The Half Killed

by Quenby Olson

  Along the legs now, and up to the hips. Narrow they are, and this trivial fact lends me some small portion of relief. For if the hips are still narrow, it follows that the young woman has never borne children, and if she’s never borne children, there are no empty mouths left behind, crying out for their mother.

  The fingers are elegant, as are the wrists, designed to bear the weight of various rings and bracelets, though no doubt any jewelry she may have had the misfortune to wear at the hour of her death was pinched long before her body had begun to cool.

  Over the arms now, the dip of the waist, rising again into the chest. And upwards, past the fatal wound at her throat, up to the hard lines of the jaw, the enigmatic smile, the nose, slightly upturned. If her eyes were open, I know they would be dark. A warm, rich brown. Skimming the eyebrows, across the flat plane of her forehead, and finally to the roots of her hair, deep brown but laced with a reddish tint, a warmth of colour augmented by the golden glow from the lamps.

  It’s Chissick’s voice that jars me from my speculative silence. I look over at him not because he’s speaking loud enough to overpower my thoughts, but because the words are softened, the last note drawn out on something close to a whisper.

  "Could you give us a moment? Please?"

  He says this to Trevor, who appears to recognise this particular tone of request. "I’ll be upstairs, eh?" A sharp bow of the head, and the man rolls down his sleeves, delaying his departure long enough to mutter one last remark in Chissick’s ear. "Next time you’ve got a girl tagging along with you, leave her on the pretty side of the door. In my experience, not many of them are too keen on all this grisly stuff."

  Chissick lowers his eyes. "I’ll keep that in mind."

  The door closes behind Trevor, and I imagine him hoisting his great weight to the top of the steps. Lord willing, they’ll still be intact when it comes our turn to depart.

  "Are you all right, Miss Hawes?"

  Chissick asks me this, I hope not because of any ill look on my face, but out of pure concern. No doubt brought about by the fact that I’m currently clutching the lower end of the table, the centrepiece of which happens to be a recently deceased young woman.

  "If you need a few moments," he says, full of care. "A bit of fresh air…"

  Where he thinks I’ll be able to fetch a breath of clean air without first putting a distance of at least twenty miles between myself and London, I’m not entirely sure.

  "No, no. I am fine." And to prove it, I release the rough edge of the unfinished wood, relying on my own balance as I walk around the table, my right hand flicking away a fly that worries the base of my throat.

  "Do you need to touch her?"

  The question strikes me with such force, that I have no choice but to turn around. "I beg your pardon?"

  He gestures towards the body with a jerk of his finger that could be mistaken for a nervous tic. Now that Trevor has left us, I notice a significant loss of composure in Chissick’s behaviour. Why, he can’t even look at the dead girl for longer than it would take him to blink. "I wasn’t… I’m not sure of your methods, and I was wondering if you needed to lay hands on the body, or communicate with it in some way."

  "With the body?"

  "Yes."

  "Mister Chissick, that is nothing but dead tissue. I’d be likely to obtain a more shocking revelation from a corn husk."

  This remark draws a wince of pain from him, but it’s fleeting, there and gone before I can convince myself it ever occurred in the first place.

  "I am sorry," I say, sensing the need to apologise. But he’s already shaken it off, ruddy hair tumbling into his eyes as he removes his hat and rakes his fingers across his scalp, all the way from his forehead and down to the scruff of his neck.

  "So, what happens now?"

  A good question, one that echoes through my mind as I swat at the persistent fly and allow my gaze to rest on the dead woman’s face. "I am not exactly sure. To be honest, I’ve never done this before."

  His eyes narrow, two flecks of blue staring out from a fringe of brown lashes. "What about all the years you spent on the stage, telling people everything, secrets no one else could have known."

  "On stage," I repeat after him. "But unfortunately, I never found myself much in the habit of visiting mortuaries and striking up a chat with the recent arrivals."

  His gaze finds its way to the ceiling. "Then why are we even here?"

