![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Um. Sort of. I've ... no idea what this is. It's ... very, very bad, and a far cry from my usual fare, and ... Um. I've no idea. Forgive me, yes? *shakes head* I've no idea.
Title: Boogeyman
Rating: R (for violence)
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: Helen, James and two Boogeymen
Summary: Set sometimes in the 1890s. Helen and James, and someone else, on a monster hunt.
Wordcount: 3514
Warnings: Violence, inc towards children. Dark. Very, Very dark.
Notes: If anyone has ever read The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray, I took a good deal of inspiration from it.
Disclaimer: So very not mine
Title: Boogeyman
Rating: R (for violence)
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: Helen, James and two Boogeymen
Summary: Set sometimes in the 1890s. Helen and James, and someone else, on a monster hunt.
Wordcount: 3514
Warnings: Violence, inc towards children. Dark. Very, Very dark.
Notes: If anyone has ever read The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray, I took a good deal of inspiration from it.
Disclaimer: So very not mine
Boogeyman
He moved mostly in the nighttime. A shadow among shadows, fast and quiet and strong. Strongest of the strong. The night was not because he feared. It was because the night was when they feared. His prey, so small, so scared, flinching from shadows and the echo of footsteps behind them. The night was for the hunting, and the fear in tiny eyes.
Shadow by shadow. The hollow echo of footsteps. Not yet. Not yet. The tiny figure ran ahead of him. Breathing harsh and terrified. Running from the monster in the darkness.
One glance back, quick and frightened. Searching for the footsteps. Nothing to see. Not yet. The little mind wouldn't recognise him yet. Against the rules. One glance back.
He sped to match the patter of small feet. Let his heavy steps echo, a bass counterpoint. Let the hunt thrill the child, let it shiver through her.
The second glance. Terrified, now, desperate. Where is he? Where's the monster? Won't someone protect me from the monster? I can't see. Where is he? Where is it? And still he doesn't let her see. Not time yet. But nearly. Nearly.
A stumble, a trip. Sprawling on the flagstones, crying out in pain, and there's blood on the stones, in the air. Blood and fear and shadows and darkness. Naughty girl. Foolish child. Alone in the world, because she made mommy mad, because mommy's too drunk to keep track. Because she's a bad girl, daughter of a bad woman, and now. And now. The shadows and the hunt. The monster in the darkness, who feeds on bad little girls.
And then. And then. The third glance. The last glance. His cue. His chance. The rules of the game. The following and the fear, for one glance, two, and should you keep your eyes ahead, I'll not catch you. But three's the charm, three's the chance, the monster's waiting for one last glance.
Her scream was small and thin, much like her. No-one heard. No-one ever did. Goblins in the night, stealing little children from the light. No-one ever saw them go.
***
"We have to do something, Helen."
James stood by the fireplace, his hands braced against the mantlepiece, his back viciously stiff. Helen put down the decanter carefully. Much as the alcohol would probably relax him, she wasn't sure it was a good idea right now. It had been some years since she'd seen James in such a ferocious temper, and she wasn't completely sure what to do about it.
"Of course we will, James," she said softly. "That's what the Sanctuary is for, remember? To protect humans and abnormals from each other?"
James made some noise, some grunt of acknowledgement, or perhaps dismissal. It was hard to tell. He was ... furious, she thought. Genuinely so. And Helen wasn't quite sure why. But she could ask. There weren't many who would dare question James in a mood like this, but Helen was far from a coward, by any standards. And besides. He was beginning to get on her nerves.
"James? Would you like to tell me what's the matter, or should I just ply you with alcohol until it slips out on its own?" More than a little testy herself. More than a little angry.
He actually turned to her, at that. Turned his head to blink in confusion for a moment, temper slipping a little in surprise at her tone. Then he inclined his head with a rueful smile, recognising his own snappishness, and its unreasonablity.
"It's just ..." he said, very softly. "They waited to call us. Fourteen children have been lost in the lower class areas of the city. Fourteen children that they know of. And they waited until the creature took some petty lordling's child before they called us. They waited ..."
He stopped. Shook his head, forced the growl from his voice, the soft rage. But by this time, he didn't need to. Helen suddenly understood enough to echo his rage with one all her own. His rage, and the kind of soft helplessness that ran underneath it in his tone. The sheer despair.
