The Claws of Evil - By Andrew Beasley Page 0,5

boys he knew; older than his years. His eyes were big and blue, though they often looked tired, and his teeth were all fairly white, which was something to boast about. But the thing that made him stand out from the crowd was his hair: a mane of red-gold that some said made him look like a lion. Others said that redheads were full of anger and bad news. Ben denied this fervently. Mind you, anyone who found it funny to call him “carrots” would get a thick lip for their efforts as quick as they could blink.

Aching with cold, Ben turned up the collar of his coat and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. Though he would never admit it, he couldn’t shake the memories of Skinners Lane. He needed something to distract himself and so he pointed his feet in the direction of the Jolly Tar public house. There was a man there that he needed to see.

It was never quiet near the London Docks and as he got closer to the inn, he took comfort in the presence of the burly coal whippers, ballast-heavers, sailmakers and watermen, all brushing shoulders. And then the boys like himself, causing mischief and getting in the way; mudlarks, chancers and thieves. And me the biggest chancer of them all, thought Ben.

He picked up his step as the Jolly Tar came in sight. This was where he always came when he needed to escape from the harsh realities of his life.

Because this was where he would find old Jago Moon.

Bones.

In trays. In cases. Beneath glass. Each one scrutinized, identified, listed, labelled and annotated. The elongated claws of burrowing mammals, the massive thigh of a great cat, the horn of a narwhal, the jaws of a Nile crocodile. The ivory of the ages, all the flesh stripped away. One entire wall was devoted to craniums and brain cases: a wall of skulls. No eyes in their sockets, no tongues in their mouths, but teeth aplenty, and even the most dim-witted idiot to come stumbling in through the door, broom in hand, could imagine that the beasts were living still. Living and breathing and snarling. And feeding.

There were no windows in this room and the only light came from a flickering oil lamp on the desk, feeding the shadows that lurked in the corners and grew fat. If the man seated there alone was in the least bit troubled by his surroundings, he didn’t show it. In fact the opposite appeared to be true; here was a man who seemed entirely at home in this catacomb, surrounded only by the remnants of the dead.

What are we anyway, thought Professor James Carter, if not fragile flesh hung upon a tree of bones?

Professor Carter examined the tray of bones before him. They purported to be the fingers of martyrs and saints. He snorted at the idea; he had never found any man worthy of the title. He chose one at random and brought it close to his eye. Did you perform miracles while you lived? he wondered. Dismissively, he tossed it back with the others. I think not.

Carter examined his own hands. The left was broad palmed and strong fingered, the flesh bronzed by foreign winds. The right? Well, that was different. His arm ended in a stump just below where his wrist used to be, and beyond that was bone of an entirely different sort.

If he had been a pirate, Carter might have chosen to replace his missing hand with a hook. But he was not a pirate. He was a professor of history at the British Museum, and so he chose a different sort of prosthesis altogether.

He held it up and admired it in the lamplight: a wicked sickle of bone; a claw to be precise. A miracle designed for ripping and cutting and slashing. Before time began it had belonged to a mighty hunter, a dinosaur, the great Megalosaurus. Now it belonged to him. It made him the man he was.

There was a hesitant knock on the door and he swivelled in his chair to face it. “Come,” he said, and a ragged boy tumbled in, breathing heavily.

“There’s been a finding, sir,” said the boy, still panting. “Something that we think you need to come and look at.”

Carter nodded in response; perhaps he wouldn’t have to wait much longer for the power he desired. He paused to pull on a long leather trench coat, as brown and weather-beaten as the man himself.