Shadows Gray

by Melyssa Williams

  You’re so naïve, pet. What kind of boy wants a whore for a mum?

  I always thought it’d be you and Israel, actually. I’m never wrong.

  You’re always wrong, smarty. You said you were going to marry Johnny Depp.

  Yeah, well, I ran out of time is all.

  It’s not a palace but it’ll do for now. I’ll move up, Sonnet. You’ll see.

  I remember another conversation too. One that makes me tremble with anger.

  There are bad people here. I met a bad man yesterday. He won’t hurt me though, he told me so. He said I was a good girl. He might hurt you though.”

  “Why would he hurt me?”

  “Because you are a bad girl! He wants to hurt the bad girls.

  And:

  I took care of the girl, Luke. All by myself.

  Rose knew about Jack. Rose even met Jack. And if Israel was right about her need for revenge and wanting to hurt the ones I love, Rose sent Jack straight to Emme.

  ********************

  I’ve heard people say that the waiting is the worst part. Worse than the news that your loved one is dead, worse than the news that the cancer has spread, or that someone didn’t make it through the surgery. And it’s true, I discover; the waiting on that couch with Bea was worse even than when Israel and Dad come back with Emme’s body. She is wrapped in Israel’s long coat and the bundle is small in Israel’s arms, almost like he carries a child. He lays Emme down on the floor by the fire as Bea covers her eyes and moans, retreating further into the couch as if it could consume her wholly.

  “Where’s Joe?” Dad’s voice sounds thick with emotion.

  “Asleep at the table,” I reply hollowly. He had fallen asleep only minutes before and I didn’t have the heart to wake him, danger of traveling or not.

  “We couldn’t just leave her body there. We’ll have to find a place to bury her tomorrow. We’ll let Bea decide,” Israel opens his arms and I move into them. I inhale his familiar scent and want to disappear inside of him. He can’t hold me tight enough right now.

  “How bad is it?” I whisper. I swallow hard as I look at the wrapped body.

  “Not that bad,” he answers, gently. “She’s been stabbed through the stomach, but nothing else. Not like the other girls will be.”

  “You’re a doctor,” I trip over my words. “Was it quick, Is?”

  “Yes, it was quick.”

  The words are like balm to my heart even though I know he would lie to protect me. I will still take comfort in spite of that knowledge, as I pull back the coat from Emme’s face.

  She looks like she is sleeping, angelic as always. I smooth her strawberry colored hair away from her face and kiss her softly. The tears that fall from my eyes land on her cheek and they glisten there, like diamonds in the firelight, like dew, almost like her very own tears if the dead could cry.

  There is nothing to say, nothing to do until morning. Words are inadequate when grief is so deep and for a long time the only sound is that of Bea’s keening. After a while, even that stops and we all sleep.

  ********************

  It is late, late morning before any of us awake. Though my shoulders ache from my strange position, curled up on Israel’s lap all night, I stay where I am, in the warmth of those arms I love so much.

  When Joe wakes up and stumbles, bleary eyed and yawning into the room, Dad springs into action and is immediately by his side. Explaining something about a walk, he bundles Joe up and they leave through the front door. I know it is to explain to the little boy what has happened. I stay where I am for a moment longer, but I know what I must do. There are three people I need to find: Inspector Walter Andrews, Luke Dawes, and my sister. I don’t expect Inspector Andrews to believe anything I have to say but I will have to try to make him understand that Emme’s killing was a foreshadowing of more terrible things to come. As for Luke and Rose…I only know that I am angry, angry enough to force a confrontation. I will grieve later.

  “I’m coming with you,” Israel murmurs when I unwrap myself from his arms. His eyes are still closed but he is fully awake. Energy courses through his body and nearly gives off sparks whenever I touch him.

  “You won’t like where I’m going,” I answer.

  “I never do, but I’m coming anyway.”

  “Get your coat then.” I soon as I say it I realize just what I’ve said and an almost hysterical laugh nearly bursts out of me. He can’t take his coat, as Emme’s body is still wrapped inside it.