"The lines they draw," James went on, quietly. "Sometimes I think ... Forty years ago, would they have let Nigel die, to save you or me? Would they have counted his loss as nothing much, so long as my parents or yours still had a child at the end of the day? Or would new money'd parents have been enough to save him?" He shook his head, looking over at her, at the echo of his own pain in her eyes. "Sometimes I think it's not humans and abnormals that need protecting from each other, Helen. Sometimes I think it's humans who need protecting from themselves."
And well. She couldn't argue with that. Didn't want to. She'd seen too much herself. Been forcibly introduced, so many times, to values placed on lives by arbitrary means, by class or gender or nationality, and she knew. She saw. And she understood James' pain.
"We'll do something now," she said, very quietly. "We'll stop this now, before any other children are lost." A small, hard smile. "Because we can. Because no-one shall stop us. We'll stop this, James."
He smiled, inclined his head in acknowledgement, but there was still fury in his eyes, still some sadness where the smile couldn't reach. "Yes," he said softly, as he turned back to the fire. "But what about the things we can't stop?"
***
He'd been hunting for three nights, now. Three. Superstition, that, but in this world ... He set some store by superstition. Set some store by the old rules, the old games, because he'd seen the darkness, he'd walked in it, and there was room in the shadows for many a dark and tilted view of the world.
Hunting. Three's the charm. Hunting in the shadows, and his prey ... Oh, his prey. Hunters in their turn. He'd felt the trap begin to close. Felt that hunting attention turn, felt the scales between predator and prey sway and balance precariously, the direction of the hunt swinging like a pendulum between forces. Three. Three nights, three hunters, three prey. Three forces. Three's the charm. Don't look back. In the shadows and the darkness, keep your eyes ahead. Three's the chance, no backwards glance.
They never saw him. He followed them in the shadows of the city, through fog and along flagged streets. Under the gaslamps and the werelight of the city against the sky. His hunting ground. His delight. And they ran ahead of him. Hunting in their turn. Not looking back. Never realising. Never seeing. No-one ever saw them. Not in time. No-one ever saw.
***
"Of course!"
Helen sat up, rubbing her eyes wearily, and looked over at James, the detective leaping up from a study of one of her father's notebooks and moving towards the shelf. Searching for something, buzzing with that strange energy that came with discovery for James, that came with inspiration. As bad as herself or Nikola, sometimes. As impatient, too, ignoring her querying look in favour of pulling half a shelf down on himself, shoving leather-bound tomes out of the way in search of his goal.
Helen stooped behind him to pick up one of the books, looking for some idea of where he was searching, since he didn't seem inclined to answer in words just yet. She frowned down at the Bradshaw in confusion. James was looking, not at her father's journals, or the collections of folktales they'd previously been searching, looking at the childsnatchers of legend. James was looking at London. At railway timetables, and maps, casting them aside, searching ...
"Aha!" He plucked free one of the older volumns, one of his own, as a matter of fact. A treatise on behalf of some criminalist, if she remembered rightly. Discussing the secret ways through London ...
"James?" she asked eventually, a little impatiently, watching him flick through the book. "Would you like to explain what you've found? Or at least what you're looking for ...?"
"Water," he said, looking up at her with distracted, intense eyes. "I knew there was something about the missing children that caught my eye ... I just couldn't remember what it was, where I'd seen it before ..."
Helen blinked at him, frowning curiously. "And you think that something is ... water?" She was somewhat baffled, she did admit. It had indeed been raining some of the nights the children had gone missing, at least as far as those responsible for them remembered their going missing (Helen clenched her teeth a little, at the thought), but not all. She didn't quite see ...
"Not water," James looked up, properly now, having found what he was looking for. He held out the book, pointing to a plate showing a map of London, cut through with faint lines denoting ... Helen frowned, looking closer. It looked like a map of the rail, except the locations were wrong. And then she saw the key ... "Waterways," James said quietly, voice humming with the excitement of discovery. "All the abductions happened over the submerged waterways of London. The sewers, the submerged rivers. Look. Here, and here ... and the fourth girl here, over the Tyburn ..."
"Water," Helen murmured, feeling something niggling at the back of her mind, some memory of something, in one of the journals she'd been reading, some child-snatcher ... "James! Oh, Heavens, James ..." She ran back to the table, with him close behind her, pushing papers out of the way, searching for, unearthing ... "Here! A snatcher of naughty children, usually said to live near ponds or water."
