The Scream of Angels

by David Haynes

  The Scream of Angels

  By David Haynes

  © David Haynes

  Copyright © David Haynes 2013. All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without written consent from the author.

  Cover Design by Michaela Margetts

  © Michaela Margetts 2013

  For Sarah and George

  Also by this author.

  The Macabre Collection

  Contents

  Prologue

  Le Théâtre Du Grand-Guignol

  Cabaret Du Neant

  Victor Cresswell

  A Bloody Night In Pigalle

  Paris Morgue

  Pigs’ Blood And Angels

  A Step Too Far

  Pere Lachaise

  Laudanum

  When Angels Scream

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  February 1899

  Spitalfields, London

  “Hush, my love.” The body lay lifeless and silent beneath his hand. Even the elegant, irresistible percussion of her heart had faded away to nothing now. It left only one sound – the ghostly echo of her tortured screams. He placed his gloved hand over her mouth and started to cut. Her cries had been theatrical and flamboyant, at least initially, when she believed pity was her only ally.

  Yet, he heard them still. He heard all of their screams; one by one they drifted about his mind like an unfinished symphony. And in the darkness, he conducted their desolate wails with the edge of his knife.

  He fell back in rapture and raised the grisly cartilage of her throat to his ear. Her screams slipped elegantly within the beauty of the composition; her voice added to it wonderfully. But it was not complete; it would never be complete until the final three voices had been added.

  The bitter shriek of a constable’s whistle sliced through the murderous rhapsody and raised him from the bliss of his thoughts.

  ‘Why must they harry me so?’ he thought.

  No longer caught up in the majesty of his endeavours, he looked down on the woman. She would no longer toy with her flaming red curls and pass coquettish smirks to her lovers. No longer would she try to forget what had happened by sipping her laudanum. Her lifeless eyes stared back at him; holding his cold gaze for a moment. He plunged the knife into her eye socket until the blade twisted and snapped on the bloody cobbles beneath.

  “Now I shall hear your screams forever, my poor weak mother.”

  Le Théâtre Du Grand-Guignol

  March 1901

  20 bis, Rue Chaptal

  Pigalle, Paris.

  “We require a knife, preferably sharp but not necessarily so, a saw and a tourniquet. That is all.” The surgeon stood beside the table and addressed his two comrades. His frock coat was stiff with the blood of a hundred amputations and he wore it proudly, as proudly as a medal of valour.

  “You hold him,” he pointed the teeth of the saw at one of his colleagues, before turning his attention to the ashen faced other, “and you can remove your pocket watch and record how long I take to remove his leg.”

  The patient uttered a terrible howl as the surgeon smiled down at him. “Hush now. It will be over in a matter of excruciating seconds.” He threw his head back and laughed like a lunatic.

  “Now hold him!” He placed the teeth of the saw upon the patient’s leg, just below the knee. “One, two, three, four!” In just four strokes the saw passed through skin and bone until it grated on the stone table beneath. He picked up the severed leg and hurled it dismissively into a bucket of sawdust. “Close the wound, gentlemen!”

  The patient gurgled and thrashed as they sealed his flesh.

  “How long did I take? It must be close to a new record.”

  The assistant was frantically attempting to aid his beleaguered colleague closing the gaping wound and had dropped the watch.

  “I asked you how long!” The surgeon demanded.

  The assistant turned his bloody face to the surgeon, “I fear you have removed the wrong leg, sir.”

  “Then we must remove the other. Take up the watch and record the time. Mind you deduct ten seconds!”

  And in the seats, which had once heard the tortured anguish of confession, Robert Bishop vomited onto his shoes. His friend, Blair, cheered and clapped, delighted at his the utter misery of his friend.

  “Bravo!” Blair shouted as the surgeons and patient bowed before the audience. The blood of a calf they planned to eat later, dripped from the pointed teeth of the saw.

  “Welcome to Paris, Bishop! You would not see this in London, would you?”

  Bishop emptied his stomach again.

  “Come, before you cover us both. Let us have supper!” Blair gripped his shoulders and pulled him out of the confessional and onto the street.

  Blair rested a perforated spoon on his glass and placed a sugar cube on it.

  “Well, what did you think of Le Grand Guignol and the naturalists?” He poured water onto the sugar transforming the green liquid below into a milky cloud.

  “You know what I thought. I would rather forget all about it, thank you.” Bishop examined the liquid carefully. “How you can drink that rot is beyond me.”

  “Do you not know? La Fee Verte bestows favours upon those of us who release her mysteries. Succumb to her charms Robert, you know you wish to.”

  A violinist started playing at the rear of the café. The sweet music did not seek to compete with the gathered throng, but accompany their rowdiness. Quite how many patrons were in the Café Barrett at that moment, Bishop could not say, for the cacophony disturbed his senses.

