Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences (10 page)

I turn to the first page of the book. There is much mumbo jumbo about the evolution of the universe, the influence of the planets and so on. Eventually, I find that my eyelids are far too heavy. I put my hand down on the barrel of the Wilkinson-Webley to reassure myself. I don’t notice when the lamp gutters and goes out.

Moonlight on water wakes me, and then I realise that I am still in my berth, still abed, with my hand on the gun. The book is heavy on my chest.

I’m trying to get my sleep-crusted eyes fully open when the phantom thrusts her face toward mine. I scrabble for the gun and plaster myself against the wall, while the useless book slides off the bed and crashes onto the floor.

“
Ni shi shei
?” she asks. “Who are you?”

No one, I want to say. I am no one.

“Charles Gordon.
Gordon Zhongwen
.” Chinese Gordon some people have called me because of my help with the Taiping rebels.

She receives this information in silence. The room is freezing. Ice rimes the bedstead and I can see my own laboured breath. Fretful ghostlight flickers through her form. She turns her face away from me and for an instant, I see the spots and whiskers of a leopard.

I gasp and the cold reaches deep into my lungs. I cough and she is looking squarely at me again, her eyes blacker than a starless night.

“
Ni shi bao
,” I say. You are the leopard.

She inclines her head.

“
Weishenme
?” I whisper. Why? How?

“In the Emperor’s court, a powerful general named Li Dajun became enamoured with me. He wanted me for himself.
Shi kun rao
…” She shakes her head as if searching for a word she’ll never find.

“Obsessed?” I venture. I cannot believe I am having this conversation.

She nods. “What I didn’t know was that Li also followed the dark path of
gu
.”

Chinese black magic.
Gu
practitioners were said to be capable of breeding demon worms from which they decanted poisons so subtle and refined as to be almost untraceable. But that didn’t seem to be the case here. I had never heard of anyone being able to poison someone into becoming a ghost.

“He waited for me on the mountain when I went to visit the tomb of my old master. He tried to make me break my vow to the Emperor, but I would not. Li used the
gu
to transform into a leopard. And then he devoured me.”

I have to remind myself to shut my mouth. My fingers are loose on the cold barrel of the gun.

“But he was not content with this,” she continues. “He ground my bones into his inkstone. He painted the jar with that ink and sealed my spirit. He made me into a
guizi
, a demon to serve him. As a leopard, I kill. As a ghost woman, I frighten people with my mourning.”

She is very nearly weeping now. “Li’s son gave the jar over to the Emperor when Li died. The Emperors have kept the jar as an heirloom and as a weapon. I have begged them for centuries to break it. None of them would.”

I can see why. A ghost assassin chained to one’s service would indeed be a powerful thing. And such an artefact might be useful at some future date to the Ministry, particularly in unwinding the occult practices of China’s dark mages.

Perhaps the Ministry could recruit this spirit and seek her aid against our supernatural foes.

I shake off the idea immediately. Could this ghost truly be controlled? I think about the torture our men suffered in the Imperial Palace and I wonder if not all of it was entirely done by physical means. Wouldn’t it be better to free her and spare our agents any potential harm? Recruiting a spirit into the service of the Ministry? Preposterous.

“You want me to break it, don’t you?” I ask.

She nods.

“If I do this, you will harm no one else?”

“
Dui
.”

“And if I do not?”

“More will die.”

I’m reluctant, I must admit. It’s a beautiful, ancient piece of art, a bit of history that can never be recovered. The archivist would be head over heels for it.

The captain had said that something must die to stop the deaths of others. The sacrifice of one ginger jar is both easier and harder than taking a life and making a show of a burial at sea.

“Do it in daylight,” she says. “And throw the shards into the sea.”

Then, without another word she is gone. The room warms by slow degrees.

I look at the jar. It is a small price to pay, I suppose.

I rise and uncap the ink bottle, dip in the nib, and open my ledger.

I write at the top of the lined page in an unsteady hand.

One Ming Dynasty piece of chinoiserie. Lost at sea.

Panther Nights

Glenn Freund

Taken from the Journal of Edward Riches

May 28, 1888

I found another lumberjack killed last night. Upon inspection of the body, large gashes were found on his chest and arms. The wounds appear to be from an extremely large Jaguar or other animal. The odd part is that it looks like he did not die from his wounds but instead drowned. I am not a medical man, but I wonder if he drowned on his own blood. A horrifying thought.

A loud animal cry was heard right before a man’s scream.

