A Night in the Lonesome October

October 13

The great detective was back today. I glimpsed him only briefly from a hedgerow where I was burying something. He did not see me.

Later, Graymalk told me that he had visited Owen's place. Owen and Cheeter were out, and he had looked about some, discovering the wicker baskets. His assistant injured his wrist, she said, having been sent up the ladder into the oak to test the strength of some branches, whence he had fallen. Fortunately, he landed on a heap of mistletoe, or it might have been worse.

That evening, I heard a scraping at an upstairs window while I was making my rounds. I went to it and peered out. At first I saw nothing, then I realized that a small form was darting back and forth.

«Snuff! Let me in! Help!» it cried.

It was Needle.

«I know better than to invite you guys inside,» I said.

«That's the boss! I'm just a bat! I don't even like tomato juice! Please!»

«What's wrong?»

I heard a loud thunk from the other side of the wall.

«It's the vicar!» he cried. «He's wigged out! Let me in!»

I undid the latch with my paw and pushed. It opened a few inches, and he was inside. He fell to the floor, panting. There followed another thunk from without.

«I won't forget this, Snuff,» he said. «Give me a minute… .»

I gave him two, then he stirred.

«Got any bugs about?» he asked. «I've got this fast metabolism, and I've been getting a lot of exercise.»

«It'd take a lot of effort catching them,» I said. «They're pretty fast. How about some fruit?»

«Fruit is good, too… .»

«There's a bowl in the kitchen.»

He was too tired to fly it, though, and I was afraid he was too fragile to pick up in my mouth. So I let him cling to my fur.

As I walked downstairs, he repeated, «Wigged out, wigged out… .»

«Tell me about it,» I said, as he feasted on a plum and two grapes.

«Vicar Roberts has become convinced there's something unnatural in the neighborhood,» he said.

«How strange. What might have led him to that belief?»

«The bodies with no blood left in them, and the people with anemia, who all seem to have had vivid dreams involving bats. Things like that.»

I'd seen Vicar Roberts many times on my rambles, a fat little man, dundrearied, and wearing old-fashioned, square-lensed, gold-framed spectacles. I'd been told that he often grew very red of complexion at the high points of sermons, splattering little droplets of spittle about, and that he was sometimes given to fits of twitchings followed by unconsciousness and strange transports.

«It is understandable in someone of an hysterical personality type,» I said.

«I suppose so. At any rate, he recently took to running about the parish by night, armed with a crossbow and a quiver of bolts, 'flying stakes,' he calls them. I hear your door! I'll bet that's him! Hide me!»

«No need,» I said. «The master would not let an obvious madman armed with a dangerous weapon come in and search the house. This is a place of peace and refinement.»

The door was opened and I heard them speak quietly. Then the vicar's voice was raised. Jack, being a gentleman, responded in his usual soft, courteous tone. The vicar began to shout about Creatures of the Night and Unholy Practices and Living Blasphemies and Things Like That.

«You gave it sanctuary!» I heard him cry. «I'm coming after it!»

«You are not,» Jack responded.

«I've a moral warrant, and I bloody well am!» said the vicar.

Then I heard the sounds of a scuffle.

«Excuse me, Needle,» I said.

«Of course, Snuff.»

I ran on into the front hallway, but Jack had already closed and bolted the door. He smiled when he saw me. There came a pounding from behind him.

«It's all right, Snuff,» he said. «I'm not about to set the dogs on the poor fellow. Uh, Where is your friend, anyway?»

I glanced toward the kitchen.

He walked that way, preceding me by several paces. When I entered he was already feeding a grape to Needle.

«'Creature of the Night,'» he said. «'Living Blasphemy.' You're safe here. You can even have a peach if you'd like.»

He strolled off, whistling. The pounding on the front door continued for another minute or so, then stopped.

«What's to be done about that man, d'you think?» Needle asked.

«Stay out of his way, I guess.»

«Easy to say. He took a shot at Nightwind yesterday, and a couple at Cheeter recently.»

«Why? They're not into sanguinary stuff.»

«No, but he also claims to have had a vision concerning a society of wretched individuals and their familiars preparing for some big psychic event which will place them at odds with each other and threaten the safety of humanity. The vampire business was the first 'sign,' as he put it, that this was true.»

«I wonder what busybody sent him that vision?»

«Hard to guess,» Needle said. «But he could be shooting at you, or Jack, tomorrow.»

«Perhaps the parishioners will send him to the Continent,» I said, «to take the waters at some salubrious spa. We only need about two and a half weeks more.»

«I doubt they will. In fact, I think he's enlisted some of them in the cause of his vision. He wasn't the only one out there with a crossbow tonight.»

«Then I think we're going to have to identify those people, find out where they live, and keep an eye open in their direction.»

«I use echolocation myself, but I get the idea.»

«Nightwind and Cheeter obviously already know. I'll tell Graymalk if you'll tell Quicklime and Bubo.»

«What about that Talbot fellow?»

«So far as I can tell, Larry Talbot doesn't have a nonvegetable companion. He can take care of himself, I think.»

«All right.»

«… And we should all agree to spread the word on who they are and where they live. It won't matter to someone like that what your persuasion is.»

«I agree with you on this.»

Later, I checked around outside and there were no crossbow-persons in the vicinity. So I opened the window again and let Needle out, the vicar's quarrels stuck in the siding over our heads.