"Hey, that's a good dress!" Jackie protested as soon as her surprise would let her.
"Don't worry. You won't need it," he smiled. "Not for a long while, if ever. Now, be quiet."
And there was a sternness to his voice that brooked no response.
"Clasp your hands in front of you," he said, and his tone made her obey without a moment's hesitation.
Quickly, Conor used the sash cord to bind her wrists, tightly, though not painfully, in front of her. Then he took the strip of green material and bound it around her eyes.
"Why all the precautions?" Jackie dared to ask.
"I don't want you changing your mind now," he answered. "You know too much."
He took her hands then, and pulled her gently to her feet.
"Just let me lead you and you'll be perfectly safe," he said.
And he took her by the elbow and led her quite a long way before he stopped her and laid something warm over her shoulders.
"My winter cloak," he said. "Much warmer than that flimsy raincoat you had on. Watch yourself now. We've got two steps to go down."
This, they did and Jackie heard the sound of a door opening. Then a blast of cold November air hit her in the face. And a smell…like garbage.
"We're in the alley back of my place," he told her.
"The one where that girl was discovered?" she dared to ask.
"Well, yes and no," he answered enigmatically. "Come along. This way's the street."
"Won't people wonder at a man leading a bound and blindfolded girl down the street?" she asked.
"It's late. There's no one around."
"In this city?" Jackie gasped. "The city that boasts it never sleeps?"
"That's not true, obviously. Listen. What do you hear?"
Jackie listened to the impossible silence.
"Nothing," she said. "But that's imposs…No, wait! I do hear something."
"What's it sound like?" Conor asked her.
"Like horse's hooves, and the squeak and rattle of wagon wheels on…on cobblestones."
"That's exactly what it is."
"But there are no horses in the city. Not any more," Jackie protested. "Except at the racetrack."
"There is no racetrack," Conor chuckled. "Not yet."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"It is eighteen ninety-seven, my dear. The year I became a Konor."
"I don't believe you."
"You might as well. And this 'wagon' with a horse is the hansom cab which will take us to Magdalena. Watch it. The first step's a high one."
Once she was seated on the padded, straight-backed bench that smelled vaguely of coal-oil, horse, and cigar smoke, Jackie finally dared to ask the most important question.
"Who is Magdalena?"
"Magda is our trainer."
"For me?"
"Yes. You and Magda will see quite a lot of each other for the next while. How long depends on you."
"But what will she train me to do?"
"Not 'to do.' To be. She will train you to be a Jacynthe. She will train you to be totally submissive."
"Submissive?" Jackie gasped. "But I thought the Jacynthe was considered all-powerful."
"She is."
"Then I don't see…"
"No, you don't yet," Conor said gently. "You don't understand that only in total submission can one find absolute power. Only when you have gone through every kind of pain and degradation it is possible to suffer and come out the other side, only then will you be impervious to fear. And in that can come power. And, only when you have been beaten down so low that it is impossible to sink lower, will you rise to the heights of your power. I would be only too eager to teach you those lessons, my dear Jacynthe—if that is who you should, indeed, turn out to be, but I cannot trust myself. I myself am still far too human and too much in love with you. I might take pity on your suffering and…well…"
He stopped himself.
"And what?" Jackie asked in a tiny, fearful voice.
"Well, that is why we have Magda," Conor answered.
Suddenly Jackie became aware that the sound of the horse's hooves had become less of a clopping and more of a dull thudding, and the carriage had begun to lurch and bounce as if they were now travelling over rutted dirt road rather than the regular cobblestones of the city. At the same time, as they left behind the garbage-laden streets, the air took on the scent of wet leaves and pine.
"We must be out in the country," Jackie remarked.
"It is amazing how depriving a creature of one sense—in your case, sight—sharpens the others," Conor noted. "In the days to come, you will find your senses will become as keen as a wild animal's."
"What are you telling me?" Jackie asked hesitantly.
