Another Jekyll, Another Hyde

by Daniel Nayeri

  A few minutes after leaving his pilot in a nearby private landing strip, Thomas discovered that as small as Sandy Cove may be, without an address he was as lost as he would be in New York. He and Connor spent half an hour asking around in the town center, which consisted of a couple of stores, a church, a town hall, and a single traffic light. There were at least three cafés, each with a homemade wooden sign, in a town that probably had no more than a few hundred residents. Maggie’s Café. Sylvia’s Bakery and Tea Shop. Marie’s Old-Time Coffee. They must really love coffee. It was the owner of Marie’s who pointed them down a dusty road that seemed to lead right out of the country.

  “Can you hang around here till I get back?” said Thomas when his friend started to follow him down the road.

  “No way!” Connor protested. “I came all this way.”

  “I know,” said Thomas, thinking of his many unspeakable secrets — and everything the Fausts would reveal. “But I have to do this alone, OK?”

  The look on Connor’s face made Thomas feel like the worst friend ever, but he was relieved when Connor didn’t object. He said, “Fine, but you owe me one,” and turned back into the café, muttering glumly about how he should have stayed home.

  “I owe you about a hundred,” Thomas called after him.

  Twenty minutes later, Thomas was standing in front of a cottagelike house situated by itself at the end of a small road, with thick curtains covering the windows and a lawn with a hodgepodge of mismatched flowers, as if they had been planted by a blind person. The mailbox said BEATRIX WEST.

  He knocked twice. When the door finally opened, he found himself staring at a strange old woman with a familiar face. He held out his hand and said, “Hello, Miss . . . Beatrix . . . um . . . pleasure to meet you.”

  She looked at him for a full minute, her lips quivering, before she spoke. “Thomas Goodman-Brown,” she said. “Why did you come?” She took his hand into her warm, veiny grasp and held it there — the gesture of someone used to playing the grandmother.

  “I’m sorry?” he said, pulling back. “How do you — I mean — I’m looking for Jamie and Isabelle West.”

  The old woman began mumbling something in another language. Then she snickered to herself, shook her head, and said, “It’s me, Bicé. Do you remember me? From our days in school?” She spoke as if it had been a hundred years ago that they had been classmates.

  For a moment, Thomas couldn’t breathe. He looked deep into her face, all the parts of it that had looked familiar to him before. The nose, the almond-shaped eyes, the pretty half smile, still kind of young and girlish. She was exactly like Bicé Faust, the soft-spoken outcast who used to sit for hours in the library, used to ride back and forth aimlessly on the subway, and used to watch her brothers and sisters compete against Thomas and his friends in contests and tournaments and meets.

  He didn’t know what to say. He mumbled, “Victoria said you were . . . older.”

  She laughed. “Now, that is a long, long story. Do you want to come inside?”

  He didn’t, but he nodded and entered the house. Inside was dim, but he could smell lavender, and something baking. The house was decorated with old furniture, probably from secondhand stores, mismatched, some of it frayed, but overall cozy and warm, arranged around the room by someone with an eye for beautiful things. There was a small lamp covered in a pink lamp shade on a corner table. It cast a rosy light into the room. Bicé offered him a plate of random cookies, homemade, but all different kinds. He took one and said, “I came because I need your help.”

  She nodded, as if she knew, then she plopped down onto an armchair and motioned for him to sit. “I’ll do everything I can, Thomas.” She waited and Thomas tried to find a good starting point. When he didn’t start right away, she added, “Is she still there, hanging around your circle?”

  Thomas nodded. “She married my father.”

  He saw Bicé bite her lip, then nod.

  “Look, I know when the three of you lived with her, she gave you potions and things. I think she’s poisoning me. Do you remember that night? At your house?”

  Thomas could see Bicé’s face closing up, as if some deep sadness were taking over. “I’m sorry about that, Thomas. That was the night I found out what she really was. I didn’t mean for bad things to happen to you.”

