The Jekyll Revelation

by Robert Masello

  He heard the crunch of tires on the gravel out in front of the store, and a few seconds later, the barking of Tripod and a car door slamming shut. Miranda was home, but he could only imagine what it would be like for her to go upstairs in a house where Laszlo—suddenly and effectively—no longer lived. Would she be relieved? How could she not? But would she also be happy . . . or simply so drained by the whole dreadful experience that she felt nothing? He wanted to go to her. He wanted to get up off the damn bunk and go see, but something was holding him back. Was it tact? Or cowardice? He felt like he should leave her alone—let her be. She needed to dispel a ghost, he thought, before a new suitor came knocking on her door.

  He closed the journal, but went to sleep with the light still on in his trailer. He wanted her to be able to see it if she looked out the window . . . and if she needed to come to him of her own accord. The distance between her back steps and the door to his trailer was only a couple of dozen yards, but who would cross it first, he wondered, and when?

  30 September, 1888

  The knife was all I could focus on. It was long, a butcher’s knife, and the man let it descend from the cuff of his coat only gradually.

  Whatever terrible deed he was contemplating, it was not something he wanted to finish quickly.

  I backed up farther into the shadows of the arcade, trying to put some distance, and market stalls, between us. Was this, then, Jack himself? And how did he know my name? I glanced around for anything that might be used as a weapon, but came up with nothing but my ivory-handled umbrella. A poor substitute for a rapier.

  The man approached slowly, keeping his arms out to block me from trying to run around him and out into the street. It was so dark that I could barely discern his features—he had a heavy, squarish face, and blond hair sticking out from under a sodden deerstalker hat. He smelled of wet wool and leather.

  When I made a feint to my left, he pivoted in that direction, and when I feinted right he did the same. He kept his head down, like a bull, and his eyes—cold and grey—fixed on me. I ducked behind a stall, rank from spoiled vegetables. To stay on course, he shoved a cart out of his way with one sweep of a meaty hand. In the other, his fingers kept twitching on the handle of the knife, as if the knife itself could not wait to begin its awful work. The corpse of Annie Chapman, lying on the mortuary table, came back to me in one sudden flash.

  What I did not feel, and this was what astonished me even then, even in what should have been an utterly terrifying moment, was fear. I felt instead a burst of exhilaration, coupled with a sensation of freedom and power. I was not the scribbler Robert Louis Stevenson—I was the wolf Lord Grey. My blood was up, my back was up, and I all but dared the assassin to attack me.

  Snorting like a bull, too, he tried to push the stall over, but all it did was keel to one side, scraps of mouldering lettuce and cucumbers sliding onto the stone floor. I made a dash for it, and he lunged, his boots slipping on the wet mess, but his blade swept through the air and caught the tail of my coat, enough to unbalance me. I stumbled towards the entrance to the arcade, where the light from the gas lamp cast a feeble glow, but to my surprise, the man scrambled to his feet and, faster than I thought he’d have been able, swung the knife again. I parried the thrust with my umbrella, which went clattering from my hand, and then he was on me, like a great clumsy bear, straddling me, trying to pin my shoulder back to the floor with one hand, while shoving my jaw up with the palm of the one holding the knife. One swipe of that blade would do the trick.

  And then, as I clawed at him with my own hands and struggled to budge his ponderous weight, he paused. Studied me in the lamplight, his thick brow furrowing with confusion, his eyes uncomprehending, as if it had suddenly dawned on him that he might have mistaken his prey.

  The pause was all I needed. I grabbed at the knife, the blade slicing the side of my hand, but my blood making it slick. He squeezed it harder to maintain his grip, and it twisted in his hand. Before he could gain control, a whistle blew—a policeman’s whistle—and then a voice shouted, ‘You there! Drop your weapon!’

  ‘That’s him! That’s the one who hit me!’ the old prostitute cried out.

  ‘Police! You are under arrest!’