  A party of revellers, who had come from a ball, danced in masquerade dress before the violinist and received applause. A man stood and attempted to recite a poem. None of the crowd enjoyed it; for after the first verse they hissed each time he threatened to open his mouth. When, at last he gave up, he was welcomed back into the fold with a ribald cheer. A beautiful lady, dressed in a black silken gown came to the table and whispered coquettishly to Blair. He took her hand and kissed it before sending her away again. Amongst all this was the sound of French voices engaged in conversation; of toasts being made and of life being lived. Bishop could not have felt more out of place if he had been in the Indies.

  “What did she want?” he asked.

  “I have ordered our supper. Tonight we will eat steak, but that will not be the finest thing on our plates. No, we will be served haricots blancs, cooked with the most delicious salted butter imaginable,” Blair flung his arms into the air. “Is this not the most wondrous place you have ever been? All of Paris is like this, Bishop. Here for your taking.”

  “I do not wish to take anything. I wish only to write.”

  Blair sipped the absinthe, “And do you wish to write like Dickens or Verlaine?”

  “Neither. I shall write like Robert Bishop.”

  Blair threw back his great leonine head and roared with laughter, “Oh, we will have such fun, you and I. Now, drink copiously at the bosom of La Fee Verte for this will allow your true nature to awaken.”

  Bishop had no intention of allowing himself to be seduced by the nefarious taste of absinthe. Or indeed, by considering the ridiculous notion, that imbibing himself of it would awaken a creative leviathan. He was a writer, yes, but his journey was not set on a course of frivolous Bohemian fancy. No, it was set for the anguish and humiliation which only those striving to write serious literature suffer.

  *

  Bishop gazed from his dirty window to the courtyard below. A plump lady pumped water from the well. Her face was flushed with effort but she sang a pretty verse as she filled her bucket. Finally, she wiped her hands across her apron and turned, slopping water onto the cobbles. She shrugged and continued singing, then c
rossed the courtyard before disappearing through a low dark door on the other side.

  Bishop turned away. His room was small and the walls grubby. In truth he could have managed something of higher rent but the thought of trailing around Quartier Latin with Blair for another day was intolerable.

  “This one is perfectly ghastly,” he had said about the room. “You will not be able to entertain anyone here, let alone a delicious Mademoiselle from Pigalle.”

  Immediately Bishop knew the room was ideal for his purposes and he paid the concierge five hundred francs for a full year in rent.

  “I do not intend to entertain ladies from Pigalle, or from anywhere else for that matter. This will suit my needs, perfectly.”

  “Oh my dear Robert,” Blair shook his head, “to write, you must live life to the fullest. This abstinence you cling to will not improve your writing, it will only diminish what is truly in your heart.”

  How did Blair know what was truly in his heart? How did anyone, for he hardly knew himself anymore.

  “Medicine!” his father had exclaimed. “For a man of your fortitude and intelligence, it is the only career to choose. We shall form a partnership when you are qualified and work together. You shall treat their ills and I shall relieve them of their money!”

  For three years he toiled under the misapprehension that intelligence and obligation would lead him through the desperation of unfulfilled dreams. Yet they never left him, not once. Not even when he was forced to endure the ruthless and barbaric displays they called surgery.

  The nausea had been slow to arrive. At first, the brutality of the operations had held him in a shocked daze. For what could prepare him for the sight of a man writhing and screaming in agony as one of his limbs was hacked off? Nothing on earth, except the horror of his nightmares.

  Then the nausea came. The rancorous contents of his stomach spilled onto the cold tiled floor where it made an unholy alliance with sawdust and blood. Blair’s laughter had been nothing to the derision of his colleagues and the never-ending jokes at his expense.

  “Never mind, Bishop. Perhaps you might be more suited to treating old ladies in their parlours, over a nice cup of tea?”

  The bravado was insufferable and spiteful, yet it was not that which drove him from his training. His colleagues could not know that his nausea was derived, not from revulsion, but from a dark thrill. It was a powerful, intoxicating narcotic that threatened to overcome his mind and body as effortlessly as opium. Yet it delivered no pleasure as it snaked through his body; only fear. He knew if he permitted the bloody opiate freedom to tighten around his heart, he would be lost forever.

  Writing was an escape, an opportunity to record what lay dormant in his dreams. The dreams were poisonous and exciting but they could not stay forever hidden in the darkness, for in there, they retained their power. The dark ink from his pen flowed onto the paper like blood. The words picked and scratched at the paper like the very demons they were. But as the ink dried, so diminished their power, rendering them nothing more than hideous tales of terror which so excited society.

  So far, he had written four stories. All of them had been published and all of them had been greeted with sensational clamour by the masses. Excitement had turned to despair when he realised he too was being described as a ‘Penny Dreadful’ writer.

  The term lessened his torment and trivialised what had lain hidden for so long. His decision was swift and final. He needed to escape the routine of his life in London and no longer would he deliver the cheap stories they sought. If they wanted terror, true and pure, then he would permit the festering blood of his nightmares to spill onto the page with extravagant abandon.

