by Jerico Lenk
Miss Claudette … such a fan … I attend your every performance … dinner … meet at 9 o’clock in the evening …
Corner of the eye. Someone in the doorway. A large man, voluminous cloak. Bowler hat. Grotesque white faceless mask, just holes for the beady, glittering eyes to peek through. No … I dropped the letter and the cameo ring on his balled-up leather fist cracked against my jaw as the stranger hit me—
Candles. Surrounded by candles. I saw Christina suddenly as if I were in the room before her, and she was hanging. Hanged … hung over the center of a large diabolical-looking circle painted on the floor. Absolutely a circle like the one in my mother’s room, and the vanity stool kicked off to the side too far away from her feet. Her hands dangled limp and white at her sides the way her swollen face sagged gently against her shoulder, stare glistening empty like the stare of that wax witch downstairs. I could feel him behind me, the masked man—my hair stood on end as if reaching for his presence—could hear him breathing, a slightly laborious and wheezing sort of breath.
I gasped myself out of the trance, on the floor of the dressing room cradled half against Miss Jessica’s knee.
“O’Brien,” she hissed. “A kerchief, please. He’s in a fit.”
“I’m not in a fit,” I croaked, but Miss Jessica smothered most of it to tend to my apparent nosebleed. I sat up on my own, winded and sick to my stomach. And then I just burst into tears.
“Miss Christina Hughling,” I reported, hands shaking. The fear was so vibrant yet, it was like the pitch of a fever that would not break. “Killed, here in this room. I don’t know, a deranged fan, perhaps. On the stage, movement upstairs, she’s an echo, certainly … ”
The circle. I couldn’t say it. The circle on the floor. On my mother’s floor.
Miss Jessica blanched. “I’ve felt that,” she murmured. It seemed for one moment she would lose her temper, but then she just looked sad. “Murder. It’s the worst feeling in the world.” She stared long and hard up at Clement, before her eyes veered back to me as if analyzing my reaction in comparison to hers.
O’Brien turned frantically, the flame in his lamp stuttering. “There wasn’t anything in the file about … ”
“Get him on his feet,” Clement said, his narrowed eyes lingering on me, and then he turned on his heel and stormed out into the dark hall.
Off to Fleet Street we went, to wait patiently while Mr. Zayne tore through his fat, mouldy books searching for the records of a Miss Christina Hughling, murdered in the Starlight Theater.
O’Brien stayed by my side as if a nurse to a ward as, still feeling quite fatigued and feverish, I wandered about peeking and toying with all the outlandish things in the Stygian Society’s collections. Mr. Zayne’s other men weren’t there; it was surprisingly peaceful as thick candles burned and a campy song echoed from an old phonograph. Anything to get the music from Miss Hughling’s death out of my head.
Looking rather cozy in a sweater with holes cut in the ends of the sleeves for his thumbs to poke through, Mr. Zayne fell very still with his finger to the faded page of his ledger of the deceased. Slowly, he met Clement’s eyes.
“What?” Clement snapped. “Out with it, man.”
“It doesn’t say murder,” Mr. Zayne said. “Says here suicide, Clement. 1877. Old Mr. Thomathy annotated. She even left a note, apparently.”
Clement shot me a scathing glance. “Will, you said—”
“I wasn’t lying!” I cried. “She was murdered. I know for a fact she was. He hanged her. I saw it. Well, I saw her hanging. And then I woke up!”
“Well, the post-mortem examination should have discovered any wounds, and what sort of murderer simply hangs his victim?” Miss Jessica defied. “She left a note. She killed herself. Who performed the pre-work? They were absolutely remiss!”
“I saw it,” I insisted fiercely.
And yet the images were already fading. Everything, slipping away, except the dull shroud of murder and the vision of the woman floating above the wicked circle on the floor.
The frown flitted from Miss Jessica’s face as she looked to Clement, eyes wide. “Someone’s managed to conceal the crime, then.”
