The Jekyll Revelation

by Robert Masello

  Laszlo turned toward him, his black mustache curling around the corners of his mouth, his eyes narrowed with hate. “You think you just won something?”

  Though it was too soon to tell, Rafe thought that maybe he had.

  “You didn’t win shit. Take it from me.” He stomped up onto the front porch and said, “All you just did was step into a world of pain,” before the screen door banged shut behind him. “A world of pain, my friend.”

  Apart from the mention of friend, Rafe didn’t doubt him. Laszlo wasn’t the kind of guy to let bygones be bygones. He’d gather his belongings—something about that three strikes remark had hit home—and he’d split, but he wouldn’t go far. There weren’t many other places like Topanga Canyon anywhere in the world, and if you were a grifter down on your luck, it was home.

  30 September, 1888

  The recently installed electric lights on the marquee of the Lyceum Theatre were sputtering and frizzing in the light rain when I stepped down from the carriage. The last stragglers were leaving the theatre, opening their umbrellas and raising their collars, while an usher folded up a standing placard that announced ‘Closing Soon! Get Your Tickets Now!’

  Up until that moment, I had been under the impression that the play was a huge success, and would run indefinitely. My royalty of twenty pounds per month, paid by Richard Mansfield himself, had been very welcome, especially in light of the bills piling up on the hall table at home. An establishment called the Aldgate Arms Hotel, I saw, had sent something stamped Third Notice on the outer envelope, and I dared not guess what expense Lloyd had run up there, no doubt entertaining the fair Miss Constance Wooldridge.

  The invitation to the theatre tonight had come not by post, but by private messenger, and even then it was marked Confidential. It was from the theatre manager, and it urged me to come backstage after the performance to see him. Going around to the stage door in the alleyway, I ducked in out of the rain, furled my umbrella, and when a passing stagehand asked me my business there, I told him I had come to see Mr Stoker.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Robert Louis Stevenson.’

  ‘The bloke who wrote the play?’

  ‘The book. The play is based on it.’

  Hoisting a crate onto his shoulder, he said, ‘Bram’s in the box office, counting the receipts. Go across the stage and turn left. Can’t miss it.’

  ‘How were the receipts?’ I could not resist asking.

  ‘No shortage of empty seats tonight. That’s all I know.’

  The house lights were still on, and halfway across, I stopped and looked out at the vast and plush auditorium with its distinctive mezzanine overhanging the orchestra seats. The third-act stage set—Dr Jekyll’s laboratory—had not been struck, and there was a puddle of liquid, the magic potion, on the floorboards. Overhead I saw the complex web of ropes and pulleys, lights and wires, and weighted bags common to any theatre; despite my previous forays into playwriting, how all of these are deployed, and kept untangled, remains a mystery to me. Henley always says, ‘You supply the inspiration, Louis, and leave the mechanics to me.’

  I could hear the sound of coins clinking before I found the actual office—a tiny, cramped cabinet where Stoker was sweeping coins and pound notes into a drawer with one hand while entering sums in a ledger with the other.

  ‘I don’t want you to lose count,’ I said, hovering in the open doorway.

  He held up a finger to bid me wait, finished with the money on the table, then made his final entry and stood to shake my hand.

  ‘So glad that you could come.’

  ‘Your note was too intriguing not to.’

  ‘Please, have a seat,’ he said, gesturing at the rickety chair on the other side of his desk. ‘Can I offer you a drop of whiskey?’

  Considering the chilly rain I had just come in from, I thought it was a capital idea. Producing a bottle from his drawer, Stoker poured us both a generous glass.

  ‘To Jekyll,’ he said.

  ‘To Hyde!’

  After a few pleasantries, and sips of the fine Irish whiskey, Stoker asked if I had seen the placard outside. I told him I had, and confessed my puzzlement.

  ‘It’s not just us,’ he said. ‘This damn Ripper has no one wanting to go out at night.’

  ‘But surely, a play is just the sort of thing to take their minds off such a terrible subject.’