  “Bea,” Israel goes over to the couch. “Bea, I know you’ll want some time alone with your daughter. I’m going to send a cab for Prue and she can help you with dressing Emme. She’ll know what to do. Wait for her, alright?”

  Bea nods and though I am reluctant to do so, we leave her. It is a sleeting, chilly morning, a bad time to be without a coat, but it only motivates us to move faster. Israel gives everything in his pocket to a driver and sends him to collect Prue.

  “I wouldn’t want Bea to see all that blood on her dress,” he explains softly. “Prue is better suited to take care of everything.”

  I nod wordlessly and swallowing back the tears my body wants to spill, I tell him of my first meeting with Inspector Andrews.

  “Do you think he’ll listen? There’s no way to explain how we know anything that makes any sense.”

  “I know,” I agree. “But we have to try.”

  “Maybe a letter then. I don’t want him locking you up in a loony bin.”

  “Ha ha. Alright, a letter. Dad can write one; he’s the historian. Maybe he can remember another victim’s name or something more helpful.”

  “There are thousands of prostitutes in London, especially the Whitechapel district. I don’t think we’re going to change history, Sonnet. I don’t think we can, as much as you want to.”

  “Speaking of being crazy, what do you know about Bedlam?” I change the subject. “You’re a doctor, have you studied the history of one of the oldest hospitals in the world?”

  “I know that the inmates don’t like to be called crazy and the proper name is Bethlem Royal Hospital,” he deadpans.

  “Sorry. How bad do you think Rose had it there?”

  “Depends on the time period she was there, I guess. It’s been around for a long, long time. If she was there during the thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth centuries, it would have been horrendous. Not much better after, although at least they stopped manacling them to the walls or floors. In the early eighteen hundreds, just a few decades ago, they would let the patients out at night for dancing in the ballroom.”

  “That sounds bizarre and maybe a little scary. All those poor people dancing their cares away all night?” I think of Rose sipping her imaginary tea and suddenly I can picture her dancing in her red dress and bare feet in a dusty, old ballroom with the other mad patients; twirling and spinning. A crazy snapshot. Somehow the picture fits very well with what I know of my sister. “She said she danced there.”

  “Is that where we’re going?” Israel asks.

  “Bedlam? No. No, I want to talk to Rose. I want to know,” I falter. “I want to know why. Why she hates me so. And I also want to know how she does it. Manipulates time, I mean. I want out of here,” my last words are spoken viciously and I realize suddenly how true it is. How bad I do want out of London, this place of cold and death.

  “I doubt she knows herself,” he replies. “She must be capable of some kind of power, but I wonder if she knows how to harness it.”

  “Well, then maybe Luke will know. Obviously, he’s Lost too and has been keeping all sorts of secrets.” I can’t help the bitterness that creeps into my voice.

  Israel glances over at me. Something flickers across his face, whether it is jealousy or concern I don’t know. Impulsively I step in front of him and kiss him, lifting my head to his. I have to stand on my toes in my boots. He is warmth and light and hard curves and I am shadows and softness and gray. He tastes of life and I taste of tears.

  “So
nnet,” he pulls away. “That night with Dawes? It’s not that I didn’t notice your dress. It’s just that you always look that beautiful to me.”

  Standing there, kissing in the street with the sounds of horses hooves coming too close for comfort, jogs us back to reality. We approach Rose’s house quickly. Amazing how long it seemed to take to our fevered imaginations last night when we were racing against time to stop a madman who wouldn’t be stopped. In the daylight it is a short walk to Dr. Smythe’s house and only a few more blocks to Rose’s.

  “If Dawes knew about Jack and Emme, you do know I’m going to kill him,” are Israel’s last words before I lift my hand to the knob on Rose’s door.

  “I know,” I whisper and the door opens before I can turn the handle.

  ********************

  “Gray,” Luke’s face is ashen when he sees me. He reaches out his arm – to close the door again? To embrace me? I hardly know. In either case, I slap his hand away and push the door further open.

