The Devil's Workshop

The door is closed, the candle snuffed.

Hear Mummy’s footsteps in the hall.

Claire stuck the point of the pencil in her mouth and sucked on it while she thought. It was good to have something to puzzle over besides the workings of her own body.

Something moves, but nothing’s there.

It’s just a shadow on the wall.

She decided she didn’t like the first two lines and crossed them out, thought a bit, and added more. She worked out the verse in her head and smiled as she rearranged the words on the paper, building couplets as she went.

Distracted, she only paused long enough to ride out each new contraction, and she didn’t fret about the passage of time. She didn’t notice the room grow darker and the shadows on her wall begin to converge.

31

The wagon had not yet reached HM Prison Bridewell when the cannibal had a seizure. Napper’s eyes rolled back in his head and the handcuffs kept his hands restrained, but his right shoulder rotated forward and his right leg twisted up and across his left leg and he curled down and toppled off the bench onto the floor of the police wagon.

Watching this from the other side of the wagon, Hammersmith immediately drew his truncheon from his belt, but didn’t otherwise move. He had no way of knowing whether Napper was tricking him, trying to get him to come closer, or if something was actually wrong. Hammersmith could hear Napper’s teeth grinding above the sound of wheels on the cobblestones outside. It occurred to the sergeant that Napper might swallow his own tongue, and so he dropped down and knelt beside the cannibal, his truncheon at the ready. Napper made no move on him, but seemed to be breathing, and so Hammersmith eased back on his haunches, his spine resting against the front of the bench behind him, and waited. At last Napper’s limbs relaxed and his eyes closed. A great streamer of thick drool escaped from his mouth and ran across the toe of Hammersmith’s boot. Napper’s breath steadied and slowed and he appeared to sleep.

Hammersmith put his truncheon away and made a halfhearted attempt to lever Napper back up onto the bench, but the prisoner was limp and unhelpful. Finally, Hammersmith gave up and kept a watchful eye as Napper slept.

Several minutes later, Napper’s eyes opened to half-mast and he spoke. The words were slurred, and Hammersmith leaned marginally closer.

“What?”

“Not just us,” Napper said. But Hammersmith thought he said not justice.

“Never mind justice for you,” he said. “What about your victims, huh?”

“No,” Napper said. “More than us now.” This time Hammersmith heard him correctly.

“What does that mean?”

“You might catch us, but you’ll never catch him.”

“Catch who? Either make some sense or shut up, you.”

“Somebody set the Devil free and it’s too late to put him back,” Napper said. Then he closed his eyes and began to snore.

Hammersmith frowned and settled back against the bench. Outside, a cloud drifted in front of the sun and the interior of the wagon went darker and colder. The lantern’s light seemed to dim. A shiver scurried up the sergeant’s spine, and he felt the hair at the base of his neck stand up. He shook off the feeling, but he tightened his grip on his truncheon and fastened his eyes on the slumbering cannibal.

32

The crude staircase ended at a tunnel that led off in either direction, farther into the city and farther away from it. March argued that the prisoners would have run as far away from London as possible, but Day disagreed.

“These men were all scheduled to die in prison,” Day said.

“Precisely why they would want to get far away from it,” March said. “They would be heading north, toward open country.”

“That’s what you or I might do. We’re rational people. But these escapees are the worst specimens London has to offer. They’re animals, predators. I think they’ll go looking for prey.”

“Surely not right away. Surely they’d hide first. They’d want to be certain they wouldn’t be caught.”

“No,” Day said. “They’ve been forced to deny their true natures for months and years. They’ll be hungry. They’ll want to experience a kill. They’d go where they can find the densest concentration of people. Of victims.”

“There are people to the north of us.”

“We don’t know who’s down here, if anyone is. But if Cinderhouse made it this far, if he’s down in these tunnels, he’ll want a child. I know this man, I captured him once before, and I know that he’ll go looking for a child. He would go south.”

March argued his point for a few more minutes, but finally gave in and followed Day into the tunnel going south.