The Curse of Salamander Street Read online

  The Curse of Salamander Street

  G. P. Taylor

  To Hannah, Abigail, Lydia – the source of my inspiration

  The Curse of Salamander Street

  Pergrandis Cetus

  IT had been three days since the ball of fire had crashed into the earth, somewhere far to the south. The sky had burnt blood red and turned the sea to a boiling cauldron. Beadle stumbled, half-mad with rage, as he cupped his bleeding cheek in his torn hands and licked the blood from his fingers. The dark of the wood clung like a blanket to the ground, and a fine white mist hovered above the stinking earth. From every tree and every branch came the screeching of small birds as they coughed and chattered mournfully in the cold evening air.

  Beadle looked up and saw the light of day fading through the thick fingers of the growing eaves that locked together like the struts of a vast cathedral. The drip, drip, drip of the last of the storm fell to the forest floor from the twisted wooden spindles that beat against each other in the wind. Beadle held out a bloodstained hand to catch the drops that spat coldly against his skin.

  ‘Never mind, Beadle,’ he said softly to himself as he splashed the chilled water against his bloodied face. ‘On yer own now … Yer own man, and not a minute too soon.’ He spoke as if to calm his anger. The sound of his voice danced from tree to tree like the whisperings of a wood elf. Beadle laughed. With one hand he pulled the woven scarf up around his face to dampen the wound that throbbed and chided his skin. He wiped the back of his sleeve across his brow and commingled blood and sweat with evening dew. ‘Soon be at the sea and then on to the path – never look at Demurral’s face again, never hear another lie from his lips.’ Beadle said the words in a voice just above a mutter, fearful that the trees could hear his proclamations and the reeds would whisper and a spell be made.

  He had trudged wearily for many hours along the twisting path that snaked across the heath and into the forest. To the west, the sky had wept bitterly, washing the moor until the track had run like a small river and babbled over the cliff edge and into the sea. Now, as he strode quickly on, Beadle could smell the ocean. It came to him in the fragrance of seaweed and dead fish. He stopped for a moment and looked about him. To one side the path fell away into a warren of dark gorse and bramble. Above him, cut into the shale crag was a stack of narrow treads that went this way and that amongst the trees that had grown from the cliff. Where the paths crossed the steps spiralled like a stone staircase of a vast cathedral. He stopped and looked to the sea below. Then he looked up to the high cliff that seemed to grow above him as if the earth moved upwards minute by minute with his every breath.

  Beadle rubbed his chin and panted hard. The thought of climbing the steps onto the high peak daunted him. If he took that way, he knew he could be seen from the tower of the Vicarage. In his heart Beadle knew that Demurral wouldn’t let him go that easily. It had been too simple: Beadle had just walked away from his old life. Here in the wood that clung to the shale cliff, he thought he was safe. The trees and fallen winter leaves made reassuring sounds that reminded him of brighter days. Again he looked up and then down. Beadle stood in the middle of the crossed paths unable to make up his mind and wondering if Demurral had invoked an invisible creature to follow his every move.

  ‘Wouldn’t let me go that quick,’ he said to himself in a croaked voice as if he was unsure of his own words. ‘Can’t be just running off – don’t know which way …’ He looked to the path that swept into the arch of gorse and shook his head.

  ‘Never simple, never simple … Chin up, chest out, heart full of pride …’ he said as he looked back and forth, unsure as to which way he should go. ‘Down? Dark and easy – but up?’ He paused, scratched his bloodied nose and sighed as he thought.

  Beadle took two paces up the flight of steps that led through the trees to the light above. He stopped again and looked up, listening to the sounds of the forest that rose up before him. From far off came the splintering of wood as if someone or something had taken hold of a small tree and split it in two.

  ‘Down,’ he commanded himself quickly. The call of his tired bones had won the battle of his will. ‘And down it will be.’ Beadle shuddered uneasily and looked about the dark wood, his eyes searching out the blackness.

  Step by step he walked on into the gorse tunnel that formed a canopy above his head. Beneath his feet the mud squelched and moaned with every fall of his foot as it clasped to his worn boots like sticky fingers. In ten paces he was back to night. The gorse tunnel rustled and shivered with every breath of the wind. Spines of bramble sliced to his left and right like sharpened swords, as the shrill whisper of the dying gale leapt from the sea and through the forest.

