Opium and Absinthe: A Novel

by Lydia Kang

  “Does your husband know that you’ve murdered people to grind them into a pharmacopeia?” Tillie said.

  Mrs. Erikkson pounded her hands on the table, and Tillie winced in astonishment.

  “Don’t you judge me! Tom is my life.” She wiped her mouth, hand shaking. “My husband is a dolt and vastly insufficient as a parent and a husband. But he’s been supplying me nonetheless.”

  She meant Lucy. And Albert Weber. And Annetta Green. They’d been Dr. Erikkson’s patients too.

  “I’ve seen him strike you,” Tillie said. She was having difficulty keeping the panic out of her voice. She ached to be free of her bonds and sit up.

  “Yes. Like I said, insufficient. He is a weak and frightened man, but he knows he is nothing without me.” She poured herself one last tumblerful of absinthe. She put down the empty bottle but misjudged the edge of the table. The bottle fell off and bounced on the hard dirt floor. Mrs. Erikkson kicked it into the corner. “On occasion, I speak back, and he dislikes it. But I need his income to help Tom. My husband spends enough time between the thighs of those whores he visits every night, and his guilt keeps him in check.”

  “I thought he—I thought Dr. Erikkson was the killer.”

  Mrs. Erikkson hooted a laugh. “My husband? He can hardly function! He won’t eat in public or in front of me. A proponent of the great Reverend Sylvester Graham. He thinks by eating purely, he won’t succumb to impure thoughts. He hasn’t touched me as is a husband’s right in years. At night, he succumbs to all his sins with those whores and starts fresh in the morning.” She straightened up. “Enough. It’s time to proceed. My, you’re still quite alert. I’ll give you some more morphine.”

  “No, it’s quite enough—”

  “Don’t be silly. You want to be quiet when this all happens. It’s better this way! It is kindness itself. Excitement in the blood could cause too much excitement in Tom when he takes the medicine. I like them to be quiet as lambs when they go.”

  Mrs. Erikkson readied another dosage of morphine, when a loud knocking came from above.

  “No doubt my husband wants me to do another delivery.” She wiped her hands on her apron and smiled. “I shall be back.” She replaced Tillie’s gag and climbed the ladder. The trapdoor over the chamber closed tightly, and she heard Mrs. Erikkson’s footsteps crossing the floor. There was that same creak of the door opening and more voices.

  Tillie tried to yell and scream, but the gag muffled her sounds too much. She looked around. The fire, the needle and syringe, and then next to them on the table—an unrolled leather case that held several sharp-pointed lancets and what looked like ice picks of graduating thicknesses.

  So these were the vampire teeth used to bore into people’s necks. These would be the instruments of Tillie’s own death. Her eyes widened in terror, imagining Lucy pinned to this very table. Her sister had intended to change the course of her life, to leave James, to provide security for Betty. This was not how Lucy had wanted her life to end. This was not how Tillie wanted this story to end.

  Not like this.

  She wriggled in her bindings. They were tight, and she could gain no purchase to pull free from them. She could feel the morphine working within her, too, a coming tidal wave that promised that everything would be fine and peaceful, and why was she struggling so anyway? It buffed her consciousness into apathy, and the last thing she needed was to be complacent.

  But interestingly, it wasn’t very potent. Tillie had been used to such high doses, and those tablets of heroin she had been taking before had been deceptively strong. She was still quite awake. She recalled that even as her morphine use had progressed, she had been needing larger and larger doses to keep herself satisfied. But Mrs. Erikkson did not know how much she had been using. Tillie worried, though. Perhaps she would not be quite as tolerant of high doses now that she had not taken any opiates for weeks. She could not chance that Mrs. Erikkson would give her more.

  The door upstairs shut again, and Mrs. Erikkson was soon back downstairs in the chamber. Tillie feigned sleep, watching her from under nearly closed eyelids. Mrs. Erikkson opened up a second bottle of absinthe and poured a small glass. Her eyes shut as she swallowed it down.

  She removed a small section of the table from just under Tillie’s neck and hung a pail beneath it. She spread an oilcloth under Tillie’s shoulder and neck, then turned her head to the side so it faced the fire and the table of instruments. Tillie knew she would pierce her neck, and the blood would spurt directly down into the bucket. Clean and neat. It explained why Lucy hadn’t been drenched or splattered in blood. Mrs. Erikkson’s setup put cow milking to shame.

