Varrable went white. He replaced the telephonic apparatus in its cradle.
‘Billy,’ he said, voice hollow. ‘I could do with a tonic.’
The Flavering girl obediently sorted through empty bottles.
‘Not that tonic,’ Varrable said, with utter disgust. ‘There’s brandy around somewhere.’
I found the decanter and poured a generous measure. Varrable snatched the glass from me and raised it to his mouth. Then he gasped in horror and set the glass down.
‘Billy, you nearly … No, the real brandy. It’s in the desk.’
I found a bottle and filled two more glasses.
Varrable and I both shocked ourselves with drink. The brandy hit the last of the Tivoli champagne, but did no good.
‘Just before close of trade yesterday,’ Varrable explained, ‘a vast amount of consortium stock went on sale. It went in small lots, to dozens, hundreds of buyers. There’s been clamour for the issue for months, but it’s simply not been available. When it was “up for grabs”, there was what my man called a “feeding frenzy”. A share worth fifty pounds yesterday isn’t worth five shillings this morning. And won’t be worth fivepence tomorrow.’
‘Dare-ing,’ I said.
Varrable nodded, swallowing more brandy. ‘He sold at fifty pounds, Billy. Without telling us. We’re all ruined, you know. Except him.’’
I could not quite conceive of it.
‘There’s still the business,’ I said, ‘the Tonic. Money is pouring in. Buck up, Doc. We can cover debts in a day, costs in a week, and be in profit again by the end of the month.’
Varrable shook his head.
‘Jekyll Tonic sells at a loss. Even at a shilling.’
This was news.
‘Oh, in the long run, costs would have come down,’ said Varrable, bitterly. ‘But there is not going to be a “long run”. There were unforeseen expenses in development, you see. The original estimates were optimistic. We were moving too swiftly to revise them.’
I understood. A harvest had been reaped, profit had been made. Leo Dare had taken his money out and moved on.
‘I borrowed against the stock,’ I admitted.
‘So did I,’ said Varrable.
My pockets were still stuffed with writs of foreclosure, bills suddenly come due, summonses to court, notices of lien, announcements of garnishee and other such waste paper.
A quiet knock came at the door. A doggy head poked around.
‘I realise this is an inconvenient time for you both,’ said Inspector Mist, ‘but I am afraid I must ask you to accompany me to the Yard.’
The thing of it is that if Jekyll Tonic had not worked, Leo Dare would have stayed in it longer. If it were just the coloured water he himself was prepared to drink, the horse might have been ridden for years. Then there might have been gravy enough to keep us all fat. But, as Varrable had always said, the effects were dramatic but unpredictable, and that made the venture a long-term risk.
The Threadneedle Street raiders inspired similar crimes, no more successful but equally spectacular. Veiled ladies brought suit against the likes of Dr Hugo Varrable for artificial exploitation of affections, which had in more than one case led to Consequences. Every murderer and knock-down man in the land was purported to be under the influence of the Jekyll, though it is my belief that as many heroic rescues from burning buildings or sinking barges were carried out by persons temporarily not themselves as were homicidal rampages or outrages to the public decency. All manner of folk disclaimed responsibility for reprehensible actions by blaming the Tonic. Sermons were preached against Jekyll Tonic, and Editorials - in the very same ‘papers that had boosted us - were written in thunderous condemnation. Lawsuits beyond number were laid against the consortium, which no longer included Leo Dare. The simple duns for unpaid bills took precedence, driving us to bankruptcy. The criminal and frivolous matters dragged on, though many were dropped when it became apparent that the coffers were empty and that no financial settlement would be arrived at. A tearful Harry Button was booed off stage before he could give his infamous Joke, and shortly thereafter found himself bought out of his contract and booted into the street by the Management. Temperance organisations shifted the focus of their attention from the demon alcohol to the impious Jekyll Tonic.