  "Because you asked me to come."

  No reply from him now. Maybe a sigh, a touch of resignation. Or maybe I’m beginning to cast a shadow of my own feelings onto those around me.

  "Where did you find the body?" I ask after a moment’s pause. And listen to my voice! So serious, as if I’m diving into the first stage of an interrogation.

  "Oh, I didn’t find her. It was…" He blinks several times as he arranges his reply. "Upstairs," he says. "Two floors up. By the time I’d arrived, they were about to carry her down here. I mean, it wouldn’t do much for business to leave her stretched out for everyone to see," he finishes with some bitterness.

  "No, I would imagine not."

  A few more steps, and I’m at the other end of the table. Several strands of the girl’s hair trail over the edge, and without a thought, I sweep them up and return them to the mass of tangled waves resting beneath her head. "She was found in the open?"

  "Actually, she was... she was in bed."

  If it hadn’t been for the hesitation, I wouldn’t have any reason to take anything unseemly from that statement. But I know very well what sort of an establishment I’m standing in, currently teeming with life only a few feet above my head. The maze of rooms fitted out with rows of beds, a few extra coins purchasing a mattress large enough for two.

  "But what about during your demonstrations?" His sudden switch to our former subject drags my gaze back to his face. "What did you do, when you had to know something? When you had to discover some vital piece of information?"

  "Nothing, really." And I can see the disappointment in him before I’ve even finished speaking. "I would wait. Not much more than that."

  His eyes narrow, and the hand holding onto his hat brushes across his thigh. It’s the most petulant movement I’ve seen him make since our arrival here. "Do you feel anything?"

  Inside my ill-fitting gloves, my hands flex. "No more than usual." And there, I can’t even look him in the eye.

  "I see."

  He begins to pace the length of the room, the shadows growing and relenting, almost opaque as he nears the wall. When he turns, the poorly defined shapes flicker into a thin, grey mist on the sweating stone. "The girl…" He glances at the table, but for no more than a second. "Her eyes were open when they found her. That’s what they said. Wide open. And even by the time I arrived, I thought she might blink if I touched her. The curious thing... she was still warm. Dead for how long, and there was nothing about her to make you think her heart wasn’t still pounding away inside her chest."

  He’s struggling with the particulars, not as they must have been recorded down for posterity, tucked away in files and left to collect the dust of years, but instead as he sees them in his mind, his senses still reeling from the memory of the dead girl sprawled across the bed, one arm flung out behind her, both knees bent as if she’d lowered herself in prayer, and then simply collapsed onto her side.

  "You couldn’t believe there wasn’t more blood," I say at last, before I pull back, before the image takes on any more clarity. My eyes flutter open, the scene still imprinted onto the underside of my eyelids, as if I’d spent the last minute staring at the midday sun. I allow the rest of the details to fade, the mingled odours of sweat and lust, the high burst of laughter from the woman’s throat, her head thrown back in ecstasy.

  And now Chissick looks down at me, those cool eyes picking up the soft colour from the lamps. Slowly, he nods.

  "The wound is so deep. She should’ve been soaked in it."

  But there wasn’t a drop, was there? I glance
at her throat, at the faint crust of blood at the corners of her torn flesh, already dried to the colour of rust, the vibrant red of her spirit having long since evaporated into the air.

  I move away from the table, stopping when the confusion of images stirring inside my head makes it difficult to place one foot in front of the other.

  "I’ve seen this type of death before." A flicker of pain, and I grit my teeth against it. "Some years ago. Four bodies, but all of them carried the same wound across their throat, the same burnt flesh."

  And it’s then my resolve slips, and I begin to feel what I had been fighting so hard to hold at bay from the first moment Chissick led me across the doorstep. The malevolence that resides here, pervasive in the way it envelops me, until I put out a hand, reaching out into space as a new pressure breaks down the barriers I took so much trouble to construct around my mind. A moment more, and cool fingers find mine, lacing between my knuckles as Chissick joins me in my new position, trembling on my knees, in the middle of the cellar’s dirt floor.

