Another Jekyll, Another Hyde

by Daniel Nayeri

  “Just tell me what I must do. This is magic too old even for me.”

  “Such bloody days . . . and now more blood must be spilt. Come in, come in. They’ve already visited me twice on account of witchcraft. I don’t need more bodies here.”

  “Be quick. I must have a remedy or I’ll lose my place in the Legion.”

  “I can make it so you become pregnant, and I can make it so you have a son. But do you have the stomach for what must come next?”

  “Tell me. Be quick.”

  “The child will have your very soul. You will love him, as humans love their children. And then, on the night he turns sixteen, you must kill him. You must burn his body and mix his ashes with your previous source of immortality. This is what every demon must do when her life source begins to run out. For me, it was the waters of a spring of Eden. For you, I believe, it was the bones of five mummies of your own blood. Am I right? Yes, yes . . . I did this myself when my water began to run out. It wasn’t easy, I must tell you.”

  “What comes next?”

  “You must take the mixture containing the ashes and the life source and feed all of it to the one chosen human — the one who is worthy to carry the soul of your child forever. Then your spirit will live on in the chosen victim and in all his children, grandchildren, and the generations that follow, so that you will not only live on in him but multiply, filling the earth with a new superior race, one unencumbered by love or frailty. Then you can have your own Legion . . . unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Well, naturally there is an art to choosing a victim.”

  Thomas wondered why he was going to student council, given the monumental things going on in his own house. But what could he do? If he didn’t keep up with his commitments, his dad would pull him out of school and send him to some military camp or institution for wayward boys. A calendar full of AP classes, sports, and debate matches was the only thing keeping Charles Goodman-Brown from staging a faculty-wide intervention at Marlowe on behalf of his son.

  He considered what he had seen and heard at the Faust place. Somebody was still living there, in that putrid purgatory. He had heard a childish voice, and something had definitely struck him in the head. Could it have been one of the Faust kids? Or had he imagined it? He remembered a face. Should he report it to social services or to the school counselor? But if he did, what would he say? My stepmother is some kind of witch and she has imprisoned some kids, possibly former students, in an Upper East Side lair full of dead bugs and a creepy death vibe? Yeah, that wouldn’t get him committed.

  One thing was certain: Nicola Vileroy had lied about seeing Thomas go out the night Roger was attacked. She must have. Either that or she was making him forget.

  Annie was standing by her locker. She had her head so deep in there that he could see only her lower half as she fumbled to pull out something from the back. He approached and tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped back.

  “Sorry,” said Thomas, looking at his watch. “Do you have to get to class?”

  “No. Actually, I was waiting for you,” said Annie. “Have you heard anything else about Roger? I was wondering if maybe you could get me into Elixir to investigate.”

  “Um,” said Thomas, immediately defensive. “No, that’s not a good idea, Annie. You shouldn’t go there.”

  “Why not?” she said, her tiny arms crossed. “You go there all the time. Besides, I’ve decided to figure out for myself what happened to Roger. Everyone’s being so useless . . . acting like once he gets better it doesn’t matter if we ever figure out who did it.”

  “Is he getting better?” said Thomas, itching to change the subject.

  “No,” she said. “He’s still in a coma. I want to figure out who did it before he wakes up, so he doesn’t have to be scared.”

  Thomas smiled and put an arm around her shoulder. “That’s really nice.”

  She shrugged. “He’s my best friend,” she said. “I have some theories. I think it probably had to do with Roger being gay, don’t you? I know it’s hard to imagine it nowadays, but that stuff still happens. Right?”

  Thomas wondered if he had heard her right. Did she say gay? Roger? “Wait,” he said. “But he likes you. I mean . . . I thought he was jealous and that’s why he didn’t like me. . . .”

  The look on Annie’s face was a mix of disgust, confusion, and embarrassment. “Oh, he’d have to be jealous not to like you?” She must have realized that the comment was a low blow, because then she shook her head, smiled feebly, and said, “Sorry. No, he wasn’t into me like that. But you’re probably right that he was jealous of all the time you and I spent together.”

