What Moves the Dead (23)

“Is it?” He turned away. “I hear the woodworms gnawing in the beams,” he muttered. “Would to God that they would gnaw a little faster.”

I can’t say this discussion put me in a particularly hopeful frame of mind. I left the library myself and went looking for Denton.

“Hello,” he said, looking up from a book that he was reading (which, presumably, he had brought with him). “You have a singularly focused look about you.”

“What do you know about hares?” I asked.

He blinked at me. “Come again?”

“Hares. The animal. Long ears. Hops around. Boxes in springtime.”

“You mean rabbits?”

Christ save me from Americans. “No, they’re bigger. You don’t have hares?”

He had to think about it. “Err … wait, I think they’ve got them up north. Snowshoe hares, they call them. Why?”

“Is it possible there could be a disease in the hares that might have affected Madeline? Something that she could catch from them somehow?”

“I don’t know of any.”

“But is it possible? Something that could afflict both hare and human?”

“Of course it’s possible. Rabies affects them both. But I trust you’re not suggesting that Madeline has rabies?”

“No, no.” I sank down in the chair. “The hares around here act strange. All the locals say they’re possessed. No, I don’t believe that.” I raised a hand to forestall Denton’s protests. “Most of us go to the Devil without him having to personally oversee things. But I saw a hare out on the moors that moved very strangely, and Maddy sleepwalking reminded me of it.…”

It sounded ridiculous when I said it out loud. I was grasping at straws and I knew it. But to his credit, Denton was apparently willing to grasp those straws alongside me. “You think there’s some connection?”

“Possibly? Maddy was never sickly. But Roderick doesn’t have it, so I thought it couldn’t just be some miasma in the air or the water.…”

“The servants would have mentioned if there was some similar disease in the village.”

“Yes, of course.” I sighed. The mention of the servants reminded me, though—“Madeline’s maid. Do you know what she died of?”

“She threw herself off the roof.”

I stared at him.

“This is not a good house for anyone,” he said, “but certainly not for those of melancholic temper.”

“Christ’s blood.”

Denton took pity on me, or perhaps it was just his way of holding on to that straw. “It’s still not a bad notion. There are diseases that only affect a very few people. Leprosy, for example. The vast majority of us are immune, except for the poor devils who aren’t.”

I nodded eagerly. “So Maddy could be susceptible. The problem is that if I shoot a hare, I realize that I have no way of telling whether it’s normal unless there’s something really extraordinarily wrong. Would you be able to tell?”

“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said. “Or a cook. But I suppose I could take a look at one and see if anything jumps out at me.”

I nodded. “Then tomorrow I’ll see if I can fetch you a hare.”



* * *



In the end it was Hob who located the hare, by virtue of nearly stepping on it. He spotted it at the last moment, snorted, and pulled sideways, hopping on three hooves. I was rather startled myself, particularly when the hare didn’t move. It just sat there, staring up at the pair of us with its wild, empty eyes.

“Go on,” I told the hare. “Walk a bit.” It would do me no good to shoot a hare that wasn’t afflicted by this nameless malady.

It did not oblige. I slid off Hob’s back and took out the gun I used on small game (not cows). “Come on, scoot.”

The hare stared at me. I took a step forward, then another. Christ, was I going to have to actually nudge the thing with my boot?

Before I touched it, it turned and began that strange crawling walk. It moved more rapidly than I would have expected. I took aim, only to watch it vanish into a stubby copse of trees, which were either dead or doing a remarkable imitation of it.

“My own fault for being slow,” I muttered. “Hob, stay.” I ground tied him and went after the hare.

The dead trees did not improve upon close inspection. I stepped inside the copse, looking for the hare, and found it sitting up, watching me.

“Right,” I said. “You’ve definitely got it, whatever it is.” I started to sight down the barrel, although I could probably have bashed it over the head with the butt of my gun just as easily.

Movement in the corner of my eye distracted me. I turned my head and saw another hare, moving in the same unpleasant fashion. It looked almost spidery somehow. I had the sudden absurd notion of a disembodied hand walking along on its fingers, or of living limbs separated from their owners. Clearly Denton’s dream had lodged itself in my brain.

I turned back to the original, only to find that a third had joined it. All three of them stood up on their hind legs, watching me.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention.

I shot one of them. It might have been the first of them, but they might also have been changing places. A child could not have missed at that range. The copse rang with the shot and the hare collapsed.