Mayhem

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘I thought perhaps he would be home more often now that this stupid strike is on. There can hardly be any work for him to do if no ships are being unloaded.’

  I sat on the side of the bed and checked her pulse, which was strong and even. She looked better than she had in a few days, and had eaten a little more too.

  ‘But no,’ she continued, ‘he is never here.’ She sighed and leaned back against her pillows, closing her eyes. I thought she looked quite beautiful. ‘Sometimes I wonder what happened to the man I married, Thomas. I really do. He is like a stranger.’

  I clenched my fist to stop my hand trembling, digging the nails into my pain.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said sadly, ‘I am quite glad we are sleeping in separate rooms.’

  ‘It will be better when you feel better,’ I said. ‘And of course when the baby comes. You are both just very tired.’

  My words seemed to soothe her, and I waited until she had drifted off to sleep before turning the light down and closing the door. It took all my strength to remain composed around her when I loathed every moment I spent in this awful house. Despair seeped from the walls, and I had no choice but to breathe it in. Even the brightly coloured wallpapers had dulled, as if the wickedness of what lived here had spread its darkness.

  In the study I sought out the small box I had hidden amongst the books. I still had the priest’s pipe, and I had taken the precaution of going to my favoured den and purchasing a supply of the poppy. As usual, Chi-Chi had remained silent as he sold me what I required. The laudanum might enough to calm me during the day, but at night, in this awful house, knowing that Harrington and that thing were so close to me, I needed something more. I could not increase my dosage – I was beginning to have problems with my bladder, and the trembling was on the verge of turning into convulsion – but I truly needed the oblivion I had in the past sought on Chi-Chi’s cot. I needed something to dispel the awful dread that pervaded the Hebberts’ house.

  I prepared the opium and then sat in Charles’ favourite wingback chair and lit the pipe. I breathed deeply of the sweet smoke, then, with the last of my energy, put the equipment back in the box and closed the lid before relaxing. Tension eased out of the muscles of my neck and shoulders and my jaw hung slack, a blessed relief from the ache that had settled in from gritting my teeth so tightly all day.

  Upstairs, Juliana would be sleeping as the child who was so determined to make her ill grew in her belly. I found the pregnancy disturbing: what was she carrying? Her husband’s child? Or was there some part of the parasite that had transferred into her womb too? Was that why she suffered so much with sickness, because she was bearing a monster’s child? The lamp was on low, and even as I drifted in the opium haze there were too many shadows for my comfort. I tried not to think about the baby; there was nothing I could do about that. James Harrington was the quarry, and all I could do was watch and wait.

  I must have fallen into some sort of unconscious sleep, because I awoke with a start, feeling cold and achy, as if I had been in the same position for too long. I was at first completely lost to my surroundings, expecting to be in my bed at home, and instead finding myself dressed and upright. The shapes in the room were all wrong …

  It was dark.

  The fog in my brain began to clear and I slowly remembered my whereabouts. Had I turned the light down? I did not think so. Pale light trickled in from the night sky outside, but barely crept as far as my feet. I sniffed and coughed, my throat dry from breathing through my open mouth, and I looked around me. My opium box was still there – surely if I had gone to the trouble of turning out the lights, I would have put it back in its hiding place? Admittedly, what I did under the influence of the drug was not always clear but I had to presume I would act as I did normally. My back ached as I leaned forward, and I started to shiver away the drop in my body’s temperature. I needed to turn the light on. The house was oppressive enough in daylight; at night I found the tension unbearable.

  I went to stand, and then froze as my eyes, now growing accustomed to the gloom, locked on something at the other side of the room: a dark outline, a figure, just behind the open door, not quite in and not quite out of the room, bisected down the middle by the dark wood. He remained perfectly still.

  With my heart in my mouth, I got carefully to my feet and turned up the lamp. The clock showed it was nearly one o’clock.

  Harrington stayed where he was, standing silently just behind the door, his hands hanging by his sides. He continued to stare at me, and I tried not to look at the space around his shoulder. I could not see the Upir, but that did not mean it was not watching me.

  ‘James?’ I asked, my voice cracking slightly, ‘are you all right?’ His pale skin was coated in a sheen of sweat that looked like grease, and a patch of purple on his right cheekbone was loud against his pallor. His blond hair was untidy: it was obvious the sickness was coming for him again.

  He frowned at me.

  ‘I must have dozed off while reading,’ I said, despite any lack of evidence in the form of a book. How long had he been watching me? Ten minutes? An hour? I shivered. ‘I should go to bed.’ I kept my tone light. ‘So should you. It’s very late, and you look rather unwell.’

  ‘I had a letter from Charles and Mary. I saw you were sleeping, but I thought you would like to know: they are coming back. In a week.’

  He turned and walked away without waiting for any response. I heard him make his way steadily up the stairs. Charles was coming back. I could go home. I picked up the box and turned the light down, despite loathing the darkness. I tried not to imagine that the Upir had somehow separated itself from the host and was waiting for me in the hallway.

  I still had the dregs of the opium floating in my system, but my fear had overwhelmed it. I climbed the stairs with haste, and by the time I reached my bedroom, the furthest along the corridor, I was virtually running.