May 29
th
1888

It was a rough night last night. Victor, my friend in camp was killed. We went our separate way after dinner, and before I got back to my cabin, I hear him scream. The sound went straight to my bones like a icy finger nail. Running, I got to him, but it was too late. I drew my gun and shot at the black mass that was over him, but it seemed to do no good, the monster just bounded off into the night. I am going to miss Victor. I will have one more drink for him tomorrow, and find this creature, and stop it once and for all.

Belize, Central America

June 15
th
1888

After arriving in Belize a little worse for the w
ear
, Agent Flowerdew stepped onto land. Thinking to himself while departing the trade ship,
Pirates. Pirates attacked us. What is this the bloody 17
th
century? As if navigating the reef wasn’t bad enough…
he met with a familiar heat. After having been a field agent in Jamaica for years, Mathew Flowerdew was no stranger to heat. He dreaded
the cold air of London, and tried to go back to the Ministry as little as possible, but he revelled in the heat of Jamaica.

He had been assigned to Belize after Agent Edward Riches had disappeared. Riches had been making reports of men going missing from the lumber camps when the reports suddenly stopped. Never a good sign. Early briefs suspected that it was just the locals making another attempt to rid the coast of the British. After several nights of scouting around the camp, Riches had come up with the conclusion it was a monstrous jaguar. The reports had stopped shortly after.

Flowerdew had not known Riches well. He was a gruff old man with a meticulous hand and a reputation as a crack shot. Riches had saved Flowerdew a couple of times when things got out of hand. He also had a penchant for women a man his age maybe shouldn’t have, and that penchant had landed him in trouble a time or two. His box of wedding rings was known all throughout the islands and Central American field agents. But out of respect, the local women didn’t. Over all, he was a superlative field agent.

After being assured his cargo would be taken to the lumber camp, Flowerdew grabbed his gun belt, and his vibration blade machete, threw his bag on to the back of a cart, and jumped up to take his seat with the cargo for the journey to the camp. As the cart trundled along the road, the slow rocking and knocking of the cart combined with the gentle breeze coming in from the sea lulled him into a trance-like relaxation. The heady smells of the jungle added to this peaceful, soothing feeling, but the tranquillity was not savoured as he reflected back on his orders from Doctor Sound:

Flowerdew,

I need to you go to Belize and check in on Riches. He has been reporting on some disappearances in the area. Riches’ weekly reports have stopped however, and I need you to find out what is going on there. Check in on him make sure he is okay, or see if he found himself another ex-wife. If he has, inform him to desist such raucous behaviours immediately. There are worse places he can be then Belize. Places with far fewer women.

Be careful, Flowerdew. Bring your full kit. We do not know what happened to him.

Doctor Sound

A hard jostle from the cart snapped Flowerdew out of his reverie, and he found on awakening, the jungle giving way to a clearing. Looking like a giant’s muddy footprint in the forest, the sounds of industry came pouring out into the clearing. Saws ripping. Axes chopping, wood cracking. Different languages and accents floating on the air. A strong smell of earth and mud filled the air as he approached the main camp.

Hopping off the cart, Flowerdew sauntered towards the main camp building. As he approached, a mountain of a man emerged from the doorway.

“Hello there! Foreman around?” Flowerdew yelled across the yard as he approached.

He received a gruff reply of “Who wants to know?” surprisingly enough, in an accent of the southern US as the man looked Flowerdew up and down.

“Mathew Flowerdew. I was sent from Miggins’ Antiquities of London,” he said, as he walked past the block of humanity that was standing next to the door of the main building.

With the sound of the yard fading into the background, Flowerdew entered the main building. Giving himself a second for his eyes to adjust, he surveyed the interior of the room. It had a very modest arrangement with just a few desks and several long benches and tables. On one side there was a large desk covered in maps and piles upon piles of papers.

“Boss ain’t in here” the human block replied, walking into the doorway. “He’s around back.”

The man paused. “The name’s Zeke.” He extended his hand to Flowerdew, who couldn’t help but notice it was like hams had been tied together with fingers cut out. Calloused and hard, he had a surprisingly precise hand shake.

“Pleasure to meet you, Zeke.”

“Follow me.” Without another word, Zeke turned and went back outside.

Walking around the building, Zeke pointed to a fellow who must have been a powerful man in his youth, with a strong square jaw and broad shoulders. However, time had stripped him away, deflating him like a cliff face after decades of ocean battering. He was wearing glasses as he looked over his work. Behind those glasses were eyes that looked like they were prone to smiling, and lines around his face.