"Rawhead and Bloodybones," James read, softly. Found the rhyme, traced it with his finger, reading it out in distant, morbid fascination.
"Rawhead and Bloody-Bones
Steals naughty children from their homes,
Takes them to his dirty den,
And they are never seen again."
He looked up at her, and she knew the dismay in his features matched her own. No creature who stole children had good intentions, human or abnormal, but at least with some of them ... But Rawhead was a hobgoblin. A subspecies renowned for seeing humans as ... well, food. As prey. And the name was only partly from the creature's appearance, only partly caused by the raw-red, skeletal look of the thing.
It also came from the descriptions of what was left of Rawhead's meals. Of the remains of the children he'd stolen. Bloody bones, and little else. Bloody bones, and nothing more.
"We won't be rescuing any of them, will we?" James asked her softly, but they both knew the answer. They both knew what they faced, now.
***
The humans were hunting him. For the third night in a row. Hunting him, stalking him, dogging his footsteps as he dogged those of his little children, his little prey. Closing around him. Waiting from him to look behind, once, twice. Thrice and then. But he wouldn't. He won't. Not for them. Not for humans, no right to be hunting him. Small. Weak. Not the smallest, not the weakest, not sweet like the naughty little things that ran from the sound of his footsteps. But still too weak to hunt him. Still too weak to have the right.
So he hunted them in return. Not children, not younglings. Not small and sweet and meat. But his prey, nonetheless. His despite it, walking with their hard footsteps over his rivers, over his pools, over his hunting grounds. Tracking through his places, through his world, with their smell and their fire and their hard, hard eyes. Guarding the little ones against him. Hunting for his home. Hunting for his lair, and all the bloody little bones that crunch-crunched beneath him as he slept.
Well, they couldn't have them. Naughty things, peeking through the cracks in the door, looking for things that weren't theirs to see. No. No, no, no. Not for them. Not now. No right to hunt him. No right to see. He'd show them. He'd stop them.
He had the male, now. He had the man, with those bright eyes, peering into the shadows, seeing things he shouldn't. Such a hunter, this human. More than a human should be. Saw too much. Not Rawhead. Never him, hiding in the shadows, invisible until the third glance behind. Only the third glance, shot in fear across the shoulder, and the man was looking forwards. A hunter, not prey. Looking ahead and not behind.
But that could change. That would change. With the footsteps in the shadows, the heavy tread in the darkness at their back. Like all the naughty children. Like all the little boys and girls, in the darkness where they shouldn't be, watching for the monsters they can't see.
Heavy feet, thunder at his back. Thunder for the hunter, for the human daring to step into the darkness and the monster's world. Thunder at his back, always at his back, though he turned and turned, always trying to look ahead. Always trying not to look behind. Because the human knew. But not enough. Not enough.
Once. One glance, cast across the shoulder. One look behind, and he laughed in the darkness at the human's back. One for one. Wait for three. Wait for me.
The man was moving towards the other human, now. Streets away, wanting someone at his back. Someone to look ahead, and make it not behind. But too far. Too far. Rawhead was hunting now. Rawhead was angry, now. Making him turn and turn, circling, confusing. Cutting him off. Keeping him away, keeping him above the water. Making him turn and turn, and then ...
Twice. Twice behind, to find the monster in the dark. One and two, I'm coming for you. One and two, and just once more, and I'll be standing at your door.
The human ran. The man ran, pointed himself at his companion, streets away, and simply ran. Trying to ignore the footsteps, the tread, keeping his searching eyes all fixed ahead. Too late. Too late. Instinct, now. The animal creeping in the man's mind, the thing that had been prey before it had hunted, the thing that remembered the darkness. The thing that remembered the fall, and the blood, and the footsteps in the darkness. The man wanted to look back, now. The animal inside him wanted to look back. Had to. And now ...
A stumble. A fall, almost, so close. The human stumbled, staggered, and could not help himself. Could not stop himself.
The human looked behind. One. Two. Three. Now you see.
***
The creature appeared from nowhere. Appeared from behind whatever veil had hidden it from view, suddenly there, suddenly real, in a way that was so achingly familiar. A way that reminded him, so achingly, of all that had gone before. But he had no time for that, now. No time at all, when beyond the sudden looming of the boogeyman ...