  He wrapped his bitter hands in the soft dampness of the tails of the neck scarf, muffling them against his worn-out jacket. Beadle smiled to himself as he saw the cut from the dagger that had slivered through the cotton warp of his frock coat, just missing his skin. It had burst open just above his heart, but the knife had glanced against the unread prayer book that he had carried for years like a talisman.

  ‘He’ll never do that again, not to Beadle,’ he grunted as he walked, wiping a tear from his eye as he thought of a time before.

  *

  Beadle had stood in the remnants of the Vicarage high above Baytown. The cannon of the Magenta had torn down every ceiling and mantel. When the world began to spin and the sky explode, Beadle had hidden in the cellar and listened as the stones crashed to the ground and what was once such a proud place was shaken to rubble. When he had emerged later that morning, all was in ruins. It was then that he knew his life had gone. What had been a reluctant home was now no more. With the falling of each stone, so had his life crumbled. He had no desire to serve his earthly master. All he knew was that his heart commanded him to take the road to London.

  Beadle knew that Demurral would come for him. Demurral had once vowed that it would be futile for Beadle to think of leaving and that no matter where his footsteps led him, he would be there. It was a thought that had plagued Beadle all that night. He had hidden from his master and had taken a small knapsack and packed what meagre items he owned and fastened the brass catch. He had then slung it over his shoulder as he slammed the large wooden door to the empty house. In twenty paces he was in the stable. The night sky had quaked and the world shook. Beadle buried himself in the thick straw and, unable to fight off the hands of sleep, he quickly slumbered.

  ‘BEADLE! BEADLE, COME OUT!’ Obadiah Demurral shouted three hours later, the sharp words stabbing Beadle from his sleep. ‘NOW!’

  Beadle had dug deeper into the straw, hoping not to be found as Demurral had trudged the stone courtyard searching for his servant. He had listened as Parson Demurral had smashed his walking cane against the stones and demanded his presence like an angry child.

  Demurral had then slumped to the ground and sobbed. ‘Humiliated me, Beadle, humiliated,’ he squawked, weeping between each word and beating the ground. ‘They tricked us … A trap … Power beyond belief. Imagine, Beadle. They had an angel – and not even Pyratheon could withstand his wonders. It brought the Ethio back from the dead and took death from him in an instant. I fear he will come for me. I am as good as dead and for me there will be no everlasting life. This is my curse, my future. I have taken on the powers of Heaven and I have been crushed beneath their feet. HE CHEATED – BROKE THE COMMANDMENTS AND TWISTED HIS OWN MAGIC! I must leave this place.’

  Demurral panted pathetically as he sobbed and as he spoke it was as if another spoke through him. ‘My only consolation is that the Ethio boy was snatched from the ship by Seloth and dragged to the depths. Saw it with my own eyes as the ship. They came from the sea like a ghostly c
hoir of dead souls and snatched him from the ship. They moaned and cried until it deafened the world to their lament … Beadle, come to me. Beadle …’ Demurral had then wailed even louder, moaning into the palms of his hands and sighing like a dying dog.

  Hiding his knapsack, Beadle crawled from the straw, crossed the yard and warily approached his master.

  ‘Beadle?’ Demurral whimpered, looking at him through tear-stained eyes. ‘Is it really you? I thought you were gone, abandoned me like the rest, never to be seen again.’

  ‘Still here.’ Beadle whispered his reply as he held out a hand to Demurral. ‘Just waiting for you to come back. I hid from the sky-quake and fell asleep.’

  ‘SLEEP?’ Demurral raged suddenly as he grabbed Beadle by the arm and pulled him towards him. ‘You slept and I died, that’s what you did. Stole from me while I lay in the grave and made your escape. I can see it in your eyes. Shoes for the road and two coats for the night. You weren’t waiting, you were going. Weren’t you, Beadle?’

  Beadle nodded, his arm gripped by fingers that burnt his skin. He pulled to run away as Demurral twisted his cane with one hand and slipped the sheath from a long blade hidden within.

