From Hell Again

Selection from the story "From Hell Again"

At three Mayhew was under the Tower Bridge once more, his weighted nets dragging, catching. Ship lights gleamed like will-o-the-wisps along the banks. The first haul produced a piece of a hansom wheel and an intact lantern, also from a carriage, and Mayhew wondered if an entire cab could lay beneath him in the black depths. The lamp was worth some money to him, and it was a curious enough proposition that he dropped his nets there again to see if he would collect more fragments from a hansom. As he rowed vigorously, the nets caught again, this time holding like an anchor. He tried, but couldn’t pull them free. Taking one of his grappling hooks, he stood, removed his coat, and tossed the hook out behind his boat so that it would sink beyond the nets. Down and down the rope played out, until the hook touched bottom. Then he retrieved it, slowly, letting it drag along. The hook, too, caught on something, and Mayhew pulled on that for all he was worth. He strained till his pulse was throbbing in his head. The hook tore free suddenly, sent him sprawling back into the wet bottom of his boat. He reeled in the hook. It brought up a large broken slab of wood caught on one of the spikes. When he tried the nets, he found them freed as well, and drew them in as fast as he could.

The nets brought up more broken wood and what looked to be a piece of iron rail of the sort that might garnish a driver’s platform. Then there was a hansom on the river bottom, as unbelievable as that seemed. He sat back in wonder at how such a thing could happen, and looked right up at his answer--at the jutting promontory of the Tower Bridge. As Mayhew imagined what happened, the water behind his boat erupted in a release of bubbles. He scrambled to the rear in time to see a body flung up onto the surface of the Thames, bob there for a moment, then sink out of sight. Hastily, he grabbed his nets and flung them out where the water still rippled. Then he rotated the oars into the water and rowed hard, nearly lifting himself onto his feet. The nets took on weight and dragged. He shipped the oars quickly and started drawing the nets in hand over fist, soaking himself but too single-minded in his purpose to stop and put on the slick sou’wester.

The nets and their tangled capture bumped against the boat. Mayhew grabbed hold and pulled the whole mess in at once. The body rolled beneath the ropes, the head flopped back, and death stared up at Patrick Mayhew.

The man had been in the water much longer than Mayhew had supposed, long enough for the skin to have sloughed away from the sludge-covered bones in most places, to leave a wet, glistening visage, a moulage of mud. As much as a year, Mayhew guessed, pulling back. He had hauled corpses in every horrible state of decay imaginable, most of them obscenely bloated. This eyeless figure ought to have been insignificant by comparison, but it now sent a wave of terror shooting like an electrical discharge through Mayhew. He found himself pressed against the side, gripping one oar as if to crush it. This unreasoned fear lasted only moments and then passed like a breeze continuing on downstream. Mayhew had a vision of the people on the ships at dock waking from their sleep, lifting taut faces from pints of ale, as the cadaverous wind rolled by. He wanted nothing more than to grab the nets and fling this body back into the blackness of the Thames; but he had a purpose here, and he was not finished.

He inched his way to the remains. The body wore a cloak and, beneath this, the remains of a coat, vest and tie. Mayhew tore the cloak apart when he lifted it--the material shredded with the weight of muck to support. He dug his fingers through the slime and drew back the black coat—which looked to have been a fashionable dinner jacket--to get at the vest. At first he thought there was no watch, because the chain, covered with weedy slime, was as dark as the material. As he shifted the corpse, something in the watch pocket gleamed, and he moved the lantern nearer, then reached in and drew out the watch. Where every other part of the corpse was caked or colored from its long stay in the water, the watch case glistened as if it had been polished that morning. Mayhew turned it over, disbelieving that it could be in such condition, but the other side was as shiny and unblemished. He could make out distinctly the smoothly molded ridges of the case and the stylized face of a Gorgon in a raised circle, even in the lantern light. He stood, and the body rolled slightly. One arm was suddenly flung out. The knuckles clacked against the side; the sharp, blackened fingers began to curl up slowly. He could bear the thing no longer. He stuffed the watch into his pocket, knelt down, grabbing the netting, and heaved the body over the side. When it did not sink right away, he grabbed a short boat hook and stabbed out, shoving the body under the surface. The hook must have caught on the corpse’s coat because, when he tried to draw it back in, it snagged, tipping Mayhew off-balance. He twisted around and the hook caught on the edge of the boat. All of his weight went on it as he turned, and the hook snapped. The spot was cursed. In a panic, Mayhew threw down the broken pole, sat and began hauling on the oars as hard as he could, desperate to escape that haunted place. Never had the Thames carried any fear for him before this, but now, even with the body back where it belonged, he could not get rid of the apprehension that had crawled into his boat with the corpse. It was as if the fear had slithered off and condensed into the muck on his clothes, at his feet. His shoulders ached and his lungs burned at the effort, but Mayhew did not slacken his pace until he was in sight of his dock. He left hooks and nets in the boat, threw the tarp hastily over everything, and set off, almost at a dead run, for home.

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