. In his curiosity, he had allowed himself to be led away down Skinners Lane. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he cursed himself. Everybody knew that you didn’t go down Skinners Lane at night unless you had a death wish. You really are on your own now, son.

  To Ben’s horror, at that moment the Weeping Man cocked his head and very slowly turned around. He took a step in Ben’s direction.

  Then another.

  Ben couldn’t move now, even if he wanted to.

  Twelve paces away.

  Eleven.

  Why can’t I run? Ben screamed inside. Why can’t I just run?

  Ten paces.

  Nine.

  Then, as Ben watched, a heap of unwanted rags – bundled up, left to rot at the side of the street – began to stir with life. The Weeping Man kneeled over the tattered remnants, stretched out his hand and, from beneath the surface, from under the filth and the grey stain of snow, another hand emerged, tiny and pale. Slowly, frail fingers reached out and clasped the Weeping Man’s. An arm like a stick followed that hand, and then the form of a girl, fragile and lost.

  It was Molly Marbank. Sweet little Molly Marbank, whose father worked with Ben’s father at the docks. Or at least he had until he missed seeing the beam that was swinging towards him, sweeping Mr. Marbank’s legs one way and his soul straight on to glory. After that Molly was orphaned and alone, and everyone assumed that she had gone to the workhouse.

  Only Ben now knew that Molly was here, hand in hand with the Weeping Man.

  The girl by his side, the Weeping Man rose to his feet and turned to leave.

  And in that instant, Ben knew that he had been seen.

  For the first time, Ben saw fully the face of death. The Weeping Man was much younger than he had expected: clean-shaven, square-jawed, with an almost aristocratic face, framed by tumbling dark hair. Ben saw soft cheeks, slick with tears. He saw a broad mouth, smiling. He saw a sword beneath the folds of the black coat, long and wickedly sharp. He saw eyes as deep and dark as wells. Ancient eyes, that had seen secret and terrible things.

  And those eyes saw him.

  The Weeping Man addressed him from the darkness. “I shall be coming for you, Benjamin Kingdom,” he said.

  And then, at last, Ben could run.

  Ben ran until his chest ached and each breath burned like a mouthful of hot coals. As his legs began to give way, he forced himself to put one more turn in the road between himself and the Weeping Man, before finally collapsing against a wall, exhausted and shaking.

  That was a close one, he told himself.

  His hands were tingling, he realized, a strange pins-and-needles feeling that was more than just the cold. He flexed his fingers, trying to make them feel normal again, but the odd prickling ache continued. It was something that he had experienced all his life: a throbbing, burning sensation that he couldn’t explain. All he knew was there were times, normally when he was angry or scared or stirred by deep emotions, when he thought that his hands might burst into flame.

  He rolled his hands into tight fists as he thought about poor Molly, and they burned even brighter. He hadn’t raised a finger to save her.

  Some friend he’d turned out to be.

  He should have attacked the Weeping Man and rescued her. Maybe he could have distracted him somehow and given her a chance to escape? Or at the very least he could have shouted out; bought her another second of freedom.

  Then he remembered the sword.

  The sorry truth was that the only way it could have played out differently was for there to be two dead children instead of one. But truth or not, that didn’t stop Ben from blaming himself.

  He still couldn’t get over the way that Molly had just upped and gone with the Weeping Man. Ben had been petrified and yet Molly had shown no sign of fear. On the contrary, the expression on her face had been one of absolute peace as she’d taken his outstretched hand. It made no sense to Ben. Most likely she had merely been numbed with cold and past caring.

  All that Ben had been able to do for her in that final moment was to plead with her through his eyes: Don’t go, he had urged her. Don’t go, Molly.

  It didn’t feel like enough to him. But he didn’t cry.

  Ben had seen a lot of death already in his young life, but there was only one person that he mourned for. A sharp pain pierced his heart as he thought of her. A single tear appeared and for a second it lay on his cheek like a jewel before he scrubbed it crossly away.

  That’s enough of that, he told himself sharply. He brushed himself down, set his billycock hat back on his head at what he considered to be a jaunty angle, and put some of the usual swagger back into his step. He might just have been scared out of his wits, but he still had his reputation to think of. He was Ben Kingdom, after all.

  Soon Ben was back on the relative safety of his home turf and feeling more like himself, the burning in his hands gone for now. He paused in front of Ricolleti’s, the Italian grocery and provision store, and for a moment he studied his reflection, framed by cases of tinned meat and barrels of dark tea.

  Ben was pretty much like all the other boys he knew; older than his years. His eyes were big and blue, though they often looked tired, and his teeth were all fairly white, which was something to boast about. But the thing that made him stand out from the crowd was his hair: a mane of red-gold that some said made him look like a lion. Others said that redheads were full of anger and bad news. Ben denied this fervently. Mind you, anyone who found it funny to call him “carrots” would get a thick lip for their efforts as quick as they could blink.