“Son of a bitch!” Clement hissed, slapping the death book shut under Mr. Zayne’s nose. He didn’t have to elaborate for any of us to understand his sudden bitten-back rage. We’d have to file a report with Scotland Yard regarding the murder—of course on the evening we’d bent the rules and taken no escort with us.
“But who would have concealed it, and how?” Miss Jessica pressed.
“The police could have, if they’d been so inclined.” Clement dragged a hand down the side of his face. “The family perhaps requested it to keep their personal affairs out of the papers. But the killer might have done it, too, if he held enough power. Listen, that’s a mess in which I’d rather not be tangled, so let’s just burn her damn bones and call it a night.”
Miss Jessica was aghast. “The man may still be free!”
“Do I look like a Yard inspector to you?” Clement retorted.
Mr. Zayne pointed to the door, where outside through the hustle and bustle of Fleet Street, his men, the other members of the Stygian Society, were on their way back from—well, I hadn’t really any idea what they did beyond their work with the Cross, and it was probably wrong to conjecture it something criminal or deprave. But who knew.
“Dover,” Mr. Zayne read after taking a moment to find Miss Hughling again in his big book of names. “Body was shipped back to Dover where her family is, Clement.”
“Bloody hell, we’ll just note that and leave the case open, then.” Clement heaved a sigh and grabbed his muffler from the back of Mr. Zayne’s chair. O’Brien and Miss Jessica followed him out, she, of course, already talking his ear off about how the devil we were to patch up our night’s escortless blunder.
I stood with my arms crossed, looking around the dim, musty shop until finally my eyes found Mr. Zayne over a tall stack of timeworn French books. He was already looking at me.
“There’s something of import you want, isn’t there?” he prompted, tapping his cigarette case on the top of his makeshift front desk. It was so odd, how shabby could meet cultured in the strangest of ways with people like him and Clement.
I blushed faintly, nodding. “How did you know?”
“Well, you stayed in here. Other’n that, just a feeling.”
“How did the Black Cross find you, Zayne?” I asked politely.
He offered a little smirk and a nod of the head, rubbing at one cheek with the scrape of stubble against his palm. “Ah, what a proper way to word it, Winchester.” He lit a cigarette, offered me one, then hoisted himself to sit cross-legged on his front desk. He gestured for me to pull a chair over and sit beside him. I did.
He smoked thoughtfully for a moment, then gave me the kindest of grins. “You know, they passed the Anatomy Act so long ago, but there’re still plenty of resurrectionists. I picked up the trade about your age or younger, on top of employment as errand boy at Madame Felicity’s, just up the street here. Thought it was better than tooling—crowing—cracking and all the like. Well, the resurrectionists nowadays work for different masters, but mainly me and the other boys dug up bodies for doctors, undertakers, occultists … ” Mr. Zayne paused, made a puckered face, then chuckled and shrugged. “And the Cross kept aware of it, of course.”
I was in awe. It was almost a shame, how the surprise was more like morbid curiosity. Respectful curiosity, I mean. Mr. Zayne had been a perfect crook in training. And Clement, in that poor Southbank neighbourhood … what if he’d been like Mr. Zayne before the Cross?
“Felicity traded my contract to the Black Cross, I don’t know, not too long ago, and since then I’ve been one of their bone-snatchers.” Mr. Zayne grinned. “I get paid handsomely.”
“How do you know Clement?”
The question tumbled out unwarranted. It was what I really wanted to know, though. You could ask anyone about Cain, but Cleme
nt required a more intimate perspective.
Mr. Zayne sent me a sideways glance.
“The Cross already had him when I joined, see,” he said in a low and velvety tone. “He was … seventeen, then, I think? And all he’d do was play the bloody piano. But I managed to get him to talk after a while.”
He said it with a mysterious glint in his squinted eyes, something secret and proud, and nostalgic. Seventeen … Clement hadn’t really been older than me when he’d signed on. And the question I’d been dying to ask Mr. Zayne had only unlocked more questions.
“Zayne! Winchester!” Clement called from outside. “We don’t have all night!”
“I simply cannot believe this!” Miss Jessica’s voice carried tightly from the walk out front. “And now you’ve a police report to write … ”
“I have a question for you, now,” Mr. Zayne said as I donned my coat and muffler. “Even trade, yeah?”