James looked up at him. Met his eyes from his crouch beneath the sweep of the monster's arm, that same piercing gaze that he so remembered, so hated, so missed. James looked up at him, eyes widening in shock and fury, even as he fell, even as he pulled his gun and discharged it at the creature between them, as much to alert Helen as anything else. James stared at him as he fell, and John felt his lips peel back in something that could not, in good conscience, be called a smile.
The hunt had finally come to its close. The hunters had finally come together. The pendulum had finally swung full circle, had finally settled back to the true hunter in this game, and John had no time for James. No time for the hunter, when what he wanted was the prey. When what he wanted was the monster.
Laughing, snarling, the knife in his hand, he caught the creature's arm. Felt his hand slip-slide along raw flesh, dark and smooth, red before the knife ever found its home. Raw. Rawhead, and Bloodybones. John knew the stories. Knew the monster. Abnormal, as Helen would call it. Perhaps criminal, as far as James was concerned. John didn't care about that now.
He smiled into Rawhead's face, smiled into the animal knowing in dark eyes, one monster to another, one hunter to another, and raised the knife so darkly gleaming as the rush of teleportation caught them both.
Monster, monster, in the dark. You've hunted what was not yours. You've hunted what was mine. And that, I cannot allow. That, I cannot endure.
Come, Rawhead. Come, hobgoblin. Come, boogeyman. See what monsters humans be. Come Bloodybones, and dance with me.
***
Helen watched James carefully. Watched him as he stood by the fireplace, braced against the mantlepiece, his back stiff with rage. She put the decanter down again, but this time, too late. This time, a glass lay beside his hand, a little further back from the edge than James himself, and it was too late for alcohol to blunt his fury. Too late for brandy to calm him down.
She couldn't blame him.
"It's been two weeks," she said, softly. Carefully. "There have been no more ... They haven't reported any more children missing. At least, that they know of. James ..."
"He killed it," James said softly. "I know, Helen. I knew the moment I saw him. John always was ... John was always possessive." He laughed, short and sharp, and far from happy. Far from calm. "Why should he let another monster hunt in his streets? Why should he share the bloodshed?"
She didn't answer. Stayed silent, nursing the hollow ache inside her own chest, nursing the darkness and the pain and the rage, and watching the vicious stiffness of James' back. Watching everything she felt be echoed out in turn, playing over the form of a man she loved as a brother, a man she knew felt her pain as his own.
"What if the last one had been still alive?" James asked, tight and controlled, as if afraid to let the darkness slip free in his voice. "What if the last child ... He took our chance, Helen. He took away any chance, however ... however slim. He didn't kill it because it was the right thing to do. He didn't consider the victims, didn't consider that there might still be a chance ... He killed it because he likes killing. He killed it because ..."
Because it threatened us. Helen heard it, though James didn't say it aloud. Couldn't bear to say it aloud. John had killed Rawhead because Rawhead had threatened James, threatened Helen, and John ... John had always been possessive. John had always turned aside anything that threatened them, had always stood in front of them. And even now ... Even now. John stood in front of them, and killed what came for them. Because John thought they were his. Because John was a killer.
On second thoughts, Helen picked up the decanter again. Not for James. Oh no. Not for James. For her, and she didn't even bother with a glass. The crystal was heavy, achingly so, and the brandy burned, but Helen didn't care. Helen didn't care.
What lines did John draw? What lines did they draw? Perhaps the child had already been dead, long before they ever started the hunt. All the sources, the stories ... There was every chance the child had already been dead, long before she and James started their hunt, long before John stepped in and robbed them of the chance to be sure. It was likely, more than likely, that the child had already been dead.
But that was cold comfort. Such cold comfort. Because Helen had seen the monster. From the top of the street, Helen had seen the monster, rising over James, seen the arm reach out to cut him down, and then John ...
Cold comfort, that most probably there had never been a chance. Because even if there had been, in that moment ... Helen had watched John step in to save James' life, had watched John smile above a knife and steal the monster away, and she had been grateful. For a moment, for one searing moment, she had not cared for dead children, only that John, in that instant, had saved her friend, a man she dearly loved. Only that John had stepped in, and kept James from dying.
Where did they draw their lines? Like John, like the foolish men who waited for so many children to die before they moved. What lives did she value, and who would she sell to keep them safe? Who would she let fall, to keep these men by her side?
