Smoke

by Dan Vyleta

  “What are you doing, Thomas?”

  “You heard! He is coming for us. He is killing Mrs. Grendel and then he is coming for us. For Livia. I am too weak. I can’t even break down the door.” Thomas wraps a hand around the tin dangling at the bottom of his rubber snout. “I need strength. The strength of madness. This is murderer’s Soot. Black as black. From your mother’s secret stash. And this here”—he stabs down with the needle, misses the little ampulla—“will quicken it.”

  “You will get lost,” Charlie says. “Lost in the Smoke.”

  All the same he kneels down and attempts to help Thomas draw the liquid into the syringe. But his hands, too, are shaking. It’s up to Livia then. She threads the needle through the thick wrapping of foil that seals the little bottle, draws its inch of liquid into the cylindrical glass chamber.

  “Good! Now release it into the tin.”

  She hesitates, her eyes on Charlie, then Thomas.

  “What will happen to you?” she asks.

  “Do it!”

  “What if—”

  “Do it!”

  Thomas cups her hands in his. She leans forward. His face is rubber. The goggles are easiest to kiss. A smudge on their glass, his eyelid fluttering underneath. Already he is smoking, green and yellow, an aggressive kind of fear.

  “I love you.”

  He says it to Charlie as much as to her. Livia injects the liquid into the tin, hears him inhale. The eyeglasses ink over, darkness in the mask. A spasm, followed by the wheeze of respiration. Then Thomas pushes her aside and charges, all his weight thrown against the door. Again and again he batters the wood, heedless of injury, until his left arm hangs like a flipper broken at his side. The noise brings Julius running; when the lock finally breaks, he has to jump aside not to be showered in splinters. Livia only sees him indistinctly: there is too much Smoke. In the room, but also in her blood, infected as it is by Thomas’s rage. An emaciated figure, ash-grey, the whites of his eyes dyed and curdled, purple-black. His hands are up, boxing style. The voice surprisingly light. Taunting.

  “There,” Julius says. “The gloves are off. And you found a mask. Second face. It grows into you. After a while, you can’t tell if it’s on or off.”

  Then he and Thomas disappear in an explosion of Smoke.

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  It is ugly, and also happens at a distance, inscrutable, hidden from view. It’s like a hole has opened up in the centre of the hallway, a window to another place, far away. The darkness of a well, in winter. You can throw the bucket down into the dark. You will hear it hit, but what it finds down there is beyond the realm of the senses. The water you draw is black.

  Livia would like to go and help Thomas. But even at a distance the Smoke that reaches out to them in thin dense tendrils frightens her blood. Infects it, yes, but also chases her away, to the front door where she cowers, consumed by baseness, hate, and fear. Not far from her, she can see Charlie in his own battle against the Smoke, leaning into it as though into a storm. Beyond, there is the wild flailing of limbs, accompanied by sounds, dull, spongy thuds, meat beaten soft by a butcher. Shouts in between, yelps, something like laughter. After what seems like an age, a hand reaches for her, Charlie’s. They lace fingers, so hard she can feel his bones pressing on hers. His hair and face is black with muck.

  Together, she and Charlie finally work their way closer, aware that the fighting has slowed, that it is just one figure beating the other now; that the Smoke is dying down. The Soot that coats the floor is slick like axle grease and they find themselves skidding, then falling gracelessly alongside the prone figures. Thomas is on top. What is on the bottom is motionless and running red with blood.

  And still Thomas is beating him, one fist rising into the space above his head and coming down on chest, head, neck, like a toddler in a strop, hammering the floor. She bends down to him, tries to reach him, the mask on his face. He feels her tug at him, turns, goggles black and bulbous. Then he pins her, puts a hand around her throat, throws his weight on her. His fingers are slick with blood, move from her throat, to her face, her hair, tear at her clothing; his body heavy and hot. It’s Thomas, she reminds herself, struggling; Thomas. She manages to hook a hand around the rubber tube that juts from his jaws and yank it up, dislodge the mask; something dark rising in her worse than fear. Then Charlie is there, riding his friend’s back, pushing him down beside her. They hold him wedged between their bodies.