"Just that, in the days to come, Magdalena will systematically deny you one sense in order to sharpen the others," Conor answered. "You will, for instance, spend much time in absolute darkness and alone. Isolation in total darkness is the most complete of such deprivations. Moreover, depriving a person of his senses, sooner or later, makes that person doubt who he or she is. That is just the sort of first step toward the kind of complete submission we require."
Jackie was about to open her mouth to voice her fears, but Conor seemed to sense this and he placed a finger on her lips.
"Do not try to protest," he said. "The carriage has stopped, for we have arrived at Magdalena's. It is too late to back out now."
He need not have said that, Jackie knew. Arriving at Magdalena's was not what made it too late. That time had come the very moment she looked into his eyes. Oh, God, how long ago...
Suddenly, Jackie felt his warm breath on her cheek as his lips grazed it lightly.
"Goodbye, Jackie," he said. "I shall miss you in the long days that you are gone. But it will all be worth it if at the end I am able to say, 'Hello, my Jacynthe.'"
She felt the cold air blow through the cab and a pair of strong hands clutched her wrists hard and painfully, dragging her out, down from the cab. Then she heard the wooden door shut and the horse's hooves thudding away.
"Come along, Miz," a gruff voice cut through her personal night. "Mustn't keep Mistress Magdalena waiting."
* * *
Some minutes later, Jackie found herself in front of Mistress Magdalena, the blindfold gone but her wrists still bound.
The Mistress was a tall, tautly-muscled woman, probably in her early forties, with coal-black hair and yellow-irised eyes like a cat. The lines around her mouth seemed to show that her only approximation of a smile was a sneer. Almost like a parody of a Dungeon Mistress, she was dressed in high black leather boots, tight black leather slacks, and a halter top that bared her muscled shoulders. As she stretched out languidly on wing-back chair set on a daïs so that it looked vaguely like a throne, her right hand held a riding crop so casually that she seemed she was unaware of it.
She stared down at Jackie with a dispassion that chilled the girl to the bone.
"So," she said, tapping her left palm with the handle of the crop, "this is the little trollop who would be a Jacynthe, you say?"
"I didn't ask to be…" Jackie started to protest.
"Quiet! Speak when you are directly addressed." Magdalena brought the crop down on her palm again, hard this time. "What is your name?"
"J…Jackie," she sputtered.
"No, it isn't. Try again."
"Jac…Jacqueline. Jacynthe?" Jackie tried desperately to get at least a nod.
"No and no! Stupid child!" Magda snapped. "Your name is Nobody. Miss Nobody. Understand that? Now, what is your name then, stupid child?"
"M…miss Nobody," Jackie stammered.
"Learn to think of yourself as that," Magda nodded coldly. "Hold your hands out and turn the palms upwards."
Despite the silken cord binding her wrists, Jackie managed to do as Magda ordered.
And the riding crop came slashing down across them—one, two, three times.
"That's for three wrong answers. What did you say your name
was again?"
"Miss…miss No…body," Jackie sobbed through the burning pain of the welts across her palms.
"Maybe those stripes on your hands will help you remember," Magda sneered. "However, though you are saying the words now, you don't believe them. And it is only when you come to accept totally that you are Nobody, no one, a non-person, that we can begin to make you see yourself as a Jacynthe."
Magda waved the crop and Jackie winced.
"Take her to her cell, Theo, and take her pretty clothes away. They only help her to think of herself as someone. And she won't be needing them…for quite a long time, I believe."
Jackie felt her heart sinking into her stomach as Theo, a short, ugly gnome of a man with an oversized head and a stubble of coarse gray beard, led her away from the Mistress' Inner Sanctum, along a dark hall and down a long flight of stairs.
'Quite a long time', indeed, she thought. If they really believed that they could ever have her denying that she was Jackie Talbot. If they could think that any amount of torture or debasement could make her believe that, they were dead wrong.