  Aching with cold, Ben turned up the collar of his coat and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. Though he would never admit it, he couldn’t shake the memories of Skinners Lane. He needed something to distract himself and so he pointed his feet in the direction of the Jolly Tar public house. There was a man there that he needed to see.

  It was never quiet near the London Docks and as he got closer to the inn, he took comfort in the presence of the burly coal whippers, ballast-heavers, sailmakers and watermen, all brushing shoulders. And then the boys like himself, causing mischief and getting in the way; mudlarks, chancers and thieves. And me the biggest chancer of them all, thought Ben.

  He picked up his step as the Jolly Tar came in sight. This was where he always came when he needed to escape from the harsh realities of his life.

  Because this was where he would find old Jago Moon.

 
Bones.

  In trays. In cases. Beneath glass. Each one scrutinized, identified, listed, labelled and annotated. The elongated claws of burrowing mammals, the massive thigh of a great cat, the horn of a narwhal, the jaws of a Nile crocodile. The ivory of the ages, all the flesh stripped away. One entire wall was devoted to craniums and brain cases: a wall of skulls. No eyes in their sockets, no tongues in their mouths, but teeth aplenty, and even the most dim-witted idiot to come stumbling in through the door, broom in hand, could imagine that the beasts were living still. Living and breathing and snarling. And feeding.

  There were no windows in this room and the only light came from a flickering oil lamp on the desk, feeding the shadows that lurked in the corners and grew fat. If the man seated there alone was in the least bit troubled by his surroundings, he didn’t show it. In fact the opposite appeared to be true; here was a man who seemed entirely at home in this catacomb, surrounded only by the remnants of the dead.

  What are we anyway, thought Professor James Carter, if not fragile flesh hung upon a tree of bones?

  Professor Carter examined the tray of bones before him. They purported to be the fingers of martyrs and saints. He snorted at the idea; he had never found any man worthy of the title. He chose one at random and brought it close to his eye. Did you perform miracles while you lived? he wondered. Dismissively, he tossed it back with the others. I think not.

  Carter examined his own hands. The left was broad palmed and strong fingered, the flesh bronzed by foreign winds. The right? Well, that was different. His arm ended in a stump just below where his wrist used to be, and beyond that was bone of an entirely different sort.

  If he had been a pirate, Carter might have chosen to replace his missing hand with a hook. But he was not a pirate. He was a professor of history at the British Museum, and so he chose a different sort of prosthesis altogether.

  He held it up and admired it in the lamplight: a wicked sickle of bone; a claw to be precise. A miracle designed for ripping and cutting and slashing. Before time began it had belonged to a mighty hunter, a dinosaur, the great Megalosaurus. Now it belonged to him. It made him the man he was.

  There was a hesitant knock on the door and he swivelled in his chair to face it. “Come,” he said, and a ragged boy tumbled in, breathing heavily.

  “There’s been a finding, sir,” said the boy, still panting. “Something that we think you need to come and look at.”

  Carter nodded in response; perhaps he wouldn’t have to wait much longer for the power he desired. He paused to pull on a long leather trench coat, as brown and weather-beaten as the man himself. “A finding, you say?” He turned to the boy, and grinned like a skull. “Then that must be a job for Claw Carter.”

  At the Jolly Tar, Ben was met with raucous laughter and a grey fog of tobacco spilling out of the door. Inside he found the usual mass of unwashed bodies and, after a second of searching, caught sight of Mr. Moon, sitting hunched over a table in his usual corner beside the fire. Ben eased his way through the drinkers and lingerers, taking great care not to jog any elbows on his way; it was more than his life was worth to spill someone’s drink.

  Far from his home in East India, a morose and muscular lascar stood at the bar, drinking steadily. Beside him stood a coal porter with biceps the size of hocks of ham. A monkey chattered angrily from its vantage point on the lascar’s shoulder, alternately picking at its fleas and spitting in the coal porter’s glass. If the porter’s glazed eyes ever cleared up long enough for him to notice, then a right old heave-to was definitely on the cards.

  Ben hurried past.

  As silently as he could, Ben eased himself into the seat opposite Moon, taking care so that his chair did not make a sound against the flagstone floor.

  “Good evening, Master Kingdom,” said Jago Moon.

  “Good evening, Mr. Moon,” Ben replied, amazed at how the old man saw him coming every time.

  With two blind eyes, Jago Moon regarded him across the table. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said in a voice of gravel.

  Ben was taken aback, but not wrong-footed; he was a regular customer, after all. He eyed Moon’s satchel and wondered what treasures it contained this time.

  In defiance of his blindness, Jago Moon was a seller of second-hand books, specializing in lurid tales just suited to an imagination like Ben’s. Moon always had a supply of the cheap cloth-bound pamphlets that stuck-up toffs called the “penny dreadfuls”. Ben read them greedily and knew their names by heart: Black Knight of the Road, The Skeleton Burglar, Starlight Sal, The Resurrection Men... Stories about villains and robbers and bodysnatchers and terrible doings in the night; what could be so dreadful about that?

