Darker Still

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  “Let’s think through the procedure Lord Denbury related. It’s that phrase the demon said. I know that’s the key, but it’s not complete enough to send him back.” She pointed at the phrase, running her finger over it and tapping one particular word. “This word does not make sense. It is not Latin. Part of it, but not the whole.”

  I cringed as she said a few of the words aloud, but she did so in English, rather than Latin—so that any power of the word was hopefully dispelled in translation.

  “I send the soulren through the door…” She made a face. “In Latin or English, it doesn’t make any sense. But once we wrap our minds around that final piece, we’ll have the spell. Perhaps with the name thrown in—do you recall if he used the name Jonathon or John in the midst of the incantation? Because I find it hard to believe the beast wouldn’t have been specific about it.”

  “John,” I signed. “But the fiend gave no name. Without his, can we reverse the spell?”

  “I don’t know, and how could we gain such access? How do we lure and keep him close without his suspecting?”

  An idea began to form like a ghost in the back of my mind. It terrified me, but the moment I began to dream it up, much like following the fiend, I knew it was right. I could speak in Denbury’s world. It was time I started speaking in this one. No one would suspect me. Until it mattered most.

  I took a deep breath and tried to speak, ignoring how much I hated the sound. The words were rough, and they came at great cost, amid tears, and it took a long time to wrestle with each sentence, to muscle each word. Mrs. Northe took my hand, patiently encouraging me.

  Something supernatural had cured my voice. I had to imagine it possible here.

  I thought of the press of Jonathon’s spirit, a helping and encouraging hand, from one heart to another. I tried. And I spoke, though it seemed to take years to make my point.

  “I spoke in Lord Denbury’s world,” I said, my voice slow. Dull. I struggled against my distaste. But I thought about the ease of my voice within the painting. It had grown strong there, and that helped me now. “I need to speak…in this world. If the devil comes…in ritual…I’ll lure him close enough…to reverse the spell. He saw me. At the Art Association. And…I do not flatter myself to say that he liked what he saw.” I shuddered. “He made that quite clear. But he won’t suspect a woman he thinks mute, will he?”

  Mrs. Northe watched me, worried, as if she wanted to fight this but couldn’t.

  “The longer we delay…the more women will die,” I said.

  We sat in silence for a while before Mrs. Northe said, “You must go to Denbury once more. Keep up his spirits. We need him whole. He’ll need to be a strong anchor of soul and conscience if this can be reversed well. You bring hope into his darkened world. And he’ll need every shred of it. Do you love him?”

  I was unprepared for the question, but there was no use fighting it. “Yes.” The word came out very clearly.

  “Good. That will help.”

  Mrs. Northe did not agree to my plan, but she did not argue against it. The struggle on her face told me she wasn’t sure she could. Then she arranged to take me home, and I crept in here to my bedchamber to relate all this.

  I shall begin practicing, softly and in English, the phrase that must be said. Mrs. Northe and I will puzzle over the word we cannot make sense out of—I dare to use the Latin—animusren. A word that is and isn’t Latin at once. But if I don’t know what it means, then I have no power. But once I do…I will take the magic. And wield it.

  Facing the impossible seems to be what I was made for, and I only pray my courage matches the boldness of my plans. I pray for Cecilia and all her kind. May they be safe this night. May Providence grant them a way out of a life that few would choose to live.

  June 18

  The Herald appears to have missed the irony that it has included in its paper today. On the page opposite the text I have included is another hasty sketch of an infernal-looking Denbury, with an upside-down pentagram, which I learned from Mrs. Northe is oft used as a Satanist symbol, though right-side up the pentagram is a symbol of luck and prosperity and remains a fine talisman.

  The irony occurs to me in regards to the symbol and the place. A five-pointed star. The Five Points.

  The Devil is full of homage.

  But here is his damage, from the New York Herald:

  June 18, 1880

  Five Points Demon Slays Again

  The reign of terror continues. The tortured body of Laura May was found in a squalid room at 13 Orange Street late last night, her head at an odd angle and burn marks all over her body. It’s said the method of the burns has not been determined. And once again, witnesses tell of seeing a well-dressed gentleman before the attack.

