Dead Men's s Boots

Its toothless mouth gaped open and grew fangs that solidified from doughy pink to gleaming white. I lurched back involuntarily and the door frame banged my left elbow, almost knocking the whistle out of my hands. That would have been the end of the story, but I recovered with only a brief slur on one note of the tune.

A morbid paralysis was seizing the loup-garou, but it was coming from the feet on up: its upper body still had a lot of flexibility and it leaned forward, aiming a raking slash at my throat.

I ducked back on my trailing foot and the wicked claws turned the front of my coat into confetti: a sharp pain and a sudden rush of warmth down my chest told me that one at least had drawn blood. Shuffling like a blind man, I backed out onto the landing an inch at a time until the wooden stair-rail was pressing against the small of my back and I knew there was nowhere else to run. My options had narrowed to two: play or die.

I played, forcing the other option out of my mind. The loup-garou’s legs buckled, and it crashed down onto its knees, but it was still trying to reach me.

When the claws of the thing’s outstretched arm slashed at my ankle, I ducked to the side and kicked it away. The loup-garou roared again, but the sound had a sloughing, sucking fall to it: it was the sound of something falling apart from the inside out.

The face, now fully formed, stared at me with indelible hatred. It was Scrub’s face at first; then another wave crossed the surface of that flesh ocean and it was the face of Leonard the copy boy.

Struggling to form words, it spewed out blood and black bile instead. A few fragments of sound bubbled through the liquid decay.

‘C – Cas – Cast—’

The eyes became opaque again, and the fluid in the gaping mouth congealed all at once into something that looked as shiny and vitreous as setting tar. The loup-garou was probably dead by this point, but strange movements from this or that part of the massive, slumped body made me wary of stepping in close to check.

I just left it there, sprawled on the landing like something huge and unwanted left out for the dustman.

Maynard Todd’s office was on the next turn of the stairs. I knew it when I saw the light already on. I didn’t see anything was particularly to be gained by subtlety: my fight with Scrub had made enough noise to wake the dead, assuming there were any more of them around, so anybody in there knew I was coming.