Dr. Phibes in The Beginning

by William Goldstein

  Phibes nodded his approval. Always a great swimmer he's all for hitting the surf too except he didn’t pack his trunks this trip.

  But I know you keep a suit in your kit, Tom laughed; and taking Victoria's arm, hurried toward the door

  Lunch arrived just after they left. In his travels, Phibes always made a point of dining on local fare. But he’d never seen anything that came close to these glorious hot dogs.

  Nathan's Famous were the best of the best. The bangers-and-mash that found him at the esteemed Fitzroy's in London's Marylebone twice a week paled in comparison to this crisp and crunchy stalwart. Three quick bites and he reached for another.

  Nathan's hot dogs wore their buns with great aplomb. Taut and supple, they sank into the billowing baked roll that was slightly crunchy on the outside but soft, oh so soft within. Plain yellow mustard added the zip.

  Pure sensation these days is as rare as a climb up Everest. But the bite of a Nathan's hot dog is pure sensation, rivaling anything the great Francois Vatel put before Louie Quatorze. Both were great cuisines, the difference being that the patrician pheasant served only the Sun King and his courtiers while the democratic hot dog served an entire nation.

  As soon as he finished his feast, Phibes went down to the beach. There, spread out to the farthest reaches of the horizon, ranged the great blue Atlantic. He’d never seen the Atlantic from its western shore and was overcome by this explorer's moment.

  How simple, he thought. Who wouldn’t want to live in this state of grace? But with all those ramshackle houses shuffled in between the Ferris wheels and the roller coasters, Coney Island was a state of grace yet to be realized.

  He took off his shoes and walked barefoot down to the surf line. The beach was dark and wet and tightly packed. It looked like what it was: a much-used beach by the throngs of people who came here every day, even in winter.

  “The bass are running” the sign on the shop across the boardwalk announced. “Cut bait, two bits.”

  He sloshed through the light mist that was coming off the water. Every few paces, he could see the New York skyline loom up in the west.

  He kept looking for Victoria and her brother. The water was almost as cold as it was at Dover, where that part of the Atlantic had a green cast. He certainly knew about ocean currents but why so much difference. The wave action on the ocean floor could be a factor.

  He’d gone about a half mile when he spotted them racing back from the buoy and Tom had to go all out to hang onto his lead.

  They hit the beach in a dead heat just as the mist lifted. They were laughing and throwing up their arms. Then Victoria spotted her husband and came running to him, shedding the surf in the late sunlight. Seizing him she covered him with kisses, her swimsuit soaking him with salt water.

  I love you…I love you…I love you. She whispered those words now, the words he always wanted to hear; and would never hear again.

  GHOST

  The pain was starting. He didn’t want to go out but it was one of those rare sunny days in London that you couldn’t really stay indoors. Vulnavia went with him, looking very smart in her duster. They took the Hispano, its gray/blue trim giving it low visibility.

  Everything was working perfectly. The tires rode smooth and soundless and there was no vibration. The rear view mirror was clean.

  He checked the oil levels every time he took out the car and changed the fuel filter before the due date. The Hispano was a performance car and he kept it in fighting trim.

  Fresh tar simmered off the pavement where it had been patched. The roadway was so worn out you couldn’t avoid the potholes. The shoulders, what was left of them, were dangerously pitted.

  He meant to drive up to the Lake District, perhaps have a look at Old Ironsides although he had no intention of calling on the Olmstead's. But after 20 minutes of punishment, he cut the trip short and headed back to London. Victoria would be coming home in a few days and he had to get the place ready. He tapped the gas pedal: the speedometer climbed past 100.

  ***

  Three kids were walking down the road when they saw something. Mort, the oldest, knew what he saw. He’d been down this road before.

  Feeney never believes anything Mort says. She's his sister and she should know.

  The little kid is Screwy. Screwy used to live next door to Mort and Feeney but his parents moved way to the other side of town. Screwy hasn’t made any new friends yet so he takes the bus over to his old digs, not that Mort and Feeney were his friends. It's just that he knows them better than his new next door neighbors, who don’t have any kids anyway.