  I slammed the door shut and leaned against it, breathless and twitching, until my momentary flood of relief was swallowed up by the sudden conviction that Harrington was somewhere in the room, staring at me in the dark, just as he had been when I had awakened downstairs. I lunged for the wall light, my trembling hands making it almost impossible to strike a flint to light the gas. I was flinching against an immediate attack: the Upir was coming for me, I was sure of it.

  I finally managed to light the gas, and stayed huddled into the wall for several moments before slowly opening my eyes. My bedroom was empty. I looked into each corner and the wardrobe, and then dropped to my knees to search under the bed, but there was nothing. I was safe. Harrington was not here.

  I sat on the bed, sweating and exhausted, and let my shoulders slump. I looked up at the door.

  After a moment, I picked up the occasional chair by the washstand and wedged it under the handle. I would leave the light on.

  42

  London. September, 1889

  Aaron Kosminski

  Sometimes in his dreams he could not breathe. His face was pressed into the floor and splinters cut into his cheeks. It was dark. He was terrified. He knew this could not end well.

  The visions came too fast to keep under control: sometimes he was at the bottom of the lake, his nostrils clogged with mud, anger and hunger itching at every pore as if something wanted to explode free from his skin. Other times, he was walking the streets of London at night, tired, a weight on his back. He wanted to claw the skin from his face, to tear it free and scream his madness from the rooftops. He wanted to be free. He wanted to cry. He wanted to hunt.

  Here and there, in the suffocating dark, he would see flashes of red: crimson red, with lace trim, gone in a second, swallowed up by the yawning, endless eternity of wickedness that wanted to claim him – or washed away in the river …

  The river. The red. The wickedness.

  The visions were trying to tell him something – but when he woke, screaming and sweating and tangled in his sheets, he could only remember the fear.

&nb
sp; 43

  London. September, 1989

  Dr Bond

  Fate lives in the shadow of coincidence.

  We collided, both full-flight, in the middle of Westminster. At first I did not recognise him, but as I crouched to help gather his papers, the familiarity of his face struck my memory. Where had I seen him before?

  ‘I do apologise,’ I said, handing the ruined documents to him. It had rained heavily in the night and the streets were muddy and as I picked up a ledger I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket to wipe it down as best I could. The collision was my fault, I was sure of it – as was ever the case these days, my mind was not where I was. I had moved back into my own house a week or so before, but the relief I had hoped to find had not come. I still had the awful feeling that the Upir was coming for me, and I had not kept the promises I had made to myself, that I would stop taking the opium and cut back on the laudanum as soon as I had left the Hebberts’.

  That morning I had been at the inquest of a cobbler murdered by his wife after fifteen years of marriage. She had stabbed him as he lay sleeping, then she had dressed, eaten breakfast and walked to the police station. She had told the police inspector she could not abide the thought of his company any more. They had wondered if she was insane; for my part, I thought not. She was resigned to her fate, the officers who had dealt with her told me. She regretted her actions, but she did not regret that he was dead. She was not entirely sure why she had done it, but she knew she had.

  There was no insanity in those thoughts, but as I headed home at just after 11 a.m., I wondered whether she would have done it had the Upir not been in London. Was her fate just one more ripple in London’s water caused by his being in our midst? I certainly had not been looking where I was going.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I repeated. ‘It is entirely my fault. If there is anything …’ I paused and frowned. There was something familiar about him: the neatness of his dress, the slight roll of neck pressed over his collar. ‘I say, have we met before? You look familiar?’

  The man, perhaps ten years younger than I, had thinning brown hair and a narrow moustache, and his skin still retained the youthful softness of someone much younger, though that was perhaps due to his slightly portly physique.

  ‘I do not think so. I—’ He stopped as recognition dawned in his eyes. ‘Oh, you came to the wharves – to see Mr Harrington. I thought you might be from the bank, or one of our creditors.’

  ‘Harrington’s secretary!’ I said in triumph.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and wrestled one hand free from his bundle of papers and held it out to shake my hand. ‘James Barker. Although I am no longer in Mr Harrington’s employment, I am afraid to say.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that – is this as a result of this awful strike?’ Nearly all the dockworkers in East London were striking; they had been out for more than two weeks, and it was causing merry havoc for businesses who relied on supplies coming in and out. They had hoped to starve the men back to work, but newspapers were reporting large sums of money coming in from places as far-flung as Australia to lend support. I had paid it little attention beyond the effect it might have on Juliana and her husband.

  ‘That was the reason given, yes.’ Barker’s mouth pursed slightly. ‘But the business was not doing well before that – there was only so much I could manage on my own, and old Mr Harrington, God rest his soul, he was a stickler for detail. His son … well, let me just say he is not a natural businessman.’

  My exhaustion faded slightly. ‘But he is always at work – he must be trying.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The secretary looked as if I had said something mildly amusing. He was clearly bitter about the loss of his position because of Harrington’s incompetence. ‘But he spent very little time in his actual office. You saw the state of it yourself: hardly the desk of a man on top of his affairs.’

  ‘So what does he do, then?’ The question was light, but inside my every nerve tingled.