Oh, she might learn to say the right words on cue, but as for believing she was no one? Forget that! That would take forever.
And, ironically, in that hopeful certainty lay the very hopelessness of her situation.
* * *
Jackie's cell was exactly that. A tiny room, maybe twelve by six, with one small window, barred, and too high up in the stone wall to afford much light. But, with what little there was, she could see the bare plank bed, without even a thin mattress or pillow, and the single high-backed wooden chair, with straps affixed to its back at neck level and the shackles around its four legs, for what horrible use she could only guess. A shallow trough ran down one side of the cement floor with a tiny stream of water trickling through it and down a six-inch hole by the wall.
"You'll have to learn to use that," Theo said, pointing at the trough and becoming quite loquacious as she undressed and handed him her clothes. "Squat and let fly down the hole. Then wipe your ass off in that trough. Careful, though. That's your drinking water, too. Don't want to muddy it. When you get thirsty, you'll have to kneel down like a dog and lap the water from that trough."
He looked around the cell.
"That bed probably looks uncomfortable as hell to you right now," he said as he took every last piece of her clothing from her. "But after a night or two in that chair, with splinters jabbing your bare butt, it will look like heaven to you. Then, after a night upstairs with the Mistress, you will yearn for that chair. So everything's relative, you see. Just like your identity. You think you're somebody now; then you'll believe you're someone else; then you won't even care any more. You'll come when anyone calls you any name. Sound impossible?"
She nodded numbly and he smiled a grim smile.
"Well, you'd better get used to the idea, Miz," he said. "You really ain't anybody, not any more."
And on that depressing note, he locked the steel door of her cell behind him leaving her with only a single candle to light the gloom.
* * *
It became colder in the night, the kind of damp cold that creeps in through the pores and invades the very marrow of the bones. So Jackie drew her naked body up into a tight little ball, lay on her side on the hard bed and shuddered herself into an exhausted sleep.
So she said a silent prayer of thanks when Conor came in the night and, covering her with his warm, bare skin, became a furry blanket under which she slept, almost refreshed, till dawn…when he evaporated with first light, leaving her unspeakably lonely.
Chapter Seven
Theo came just as the first pink streaks of light caught the top of the cold stone wall above the door.
"Miz Magda will see you in the Studio now," he said.
"The Studio?" she queried.
"Yes, she considers herself an artist," Theo explained. "A sculptor who molds the clay of the soul into fresh shapes, fresh identities. The devil alone knows who you will turn out to be. But you can be sure you will not be the person you are now. Get up and follow me."
"But I have to…" Jackie looked at the trough.
"Pee? Forget it," Theo snapped. "Miz Magda said now. She meant now."
Jackie followed him, wrists still bound together, belly threatening to cramp and spew urine down her bare legs.
Miz Magda took one look at her, however, and smiled cruelly—that smile that was more than half sneer—and saw the discomfort in her face instantly.
"Turn around and bend over," she ordered and Jackie did as she was told, blushing at the view of her exposed pussy she was affording Theo.
Immediately, Magda's ever-present riding crop lashed down across Jackie's bare buttocks. Jackie yelped and loosed her urine down her thighs and onto her bare feet.
"Feel better now?" Magda asked.
"N…no…" Jackie snivelled.
"Then I might as well not have bothered," Magda said impatiently. "Stand up and admire my latest sculpture. Not what I consider a particular success, by the way."
Jackie looked in the direction Magda's crop was pointing and her stomach heaved.
Nailed to an X-shaped cross by her palms and feet was what had been a pretty redhead, her breasts and belly cross-hatched with the wounds of at least a hundred whip-marks.
"A snakeskin whip did that," Magda said. "Usually quite effective in convincing someone to accept her new identity. This one was defiant though, even after a hundred and twenty strokes. So we had to do this."
She walked over to the girl, yanked her head up and carefully lifted her right eyelid with the tip of the crop.