And was she any different for it, any different from the men and monsters of the world?
She looked at James, at the stiff lines of his back, the anger in his motions, the despair, turned against himself as much as John. Turned inward, because maybe James, for one moment, had been grateful too. She looked at James, and down at her hands, down at her self. Were they any different. Were any of them any different, or had she made them monsters, one and all, one night ten years ago.
Staring into the darkness behind the fire, into the shadows where monsters lurked, Helen realised she didn't know.
She didn't know.
He moved mostly in the nighttime. A shadow among shadows, fast and quiet and strong. Strongest of the strong. The night was not because he feared. It was because the night was when they feared. His prey, so small, so scared, flinching from shadows and the echo of footsteps behind them. The night was for the hunting, and the fear in tiny eyes.
Shadow by shadow. The hollow echo of footsteps. Not yet. Not yet. The tiny figure ran ahead of him. Breathing harsh and terrified. Running from the monster in the darkness.
One glance back, quick and frightened. Searching for the footsteps. Nothing to see. Not yet. The little mind wouldn't recognise him yet. Against the rules. One glance back.
He sped to match the patter of small feet. Let his heavy steps echo, a bass counterpoint. Let the hunt thrill the child, let it shiver through her.
The second glance. Terrified, now, desperate. Where is he? Where's the monster? Won't someone protect me from the monster? I can't see. Where is he? Where is it? And still he doesn't let her see. Not time yet. But nearly. Nearly.
A stumble, a trip. Sprawling on the flagstones, crying out in pain, and there's blood on the stones, in the air. Blood and fear and shadows and darkness. Naughty girl. Foolish child. Alone in the world, because she made mommy mad, because mommy's too drunk to keep track. Because she's a bad girl, daughter of a bad woman, and now. And now. The shadows and the hunt. The monster in the darkness, who feeds on bad little girls.
And then. And then. The third glance. The last glance. His cue. His chance. The rules of the game. The following and the fear, for one glance, two, and should you keep your eyes ahead, I'll not catch you. But three's the charm, three's the chance, the monster's waiting for one last glance.
Her scream was small and thin, much like her. No-one heard. No-one ever did. Goblins in the night, stealing little children from the light. No-one ever saw them go.
***
"We have to do something, Helen."
James stood by the fireplace, his hands braced against the mantlepiece, his back viciously stiff. Helen put down the decanter carefully. Much as the alcohol would probably relax him, she wasn't sure it was a good idea right now. It had been some years since she'd seen James in such a ferocious temper, and she wasn't completely sure what to do about it.
"Of course we will, James," she said softly. "That's what the Sanctuary is for, remember? To protect humans and abnormals from each other?"
James made some noise, some grunt of acknowledgement, or perhaps dismissal. It was hard to tell. He was ... furious, she thought. Genuinely so. And Helen wasn't quite sure why. But she could ask. There weren't many who would dare question James in a mood like this, but Helen was far from a coward, by any standards. And besides. He was beginning to get on her nerves.
"James? Would you like to tell me what's the matter, or should I just ply you with alcohol until it slips out on its own?" More than a little testy herself. More than a little angry.
He actually turned to her, at that. Turned his head to blink in confusion for a moment, temper slipping a little in surprise at her tone. Then he inclined his head with a rueful smile, recognising his own snappishness, and its unreasonablity.
"It's just ..." he said, very softly. "They waited to call us. Fourteen children have been lost in the lower class areas of the city. Fourteen children that they know of. And they waited until the creature took some petty lordling's child before they called us. They waited ..."
He stopped. Shook his head, forced the growl from his voice, the soft rage. But by this time, he didn't need to. Helen suddenly understood enough to echo his rage with one all her own. His rage, and the kind of soft helplessness that ran underneath it in his tone. The sheer despair.
"The lines they draw," James went on, quietly. "Sometimes I think ... Forty years ago, would they have let Nigel die, to save you or me? Would they have counted his loss as nothing much, so long as my parents or yours still had a child at the end of the day? Or would new money'd parents have been enough to save him?" He shook his head, looking over at her, at the echo of his own pain in her eyes. "Sometimes I think it's not humans and abnormals that need protecting from each other, Helen. Sometimes I think it's humans who need protecting from themselves."