  "Miss Hawes, what’s wrong?"

  But I’m already on my feet, skirts swirling around my ankles as I walk out of the room, into the darkness of the hall, one hand extended, tracing the solid lines of the wall until I feel nothing against my glove but open air. By the time my foot lands on the bottom step, Chissick has drawn level with me, both of us vying for space as he follows me to the top of the stairs.

  "It was the landlord that found her," he says, reaching out to open the door before we’ve even arrived on the landing. "Scared the poor man out of his wits, I’d say."

  "I am sure he’s seen worse."

  Upstairs now, and the light from the fireplace dazzles my eyes. The common room is still bustling, exhibiting a strength of activity I suspect will continue at the same energetic pace until several hours past the first light of dawn. But I’ve no time to stare at the revellers, not with Chissick at my side, ready to shield me from this roomful of lodgers. And the ringing in my ears pushes me forward, with greater force than Chissick’s hand at the small of my back. To the right now, and up a narrow flight of stairs, closed in on both sides so it feels as if I’m ascending to the next floor through a chute. Left at the top of the stairs, and the pounding of my feet on the dusty floorboards, the swish of my skirts along the walls sounds so familiar to me. But it isn’t a memory, merely an echo of the visions flashing behind my eyes. The light along these musty corridors is feeble at best, but the entity clawing its way into the edges of my mind has taken these turnings before.

  There are countless doors, doors that open onto rooms with only a single bed, others that open onto dormitories, low cots and mattresses lining the walls. Though at least half of the spaces are occupied, there’s no complaint from any of the boarders as we barge into a room at the rear of the building’s top floor. The space seems small at first, until I notice the partitions set up between each bed, six feet of wooden panelling from the floor up, leaving less than a foot of open space between the top of the screen and the ceiling.

  "This way," I say, and the sounds, the smells drive me forward. Between the rows of beds, I catch glimpses of bodies, most of them in various stages of undress, those that even bother with the removal of clothes before getting down to business, as they say.

  We’ve not gone ten paces into the room when Chissick makes a sound of protest, his hand on my arm, pulling me back towards the door. Suddenly, a female voice from the far end of the room cries out, followed by the sound of a man grunting between muttered curses. At this, Chissick breaks into a fit of forced coughing, filled out with words meant to discourage me from going any farther.

  "Tomorrow," he says, still tugging at my sleeve. "Tomorrow, we’ll come back, when there’s not… this isn’t… you shouldn’t be…"

  But none of his statements reach completion. A jerk of my arm pulls me away from him, and I move halfway down the line of beds, not having to count, but knowing when I’ve arrived at the right one.

  The mattress is hardly long enough to accommodate a full-grown person, let alone two. Roughly square in shape, its lopsided appearance stirs to life a dark curiosity inside of me, and I take a moment to wonder how many bodies might have spent their time on this particular bed.

  "Miss Hawes?"

  The light in here is dim, most of it coming from a small lantern fixed to a hook on the opposite wall. I blink several times, giving my eyes a few seconds to adjust.

  "Miss Hawes." Chissick is beside me now, close enough that I can feel his breath skirting across the edge of my hat, tickling the few loose hairs that have managed to work their way free of the pins. "What is it? What do you see?"

  Such a complex question, one to which I could give any number of replies and not for one of them be called a liar. I straighten my shoulders, grimacing at the feel of sweat building across my upper back.

  "She was with a man." The statement feels redundant the moment I say it, but I continue talking as I organize the stream of thoughts now flooding my mind. "But you don’t know where he is, do you?"

  "No one saw him leave, or if they did, they can’t connect him to her." His face contorts at the arrival of an unexpected thought. "Did he kill her? Is that what you see?"

  "No." I shake my head, my eyes squeezed shut until I see little white lights behind the lids. "No, he’s innocent. At least as far her death is concerned."