  The beam from a bull’s-eye lantern was aimed straight at us, and the man rolled to one side, lumbered up, and then charged at the constable. His lantern went flying into the air, and he went over like a bowling pin as the culprit took off down the street.

  The whistle shrieked again, and the officer got up, dripping wet from the puddle he’d landed in. ‘You stay right where you are!’ he ordered me, before charging after the knife wielder. Several windows went up in a tenement across the way, and a curious head or two poked out.

  ‘That’s the wrong ’un!’ the prostitute hollered. ‘The wrong ’un!’ But the copper was already in hot pursuit of Jack the Ripper and had no time for the likes of me. Suddenly, left alone at the arcade with the man who had frightened her in the first place, she kicked off her shoes and ran, barefoot and screaming like a banshee, into a side street.

  Straightening my clothes, which hung on my stooped frame like loose garments on a rack, I brushed my hair back and bound my handkerchief around my wounded hand like a tourniquet. Then I sauntered out of the shelter of the arcade. The rain had stopped.

  ‘Hey there, what you done to her?’ a man called out from an upper-storey window.

  I looked up at him, from beneath a gas lamp, the light falling full on my face. What exactly he saw there, I cannot say, but can well imagine.

  His expression changed from indignation to confusion and then horror, a progression akin to that I had seen on the face of my would-be killer only moments before. His head went back in, the window slammed shut, and the curtains yanked closed.

  In my present state, I felt it unwise, and no longer necessary, to drop in on Henley. Would he even have recognized, and admitted, me? It was an open question. Instead, I made my way, by a long and circuitous path, to the back gate of my garden—which I found locked—and scrambled over the wall like one of the captive monkeys I had befriended on my voyage to America. I found it surprisingly easy to do so.

  TOPANGA CANYON—CALIFORNIA

  Present Day

  Balancing the Hefty bag on his lap while hanging on to the handlebars of the motorcycle was a feat Laszlo should not have even attempted. But he did things when he was pissed, and drunk, that he shouldn’t have done, like trashing Miranda’s shop. Now look what it had gotten him. Evicted. He’d had a pretty sweet deal there—and she was anything but a lousy lay—and now, here he was, driving all his worldly shit to the Spiritz’ place—locally known as the Compound—to crash for the night. Longer than that, if Axel would let him.

  But why wouldn’t he? Laszlo thought. He’d done some fairly decent work for the gang, peddling meth to the occasional canyon day-tripper, and now he could do more. He’d have to sell himself when he got there—convince them that he could carry his own weight.

  The Compound was up the road a few miles, around twisting turns that were poorly marked and unlighted, and more than once he almost tipped over on the bike. When his one headlight finally picked up the No Trespassing sign, he turned up the drive, bumped over the little wooden bridge that crossed what should have been a stream but was now just an empty rut in the ground, and parked outside. There was actually a hitching post, left over from the days when the Compound was owned by a movie studio and used to shoot cheapie westerns, along with several outbuildings that had once housed horses and crew. Surely the gang could make room there for one more.

  The main house was a run-down adobe, but the lights were all on inside, and through the open windows, he could even hear Axel arguing with somebody.

  “What is it about the words shut down that you don’t understand?” Axel was saying.

  “They’re scared shitless. They’re not gonna tell anybody.”

  “Forget it.”

  “It’s a good lab. You know how hard it is t
o set up a good lab?”

  “I know what it costs, that’s for damn sure.”

  Laszlo left his bags outside the door before going in. The minute he did, all conversation stopped. Axel was sitting by the fireplace, which was filled with a plasma-screen TV. Roy—the guy who cooked the meth, so far as he knew—was sprawled out on a broken-down Barcalounger with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other, while Seth and Alfie occupied an equally dilapidated sofa. It was good that those two idiots were there; right now it felt to Laszlo like he had allies.

  “Excuse me,” Axel said, “but did you call for an appointment?”