  “Already sleeping, eh?” Mrs. Erikkson murmured. “Very well.”

  She loosed the gag from around Tillie’s head, where the cloth obscured parts of her neck. There was yet another knock on the door upstairs.

  “Confound it! Why do they keep bothering me?” Mrs. Erikkson hissed. “I’ll not answer them this time.”

  Tillie listened carefully. There were murmurs and a peculiar flitting, light musical sound from outside. A tiny voice could be heard through the floorboards. Faint, ever so faint.

  “Pape!” the tiny voice said. It was yelling, but the strength was diluted through layers of wood doors and floors, distances. “Get your World today!” Dim, high-pitched whistles sounded, a rising trill of insistence.

  It was Piper. There was no doubt. In seconds, he would be too far to hear her.

  Tillie quickly licked her lips and whistled her birdlike pips in quick succession, before screaming with all her might. “Help! Piper, it’s me, Tillie! Help!”

  Mrs. Erikkson rushed to Tillie’s side quickly and brought both fists down like hammers onto her face. The blows made Tillie gasp, her head ringing with pain.

  “Be silent!” she hissed. She went to her table and picked up the syringe, fumbling for the morphine. But the absinthe had done its job, and the woman’s hands were clumsy. In her rush, she knocked over the small bottle; liquid gushed over her worktable and instruments.

  “Damn it!” she said, her voice rising in panic.

  Tillie, meanwhile, was whistling as loudly as she could despite her eye swelling rapidly from being struck. She yelled and hollered, banging her head against the table. Mrs. Erikkson abandoned the syringe and mashed her meaty hands over Tillie’s mouth. Tillie bit down hard, tasting salty, iron-tanged blood in her mouth. Mrs. Erikkson screeched in pain, reeling back and holding her hand.

  “Very well! I’ll silence you one way or the other.” She grabbed the short curved knife from the table, but before she could reach her mark, Tillie lunged, trying to bite her hand again. She spat blood into Mrs. Erikkson’s face. The knife’s aim was untrue; as it drew against Tillie’s neck, it pierced the skin at the wrong angle.

  Tillie felt warm blood drizzling from her neck, heard it dripping into the bucket. But she didn’t stop struggling. Despite the dizziness clouding her mind, she whistled, yelled, screamed while Mrs. Erikkson dried her hands to get a better grip on her knife.

  “Stop struggling!” she hissed. “Be still!” She pushed Tillie’s temple down against the table. Tillie shook her head left and right, her head slipping stickily beneath Mrs. Erikkson’s grip. Mrs. Erikkson abandoned her effort to keep Tillie still. “You broke your clavicle here, did you now?” she said, touching the angle of bone that slightly tented the skin near her right shoulder. “Yes, you did.” Mrs. Erikkson fetched a brick from a pile by the hearth. She lifted it high over her head and brought it crashing down onto the newly mended bone.

  The pain was even worse than when Tillie had first broken it riding. White light exploded behind her eyelids, and she heard and felt the bone crunching into shards. Tillie screamed silently, open mouthed, incapable of even making sound. She froze in the maelstrom of pain, doing everything within her power not to move.

  “There. Now I can work in peace.” Mrs. Erikkson propped the brick back on the hearth, calmly gathered the knife and one of the i
ce pick–like tools.

  “You . . . ,” Tillie gasped. She managed to pry her good eye open to stare at Mrs. Erikkson. “They’ll know what you did.” She licked her dry, cracked lips and whistled shrilly again.

  Mrs. Erikkson’s face suffused red with irritation. “That’s enough from you.” Knife raised, she stepped closer to Tillie’s body. Tillie inhaled, as deeply as the pain allowed, and let out one last whistle. Above the oubliette and from the street, it was silent. It was too late.

  Tillie sagged against the table. She closed her eyes in resignation.

  And then a single whistle sounded. It came from above the floorboards.

  Mrs. Erikkson paused with the knife over Tillie’s neck. The surety of her expression warped into a pang of fear.