  Bishop pulled the wooden stool up to his desk and gripped the cold, bone handle of his dip pen. The first line came easily for he had been considering it since visiting Le Grand Guignol with Blair. In the courtyard below, the lady pumped water into her bucket for the second time that morning and sang her cheerful song.

  *

  At a little after four o’clock in the afternoon, Bishop paused from his writing. The filthy window allowed little light to enter at the brightest of hours. At four o’clock it had become unmanageable. At some point during the day, the lively tune from the courtyard below had ceased. Yet, Bishop hummed the tune happily to himself for he had accomplished a great deal. He had no idea what the tune was called or indeed, what the words meant but it had penetrated his thoughts over and over again during the day. It left behind a repetitive trinket which he feared would become an annoyance if it remained.

  Still, he was satisfied. The words had crawled over the page creating an intricate pattern in which words, sentences and tales were built. It had happened easily and without the restraint which he felt compelled to keep when writing in familiar London. He did not require Blair’s La Fee Verte, or the bawdy nightclubs of Montmartre to inspire him, for he had the darkest imaginings contained within his own mind.

  His belly rumbled. The only time he had left the room was to purchase warm milk and bread from a stall further along Rue St. Andre-des-Arts. He had not eaten lunch and he now began to wonder what he would eat this evening.

  “Oh Bishop!” Blair’s unmistakeable voice drifted up from the courtyard. Bishop considered ignoring him but when a scattering of pebbles bounced off the glass, he had no choice but to go to the window and open it.

  “The cost of a broken window will come from your pocket and not mine!” he shouted.

  “What is a few sous when the whole of Paris awaits us? Put on your coat and come down,” Blair wore the flush of an afternoon in a café on his cheeks and he winked playfully at Bishop.

  “I am writing. I have no time for mischief, Blair.”

  “Well in that case, I shall remain here and make my own entertainment,” Blair tapped his cane on the cobbles three times and puffed out his chest.

  “As I walked out on a May morning, on a May morning so early,

  I overtook a pretty fair maid just as the day was a-dawning.

  With a rue-rum-ray, fol-the-diddle-ay…”

  “Please stop that! I’ll be down presently!” Bishop shouted, trying to make himself heard but Blair was already in rapture and clicked the heels of his shoes on the cobbles as he danced. Bishop would not have chosen Blair as his comrade for the evening, or at any time, come to that. Against the joyfully melancholy time Bishop had spent with his pen, Blair’s behaviour was a shocking counter-balance.

  “There is no need to watch over me. I am quite capable of looking after myself,” He approached Blair quickly to stop his terrible singing.

  “Of that, I have no doubt, although I fear your version of looking after yourself and mine are at odds. Nevertheless, your father requested I do so, and I do not intend to dissapoint him.”

  “I am thirty years of age, Blair. What harm does he think will come to me?”

  “Oh, the usual I expect. Depravity, sex, love, madness and all that goes with it.”

  They strode out of the courtyard onto Rue St.-Andre-des-Arts. “I am more likely to suffer something far worse in your hands. You appear quite drunk.”

  “Aha, you are quite right on both counts! This really is the most lethargic district in all of Paris. Why you have chosen to live here is quite beyond me. We will ride the omnibus to Montmartre. Tonight, Bishop I will take you to the Black Abyss!”

  “Now follow my lead,” Blair smiled with a wicked glint in his bloodshot eyes. “Take your cane between your teeth and when the bus comes past we must hurl ourselves at the ladder fastened at the rear. If we make it, we see the back streets of Paris in all their glory. If we don’t, well let us just say, it hasn’t happened yet!”

  A bell rang from the bus as it neared the stop. “Can we not just climb aboard as any normal passenger?” Bishop asked, confused.

  “You are in Paris, buses don’t stop for passengers!” Blair clutched his cane between his teeth and steadied himself.

  Bishop followed suit, unsure whether he was about to meet
his end. A pair of horses pulling the bus clattered past his nose and suddenly Blair roared something unintelligible before flinging himself at the rear of the bus. Bishop immediately followed and they both climbed onto the uncovered top deck.

  They took their seats behind the driver. “It is disorganised, chaotic and dangerous!” Bishop announced.

  “You missed out wonderful.” Blair replied and lit a cigar.

  The bus rocked and lurched through the back streets, avoiding the busy boulevards. The narrow streets were barely wide enough to accommodate their passage and Bishop watched in apprehension as Blair kicked the gas lamps as they passed. On one occasion, the bus came to a temporary stop in order to allow a third horse to be tethered. There, just a few inches away and separated by a pane of glass only, a family were eating a meal. They were either oblivious or familiar with the experience of being observed by passengers on the bus and continued with their routine. Even so, it was intimate; too intimate and voyeuristic for Bishop.