  Laszlo pretended to laugh, but Axel always gave him the creeps, truth be told. The guy was so sarcastic all the time.

  At the far end of the room, two other guys—in Spiritz jackets with cutoff sleeves to show off their ’roided-out arms—were at the pool table, leaning on their cues and waiting to see what was going to happen next.

  “I ditched my old lady,” Laszlo said, and Axel looked around the room at the others as if he didn’t understand what had just been said. “She’s just not worth all the shit she laid down.”

  “Your what?”

  Laszlo was confused.

  “Your old lady?” Axel said. “What are you, a hippie?”

  Laszlo laughed obligingly, and so did the others.

  “So, in other words,” Axel said, “she just kicked your limp dick out of bed.”

  The guys at the pool table grinned and clicked their cues together.

  Roy looked irritated; his pitch had been interrupted, and he blamed Laszlo.

  “Don’t tell me,” Axel said, “you want to crash—isn’t that what you hippies like to say?—here, at my place?”

  “If it’s okay.”

  “Let’s take a vote,” he said, looking around the room, but they all waited, wondering which way he wanted them to vote. “A show of hands. Who’s in favor?”

  Laszlo looked at Seth and Alfie. Hadn’t he helped them out before? Seth warily raised a hand to vote yes.

  Then Alfie went along, too.

  “Roy?” Axel asked.

  “As long as he sleeps in the barn, why would I give a shit?” He jabbed a hand into the air. “Okay? Can we get back to business now?”

  Laszlo knew enough not to push it.

  “Okay, that’s a quorum. You can stay. For now. Just don’t piss me off.”

  Seth and Alfie looked vaguely pleased.

  “All I need now is some more blister packs and ammonia,” Roy said, trying to pick up where he’d left off, but he still hadn’t recaptured Axel’s attention.

  “Why don’t you boys show him where to bunk?” Axel said, and Seth and Alfie levered themselves up off the sagging sofa and made for the door.

  Outside, Laszlo picked up his stuff and followed them around back, where he saw their truck parked at what had plainly been a stable at one time. Roy hadn’t been kidding.

  “This is where you guys live?” Laszlo asked, realizing only then that he had never known, or cared.

  “Sometimes,” Seth said.

  “It’s a pretty sweet deal,” Alfie added, “for as long as it lasts.”

  An owl hooted from the gable when they opened the big wooden doors, and Alfie pulled down on a string to turn on the light.

  A bare bulb hung from the rafters, and in its harsh glare Laszlo saw several ancient bunk beds—Christ, the old movie actors must have slept in these seventy years ago—and odd and ends of other furniture, including another big TV squatting on a minifridge. The wires trailed across the dirt floor.

  “If the bunk’s got a sheet on it,” Seth said, “somebody’s probably using it. If it doesn’t, it’s yours.”

  Laszlo dropped his Hefty bag between his feet. What the fuck. He knew the Compound might not be cushy, but this? At Miranda’s, there were always fresh sheets on the bed, and they smelled of sunshine after drying on the line.

  Now he was getting pissed all over again. How come she was still back in the apartment above the store and he was stuck in this stable? Apart from the beer bottle he’d thrown out the window, there were even a dozen more Coronas still in the fridge.

  “That one’s free,” Alfie said, gesturing to a lower bunk with a rolled-up mattress on it.

  Shit. Laszlo unfurled the mattress—it sure as hell didn’t smell like sunshine—and plopped down on it. Seth and Alfie were standing around like bellhops waiting for a tip. Seth had the knife he’d taken from the trunk stuck through a belt loop. That was when it occurred to Laszlo that he might be able to stir up some trouble for the lovebirds, and maybe, if he was truly lucky, catch Miranda out in the open, alone and in the dark.

  “You know that trunk you found?”

  “What about it?” Alfie said.

  “We can get it back.”

  They waited.

  “It’s at the dump. Right now.”

  “Dump’s closed.”

