Heathen/Nemesis

Sixty-One

The ferocity of the assault lifted Peter Farrell off his feet.

He was slammed into the wall with crushing force and enough power to knock the wind from him. Reeling from the onslaught, he toppled forward but managed to keep his feet until a second attack pinned him to the wall and held him there.

‘You said you would get the book,’ snarled Francis Dashwood, gripping Farrell by the collar. ‘We relied on you and you failed.’

Farrell recoiled, not from the verbal tirade but from the rank stench that wafted over him every time Dashwood spoke. It was a smell like rotting meat, a rancid, cloying odour that made him nauseous.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said breathlessly, trying to inhale as little of the fetid air as possible.

‘Your apologies are no good to us,’ roared Richard Parsons. ‘We need the book, not your pathetic excuses.’

Dashwood let out a howl of frustration and hurled Farrell across the room. He crashed into a table, somersaulted over it and landed heavily on the carpet. He lay there for a moment before rolling over and getting to his knees.

The other two men advanced upon him.

‘It has kept us alive for over two hundred years,’ Dashwood told him. ‘Get it.’

Farrell clambered to his feet, breathing heavily, forced to inhale the reeking smell. He looked at the other two men. There was a yellow tinge to their skin. Parsons’ eyes looked sunken, with blue-black rings around them making him look badly bruised. The flesh of his hands appeared loose, as if it didn’t fit his bones.

The skin beneath his chin hung in thick folds that swayed back and forth as he walked.

Dashwood looked even worse. A sticky, pus-like fluid dribbled from the corners of both his eyes. The orbs themselves were bulging in sunken sockets, criss-crossed by hundreds of tiny red veins, each one of which looked on the point of bursting. Like Parsons, his skin was sagging in places like an ill-fitting suit. In others it had begun to peel away in long coils. One of these coils hung from his left cheek like a spiral, frozen tear.

The stench inside the room was practically intolerable.

‘Your men failed at the house and then on the train,’ Dashwood reminded him.

‘We will not tolerate another failure. You must get the book and bring it to us personally,’ Parsons told him. ‘Do you have any idea how important it is? Not just to us, but to everyone connected with this organisation?’

‘If the contents were to be known, as Ward wanted them to be known, the results would be catastrophic,’ Dashwood reminded him. ‘Get the book.’

He shoved Farrell, who fell backwards, colliding with a chair and almost falling again.

‘It isn’t at the house,’ he said, looking at each of the men in turn. ‘We’ve already checked. She didn’t have it with her ...’

Dashwood cut him short.

‘Are you sure of that?’ he snapped.

‘I’m not sure, but . . .’

Farrell was interrupted by a powerful blow across the face. As it landed he felt the repulsively soft feel of Dashwood’s skin against his own.

‘You know what will happen to us if the book is not found,’ snarled Dashwood. ‘You can see what is already happening.’

He grabbed Farrell again and pushed his face within inches. ‘Look.’ He touched the coil of rotting flesh with his free hand, pulling it slowly free. The skin tore slightly, leaving a red mark. Dashwood pushed it towards Farrell’s lips, jamming the length of putrid flesh into the other man’s mouth.

Farrell closed his eyes as he tasted the rotting matter on his tongue.

‘Taste our pain,’ hissed Dashwood, gripping Farrell’s chin, forcing him to chew on the strand of flesh. As he spoke his foul breath swept over Farrell in a noxious cloud. ‘Smell our suffering.’

Farrell knew he was going to be sick.

He felt Dashwood’s index finger inside his mouth, pushing the slippery piece of skin further into the moist orifice.

‘Swallow it,’ Dashwood demanded.

Farrell did as he was told and retched violently, falling away from Dashwood, feeling his stomach churn, eager to be rid of the disgusting matter inside it. He bent double and vomited, falling to his knees in the puddle of his own regurgitated stomach contents. The bitter stench mingled with the odour of putrescent flesh and he almost retched again but found that there was nothing left to bring up. His muscles contracted but could force nothing else out.

He sucked in deep, racking breaths and looked up at the two men.

Could the word be accurately applied to these two apparitions?

‘Where is the woman now?’ Parsons wanted to know.

‘She hasn’t been back to her house,’ Farrell said. ‘Someone picked her up at King’s Cross. Another woman.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘They could be anywhere.’

Dashwood took a menacing step towards him.

‘My guess is they’ve gone to the other house,’ he said quickly. ‘The one Connelly mentioned before he died. If they have, we’ll find them. And the book.’

‘If you don’t, it will mean your death as well as ours,’ Dashwood told him. ‘Now go.’

The stench of death hung in the air like an odorous, invisible cloud.