  Here's what they said about what they saw. Or didn’t:

  Wot?

  There! Comin’ down the road right at us!

  Wot?! I don’t see nothin’.

  Hey.

  Wowee! What was that!?

  Told you. It's a ghost. I seen it before.

  Ain’t no ghost. You can’t see ghosts ‘cept in a haunted house.

  Ain’t no ghosts, period! Stop telling those lies.

  Sez who?

  Reverend William, and he should know.

  He don’t know nothin’. We learned all about ghosts in Sunday school. They come outta dead bodies.

  You're full of it. Only thing comes outta stiffs is the worms.

  And the soul. Don’t forget the soul.

  The soul's up in heaven with the other souls and angels and all that stuff.

  God. What about God?

  Well, He's there too. But He's busy. Ain’t got no time to take care of the souls.

  That's a fine how-do-you do!

  Yeah. I want somebody to take care of me.

  You!? You ain’t going to heaven.

  Sez who!?

  You know who. Teacher caught you.

  Teacher ain’t seen shit!

  So why you stood in the corner?

  Stop it or I’m gonna pop you.

  Alright you guys. Time to head back.

  Take back what you said.

  I ain’t said nothin’. You saw it. I saw it. We all saw it. It was a ghost right out here on the roadway. I seen it before and now you guys are here to prove it.

  Talkin’ through your hat!

  I’m hungry. Let's go eat.

  Yeah. It's suppertime.

  THE

  HOMECOMING

  Finally the great day arrived: Victoria was brought home and #5 Maldine Square burst into celebration.

  The ballroom was decked out in streamers and confetti. The Wizards, all formal like in their soup-and-fish, were mixing it up on the bandstand while Sophie swayed at the mike in a shimmering yellow sheath.

  The crystal ball glowered red when Phibes passed underneath on his way to join Vulnavia. She was at one of the tables with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and two tulip glasses chilling in the ice bucket. After toasting each other and tossing their glasses over their shoulders, they went out onto the ballroom floor and broke into a Charleston, applauding when the music ended.

  Moments later Sophie and Sad Sax skipped out onto the dance floor to show how the Charleston is really done.

  Over the next several weeks, Phibes spent most of his waking hours with his wife but her eyes never fluttered. She was inert beneath the quartz.

  This realization finally triggered an avalanche of pain that sent him hurrying back to his room. He shut the door and sat down on his pallet, bringing his knees up beneath his chin. That was something he learned in the trenches at Arras: make yourself a small target. But the pain just kept rolling over him like ocean waves: he could feel the fractures in his bones starting to re-open. If this kept up, he wouldn’t last the week.

  Hours passed. Vulnavia checked on him several times to no avail. At last, the door opened and Phibes, moving quite stiffly, followed her down to the basement. There were several large chunks of ice floating in the pool when they got there. Life savers, he thought as he slipped out of his robe and dove into the deep end. Ah!

  He moved around in the water, feel
ing its buoyancy and testing it with a few breast strokes. So far, so good. He put his feet against the wall and pushed off toward the opposite end. Halfway there, the pain caught up with him, pushing him down and holding him under. Luckily a large chunk of ice was floating nearby. He pulled himself up, gasping for air.

  A new jolt of pain took his breath away. Fighting for air, he checked his arms, legs, torso, head. He had to be ready for this next breath. If he wasn’t, there wouldn’t be a third.

  For twenty desperate minutes he paddled around the pool, staying as close to the ice blocks as possible. With every breath he took, he didn’t know if there’d be another. There was no margin for error: shortening his breathing now would be fatal.

  Finally he found a rhythm and began to move about a bit more freely in the water. He was very very alert to changes in his breathing, catching himself before they started to spiral out of control. Vulnavia added fresh blocks of ice as needed. It seemed that he was using up more ice than usual, although his skin didn’t feel feverish to the touch. Was this some fluke or was the pain generating a heat of its own?