Sir Marmaduke and Lady Knowe made numberless attempts to get in touch with Leo Dare, but I recalled those cards he had made a pack of and ignored in Kettner’s and did not waste my efforts. A man with no fixed address finds it easy not to be at home to the most persistent callers. At length, both worthies departed from the stage in no more dignified a manner than ‘Brass’ Button. Sir Marmaduke, sadly, retained a gold-thread curtain cord from the fixtures transported away by the bailiffs and hanged himself in his empty Belgravia town house. Lady Knowe, perhaps surprisingly, married her Guardsman. The couple decamped for a posting in Calcutta, where she devoted her energies to improving the moral health of Her Majesty’s troops by campaigning against boy-brothels.
The formula remained ours alone, our sole asset, but many competitors were working to reproduce its effects. A Royal Commission was established and, with uncharacteristic swiftness, made all such research illegal unless conducted under Government supervision. I suspected some in Pall Mall still maintained Major General Cogstaff-Blyth’s notions of a Regiment of Hydes trampling over the Kaiser’s borders, chewing through pickelhaubes with apelike fangs and rending Uhlans limb from limb. Regulations closed around the Jekyll. An amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Acts insisted that the Tonic now could not be sold unless a customer signed the Poisons Book and waited until the signature was verified. By that time, it was a moot point since there was no Jekyll to be had anywhere. Our Shoreditch factory ceased manufacture when the stock crashed, and supplies dried up within the morning.
Varrable and I spent some nights enjoying the hospitality of one of Her Majesty’s police stations, mostly through the good graces of Inspector Mist, who realised we had nowhere else to go and no funds to procure lodgings. A great many lines of enquiry were being pursued and we were told not to leave London. Questions would doubtless be asked of us on a great many matters, but no criminal charges were forthcoming as yet.
We trudged, cabless, to Shoreditch.
The factory, thoroughly looted, was abandoned. Our bruisers, our pretty sales-girls, our secretaries, our vat-stirrers, were all flown. And the fittings and furnishings with them. Even the prized telephones.
‘What if he didn’t drink coloured water that time?’ said Varrable, with his now-habitual look of wide-eyed frenzy. ‘I’d brewed up the first test batch. It could have been the real Tonic. He could have changed?’
‘Leo Dare has no Hyde side,’ I said. ‘He was always himself.’
Varrable admitted it, smashing a beaker too cracked to steal.
We were in the stables, where vats stood overturned and empty, the flagstones stained with chemicals. The stinks still clung to the place. The gates had been torn down and taken away.
‘Look,’ said Varrable, ‘the cabbies are back.’
Opposite the factory was a knot of loitering fellows, despondent and jittery, as I remembered them.
‘I imagine not a few of our employees will be joining them,’ I said. ‘It was all over too swiftly for them to draw more than a week’s wages.’
‘It’s breathtaking, Billy. He sucked all the money out, like you’d suck the juice from an orange, then tossed away the pith and peel. No one else saw anything from the Jekyll bubble.’
The loiterers formed a deputation and crossed the road. They marched into the factory.
‘This might be it, Doc. Prepare to repel boarders.’
‘They don’t look angry.’
‘Looks can be deceiving.’
In the gloom, we were surrounded. I made out fallen faces, worn clothing, postures of desolation and resentment.
‘D-d-d-d-octor V-V-V-Varr …’ stammered one of the louts.
From his shabby clothes and battered
face, it would have been impossible to recognise the exquisite aesthete, but the voice was unmistakable. The Hon. Hilary Belligo.
‘Is there anything left over?’ asked one of Hilary’s fellows.
I shook my head. ‘We are at a financial embarrassment,’ I said. ‘All in the same boat.’
‘N-n-n-not m-money!’
‘Tonic.’
I remembered a happier day and Varrable’s declaration that the likes of Hilary Belligo would be happy to pay five pounds a thimble for the Jekyll. I wished I had a crate of Tonic in a safe store somewhere, but it was all gone, shipped out and drunk. There wasn’t a bottle left on a shelf in London. When supplies stopped coming from the factory, devotees haunted the most out-of-the-way shops and tracked down every last drop. There had been fearful brawls before the counters to get hold of it, as devotees paid whatever canny chemists asked. Even Jickle Juice and Jeckell Tonik, supposedly withdrawn from sale, were snapped up and drunk down. Fools had forked over ten guineas for empty Tonic bottles refilled with Thameswater.