  She watches the change: his mouth snarling, threatening her skin, the very teeth turned black with Soot. Then, like a child emerging from a tunnel, something else starts surfacing in Thomas’s eyes. Intelligence. Recognition. It is followed by such an intense burst of shame that she wants to turn away from him, not to burden him with her witnessing. And still his weight lies heavy on her, on her chest, her thighs. She scrambles away, bumps into the lump of flesh that is Julius, the mouth a cavity of tooth stumps, hair ripped out in clumps.

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  “He was starved, weak. Skin and bones. Nothing but rage. He did not stand a chance.”

  That’s the first thing Thomas says. His left shoulder is dislocated, his hands swollen to twice their size, his shirt ripped to shreds. “Renfrew was right all along. I’m a killer.”

  “You were not yourself.”

  “Wasn’t I, Charlie?”

  He is crouching in a corner, chin curled into his chest. Thomas has yet to look at Livia. She wants to make it easier for him, but it’s hard, past the memory of his body forcing its weight on hers. Her face and shirt are covered with both cousins’ blood.

  “It’s over now” is all she manages.

  At this, his eyes rise. No tears. That same unblinking stare. Never flinching from the facts.

  Not even now.

  “Yes, over. My nature is out.” He rises, takes a step towards Mrs. Grendel, then stops. “You do it. See whether she is all right.”

  Mrs. Grendel has yet to move. She is sitting on a stool in a corner of the kitchen, huddled into herself. One of her eyes is swelling shut. Other than that she is not visibly hurt. Livia crouches in front of her, tries to talk to her. But the woman stares right through her. It is not that she is unconscious and does not see. Her eyes look beyond, at Julius. On her large, ruddy, working-woman’s hands, the veins crisscross like parcel string.

  “We must go,” Charlie whispers behind her. “Find Mowgli.”

  “Yes.” Livia stands up, looks down herself. The miner’s shirt is ripped and stained, the blood already half dried. She thinks she can smell it. “I must get changed.”

  “There is no time. And you have no other clothes.”

  “I must get changed,” she repeats, brusquely, then rushes into her mother’s room.

  When she emerges Livia is wearing one of the dresses Sebastian brought for her mother. It is too large for her and feels alien after days spent in men’s clothing. It is as though she has stepped back into another life. She raises the hem as she steps over Julius.

  The boys stare at her when she enters the kitchen, even Thomas, beaten, miserable Thomas. She has scrubbed her face and hands with lye soap and a boar-bristle brush. Her body underneath the dress remains as filthy as ever. There just wasn’t the time.

  “Hurry,” she says, needlessly. The two boys rush past her at once, each eager not to touch her, now that she is once again a lady. There is a bulk to the petticoat that gives new width to her hips.

  Before leaving, Livia returns to Mrs. Grendel one more time.

  “Are you all right?” she asks and then, when the woman does not respond: “What is your name, Mrs. Grendel? Your Christian name?”

  The delay in the answer is such that Livia has already turned and walked three steps before she hears it.

  “Berta,” the beaten woman says. “Berta Grendel.”

  They do not say “Good-bye, Berta.” They simply leave.

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  Thomas leads. He is spent, broken, hollow-eyed with fear. And yet he leads them, towards the sewer entrance he dis
covered. Livia and Charlie follow, hand in hand. Her fine dress elicits comments, catcalls, caps doffed in mock homage. London, a city of louts; sleepless, even in the middle of the night, a steady stream of figures peopling its streets. She trades pallid Smoke with her hecklers, stains grey the ruffles of her sleeves. There is, in her Smoke, a tiny whiff of her own thrill at being noticed.

  It isn’t long before they reach their destination. An unmarked building, its gateway leading to a courtyard; and there, set into the courtyard’s wall, the brick-rimmed entrance to a stairwell, leading underground. A squalid place, anonymous, the site of an old cesspool now pumped empty. The courtyard is littered with construction materials. A chalkboard screwed into a wall marks the rota of work shifts. Thomas told them that when he found it earlier that day, the entrance had been guarded by a foreman with a ledger, ticking off names against a list. There is no foreman now, nor any workers, no one to tell them that they must not enter at their leisure. There is only one hitch, a problem so simple it has eluded their plans. The entire gateway is blocked by an iron gate.

