The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(115)
“Good God . . . ,” Clayton muttered. “Who could have done this?”
Wells stifled the urge to vomit.
Stepping gingerly over a piece of liver lying on the floor, Clayton leaned over and examined a wound on one of the victims’ faces: three deep cuts from the forehead down to the chin. It looked like the work of a fierce set of claws, which had not only flayed the skin but had gouged out one eye and sliced off half a nose. The inspector shook his head slowly as he surveyed the baleful scene. Wells was stooping over the pile of bodies, observing some of the wounds with clinical interest. Murray had dragged the girl out into the corridor, opening a window so the evening breeze would revive her, while the prisoner stood in the doorway, white as a sheet. Then Clayton noticed the dead man slumped in Garrett’s chair, his head turned toward the wall at an impossible angle, as though the killer had broken his neck by twisting it round a hundred and eighty degrees. His stomach had been ripped open and his intestines lay in a heap on his lap. And yet instead of throwing him on the pile like the others, his killer had clearly taken the trouble to sit him in the chair. Curious as to the identity of the policeman who had been singled out for this special treatment, Clayton turned the dead man’s head around.
“What on earth?” he cried, startled out of his wits.
The others looked at him in alarm.
“What’s going on?” Wells asked, walking over to the inspector and trying not to slip on the entrails strewn over the floor.
“It’s Colin Garrett,” Clayton explained, bewildered. “The young inspector I was talking to not five minutes ago outside the bicycle shop.”
He went out into the corridor, overcome in equal measure by the nauseous smell and his own bewilderment. Wells followed.
“Are you sure it’s the same man?” asked Murray. Clayton was about to nod when a spine-chilling voice echoed along the corridor.
“Didn’t they teach you to respect the dead, Clayton?”
As one, the group turned toward the direction the icy voice was coming from, only to discover a dim figure observing them from the end of the passageway. As the intruder moved toward them, stepping into a halo of lamplight, they made out the features of the same pale, skinny young man whose broken neck and torn face they had just seen inside the room. They stared at one another in disbelief at the sight of this disquieting double.
“This is not possible,” Clayton whispered.
“I thought you believed anything was possible, Clayton,” the false Garrett retorted, his voice devoid of all humanity.
Clayton responded to the provocation by stepping forward away from the others and raising his revolver.
“Stop! Don’t move another inch, whatever you are,” he commanded in an unnecessarily theatrical voice.
The false Garrett contemplated him for a few seconds with the air of a sleepwalker, then replied almost indifferently, “I wasn’t intending to, Clayton.”
At this, his mouth opened grotesquely, and what looked like an incredibly long, reddish tongue like a toad’s or a chameleon’s darted along the corridor toward Clayton. The inspector felt the hideous appendage coil itself round his arm, and his gun went off without him even realizing he had pulled the trigger. Even though he had not had time to aim, Clayton saw the bullet hit the head of the false Inspector Garrett. As Garrett dropped to the floor, his monstrous tongue uncoiled, furling back into his mouth like a ball of flesh. Before anyone had time to react, Garrett’s body began to writhe hideously in the middle of the corridor.
Agent Cornelius Clayton of the Special Branch at Scotland Yard, who was standing between the convulsing form and his companions, saw how the same monster he had seen emerging from the tripod shot down on the outskirts of London—that reptilelike biped that had dragged itself moribund along the ground for a few moments before expiring in front of them—began to worm its way out of Garrett’s body. The head of the hapless Garrett began to contract as though it had been crushed in a vise. His jaw stretched until it resembled a crocodile’s maw. At the same time, his hands began to taper into hideous talons, joined by a kind of membrane, while his skin grew greenish scales and his body swelled up to monstrous proportions. And then, before the ghastly transformation was complete, the monster, which still bore a faint resemblance to Inspector Garrett, sprang to its feet and once more shot out its slimy tongue at Clayton, who was still aiming his now empty gun at the creature. Diving to the floor, Clayton managed to avoid the viscous coil. He watched helplessly as it struck the prisoner’s chest, knocking him to the floor. Then it raised the poor wretch up off the ground and began drawing him toward its enormous fangs. Struggling desperately, the prisoner managed to grasp hold of the open window. This halted his advance for a moment and even managed to confuse the creature as its laborious metamorphosis continued. Overwhelmed with pure terror, the apelike porter managed to plunge out of the window, grabbing hold of the windowsill from the outside. He stubbornly clung on in midair, while the hideous tongue tried to jerk him back into the corridor. Clayton stood up, placing himself once more between the creature and the terrified group. Not knowing what to do, he simply watched Garrett’s continuing metamorphosis into what looked more and more like a two-legged reptile, shredding the hapless inspector’s skin. Just then, with a swift movement that surprised everyone, Murray leapt away from the group toward the window, where with savage determination he began pounding the hands of the unfortunate Mike, who, unable to cling on, gave a muffled yell as he plunged downward. The rest of them looked on as the monster’s tongue tensed and the weight of its victim dragged it, helpless, toward the window. The startled creature made a desperate lunge for Murray, who managed to tear himself free with a cry of pain, then it clasped hold of the window frame. Fortunately, the monster’s claws were not yet properly formed, and it was powerless to stop itself from plummeting to the street, attached to the prisoner by what looked like a grotesque umbilical cord.