I shrugged, showing empty hands.
‘I might know where some Tonic remains,’ said Varrable, smoothing his hair with stained hands. ‘But we’ll need to see, ah, expenses up front.’
The desperate souls all had money about them. Not much, and not in good condition - torn bank-notes, filthy coins, bloody sovereigns. I cupped my hands and they were filled.
‘Be here tomorrow, at ten,’ said Varrable. ‘And keep it quiet.’
They scurried away, possessed with a strange excitement, a promise that took the edge off sufferings.
‘Have we a secret reserve, Doc?’
Varrable shook his head, disarranging his hair again. ‘No, but I still have the formula,’ tapping his temple. ‘Some of the ingredients must remain here. Few would want to loot chemicals. I can brew up Jekyll in the laboratory, rougher than the stuff we bottled, but stronger as well.’
‘The demand is still there.’
I knew Hilary Belligo’s crew would ignore Varrable’s order to keep quiet. By tomorrow, word would be out. In two short weeks, a great many people had become used to a spoonful of Jekyll every day. The business was gone, the consortium collapsed, but that didn’t mean the need had evaporated.
‘It’ll be illegal,’ I ventured. ‘Under the Dangerous Drugs Act.’
‘All the better,’ Varrable snorted. ‘We can ask for a higher price. That lot’ll slit their grannies’ throats for a drop of the Jekyll. And we’re sole suppliers, Billy. Do you understand?’
Varrable was as possessed as the Hon. Hilary. With another kind of need.
Leo Dare had passed from the story. He left us all with new needs, but also new opportunities.
‘I understand. You’re the chemist, I’m the salesman. We’ll need a place to work. Several, to keep on the move. Mist won’t just forget us, and he’s no fool. We can no longer afford fixed addresses. We’ll need folk for the distribution, lads to stand on street-corners, fellows to sit in taverns. Servants, perhaps, to get to the customers with the folding money. We’ll need places to hide the profits. Not under mattresses, in investments. Respectable, above-board. We’ll have to see off the opium tongs. Maybe those East End roughs are still interested in the Jekyll trade. We could pitch in with them. The law of the land will not be with us, just the law of the market. We’ll need new names.’
‘I have mine. Harold Rose.’
‘And I’m Billy Brass. Do you know, ah, Harold, I think that this way we shall wind up richer than before.’
I had the strangest impression that Leo Dare was smiling down upon me.
And so your friends Dr Rose and Mr Brass embarked upon a new venture.
Kim Newman has won the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Award, the British Science Fiction Award, the Children of the Night Award, the Fiction Award of the Lord Ruthven Assembly and the International Horror Critics Guild Award. A film journalist and broadcaster, his novels include The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, The Quorum, Back in the USSR (with Eugene Byrne), Life’s Lottery and the Anno Dracula sequence, comprising the title novel and its sequels The Bloody Red Baron, Judgment of Tears (aka Dracula Cha Cha Cha) and the forthcoming Johnny Alucard. Also upcoming are An English Ghost Story (currently being developed as a movie from a script by the author) and The Matter of Britain (again with Byrne). Newman’s short fiction has been collected in The Original Dr Shade and Other Stories, Famous Monsters, Seven Stars, Unforgivable Stories and Where the Bodies Are Buried, while his story ‘Week Woman’ was adapted for the Canadian TV series The Hunger. In 2001, Newman directed a too-second short film, Missing Girl, for cable TV channel The Studio. ‘This is my second stab at a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,’ admits the author. ‘The first was “Further Developments in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, published in Maxim Jakubowski’s Chronicles of Crime and also found in my collection Unforgivable Stories. That took a very different tack in imagining what might have happened after the events of Stevenson’s story than “A Drug on the Market”. Dr Jekyll appears briefly in my novel Anno Dracula, and there’s a return visit to his house in the forthcoming Johnny Alucard. Obviously, the original lingers in the memory, sparking ideas that need to be written up. I even liked the film of Valerie Martin’s brilliant novel Mary Reilly, though I think Eddie Murphy should be prohibited by law from making another Nutty Professor sequel. Of all the founding texts of the horror/monster/Gothic genre, Stevenson’s novella strikes me as being the best all-round piece of writing. While Frankenstein and Dracula are big, sprawling books full of flaws and hasty patches, careless of characterisation, choked by plot, Strange Case is put together, as Stephen King once noted, like a Swiss watch, without a wasted word, cliche character or dull paragraph. Mr Hyde is one of the genre’s most vividly imagined monsters: not the lusty caveman of most film versions but a shrunken, frightened, bullying, vicious little man who never picks on anyone his own size. In this piece, I was also influenced by H. G. Wells’ Tono-Bungay, which has a terrific section about a voyage to corner quap (a wonderful word Wells seems to have invented and which I hope comes back into circulation) and is an early fulmination against the advertising industry. Though it doesn’t play with the original text in the way Anno Dracula does, “A Drug on the Market” does take a similar line: extrapolating from a story about individual monstrousness to imagine its effects if spread to a wider society that is Victorian London but also our own world a century on.’
