by Quenby Olson
She tilts her head to one side, a small gesture that gives the impression she is surveying him. It is a movement that contains the power to unsettle, not for any particular act or gruesome spell committed by it, but simply because it is a motion made for gentle conversation, for drawing rooms and for the wink of gaslight on jewels and for painted fans. Not for use by a woman who stands before us with the shadow of death crawling across her palms.
"I lost several of my girls to you, you know. I never could have predicted that a dull, dry bit of sermonising would be enough to steal them away. And where are they now, hmm? What glamourous life have you sorted out for them? Toiling away in factories, I’m sure. Making cheap lace for middle-class housewives. Or maybe even bouncing their own babies on their hips, before their stinking, loutish husbands come home to beat them, bed them, and pass out on top of them."
His face remains closed, a lack of expression carefully held in place to prevent anyone from guessing his thoughts. At least, this is all I can assume in the brief tick of silence before my aunt takes a step forward, her chin lifting before she renews her assault.
"Is that what you wanted for your sister? For Isabel? What a promise that would have made! ‘Give up the parties, give up the adoration. Make a home in Shadwell and peel potatoes for the rest of your days.’"
I hear the hiss of air as Chissick draws in a breath through his teeth. "Miss Hawes," he says, but he does not look at me. His gaze is still on my aunt, on the darkness that seems to pulse like a living thing as it condenses around the tips of her fingers. "Are you well?"
The question forces my mind to pause. And so I have to take a moment to think before I can return an answer to him.
"No."
"But for the moment, at least? You won’t…?" A quick dart of his eyes, from my aunt to me and back again, and that is all the acknowledgement I receive.
"For the moment," I say, my voice quivering slightly. "I believe I am still breathing. And you? Your head, does it pain you?"
A twitch at the corner of his mouth, though I cannot tell if it is the evidence of a wince or of a stifled grin. "Like the very devil."
My aunt, I notice, watches this exchange with no small amount of interest. She steps forward, towards Chissick, and as she moves, it seems as if all the darkness, all of the shadows in the room shift with her. "You worry about her, don’t you?"
He clenches his jaw, causing the tendons in his neck to tighten, but still he gives her no reply.
"But what about you, Julian?" I see him flinch at her casual usage of his Christian name, as if such familiarities from someone such as her should not be permitted. "Who is there to worry about you? Your family is gone. And your church, your chosen brethren, why even they disapprove of you, of the company you choose to keep around you. Drunks and whores. Gamblers. Murderers. You think you can save them, don’t you? You think you can save everyone, yet you couldn’t even save Isabel, your own flesh and blood."
My gaze drops to the revolver. Even in the poor light of the room, I can see the white of his knuckles as he grips the handle with renewed strength.
"I don't believe you're afraid of me, afraid of what I could do to you." She is close enough to him now that should she raise her hand, she could strike him across the face. But she does not need to touch him. A flick of her fingers and the shadow slithers through the air, twining around itself as it slides with the softness of a caress around Chissick’s throat.
"Ryall wasn’t afraid of me," she says, and now she is close enough to him that her breath should stir the wreath of darkness that cinches around his neck as he pulls against it. "And your sister, she had the nerve to laugh at me, to spit in my face when I threatened her and everything she cared about. And she cared about you." The last few words are carried on a whisper as the blackness claws its way up along his throat, over his chin, until I fear it will press itself over his mouth and smother him unless I can think of something, of anything…
"And Sissy?" The words are nearly a shout as they tear themselves out of my throat, loud enough to ensure that I can pull my aunt’s attention from her latest quarry. "What was her crime against you?"
Her reaction is instantaneous. The shadow relents, and I watch as Chissick collapses to his knees the moment the pressure around his neck is released. But now she is walking towards me, and with each step that brings her closer, the pain in my head increases tenfold. By the time she is in front of me, each breath feels as if I'm trying to gasp at clean air through a veil of smoke, and the pain…
"Sissy thought she would stop me. Can you imagine that? Silly, gross creature that she was, and she thought she could somehow put a halt to all of this." She sweeps her hands out to her sides, as if what is contained in this dark, sweltering room is nothing less than an exhibit of her greatest achievements. "She found me, you know. Only a few days ago. She said you’d sought her out, for help. How you would think she could help you…?" Another step, and she is so close that I can feel the darkness as it shivers around her. "She was going to tell you about me, but I couldn’t have that. It wasn’t time yet. I had to wait until you were ready, until you would have only a single choice before you."
Somewhere—perhaps only a few feet away, perhaps from the opposite end of the world for all that I'm capable of trusting my senses—I hear Chissick coughing, still gasping to regain his breath as he struggles to return to his feet. My own posture seems to have diminished upon my aunt’s approach, and when she reaches her hand towards my face, I feel myself cringe away from her.
"It hurts, doesn’t it?" Her face swims in blurred and contorted lines before my eyes, and that is when I realise that I must have begun to cry at some point. "But my dear, sweet Thea, it’s only because you insist on fighting it. The more you strive against it, the more of your strength it will take from you."