  Thomas felt like a tool. All this time, he had wanted Roger out of the way, thinking that he was trying to move in on his girl. But all Roger wanted was to keep from losing his best friend. Why had Thomas never known this about Roger? Thomas had to admit to himself that he had basically just failed to pay attention.

  But was Roger’s beating really about being gay? Thomas didn’t want to think about it anymore. The idea that he had wished Roger any harm was too much, given everything that had happened.

  “Look, I have to go,” he said to Annie.

  “So will you take me to Elixir?”

  “I don’t know, maybe.” With that, he bounded down the hall toward the student-council meeting room.

  The halls of Marlowe were mostly empty by five p.m. Sports were winding down for the day, and now that the sun was disappearing earlier and earlier, no one was all that eager to drag out their after-school activities. Thomas was leaving the student-council room, trying to shove the fifty or so handouts that Lucy Spencer had printed — prom flyers and fund-raiser announcements and petitions for various causes — into his backpack, when he spotted the single light dotting the long, dim hallway. It was coming from the principal’s office. He could see from across the empty corridor that at least two people were inside, talking in hushed voices that drifted in patches through the half-open door.

  He crept closer. Something made him curious — maybe it was the lateness of the meeting or the furtive quality of the voices. Or maybe it was just that Thomas had a lot of secrets lately. As he approached the office, he noticed a black box propped just inside the door, holding it ajar. It was one of those police investigation tool kits.

  Inside, he heard familiar voices.

  One was Principal Stevenson’s, but there were two others — both of them strangely out of place here in Marlowe.

  “Yeah, it’s a real shame, but we’ve got no choice. It’s gotta happen by the book.”

  A sickening feeling overtook Thomas. It was the voice of the police commissioner named Paulie, the same one who had come to his father’s wedding, made a huge scene, arrested him, and then left him to rot in the police station.

  The second police officer spoke now, in a more deferential tone than the first.

  “Sure, it might disrupt the flow of things before and after school, but we’ll try to do most of our investigating when the kids are in class.”

  It was Detective Mancuso. What luck, Thomas thought. As if he didn’t have enough people breathing down his neck at home, now his two arresting officers were going to be spending their days at Marlowe. He wondered if they would search the dorm rooms. Was that legal? He should warn Cornrow and the other boarding guys.

  “Here’s the thing,” said Commissioner Paulie. “This case has now been upgraded to a hate crime. Do you understand what that means?”

  There was no answer, which made Thomas think that Principal Stevenson was nodding or shaking his head.

  “We’ve spoken to the victim’s parents, as well as some of his friends, and we believe that the perpetrator was motivated by Roger’s sexual orientation. Since Elixir is a new hot spot for the private-school crowds around here, we also believe that the perp was someone who knew the boy. Possibly the whole thing was planned out in advance.” The commissioner cleared his throat. “Of course, that means we ha
ve to take it much more seriously than your run-of-the-mill assault.”

  “We have a zero-tolerance policy toward hate crimes,” said Detective Mancuso. “We want to devote two detectives to this full-time, to investigate Marlowe for as long as it takes to find the assailant.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Principal Stevenson. “Do what you have to do.”

  “Good,” said Commissioner Paulie. “We’re gonna smoke out the bastard.”

  London, England, in the Year of Our Lord 1536

  Two women walk in a manor field, near a grove of English elms — one woman a gaunt brunette, unsteady on her feet, holding some unfinished embroidery work, the other woman blond, rigid, and possessed of an evil eye. “Governess, I’ve miscarried again. Again. Henry is mad with grief. He thinks I deceived him into marriage by sorcery.”

  “Well,” says the governess, “didn’t you? We’ve gotten you the English crown, Anne. Do try to be grateful.”

  “He’s going to kill me,” says the brunette. “He has a younger mistress. I used to be the younger mistress. Now I’ve failed three times to bear a son. . . .”

  Night is getting on as the two walk across the hunting grounds, toward a waiting carriage. A footman opens the door of the carriage, bows, and speaks. “Do you approve of the manor, Your Majesty?”

