The two friends stood trembling in the middle of the wildly pitching boat, looking at the dark water with dread anticipation.
Silence.
A few stray bubbles. And then nothing.
“I struck it two good blows about the head,” Conan Doyle said. “Surely it’s done for—”
There was a tremendous crash and a seismic shudder as something drove up through the rotten timbers of the hull and a hand clamped upon Conan Doyle’s ankle with a bone-crushing grip. Water gushed into the boat through the hole.
Conan Doyle shouted with pain and tried to prise the fingers loose, but the iron grip was unbreakable. “Oscar, it has me!”
Wilde snatched up the dropped oar and swung at the monster’s hand. The blade missed, smashing into Conan Doyle’s shin, making him bellow with pain.
The heavy boat began to rapidly fill with water and Conan Doyle knew it would soon sink.
“We’re sinking, Oscar. It will likely let go of me once we go under. You must swim for it. Cast off your coat, it will only drag you down.”
“My coat? This coat? Never!”
“Don’t be a fool man! Don’t drown for the sake of vanity!”
“I can think of no nobler cause to die for!”
“Get ready to jump and remember to keep your mouth closed. The river here is rank with every form of filth and poison.”
“I shall be sure to keep your sage advice in mind whilst I am drowning.”
Conan Doyle and Wilde continued to grapple and pull at the monster’s fingers, but its death-grip was inhuman.
Soon, black Thames water surged over the gunwales and the boat filled with water. At the last second, Wilde leapt and struggled to swim away from the sinking boat. He looked back to see Conan Doyle’s agonized face as the boat dragged him beneath the water. Huge bubbles erupted for long moments, gradually thinning to a trickle, and finally stopped.
Wilde was suddenly and terribly alone in the water. Conan Doyle had drowned.
The water was stunningly cold. The Irishman flailed toward the shore but the heavy coat billowed out behind like a sea anchor, pulling him under. Reluctantly, he opened his arms, shrugged his shoulders and let the river take the coat. Wilde had not been completely honest: he could swim after a fashion. After ten minutes of flailing and splashing he slogged up from the river onto the mud and vomited up a gutful of vile water before collapsing to gag and choke.
“Arthur,” he wheezed, lying in a waterlogged puddle. “My poor dear friend. Oh, Arthur.”
He had been lying there, gathering himself for several minutes, when he heard a splash. He raised his dripping head from the muck and looked back at the river. To his amazement, something glimmered on the surface, a foaming of bubbles. And then he saw the head of a swimmer break the surface.
Wilde clambered unsteadily to his feet. The swimmer was moving slowly, methodically toward shore. But was it man or monster?
“Arthur?” he called out, both hopeful and fearful lest it not be. The swimming shape drew closer. “Arthur! Is that you? Please be you. It looks like you. Follow my voice! This way! Keep swimming! You can do it!”
The swimmer came on in a slow but steady breaststroke. The bobbing head intermittently vanishing as it sank and rose, sank and rose. But then Wilde suddenly had his doubts. He stopped calling. Took several nervous steps away from the water. By now the swimmer had reached the shallows and a sodden human figure dragged itself upright, water streaming from its clothes.
“Arthur… is that you? Please, say something.”
The shadowy figure staggered up from the reeking Thames and onto the muddy shore in a series of lurching steps and collapsed at Wilde’s feet. Although barely recognizable, his hair matted with riverweed and filth, it was, indeed, Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Arthur!” Wilde said, falling to his knees and embracing his friend. “I feared you had drowned. The monster had you in its grip. How did you escape?”
Breathless and gasping, Conan Doyle opened his hand to reveal a tiny silver pocketknife. “My father gave me this on my tenth birthday. I keep it in my pocket at all times. It is very sharp. I held my breath as the boat went under. Then my knowledge of anatomy served me well. I reached down and, by feel alone, severed the tendons of the creature’s fingers one-by-one. Even a monster with tremendous strength must have tendons to grip something. As I cut through the last tendon, the grip went slack. I broke free and floated to the surface, though I was on my last breath.”
“Well done, Arthur. You have destroyed it.”
Conan Doyle looked at his friend with sudden concern. “No, Oscar, I did not destroy it. The monster’s arm was thrust through the timbers of the hull. I assumed the heavy boat dragged it to the bottom of the Thames.”
“Then it’s not dead?”
Both men looked up at the sound of splashing. The monster had also swum to shore, and now it stood up in the shallows, water sluicing from the ragged clothing. It paused a moment, as if gathering its dreadful inertia, and then shambled up the beach toward them.
“Apparently not,” Conan Doyle said, dragging himself to his feet. He looked about for a weapon and snatched up a heavy lump of waterlogged driftwood and ran down to meet it, shouting a kind of battle cry. As the creature came sloshing up from the water, the Scotsman swung with all his might and brought the driftwood club crashing down on its head with a mighty thud. Vertebrae cracked, kinking the head upon its neck and staggering the monster. But then it snarled and lunged at Conan Doyle, grabbing him by the coat front and flinging him away a dozen feet. He crashed heavily to the ground driving the air from his lungs, momentarily stunning him. Before he could recover, the monster was upon him. One hand clamped about his throat and began to squeeze. The second hand fumbled to gain a grip, but the severed tendons had rendered the flapping fingers useless. Still the grip of the monster’s single hand was crushing and Conan Doyle found himself being throttled to death.
WHACK! Wilde had recovered the chunk of driftwood and brought it down upon the monster’s head. The blow would have killed a living man, but the creature scarcely noticed. Conan Doyle’s face purpled as the relentless grip tightened and he struggled vainly to pry loose the fingers.
“Oscar!” he wheezed in a strangulated voice. “Hit him!”
THWACK! Wilde’s club came down again, crunching vertebrae, kinking the monster’s neck in the opposite direction.
Conan Doyle was gargling up froth. His vision began to darken and his fingers grew clumsy as his oxygen-starved brain began to sink into oblivion.
THUD! Wilde brought the club down a third time and the chunk of driftwood broke in two. The Irishman looked around and despaired. The foreshore was barren, with nothing left to use as a weapon.
Conan Doyle’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. The world began to recede down a dark tunnel. A hundred miles away, his hands flailed uselessly.
Suddenly Wilde thrust something in front of the monster’s face. The creature froze. A convulsion shook the large frame. The grip loosened as the fingers relaxed their hold on Conan Doyle’s throat. It snatched the object from Wilde’s hand, rose stiffly, and stood cradling the thing in its hands, brows hunched stupidly as it studied the object. And then the face grew soft. The posture slackened. The monster threw back its head, opened its mouth, and released a mournful cry of utter desolation.
Conan Doyle struggled to sit up, choking for air. He looked from the monster to Wilde in amazement.
“What…” he asked in a ruined voice “… what did you do, Oscar?”
“I showed it the photograph of Vicente’s sister. Apparently, it still retains some human memories.”