  Thomas smiled. “How do I know if she’s drugging me? Bad things are happening —” Thomas stopped. Should he tell Bicé about all the partying and drugs and everything he had done since Belle left? She looked so much like a mother, or grandmother, that his natural instinct was to keep his secrets. But he reminded himself that Bicé was just an unlucky girl his own age.

  Just then, there was a noise and the door creaked open. In the doorway stood the gaunt redheaded boy from the award ceremony photo. His greasy hair came down over his eyes and he was about fifty pounds thinner, but that was definitely Christian Faust staring openmouthed at Thomas from the doorway. Thomas got up from his chair. “Christian,” he said, and held out his hand. “Good to see you again, buddy.”

  Christian didn’t move.

  He looked off in the direction of the only small hallway in the house. For an awkward moment, everyone stood silently, biting nails and fidgeting. Then Christian said, “Why are you here?”

  “I just . . . It’s Vileroy,” said Thomas. “Is Belle here?”

  Christian didn’t answer. He just stood there squinting, then moved to the small couch and sat at the edge, pushing a chunk of hair behind his ear. He stared at the plate of cookies but didn’t take one, just looked up at Thomas and waited with empty eyes. Thomas sat down, too, and began to explain about the bottle of W and about Nikki, about the flashes of black and changing into someone else. He told them about how each pill was a different component of his alter ego and that he felt a different one of Edward’s emotions each time. He talked about the gradual change into Edward, first in his thoughts and then his body. He told them about the recent crimes at Marlowe, about Roger and Marla and the missing school nurse. It seemed like he spoke for an entire hour. Bicé and Christian never said a word, only looked at each other once in a while, as if communicating on some other level. They might have had a whole conversation that Thomas couldn’t hear. Those two always did seem closer than any of the other Faust kids.

  Finally, when Thomas was finished, Christian spoke: “Can I see this W?”

  Thomas hesitated. Then he reached into his pocket, took out the bottle, and set it carefully on the coffee table next to the cookies. Christian took it, popped it open, and unceremoniously emptied the contents onto the table. Thomas gasped but didn’t object.

  Bicé picked up one of the pills, held it up to the light, and turned it over, bringing it closer to her foggy, sunken eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Yes . . . this is Nicola’s work.” She looked up at Thomas. “I wouldn’t see this Nikki person again.”

  “How can you be sure?” said Thomas.

  “I’ve roamed her house for a hundred years, Thomas,” she said. “I know the smell of this pill. It has the same sludge smell from the potion she used to give me.” She pulled away from the tablet as if she were tempted to swallow it right there. Thomas wondered just how much of an addict Bicé had been. A hundred years? Who would waste their whole life that way? And how was she still alive? Thomas couldn’t even tell how old she looked. She looked different in every light. Sometimes no more than fifty, sometimes so old he didn’t dare dream up a number.

  He tried to make a joke. “So if I take all of it, I won’t just change into Edward but I’ll live forever, too? Great.”

  No one laughed. Bicé shook her head and said, “Hyde will live forever. Not you. You will probably die.”

  It wasn’t the words but something in her tone, the whispered warning, that made Thomas shiver. “He calls himself that sometimes. Hyde. How did you know?”

  The old woman sighed. She looked into Thomas’s face and said, “Last year, I tried to kill her. I tried to learn the ancient language that
no one can learn in one lifetime, because you have to know all languages. But it only weakened her. It didn’t kill her because she was hiding a secondary source to her immortality. I read news reports and talked to many people and pieced together that she was posing as the school nurse to protect the bones of her ancestors, this so-called bonedust. I just didn’t know she had another —”

  “Hold on a sec,” Thomas interrupted. “She was posing as what, now?

  Bicé shrugged. Thomas sighed. “Sorry. Go on,” he said.