  “Henry made a fine purchase,” says the young queen as she steps into the carriage. The footman closes the door. The queen turns to the governess. “We would have named this park after our son. Henry the Ninth Park.”

  “If not your son,” says the governess, “then mine.”

  “You have a son?”

  The governess evades: “If I did, I would name him Hyde, and this land after him.”

  “Hyde Park? It sounds ridiculous. . . . It needs a royal name.”

  “You are right, my queen.”

  The queen puts the unfinished embroidery up to her lips, to stifle a sob. The driver mounts the carriage. The queen leans out of the window and whispers, “Governess, please. Will you help me stay young?”

  The eye of the governess seems to shimmer. Her mouth, a straight line, tilts upward into a grin. “But why, Anne? Why would I ever do that?”

  The carriage pulls away, down the king’s private road at Hyde Manor. The governess stands by a sycamore and watches the sun fade. A lingering shadow emerges from behind the tree. The governess speaks without turning around: “Did you retrieve the bonedust?”

  “Yes,” says the shadow.

  “Good boy,” says the governess.

  “But an Egyptian boy has stumbled upon it as well. He took the last one.”

  “So kill him.”

  “He was very quick.”

  The governess is silent. The figure in the shadow holds his breath.

  “Edward,” says the governess, “we have only a superficial mask for this aging. With the bonedust, we can cure it. It is the source of our immortality. If you can’t get it for me, dear boy, or protect it from some dim-witted child, then I won’t have enough for the both of us, and I’ll be forced to grind you into little tablets. You’ll be all that I have left, Edward. Is that what you want?”

  “No, Mother.”

  “That’s a good boy.”

  Thomas knew he was asleep. You can’t fly to Ibiza in the time it took for him to get there. He was playing golf. He remembered that much. On a course somewhere, his coach giving him the happy voice — the one he used when Thomas was slamming drives so far that they needed NASA clearance. He was on the fairway at Pebble Beach. No, no, wait. He saw that on TV. He was practicing with the Marlowe team at the driving range on Chelsea Piers, looking out onto the Hudson River. His coach said, “You’re hittin’ the pigeons, Goodman-Brown. You’re bombing the moon!”

  Pigeons are birds. The Canary Islands are near Ibiza. Then he was in Ibiza. Ibiza is in Spain. The club in Ibiza is outdoors with netting above the dance floor. Paper lanterns hang from the nets; the ocean water is lapping somewhere against the rocks. Everybody has that sun-sleep smell. Half the girls just walked in from the beach, wearing colorful little skirts over their swimsuits. Thomas is dancing. Flashing lights. A girl smiling at him. A golf club swinging and smacking the ball into the air. A back alley in New York, someone huddled on the ground, taking kicks to the stomach. The sound of a jet. The smiling girl is Nikki.

  Where are you going, Nikki? He should have gotten her last name.

  Pretty, smiley Nikki . . . Sounds sort of like Nicola . . . Same bluish eyes, too . . . except Nicola’s smiles are fake and scary and make him want to run away.

  The scenes flickered across his vision too fast. Thomas closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids it was the Fourth of July. What month was it? He squeezed the visions away.

  When he opened his eyes, he awoke in a courtroom. The fluorescent lights were too bright. The table in front of him, the judge’s bench, the jurors’ box — they were all the same color wood. Thomas blinked. It might have taken a day. When he opened his eyes again, he was still in the court. Everyone was looking at him. The jury was a commercial for racial diversity. Thomas knew there was sound, because he heard a woman clear her throat behind him. Finally, the judge said, “Is that all, Mr. Goodman-Brown?”

  All Thomas could think was, Holy crap, I hope I have my pants on. He looked down. Good news. Pants were on.

  “Mr. Goodman-Brown?” said the judge.

  Thomas looked up. “I’m sorry, what?”

  The courtroom stirred. For the first time, Thomas read the crest hanging from the judge’s bench. It said, THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT.