The eye was nothing but a hollow socket that still wept blood in a trickle down her cheek as it was opened.
Magda shrugged.
"Some people never learn, though. Even after we took her other eye, she kept insisting she was who she used to be. So we finally had to resort to this."
The crop now pried the obviously dying girl's mouth open and blood gushed forth in a torrent.
"Tongue," Magda said. "We had to excise it. With pliers. Messy. However, now…but let me show you. Who are you, dear?" she asked of the redhead. "Are you Ingrid Moore?"
Slowly, weakly, the girl shook her head.
"Are you the Black Angel, Lilith?"
Even more slowly the girl nodded her head.
"Since even I must work on my skills, this girl was only for practice," Magda explained. "Still, even as such, she must be counted as only a modified success. We got the results we wanted, but, in achieving them, we ended up spoiling the merchandise a little. For your sake, therefore, I hope Conor's right and you are the Jacynthe he's been looking for. He's already been wrong twice. All right, Theo, cut this thing down and take her out into the woods to feed the wolves."
Magda shrugged.
"Well, third time lucky, they say," she said. "Are you ready to begin, Miss Nobody?"
But Jackie wasn't listening. Somewhere along the way, the sight of that mutilated girl had become too much for her, and she had retched violently and pitched forward to the oaken floor.
* * *
She returned to consciousness with the taste of stale vomit on her tongue and with the awareness that she was hanging upside down from her ankles, her hands dangling loose above her head so that her outstretched fingers barely touched the floor. Then, as her eyes focussed, she became aware that she was staring at a pair of black leather boots and slim black-clad lower legs directly in front of her.
Magda. So it wasn't a dream, she thought. Not Theo. Not Magda. Not the girl on the cross. None of it.
Jackie let her eyes sweep in a wide arc around the upside-down room. There were racks of whips and horrible-looking chairs and all sorts of unidentifiable horrors…but no X-shaped cross.
"Wh…where's the cross?" she croaked through parched lips.
"What cross, Nobody?"
"There was an X-shaped cross," Jackie said, fuzzily. "And a girl on it. You'd whipped her viciously with a s
nakeskin whip and gouged her eyes out and torn her tongue out with pliers…"
Magda cut her off with a scornful laugh.
"What an imagination you have! It was just a dream, I'm afraid. Theo went to get you this morning, found you where you'd finally fallen off to sleep on your bed, carried you here and strung you up, right where you now find yourself. And there was certainly no girl such as you describe. Was there, Theo?"
"No, Miz Magda, by my life."
"But…"
"Look, my dear Nobody. We couldn't risk disfiguring a possible Jacynthe just to break her spirit, could we? Besides, we have ways of hurting you that leave hardly any marks, except upon the mind. Hanging upside down, for instance, disorients you. Do it for long enough and you lose track of where and who you are. Only temporarily, unfortunately, while we are after more permanent results. Then this whip…"
She held out a three-foot strap of leather about two inches wide.
"Though it doesn't cut the skin, it hurts much worse than the snakeskin one you imagined. In fact, it hurts so much, they say, that soon the fear of being hit with it becomes as bad as the blow itself. But let's test that little piece of hearsay, shall we?"
Magda walked around in back of Jackie and out of her line of vision, and there was a silence that seemed to Jackie to last interminably. Finally, Magda's voice asked,
"Are you sure you are ready for this, Miss Nobody?"
"If I am truly Nobody, what does it matter?" Jackie asked bitterly.
"True," Magda said curtly and another silence ensued.
Then, suddenly, there was a hissing on the air and a sharp blow struck Jackie on the buttocks.
Magda's words had prepared her for pain, but no words could have prepared her for this kind of pain. It flamed across her nether cheeks; it shot bolts of lightning up her legs so that they spasmed, pulling her knees up; it burned down over her belly and seized her by the throat, so that she could only emit a small, strangled cry to voice her agony to the world.
Nightwalkers Page 5