White hot pain lances through my head where her finger touches my temple. "It was so difficult, but this is why I waited." She applies more pressure, and my vision turns black as a wave of sickness roils upward from my stomach. "I wanted to be sure you had reached the point where no one else could help you." Her finger slides down the side of my face, and it is like a knife slicing through my flesh. "Look at me, Thea." Her finger now under my chin, she tilts my face upward, but my eyes are unable to focus on anything. "I will teach you how to control it, and through you, we will gain all that we ever wanted."
When she steps away from me, the sharpest edge of the pain drains away, like poison drawn from a wound. The void it leaves is swiftly filled by a dozen—no, a hundred thoughts that boast such clarity, I'm almost driven off balance by the sudden realisation that accompanies them.
Before I’m aware of it, my fingers seek out the scars at my wrists, sliding over them as a new thought enters my head. I glance at Chissick, swaying on his feet, and then at the gun he still holds in his right hand.
"Julian," I whisper, not for any pale attempt at secrecy, but because I doubt I possess the strength to speak at a higher volume. "You must listen to me."
His eyes meet mine, and there is the furrow of a question between his brows.
"Julian," I say a second time, and it issues from my lips over something of a groan. "So many have died. They are still dying." You must see, I try to tell him. You must see what has to be done.
"And they will continue to die," my aunt chimes in, the uninvited guest to our conversation. "Unless you learn to use it, to control it for yourself."
"This heat," I continue, ignoring my aunt as she stalks in a fresh circle around us. "The drought, all of it. It is because of this spirit, because of its malevolence. And it will continue to destroy and to kill as long as it is allowed to run rampant through the city." I lean towards him, too weak to trust myself with the mere act of taking a step forward. "It must be sent back, Julian. It has to be stopped."
"No, no, no." My aunt’s voice is a whisper, barely registering as a sound as she returns to my side, and with her presence, the pain renews its onslaught. "With me,"
she says, louder now. "You will come with me, and I will teach you, and the strength you will have… Oh, my dear. You cannot imagine it."
The difficulty, of course, is that I'm perfectly capable of imagining it. And the horror with which it fills me is something even the most vicious minds would struggle to comprehend.
"I will not go with you," I tell her, and I'm careful to look into her eyes as I say it. Eyes that were once a similar shade of green to my mother’s, but are now succumbing to the threads of black that spread across the white like spilled ink. "I want nothing to do with you, or your spirits. And I will do everything in my power to ensure nothing like your monster can ever come through again."
Even as I watch her, the darkness spreads, until the whites of her eyes are overtaken. "You are a foolish girl. As long as you are alive, as long as your heart still beats within your chest, the doorway will never close. They will always seek you out, until your mind is driven to madness."
I look back at Chissick, and his own eyes… I think they are everywhere at once.
"Julian."
He gives me a slight shake of his head, and I know that whatever thoughts he has right now, they are not meant to be heard by one such as myself.
"Julian, do you remember your prayers?"
Another movement, a tightening of his hand on the revolver.
"I need you to save me."
"I..." He stops speaking, his mouth clamped shut, biting off his own words. But then he opens his mouth again, enough to release one small sound that is swallowed up by the suffocating heat in the room. "No."
Beside me, my aunt shifts, her limbs taken over by some new nervousness. "What are you talking about? What are you saying to him?"
"No, Miss Hawes." And again, he shakes his head with all the petulance of a small child. "I won’t."
I move closer to him, my gait a shambling and uneven thing. I move until I’m near enough to reach out, to grasp his arm, to lift his hand so that the pistol is between us, the barrel aimed at my chest, quite near to my heart.
"You have to save me, Julian."
"No!" The cry comes from my aunt, but she is rendered useless behind me, unable to act for fear of harming me. And I feel it in her, flowing out from her, the unbridled fear should anything happen to me. Because without me, she will have nothing, perhaps not even her life.
"I couldn't," Chissick says, fumbles, and starts over. "I couldn't do that. I couldn't bear to think of what I'd done."
"And you can bear to watch more people die by the hand of this demon?"
"There has to be another way, there has to be."
"None so quick as this."
My limbs are trembling. I want to exude confidence, I want to convince him, but I'm afraid that I may not be up to the task.
"Thea, what are you doing? Thea!" A hand grips my shoulder, and it is like fire being driven deep into my flesh, burning with an intensity that takes my strength away from me and leaves me crumpled on my knees. I choke on the bile that rises upward, but I cannot stop looking at Chissick, or at the tendrils of shadow that creep from my aunt’s fingers and close the distance between the two of them.
"Stop." The word is scraped out of me, and another bout of retching is near enough to undo me. "Don’t touch him."
"Then listen to me." My aunt stands over me, the shadow still tethered to her hands, but hovering, roiling and twisting in the air, only inches from Chissick’s face. "Do what I ask of you. That is all. And I promise you that he will remain safe."
I close my eyes. The pain is so strong, such an unrelenting presence, but I know that I must push through it to reach him. "Let me in," I whisper to him, my voice barely a scratch in the back of my throat.
It is not only my voice, but my hands, the very nearness of me, until he has no choice but to see the things in my mind, the image of his sister, of her final moments, of her naked body, laid out on a table with all the reverence of a doctor's specimen.