And well. She couldn't argue with that. Didn't want to. She'd seen too much herself. Been forcibly introduced, so many times, to values placed on lives by arbitrary means, by class or gender or nationality, and she knew. She saw. And she understood James' pain.
"We'll do something now," she said, very quietly. "We'll stop this now, before any other children are lost." A small, hard smile. "Because we can. Because no-one shall stop us. We'll stop this, James."
He smiled, inclined his head in acknowledgement, but there was still fury in his eyes, still some sadness where the smile couldn't reach. "Yes," he said softly, as he turned back to the fire. "But what about the things we can't stop?"
***
He'd been hunting for three nights, now. Three. Superstition, that, but in this world ... He set some store by superstition. Set some store by the old rules, the old games, because he'd seen the darkness, he'd walked in it, and there was room in the shadows for many a dark and tilted view of the world.
Hunting. Three's the charm. Hunting in the shadows, and his prey ... Oh, his prey. Hunters in their turn. He'd felt the trap begin to close. Felt that hunting attention turn, felt the scales between predator and prey sway and balance precariously, the direction of the hunt swinging like a pendulum between forces. Three. Three nights, three hunters, three prey. Three forces. Three's the charm. Don't look back. In the shadows and the darkness, keep your eyes ahead. Three's the chance, no backwards glance.
They never saw him. He followed them in the shadows of the city, through fog and along flagged streets. Under the gaslamps and the werelight of the city against the sky. His hunting ground. His delight. And they ran ahead of him. Hunting in their turn. Not looking back. Never realising. Never seeing. No-one ever saw them. Not in time. No-one ever saw.
***
"Of course!"
Helen sat up, rubbing her eyes wearily, and looked over at James, the detective leaping up from a study of one of her father's notebooks and moving towards the shelf. Searching for something, buzzing with that strange energy that came with discovery for James, that came with inspiration. As bad as herself or Nikola, sometimes. As impatient, too, ignoring her querying look in favour of pulling half a shelf down on himself, shoving leather-bound tomes out of the way in search of his goal.
Helen stooped behind him to pick up one of the books, looking for some idea of where he was searching, since he didn't seem inclined to answer in words just yet. She frowned down at the Bradshaw in confusion. James was looking, not at her father's journals, or the collections of folktales they'd previously been searching, looking at the childsnatchers of legend. James was looking at London. At railway timetables, and maps, casting them aside, searching ...
"Aha!" He plucked free one of the older volumns, one of his own, as a matter of fact. A treatise on behalf of some criminalist, if she remembered rightly. Discussing the secret ways through London ...
"James?" she asked eventually, a little impatiently, watching him flick through the book. "Would you like to explain what you've found? Or at least what you're looking for ...?"
"Water," he said, looking up at her with distracted, intense eyes. "I knew there was something about the missing children that caught my eye ... I just couldn't remember what it was, where I'd seen it before ..."
Helen blinked at him, frowning curiously. "And you think that something is ... water?" She was somewhat baffled, she did admit. It had indeed been raining some of the nights the children had gone missing, at least as far as those responsible for them remembered their going missing (Helen clenched her teeth a little, at the thought), but not all. She didn't quite see ...
"Not water," James looked up, properly now, having found what he was looking for. He held out the book, pointing to a plate showing a map of London, cut through with faint lines denoting ... Helen frowned, looking closer. It looked like a map of the rail, except the locations were wrong. And then she saw the key ... "Waterways," James said quietly, voice humming with the excitement of discovery. "All the abductions happened over the submerged waterways of London. The sewers, the submerged rivers. Look. Here, and here ... and the fourth girl here, over the Tyburn ..."
"Water," Helen murmured, feeling something niggling at the back of her mind, some memory of something, in one of the journals she'd been reading, some child-snatcher ... "James! Oh, Heavens, James ..." She ran back to the table, with him close behind her, pushing papers out of the way, searching for, unearthing ... "Here! A snatcher of naughty children, usually said to live near ponds or water."
"Rawhead and Bloodybones," James read, softly. Found the rhyme, traced it with his finger, reading it out in distant, morbid fascination.
"Rawhead and Bloody-Bones
Steals naughty children from their homes,
Takes them to his dirty den,
And they are never seen again."
He looked up at her, and she knew the dismay in his features matched her own. No creature who stole children had good intentions, human or abnormal, but at least with some of them ... But Rawhead was a hobgoblin. A subspecies renowned for seeing humans as ... well, food. As prey. And the name was only partly from the creature's appearance, only partly caused by the raw-red, skeletal look of the thing.
