The Vorrh

establishments than theirs: from the shabby beer halls of the Arctic to the decrepit rat holes of Guatemala, to the gambling house of the Yukon, decorated with icicles of human blood. But he had never drunk alone in a public house in England. Here it was improper; the chronic barriers of position and wealth forbade the fluidity he found everywhere else.
    The second drink hit, stirring some mirth out of the sediment of his gloom. Everybody in the cramped, over-varnished rooms of the pub was intensely aware of the gaunt, scraggly-bearded man with crazed, prophet’s eyes, who had started talking to himself and grinning into his drink. He was oblivious to them all.
    His mind wandered to an earlier time and place, where he had consumed a weighty amount of the potent black rum and port mixture, with a man who had since become an infamous figure, even to those on this miserable rock. They had been in Cheyenne, in the wild Dakota territories, distinguishing themselves by making loud toasts to the Bard and to Scholarly Conduct, to The Fine Arts and Chivalry. The saloon had been full of armed riff-raff; many there with a price on their heads had ignored them and refused to be stirred by their conduct. Muybridge’s drinking companion that day had been John Henry Holliday, the notorious gambler and gunfighter who had made the London newspapers a year earlier, when he and the Earp brothers had staged a magnificently theatrical gunfight in the little-known and appropriately named town of Tombstone. Muybridge was sure that ‘Doc’ Holliday had done most of the killing and maiming on that day, and he wished he had been there to see it, maybe photograph the heroes afterwards.
    He shoved his hand into his topcoat’s inside pocket, looking for more money, but finding instead the loaded Colt pistol. It was getting like the old days, he slurred to himself. He now had the appetite for a bit of gunplay. Then, with all the rhyme and reason of an amateur drinker, his thought switched to Josephine, to her passive and inert reaction today, to her electric performance with his copy of Gull’s device. Her pliant and sensual magnetism seemed a much better option than shooting the worthless clientele of The Roebuck.
    He pulled himself up and made for the door. No one caught his eye, and the pub breathed out when he was gone. He sobered on his way back, getting lost twice and deciding never to drink publicly again, especially with a charged revolver. He stopped over a gurgling drain and emptied the bullets out of the gun; they fell like brass comets into the speeding firmament below.
    He turned the key very slowly and entered the apartment without a whisper. He crept back towards his camp bed, trying not to make a sound. He did not want to wake her, to let her see him tipsy after she had seen him in defeat.
    As he dragged off his coat and unlaced his boots, he heard a noise that made the hair stand up all over his body. Something was scratching in the rooms. This was no faint animal, no rat or mouse scrabbling for figments of foods; something else was clawing nearby. He patted the walls, finding his way to the shelves. He found the simple tin candelabra and matches, lit its three stubs of candles and peered through the rooms. The scratching stopped. He was totally sober, with an icy wire inside his spine. He waited, and the clawing began again. He heard wood splinter and rip, and pushed the hushed light towards it. It stopped again, but he saw a mass on the kitchen floor. It was Josephine’s dark body against the black floor. She was naked and lay very still, staring with unblinking eyes at the flaking ceiling. He brought his light close to her to ward off the unseen creature that scraped in the room. He knelt and touched her arm; it felt very cool, as if she had been out of bed for hours. He held the light high above his head to scan the room and keep the thing at bay; hot wax spilt and splashed across her face. There was no reaction.
    ‘Josephine?’ he whispered urgently. ‘Josephine!’
    He touched her neck and felt no pulse. He bent over and put his hairy, impudent ear between her breasts: there was no heartbeat. She was dead. He sank back like a sullen, wet sack, into the collapsed quiet of the rooms and the world. Then the clawing started again. He spun the candles towards it and saw her left hand, frantically digging a pit in the floorboards. The nails were broken and the fingertips bloodied, but the old wood yielded under their