Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

rich. He felt his mouth twist in a grin, though his heart was beating hard and the sweat of fear was upon his neck. He fervently hoped to live through the next few minutes to enjoy his wealth. Using one hand and an elbow to gauge the walls, Matthew started his progress into the unknown.

PART TWO: The Valley of

Destruction

Six

'A pity about Matthew Corbett. Dead at such a young age,' said Hudson Greathouse. He shrugged. 'I really didn't know him very well. Had only worked with him since July. So what more can I say, other than that he poked his curiosity into one dark hole too many.'

The wagon, pulled by two sway-backed horses that seemed to move only with the slow but dignified agony of age, had just left the stable in Westerwicke. The town stood along the Philadelphia Pike, some thirty miles from New York; it was a small but well-groomed place, with two churches, houses of wood and brick and beyond them farmfields and orchards carved from the New Jersey forests. A farmer selling pumpkins from a cart waved, and Greathouse waved back.

'Yes,' Greathouse said, looking up at the clouds that sailed like huge white ships across the morning sky, 'too bad about Matthew, that his life was cut so short due to the fact he had neither sense nor bodyguard to protect him.' He cut his gaze sideways, at the driver. 'Would that have been a good enough speech at your funeral?'

'I have already admitted,' Matthew spoke up, as he flicked the reins to urge a little more speed to horses that only hung their heads lower as if to beg for mercy, 'that I should not have gone in that tunnel alone.' He felt heat in his cheeks. 'How long are you going to play this tune?'

'Until you realize you're not ready to go off risking your life foolishly. And for what? To prove a point? That you're so much smarter than everyone else?'

'It's awfully early for this.' In fact, it was not much after six o'clock. Matthew was tired and cranky and wished he were anywhere on earth but sitting in this wagon beside Greathouse. By God, he'd even take the tunnel again. At least it had been quiet in there. He now knew the real meaning of torture; it was having to share a room with Greathouse at The Constant Friend tavern, as had been done last night in Westerwicke because the other two rooms were taken, and not being able to get to sleep before a snoring began that started like a cannon's boom and ended like a cat's squall. Long past midnight, when at last Matthew did slumber, Greathouse gave out a holler that almost made Matthew jump out of bed fearing for his life, but not even the subsequent angry knocking on the wall of the next room's occupant brought Greathouse up from his netherworld. More galling, the great one would not let this incident of the tunnel go. Danger this, and danger that, and what might have happened if it had not been a tunnel that led under the estate to the river, but instead to a cave where he could have gotten lost in the dark and been wandering until he had a beard down to his boots. What then, Mr. Corbett? Do speak a little louder, I can't hear you.

'You're right,' said Greathouse after a brief reflection, which served only to make Matthew expect another volley was being loaded. 'It is early. Have a drink.' He passed over a leather flask of brandy, at which he'd already been nipping since the first threads of sunrise. Matthew took it and swallowed enough to make his eyes swim and his throat burn, and then he returned it to its owner. Greathouse corked it and slid it under the plank seat, next to the pistol. 'Maybe I can't say I wouldn't have done the same. But I'm me, and I have experience at such things. Didn't you think to tie a rope to something to find your way back by?'

'It would have been a very long rope.' Very long indeed. The tunnel, a natural feature of the Chapel estate, had been in Matthew's estimation almost a quarter-mile long. At one point it had descended at an alarming angle but by then Matthew could see light ahead. It had emerged from the riverside cliffs among boulders, and a path could be negotiated to the nearest woods. He surmised that not all the members of Chapel's little party had been privy to knowing about the escape route, but that was how those particular four had gotten out.

'I don't think I'm so much smarter than everyone else,' Matthew answered, to one of Greathouse's more stinging barbs.

'Sure you do. It's part of your charm. Oh, my back aches! That bed should've been arrested for attempted murder.'

'You seemed to be sleeping well enough, for the most part.'

'An illusion. I had a particularly bad dream.'

'Really? Did you happen to be dreaming about a war between cannons and cats?'

'What?' Greathouse scowled. 'No. It's this damned job. I don't like it.'

'You were dreaming about the job?'

'No. I had a dream about now, this sounds ridiculous, I know.' Greathouse hesitated, reached for the flask again and held it at the ready. 'I had a dream about that damned tooth.'

'The tooth,' Matthew repeated.

'You know. McCaggers' tooth. What he showed us. All that jabber about God and Job and monsters and ' The cork was pulled out and another swig of brandy went down Greathouse's throat. 'All that,' he said, when he'd finished.

Matthew waited, certain there would be more. He flicked the reins again, but it didn't speed the old horses a single hoof. Still, their destination was not very far ahead. The doctors, Ramsendell and Hulzen, would be expecting them at the Publick Hospital.

'I dreamed,' Greathouse said, after taking a long breath as if to get his brain started again, 'that I saw the monster the tooth came from. It was as big as a house, Matthew. No, bigger. As big as Trinity Church, or City Hall. Bigger yet. Its skin looked to be like black iron, still smoking from the bellows furnace. Its head was as big as a coach, and it looked at me, Matthew. Right at me. It was hungry, and it was coming for me, and I started to run.' A crazed grin erupted across his face. 'Ridiculous, isn't it?'

Matthew made a noise, but kept his eyes on the road as long as Greathouse looked at him.

'It came for me,' Greathouse went on. 'Like a terrible wind. Or a force of nature. I was running across a field where there were dead men lying. Or pieces of men. There was nowhere to hide, and I knew the monster was going to get me. I knew it, and there was nothing I could do. It was going to get me, with those teeth. A mouthful of them, Matthew. By the hundreds. It was so huge, and so fast. It was coming up behind me, and I felt its breath on my neck and then '

Greathouse said nothing else. At last, Matthew asked, 'You died?'

'I must have woken up. I don't remember. Maybe I did die, in the dream. I don't know. But I'll tell you what I do know.' He started to take another drink and then thought better of it, for there was the job to be done today. 'I had almost forgotten what fear is. Not being frightened, that's one thing. I mean, fear. What you know you don't have a chance against. That's what I felt, in the dream. And all because of that damned tooth.'

'Your eel pie last night might have something to do with it. I told you it didn't smell very fresh.'

'Wasn't that. All right, maybe a little. My stomach did pitch and tumble a bit. But it's this job, too. If the money wasn't so good, I would've told Lillehorne to find someone else. Surely a couple of constables would have done just as well.'

'The doctors asked for us specifically,' Matthew reminded him. 'And who else would've come? Dippen Nack? Giles Wintergarten? I don't think so.'

'The doctors.' Greathouse gave a fierce tug at his brown woolen cap. 'You know what I think of them, and their asylum. I suppose you're still visiting the lady?'

'I am. And she is getting better. At least she knows her own name now, and she's beginning to understand her circumstances.'

'Good for her, but that doesn't change what I think of housing a bunch of lunatics out here in the woods.' The wagon, as slow as it was, had left Westerwicke behind and was now moving along the forest road, which was still the Philadelphia Pike and would be called so all the forty-odd miles to that city. Up ahead, little more than a quarter mile on the right, would be the turnoff to the hospital. The sun was strengthening, casting yellow and red