<
Slaves of Nowhere
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON
‘I am you.
Your jagged dream.
Your child.
Yourself.
I hold you, soothe you.
Suckle and destroy you.
I am no one.
Everyone.
I have been gone so long.’
The entry was handwritten; a delicate pain.
JoJo stared at it. Glanced at the clock, death by fragments circling its void face.
The next one would be here soon.
‘I hear my insides,
Bloodless and swallowed.
I am an eclipse.
A funeral.
An unsoothed blank.’
JoJo sipped cognac, stared at Manhattan as if it were a sad child, watched near buildings where the unloved sat alone; interred in night windows.
The Spanish mirror reflected dark tresses, full lips. Eyes long past dread. Fingers slender, resting in silver rings; elegant, bandaged. Walls, emptied of family; meaning. Too many years ago. Decades … centuries.
Always.
‘Please take me away
from me.
Bring the perfect
sorrows
of sleep.
My hand in yours.
For an hour, I would die.
For a minute, I die forever.
Reborn in nowhere.’
Mouths and hands, kissing, licking.
Reaching
, tearing JoJo open.
Sperm; pearl graffiti.
Looking into a hundred eyes, a thousand needs.
The pen inched and curved, ink a helpless pathway.
‘My eyes are your shame.
Look in the mirror.
I am there.
I am you.’
The man would be here soon.
The woman.
The couple.
Then, the man who wanted to rape his daughter. And the woman who wanted to be held by herself, allow tracing tongue to wander her own mouth, lick her coral pussy, taste secretions; dead nectars.
And the other man who …
‘I am nowhere.
I have no colours.
No sound.
I am tired.
Invisible.
I need to be held.
I need to die.’
JoJo placed down pen, finished the cognac.
Grasped the razor, sat on velvet chair, slid sharp blade over wrist like a stroke of perfume. Listened to the drowsy slippage of blood deserting veins. Rain crawling windows. The clock slowing, dying.
The doorbell; the appointment.
JoJo slowly rose, walked to the door, fingertips a red seepage. Peered through the eyehole. The man was slight, short. Would want to feel big, be within something tight, childlike. Hear his own daughter, screaming for Daddy as he thrust inside her. JoJo saw the little girl’s photograph in his hand: freckled smile, trusting eyes.
JoJo went empty inside, as icy bleach spread and all was a dead nausea. Then, it began: the agonies of detail.
The expression eased, now shy, unsure. Wrists quietly re-sealed. JoJo’s hair slowly became blonde, body pale, young. No longer tall, bearded. Breasts retreated, nipples withdrew to pink simplicity, pubic hair lightened, vanished, revealing vestal softness. Sweet blue eyes looked afraid; a rapist’s ethereal doll.
It would hurt.
Some did.
Others wanted pain.
To be filled; controlled. Bloodied by lust, indifference. Every day, the same hungers; desperate, broken. An hour or two to lose themselves, find themselves, pretend it never happened.
Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 47