  It was after midnight when Phibes climbed out of the pool and went upstairs to his room. Vulnavia had left a sandwich and a glass of buttermilk on the deal table, with a cloth napkin neatly taped over it. He didn’t touch the food. Not because he was too tired to eat but rather because he didn’t want anything to disturb his hard-won breathing rhythm. And so he turned in for the night, without fear of asphyxiation.

  Sleep he did, coaxing himself back to sleep when the jabs of pain woke him up during the night. At first light he got out of bed, tireder than the night before.

  He didn’t last the morning and by 11 AM he had left his room and was heading down to the pool. With every step, the pain grew more excruciating. The freshly starched shirt that he usually donned in the morning today made him look paler than normal.

  Vulnavia had cooked a plate of veal and eggs and kept it in the oven for him. Noting her alarm, he took a few bites, polishing it off with a spoon of blackberry preserves from the jam pot. The fresh biscuits were still hot.

  Phibes eased into the water at the shallow end when he got down to the pool, taking in the cold with a series of full-body contractions, a technique he’d learned in the Arctic.

  After ten minutes he found enough room to think.

  The pain had been on him since the accident. He’d always found a way to counter it, to make it go away for a few days. But this time it was different. The pain wasn’t going away. It was harder, more permanent and he knew that it would finish him off before he could do anything for Victoria.

  What must be done?

  Phibes mulled these thoughts while he paddled around in the frigid waters. At dusk, he made up his mind. He would reclaim Victoria through Sophie as planned, with the mansion as their backdrop: and there would be retribution. Those who killed Victoria would have to pay.

  A common murderer he was not. He also was not a religious man but at this moment, he turned to the bible.

  RUCKUS

  A fearsome stillness settled over #5 Maldine Square. The ballroom gathered dust. The Wizards laid down their instruments and sat listlessly on the bandstand. The crystal ball faded.

  The neighbors, who had long since withdrawn the welcome mat, took notice. They watched and listened for sounds of movement but #5's blinds were drawn and the ancient brownstone gave them nothing to hear, or see.

  Maybe they moved?

  Not likely. We would’ve heard them if they did.

  I heard ‘em! Mrs. Livesey said with her usual certitude. They moved.

  Nope. Sounded more like groaning.

  Groaning you say?!

  There's another Ripper living next door! Let's call the Bobbies.

  Didn’t like it from the get-go. All those big crates! A torture chamber, is what we got right here on Maldine Square, that's what!

  Or a hoorhouse!

  Sam, shut your mouth. You oughta be ashamed of yourself!

  Hold off! You know how them top hats like the ball and chain so don’t play dumb with me! The upper crust goes for the kink: whips and chains and all that. That's the only way they can get their jollies.

  Sounds like you know what you're talking about, Sam.

  The others broke into laughter. They were razzing him hot and heavy when Mrs. Livesey, always the great Leveler, punctured the bubble.

  We woulda seen them johns comin’ to get their arses whipped and I ain’t seen nobody. Any of you seen anything?

  Nope…Me neither…No, no one. Mrs. Livesey gave them her gimlet look and then stuck out her chin triumphantly. But I do be hearing somethin’ coming from the house. Groaning somethin’ awful, like the house is falling apart. And I tell you we better call the authorities before it caves in and takes us with it!

  First thing next morning a huge ruckus broke out on the Square when The Taube fell out of his perch atop # 5 and plunged down to the brickwork far below.

  He was headless!

  Traffic screeched to a halt and folks came running from every direction to see what it was all about. Swarms of pigeons blanketed the sky, throwing the scene into darkness. It was a display of human and avian reverence, the likes of which London had never seen before, made all the more remarkable seeing how annoying birdshit is to say nothing of the sanitary.

  The Taube was a great womanizer but no one could have expected this – tens of thousands of pigeons (most of them hens), flying in to pay their respects and blanketing nearly all of Bermondsey.

