Free The Angel of Highgate by Vaughn Entwistle

Skinner waved vaguely. “Take what is owed you.”
    Augustus Skinner did not remember the doctor leaving. In truth, he did not remember much else, for the laudanum had taken effect and he felt his body dissolving into a buoyant gas until all that remained of him was a head floating like a cork on a puddle of ether.

7

R ISEN FROM THE G RAVE
    T he Night Hawk is one of the largest species of moth, with a wingspan measuring as much as 6 inches
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    Algernon pondered the illustration. The moth was dark brown in color. Fuzzy antler-like antenna protruded from its forehead. The eyes were gleaming black domes set on either side of the head that seemed to stare out of the page, fixing the viewer with its uncanny gaze.
    A loud metallic clang. He looked up from his book. Two young nurses were passing out bedpans and one had just tumbled from the wheeled cart as they pushed it along the ward. He was in the Whittington hospital. When Thraxton had been brought in, no one had known for certain who he was, and so he had been placed in a general ward, along with the common folk and their mundane ailments.
    Algernon sat in a straight-backed chair next to the head of the bed, reading a book on moths and butterflies as he kept vigil over his friend. It had been three days by this time, but to the concern of all, Thraxton showed no signs of awakening. He looked down at his friend. Thraxton’s face was almost as white as the bed sheet tucked under his chin—apart from the mark that Snudge’s cosh had left, a livid red welt that ran from cheekbone to temple, and around which spilled waves of glossy black hair.
    It was not the first time Algernon had kept vigil at his friend’s bedside. They met as first-year boys at public school. In keeping with a proud school tradition, the younger boys were relentlessly bullied by the older boys, as they themselves had been bullied in their time.
    This was just such an occasion.
    Algernon had been standing with his classmates in the quadrangle awaiting the school bell when the most notorious bully in school, Tom Bagby, or “Baggers” as he was known, sauntered over dragging behind his usual pack of toadies. Bagby had flashed a cruel smile at Algernon and then, without warning or provocation, drove a vicious punch straight into his face. The blow floored Algernon, and then Bagby leapt on top, pinning the younger boy’s arms as he rained punches on his face and chest. Algernon’s first-year friends, intent only on self-preservation, instantly bolted for cover. As the bully-boy pummeled his helpless victim, Bagby’s cronies cheered and shouted, “Go on! Bash him, Baggers!”
    Suddenly a blur of fury and flying fists crashed into Bagby and knocked him tumbling. To the shock of everyone, the figure that scrambled to his feet, small hands balled into trembling fists, was the new first-year boy, who was shorter even than Algernon. Bagby snarled and lunged at the new boy and the fight began. The younger boy fought like a maelstrom, but it was a vastly unfair competition. Bagby was a fifth-year boy, head and shoulders taller, and he was the school boxing champion. He knocked the younger boy down once and then again and then a third time. Still, the new boy dragged himself to his feet each time. A fourth. A fifth. A sixth. A seventh. But despite the fact that his nose dripped blood and both lips were split, the younger boy refused to stay down. As the beating continued, even Bagby’s thuggish friends grew frightened and called for him to stop. Throughout, the younger boy never cried, although Bagby himself was on the verge of tears, for an opponent who refused to give up terrified him. And so the beating continued until a final uppercut knocked the smaller boy to the ground and sprawled him senseless. Then a school master, black robes flapping like the wings of an agitated crow, burst through the melee to stop the fight—as always, too late. The milling mob of boys instantly dilated around the small prone form