What Moves the Dead (33)
“A warm moist growth medium,” said Miss Potter, “is very conducive to the growth of many, many fungi.”
“Yes, but it can’t possibly have lived through—”
The animal moved.
There were three veterans at that table, battle-scarred soldiers who had served their countries honorably in more than one war … and all three of us screamed like small children and recoiled in horror.
The hare kicked twice, not seeming to care that its guts were open to the air, and managed to roll itself over. Angus flung himself in front of Miss Potter. I flung myself backward in my chair, knocking it over and taking me with it. This proved to be providential, because Denton flung his scalpel aside and would have speared me handily with it if I hadn’t been on my back on the floor.
By the time I was upright, the hare was crawling along the table, leaving a broad pink smear across the tablecloth. Denton was in the corner, quivering, and Angus looked dazed.
Miss Potter flipped her umbrella around and pinned the hare in place with the tip. “Gentlemen,” she said, “I will hold it in place if one of you would like to kill it. Again.”
Moving almost mechanically, I reached into Denton’s bag and pulled out a heavy blade that looked like kin to a meat cleaver. The hare twitched and paddled its feet against the tablecloth. The thin taste of bile coated my tongue.
One solid chop with the cleaver severed the hare’s spine, and it fell limp. I did not stop until the body had been fully detached from the head, and even then I might have kept going, but Angus took the cleaver away from me.
“It’s done,” he said.
“It isn’t,” said Miss Potter. “The head is still moving.”
I looked at the head pinned under the umbrella and saw the mouth opening and closing, the chisel teeth catching in the tablecloth, and then my gorge rose and I turned and ran to the privy.
* * *
When I was empty of even the memory of food, I dragged myself back to the drawing room. They had thrown the tablecloth over the twitching hare and wrapped it into a featureless ball. Denton was as white as the linen napkin over his face as he stood repacking his bag. “The fungus grew in greatest concentration at the top of the spinal column,” he said, in a distant, precise voice. “It had completely wrapped the vertebrae there and intruded into the skull.”
“But severing the spine killed the body,” I said. The image of Madeline’s corpse, her head bent, intruded behind my eyes.
“No.” He slammed the bag shut. “That hare has been dead for days. Whatever that thing is, it was moving it around like a puppet. All we did was cut the main strings.”
“Nor will they stay cut,” said Miss Potter. She sounded the calmest of the four of us. “The growth rate of some fungi, as I said, is extraordinary. I suspect that if we left this specimen alone long enough, it would regrow the connections and begin to move again.”
“Christ’s blood.” I put my head in my hands. The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do. “Then Madeline…”
“Don’t.” Denton nearly shouted the word. After a moment, he said, “Let’s get rid of this thing. I can’t … I can’t think about the other thing. Not yet.”
“Throw it in the lake, then?” I said.
“I do not recommend that, Lieutenant. If it comes in contact with the water supply, it could infect anyone who drinks the water.”
Angus’s mustache sagged. So did the rest of him. “Miss Potter,” he said quietly, “it’s in the lake already. It’s in the fish. All our drinking water comes from the lake. All of us—the three of us—have been drinking it and bathing in it for days.”
“Weeks for me,” said Denton.
Miss Potter, to her credit, did not recoil in horror from us. She nodded once, slowly, and said, “Then I am afraid, gentlemen, that there is a chance that all of you have contracted it already.”
Denton nodded to himself. I looked down at my arms, picturing the skin under the fabric with its fine dark hairs. If I shoved the sleeves back, would there be long white strands emerging from the surface?
“We’ll burn it,” I said, grabbing the bundle of cloth. I fancied I could feel a quiver of motion inside. “Angus, bring lamp oil.”
The stable yard was empty, the horses tucked away in their stalls. (Oh God, was the foul stuff inside Hob, too? Had I killed him by bringing him here?) We passed through it to the ragged garden, to the burn pile. It was pitifully small. Every scrap that could be used to heat the house had already been scavenged.
I dropped the tablecloth and its contents onto the darkened paving stones and Angus emptied one of the lamps over the cloth, then knelt and lit it. We stood shoulder to shoulder around it in a semicircle, close enough to feel the heat of the flame, unwilling to leave until the beast had been reduced to ash. Occasionally Angus would stir it with a stick, and we used Roderick’s lamp oil recklessly to finish the job.
It was thus some time before we had finished, and the evening was drawing in. When we turned back to the house, Miss Potter’s startled cry froze us all.
“What is that light?”
Sickly greenish radiance haloed the near end of the house. It was faint enough that perhaps we would not have seen it if the sky had been brighter, but against the darkness, it stood out in sharp relief.