  Suddenly, the trapdoor opened, and light flooded the tiny chamber. Piper, with his curly black hair, peered down, alongside John O’Toole and Ian.

  “Stop!” John roared. Mrs. Erikkson, her face splattered with crimson, hands dripping in Tillie’s lifeblood, staggered back from the table, still holding the knife. She looked at all of them, saw what they saw—Tillie, bound to the table; the friendly hearth with its fire burning; the instruments laid out before her. Her lower lip quivered, and her eyes bulged. She looked like she was gagging on air.

  “No . . . ,” she murmured. Her hand reclenched around the sickle knife. “You’ll take him away. You don’t know how to care for him. I’ll have nothing!”

  John had already started to make his way down the ladder, when Mrs. Erikkson lifted her fist. With the assurance of someone who knew anatomy intimately, she touched her neck with one hand as a guide, right over the pulsing artery. Her other drew the knife closer to carve her own flesh.

  A different voice rang out. “Stop, Mother!”

  Tom’s ashen face was there in the trapdoor. He reached a hand down to the chamber.

  “Tom?” Mrs. Erikkson faltered, her knife poised in midair. It was all the interruption needed. John had jumped past the last rungs of the ladder, dropping to the floor. He sprang forward to knock the knife out of her hand. Ian jumped down next, and together they tackled her to the floor.

  “You’ll kill him!” she shrieked. “You’ll kill him! No one knows how to care for him. No one! Stop!”

  She was stronger than any of them had imagined. Ian finally tied her arms together behind her back, and John had to kneel on her legs to keep her still. Piper had scrambled down the stairs to start untying Tillie. Ian wiped the sweat from his eyes and came to her side.

  “It’s done. It’s over,” he said, stroking her hair as Piper loosened the last of her bonds.

  Tillie looked at Tom, still peering through the door into the oubliette. He had an otherworldly look on his face, a mixture of relief, confusion, and utter shock. She saw him sit down with a bump and cover his face with his hand.

  Tillie’s neck was still bleeding at a steady clip, and Ian pressed a cloth against the wound. She closed her eyes from equal parts dizziness and relief. She wasn’t sure her heart had the strength for one more beat. But even if it stopped, she would know, with a tiny smile, that she was not broken.

  CHAPTER 27

  But we are strong, each in our purpose; and we are all more strong together.

  —Van Helsing

  “Is she dead?”

  “Stuff it. She’s just sleeping.”

  Tillie stirred. Her neck was terribly sore, but that was the least of her problems. Her left shoulder hurt more than she had ever remembered. This pain was so livid and alive it felt like a creature was stabbing her from the inside of her body with tongs and torches and knives.

  She opened her eyes.

  Peering at her closely were Piper, Pops, and Sweetie. Pops looked like an old man in the body of a ten-year-old. He held a wilting bunch of daisies in his fist. Piper was chewing rather aggressively on a thick rind of bread crust.

  “Oh, ow.” Tillie groaned.

  “You’re awake. Sooner than I thought,” Ian said. He was farther away, sitting in a chair that had been placed in the corner of the bedroom.

  “Oh goodie. You’re not dead. Can we have cake now?” Sweetie asked. She ran to the door, which was open. In the hallway, Tillie could see Ada and John talking. They turned to the sound of voices with lit eyes and smiled. Ada rushed to her side. It seemed like her belly had grown since Tillie had last seen her.

  “You’re awake! I promised they could come in so long as they were quiet, but . . .”

  “You promised cake if we were quiet!” Piper shouted.

  “Ugh, these boytshiks,” Ian said affectionately.

  “You need to teach me more Yiddish,” Tillie said. “I don’t understand half of what you say. It’s all scandalous, I’m sure.”

  “It’s not. And I’ll teach you.” Ian suddenly started picking at a loose thread on his sleeve, but he was smiling.

  “Scamps. Let’s go,” John said at the doorway. “Not that they’ll be quiet. They all scattered to find you after you went missing. To your house and the doctor’s street, Central Park. Whistling like mad birds.” He inclined his head into the room. “Are you sure you’ll be fine without me?” he asked Tillie, though perhaps he was asking Ada.