  But the Supreme Court doesn’t have a jury, thought Thomas. He looked to his left. There was no jury. Not even a jurors’ box. He looked up front again; this time, nine judges sat in front. It was the Supreme Court. Thomas was doubly glad that his pants were on.

  “I said, Will that be all, Counselor?” said the judge. “Does the defense rest?”

  “Oh!” said Thomas. It seemed he was the defense lawyer. Score! “Yes, Your Honor. The defense rests.”

  The other eight judges sighed and sat back from the edge of their seats. The center judge said, “Well, Mr. Goodman-Brown, if someone had told me yesterday that a young man such as yourself was going to defend the single most important piece of judicial review this country has ever seen, I would have been dubious. But that, young man, was one effing genius closing statement. This court has no choice but to rule in favor of such pimpical lawyering.”

  The courtroom erupted with cheers. Two of the female judges gave each other high fives. The old judge in the corner began the slow clap.

  Thomas raised both fists into the air as a little newspaper boy from the 1920s ran into the courtroom, shouting, “Extra! Extra! Top lawyer Thomas Goodman-Brown voted Most Likable Man in America!”

  Thomas woke up. He was on the floor of his room with his shirt off. A golf ball was in his pocket, digging into his leg. At first he thought he’d slept on a golf club, but then realized it was his left arm. It was so numb, he couldn’t tell it was his. He tried to groan, but his tongue was stuck to the side of his mouth. He rolled over. The room was dark, except for his desk lamp. His alarm clock said it was nine thirty, but it could have been morning or evening. He had no idea. He didn’t even know what day it was.

  “Your father and I missed you at dinner.” Madame Vileroy’s voice startled Thomas, but his reflexes were so addled that he didn’t move. She was sitting on his bed, in the dark.

  He said, “Unnhhn hrrrr?”

  His stepmother responded, “I didn’t want the light to burn your eyes. Seems you’ve been enjoying yourself the last few days.”

  Thomas scraped the grime off his tongue with his teeth and swallowed as much of it as he could. He said, “Days?”

  “You’ve been in and out,” said Madame Vileroy. “If your father hadn’t had an emergency at the office, he would have handcuffed you to his wrist.”

  Thomas pulled himself up and sat with his back against the wall, facing his bed. He
dragged a palm over his face. That was when he noticed the plastic bracelets dangling from his wrist. “How did I get these?”

  “The doormen at the clubs, I presume,” said Vileroy.

  A few of them were in Spanish; one was in Thai. Straining his eyes to read the bracelets was enough to send shooting pains through his temple. Why was Nicola in his room, anyway? Where the hell was his dad? An office emergency? He didn’t even have time to punish the crap out of his son for clubbing nonstop for God knows how many days? Not that Thomas wanted to be punished, but at least that would be normal.

  The last few days, Thomas had been starting to have black spells — little moments here and there when he would feel like he wasn’t the only one in his own head. As if his body was a container and he wasn’t the only thing filling it anymore.

  Thomas tried to get up, but his feet were still noodles. Nicola stood up and walked over to him. She was wearing a dress that Thomas could have sworn was originally his mom’s. Was it possible that his dad had allowed her to raid the closet? Maybe it was a different dress. She even smelled like Thomas’s mother. She helped Thomas stand and move to the bed. She held him by the elbow and said in a raspy whisper, “Victoria and Valentin have been asking about you.”

  Thomas wrenched his arm away. “What?” Another wave of pain shot through his temples, so that he almost fell backward. His stepmother caught him. “I only said that your friends, Connor and Annie, have been asking about you.”

  Thomas peered into her eye, but the pain was too strong, and in the end, he didn’t care if she knew that he’d visited her house. But did she just say Victoria and Valentin? Were they the ones he had run into? He wished he could remember the face of the kid who had knocked him out. He would figure it out, he promised himself. Unlike the Faust kids, Thomas couldn’t be disposed of without anyone knowing — absentee or not, his father would know. As he collapsed on top of the bedspread, he felt the golf ball in his pocket and heard it rattle. He pulled it out. It wasn’t a golf ball, but the bottle of W, almost half empty.