Fingers on the door, ready to go, I met his eyes as patiently as I could. “Of course, Mr. Zayne.”
“Is it true?”
My heart lodged in my throat for a breath or two. “Is … what true?” I prompted. My mother’s involvement with the Cross? Her murder? The house from whence I’d come? That I hadn’t formally applied? He couldn’t possibly know any of those things. Could he—?
Mr. Zayne shrugged, just sitting there on that damn examination table. “That you’re special,” he said, innocently. “Clement says you’re special, like him. Like a lot of you. Is it true you’re special, Winchester? Can you really see things others can’t?”
I blinked a few times in surprise, breathing a sigh of relief I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. “Yes,” I whispered then, but I didn’t mean it vainly. I was just flustered to know how often I was spoken of unawares. And … highly, apparently. By Clement. To three people now. God, but he was so confusing to me. “I mean no. I mean, yes, Westwood said I was an exception, but I don’t think I’m very special.”
“Oh.” Mr. Zayne smiled warmly. I would have sworn there was another twinkle in his eye. “Everyone’s special. The trick is knowing it, and owning it.”
Stately families had long since fled the cheerless, exhausted city, dark and sad and wet as it was as autumn died away. But the rest of London went on like clockwork, grinding clatter, tolling bells, people on the street hopping around puddles and horse filth as rain and smog choked the blustery sky. And just as November turned towards December, my worst nightmare came to life.
Across from me in the reception room of the Cross main offices were my father and Miss Valérie. The secretary just closed me in with them like Daniel in the den of lions.
“They can’t even offer mid-morning refreshments?” my father complained, having already made himself comfortable in a chair near the mantle. His colour was poor, his eyes tired. But his demeanour was ostentatious as ever, from the flashy pattern of his suit to the shine of his shoes. Beside him, Miss Valérie inspected the faded Chinese rug underfoot with a wrinkle to the bridge of her nose.
I stood near the windows, heart pounding. I opened my mouth. I closed it. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t find words to say.
“I found you, darling,” my father seized the silence, saying it so compassionately, so tenderly. His brows furrowed. “Thankfully, it wasn’t all too difficult to figure out!”
“How long?” I felt as if I’d choke on my tongue. I wouldn’t have washed up and dressed so fast had I known he was the one calling when the courier roused me from a good sleep. My hair was a mess and my flannel sleeves peeked out from crooked cuffs, bandages all haphazard under my shirts as a stray bit of tooth-paste dried on my thumbnail.
“How long have you known I was here?” I said again.
“Since you left, Willow.”
“Will.”
Miss Valérie cut me a confused glance. My father fiddled with his walking stick, smiling plaintively as if for the first time musing on how he’d raised me … or how little he truly knew me, his child.
“Since I left?” I scoffed, gently, shaking my head. “Yet it took months for you to seek me out?”
“Don’t fret, Will,” my father said, trying to placate me, or perhaps curry my favour. “I promise, we did not come to force you out of this place, though God knows we could have.”
“I know.” I felt myself hardening inside. “I lost many a night’s sleep over it.”
“As you should have … ” His eyes flashed, like off some brilliant threat biding its time. “Do you know why I refrained?”
I could barely mouth the word. “Why?”
“Because it is no longer your home. I will not have you back.”
The entire world seemed to retreat from me. It was not a surprise. But I was confused for a breath or two … the most peculiar twist of devastation and joy.
“This was your choice,” my father went on as if it pained him. “You made your decision against all my better warnings and the lessons I tried so hard to teach, so I’ve no other option but to disown you.”
“Disown me?” I sputtered.
“Yes, dear,” Miss Valérie hummed, eyes hooded and face tight with make-believe regret. “It was an unfortunate necessity, and it gave your father great heartache. Why, he even had to see a doctor for chest pains with all the stress of the betrayal.”
The betrayal. Like I was a conspirator. Like I’d caused him such trouble on purpose.