  “I’m fine, John!” Ada made a shooing gesture with her hands. The three newsies and John left, their chatter dissipating as they thumped downstairs.

  Tillie struggled to sit up. Her arm, with its broken clavicle, was again bound against her chest. Oh God, everything hurt. Her wrists were sore. She pushed up the sleeve of her nightgown and saw the ligature marks and cuts from where she had been tied down. Memories of being in Mrs. Erikkson’s oubliette flooded her.

  “Oh.” She looked at Ian. “What happened after I fainted?”

  “Well, the police came and took Mrs. Erikkson away, but they took Tom and Dr. Erikkson too. They didn’t know how extensive their involvement was.”

  “Were they? Involved?” Tillie asked.

  “I don’t think so. I think their worst crimes were being a monstrous husband and a son who thought it was acceptable to attack young women, intoxicated or not.”

  “It’s on the front page of the paper,” Ada said.

  Tillie hadn’t seen Ada since she had driven off in the carriage. “Ada. What happened to you when we were at the park? I thought you were going to be nearby.”

  “I was. And then—I saw John around the corner. I just lost my senses. I started arguing with him because he had left me, and then I told him about the baby—” She held her belly. “He had been following you. Of all the times! He would ruin everything, and I told him to be off, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “Well, why on earth was he following me?” It hadn’t just been that time either. There’d been that night she’d seen him outside her window, watching her. Other times too.

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Ian said. John had returned and stood in the doorway. As usual, he had that somewhat perpetually angry look about his face. Ada strode forward and pulled him into the room. He kept his hand in hers.

  “I apologize. I didn’t mean to scare you. Your grandmother had paid me two months in advance for my service, and when they let me go, well. I had a job to do for which I was paid, and I don’t take that lightly.”

  “But then why did you give me absinthe in the carriage? After Tom attacked me?”

  “I confess I stole it from the Erikksons’ home. I figured you might need something to calm down. They had a case of it by the door. I knew you wouldn’t drink it if you knew where it came from.” He was peering at her the way he always did. Even that one time, when Ada and John had been in each other’s arms, having a midnight tryst, he’d always stared. Tillie looked away, embarrassed.

  “John, you’re doing it again,” Ada said quietly.

  “Oh.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He pulled a pair of brass spectacles out of his pocket and put them on.

  “He’s terrible about his spectacles. He thinks they’ll make his eyes weak if he w
ears them, but then he can’t see past ten feet if he doesn’t. So he ends up squinting and staring all the time.”

  “I loathe them,” he mumbled. “They make me look like an old man.” Ada smiled up at him with the unabashed incandescence of someone so in love that even spoken gibberish would bring on a fit of romantic sighs. She reached for his hand, and John’s angry eyebrows unfurled and his face lit when he looked at Ada.

  “We’re to be married this week. If you’re well, I hope you’ll come with us to the church,” Ada added. She patted her belly. “The sooner the better.”

  “Oh, Ada! I would love to!” Tillie touched her face, feeling the indented scars over her cheeks. “I’ll have to wear a veil. I don’t want to be bad luck, looking like this.”

  “You look fine. You have battle scars. We all do, but some show more than others,” Ian said quickly. He stood. “I have something for you.” He reached down to a satchel and pulled out a book. He laid it on Tillie’s lap. It was Lucy’s diary.

  Ada and John had retreated to the hallway.

  Tillie touched the leather binding. She was tempted to open it and start reading from the first page, thirsty to hear her sister’s voice. Lucy had written this for herself and perhaps had had no intention of sharing it with anyone. Hence the locked drawer. Reading it would bring back currents of memories, sweet and bitter. Lucy was gone, and her tormenter would no longer hurt anyone else. There was satisfaction in this fact, relief. But there was no serenity to accompany the relief. It did not quell the tempest that was Tillie’s loss. She thought of Nellie Bly’s recent visit and how, despite the woman’s matter-of-fact way of speaking and acting, Tillie had spied a shadow in her expression, like a bruise on her soul. She’d recognized it in herself—the mark of someone who has lost a loved one so dear.

  “Aren’t you going to read it?” Ian asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tillie said. She looked up at Ian, her face stricken.

  For the first time since Lucy died, Tillie cried.

  December 1, 1899