  ‘Not this one. This one’s all bound up with it in the public’s mind. The play opens and, bang, Jack strikes! Not only that, Mansfield’s performance as Mr Hyde is so effective that he’s got half of the audience convinced that he’s the Ripper himself. We get letters here every day, warning us to keep a close eye on him and report anything suspicious to the police.’

  ‘But hasn’t it occurred to them that, among other things, if Mansfield is up here on the stage every night, he can hardly be in the East End murdering people?’

  Stoker took a swallow and nodded. ‘The police have looked into that themselves, and a certain detective from Scotland Yard—’

  ‘Is his name Abberline?’

  ‘The very one. He says that there’s time enough, and more, for him to finish the show and still have committed the crimes.’

  ‘They can’t seriously believe that a mere actor, particularly one as famous as Richard Mansfield, is guilty of such horrific acts.’

  ‘They are casting, it seems, a very wide net.’ Looking fixedly at me, he repeated, ‘Very wide, Mr Stevenson.’

  It was several seconds before I took his meaning. ‘Are you suggesting that they suspect me?’

  ‘Richard is convinced that he is being tailed everywhere he goes. I doubted him at first, but I’ve since confirmed it with my own eyes. I would not be at all surprised to learn that your own movements, too, were being followed.’

  ‘Thank you for warning me,’ I said, still bowled over at the news. I was suspected of being Jack the Ripper? And all for having written a horror story? It was too absurd; Fanny would either die laughing or shriek in fury. ‘Thank you for having me come here so that you could tell me this.’

  ‘It’s only part of the reason I had you come,’ he said. ‘I also have a favour to ask.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Richard’s down in his dressing room. He stays there until midnight every night, then has a coach waiting for him in the alleyway. He is behaving like a hunted animal, which, of course, makes him look even more suspicious. He raves on about the play, about the secret truths it reveals, about his ability to physically transform—‘

  ‘Which he conveys very convincingly on stage.’

  ‘Too convincingly, for some. I thought it might help if you could go down and talk to him—don’t say that I put you up to it—and perhaps put his mind at ease. He seems to be having some trouble separating fantasy from reality. He’s an actor, after all. Tell him it’s just a story. Tell him you made it up and there’s no truth to it. Tell him there’s no such potion.’

  He had no idea what he was asking of me. He had no idea that to do so, I would have to be the one telling a lie.

  ‘If Mansfield collapses, the play, of course, closes, and we don’t have anything else lined up for months. We need him to keep going, for as long as we can manage to scrounge up an audience.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said, though less out of concern for the Lyceum’s finances than for the health and well-being of the suffering creature in the dressing room below. ‘How do I find him?’

  ‘Take the staircase behind you, then go to the end of the hall. His name’s on the door, but it’s sure to be closed. Knock. He’ll be hiding.’

  Draining my glass—I would need the fortifying—I followed his instructions, and saw not only his name on the door, in gilded letters, but a framed column from the “Times” that, upon closer inspection, trumpeted Mansfield as ‘a great actor of our time, and let us not mince words, an actor for the ages’. Actors, in my experience, are never shy about their accomplishments.

  Inside, I c
ould hear someone rustling about and even muttering under his breath, but the moment I knocked, the sound stopped. I knocked again, and this time announced myself by name.

  There was still no reply.

  ‘I’d stopped by for a drink with Mr Stoker and thought I would take this occasion, long overdue, to meet you.’

  ‘If you’ve got some opinion about my performance’—opinion said with a poisonous tang—‘write a letter to the management.’

  ‘I do have an opinion,’ I said, to the closed door. ‘I think it’s remarkable, and only wish to congratulate you on how perfectly you have captured the very essence of the role.’

  After another long pause, a bolt was thrown. ‘You’re alone?’

  I assured him that I was.

  Another lock was unlatched, and the door was opened just wide enough to allow me to slither in, then slammed shut again.

  I found myself in what looked like a wardrobe closet—clothes and costumes hanging from pegs all over the walls, coats and hats on a teetering rack, a vanity table whose every square inch was covered with pots of cosmetics and brushes. An ornate mirror with a glaring lamp fixed to the wall above it reflected the entire room.