“He got a lot on his mind of late. He feels responsible for the loss of these men. He comes out here to think and take a load off.” And with that he walked back around the building, yelling orders to people to unload the cart in the centre of camp.

“Hello, I am Mathew Flowerdew of Miggins’ Antiquites,” he announced, continuing the cover story that Riches should have established as he walked toward the foreman.

“Oh! Hello. Come over and sit down. What can we do for you, sir?” The man seemed very distracted and slightly nervous.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Flowerdew said as he righted a log.

“Bloody hell, I am sorry. Silvester, Silvester Bates,” he replied resting his axe on his shoulder and promptly thrust a large sturdy hand out. It looked like it had gone around the world and back, but had been back for several years.

“You alright, Mr Bates?”

“You know, when you think you have seen it all, something comes up. I can look a falling tree square in the trunk, laugh in the face of locals with a machete, but.. I’m sorry I did not catch your name?

“Flowerdew” he offered.

There was a dead space in the conversation as Bates focused on the two hands that were still shaking.

“You know, I wasn’t even supposed to be the foreman. Last foreman got killed by it.”

Flowerdew stared at the pain that ran across the man’s features. He suspected his was a face that must have not been accustomed to sadness. Keeping his face and tone deadpan, he replied, “Well, sir that is why I am here.”

Bates’ eyebrows wrinkled together. “But you’re representing an antiquities boutique, correct? What exactly do antiquities have to do with—”

“I don’t know if my associate explained this wholly, when industry reaches untouched communities such as this jungle territory, there can be artefacts disturbed that can provoke retaliation steeped in ancient rituals and folklore. These rituals and folklore, as well as the preservation of these ancient cultures, are our top priority.” When Bates gave slight nod accompanied with a silent
“Ah,”
Flowerdew, looked down at the still extended hands still embarrassing and asked, “Two questions; one, can I have my hand back and two what can you tell me about these deaths?”

With a start of realisation, he released Flowerdews and followed it with a sigh so deep it looked like he had deflated, Bates began to speak. “They started about two months ago, right after we moved the camp to the river. We had made our way far enough from the coast that it was getting hard to move the lumber. This spot in the river was helping a lot with getting the mill up and running. A little while later, some of my men started disappearing. We thought it was the locals at first, but they have not been giving us trouble for a while. Then we thought it might have been some big cat, one of those panthers creeping around at night, making the awful crying sound followed by the horrid screams. But…” His words trailed off. Flowerdew could just make out in the man’s eyes a memory bubbling to the surface. “After a few weeks we found the first corpse. He had scratched out his own eyes, and was blue. Blue like he had drowned in the river.” Bates reached into his pocket, producing a flask, shaking his head as he opened it and drank several fingers’ worth. “A panther does not do that to a man. The disappearances seemed to get a lot worse when we got our shipments in.” He took another gulp from his flask, and then slammed his axe into a log. “We can’t keep losing men at this rate. I keep having to hire whoever is willing to come all the way down here, not the most top choices if you know what I mean.”

As Flowerdew tried to piece together what he knew from Riches’ notes, the gears began to turn in his head. “When was the last disappearance?”

“No disappearance this time. Found him dead in the middle of the camp. Blue like he was drowned again,” Bates said, his eyes staring into the spirals of the wood.

“Do you still have the body?”

“No sir, we burned it. The men get pretty jumpy about these things. They do not want some cursed dead man around camp,
Obeah
, hoodoo, local lore and the like, you know how it is. Each group has their own reason, but whatever is killing my boys, it just is not right so I do not blame them.

“I am responsible for them, you know. It starts to chip away at your heart, as you are helpless to do anything. I don’t know what is killing them, all I know is, my liche yard is getting bigger and bigger. Whenever I close my eyes at night I hear the sound of whatever it is mixing with the screams of ma-boys. It’s like nothing I have every heard, it sounds like a monster, grinding metal in its guts, plus the sound of pure terror my boys scream as it gets them…”

“If you can think of anything else that might be helpful, please let me know. I will be staying in Riches’ cabin if that is alright,” Flowerdew replied as he stood up and passed his hand across to shake.

“That is fine. I will make sure Zeke gets some of the lads to bring your things over.”