  Though police have extensively questioned area residents, officers have no leads on any suspect and will not confirm whether they believe this is the same killer who struck at Cross Street. It seems the Five Points is the very Devil’s playground, and he abuses his own home with impunity. Perhaps we can hope that the district may simply cannibalize itself and thus eat its way out of existence and the city will breathe a sigh of relief.

  The opinions at the end anger me. The Five Points and the people living there aren’t to blame for this; they could have hardly asked for such terrors to be theirs. I recall my father’s friends speaking out on the behalf of the ward—that people there needed to be taken seriously, not treated with derision. My heart goes out to Laura and all those who live in such fear as to be silent, their lives bought and sold for a price.

  But really, if newspapers are only going to mock rather than seek justice, why talk to a reporter at all and try to fight for the truth? Poor Laura. Saint Laura. Would that I had known her and could have saved her, as I hoped I’d been sent to save Cecilia…but in turn, her life was traded for another.

  “Saint Laura.”

  You see, I put her homage in quotes because I’m forcing myself to say things. I can whisper in this world better than I can speak. Last night I went to sleep murmuring the dread phrase over and over again, the Latin, the spell, hoping a ghost of a voice will be voice enough when it comes time to use it.

  I am shocked I did not dream last night. But then again, the mind is not always predictable. Still, I would have liked to be warned of Laura. Or would I? It isn’t like I could have found her. Being wrapped up in this madness has given me such a sense of responsibility for what occurs.

  What if we can’t determine the last piece of the word puzzle?

  I pray it’s a small enough omission that will not render the entire magic useless.

  Any spare moment that I’m not watched, I practice the alphabet quietly and aloud. As if I were a child learning a skill I’d long since sworn off. And while my speech hardly sounds as effortless as my words did when I was within the portrait, I think about things that are just and good. I think of angels. I pray. I muse on Mother. I think about Jonathon, and my heart swells. At this, speaking comes easier.

  I knew I had to go to him during the day, and thankfully Father said he’d be in meetings but if I wanted to come and sketch, I was welcome to it. And so I did, making one sketch in case Father asked what I’d done, and then I made my way to where I was needed most.

  Later, at my home

  (Ignoring dinner again–oh, but how could I eat? My stomach is all in knots.)

  I gritted my teeth on seeing the painting. It was like a punch to my stomach. Jonathon looked gray and sunken, with nearly all the gorgeous vitality sucked out of him. Another scar, this time upon the opposite cheek. Not only would more innocents die if we could not reverse this curse, but Jonathon would wither away into nothingness. I’d give anything to see his perfection once more.

  I stood before him for a moment, took a deep breath, and then stepped through.

  “Oh, Natalie, you’re safe,” he said as I fell into his arms. “When we didn’t meet in dreams—I didn’t know…” He stroked my hair and clutched me tighter, his reli
ef making him bold. And I let him. In fact, I clutched him in turn. I held him to me. He moaned in pleasure, a delicious sound.

  “But you were there with me. I felt your hand on my shoulder. My angel.”

  “Did you?” He lit with pride. “I wanted to be with you so much.”

  Then he drew away, racked by a violent cough. He was a ghost of himself, pale and sickly. The cuff of his sleeve was bloody—likely the carved wounds on his arm had been reopened during the murder. I moved to caress his cheek, and as I did, a crease on his face eased again into the smooth picture of youth I so admired. I had an effect upon him, and it was for the better.

  “Do I look as terrible as I feel?” he asked with a worried laugh.

  “Yes,” I replied. It was the truth. I had no kerchief, but I ripped at the lace of my sleeve to dab at his wound. We both winced. I led Jonathon to the window. Even if it was false sunlight, we would let it warm us as it would.

  “What happened? All I saw out there were swirling madness, smoke, and laughter, a mad jumble. I heard more screams…”

  “Do you want to know? I warn you it isn’t pleasant.”