  As for Mansfield himself, he was a dishevelled wreck, a dusted wig still stuck askew on his head, a dressing gown stained with rouge and powder, his pale features streaked with makeup that had only partially been removed.

  ‘Excuse my appearance,’ he said, fluttering his hand in confusion, ‘but it’s the devil to get this stuff off.’

  ‘Don’t let me impede you.’

  He plopped back down in front of the mirror, while I propped myself, as if at a bar stool, on the end of an upright dressing case.

  ‘You’ve been receiving my royalty checks?’ he asked, wiping away some more of the stage paint.

  ‘I have, and thank you.’

  He snorted, relieved to know that that was no cause for the visit. ‘I had intended to call on you myself,’ he said, ‘but it is not an easy thing for me to get around London.’

  ‘Have you tried the new underground?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not that. It’s that my fame is so great, I am recognized everywhere I go. Did you know that the photograph we have done for the advertising is the most-produced picture in the land? It’s up in every public house, apothecary, and tobacconist’s shop in town.’

  ‘I have even seen it in my wife’s milliner’s shop.’

  ‘There you have it. When I am not being accosted by strangers, who wish to pump my hand or breathe the air of genius, I am under the surveillance of the local constabulary. Did Stoker tell you about that?’

  ‘I don’t believe he did.’

  ‘You’re a liar—a fine story-teller, Stevenson, but a bad liar.’

  ‘Why would the police follow you?’ I said, electing to stick with the lie till the end.

  ‘Any man who can make such sudden and violent changes on stage, who can transform himself from a model of rectitude into a creature of depravity, who can ape the gestures of a monster to such startling effect, is ipso facto considered a possible, even plausible, Jack the Ripper.’ He swivelled in his chair to face me and said, ‘You’re on the list, too.’

  I pretended shock, but Mansfield went back to cleansing his face and neck and said, ‘Never play poker. Your face is as transparent as a pane of glass.’ Tossing the used make-up towel to the floor, he picked up a fresh one from the vanity. ‘What you have written, and I have dramatised, has in it something so corrosive, but so true, that it unsettles people. It has unsettled me since the first rehearsal back in Boston.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I think I’m onto you, Stevenson,’ he said, catching my eye in the mirror. ‘This isn’t just some story you concocted. There’s a truth to it that even all your artifice can’t disguise. What really happened to you? What have you discovered about the duality of man, and how precisely did you do it?’

  Now we were venturing into those waters that Stoker had implied.

  ‘You have tapped into some vein of ore, and through your story I have tapped into it, too.’ He brushed the wig back off his head, revealing a pate barely covered with thinning brown hair. ‘There’s been many a time that I wish I hadn’t. Times when I feared the police were right to trail me now. Times when I awoke in the morning in soiled clothes that I did not remember putting on. Tell me that hasn’t happened to you, too.’

  Perhaps I was that pane of glass, after all.

  Rising from his chair, he disappeared behind a screen, the dressing gown tossed over its rim. ‘For a man of words,’ he said, ‘I find you surprisingly taciturn.’ I heard a pair of pants being pulled up and braces snapped. ‘Your secret’s safe with me, you know.’

  ‘I only wish there were such a secret,’ I replied, thinking, inevitably, of this journal I keep and the flasks of the elixir locked in my study. ‘Because of my own ill-health, I have had a lifetime to contemplate such questions of the mind and body, of morality and mortality. You’d be amazed at the thoughts that come in the dead of night, or even the light of day, when one is confined to a room, and a sickbed, for months on end.’

  ‘I had my own sickly youth,’ he said, looking at me over the top of the screen as he buttoned his shirt. ‘But my fantasies were not nearly so morbid. I dreamt of fame and fortune, and to a great extent I have realized those dreams, through industry and a God-given talent.’

  ‘So you have.’ He had no shortage of confidence, either.

  Bending down apparently to buckle his shoes, his head disappeared as he said, ‘We are bound together, you and I, by this business. I feel that I cannot get Mr Hyde out of my skin—he has been awakened and lives inside me now—and I fear that with each day that passes, and each performance I give, his influence grows. Do you think that’s possible?’ His head came up like a jack-in-the-box, his eyes, still lined with a bit of mascara, wide.

  ‘I think a bit of Mr Hyde lives in everyone, and that’s why the story resonates as it does.’

  ‘But is it a kind of corruption, a force that, once unleashed, goes unchecked?’

  ‘That is why we have willpower. To control the impulses and emotions that can only lead to evil.’

  ‘Pshaw! Evil? Is indulgence evil? Is sensuality evil? I don’t think you believe that, Stevenson, and I don’t think your story says so. I think you hedge your bets. I think it’s hypocrisy you’re after. You just want an acknowledgement of how things actually stand. You want an admission of guilt from the whole human race.’

  At that, I had to laugh—not only at the turn of phrase, but at the accuracy of the charge.

  Mansfield, pleased that his bon mot had gone over so well, emerged, pulling on his coat and checking his pocket watch. ‘I must go now.’

  Opening the door, he looked down the hallway, then waved me to come on. He locked the door behind us, and, throwing up his collar and fastening a top hat onto his head, led the way back up the stairs, across the stage—all the lights extinguished now except for one, the so-called ghost light, standing on a pole centre-stage—and to the stage exit. ‘I would drop you off, but it’s best we not be seen together,’ he said, ‘lest they think we are conspiring in some fresh atrocity.’ Abruptly, he turned and went out into the narrow alleyway. A cab was waiting there, the coachman holding his whip. As it left, Mansfield stuck his head out the window and said, ‘Tell Stoker he doesn’t need to send any more emissaries. I’m sane as the archbishop of Canterbury.’

  TOPANGA CANYON—CALIFORNIA

  Present Day

  In the rearview mirror, Miranda saw the two men in a Mexican standoff, and she prayed that she’d made the right decision, leaving Rafe behind. But the dump was only a few miles up the main road, and she should be gone no more than a half hour. Trip had curled up on the passenger seat with his tail wrapped around him; he liked traveling in the car.

  It was dark out now, and a cool wind was blowing through the canyon. She drove with the windows open, letting the breeze whip her hair back ove
r her shoulders. Houses were sparse along the sides of the road, and though most of them were pretty small and run-down, every now and then there was a pair of gates, or a fancy new fence with an intercom box, to indicate that somebody had laid down a lot of money to build their dream home, secluded somewhere out of sight, up in the overgrown hills.

  She drove past a couple of mechanic’s shops, a hardware store, a vegan restaurant where everything was served so raw even she could barely get it down, and had to make sure she didn’t hit the gas pedal too hard. Anxious as she was to get to the dump, she knew that the cops liked to lurk along the roadside at night, and spring at the last second. She’d already gotten two speeding tickets. She did not want a third.

  Three strikes.

  She’d thrown that little bomb at Laszlo, knowing it would hit home. He had two convictions already—one on a drug charge, one for grand theft, and God knows what else might be on his record that she wasn’t aware of. What was wrong with her? What crazy, screwed-up thing in her head made her get mixed up in the first place with men like Laszlo? Maybe she thought they’d been unfairly treated by life, maybe she thought that her healing touch was all that was needed to fix them, maybe she needed a project . . . or maybe she was just as damaged as they were.

  Trip tried to stand up and look out the windshield, but with only three legs, it was too hard for him to get his balance.

  “Get down,” she said. “Nothing to see. Get down.”

  At the next crossroad, she saw the sign, pockmarked with bullet holes, for the sanitation and recycling facility, and turned off the main road. The car jounced along on the old cracked asphalt for about another quarter mile, and when she looked back at the green trunk, she could see it rocking around as if it were alive. Christ, how she wanted to get rid of that damn thing. It was like driving with an alligator in the backseat.

  As she approached the dump, a sign indicated the hours of operation—this wasn’t one of them—and warned that no one, under penalty of fine, was to leave anything there unattended. A high iron fence ran all around it, with razor wire on top. Why, she wondered, did they need all that security for a dump? What was there to steal?