  “I didn’t know she had another backup. You see, she let her supply of immortality become depleted. She was so eager to advance herself with its power, she spread it too thin. She hid bits of it in beauty potions and age-masking serums, small things to help her trap people like us. Then, in her eagerness to protect it, she did the last desperate thing a demon can do. She had a son. Your Hyde. She killed him and mixed his body with a large portion of the bonedust. I read about this ancient kind of magic. It’s bad. Very bad. It means that she resigned herself to dying along with the pills, knowing that the tablets with Edward’s body and soul were the last thing that could carry on her line. She has carried that bottle around with her for centuries as insurance. I saw it in her house once, hidden behind four doors. I reached out and almost touched it, and suddenly she was there, pushing me back into the real world. She has been searching for someone for years, someone with power, with resources, with just the right circumstances, waiting to create an immortal Edward and live on through his soulless demon children.”

  “So you’re saying . . .” Thomas swallowed. This was too much to hear. How could he have taken those pills? The sight of them disgusted him now. He was the one responsible for his blackouts and for the bouts of change that overtook him. He had actually, physically, put Edward into his body.

  From the corner of his eye, Thomas saw a black-shrouded figure appear, then disappear at the end of the hallway. Was it Belle lingering there, listening, keeping just out of sight? He felt sorry for her. She, too, had made an awful choice without knowing the consequences. He wished she would join them so he could tell her that he never cared about how she looked. But he knew Belle enough to know that she never would. She was content to stay in her corner, alone.

  Bicé nodded. “You have a choice. You are already halfway there, if I’m counting these pills correctly. Edward is half inside you, half in that bottle. You could take them all and become Edward Hyde. Or you could abandon the pills and live in limbo.”

  Thomas felt the blood rush to his face. Panic began to take him over, that feeling of being trapped, like that awful night last year when Victoria meddled inside his mind at Vileroy’s apartment. “Um . . . look, I was only kidding before about taking the rest of the pills. You said I’d die! Why on earth would I want to become Hyde? Why would I take the rest? Forget it. Toss them, for all I care!”

  Christian snickered. “Nothing is that simple with her,” he said, his voice raspier than before.

  Bicé nodded. “It’s true. It’s not so simple. If you toss the pills, someone else can always find them. I have no idea how to destroy them, so you can never be sure in whose hands they will end up. Vileroy could get them back. She would then have half of Hyde and could go on and on with her games, bring him back through some other weaker person. As for you, well, you would still have enough of him in you to torment you for life.”

  “And if I keep taking the rest?” said Thomas.

  “It would be you against Hyde. . . . No more tablets. No more chances for him to come back. It would be riskier, tougher — life or death for you both. But at least the one who wins gets it all, a normal life instead of some pathetic half existence.”

  “Great,” said Thomas, trying to steady his breathing.

  “She’s all about the ironic megachoices,” muttered Christian. “I, for one, would go for the risky choice. Live free or die young, right?” He chuckled again. Thomas didn’t remember Christian being so angsty. But then Christian flashed his old-boy smile and Thomas felt reassured. Maybe his friend was right. Thomas shouldn’t go on like this. He should fight back.

  “I thought that if I take the pills, Edward will take over,” said Thomas. “That’s what you said before.”

  “Yes,” said Bicé. “That is how it’s intended to work. It’s how it works almost all the time, and so the old manuscripts and spells don’t bother to mention the small, meaningless formalities. But the fact is, you can’t take a person’s soul without their permission. There are dormant powers inside everyone waiting to be called on. It may be nearly impossible to stop him, but Hyde can’t take over unless you let him. He can’t stay if you manage to toss him out.” Thomas remembered that moment of overcoming Edward in debate class. It had been so hard to gain just a second, how could he ever do it for good?

  You will never win. Never.

  “But then . . . where would he go if the pills are gone?” he asked, ignoring Edward. He glanced down the hallway again, wondering if Belle would come back. But she was gone now. Maybe the shrouded figure he saw wasn’t even her, just a shadow.

  Bicé raised a gray-and-white eyebrow. She gave Thomas a big childlike smile, the way she used to do when they were the same age, and whispered, “Exactly. He will be imprisoned. No more Hyde. No more immortal Vileroy.”