  He nodded, wincing again, not from pain, but in bracing himself for the news.

  “It was the same as the first. He did strike. I managed to save a Cecilia, but he found another unfortunate woman.”

  Denbury turned away, seething, his fists clenched. “Take that beast down! If it means killing me, so be it! Kill my body, then. I can’t let this—”

  I grabbed him and turned him to face me. “No! It doesn’t have to come to that. We have information now! Mrs. Northe and I believe we have figured out the structure of the counter-curse. We hope. Save for the one word that doesn’t quite translate. But we hope that one word won’t render the whole phrase useless. We have a plan.”

  His pained expression filled with anxious hope.

  I spoke evenly and described the mission. “The phrase he used on you will be used against him by someone he would not expect, someone ‘accidentally’ in his path, someone he would see as an easy target, an offering from the gods, as it were.”

  Jonathon’s eyes widened as he watched my face. I was sure to keep it defiant and proud to hide my fear. “You?” he breathed.

  When I nodded, his face clouded. “It’s too dangerous. There has to be some other way.”

  I spoke to reassure him, more confident than I felt. I had to be strong for him. “I can speak here with you. Somehow you gave me that gift. I must believe that I can speak beyond this place. But not until I’ve made him believe otherwise. I need you to answer me something—”

  “Natalie, it’s insane for you to be in his presence—”

  “If we delay, more girls will die and there will be nothing left of you to save!” He opened his mouth to protest, but I continued. “I will need your help—”

  “Anything, tell me.”

  I gestured for him to sit at his desk, and I perched on the side.

  “I need you to recall exactly what was said to banish you here. As it stands, the spell is incomplete. When the beast struck you with that phrase, did he attach a name to it? This creature is driven by names. The power of the name is the oldest magic of all. He’s collecting something he’s attached meaning to, targeting victims with the names of saints.”

  Jonathon clenched his fists. “That’s why he liked to call me John, all that forty martyrs of England nonsense! There was something else. After the Latin phrase he added, ‘John the Doctor,’ but my mind was fixed upon what I thought were ‘soul’ and ‘door.’”

  “You see, this is a door,” I explained, gesturing to the window portal that was the picture frame by which I’d come and gone. “A door he created to separate your soul from your body. Mrs. Northe had the good sense to pry beneath the nameplate outside on your frame. Below the nameplate was written the word ‘ba.’”

  I snatched a pen whose slender length struggled against me, this physical world wanting to rebel, and wrote the word upon the blotter.

  “Ba?”

  “It’s Egyptian. Mrs. Northe sorted it out. Otherwise I’d have been lost. That pendant of yours is an Egyptian cartouche. The pendant names you as a vessel. The ancient Egyptians believed there were seven parts of the soul, all of them small words like ‘ka’ and ‘ab’—each has a different name. “Ba” is the part of the soul that flies in and out of the tomb, sometimes as a bird—”

  Something struck Jonathon. “Small words, you say? What are the others called?”

  I thought about Mrs. Northe’s note where she wrote them all out. I had been so intrigued by the words that they had lingered in my mind, but I didn’t recall them precisely. “They’re all brief, one-syllable words, like those I mentioned—”

  “Ren? Is one of them ‘ren’? If the devil entwines his spells among so many traditions, perhaps the part that confused me, the Latin animusren is actually ‘soul,’ animus, and ren as separate words—”

  “Yes!” I cried. “Yes, ren is one of them—that must be it! I wonder which of the seven soul parts that refers to. Mrs. Northe will know. Oh, Jonathon, you’re a genius. That’s it!”

  He flushed. “You’re the genius here.”

  But it was like he was a whole new man, having empowered himself with knowledge, with deduction. He’d seized the bars of his prison and rattled the cage. He looked almost entirely himself again. I couldn’t stop smiling.

  “What a team we’ve made, you and me and Mrs. Northe!” I exclaimed, and he grinned with me. “Mrs. Northe will help us make sure every word will have power we can use! And ‘Doctor’—that’s yet another piece. Naming as power is starting to make sense.”