  It would horrify old “Cowpat” Cowper, the Sunday school teacher who had taught Ben his letters, to know that he was wasting the precious gift of reading on such tawdry tales. But then Cowpat Cowper probably went home to a nice warm house and a nice safe life and didn’t need to escape from his reality quite so much as Ben.

  “What have you got for me today, Mr. Moon?” said Ben, getting ready to slide his well-worn coin across the table. “Pirates? Highwaymen?”

  From over by the bar, an angry voice rose above the throng. “Is that your monkey gobbin’ in my rum?”

  Ben knew that was his signal to leave; all he wanted was to get his book and get out before things turned nasty. But Moon seemed to be taking for ever, rummaging in his satchel. Eventually he drew out a dog-eared old volume entitled The Boy Burglar.

  “That’ll do nicely,” said Ben, reaching for the book with one hand and pushing a farthing forwards with the other. “A pleasure doing business with you, sir.” But even as Ben made to get up, shoving his chair away with the back of his legs, Jago Moon’s fingers accidentally brushed against Ben’s. In that instant, Ben felt an invisible power pass from him to Moon and they both flung their hands up in shock, struck by strange lightning.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Moon,” Ben began, “I don’t—”

  Ben’s words were cut short as Moon’s hand whipped out and clasped Ben’s forearm tight. Ben winced and made to pull away, but Moon was surprisingly strong and dragged him down until their faces were level. The milky orbs of Moon’s blind eyes rolled in his skull as he breathed doom upon Ben. In spite of the stifling heat, Ben’s blood turned to ice in his veins.

  “Listen here and listen good,” Moon hissed urgently, his lips so close that Ben could feel the rasp of stubble against his face. “You’ve got the Touch, lad.” Moon made it sound as if this was a good thing. “Your life ain’t never gonna be the same again. You’ve been chosen, Ben. The Weeping Man is coming for you.”

  Professor Carter swept through the streets. The tails of his coat billowed out behind him like wings. The air was bitter, although not as cold as it had been in the mountains of Nepal. When a man had travelled, it gave him a certain perspective on things, Carter mused. It allowed him to see the bigger picture.

  The boy ran on ahead of him, eager to please. He went by the name of Jimmy Dips, a pickpocket by trade. Carter was a collector, and in order for there to be a collection, many things needed to be found. He had decided a long time ago that it was better not to ask where or how, but to quietly employ the services of boys like Jimmy, who could sniff out items in dark places. Some objects, of course, were worth more than others. It was that possibility that made him leave the comfort of the museum on such a night as this.

  After all, how often did a man get the chance to hold an object that had once altered the course of history and was about to change the world again?

  Jimmy Dips scampered to the corner of the street, looked both ways and then rushed back to the professor’s side. He reminded Carter of a ferret; his face was all nose, constantly twitching and tasting the air.

  “Nearly there now, Professor,” said Jimmy.

  “I know,” Claw Carter snapped. There was a limit to how much mindless enthusiasm he coul
d stomach.

  The Punch and Judy public house was only a short walk from the British Museum and it was a venue that he had often found suitable for conversations of a private nature. There were no lights showing when they arrived, so Carter marched over to the door and knocked on it smartly with his claw.

  There was the sound of bolts being drawn back from inside, followed by a hushed voice: “Is that you?”

  “Who else do you think it might be?” said Carter, flinging the door open and seeing no reason to keep his voice down. “Father Christmas?”

  The fat innkeeper looked suitably chastened. Jimmy Dips could not conceal his smile.

  “She’s down there,” said the innkeeper, pointing the way to the cellar.

  With Jimmy trailing in his wake, Carter descended the steps and found a girl sitting in a corner behind a round oak table. Her delicate arms were spread out across the back of her chair, a picture of feline ease.

  “Good evening, Miss Johnson,” said Carter.

  “Good evening, Professor,” she purred.

  Of all the gutter rats and street thieves that Professor Carter knew, Ruby Johnson was the most audacious and the least expendable. She had chestnut-brown hair, chopped in a jagged, almost boyish style, and eyes the shape of almonds.

  “Drink?” she asked.

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “I meant for me,” said Ruby.

  Carter threw back his head and laughed. “A drink for the lady, if you would be so kind, Jimmy.” He snapped the fingers of his good hand. “In a clean glass.”

  Jimmy hurried off.

  “Now,” said the professor, all business, “you have something for me?”

  Ruby reached into the pocket of her velvet jacket and brought out a small object, wrapped in a jeweller’s cloth. The professor was impatient to see and took it from her swiftly. He held it for a moment, clutching it tightly in his fist, before relaxing and placing it on the table in front of him, then gently peeling back the corners of the cloth to expose the treasure within.