Human Nature by Jonathan Green

Author:Jonathan Green [Green, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Steampunk, Fantasy, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781905437863
Publisher: Abaddon Books
Published: 2008-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Morning came, it seemed, all too soon, the watery grey light of a dreary dawn oozing across the moors along with the stagnant mists that rose from the peat bogs and waterlogged hollows. Hunter's Lodge having once been precisely that, it had not been a problem finding accommodation for both Ulysses and his manservant, so that each of them was able to have his own room.

Before the three of them had retired for what remained of the night, Jennifer had told both of her gentlemen house guests to feel free to help themselves to anything from her father's wardrobe, to replace that which had been either soiled or ruined during their battles with the Barghest. But she wouldn't enter the old man's room herself. It was all too soon, his death too recent, her loss still too raw. It would take her some time to come to terms with the old man's death, if she could at all.

On rising, Ulysses washed at the basin in the guest room. Peering at himself through bleary, half-closed eyes, he took in all the little nicks and scratches he had sustained battling the beast. There was even a bruise blossoming, like a blue-black carnation, on his cheek under his left eye, but he couldn't actually remember how he had come to sustain such an injury.

He decided that he would look a whole lot better if he shaved and so, finding soap and a brush, set to work, careful not to give himself any further injuries. One last dousing with chill water removed the last of the lather from his face and helped to bring him fully to his senses.

Sleep had come easily to him - exhaustion and alcohol both playing their part - but his slumber had been punctuated by dark dreams of savage dogs and desperate flights across the moors. The moors had given way to the sea and he had found himself at the edge of a cliff, white spume crashing on the black rocks below, like the distended open jaws of a predator. He heard the grunting panting of the black dog bearing down on him and yet he had been unable to take his eyes off the churning, corpse-grey surge of the sea. For there, visible between the rise and fall of the dark waves was a beautiful woman, her naked torso draped with the seaweed that tangled her hair, her pert breasts glistening milky-white against the black waters. He looked from her nakedness to her face and saw Jennifer Haniver staring back at him with anxious eyes, calling to him, her words subsumed beneath the crash of the breakers and the rattling suck of the sea as it retreated, preparing for its next assault on the jagged rocks. And then he could hear her and she was laughing. He watched as Jennifer's skin shrivelled and her hair receded until he was staring into the eyeless face of a mummified monkey. And then, with a flick of its fishy tail, the mermaid was gone.

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