My father cleared his throat. “My will has already been altered. You cannot collect loans in my name, you will get no portion of inheritance, et cetera, et cetera. I am confident any of the scholars here might explain to you the legalities, should he contact my lawyer for a copy.”
This was just preposterous. What sort of inheritance did a businessman like him have in store for me, anyway? A house of prostitutes? Miss Valérie’s good shoes? Miss Valérie …
“This is all your doing,” I seethed before I could keep myself in check, stabbing a finger in her direction. “You’ve always wanted me gone. Admit it!” I swung around to face my father again. “She’s convinced you I’m terrible and ungrateful for so long, and you believe her, that’s the worst part! She only wants you all to herself. You wrote everything to her in the will, didn’t you?”
“It would be appreciated if you refrained from speaking as though I am absent from the room,” Miss Valérie said thinly.
My father held out a hand to silence me, a shadow falling fast through his eyes. “Your mother was a madwoman who fancied herself a witch!” he cried. “It is because of organisations like this that she carried on with the delusions, and now you’re too tangled up in them to see any reason, either. You made your decision. You left.”
Witch.
“Yes, and you’re telling all your guests your beloved son ran off with one of your girls,” I finished for him, somehow laughing and yelling at the same time. I felt brittle, something frigid beyond panic. “Don’t think I have not heard. The speed of parlour talk is extraordinary. Which girl, Daddy? What did you do to her to make the world believe the lie?”
“Don’t preach to me of lies when you’ve signed on with this place in some devious and fraudulent manner, without the hand of a guardian—”
“There was no contract. Ask Westwood yourself. I’ve been employed properly, as any other young person.”
“Clearly you did not join as Miss Willow.”
“Why on earth would I?” I spat, veritably burning from the inside out with all this and sick with his constant, ignorant reminders of my intermediateness. “As far as the Cross knows, I lost my birth papers in a fire. After all, Will Winchester doesn’t have birth papers, does he?”
“You two are causing a perfect ruckus,” Miss Valérie whined, turning to the fire.
“Oh, hush up!” I said at about the same time my father rumbled, “Valérie, be quiet.”
“Daddy,” I pressed, “what exactly are you telling everyone when they ask of me?”
He shook his head slowly, feigning great despair. “Th
at I’ve disowned you, that you’ve run off with Miss Daphne. Miss Daphne is no longer under my employment.”
The final thread of fear snapped away. Absolutely livid, I stormed across the room. I swear my father flinched away at first, afraid of me. Good.
“What did you do?” I demanded. “What did you do when you found out they helped me leave? What did Miss Valérie do—”
“Miss Valérie has no part in this!”
“What did you do to Daphne, you terrible, terrible man!” Angry tears threatened, my eyes wide and cold with them. “Oh God, is she dead?”
“No, you insufferable dreamer!” My father was truly insulted. “She ran off herself not even three days after you left, to be in Paris with her sister. Zelda accompanied her, and thank God, I never did understand why your mother loved her so, the gypsy—”
I shouldn’t have, but his demeaning Zelda made something in me give way and I swung at him. He caught my wrist and swung back, giving me a smack. I staggered against a table, plagued by visions of that day in his library. Finally, the tears came pouring forth.
“Zelda didn’t call before she left?” I held my face, shaking with the conscious outrage. “Why didn’t she say good-bye? Neither of them said good-bye! What did you two do to make them hate me so much they didn’t say good-bye?”
“Child, you are simply uncontrollable!” Miss Valérie cried, clutching at my father’s shoulder as if to protect him from me.
My father, on the other hand, said nothing. Mouth bitten in a furious line, he dug through his pockets and threw a few letters on the table. Their wax seals were broken.
“Those are from the two of them,” he fumed. “I managed to apprehend them before they were sent. I don’t know why I’m giving them to you now.”
“Because they’re mine, and rightfully mine,” I said, gathering the letters up. The words were just flying out, fragile and sharp as broken glass between my teeth. “If you’ve disowned me, don’t stop there. Scour me right out of your life completely. Burn Mamma’s things. Sweep us under the rug if we’re such a blemish on your days.”
