The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble (4 page)

‘This is barbaric,' Peter barked.

‘Nonsense! His wife hath been murdered, he had sunk into an irretrievable slump. I brought him back from that… I am The Curer.'

‘You hast not brought the committer of his wife's murder to justice.'

‘Tis immaterial.' Darren yawned, checking his pocket watch. ‘Oh Peter, you are such a bore.'

‘Better to be a bore than a petty crook,' Peter snapped back.

‘Is it? Is it really?' Darren mused, half rhetorically, as he strolled away tapping his chin. This broke Hobble from his grip, and he got back on his feet.

‘Come, my men, and I shall show you where Mimsie's murder occurred,' he said to them excitedly, as if the incident with Darren had never happened.

As they made their way towards the exit, Peter's attention was drawn to a minuscule brownish stain on the stone floor. There lay a door to one side, and vague images of a bloodied figure first emerging from it and then scrubbing furiously at the floor with a moist rag briefly flashed through his mind.

The vast garden to the rear of the property was just as Peter and Stephen had seen it in their vision; save for the dead body, which had now been removed and disposed of. Thick wisteria clung for dear life to a rotting pergola structure which separated the weedy stoned area from the mossy lawn beyond. Acres and acres of overgrown trees and hedging filled the rest of their view.

‘And you say somebody emerged from the trees and just attacked your wife?' Stephen asked. It was now that Hobble's jovial demeanour soured.

‘Oh Mimsie!' he sobbed, dashing to a patch of lawn and dropping to his knees in despair. He rubbed his hands on the moist grass, bringing his hands back to his face to sniff them. ‘She was here, enjoying the fresh scent of our glorious natural world. I looked once and she was alive and happy, I looked again and she was strewn asunder with her beautiful thick neck cut clean in two.' He looked into the trees. ‘I saw a figure shoot off in that direction carrying two sagging meaty lumps that were once her breasts, never to be seen again.'

‘He went off in that direction, but he need not have necessarily come from that direction,' Stephen remarked.

‘I did not see him arrive, no.'

‘He may not be a he at all,' Peter thought out loud. ‘This could be the work of a woman.'

‘I am sure it was a man, though his features and clothing were ambiguous in the fractured haze.'

‘Are you absolutely sure that he went off that way,' Peter questioned, pondering upon the stain inside, ‘and not into the house?'

‘Indeed. Tis I who darted in that direction to raise the alarm. I had my poor wife's blood all over my person after cradling her – it went everywhere.'

Peter could now see that the bloodied figure was indeed Hobble – he was weeping, whining about who could do this awful thing to his beloved. So distraught was he at the sight of his wife's innards now splashed haphazardly about the place – from his own hands, clothing and shoes – that he manically tore his shirt off and sought to polish them away with it.

‘These murders plaguing Myrtleville,' Stephen sighed, ‘always women of a certain age, always out in the open, and always some body part removed. They are wicked crimes.'

‘Women are not safe to sit in their gardens, let alone walk the streets,' Hobble sniffled. ‘I shall keep dear Willemina under lock and key from now on.'

‘That would be a terrible shame for one so pretty,' Stephen chirped.

Hobble got up and rushed back to the men. ‘Are you wealthy, my boy?' he asked Stephen with more than a hint of desperation.

‘I may be, why?'

‘If my daughter's hand is to be offered in marriage, then I must know it is not to a man so simply after the Hobble fortune.' He clasped Stephen's hand, and instantly there was the sense that the Hobble fortune was not as vast as was being made out. Stephen and Peter both eyed each other, having been delivered the same impression.

‘The Hobble fortune,' Peter uttered, stroking the downy whiskers of his sideburns, ‘I hear it hast diminished.'

‘What?' Hobble sneered, pulling his hand from Stephen and pointing it at Peter. ‘Where did you hear that from? Lies! Sheer lies!'

‘We heard it from you,' Peter said with some glee.

‘From your own mind,' Stephen added.

‘But how?' Hobble fumbled, stumbling back. ‘Sorcery!'

‘By using our skills – skills which will aid in the capture of your wife's slayer,' Peter promised.

