reward.”
The door swung reluctantly open and a bizarre figure thrust his head into the light. At first it was barely apparent that the thing was even human. He seemed a second Caliban — bestial, ferocious, his face covered with vomit-colored lumps and scales. He looked down at them and growled.
Merryweather coughed nervously. “He always look like that?”
King simpered. “Like I said. He’s sprightly.”
Moon ignored them. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
The Fly looked uncertainly back. He growled again and this time it sounded horribly like a word, each syllable crawling broken and mangled from his lips. “Poet…”
“Poet?” said Moon who was trying his best to sound encouragingly cheerful. “I’m no poet. Who do you mean?”
Another inchoate growl.
“My name is Edward Moon and this is my associate, the Somnambulist. We’re investigating the deaths of Cyril Honeyman and-”
Before he could go any further, the Fly yelped in shock. “Moon,” he pointed and screamed in a guttural, unearthly tone. “Moon!”
Moon smiled. “Well done!”
“Moon!”
“That’s right. Have you heard my name before?”
Ignoring his questions, the Human Fly thrust past them and vanished into the thick banks of fog. He moved so swiftly that they were all — even the Somnambulist — too shocked and to slow to stop him.
“Looks like he didn’t take to you.” King smirked and put out his hand. “Now as to the matter of my fee-”
Moon shouldered the man aside. “Devil take your fee,” he cried and ran into the fog, disappearing almost immediately.
Merryweather turned to his men. “Follow me.”
Accompanied by the Somnambulist, they dashed after the conjuror, leaving King to shrug and saunter back to camp.
Moon could just make out the figure ahead of him, a horrible, indistinct shape loping in and out of view. He cursed the fog. Behind him, he could hear the shouts of his friends as they struggled to find their way.
The Fly fled before them, across the common, into the streets beyond. Moon could hardly believe the evidence of his senses as he saw the man leap onto the side of the first house and scamper up to the roof with all the grace and agility of a jungle cat loose in suburbia.
“Please!” Moon called out helplessly. “I only want to talk to you.”
The Fly hissed something back. It may have been his imagination but Moon could have sworn the thing was still shouting his name.
“Stop!” Moon screamed. “Come down!”
The creature took no notice and began to race along the roof of the building. When it reached the end it jumped onto the adjoining house and moved relentlessly on, heading for the church in the road beyond, squirming, wriggling, leapfrogging its way down the street, a vile shadow scampering grotesquely across the skyline. Merryweather and the others appeared, panting and too late, by Moon’s side.
“Where is he?”
Silently, he pointed upward. The creature perched upon a rooftop several houses away. For a moment it tottered uncertainly, then righted itself and scurried on.
“Good God.” Merryweather crossed himself. “Is it real?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Looks like we’ve got our man.”
“He knew me, Inspector,” Moon shouted. “Someone had told him to expect us. This man did not act alone.”
“When we have him in custody,” Merryweather said in his most pedantic voice, “remind me to ask him.”
Above them, their quarry clattered across the rooftops. As they approached the church they lost him in the fog, but an instant later the mist cleared and there he was, atop the steeple, clinging to the weathercock and howling at the sky.
“Come down!” Moon shouted. “Please!”
The creature screeched obscenities into the night.
Moon turned to the Somnambulist. “Could you-?” he began, but the Somnambulist interrupted him with a gesture. He scribbled something on his chalkboard.
FRAID OF HITES
“Marvelous,” Merryweather muttered, and the conjuror shot his friend a disappointed look. The inspector turned optimistically toward his men, but before he was able even to ask the question, they shook their heads as one.
“How in God’s name are we going to get him down?” the inspector asked.
Moon called up to the Human Fly. “Please!” he said. “We won’t harm you. You have my word.”
The Fly screamed again.
“What’s he saying?” Merryweather asked.
“I think I can make it out,” said Moreland (famed in the force for his preternaturally acute hearing). “Sounds like… God be with you.”
“What?” Moon said.
The Fly wailed.
Moon shouted up to the steeple: “Please, whatever you’re about to do — stop. We can help you.”
But it was too late. The Fly shouted again and this time they all heard it quite distinctly, a prosaic and common enough phrase in everyday life, but here somehow unsettling, shocking in its incongruity.
“God be with you.”
With this final cry, the Fly threw himself from the steeple. Mercifully, the fog masked his fall, but they all heard with sickening clarity, the terrible bone-snapping crunch as his body hit the ground.
Merryweather ran across to him and felt for a pulse. “Quite dead,” he confirmed.
Moon stood over the unfortunate creature’s corpse. An oddly frail thing it seemed in death. One could believe it almost vulnerable. “The death of a human fly,” he murmured.
“Quite right.” The inspector chuckled. “Looks like we swatted him.”
Moon stared at the policeman, distaste etched upon his face. “This is not the end,” he said softly and disappeared into the fog.
Chapter 8
One week later, on London Bridge, the conjuror met the ugly man again.
“Mr. Moon!”
Hunched halfway along the bridge, a curious figure stood shouting Moon’s name and waving his hat in greeting. He resembled a gargoyle crawled down from the roofs of the city and left to roam its streets with impunity. “You’re a little later than I’d expected.”
Moon eyed the squat-featured stranger suspiciously. “Have we met?”
The ugly man seemed palpably disappointed. “Surely you can’t have forgotten me so soon?”
“Mr. Cribb?”
A sudden grin. “The same.” This said more as proclamation than confirmation, as though he believed his name to be instantly recognizable. He held out his left, four-fingered hand.
Moon ignored the gesture. “I thought you promised we’d never meet again.”
Cribb wore an infuriatingly amused look. “Did I? Well, doubtless that was true from my perspective. From yours… let’s just say that time runs differently for the two of us.”