  Nicola sat at her mirror and considered her surroundings. Something had changed. What was it? A mother always knows when her child is in danger. It is an instinct, deep inside. It comes even to the worst of mothers — the ones whose depths hold nothing but cobwebs and fire and malice. A child is your own legacy. Your own soul.

  What was different now? Edward was safe. She knew this because she watched him from afar, when he revealed himself through Thomas and when he sat dormant in a glass bottle . . . waiting.

  The room was half in shadow, half lit by three candles pooling wax on the late Mrs. Goodman-Brown’s vanity table. Nicola touched her face. It was the face of the beautiful governess, not the nurse, but something was wrong. Was that a wrinkle? A new line? Or perhaps it wasn’t new at all, but a very old line — one she had seen on the face of a hunchbacked nanny from long ago.

  Things have changed.

  Time is almost up.

  Journal entry #32

  Well, now the golden boy thinks he’s gonna get rid of me. What a trip. He doesn’t even know I’m writing this. He thinks he’s sleeping. Stupid old girl in Podunkville . . . I wanted so much to get my hands around her withered old throat.

  Can’t sleep.

  No! Let go, Mother! Let me go! I’ll be good.

  What was I saying? No one gets rid of Edward Hyde. No reason to take Tommy boy seriously. Look at him and look at me. He doesn’t stand a chance.

  Roger didn’t stand a chance.

  And Marla. The screaming. You call that goth? I didn’t even touch her. She was just afraid of the dark.

  As he rushed through the hallways of Marlowe, Thomas couldn’t help but stop and look at Bicé’s old locker. He had barely glanced at it the entire time she was here. And now it was being used by an exchange student from Karachi. He wondered if there were any remnants of Bicé left on the shelves, maybe a book or a photo tacked up to the door. Since returning from his trip to visit the “West” family, he had found himself thinking a lot about her, and now he wondered why he had spent most of last year completely ignoring the most fascinating and wonderfully bizarre person he had ever met. Maybe there were other fascinating and wonderfully bizarre people that he was ignoring now, just because they’re too shy, or raise their hand too much in class, or are too science-y. Suddenly, he remembered that he owed John Darling some wall posts. He took out his phone and pulled up John’s page. He tried to think of something to write on John’s wall. He figured something vague and mildly conspiratorial would serve John’s purposes.

  Hey, buddy, I haven’t forgotten our deal!

  Just as he pressed ENTER, Thomas noticed his hands. They were dirty, as if he had been digging in mud. He fe
lt a sharp ache in the back of his head. He looked at his phone, still on John’s page. There were two messages on John’s wall. Wait, had he just typed that second one?

  You’re next, nerdling.

  Thomas dropped his phone. His hands were shaking, and his knees began to give out. The ache was getting worse. He had to do something, and he had to do it this second, before anyone read that post. He fumbled on the ground for his phone, even though his vision was beginning to blur and some passing freshman girls stopped to watch. And was that a police officer in the distance? Was he watching? He tried to calm his breathing, then picked up the phone and deleted the comment. He sent John a private message.

  Sorry about that. Some jerk stole my phone.

  Almost immediately, John wrote back. It was as if he had been waiting by his phone for messages.

  No problem! But post on the wall, so everyone can see. This doesn’t count.

  Thomas rolled his eyes. He breathed in four or five times. Now he felt himself beginning to regain control, and he continued toward calculus. As he turned a corner, he wondered why he was even bothering to go. He was so far behind in that class that he wouldn’t understand a thing anyway.

  As he was reaching for the door, someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Everything OK, son?” said the police officer he had seen in the distance. He was taller than Thomas and had a mustache, as if he thought he was in an ’80s police drama.

  I wonder if he’s ever fired that gun.

  Shut up. Shut up.

  “Excuse me, son?” said the police officer, reaching for his belt.

  Wait, did I say that out loud?