Hobble paced around, variously rubbing at his face and pulling at his baggy gown. Darren emerged from within the house and stood watch. ‘You will be rewarded well if you can achieve such a feat,' Hobble committed, catching sight of Darren.

‘I would like an official introduction to your delightful daughter Willemina, Mr Hobble,' Stephen asked.

‘Of course, of course; come hence and it shall occur at once.'

The two men marched back into the house as Peter stepped onto the lawn and approached the scene of the crime. Darren lingered behind him as he closed his eyes and sniffed the air.

‘What are you doing, you fool?' Darren laughed.

‘I am reaching out to The Space for assistance in solving these murders.'

‘Good luck with that,' Darren scoffed. ‘Have you ever even asked yourself
why
The Space did what It did?'

‘Why It gave us eternal life after life? Yes, I have. It is one of the only questions I cannot seem to be able to put to The Space.'

‘You forget, Peter, you forget about that very first time It opened up to us – we never asked the where, why or how – we just went blindly into Its embrace.' Darren came closer to him… too close.

‘What are you saying – I sense you do not trust The Space?'

‘It aids us with ease in taking coin from Hobble, but struggles to bring up a suitable face for the crime committed against his wife.' Darren's face seemed to change, as though he was a new man entirely – not new, but so very different and afraid. ‘It supports our endeavours toward ill, yet not our works of good.'

‘It is not like that,' Peter yelled in frustration. ‘Tis our own minds which are the evil, not The Space. What It reveals to us is a mere reflection of ourselves.'

‘In that case, my drive for monetary gain is that much more potent than your desire to put right that which is wrong,' Darren smirked, turning and strolling away.

He had a point. Peter stepped up to the house and sought out his reflection in the glass of a window – he felt then that he couldn't see himself. He was seeing a man that looked like him, yes, but not
him
. It was a difficult emotion to unravel and get to grips with… he was struggling to recognise this Peter Smith, a person he had been time and time again. The vivid memories were still there – Mother burning alive, The Space first allowing him to reach out to It – but he could no longer fully connect with them. He was an outsider, just looking in on someone else's lives. And yet, here he was
living
this life right now and staring at his genuine reflection. Darren's spin on their role in the world was tainted, and Peter now put his own current peculiar mood down to that.

* * *

Lock Lane Inn was a veritable feast of life at this time of an evening. That blindingly fierce ale would help even the most hardened cynic loosen their woes for a brief interlude of unabated merriment. This is exactly what Peter and Stephen now sought – simple, unashamed happiness. They moved briskly through the thick cloud of pipe smoke and landed at the bar, where a half-hunched bald man with a blister-covered face greeted them.

‘Gentlemen,' he shouted above the racket in the room, pouring two pints of the only drink served in this place. Peter got his purse out to pay the man, but he shook his head. ‘The money of a dead man is no good here.'

‘What do you mean?' Peter asked, bemused, albeit quietly pleased at the free drinks. He was too tired to be on his game with The Space and try to peer inside the barman's mind for the answer.

‘That Aubrey and his two minions were in here singing sad songs of your impending departure. A mere eight days left for dear Peter Smith.' He started crying, in a half-hearted sort of way, and didn't bother wiping away his tears. ‘You will never know what it is to be old like me.'

Peter had lived thrice over, the first two times with only the same set of years. This third life was destined to end the same with just days to go. He never would learn the reality of old age – the privilege of singular longevity.

‘Tis very sad,' Stephen consoled, putting his arm around Peter's shoulders as he brought his tankard to his lips. ‘Very sad indeed.'

‘I am not sad,' Peter replied stoically. ‘I welcome inevitability – the end of this set of years. They haven't been the most interesting.' He grinned at the barman, who squinted back in confusion. ‘I do hope I forget who I am next time around… I hope we all forget. At least that way there will be some respite from this drudgery.'

‘He is delirious with his sickness,' the barman wept.

‘Far from it – I have never been more focused in all my lives. And for now, I have the motivation of bringing to justice the murderer of these defenceless women.'

‘Tis a plague on Myrtleville,' Stephen responded with sadness.

‘Aye,' the barman cut in, ‘or, as Lissy calls it, the culling.'

‘The culling?' Peter questioned. ‘Rather an odd way of putting it.'