And I allow him to see more. I allow him to see my parents, to hear their final words to me, and I look up at him long enough to watch as he cringes at the vision of my mother’s slender hands, clawing at the pale skin of her own throat.
He pulls back suddenly, and the separation of our minds is so jarring that I nearly tumble forward onto my chest, my hand grasping at air and finding no assistance. I do not see his face, not because of the poor quality of the light, but because I can no longer look at him.
"You promise?" I say to my aunt, injecting just the right amount of acquiescence into my tone. "No harm will come to him?"
"Of course."
She holds out her hand to me, a gesture I take great relish in ignoring. On my own power, I draw one foot beneath me, and then the other. That I have retained any balance after all this time is a wondrous feat. A slight roll of my shoulders, and it is all I need to stand erect—or mostly so—and I make certain to keep the majority of my figure turned towards Chissick while I watch my aunt, or more importantly, the darkness that slithers through the air, called back to her like a dog on a lead.
"Miss Hawes."
I do not look at Chissick, not even when I hear the click as the gun is cocked. I've never heard that sound before, and it doesn't fill me with the sense of foreboding I had always assumed would come with it.
"Miss Hawes, I am sorry."
There is a second when I think that I want to commit everything about this moment to memory, every sound and smell, the weight of the clothing on my limbs, the dampness of the hair clinging to the back of my neck. But I don't want to remember any of these things. I want it to be over. All of it. And I want it to be done now.
Chapter Twenty-Four
* * *
* * *
There is no pain. And then, there is all too much.
A cry follows the report of the revolver, though whether it sounds from my own mouth or my aunt’s, I cannot be sure. The darkness twists and pulls at the edges of my vision as the pain blooms in my abdomen. There is warmth, as well. On my dress, on my hands, on my skin. I watch as the shadows surrounding my aunt flicker and recede, or perhaps it is the failing of my own sight that tricks me into believing that the edges of her figure have begun to blur. But there’s nothing for it. Another twist, a blink, and everything is gone.
***
There is a terrible pressure on my chest, over and over and over. And there are voices, I think. No, no. It is a single voice, soft and low and pleading from somewhere above me.
***
Something lands on my cheek and my forehead. It is cool, and it is incessant, and I cannot open my eyes and I cannot turn my head. My limbs refuse to respond, but there is a jostling beneath me, or else I'm the one being jostled. And then I hear thunder, deep and rumbling and very, very far away. And the air all around smells so clean, and every breath is like torture.
***
I am alone. At this thought, I'm seized with an anguish so acute that the quiet pounding inside my ribcage strikes out an irregular tattoo. Slowly, I pull a draught of cool, damp air into my lungs.
Confusion overtakes me, superseded by a fresh wave of fear. My lungs, my heart, even my mind—damaged thing that it is—are all still functioning. And doesn’t that mean I must still be alive? And if I'm living and breathing like so many others, doesn’t it follow that nothing at all has changed? Above me, all around me, London still burns. Perhaps the entirety of the world will soon turn to ash, along with the lives that have been and will continue to be sacrificed for my own inability to halt the terror that infects every darkened corner.
I begin to struggle, not only against the shadows that surround me, but also the pervasive silence. My breath scrapes its way in and out of my chest until another sound makes itself known, something beyond my own gasps for air and the erratic beating of my heart. A soft rush of air, not more than an exhale, touches the side of my upturned face. If I will allow myself to listen, there is yet more to occupy my straining ears: a light drumming sound, soft and quick and comfortingl
y uneven.
I need to look around me, but fear keeps my eyelids sealed. For if I dare to open my eyes, it will be the end of all imaginings, leaving only reality to take hold.
And so I remain there, without the aid of dreams or whispered voices to mark the passage of time, if time is indeed a concept that continues to exist. Without the foul distractions that used to contaminate my thoughts, I have no difficulty sensing the light touch that brushes across the back of my hand. And without any voice to consume my attention, there is nothing to prevent the cry that claws its way from my throat as my limbs are jolted fully into wakefulness.
My bare heels dig into something soft and yielding, while my hands scrabble to disentangle themselves from the blankets that threaten to smother me. My eyelids flutter as I wait for the familiar throbbing to return to my head. It will return, I tell myself, the moment I allow the first fragments of light into my skull, as if the darkness alone had gifted me with some small reprieve.
I continue with my pathetic movements until I’ve turned my head to the side, my hands still pushing weakly at the covers. I raise my chin, attempt to swallow, and nearly choke as my throat sticks together.
"Here."
A cup of water is raised to my lips, and I choke once more, though some of the liquid runs down my parched throat. My gaze latches onto the chipped rim of the cup before they follow the line of the hand that grasps it, and then I'm looking at Chissick, seated as he is so near to my side.
His chair is pressed into the edge of the mattress, but it isn’t the same chair as before, and neither is it the same bed. Because I'm not ensconced in his house, but instead I'm in my own room at Mrs. Selwyn’s, in my own bed that creaks and groans beneath even as slight a burden as my own.