  “How so?”

  “He called you ‘Doctor’ because it’s what defines you. It is something important to your soul, your essence, your conscience, and that’s what he banished here. He needed to separate you, your higher being, from raw materials.”

  Jonathon took in a sharp breath as if he’d seen something wonderful, but he was looking around me, not at me.

  “What?” I asked warily.

  He took me by the arms, leading me into the center of the room where things seemed most sharply in focus.

  “Colors, Natalie, when you speak of the counter-curse! A flurry of green and purple light, like a garden full of life. Freedom. If the red, sulfuric fires of Hell crackle around the demon as he speaks, and the opposite happens when you talk of curses, it must mean you’re right, and the magic is telling me so.”

  This gave us both immeasurable hope. We could feel it as if it were a humming vibration in the air. Our hands reached for one another. But there was still one missing piece in the way. With so many little pieces to keep track of…my head spun as they danced just behind my eyes.

  “But what name do I reverse upon him?” I said, turning to pace around him, thinking. “He deliberately left it out…”

  The words “left” and “out” clicked for me, and my eyes widened. I stopped in my tracks. “Oh!”

  The final piece.

  “The poem!” I cried, turning to him. “The fiend wrote a poem, carved in runes, on the back of your portrait frame! A poem by Baudelaire—”

  “I hate Baudelaire.”

  “All the better for your captor,” I muttered. “The poem is ‘The Possessed’—fitting, don’t you think? And as it was carved, a word was deliberately left out. A word that in the original French is ‘Belzébuth—’”

  “Well, Beelzebub! The Devil. If he had a name, he’d aspire to call himself Beelzebub!”

  “Yes! Surely, in homage. That creature would like to think he is Beelzebub the Devil, though I wouldn’t give him as much credit as all that—”

  “I agree,” Jonathon said, nodding. “The Devil can’t only be one entity. Too many terrible things happen in separate places.” He shuddered suddenly. “The beast has frequently mentioned a society, a new day and new world order, that the likes of him have already taken hold. I’d hate to think the Devil has an institution.”


  “Indeed, but that is a problem for another day. First, we need to reverse your spell.”

  “Now that we have the whole of it, it actually seems possible by evoking those Latin and Egyptian words and then naming him in turn.” A great weight was lifting from Jonathon’s shoulders. He would not waste away here, trapped in a canvas. “And look, I see your light again, telling me we’re correct! The mystery solved!” He picked me up and swung me around. “You are absolutely, unequivocally, incredibly brilliant, my beautiful, exquisite Miss Stewart!” he cried, and lowered me again.

  In that moment, time slowed. The way his head was tilted, and mine…and then his lips met mine.

  How can I begin to describe…explain…rhapsodize about this single most glorious moment of all my life? I am not being overdramatic. For once.

  He tasted of a hint of bergamot, residue of his favorite Earl Grey tea upon his lips. This scent would compel me, surely, for the rest of my days. His lips, soft and full, gently shifted to cover mine, to leave no part of my mouth untouched. He was reverent and gentle, and the press of his lips was followed by the press of his hands, slowly closing over my shoulders and anchoring me to him. He tasted my tongue with his, and his fingertips danced across my collarbone, shifting the lace ruffles of my dress as his hands quested, perhaps still hoping for confirmation that I was real.

  We breathed and gasped in unison. My body trembled in his hold, and I didn’t bother to hide it. I didn’t want to deny how much he affected me. I wanted him to know and to rejoice in his power over me. We sank to the ground, our kiss deepening and then migrating to travel over cheeks and brows, all with soft cries of wondrous abandon. I’d always dreamed of finding such passion as I’d read about in books. He breathed against my neck, kissing it gently, trailing his tongue along my earlobe, and whispering, “There is magic in your kiss indeed, Natalie Stewart.”

  “Jonathon…” I breathed, blushing and tucking my face against his neck. I’d had no other kiss to compare to, and I couldn’t guess the level of his experience, but nothing was more amazing in all the world and nothing else mattered in that moment.