  When he sees it, Thomas covers his face with his hands.

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  They try the handle, rattle the doors, study the hinges. The lock is complex and made of steel; the bars sturdy and firm. There are no more than a few inches between the top of the gate and the top of the gateway; less space at the bottom. A cat could squeeze through; a rat. No doubt a thousand have.

  Charlie articulates it first. “There we are. After all we have been through. Defeated by a lock.”

  His bitterness is fed by Thomas, who continues to stand passively, smokelessly by his side. Livia watches him in his impotence and despair; lets drop again the hand she has raised to touch him. At another time, another hour, they would sit and talk to Thomas, help him mourn. But this is no time for funerals, not even to bury your best friend’s soul.

  For five, ten minutes they simply stand there, wallowing in their defeat. Then Livia gathers her skirts in front of her and marches off. The boys follow.

  “Where are we going?”

  She only answers Charlie when the hotel comes into sight. Two porters stand outside its front steps, each flanked by a lamppost. The rest of the Regency lies in darkness, save for a window on the upper floor. Aschenstedt’s window. She remembers following him to this square; remembers his opening the shutters and looking out.

  “We need to find Mother. And there is only one person in the whole world who can tell us where she is.”

  “It won’t work. Sebastian has no interest in showing us the way. Besides, you heard what Mrs. Grendel said. He’s being watched.”

  Charlie is merely being reasonable. Nonetheless she grows angry at once.

  “What else do you want to do? Wait and do nothing?”

  They watch the square. Despite the late hour there are quite a few people there, some drinking, some talking, some merely passing through. The longer they watch, the more they are aware of a number of men who do none of these things but simply stand there, in thick overcoats, their eyes on the hotel.

  “Three, I think,” Thomas says. And then (weary, resentful, mustering the last of his will): “I’ll go.”

  Charlie stops him before he can take a step. “You can’t. You are covered in blood. You’ll never make it past the doormen.” He hesitates, continues. “I will go. I can talk them into letting me through.”

  Thomas sinks his fingers into Charlie’s sleeve. One sticks up funny. Hurt and fear constrict his voice.

  “The last time you went off by yourself, Charlie, a man tied you to his bed and whispered about virtue. If anyone goes, I—”

  “Neither of you can go,” Livia interrupts him. “It is a good hotel. A place for gentlefolk. And you both look like vagrants.”

  They do not listen, caught up in their struggle over who can be trusted to risk his freedom. By the time they understand what she is saying she is halfway across the square. She turns once, to shake her head and forbid pursuit. It is Charlie who holds back Thomas. Rational, principled, disciplined Charlie. Trusting her. Treating her as his equal.

  She is grateful and disgruntled all at once.

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  The doormen never try to stop her. She raises the hem of her skirts and pushes past them, ignoring the tipping of their hats. From the corner of her eye she sees one of the watchers stir. She wonders whether there will be another one, lurking in the semidarkness of the reception hall. A concierge mans the high wooden desk. She waves him close, so she can avoid being overheard. Coquettish. And wonders did she learn it from Mother or from one of the girls in school; or is it simply in her blood?

  “I am here to see Mr. Ashton,” she confides. “A surprise visit.”

  The young man takes in her filthy hair and splendid dress.

  “I am a family friend,” she adds.

  The concierge appears reassured by this. Not the words, she realises, but the accent. The tones of the nobly born. The smell of sweet is on his breath.

  “It is very late, miss.”

  “Indeed. But his light is burning. I saw it from my trap.” She pauses, moves her face closer to his. “He will be most grateful that you let me through.”

  The concierge shifts his sweet from one cheek to the other; locates a timbre at once flirtatious and shy.

  “In that case, miss, go right on up.”

  The man does not provide her with a room number, assuming perhaps that she has been there before and knows the way. But the hotel’s layout is easy enough to understand. She ascends to the second floor and then matches the door to the light they saw from down below. Room 14. Her knock is soft. Part of Mother’s outfit was a new pair of deerskin gloves.

  Sebastian does not open the door at once. She can hear him shift inside, approach. A long hesitation, his breath curiously laboured. When he finally opens up and sees her, his tense face floods with relief.