It also came from the descriptions of what was left of Rawhead's meals. Of the remains of the children he'd stolen. Bloody bones, and little else. Bloody bones, and nothing more.
"We won't be rescuing any of them, will we?" James asked her softly, but they both knew the answer. They both knew what they faced, now.
***
The humans were hunting him. For the third night in a row. Hunting him, stalking him, dogging his footsteps as he dogged those of his little children, his little prey. Closing around him. Waiting from him to look behind, once, twice. Thrice and then. But he wouldn't. He won't. Not for them. Not for humans, no right to be hunting him. Small. Weak. Not the smallest, not the weakest, not sweet like the naughty little things that ran from the sound of his footsteps. But still too weak to hunt him. Still too weak to have the right.
So he hunted them in return. Not children, not younglings. Not small and sweet and meat. But his prey, nonetheless. His despite it, walking with their hard footsteps over his rivers, over his pools, over his hunting grounds. Tracking through his places, through his world, with their smell and their fire and their hard, hard eyes. Guarding the little ones against him. Hunting for his home. Hunting for his lair, and all the bloody little bones that crunch-crunched beneath him as he slept.
Well, they couldn't have them. Naughty things, peeking through the cracks in the door, looking for things that weren't theirs to see. No. No, no, no. Not for them. Not now. No right to hunt him. No right to see. He'd show them. He'd stop them.
He had the male, now. He had the man, with those bright eyes, peering into the shadows, seeing things he shouldn't. Such a hunter, this human. More than a human should be. Saw too much. Not Rawhead. Never him, hiding in the shadows, invisible until the third glance behind. Only the third glance, shot in fear across the shoulder, and the man was looking forwards. A hunter, not prey. Looking ahead and not behind.
But that could change. That would change. With the footsteps in the shadows, the heavy tread in the darkness at their back. Like all the naughty children. Like all the little boys and girls, in the darkness where they shouldn't be, watching for the monsters they can't see.
Heavy feet, thunder at his back. Thunder for the hunter, for the human daring to step into the darkness and the monster's world. Thunder at his back, always at his back, though he turned and turned, always trying to look ahead. Always trying not to look behind. Because the human knew. But not enough. Not enough.
Once. One glance, cast across the shoulder. One look behind, and he laughed in the darkness at the human's back. One for one. Wait for three. Wait for me.
The man was moving towards the other human, now. Streets away, wanting someone at his back. Someone to look ahead, and make it not behind. But too far. Too far. Rawhead was hunting now. Rawhead was angry, now. Making him turn and turn, circling, confusing. Cutting him off. Keeping him away, keeping him above the water. Making him turn and turn, and then ...
Twice. Twice behind, to find the monster in the dark. One and two, I'm coming for you. One and two, and just once more, and I'll be standing at your door.
The human ran. The man ran, pointed himself at his companion, streets away, and simply ran. Trying to ignore the footsteps, the tread, keeping his searching eyes all fixed ahead. Too late. Too late. Instinct, now. The animal creeping in the man's mind, the thing that had been prey before it had hunted, the thing that remembered the darkness. The thing that remembered the fall, and the blood, and the footsteps in the darkness. The man wanted to look back, now. The animal inside him wanted to look back. Had to. And now ...
A stumble. A fall, almost, so close. The human stumbled, staggered, and could not help himself. Could not stop himself.
The human looked behind. One. Two. Three. Now you see.
***
The creature appeared from nowhere. Appeared from behind whatever veil had hidden it from view, suddenly there, suddenly real, in a way that was so achingly familiar. A way that reminded him, so achingly, of all that had gone before. But he had no time for that, now. No time at all, when beyond the sudden looming of the boogeyman ...
James looked up at him. Met his eyes from his crouch beneath the sweep of the monster's arm, that same piercing gaze that he so remembered, so hated, so missed. James looked up at him, eyes widening in shock and fury, even as he fell, even as he pulled his gun and discharged it at the creature between them, as much to alert Helen as anything else. James stared at him as he fell, and John felt his lips peel back in something that could not, in good conscience, be called a smile.