  ‘I should not speak out of turn – my work so often relies on discretion, and I would hate to get a reputation for idle gossip.’

  ‘I understand that completely.’ I smiled to reassure him. ‘I work closely with the police, and I, more than most, understand the need to keep information private. But between you and me, his family are worried about him.’

  ‘You will probably think it silly,’ he started after a moment. ‘There may well be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he spends so much time there …’

  ‘Where?’ I wanted to grab him and shake the details free.

  ‘In one of the warehouses – the smallest one, actually, nearest the river. There is no list of anything going in or out of it, but he refused to let me allocate shipments to it. I do not know what he keeps in there – perhaps he just sits inside and drinks. I’ve heard of stranger things.’ His mouth curved again into a tight, unpleasant smile. Barker clearly had no love for Harrington.

  ‘And he spends most of his days there?’

  ‘Not always – but there are periods of time when he does – those are the times he has the least interest in his crumbling business. And the evenings, of course – I know, because I was so often working late. I had wondered if perhaps he was unhappy at home, but I hear there is a child on the way.’

  A warehouse: of course. All thoughts of going home and trying to sleep vanished and as soon as I had said my farewells, I hailed a hansom cab and headed east.

  *

  The priest’s room was shabbier in daylight, and I thought I could see small dark splashes on the floorboards where he had bled whilst whipping himself. He moved carefully, too, no doubt the cuts across his back causing him much pain beneath his rough clothes. I did not ask the purpose of his birching; there were many things about the priest I did not understand, and I guessed many were things I did not want to understand. If this was part of the preparation he had to make to face the Upir then I would not challenge it; I had to presume he cared as much for his own welfare as I did for mine. He might not show his fear as Kosminski and I did, but he would be as monstrous as the creature he had followed across Europe if he had none.

  ‘A warehouse?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was pacing up and down the small space, and between my agitation and the stifling heat my collar was sticky with sweat. I had already abandoned my coat and waistcoat, tossed carelessly over the rickety chair. ‘We should have realised – the wharves are close to the river, and it is his place of business, so it would not take very much to lure a woman back there. It must be where Harrington kills and dismembers them. It must be.’

  ‘And from there the Upir can feed both himself and the river.’ The priest was nodding. ‘We must get inside.’

  ‘The strike may make that easier. There will be fewer people around to question what we’re doing.’

  A sudden, furious banging interrupted us, and from outside came a flurry of foreign words. I pulled the door open and Kosminski rushed in. He threw himself onto the bed and rocked backwards and forwards, tugging at his hair and muttering under his panting breath. The priest spoke to him in his native language, barking words at him, rather than soothing him as I would have, but his sharp tone had an effect and after a few minutes Kosminski was breathing normally.

  ‘A woman,’ he said. He looked up at me, his eyes full of dread. ‘He has a woman – I saw her.’

  ‘In a vision?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes – no, I saw her first with Harrington – but I didn’t realise he had her still. Not until these visions.’

  ‘When?’ I crouched beside him, forcing myself not to turn my face away in order to avoid the tangy stench that rolled from him, as thick as winter smog.

  ‘I cannot … I cannot remember.’ He trembled and twitched and tugged at his upper lip with dirty fingernails.

  ‘Think,’ I commanded, employing the priest’s aggressive tone. ‘Think, man.’

  ‘Two weeks ago, perhaps? He was drinking. You were still in the house.’

  Two weeks – could s
he still be alive? Nothing had been pulled from the river, and no body parts had been discovered in public places. I tried to focus on Harrington as the quarry in our hunt rather than what he carried on his back – I told myself I must think of it as murder, not as anything unnatural, or my limited courage would fail me.

  ‘He must be keeping her at the warehouse,’ I said. ‘She may still be alive.’

  ‘Warehouse?’ Kosminski said, and I wondered again at Fate: two pieces of the puzzle, coming together on the same day – perhaps we were men of destiny, after all.

  The priest prepared a pipe of the strange opium for Kosminski, and I sipped at my laudanum.

  And then, God help us, as the afternoon slowly drew round towards evening, we planned our attack on the beast.

  ‘I need to meditate,’ the priest grunted eventually. ‘I must be mentally strong, ready for tonight.’

  ‘But we should go now,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘There is a woman who might still be alive. If Harrington has her in that warehouse, then—’

  ‘The woman is not important.’ He leaned forward and pulled out a box from under the bed. ‘The Upir is important.’

  ‘But if we can save her—?’

  ‘Do not think in terms of saving, think in terms of destroying. We are not here for the woman, we are here for him. If we save her, then we shall thank the Lord, but we must focus on the creature. It is not yet dark, and if we go now, we may free her, but Harrington will run, our hunt will be taken over by your police and they will not understand their killer in the way we do.’

  His dark eyes bore into mine. ‘Trust me, Dr Bond. I have seen all this many times before.’ He opened the box. ‘Take this.’ He handed me one of two small bottles of thick brown liquid. I did not need to ask what it was. ‘You still have the pipe?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good. You must both smoke some. We must all be able to see it if we are to fight it. We will also need his’ – he gestured at Kosminksi – ‘special ability to lead us to Harrington.’