  “Miss Naylor!”

  He pokes his head around the doorframe, squints down the corridor to see if she is hiding other callers, then yanks her in by the wrist. No sooner has he locked the door than he releases her, staggers, drops his weight into an armchair. Sebastian is wearing a paisley-patterned smoking jacket. Each of its pockets is bulging with a bottle.

  “And here I thought they had finally grown sick of waiting and had come to take me away! Die Stunde der Wahrheit, ha! The pliers and the rack. But instead it’s you, wearing a dress!” He laughs, slips a hand onto one bottle, uncorks it, and takes a long swig.

  “Dr. Aschenstedt. You are drunk!”

  “Yes,” he beams. “Plum brandy, from Poland. And this here is laudanum. For later, you see. One cannot question a sleeping man.” He jumps up from his chair once more, strides over to her, confides. “You see, I am a revolutionary, Miss Naylor. A Robespierre! (Only better than Robespierre, because what a blockhead he turned out to be!) But alas, my dear—I am also a coward. Positively a coward. Lily-livered! It is almost shameful.” He giggles, stamps his feet. “But sit, my dear, sit. Here, why don’t you drink a little glass?”

  It’s a two-room suite, fashionably furnished. The door to his bedroom stands open, the bedding is unmade. Its presence only feeds Livia’s feeling of disorientation. Not long ago this would have been unthinkable: standing in a hotel room with a man, a drunk, alone in the night. Even the week in the mine seems licit by comparison. That was an adventure. This is the stuff of dormitory whispers and banned French novels. It is, for girls of her station, the very centre of the Smoke. She picks her way through the books and papers that litter the floor and cautiously takes a seat. The fireplace is burning. Black husks of charts, letters, and notes are floating in the hot air above the flames.

  Sebastian follows her gaze, jumps over to his desk, takes up a sheaf of papers and is about to feed them into the fire when something distracts him and he starts reading them instead. He catches himself, flushes, drops the papers on the floor.

  “You see I have been busy. Hiding evidence! In case…but of course,
what does it matter now? Still, you never know…” He stoops, picks up the papers once more but again fails to place them on the fire. “The trouble is, these records are precious. Letters, articles, drafts of learned essays. The next frontier of science! Besides, they’ve already searched the room. The hotel porter let them in, the swine. No man’s a hero to his valet, eh?”

  He mutters to himself, totters, then looks over at her with sudden interest. “What about you though, Miss Naylor? What in the devil’s name are you doing here?”

  Livia has her lie prepared; practised it on the way up the stairs and readied it for the moment he opened the door. Then Sebastian scattered it with his drunken antics. Now the words come haltingly and are belied by a blush.

  “I’m afraid things have gone wrong, Dr. Aschenstedt. Mother has been arrested and you are being watched. We have Mowgli. You must tell me where to take him. It is our only chance.”

  He blinks, suppresses a burp, dismisses her words with a flap of his hand.

  “You are lying, of course. Your mother left with Mowgli and you are trying to follow her.” He drops back into the armchair, happy as a clam, leans over to her, grows avuncular, then sentimental, all in the space of three breaths. “But there is something else, is there? You look aggrieved. Wie ein Häufchen Elend. ‘Like a little pile of gloom.’ Come now, you must tell me.”

  “Julius,” Livia finds herself saying. “He found us. There was a fight.”

  Before she knows it, she has given Sebastian an account, her voice raw with the horror over the thing Julius had become. Sebastian listens intently, his hands wrapped around one of his bottles, pale and fretting now. When she is done, he shakes himself like a man wishing to shake off his doubt.

  “A dark angel, you say,” he mutters even though Livia used no such phrase. “Indeed! He’s been imbibing our Soot! And did you know he stole it from us, the rogue? But then, we were all of us rogues. Your mother and I tricked him out of his money. And he ran off with half our precious harvest. Poetic justice, yes?” Without waiting for a response, Sebastian carries on, cryptically, incoherently. “What do you think, though—would you and I have taken to darkness as readily as that? You see, despite it all, I hold with Monsieur Rousseau, not dour Master Hobbes. We are born for the herd, not the jungle, eh?”