  “I want to see Rose,” I say flatly.

  It’s apparent he didn’t realize I knew about him and Rose; his face becomes even paler. She really had forgotten I was there, crouched besides the broken tea things, when her lover got home. Must have slipped her fragile mind to tell him about her little tea party with Sonnet.

  “She isn’t here, she’s gone. I don’t know where. Come in,” Luke nods stiffly to Israel, who is so tightly wound right now I am afraid he will spring into some sort of violent action at any point. I can feel his hand in mine; it feels as though it seethes and throbs with a barely controlled strength.

  We enter the house and it is as I remember it. The same books are torn apart, photographs strewn about. I push a pile to the floor and sit on the chair where it had been. No fire burns in the fireplace and it is cold in the house. Colder here somehow than it had been outside.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Israel’s voice is like an animal growling.

  “Whose? Mine? Rose’s?”

  “The one that will explain to me why you’re helping a criminally insane murderer.”

  “She’s sick,” Luke throws up his hands and his words as though that simple explanation will cover over the offenses.

  “No one is debating that. What’s your plea if she has the insanity one going for her?”

  “I’m not insane, but love makes you do crazy things. Look at her,” Luke nods at me. “Wouldn’t you do anything for her?”

  “I wouldn’t ask him to,” I answer him myself. “Rose is using you.”

  Luke shrugs. “I know.”

  “And that’s enough for you?”

  He looks at me, tipping his head to the side as he considers the question.

  “Yes,” he replies.

  “Then you might be worse than she is,” Israel says. “Did you know about Jack?”

  Luke strokes his hair back from his forehead. “Not until this morning, I swear it. Rose imagines all sorts of people she thinks she’s talked to. She told me about meeting someone bad but I confess I didn’t pay much attention to it. This morning she told me she sent him to Emme. It took me a while to connect the dots. When I did, it was too late. I did go out to see if I could find you or Emme, but you weren’t home.”

  “We were taking care of Emme’s body,” I answer coldly.

  “I’m sorry, Gray. Truly I am. I didn’t know how far she’d take this thing, this revenge. She’s obsessive about it and she isn’t going to stop. I’m the one who let you out of that house after she locked you in – I realized then that she had every intention of letting you die in there. When she told me about your mother, I didn’t know whether or not she was telling the truth. I guess I chose to believe she wasn’t. When we caught up with you, she used me to get close to you. I thought it was harmless enough, or that maybe your Dad deserved it for abandoning her as a baby, or Emme deserved punishment for taking Rose’s place as your sister in a way. I didn’t expect to start caring about you.”

  “Oh, what a lovely sentiment,” I am sarcastic. “You didn’t care enough, did you?”

  “No,” his voice is flat, exhausted. “I’ll always take care of her; I’ll always do what she wants. I love her.”

  “How does she do it? How does she choose where to travel?” I am feeling sick to my stomach and don’t want to hear anymore about his fixated love and commitment for Rose.

  “I don’t know. Believe me. If I could do it the way she can, I’d have had us living in Utopia by now. Or someplace where I could get her some help. But I’m just like the rest of you and the Lost; traveled maybe twenty times my whole life, never knowing ahead of time, never seeing it coming. I fit in anywhere now. I left my family to be with her. I lied about the artist mother and the absent father; I guess that’s obvious now. I have both a father and a mother, and a couple of sisters. I left them all behind for Rose. I’ll never see them again unless she takes me back. Somehow, she figured something out in the hospital as far as bringing the traveling on and how to steer its course; it’s how she got out. She seemed so helpless, so childlike and innocent. I told her I’d always take care of her and we’ve been together ever since.” His true voice begins to seep out now; now that he isn’t pretending to be someone he isn’t. Heavily Australian more than anything else, though there’s a guttural element that makes me think Russian.

  “Were you there when my mother,” I swallow. “When my mother died?” I need to know how badly I will always hate him.

  “No. She had just come back from there when we met. Please believe me.”