  "What do you mean?"

  A small shrug is all I can give him, my arms stiffened against the throbbing pain that ebbs and flows inside my mind. "Well, he wasn’t exactly paying his attentions to her over a cup of tea, was he?"

  He considers me for a minute. It’s now, I think, more than ever, that he begins to doubt his initial confidence in me. "So you don’t know who…?"

  "I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, Mr. Chissick. Referring to our murderer as a person may be allowing it more credit than it deserves."

  "But there are witnesses. People who saw her come in with a man, saw her go upstairs. There was no one else. There was nothing else."

  But I’m shaking my head, despite the hoarse whisper of his continuing arguments. Both arms are crossed over my chest, my shoulders sloping forward, until I can turn my head and bury my chin into the limp border of my collar. Shuffling along the side of the bed, I move closer to the wall, my shadow shrinking from something grotesque and monstrous into a dark mimicry of my own shape as soon as I’m near enough to the boards to touch them. And I do touch them. Inside my gloves, the sweat is pricking my palms, settling into the fine creases that line my skin. Two fingers are all I use, and do you see that tremble? Just there? It runs all the way to my shoulder, but it’s only visible in those two digits, slightly bent, stretching out and retreating in that last instant before they make contact with the wall.

  One touch, and I’ve merged with the shadow, no sliver of light between us.

  "So you’ve come back," I say, my voice the slightest of whispers to cross my lips. "All these years… And here I was beginning to think you were nothing more than a nightmare."

  I pull my fingers away from the wall, but the connection isn’t completely severed. Floating like a mist, the shadow follows the path traced by my hand. For several seconds it hovers, nothing more. And then a twitch of movement at its edges, almost a shudder, writhing now, contorting itself into ghastly shapes as it pushes out against some invisible boundary damaged by the touch of my two fingers. I hold my breath, afraid that the lightest flow of air from my mouth will disturb the obscure cloud. But the mist is already fading, nearly transparent now, and I’m left with nothing but a disagreeable odour on my fingertips.

  I’m still rubbing the offending substance off my gloves when I turn around. Chissick is only a few feet away, but he didn’t notice what happened. And so I'm left to wonder where I have seen it before, to probe at my memories for any encounter with a darkness that moved with all the stealth of smoke and water.

  "I am sorry, Mister Chissick." I force out the words, even though
an apology is the last thing he must wish to hear. "I am sorry, but I believe she was overtaken," I say, choosing that word instead of the one that jumped to the forefront of my thoughts. "She was overtaken by something within herself, something that had invaded her, corrupted her."

  I hear him breathe, and I imagine that if I were to turn around, it would be to witness a reluctance on his part to acknowledge my poorly spoken insinuations.

  "Are you saying she was possessed?"

  And there it is, that word I had taken such care to avoid gifting with the sound of my voice.

  "That is what I was trying not to say, yes." I look at him, the majority of his face obscured by the shadows that surround us. I feel a temptation to ask if he believes such a wild assertion, but I think I may be more bothered by how quickly he might take to agreeing with me than if he were to instead denounce me as a liar and a fraud.

  "By what?" he asks, and I can imagine the tenor of his thoughts at this moment, at how swiftly we have delved into the realm of demons and assorted other night terrors.

  "By her killer," I tell him, without a worry as to whether or not he will believe me. "And I am quite sorry to say that it has killed before."

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  * * *

  The pain builds with such skillful slowness, such cunning, that I’m scarcely aware of its presence before I’ve already succumbed. It’s a simple exercise tracing it from its origin. I can mark the first twinges to Chissick’s visit earlier in the day, the yellowed newspaper article passed from hand to hand, the sound of his breathing, the thrush-thrush of his fingers turning over the battered brim of his hat. Each moment so innocuous on its own, but they all seem to thrive off one another, until they’ve succeeded in tipping me over the edge. The remainder of the day’s events were mere trappings, existing simply to lend more of a polish to the acute ache that now grazes my forehead.