The Baskerville Tales (Short Stories) Read Online Free PDF Page B

flared and flickered with what might have been disgruntlement.
    “What happened?” She wondered what ruined an air deva’s day. “Were you run down by a dirigible? Had a fight with a bird?”
    The flickering grew more intense.
There is wrongness in the world
.
    That was hardly news.
    It hurts us
.
    Evelina frowned. “Something is hurting the devas?”
    Nature has been wronged. Graves are opened. Three, four. One walks
.
    Evelina took a breath to answer, but no words came out. None of what the creature had said made sense—not even enough to know what question to ask. She knew about Tom’s grave, but had there been others? She hadn’t gone into the cemetery that afternoon to see.
    Then something caught her eye.
    There was movement in the middle distance, right where the path to the school forked off from the road down below. Evelina squinted, straining to see against the gathering darkness. Her vantage point from the roof was excellent, but she still doubted what she saw. The figure was bizarre—manlike, but swinging its arms almost like an ape. And it had three arms. She craned her neck as the figure disappeared behind some trees. She waited, and there it was again, making a zigzagging line toward the house.
    “What’s that?” she asked the deva, but then realized it was gone. It must have left the moment the strange figure started to draw near the school.
    Her curiosity grew edged with alarm. Who was this? Her first instinct was to go down toinvestigate, but caution stopped her. Or maybe it was the fact that the third arm the figure was holding was not attached.
    Oh
. A sick, crawly feeling slithered over her. Yes, it was fairly safe to assume something wasn’t right about the visitor. Evelina shrank down against the roof, still watching but now careful to hide. The cool wind cut through the fabric of her dress and brought with it the pungent stink she’d smelled earlier that day. Her gaze fastened on the spare arm, which was glistening with a thick ooze of putrefaction. It looked in even worse shape than the one Mary had delivered.
    The figure was right below her now. Something about him was familiar, but the gait was all wrong and people were hard to recognize just from the top of their heads. And his seemed oddly shaped, almost flat in the back.
    Evelina carefully raised her head, trying to get a better look. The clothes looked rumpled, but were a gentleman’s cut. The figure wore no hat or gloves but, taking into account the fact he was carting around a rotting arm, he obviously subscribed to different standards than most of Society.
    Mesmerized, Evelina watched as he approached the school. The odd, sidling gait made it hard to guess his intended direction, but he eventually came to a halt in front of the parlor windows. Everyone now would be in the dining hall, but a lamp had been left burning. The light filtered through the drawn curtains, casting the figure into stark relief. Evelina saw him reach up, fingering the edges of the casement windows and making an odd snuffling noise. It grew to frustrated grunts as the fingers clawed with increasing force, trying to open the window.
    Evelina’s mouth hung open, a soul-deep horror nailing her to the roof. She couldn’t move now if she wanted to. What was this creature? Man? Animal? A lunatic escaped from some attic, out to terrorize the countryside?
    And then she saw it raise the dead arm it held, grasping the elbow and carefully peeling back the rotting fabric from the shoulder joint. And then it bit down, slurping a mouthful of gelatinous rot from the flesh.
    Without warning, Evelina heaved, upchucking everything she’d eaten that day and perhaps that month. She spit, the sourness flooding her mouth nearly making her retch again. She blinked her streaming eyes, trying to pull the world back into focus.
    She found her handkerchief just in time to stifle a scream. The thing had looked up, searching for the source of the awful gagging sounds she’d just