“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said the Time Traveler.
Burton smiled. “No, I don’t suppose you do. Don’t worry, old friend. I’ll get you up to speed as best I can. Let’s go inside your little hut there and have a drink.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any spirits.”
“I suspected as much,” said Burton with a grin. “That’s why I brought my own.”
He produced a small bottle of brandy from his back pocket and showed it to the Time Traveler. The amber liquid burned gold in the early morning sunlight that had just begun to peek over the horizon.
“Well, come inside, then,” said the Time Traveler. “It appears you and I have much to discuss.”
2. Under London
“Thank you for accompanying me, Captain Burton,” said Detective Inspector Frederick George Abberline. “I know you are under no such compunction to do so. This isn’t Shadow Council business.”
“Think nothing of it, my friend,” said the explorer as he held the lantern steady so the policeman could do his work. “When you said there was a cannibal on the loose, I couldn’t resist. The grisly practice has long been an interest of mine.”
Abberline ceased his labors and turned to glare askance at the explorer.
Burton laughed. “Not as a participant, old friend, but as an observer. Though now that I say that I suppose that doesn’t sound much better.”
“You have some strange hobbies, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, Captain. But what do I know? I’m just a simple copper.”
Abberline redoubled his efforts on the brickwork, inserting his pry bar into the small crevice and pulling the implement toward him. There was indeed a door here;.Abberline’s unusual informant, the famous novelist and protege of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, had reportedly escaped from what he described as an underground chamber of horrors presided over by monsters. The fact that Mr. Collins had been suffering from severe laudanum withdraw at the time did not make his story any less credible, as there had been similar tales of abduction, monsters in the sewers, and bodies found with signs of human predation.
Abberline gave a final grunt and the secret door opened, blasting them with a cold draft of air.
“What now?” said Burton, heart hammering at the prospect of encountering an actual cannibal. His one regret from his travels in Africa, morbid as it may have been, was that he had never gotten to witness the practice firsthand.
“Now we call my men. I’m not about to go in there just the two of us. You remember what happened the last time we did that.”
Burton nodded, lowering the lantern. “Shoggoths.”
“There are worse things in this world than shoggoths,” said the detective, stepping around Burton and blowing on his whistle. Burton turned as a dozen lanterns bobbed up and down in the darkness as Abberline’s best men lumbered up the hill of the cemetery toward the secret crypt. He looked at the hole, eager to see what was inside.
The whole thing had begun when a half-eaten torso was fished out of the Thames. The city’s coroner examined the remains and determined that, however the poor fellow had died, his body had definitely been gnawed on by human teeth, though from a very small mouth and with strangely pronounced canines. When Wilkie Collins was found wandering the streets, naked and delirious, Abberline called Burton at once, knowing of his interest in cannibalism. Burton had never before seen the man so in his element. He was back to chasing monsters of the human variety, and it clearly suited him. Neither of them had heard anything from Mycroft Holmes in several weeks, and there had been no more shoggoth sightings since that night at the Theosophic Society. This suited Burton just as well, and he and Isabel were once again planning their long- postponed nuptials.
“All right, Captain,” said Abberline. “We’re ready. Just stay by me.”
“Certainly, Frederick. Lead the way, please.”
A dozen policemen, armed with truncheons and lanterns, flooded the opening. Abberline pulled the grate open with a rusty squeal and they entered the dark aperture. Burton had to duck low to keep from bumping his head as he walked hunched over through the tunnel of crumbling brick. The lanterns the coppers were holding swayed with their movements, throwing strange shadows. Burton imagined he was an explorer once again, journeying into a land as strange and exotic as any Persian oasis or African veldt. And it was underneath his feet every day.
The fetid stench of raw sewage reached them as they rounded a slight bend. One of the policemen retched, and Burton had to rush ahead, breathing shallow lest his gorge become buoyant. “Do we even know what we are looking for?” he whispered to Abberline.
“I heard from an anonymous source that people are living down here.”
“Bismillah!” said the explorer. “Truly?”
“Yes. People who can’t even afford to live in the Cauldron.”
“That’s deplorable.”
“And what’s more,” continued the detective, “many of them have reportedly gone missing. But the really strange thing is what they say is taking these people.”
Burton arched an eyebrow. “Do tell.”
“Monsters.”
They heard the sound of rushing water. “Must be one of the underground tributaries of the Thames,” said Abberline. “It’s getting louder.”
Burton nodded. “Yes. Probably the Peck, or perhaps the Effra.”
As they followed the sound, the tunnel opened wider. Up ahead, Burton noticed a vague phosphorescence that illuminated a vast open space. The smell of human waste was overpowering now, and Burton immediately saw why. Lined up along one side of the dark surging river was a row of large metal cages containing dozens of human beings, dirtied and befouled.
“Good Lord!” said Abberline. “Help them. Get them out.”
He stayed back with Burton while the dozen policemen under his authority flooded the space, going to work on the cages as the people inside them called out for help.
“Who could have done this?” Burton grabbed a lantern from one of the policemen and moved it about, inspecting the space. It showed definite signs of habitation, littered with dirty blankets, the rat-chewed remains of food, and even children’s toys. Tucked away in an alcove of moss-laden brick was something even more shocking.
“Frederick, come here, please.”
“Yes, Captain?”
Abberline moved up beside him, his mouth opening in an O of surprise when he saw what was illuminated by Burton’s lantern. A metal table stood there, piled with human remains. The desiccated skin had long ago been flayed open.
Abberline pressed a handkerchief to his face. “Bloody hell! What is this?”
“It looks like an autopsy,” Burton murmured, his mouth suddenly dry. This looked all too familiar. He had been in a room like this, with cages and medical equipment, when he had traveled hundreds of thousands of years into the past aboard Captain Nemo’s Nautilus and was a prisoner of the Elder Things.
“What monster could do this?” Abberline was saying. Burton snapped out of his reverie.
“Morlocks,” said a hunched-over old woman recently freed from one of the cages. “Morlocks,” she said again as if the word should mean something. Burton recalled seeing the word scrawled in one of the tunnels. He had heard the name before, from the fevered rantings of the Time Traveler, Herbert. The woman gave him a crooked-toothed sneer, pointing toward the far end of the opening. “Morlocks.”
Burton understood what she meant. Holding up the lantern he peered into the distance. In a crack in the brickwork he saw what appeared to be a hunched figure. The thing had white hair, fungoid skin, and glowing yellow eyes. Burton didn’t scare easily, but this apparition sent a chill fleeing up his spine. “There. Look!”