Capturing the Devil

by Kerri Maniscalco

  “Agatha, I… I don’t feel well.”

  “Oh!” Agatha clutched my arm, keeping me from tumbling down into darkness and back down the stairs. “The fumes from the cleanser might not agree with you. Dr. Holmes is still perfecting the formula.” She pointed to her nose. “Cotton. I almost forgot.” She tied a scarf about her face. “Not everyone has a reaction to it, but I’m pretty sensitive to most strong scents. That’s why Dr. Holmes makes me remember the cotton. I won’t be helpful to him if I get ill.”

  I staggered a few steps farther, knees shaking. This was no cleanser. At least none that I’d ever encountered. “Why doesn’t he give them to his patrons?”

  “He doesn’t run a charity, miss. If he handed out cotton to everyone who rented a room here, he’d be out of money. Plus, this doesn’t happen with everyone. He said he only cleans the corridors like this once in a while. Today seems to be one of those rare occasions.”

  She left me and swiftly moved forward, pausing at the end of the corridor, opening doors that I swore were bricked up. I fell against the wall, fighting the darkness creeping into the corners of my vision. I needed to get out of this place. Immediately. My sense of self-preservation screeched wildly to hurry, but whatever he was poisoning me with worked fast.

  With a final shove, I stumbled a few feet back toward the stairs, head spinning as a giant portrait loomed before me. It seemed as if the eyes followed me as I collapsed to the floor, trying desperately to crawl back the way we’d come. I heard the bones in my knees crack, the pain blinding in its fury. Two hands lifted me up.

  “Now, now, Miss Wadsworth,” a cool voice said. “Stop fighting me.”

  I feebly thought of my blade sheathed at my thigh. It was utterly useless to me now. All my preparations, my certainty. Gone.

  “It’s time you met your true match.”

  His voice was the last thing that tormented me before I plunged into blackness.

  FORTY-SIX

  CAPTIVITY: NIGHT ONE

  MURDER CASTLE

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  16 FEBRUARY 1889

  My throat felt like hot coals had been shoved down it. My eyes leaked tears as if in mourning.

  It was as though my body understood before I did.

  The devil had come to claim me.

  And I would soon die.

  A hissing from somewhere above stole into the room, robbing me of consciousness.

  Sleep, deep and endless. A blessing hidden inside the curse.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  CAPTIVITY: NIGHT TWO

  MURDER CASTLE

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  17 FEBRUARY 1889

  Darkness greeted me as I cracked my lids. Oppressive like summer heat. I stirred, desperate to rouse from unnatural sleep. For a moment, I couldn’t recall where I was. Then fragments of memory came back. Before I sat up, I heard the creaking of a door. A slice of yellow light spilled like entrails across the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Counted my breaths.

  This was a nightmare. Like the ones that had haunted me these past months. A trick of the mind. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

  I opened my eyes, only to scream.

  A figure with horns stood over me, and though I couldn’t be sure, it sounded as if he hissed right before the darkness swept in to do his bidding once more.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  CAPTIVITY: NIGHT THREE

  MURDER CASTLE

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  18 FEBRUARY 1889

  Drip. Drip.

  Drip.

  The scent of gasoline mixed with mustiness and other noxious odors twisted my stomach. It was different from when I’d last awakened. Another smell greeted me, an old familiar friend. Copper and pennies and metal. Vaguely, I wondered if the dripping I heard was blood. Something clattered nearby. It sounded like bones. Too many. I imagined an army of the undead, coming to claim me. I thrashed about, furious, as the hissing began in earnest. I knew what that meant. He was dosing me again. Toying with me until he grew bored.

  I screamed, the sound echoing around me, though there was an oddness to it. As if I was submerged in a chamber beneath the sea. I had a growing suspicion that no one could hear me. No one but him. Wherever I was, no sounds escaped.

  In the distance, I swore I heard the devil laugh in delight.

  A nightmare. I was having a nightmare and would soon be awake.

  It was the last thought I had before Satan dragged me back to Hell.

