{"id":6138,"date":"2023-01-10T16:30:50","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T16:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6138"},"modified":"2023-01-10T16:30:53","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T16:30:53","slug":"bloody-man-by-avram-davidson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6138","title":{"rendered":"Bloody Man<\/em><\/strong> by Avram Davidson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bloody Man<\/em><\/strong> by Avram Davidson (Fantastic<\/em>, August 1976) begins with Jack Limekiller, a Canadian ex-pat living in British Hidalgo (British Honduras), asking Archbishop Le Beau, who is scaling fish, for work:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThey tell me . . . \u201d Limekiller hesitated, briefly. Was it My Lord? Your Lordship?<\/em> Or was it . . . it was, wasn\u2019t it . . . Your Grace?<\/em>
Some saints levitate. Some are telepathic. It was widely said and widely believed that William Constance Christian Le Beau was a saint.
\u201cJust \u2018Archbishop\u2019 will do, Mr. Limekiller,\u201d the old man said, without looking up. Scrip . . . scrop . . . scrip. . .<\/em> Jack found himself looking covertly around. Perhaps for loaves.
\u201cAh . . . thank you, sir . . . Archbishop. . . . they tell me that I might be able to pick up a charter for my boat. Moving building supplies, I understand. Down to Curasow Cove? For a bungalow you want built?\u201d
Flop<\/em> went the fish into the basket. \u00a0p. 6<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

After receiving the Archbishop\u2019s agreement and a letter of introduction, Limekiller sets about obtaining the materials he requires. He soon finds out, however, that there aren\u2019t any supplies in sleepy Point Pleasaunce, so his travels take around the town and beyond, which provides the reader with a number of delightful picture-postcard descriptions of the places he visits and the people he meets:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Well, there was<\/em> the Royal Telegraphy. Her Majesty’s Government did not exactly go to much effort to advertise the fact that there was, but Limekiller had somehow found the fact out. The service was located in two bare rooms upstairs off an alley near the old Rice Mill Wharf, where an elderly gentleman wrote down incoming messages in a truly beautiful Spencerian hand. . . . or maybe it was Copperplate. . . . or Chancery. . . . or Volapiik. What the Hell. It was beautiful. It was, in fact, so beautiful that it seemed cavalier to complain that the elderly gentleman was exceedingly deaf, and that, perhaps in consequence, his messages did not always make the most perfect sense.
Gambling that the same conditions did not obtain at the Royal Telegraphy Office in Port Caroline, Limekiller sent off several wires, advising the Carolinian entrepreneurs what he wanted to buy, and that he was coming in person to buy it.
\u201cHow soon will these go off?\u201d he asked the aged telegrapher.
\u201cYes, that is what I heard myself, sir. They say the estate is settle, sir. After ahl these years.\u201d And he shook his head and he smiled a gentle smile of wonder. \u00a0p. 11<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Stepping out into the pre-dawn was like stepping into a clean, cool pool. Already, at that hour, people were about . . . grave, silent, polite. . . . the baker setting the fires, the fisherman already returning with their small catch. The sun climbed, very tentatively, to the edge of the horizon. For a moment, it hesitated. Then, all at once, two things happened. The national radio system, which had gone off the air at ten the night before, suddenly awoke into Sound. Radios were either dead silent or at full-shout. In one instant, every radio in Port Caroline, and in the greater Port Caroline Area, roared into life. And at the same moment, the sun, suddenly aware that there was nothing to oppose it, shot up from the sea and smote the land with a blast of heat.\u00a0 p. 17<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Most of the first part of the story is travelogue like the above, but Limekiller eventually begins to hear mentions and rumours of a ghostly mystery, the \u201cBloody Man\u201d of the tale:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cAn\u2019 one day, me<\/em> see some-teeng, mon, me <\/em>see some-teeng hawreed. Me di see<\/em> eet, mon. Me di see<\/em> di bloody mon\u2014\u201d
\u201cHush up you mout\u2019,\u201d said Piggott. But the other, a much older fellow, did not hear, perhaps, or did not care, perhaps. \u201cMe di see di blooddee mon. Me di see he, ah White-MON, ahl cot een pieces ahn ahl blood-dee. Wahn, two, t\u2019ree, de pieces ahv heem dey ahl come toged<\/em>dah. De mon stahn op befah me, mon. He stahn ahp befah me. Ahl bot wahn piece, mon. He no hahv wahn piece een he side, mon. He side gape<\/em>, mon, gape open. Eet bleed<\/em>, mon. Eet BLEED!”
And now other faces than the proprietor\u2019s were turned to the narrator.
\u201cHush up you mout\u2019<\/em>, mon!\u201d other voices said, gruff.
Brown man, glass of brown rum in his brown hand. Sweat on his face. Voice rising. \u201cAhn so me di know<\/em>, mon. Me di know who<\/em> eet ees, mon. Eet ees de blood-dee Cop-tain. Eet ees Cop-tain Blood!<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 p. 15<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This supernatural thread slowly develops through Limekiller\u2019s subsequent trip down to Curasow Cove with his shipment\u2014he witnesses a fishing grounds dispute between the locals and Arawak tribesmen from the south, displaced because of sightings of the apparition\u2014and then Limekiller himself sees the Bloody Man when his boat enters a supernatural mist. Then (spoiler) after talking to Harlow, one of the locals who provides information about who the apparition might be (there is talk of Blackbeard and the Flying Dutchman<\/em>, etc.), Limekiller asks the Archbishop for help in laying the ghost to rest.
In the climactic scene, and after fighting off the Fallen (who summon waterspouts and sharks), the Archbishop administers the sacrament to the Bloody Man and he disappears.
There is an interesting historical postscript where the ghost is revealed as Captain Cook (who met his death in Hawaii, thousand of miles away), and whose ghost has supposedly returned to the area because of a light-hearted oath made by Cook before his death.
I really enjoyed the wonderful description and colourful detail of this story (it is probably my favourite of the \u2018Limekiller\u2019 series1<\/sup>) but I suspect the average genre reader\u2019s enjoyment will depend on whether they take to the sprawling travelogue that occurs before the fantasy elements come to the fore.
**** (Very Good). 19,250 words. Story link<\/a>. Book purchase link UK<\/a>\/USA<\/a>.

1. The \u2018Jack Limekiller\u2019 series of stories (which were later collected into a book) at ISFDB<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bloody Man by Avram Davidson (Fantastic, August 1976) begins with Jack Limekiller, a Canadian ex-pat living in British Hidalgo (British Honduras), asking Archbishop Le Beau, who is scaling fish, for work: \u201cThey tell me . . . \u201d Limekiller hesitated, briefly. Was it My Lord? Your Lordship? Or was it . . . it was, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[527,101,175,206,528,1409,29,1410],"class_list":["post-6138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avram-davidson","tag-527","tag-101","tag-avram-davidson","tag-fantastic","tag-ghosts","tag-jack-limekiller-series","tag-novella","tag-travelogue"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6138"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6153,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138\/revisions\/6153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}