The hunt had finally come to its close. The hunters had finally come together. The pendulum had finally swung full circle, had finally settled back to the true hunter in this game, and John had no time for James. No time for the hunter, when what he wanted was the prey. When what he wanted was the monster.
Laughing, snarling, the knife in his hand, he caught the creature's arm. Felt his hand slip-slide along raw flesh, dark and smooth, red before the knife ever found its home. Raw. Rawhead, and Bloodybones. John knew the stories. Knew the monster. Abnormal, as Helen would call it. Perhaps criminal, as far as James was concerned. John didn't care about that now.
He smiled into Rawhead's face, smiled into the animal knowing in dark eyes, one monster to another, one hunter to another, and raised the knife so darkly gleaming as the rush of teleportation caught them both.
Monster, monster, in the dark. You've hunted what was not yours. You've hunted what was mine. And that, I cannot allow. That, I cannot endure.
Come, Rawhead. Come, hobgoblin. Come, boogeyman. See what monsters humans be. Come Bloodybones, and dance with me.
***
Helen watched James carefully. Watched him as he stood by the fireplace, braced against the mantlepiece, his back stiff with rage. She put the decanter down again, but this time, too late. This time, a glass lay beside his hand, a little further back from the edge than James himself, and it was too late for alcohol to blunt his fury. Too late for brandy to calm him down.
She couldn't blame him.
"It's been two weeks," she said, softly. Carefully. "There have been no more ... They haven't reported any more children missing. At least, that they know of. James ..."
"He killed it," James said softly. "I know, Helen. I knew the moment I saw him. John always was ... John was always possessive." He laughed, short and sharp, and far from happy. Far from calm. "Why should he let another monster hunt in his streets? Why should he share the bloodshed?"
She didn't answer. Stayed silent, nursing the hollow ache inside her own chest, nursing the darkness and the pain and the rage, and watching the vicious stiffness of James' back. Watching everything she felt be echoed out in turn, playing over the form of a man she loved as a brother, a man she knew felt her pain as his own.
"What if the last one had been still alive?" James asked, tight and controlled, as if afraid to let the darkness slip free in his voice. "What if the last child ... He took our chance, Helen. He took away any chance, however ... however slim. He didn't kill it because it was the right thing to do. He didn't consider the victims, didn't consider that there might still be a chance ... He killed it because he likes killing. He killed it because ..."
Because it threatened us. Helen heard it, though James didn't say it aloud. Couldn't bear to say it aloud. John had killed Rawhead because Rawhead had threatened James, threatened Helen, and John ... John had always been possessive. John had always turned aside anything that threatened them, had always stood in front of them. And even now ... Even now. John stood in front of them, and killed what came for them. Because John thought they were his. Because John was a killer.
On second thoughts, Helen picked up the decanter again. Not for James. Oh no. Not for James. For her, and she didn't even bother with a glass. The crystal was heavy, achingly so, and the brandy burned, but Helen didn't care. Helen didn't care.
What lines did John draw? What lines did they draw? Perhaps the child had already been dead, long before they ever started the hunt. All the sources, the stories ... There was every chance the child had already been dead, long before she and James started their hunt, long before John stepped in and robbed them of the chance to be sure. It was likely, more than likely, that the child had already been dead.
But that was cold comfort. Such cold comfort. Because Helen had seen the monster. From the top of the street, Helen had seen the monster, rising over James, seen the arm reach out to cut him down, and then John ...
Cold comfort, that most probably there had never been a chance. Because even if there had been, in that moment ... Helen had watched John step in to save James' life, had watched John smile above a knife and steal the monster away, and she had been grateful. For a moment, for one searing moment, she had not cared for dead children, only that John, in that instant, had saved her friend, a man she dearly loved. Only that John had stepped in, and kept James from dying.
Where did they draw their lines? Like John, like the foolish men who waited for so many children to die before they moved. What lives did she value, and who would she sell to keep them safe? Who would she let fall, to keep these men by her side?
And was she any different for it, any different from the men and monsters of the world?
She looked at James, at the stiff lines of his back, the anger in his motions, the despair, turned against himself as much as John. Turned inward, because maybe James, for one moment, had been grateful too. She looked at James, and down at her hands, down at her self. Were they any different. Were any of them any different, or had she made them monsters, one and all, one night ten years ago.
Staring into the darkness behind the fire, into the shadows where monsters lurked, Helen realised she didn't know.
She didn't know.
Tags: