“Too late? What do you mean?”
Before Giles or the guards could respond, a detective emerged from the pharmacy. “Aye, by God, I have never known a thing like it.”
“Sir?” the constables asked.
The detective removed his black bowler hat and scratched his ear. When he spoke, it was with a broad, Scottish accent, “That man is breathing. After those bites, those horrific bites… He lives.”
“Then we burn him?”
The detective shook his head. “Not at all!”
Giles noticed that the constables and militia had gathered closer to hear the detective. He wondered if they might not rise against their superior and take matters into their own hands.
“He’s a blood-sucker! I say we burn him like all the rest!” one of the constables demanded.
The detective turned and shot each man a steely glare. “You will do no such thing! I will put a bullet into the guts of any man who dares to lift a finger against that poor soul.” He paused and let his threat sink in. His fingers were at the butt of his revolver. “I am as good a shot as I am a piper and with God as my judge I wis the best piper in all of Dundee.”
“Why should the pharmacist get any better treatment?” one of the constables asked.
“His wounds. They are not healing. These vampire creatures, when they turn a man, he heals, barring mebbe a wee mark oan his neck. This Stanley Sacks character is in a bad way, but he is speaking. I lay a silver bullet on him and he didnae even flinch. And that wee lassie, her cuts on her hand have only now stopped bleeding. He was bitten, she wasnae. But neither one of them is turning.”
“Yet.”
Giles grabbed the detective’s arm. “There’s a girl? Please sir, let me see her! I have come over from Kensington to find my granddaughter. She ran away to get her guardian… her mother, a-a present. Her name is Niamh Blessing!”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “Blessing, yeh say?”
“Yes. Listen, never mind that. Please, could I see her? She will confirm my identity.”
The detective replaced his hat and looked Giles up and down. “Come on, then. But I must warn you, she willnae be confirming anything at all. The poor wee thing she’s in an awful state. Breathing, mind, but unconscious. We can not bring her around at all.”
Giles was led into the back room, where a doctor stood over Niamh’s fragile, battered frame. Giles dropped to his knees, weeping, kissing the child’s hand and crying out her name. “I have found you, my dear, sweet Niamh! I have found you.”
The detective was joined by another of his kind, similarly attired in a black suit and hat. “I wish we could have found her sooner, sir. I fear there is little our physician can do for her.”
Giles kissed the child’s forehead and turned to his fellows. “I must take her home. It will kill her mother to see her so stricken, yet what choice do I have? If the Lord must take her, then let him take her from her mother’s arms into his.”
The Scottish detective stepped forwards and reached for a mallet and wooden stake that was set aside on a shelf. “Do you ken what this is?”
Giles nodded.
“Do you ken what it is for?”
Giles nodded again.
“Then I suggest you keep it close to you, near the lassie’s sick bed. And keep some chloroform handy. If you find any here take it with you. They seem not to like it. One broken jar in the shop slowed half a dozen of them enough for us to shoot them down and stake them. If she changes, sir, then she is not the little lassie anymore. That you must take from me as a solid matter of truth.”
The doctor cleared his throat and whispered to the detective, “Are you sure we should take a chance, sir?”
“You doctors are a bloodthirsty lot, at times. It was one of your kind that got us into this mess, eh?” the detective immediately turned to Giles and raised an eyebrow. “What was his name again, eh? Had that wee hospital oan Poland Street.”
Giles shook his head and feigned ignorance. “I am quite sure I have no idea.”
“Aye… I am quite sure, too. No matter. I had pitied this wee lassie. Look at the state of her; I had thought it maybe a kinder thing had she not made it. But who knows? Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise, eh, sir? Take her back home with yeh. I bet her Ma’s worried sick.”
Stanley Sacks appeared at the door, using the doorframe to prop himself up. His neck was covered in bandages and a greasy lotion had been slathered onto wounds across his face and head.
Giles noticed that two militia men stood behind Stanley, watching his every move with great interest.
Stanley’s voice was weak and his eyes were heavy, it seemed an effort for Stanley to even blink. “Before you take the child, I must give you this.” Stanley extended his pale hand to give Giles a small bottle. “A perfumed water. The girl, she said her mother was in need of some cheering. I believe this is what she was after.”
Giles was touched by the stricken man’s thoughtfulness. “That is very generous of you.”
“I hope she… I hope little Niamh makes a swift recovery.”
“And I you,” Giles said, shaking the man’s hand. “What will happen to you now?”
Stanley looked at the men in the room and those behind him. “Hopefully I will stay alive long enough to prove that I am no vampire.”
Giles inspected the glass bottle in his hands, turning it around to see the label and ribbon that decorated it. “I believe your kindness proves you to be no monster.”
“I have ordered my men to stay their hands, Mr Sacks. You need have no fear.”
“I have one thing to ask of you, Mr Sacks,” Giles said, his gaze flitting between the floor and the man he addressed.
“Anything,” Sacks replied.
“I was here the other day. I bought a medicine or elixir here the other day. Brown bottle, Chinaman’s name on it.”
“You refer to Hong’s Blessing,” Sacks replied. He tried to stand up straight to talk business, but was met immediately with pain and leaned against the doorframe once more.
“That’s the stuff,” Giles said, his face lighting up. “I wonder if I might purchase from you another bottle… perhaps two?”
Sacks sighed and gestured toward his destroyed shop. “I am afraid all stocks of that particular elixir were ruined. I bought it in, and unfortunately have not the recipe, myself.”
“Ah well, there is nothing to be done for it,” Giles said with a disappointed shrug of his shoulders. “I bought a good deal of it from you and have another bottle or so tucked away at home. I simply should not like to find myself without it.”
Sacks’ eyes lit up in agreement. “I could use some of it myself. I have been taking it for a couple of old complaints lately. The results are remarkable, are they not?”
Giles agreed. “It makes an old man like me feel young again!”
Edward.
Edward Summerscale arrived at the Burton house shortly after ten O’ clock in the morning on a snow-covered Christmas Eve. He noted the armed guards at the gate who allowed his carriage to pass when they recognised him. Edward then noted a carriage bearing the livery of the Burton Shipping Company parked near the entrance to the house and wondered if Charlotte had called a management meeting, perhaps so that she could spend Christmas itself uninterrupted, what with the pregnancy and the little girl now living with her.
A guard appeared at a ground floor window, nodded to an unseen comrade, and the front door opened as Edward disembarked the carriage. Edward reached into the carriage and clumsily pulled a paper parcel towards him. He was glad of his housekeeper’s foresight in wrapping the grapes and oranges fully as he would doubtless have spent half of the day chasing stray fruit around the carriage otherwise.
He clutched the package close to his breast, crossing his arms over at the wrist, hoping not to crush the delicious fruit within. A mournful wave swept through his mind. He missed his fingers – the six of them that had been taken by the madman. He was left with only the thumb and for
efinger of each hand. His black gloves concealed plaster imitation fingers which at least stopped people from staring too hard.
Sometimes, he had noticed particularly when entering a warm house from the cold, he felt an itch as though the fingers were still there, begging to be scratched. Those occasions were torturous – the desire to scratch something that was not there – and a reminder of the brutality he had suffered.
Edward was shown through to a small reception room warmed by a log fire. It was there that he realised the Burton Company carriage had carried his old friend Francis Flanders.
Francis leapt to his feet and took the parcel from Edward, setting it on the couch gently. “It is good to see you Edward,” he enthused.
The two men embraced briefly, slapping each other on the back. “Have you been waiting very long?” Edward asked.
“An hour. Something terrible has happened.”
Edward immediately feared Charlotte had experienced problems with her unborn child. “Charlotte?”
Francis raised an assuring hand. “You need not worry about Charlotte. Charlotte is fine. The problem is little Niamh.”
“Niamh?”
Edward released a heavy sigh. “She stole away last night. Henry’s uncle Giles has been living here. He and some of the men ventured into the city and found her, thank God. But she has suffered an ordeal.”
It was then that both men became aware of a commotion out in the lobby. The parlour door had opened and a doctor hurried for the front door.
Giles rushed after the man, followed by a guard and the heavily pregnant Charlotte, who was red-faced with fury. “Shame on you, Doctor!” she cried. “If you dare to call yourself a doctor!”
Giles added. “I shall see you ruined for this, man!”
The doctor turned as he heaved the front door open. “I will give no treatment to that man’s child! The ruin he has brought on this city, well it is only God’s justice that he suffers loss himself!”
“A healing man? A Christian? You sir, are the worst of the worst! The lowest and meanest of the low! To refuse a child medical attention is the greatest sin a medical man could commit!” Charlotte screamed. “That child is dying!”
Giles turned to Charlotte and noticed that she was clutching her prominent bump. He stepped to her side and held her shoulders. “There is nothing more we can do, dear. We must get you a seat.”
Edward and Francis made themselves known as the front door closed and the doctor raced away.
“I am deeply sorry that you gentlemen should find us in such a shambolic state,” Charlotte said, gasping for breath.
“Not at all, let us get you back to your chair,” Edward said, pressing a wrist against Charlotte’s shoulder, not wishing to touch her with his hidden, deformed hands.
Giles led the two visitors upstairs and into the sickroom, where Miss Pinchstaff was found kneeling by Niamh’s side. The child was dressed in a white night gown, her skin ashen and gray. The governess acknowledged them briefly, before returning to her supplications to God.
The three men left the room once more, not wishing to speak of their fears in the same room as the child. In the safety of the parlour, Charlotte composed herself and explained to Edward and Francis that the doctor they had seen leave was the fourth to do so and that none would assist them, knowing that the child was the daughter of George Blessing.
“And they call him a monster,” Francis muttered.
“What sickens the child?” Edward asked.
“She has various cuts and sprains around her body. Those would heal well enough. The problem is that one of her wounds, the one on her hand, appears to have become infected. She was seen by a doctor last night, who managed to dress her injuries, but who claimed he could do no more for her. She stirs only very occasionally, and then only to wretch, but she is completely purged, she has no more to pass. She can not take food, rejects water, she is simply wasting away.”
The two visitors were visibly upset by this. “I feared she had been bitten by one of these creatures they keep talking about,” Francis said.
“She shows no signs of a bite, but these creatures seem to be carrying various diseases,” Charlotte replied. “I have spoken with some experts on the subject.”
Francis straightened his back at this insinuation. Only he and Charlotte knew precisely who these experts were. Burton Shipping had been running what was referred to in hushed tones as ‘the Black Book’. The Black Book included a number of secret supply agreements started by Henry Burton back in his early days. Some of the agreements had fuelled his rise to dominance in shipping and included arming the Chinese against Naval and Parliamentary restrictions. Another section of the Black Book involved transactions for a secret organisation that specialised in matters such as the creatures running amok in London – the organisation known to a very limited few, as De Omori.
Charlotte had met an agent of De Omori five months beforehand and only after that had she learned of the Black Book, and the fact that her late husband’s company had dealings with that particular organisation. She knew that in the shadows of London, De Omori was fighting a silent war to free the city of the menace that held it in terror. Indeed she knew that a series of explosions heard in the city a few nights before had been caused by De Omori weapons. She hoped that the explosions signalled a turning of the tide, but either way, it seemed it was too late to save Niamh.
“The experts, with whom I conferred, were unfortunately not medical men; they were more like… soldiers, I suppose. They did explain that these blood-thirsty vampires seem to be a weaker strain than they have seen elsewhere. The problem is their sheer number. They noted that pureblood vampires have been evolving over the years and have built up a certain tolerance of sunlight – particularly in our smoky industrial cities where the sunlight is choked. Apparently, only when they tap into their otherworldly powers do they fall prey to the sun. The creatures infesting London presently, however, shy away from daylight completely, and hunt solely at night.”
“Are you saying that is what Niamh has become? That she has somehow become infected?” Francis asked.
“Not in the way you think. The experts have said these creatures normally have a phenomenal healing ability, yet in London they are finding nests of disease-riddled creatures, wasting away, craving blood, some of them turning on each other, not simply hunting humans.”
Edward shook his head at the sheer fantastical nature of what Charlotte was saying. “So for some reason, the vampire-kind has become corrupted?”
“Quite so,” Charlotte confirmed. “Are you familiar with the term ‘zoonosis’?”
Francis nodded and said, “Yes. The transference of a disease from animals to man. Smallpox from cattle, for example.”
Charlotte nodded enthusiastically. “Precisely. They tell me that the disease that makes a human into a vampire was transferred in much the same way. It was a venomous secretion, specific to a type of animal long-extinct, but at some point it infected humans, making the vampires that I, until recently, believed were pure myth. The epidemic that has gripped London is similar, but it is thought that the change has occurred through different species rather than straight from human to human, or from that original animal to humans.”
Edward raised a hand to his forehead. “Oh God! George!”
Charlotte smiled, knowing that the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place.
“This is why they blame him!” Edward cried.
“They think somehow George infected some rats or mice with this disease – God knows how he managed to get a source for the disease in the first place. But they think the fire in the hospital released these infected animals into the city at large, where they passed it on from rat to rat, or rat to cat, cat to dog, dog to man, and so on and so forth.”
“Zoonosis,” Francis added.
“But not only that,” Charlotte added, “this weakened vampire strain has collected with it some of the diseases carried by the animals of the city and warped them
– at least, that is what my informant thought. He thinks that many of the vampire creatures in London are now passing on not only the vampire venom, turning more and more humans to their side, but they are dying of a horrendous infection, which they pass on as they feed.”
“This defies belief,” Francis muttered. “I mean, it sounds like the outlandish plot of some, madman’s penny-dreadful!”
Charlotte continued. “I think that our poor dear Niamh has not caught the disease that would turn her into a vampire – by this I mean, not bitten, not exposed to the venom, but she has caught the disease that causes vampires to waste away.”
“That poor child,” Edward sighed, his head hanging low. “And no doctor will even look at her.”
“There is one who will,” Charlotte corrected him. “George.”
Francis and Edward glanced at each other.
“Francis, I know you deal with his finances, as per the arrangements he left.” Charlotte turned to Edward and paused, wincing momentarily as she raised a hand to her swollen abdomen. “And you, Edward, I know that he made a dash to Richmond Upon Thames when he left London. He saw you that night. I am convinced you have the means to reach him. Between the two of you, I must get a message to him. I fear that there is little he can do, but he should at least know that Niamh is dying. Perhaps he could be here at the end.”
Francis mumbled, “The letters he sends, they are vague and have been sent from all over the country, with no return address.”
Edward took a few paces and seemed to warm himself by the fire. He stretched out what remained of his hands in their gloves as if to catch the heat.
“Edward?” Charlotte called, trying to shake him from his reverie. “Can you get a message to George?”
Suddenly Edward turned on his heels to face her. His eyes were wet with tears. “I can do even better. I can tell him directly. Today. Right here, in London.”
The Cabinet of Dr Blessing (The Dr Blessing Collection Parts 1-3): A Gothic Victorian Horror Tale Page 20
