Eye of the Crow by Shane Peacock Read Free Book Online

almost deserted. Nearly all the boats are docked: just an odd one floats on the black water. Above the endless crowds of shadowy buildings eerily lit by gas, he can see the dome of St. Paul’s to the west, the evil Tower to the east. That poor woman was murdered at about this hour, down that narrow lane deep in the East End. He shudders to think of being there in the dead of night …
exactly
where he is going.
    London is a dream past midnight: a nightmare. He leans against the bridge’s stone balustrades, feeling terrified, and imagining the desperate people who must inhabit the night. Dim reflections of the bridge’s lamps quiver on the water, and other than the distant blasts of a few steam whistles, it is frighteningly silent. He waits for something to come out of the fog.
    Before long, it does. There are footsteps.
    Someone is emerging in the darkness.
    It is an old woman, dressed in shades of black, her clothes so worn that they seem to be patched together. Her hair hangs in strings, her face is like a mask. Beside her walks a child in a dirty sheet. No, not a child: it is a man, or an animal, dark-faced and about three feet tall, with crude juggling clubs in its hands. She has it by a chain. The hag looks at Sherlock and grins. Then the two figures disappear into the fog, floating, their near-silent steps moving slowly away. He hears the woman laugh. Or is it that thing by her side? It is an animal sound: a hyena’s cry.
    The little hairs stand up on Sherlock’s arms; his flesh is tingling.
    He has to make a choice: go forward or retreat home. He thinks of the school bully sitting on him, telling him he’s helpless. He thinks of the young Arab’s face, the fear in it, of him swinging from a rope on a scaffold in front of a huge crowd outside Newgate Prison. The people are cheering. They hate him. Three weeks and that will be the scene.
    Sherlock steps away from the wall.
    He is going to Whitechapel.
    He walks with trepidation into the old part of the city: more people emerge out of the mists like cast members from dark operas. Their numbers grow as he moves east. Most are as strange as the old woman and her wretched companion: a ghostly parade of grotesque creatures, frail as skeletons, ragged as goats. A moaning, white-haired beggar clings to him for a while. He encounters gentlemen too, drunk aslords, staggering home in fine evening clothes, preyed upon by pickpockets who rob without breaking stride. Women circle on street corners under the hissing lamps, wearing dresses pulled down at the top and turned up at the bottom, red paint on their lips. Farther east they are poorer, older, and dirtier. Some look at the boy and laugh.
    Malefactor is out there somewhere hard at work, stealing his way through life: surviving, providing for his nasty followers.
    It seems to take Sherlock forever to get where he is going. There aren’t as many lights in the East End. He meets fewer people, sees some lying on the footpaths or sitting against black buildings, unable to get lodgings for the night. There are sounds in the mist. Under each dim glow of light, he stops and looks back: just shadows, it seems, and voices like echoes.
    Finally, he finds Old Yard Street, and realizes it has no gas lamps.
    He walks into the darkness; soon the alley appears dimly to his left. He stands still for a moment. Then he turns down it.
    Footsteps behind!
    He swings around. No one. Silence.
    He moves again, his boots sounding like cannons on the cobblestones. The bloodstain is somewhere near. The fog seems very heavy. He drops down on his hands and knees and edges forward, his eyes inches from the ground.
    There it is.
    His fingers are right on the stain. He casts his mind back again. He sees the crows once more at the scene. The picture appears in his mind in two dimensions, as clear as a stereographic view. There they are! One is on the stain, yes, but the other is a carriage length away, near a damp wall. It isn’t pecking like the one on