  “That’s right. It’s outside the gate.”

  “Yeah?” Seth said. “It’s probably empty now.”

  “It’s not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. Miranda just drove it over there to get rid of it. Bad juju she thinks.”

  “What ever happened to that littler box, the one inside it?”

  “Let’s just say, you guys got screwed by that fucking forest ranger.”

  “I knew it!” Alfie exploded, smacking his own thigh. “That fucker. What was inside it?”

  “Your truck running?”

  “Uh-huh,” Seth said.

  “I’ll tell you on the way to the dump.”

  “That fucker,” Alfie muttered on his way out of the barn. “I knew it.”

  Laszlo left his stuff on the dirt floor—it looked cleaner than the striped mattress—and followed them out to the truck. The night was young, and the less of it he had to spend in that bunk, the better.

  1 October, 1888

  I did not dare to look at myself in the oblong cheval glass. When I had asked Chandler to bring it up to my study, months earlier, Fanny had laughed and said, ‘What, you are becoming vain, at your age?’

  And Lloyd had openly complained. ‘I use that mirror myself.’

  ‘Too much,’ his mother said.

  On that, we could agree. Lloyd had taken an increasingly time-consuming and expensive interest in his appearance ever since beginning his amour fou with Constance Wooldridge. Once or twice, I had tried to engage Fanny in a discussion of it, but she either brushed it aside—‘puppy love, leave it alone’—or cut me off abruptly. ‘I know your opinion, Louis, before you even say it, so what’s the point of having an argument?’

  The glass, tall and brightly polished, stands in the far corner of the room so that my back is to it when I sit at my desk. I don’t want to be reminded that it is there . . . or why.

  But today I needed it. I had managed to come in from the garden unobserved, but nearly bumped into Sally Chandler in the kitchen, setting out the breakfast dishes. I did not know she rose so early. I had to duck into the pantry, wait until she stepped outside to the coal bin, and then dash up the back stairs, the cuffs of my trousers snagging on my wet shoes, and breathed a sigh of relief only when the door was closed and locked behind me.

  Unfortunately, old Woggin had chosen to spend the night in my study, and looked up with cloudy eyes at the figure in ill-fitting clothes, with dusky skin and stunted posture, leaning back against the door frame. He struggled to get to his feet, a low growl in his throat, before I could reassure him, in a soft voice, that it was his master.

  ‘Down, Woggin, down. It’s only me.’ But even my voice was altered, and Woggin came closer, head down, still wary. ‘Smell me, then. Smell me.’

  A sniff or two, and the touch of my hand, even with its gnarled fingers, scratching the back of his head, and he relaxed enough to return to his rug.

  I hastily removed my wet coat and hat, tossed them on the rack, and opened the locked cabinet in which I kept the elixir concealed
behind some books and bottles of liquor. I threw down a generous shot of whiskey, feeling the smoky burn travel all the way down into my hollow chest, before carefully, painfully, unwinding the handkerchief from my hand. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound was deep. His knife must have been very sharp. Soaking a corner of the handkerchief in the whiskey, I daubed at the cut, cleaning it as best I could, before falling back into my desk chair. The mirror above the desk, the one in which I had first seen my hideous reflection, I have had replaced with a small watercolour Symonds gave me, painted by one of his acolytes.

  ‘The boy is no Corot,’ he said, ‘but he captures clouds nicely.’

  A bluish light was filtering into the room; birds were chirping on the boughs of the elm outside the window. Exhaustion was overtaking me. Had it not been for the vial I had brought with me that night, I might well have died beneath that cabbage stand. Of course, had it not been for that vial, I might not now have found myself imprisoned in the skin, and soul, of this alien creature. The elixir is a blessing—the one thing that can stop the galloping consumption in its tracks—and a curse—the one thing that can overtake and transform me physically and spiritually. I could not forget the vigour I had felt in my limbs, or the glee I’d felt at the woman’s terror.