  ‘No, Mister Demurral. I would have waited, I promise,’ he wheezed fearfully as Demurral held the blade above his head ready to strike.

  ‘Why should I believe that? I took you in when no one wanted you. Nursed you, fed you, and this is what you do to me? Was I not kind?’ Demurral asked.

  ‘Very kind, sir. Too kind for my own good. Beadle was so ungrateful for your kindness,’ he replied as he cowered from the blade.

  ‘Then let this be a sign of my kindness, a cut for the cutting of my heartstrings.’ Demurral took the sword and slowly pulled it across Beadle’s face. ‘There,’ he said calmly, stepping back from his servant. ‘A slice of my benevolence and one you’ll never forget.’

  ‘Forget?’ Beadle screamed as he lashed out in pain, knocking the sword cane from Demurral’s hand. ‘Forget?’ he screamed, kicking Demurral in the leg. ‘No more, Mister Demurral, no more. This is the last you’ll see of me.’ Beadle kicked his master again and again as the priest scrabbled to be away from him, the dark shadows pressing in around them as if to hide what would come to pass. As Beadle scurried from the courtyard, all he could hear were Demurral’s curses.

  ‘I will find you, Beadle. I know where you will go to hide. My heart is your heart, my thoughts will be your thoughts, you will never be free of me. Remember the blood and the hound of love that pursues you …’

  *

  In the gorse and bramble, Beadle shook the dream from his head as he listened to the grunting and whining of a distant beast. The words of Demurral echoed relentlessly in his mind as if they were spoken time and again. ‘Never did like this place,’ he said as he hobbled even faster. In the remnants of the storm, the dribbles of rain pierced the thick shelter of the gorse. ‘Blast, bother and boiling blood,’ he chuntered, cursing the mud and squelching onward as the mire was transformed to a soft brown soup that covered his feet. ‘Not staying … He’ll never see me again. All them years wasted looking after a monster. Sold his soul so many times he’s forgotten who owns it.’ Beadle rubbed the rain from his brow. ‘He’ll never find me in London. Crane will help me. Three days and I’ll be there – no matter what will befall me …’ He spoke the words as if they were a prayer, knowing that the Magenta would sail to the south.

  In the distance, Beadle could hear the gentle rolling of the waves upon the shingle beach. The sound dawdled in his mind like a dose of melancholy, stealing his wits from thoughts of Demurral. As the last drops of rain slithered through the branches of the gorse he wiped the blood again from his face with the scarf. He blundered deeper into the darkening tunnel until he walked in a muddy night, far away from the evening brightness. In the distance, at the bottom of the slope he could see a faint patchwork of light as the gorse and brambles thinned and the path ended.

  Beadle allowed himself a single chuckle, which soon exploded into a beaming smile. His mind raced faster than his feelings. Thoughts of freedom were tinged with sadness and foreboding. What had been his world had crumbled with the meeting of a boy and the melting of a heart. Now, fear and exhilaration twisted together and spurged his guts like the salt washing of a frothed beer barrel.

  As Beadle walked the last few yards through the tunnel of gorse and bramble, a faint scent of rotting flesh began to seep in from all around him. He shuddered and shook, then looked this way and that, his eyes trying to catch as much as they could from the half-darkness. It was as if someone was near – he could hear the wispy breath and the faint sighs and, more than that, the slathering, chomping and gnawing of bone. A yard ahead, just as the gorse tunnel dipped to the beach, was a hole in the tunnel roof. It was as if the gorse had been parted, and when Beadle looked more closely he could see that each thong of growth had died back and rotted. There at his feet was a pile of meatlets, small fragments of bone and strips of skin. Beadle nervously jigged two steps and, looking upwards from the shadows, saw the feet of a hanging man.

  ‘Blast, bother, boiling blood,’ he said in a whisper as he drew his breath sharply. In the wood, by the side of the path, was what was left of a man. The body hung from the long branch of an oak tree, the rope so stretched by the dead weight that he trailed upon the ground. Clinging to him like a heavy knapsack was a gruesome black creature that bit into his shoulder and chewed the flesh. The beast was the size of a large dog and covered in thick black hair that appeared to be stretched from bone to bone. Upon its back were two thick blades of shoulder bone like gargoyle wings that pulsed with every heartbeat. As Beadle watched, the creature stopped gnawing the bone and stealthily picked a piece of flesh between its lips, pulling a strip from the meat and then spitting it from its mouth. This was the beast that he had often spoken of but never dreamt he would meet. It was a nightmare of children, brought to life, a dark and distant memory or wicked thought made flesh. It was a creation of evil that had been conjured long ago when Demurral had first taken to his alchemy. It was said he had taken a child and merged its flesh with a dying wolf.

  ‘Not possible,’ Beadle said to himself as a quiet breath. ‘Cannot be … not never …’ The fearful words were choked in his mouth as he saw the beast gazing down at him and squinting through two red eyes that glowed in the darkness of the wood. It licked its teeth as it sniffed the air and two black, pointed ears twitched from side to side.

  Since he was a boy, Beadle had heard of the creature. The story of its coming to those parts had been told every Beltane for many years. Some had said that it lived in the wood below the Vicarage and from this creature that place took its name – Beast Cliff. In all his time as servant to Obadiah Demurral he had been kept from the wood for fear of the beast. Its power had lain deep within the imagination. It would grow in force from generation to generation as the horror would be retold, its terror increasing with each telling. Mothers would warn their children that if they were not good then they would be left in the wood for the beast to find them. Every cow that disappeared, every slaughtered lamb or fox-snapped gosling, was blamed upon the creature.

  It was said that at night, the creature would sit upon the milk churns and turn them sour or dance through the corn so it would die of mildew. Its shape was carved and placed upon the high spire of St Stephen’s, though it had never been seen for many years. From dream to dream it would plague the lives of children and keep them to their beds for fear that its clawed feet would dance upon their hearth and snatch them from their slumber.

  Now the creature chewed the dangling corpse, occasionally looking down as if it were aware of Beadle’s presence but unable to see him. It ripped at the flesh and took another mouthful of meat, then dragged the corpse into the darkness.

  Beadle waited no longer and edged back into the shadows of the gorse tunnel, careful to make no sound as he tiptoed through the mud. Soon, he found himself upon the shingle beach of Hayburn Wyke. He looked up a
nd scanned the sky, wary that the creature could be above him. He felt like a mouse scurrying from the corn and awaiting the pounce of the falcon from the sky.

  Walking close to the foot of the cliff, he tottered through the rocks and boulders that littered the cove. Eventually, Beadle came to the waterfall. It gushed from the dark of the wood and into the light, falling twenty feet to a large pool gouged from the shale. This was the place where Demurral had conjured the Seloth to attack the ship that had brought Raphah to the shore. This was the place where he had seen the madness take over his master and turn him from man to beast. Beadle slumped wearily on a large stone that was cut by the waves to the shape of a human hand. He looked to the sea as he soaked his muddied boots in the water and struggled to keep his eyes from closing. His eyelids flickered heavily as he fought the need to sleep.

  Reaching into the depths of his pocket he dragged out a solitary boiled egg that smelt of sulphur. In two cracks he had smashed the shell and he peeled it with one hand, holding it to his nose as he sniffed its green skin.

  ‘Quite fresh?’ he asked himself, keeping his back to the cliff and glancing up for the beast. Beadle peered to the distance, mindful of the way he would have to go. The path would lead to the south; he would cross the fields and find the way to York. From there he knew he could take the coach to London and find Jacob Crane. This was the safest way – it would keep him from the high moor, keep him from the prying eyes of Demurral boiled egg that smelt of spower. The roads were open, the lanes broad, and he could easily see if he was being followed. This was a thought that nagged him. It was as if a voice told him that Demurral would not be far behind.

  Beadle’s feet ached in anticipation, the blisters already twisting like sore burns against the wet leather boots. He stared down at his shimmering reflection in a pool. The wound to his cheek had dried, pulling the skin against the bone. He bathed his face in the cold water and washed away the blood. It burnt bitterly in the salt water. A sudden breeze glistened the pool. Beadle waited until it stilled again, then looked long and hard at the wrinkled face that peered back half-smiling and proud of his escape.