  “But you knew why she picked America, why she wanted to get close to me and Dad.”

  “I knew, and yes, I helped track you. But I never thought she’d kill you off one by one. The night we traveled here I was out on your porch like I said, but she was with me too. By then I wanted it all to stop, but she’s the one with the power. Sometimes I think she’s not as disturbed as she seems. Sometimes I think she has it all figured out and she’s playing the rest of us. In any case, one thing she hasn’t figured out is how to stop ending up here. She can go anywhere, any time, but she’ll always bounce right back here to London. At least it’s familiar to her, like home in a way.” Luke looks tired, like he could sink down to the floor and fall asleep.

  “And you don’t know where she is now?” Israel asks.

  Luke shakes his head. “I’m worried she’s traveling again. I have some medication for her that helps her stay more even. She won’t let me give it to her regularly but sometimes I can hide it in her cake. With it, she could pass for normal, at least for a little while.”

  “Well, you and your cake can stay here, but I’m going to find her,” I am out of patience. “And I think we’d better find Dad and Prue too.”

  “Go. I’ll keep her away for as long as I can, you have my word. But, Gray,” the warm eyes I used to lose myself in, narrow as they gaze into mine. “Hurry. Get out of here. Disappear. Vanish.”

  I hold his gaze for a minute more and then I nod. “We will. But first,” my gaze and my voice falters for a moment. “First, she has to understand what she’s done. She has to be put somewhere where she can’t hurt anyone, Luke. You understand that?”

  In a flash, I realize I’ve gone too far. What a fool I am. He already told me he would do anything for Rose, anything. His loyalties are not in question. He won’t be a party to anything that may hurt her. I understand this incredibly quickly, but I am not as quick as Luke. In one fluid movement he has reached the front door and turns the lock. When he turns again, this time to face us he has pulled a pistol.

  “You aren’t taking her back there,” Luke snarls. “You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what she’s been put through. I saw it. I know.”

  “You can’t just let her roam through time, killing people!” I should be feeling fearful, but instead I’m angry. “She’s collected us! Like a bloody stamp collection! She’s brought us all here and she’s going to pick us off, one by one. And then what?
What will she move onto next? Your family maybe? Your mother and father? Your sisters? You can’t stop her and you can’t make her love you. She’s twisted. She isn’t capable of love.”

  “She is capable and she does love me,” Luke hisses. “You’ll never understand what we’ve been through. She saved me and now I’m going to save her. I can redeem her and we can be together, you’ll see.”

  “I thought the same thing, but it isn’t going to work. She’s past redemption. You have to let her go. She has to be stopped.” I intentionally lower and soften my voice as if I’m talking to a child, as if I’m talking to Rose herself.

  “Not if it means going back there.” The pistol is steady in his hands. “I won’t go back either.”

  I feel Israel stiffen beside me. “That’s where you met her then?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mention that?” Luke smiles. “Inmates together. Quite romantic really. You could write a book about our story; of course no one would ever believe it. But don’t be nervous, Gray, I’m not mad. Not at all.”

  “Then what,” I clear my throat. “What were you doing in a mental hospital?”

  Luke waves the pistol in a frivolous manner that makes me wince at the thought of accidental gunfire pointed my direction. “Oh they put all sorts in there when they run out of room in the prisons, you know. Just label them criminally insane and off they go. Off I went to Bedlam. Chop, chop!” Unbelievably, he grins at me then and I feel slightly sick. “Actually, it was a little better there than in the House of Detention. Ever been there, Gray? Near Clerkenwell Green? No? Underground? Interesting place if you’re the historical type. Haunted, you know.”

  “You said Rose saved you?” All I can think to do is keep him talking. Anything to keep him from shooting.

  “She’s my sanity, I suppose,” Luke muses thoughtfully. “Ironic, isn’t it? She keeps me rational. Keeps me from doing crazy things. I want to be normal when I’m near her, want to take care of her…” he trails off.

  “You’re hardly being rational at the moment,” Israel’s tone is still filled with barely controlled fury.