‘Almost like this Lissy thinks these murders a necessary occurrence,' Stephen added.

‘This isn't old Eric Lissy, is it? Where can we find him this eve?'

‘Him?' the barman laughed, which turned into a pained cough. ‘You can find
Molly
Lissy right over there.' He pointed to the farthest point of the room, from where most of the frivolous noise was emanating, and stayed put to enjoy the impending scene.

‘No, it can't be,' Peter gasped as he caught sight of a young woman standing on a table and swooshing her dress about. ‘That's not Eric Lissy's little girl, is it?'

‘Not so little any longer,' the barman chipped in, full of mirth. ‘One of my best customers.'

Peter and Stephen briskly moved towards her, catching sight of her long bare legs as they danced about before their eyes.

‘She is a delight to my vision,' Stephen uttered, taking in her long curly red hair and chubby freckled cheeks.

‘I thought you were already taken with Willemina Hobble?'

‘Tis advisable to keep your options open, my friend.'

Rather too distracted, Stephen now bumped into a particularly bulky man, knocking the drink from his hand. Stephen, still safely clasping his own drink, took a large gulp from it and smiled back as the big man froze in shock. His eyes, which had been so happily fixed on Molly as he and the other lecherous men had ogled her, slowly moved to look down on Stephen. Look down they did, for this beast of a creature stood a good foot taller than he. Stephen was not a small man by any means – far from it, in fact – it just so happened that this creature had been built with no height restrictions in place. Before he could react, Stephen had the man's bear claw around his neck and he was squeezing the life out of him. Confident he could not die before his time, neither Stephen nor Peter did anything about this attack. Angered at the removal of the attention from herself, Molly dropped her skirt and snatched a glass from another man's hand, which she brought crashing down on the hefty's head. Instantly he let go of Stephen and momentarily stumbled around in a daze, before his swelled frame came crashing down with an almighty thud. Overcome with some unearthly thrill, Molly roared as she jumped down off the table and landed on the unconscious man's back. She jumped up and down on him as the rest of her gathering goaded her on.

‘Who are you two little weeds, then?' she shouted out to the new arrivals. Peter and Stephen looked at each other in dismay. Before they could answer, her feet came slamming onto the floor as they left the man's back, and she skipped off towards the bar. There, the barman poured her a drink, which she downed in one go. Rubbing her moist mouth, and shaking some spillage off her top, she turned to Peter and Stephen. ‘What are you after, a good hiding like Davy over there? Some men enjoy a good spanking from a strong woman.' She leant in and winked.

‘We're here about the murders,' Peter called back over the din. Suddenly, Molly's carefree demeanour soured. She stood there, rigid, staring intently back at the two men. Slamming her empty glass down on the bar, she growled. The barman filled it up again and it barely touched the sides of her mouth as she gulped it down.

‘We hear you're calling these murders the culling,' Stephen added.

She grabbed the pair and dragged them across the Inn and out through the door. Before they knew it, they were in the ditch across the lane with Molly on top of them. ‘Shh,' she whispered, placing a finger each to both man's lips. ‘You can never be too careful who's listening in.'

‘What do you mean?' Peter whispered back.

‘There are wicked people all over Myrtleville – not one of us can drop our guard,' she said fearfully, getting closer to the men. They did not complain. Peter, in particular, felt his heart racing as her bosom pressed up against his own chest. He at that very moment wished Stephen was not with them – that he and Molly were alone and free to do as they wished… or as he wished. Alas, Stephen
was
there and he could read Peter like a book. Literally, for a simple stretch in the right direction gave him grace to leap right into Peter's mind and hear his thoughts.

‘You are safe with us,' Stephen called out, rather too loudly, breaking the physical contact of the two and delivering more pressure from Molly's finger against his lips. ‘Your hands are coarse for a girl your age,' he carried on, taking hold of them and rubbing the palms. ‘They have seen much work, I would not impugn. Yet, they are equally as tender – I would have them explore my flesh at the drop of a hat.' His face creased as he eyed the young girl seedily. Peter rolled his eyes and felt a bit queasy. Still, he himself had only just had thoughts of that very nature regarding Molly.