The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(93)
And from there, the bike twisted between his legs, his eyes on stalks, Tommy watched the extraordinary machine hurtle by, leaving a thick cloud of dust in its wake. He had never seen anything like it, and he marveled at the shiny, cream-colored bodywork and the gigantic wheels spinning like mad, although he only caught a fleeting glimpse of the two people sitting inside it before the black plume of smoke gave him a coughing fit. By the time the fumes had subsided, the miraculous carriage had vanished round the next corner. Tommy wasted no time. He picked up his bike and began pedaling furiously, following the tracks the tires had left on the road. He had to see it again! He knew he would never catch up with it, but he needed to see it again even if only from afar: he wanted to remember every important detail when describing the amazing machine to that know-it-all Barrie, who would never believe his story otherwise. Several more bends in the road prevented him from attaining his goal for a while, but finally, after one of them, the ground suddenly sloped steeply down, giving Tommy a perfect view of the road ahead as it snaked along a shallow gorge. And there, several yards away, he spotted the machine and its telltale cloud of dust and fumes. Tommy stopped on the brow of the hill, sweating and out of breath, and gazed at it in astonishment. How beautiful it was! And how shiny! And now that it was going downhill, it seemed even faster. What would it be like to travel at that speed? Tommy wondered, intensely jealous of the couple inside. All at once, the smile froze on his lips. The vehicle had suddenly veered off the road and was rolling down a steep slope, bouncing over the rutted ground like a horse that has bolted; the man at the wheel seemed to have lost control. Tommy shuddered as he thought he heard the couple’s desperate screams, and he was seized with panic as he realized the machine and its two occupants were careering hopelessly toward the edge of the gorge, into which they would plunge in a few seconds if someone didn’t do something.
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THE HANDFUL OF LOCALS who found themselves in the Hexworthy Inn that morning tried not to stare at the two strangers sitting in front of the fireplace at the back of the room, speaking in hushed voices, oblivious to the curiosity they were arousing. Neither had removed his flowing cloak or wide-brimmed hat, hats they wore pulled down over their faces, and both had peculiar-looking canes between their knees, longer and thicker than the average walking stick, on whose handles an identical symbol shone: an eight-pointed star inside a circle. That wasn’t the first time the regulars at the tavern had seen the two men there; in fact, they had appeared several times over the past few years, or if not exactly those two men, as some claimed, then two others very like them. In those heavy cloaks and those hats they never took off, they were almost impossible to tell apart, and the few words they deigned to exchange with others—if you could even call them words—resembled more a kind of metallic rattle, like the sound a tin bucket falling down a well would make. The fact was that little or nothing was known about them, or why they would appear only to disappear again for months, with no apparent rhyme or reason to their comings and goings. Some claimed to have seen them on the moor, posted on the hilltops like sinister sentries. On other occasions, as now, they would turn up without warning at the inn, always in pairs, and take a seat by the fire. They would order two tankards of ale, which they left untouched, and sit facing each other like statues, their unnerving stillness broken only by the slight tremor of their lips, an almost imperceptible vibration that suggested some form of communication, although, rather than talking or whispering, they seemed to be feeding, like fish, off the thoughts each dispersed through the air. No one had ever dared to ask them who they were or what they were doing there. In fact, everybody steered clear of them if they could and complained of the same disturbing feeling whenever they were close: as though an unbearable weight were crushing them, overwhelming them with all the misery and loneliness in the world. That very morning, Mr. Hall, the innkeeper, who, much to Mrs. Hall’s despair, fancied himself a poet, had described it thus: it was, he said, akin to having a vast, immeasurable void in a starless universe suddenly expand inside you. And at that precise moment, Mrs. Hall had gone over to him to express her unease in far less poetic terms.
“Those two give me the creeps, George. And what’s more, they’re scaring away the customers. Why don’t you go and ask them if they’ll be wanting anything else while I see about laying the tables for lunch. Maybe they’ll take the hint . . .”
“They’ll be gone soon, woman,” Mr. Hall replied with feigned indifference. “You know they never stay very long. Besides, they tip well.”
“I don’t want their money, George. I dread to think what sinister methods they use to get it . . . God, they’re horrible . . . Lulu is under our bed, trembling,” she told him, as if the image of their little dog scared half to death might stir him. “Can’t you hear the horses whinnying outside? They scare the animals and they scare me, too! I want them out of here, and I hope they never come back. I insist you go and talk to them, George Hall!”
“But they haven’t done anything to you, Janny, have they?” Mr. Hall swallowed hard. He was as keen to see them leave as his wife, but he had no desire to approach them. “Besides, it would be rude of me to ask two gentlemen with perfect manners to—”
“I don’t care if it makes you look rude, George!” his wife interrupted. Then she added in hushed tones, “I’ll tell you one thing: I’m not often wrong about people, as you know, and I wouldn’t be surprised if either of those two would hesitate for a second to butcher a child or a defenseless old woman . . .”