  Something had to be done, and soon! But every time the sanitation crew tried to rush in to snatch The Taube's headless corpse from the pavement, they were nearly pecked to death by the angry birds.

  This impasse went on for the rest of the week. Then, around noon of the 7th day, a distant funeral dirge riffled through the air. The dirge drew closer and closer, lifting the pigeon cloud enough to see the Wizards entering the square in full dress regalia, their silver and black capes flowing and with ostrich-plumed Admiral Nelson bicorns perched atop their noggins.

  With a splendidly sequined Sophie leading them with one gloved fist thrust forward and tossing her baton with the other, they marched “When the Saints Go Marching In” all the way to Maldine Square Park.

  There The Taube was given a proper burial. A chaplain from one of the Thames ships offered the eulogy, the crowd mumbling the refrain. As the shovels of earth were tossed onto the walnut casket, the pigeons lifted en masse and after a final respectful fly about, swarmed away.

  “Saints” blared anew and the Wizards, with high-strutting Sophie in the lead, boogied all the way home.

  THE

  FIRST DEATH GEOMETRY

  It was the sea eagle who did in The Taube, tore off the pigeon's head with one slash of his beak sending him plummeting to the ground. The Taube, who was squatting on the telescope barrel at the time, never knew what hit him. ‘Died a peaceful death, he did’, his admirers liked to say.

  The eagle had flown non-stop from the North Sea and his wing feathers were still flecked with ice. But the zinc capsule attached to his leg was intact. It contained critically important information, information that could give Sophie back her voice.

  Three tightly-folded sheets of onionskin were packed into the capsule. Blackface type made the text easier to read given the thinness of the onionskin, but Phibes would study it later. First he must commune with the eagle who was even now digging his claws into Phibes’ gloved hand.

  They glared at one another for a full half hour: two fierce competitors at the top of their game with the whole of London Town spread out before them.

  The eagle killed a seal early in his trip but was hungry now after the long flight. Phibes had Vulnavia bring him something from the pantry before he went down to his study. Rain clouds were sweeping in so the eagle would spend the night inside the observatory dome – one of the reasons why there were no pets at #5 Maldine Square.

  ‘Aphonia’ is the catch-all term for losing
your voice. Its myriad treatments give this malady plenty of shelf space in the medical libraries. But even though the common sore throat, one if its milder forms, is a wildly popular public ailment (and a drug company cash cow), aphonia should be taken seriously. A sudden onset can plunge its victims into muteness, a terrifying sensation that many say is like being buried alive.

  The capsule provided a concise summary of aphonia's causes. Phibes ruled out diet and depression. Sophie and the Wizards lived a sequestered life and except for a rare outing, spent their days inside #5 Maldine Square. Skeletal deformities played a role but he had double-checked his calculations with the Difference Engine and made the necessary adjustments. Sophie was as perfect anatomically as her human analogs, even more so.

  The rest of the causes didn’t apply to that quixotic little miss.

  Sophie was one of a kind!

  ***

  Phibes was in the observatory on the morning of The Taube's funeral. He watched with amusement as the procession marched through the Square with a solemnity befitting a great public figure - which The Taube certainly was.

  The sea eagle was perched atop the telescope barrel, his gimlet eyes inexorably focused on the small cherry wood casket that contained his victim. The great bird had spent the last week in the observatory dome as was his right. During that time he’d endeared himself to the locals by preying on the resident rat population.

  These were no ordinary house pests: instead, they were the much larger Norway rats who, in a Genghis Khan-like swarm, had swept up from the Thames a few decades earlier to overrun the whole of Bermondsey. These robust animals knew no fear. They attacked the local dog and cat population with impunity and ran off with anything that wasn’t bolted down – a loaf of bread or the baby's bottle, no matter!

  The balance of power changed remarkably with the arrival of the sea eagle. Every morning the carcasses of his hapless victims lined the gutters for the street sweepers to collect. Before long, the area merchants took to posting handbills in their shop windows, listing the previous day's casualties – just like in the War.