The Digging Leviathan by James P. Blaylock

Author:James P. Blaylock [Blaylock, James P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780575117587
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton

Roycroft Squires read a collapsed copy of Doom for the sixth time. He was coming up to his favorite chapter, the one in which Lord Ottercove’s car sprouts wings and clears the roofs of Fleet Street houses, “flying Piccadillyward.” There was just enough science in the novel to satisfy him. He took a reflective sip at a cup of coffee, grown half cold from neglect, and jotted a note concerning mortality in the margin, shaking his head in contemplation. There was a knock at the door. Squires frowned. No one with any sense knocked at his door before noon. It was probably Jehovah’s Witnesses, come round to insist that he was all wet regarding Christmas. He’d be firm with them. Perhaps they’d take a dime for their magazine and leave him alone.

But it wasn’t Witnesses at the door, it was the eight-year-old neighbor boy, clutching a twisted paper in his hand. “Please, sir,” he said apologetically, frightened, no doubt, at Squires’ furrowed brow, “this is for you.”

“For me is it?” said Squires, nodding seriously. “What is it?”

“It came up out of the street, sir,” said the boy. “There were no end to them.” He emptied out a pocketful of notes, each one twisted into a little cylinder as if they had been shoved through a hole. Squires was puzzled, but was sure that the notes had something to do with Edward St. Ives and his strange affairs. He gave the boy a fifty-cent piece and sent him off overwhelmed, then spread the notes out over his coffee table. There were eight in all.

Written on each were the words, “Take this message to the home of Roycroft Squires, 210 East Rexroth.” One of them followed the request with the word “please,” another with “immediately,” another with “for the love of God!” as if having been written in states of increasing desperation. On the other side of each was the puzzling sentence, “Be on hand at six p.m. beneath the carob tree. Look sharp. W.H.”

“W.H.?” asked Squires aloud. He puzzled over it for a moment, wondering if he was the intended victim of some childhood prank, if a gang of neighborhood boys was setting him up. W.H.? William Hastings! Of course. Who else? But what did it mean, wondered Squires, that the notes had come out of the street? That didn’t sound entirely likely. He drew the blinds in the big arched window in the front wall of his house, looking out past the carob tree under which he’d been asked to stand. To his amazement a little cylinder of paper appeared through the manhole cover in the center of the street and blew merrily away in the breeze. The boy from next door charged after the wonderful missive.

It was puzzling. William Hastings—for it had to be he—was hiding in the sewer. There was no getting round it. Why he didn’t just shove his way out into daylight was worth speculating on, but Squires couldn’t think of a suitable answer. He took

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