Flowerdew walked around the building and flagged down Zeke to escort him over to Riches’ cabin. Once there, he took out his notebook, and looked around the cabin. At a glance it looked like no one had been in here since Riches’ disappearance. It was pretty well-furnished, with all his books kept in a chest to keep the insects out of them. Nice mahogany desk, probably made from one of the rough-cut logs. Taking out the Ministry-issued lock pick set, Flowerdew started at the lock on Riches’ Ministry trunk, recognising its make and model. After a few minutes of work and a few choice words best not shared in polite company, he gained access to Riches’ life in Belize. The inside of the trunk was for the most part empty: just a small box with a dozen gold rings of different sizes, and a couple of nice suits.

As Flowerdew released the latch to remove the top to the secret compartment, he was shocked to find it just as threadbare as its main compartment. The designated spots for guns, extra munitions, and spectral detection showed they were all missing. Only a stack of ministry journals and two small, old lodestone communicators—an antiquated piece of technology that had been replaced with wireless communication—remained. While they were effective in their time, they were very limited in their function, and only being able to communicate with each other made them very challenging in the field. Flowerdew checked the stylus and frame on both of them to make sure they were functioning. With the exception of a little rust, they seemed to be in working order.

Sitting down under the mosquito net, Flowerdew began to read through Riches’ finely crafted notes on the disappearances. He had suspected some sort of ghost panther at first based off the spectral readings that he was getting. As Flowerdew continued through the notes, he observed that Riches had grown less and less sure of the panther assessment, and began to suspect differently. He mentioned planning a full night’s surveillance the day before his disappearance. After that, the notes stopped.

When Flowerdew heard a knocking on the door of the cabin, he looked up from the books. He gave entry to the person at the door, and a large crate was brought in.

He knew right away something was wrong with the crate. At a glance his possessions appeared intact, but the crate was slightly at an angle. Prying it open, he saw all of the trunks had a drunken lean to them.

“No, no, no, no!” he franticly grumbled.

As he opened the trunks one by one, he found all of the seals on the trunks were broken, and all of their contents encrusted with sea-salt. Everything—his delicate tools and intricate arms—were damaged, and without proper tools, there was no way to fix them out here. He would have to send a message to Brazil to get a kit, which would take weeks to get here.

“Damned bumboclot pirates. The crate must have fallen over when taking all those fucking shots at us.” Letting out a large sigh he thought to himself, “Well, no use crying over bloody spilt rum.”

Flowerdew took stock of what he had with him: a few trunks full of useless equipment, two antiquated lodestone resonators, a few days’ worth of clean clothes, and his own weapons: a high frequency vibration blade machete, his own pair of Wilkinson-Webley “Peppershot,” a gun similar in design to the confederate La Mat, but with a easier trigger system for the shotgun round, and a few extra boxes of bullets.

And a bag of toffees. Sweets always made travel easier for Flowerdew.

Figuring not much more could be done today, he decided it would be good to get some rest before he went to the mess hall. Lying down, he started to cycle through the information that he knew before he drifted off to sleep.

Flowerdew bolted up right. He looked around to see what had woken him. Night had fallen while he was asleep. A shadow detached itself from the darkness of the doorframe and stepped into the centre of the cabin. “I said it was dinner time, Mr Flowerdew,” the shadow said. Striking a match, Flowerdew lit the lamp on the end table. He held it upward to shed some light onto the shadow, revealing a small Mayan boy in an apron. Collecting himself, Flowerdew thanked the boy and asked his name.

“Cookie callz me Cricket,” the boy replied.

“Cricket?”

“Yez sir, because I am always jumping to action. When I am not, I am still as stick. Plus Cookie likez me singing. If you can come with me, I’z can take you to the mess hall.”

Checking his boots for bugs, he grabbed his gun belt and walked out into the night, the boy staying close to his side.

“Where are you from, Cricket?” Flowerdew asked as they walked across the yard.

“I’m from right here. Well I was right here before I moved, but I come back. This is where I belong.”

“Who…uh…. who taught you English, Cricket?” the cross section of different dialects was starting to confuse Flowerdew. Cricket spoke in a form of pigeon English that looked like it took samples from the Queen’s English, Jamaican, Southern United States, and who knows where else.

“Whoever wants to talk with me in camp. Cookie been teachin’ me most of it, but the men, they help too.”

Ahead of them, the sound of plates and knives clashing and raucous merriment filtered softly through the air, then poured out the door like a flash flood. Entering the mess hall, a wave of heat and smells assaulted Flowerdew’s nose, painting a picture of daily life. Cricket escorted him to the foreman’s table, before disappearing into the crowd.