  FORTY-NINE

  CAPTIVITY: NIGHT FOUR

  MURDER CASTLE

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  19 FEBRUARY 1889

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  An incessant dripping dragged me to the surface of a troubled sleep. Before I cracked my eyes open, I became aware of an icy chill seeping into my body. The surface below me was as hard as ice.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  I commanded my eyes to open, but they refused, the lids still too heavy to lift. Panic started at the edges, winding its way further into my consciousness. Fatigue could not account for my inability to rouse myself. Several moments passed, my thoughts fuzzy yet buzzing with an undercurrent of urgency. A puzzle piece I was missing. Tremors raked my body as my unbound hair tickled my neck. When had I taken it down? I swore snakes or worms were crawling over my skin. Perhaps even maggots. And I couldn’t do anything about it. Imaginary walls seemed to heave and crumble with each breath. Was I buried in a grave?

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Open your eyes! I thought, furious my lips refused to form the words. Was I no longer in my body? I couldn’t understand how nothing seemed to work. My mind was alert but the rest of me remained immobile. Then it locked into place. I’d been drugged. I tried sitting up, but it felt like a malevolent force had its knees in my back, keeping me shoved down.

  A few terrifying moments passed and my fingers twitched. Bolstered by the improvement, I splayed my hands against the mattress, only to realize I’d been deposited onto the floor sometime in the night. My fingers slid over what felt like packed dirt. I rolled to my side and patted the ground for more clues and jerked my hand back. I’d touched something wet.

  “T-Thomas?” I finally managed to whisper, reaching into the darkness for an anchor to keep me in this life, this present, this time. I did not want to be torn back into that place of nothingness. I did not want to contemplate the blood I was certain now coated my hands.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Images of Thomas lying upside down, gutted and drained of blood, assaulted my senses. Were they fragmented memories? Fear propelled me up and out of the haze. Or perhaps it was love. There was no greater force on earth, nothing quite as powerful as love. Neither hatred nor fear could ever hope to possess the same amount of strength. I gathered those thoughts, clutched them close, and pushed myself into a sitting position, taking in the darkened room.

  A lone candle flickered somewhere behind me. I blinked as my surroundings came into place. I seemed to be in some sort of storage chamber or cellar. From what I could make of it, the dripping noise, blessedly, was just an old leaky pipe.

  I slumped down, focusing on the bigger worry of how I’d gotten here and why I’d been drugged. More images came back to me, though I was uncertain of them. A man with horns. Hissing. A room without sound. Now that I was awake, these seemed to be fantasy.

  Except my current location was definitely a nightmare.

  I glanced at my clothing—a thin nightgown—and froze. The trousers I’d had made in Romania were gone. As was my scalpel belt. Someone had undressed me. They’d touched me and I couldn’t even allow my mind to process the violation of my person or I’d spin wildly out of control. Revulsion twisted my stomach until I choked bile down. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe. To not lose myself to the horror. I would survive and I’d make him suffer.

  I tentatively reached up, feeling for any lumps or injury. My hair was unbound and the bun had been removed, along with my hairpins. I fr
owned, running my fingers through the tangles, hoping to dislodge any of the missing pins. Nothing.

  I forced myself to sit straighter, the motion prompting my body into a state of alertness. Followed quickly by nausea. I doubled over and concentrated on finding calmness again, breathing slowly until I was sure I wouldn’t vomit.

  More of the room came into focus, my clarity improving the longer the drug worked its way out of my system. What I’d first thought to be a cellar was similar in appearance to a laboratory of sorts. A shard of fear lodged itself under my skin.

  “No.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling like a coward. Then I forced myself to remember what had brought me here to begin with. Whom I was fighting for. It became easier to recall I was fearless in the face of fear. I was capable of so much more than I’d ever imagined.

  I’d been knocked down, struck time and again by those who did not believe I could accomplish anything other than smiling prettily. I’d been told I was wretched for my curiosity and scorned for following my heart. It was time to tell myself a different tale. One where I was the hero, battling against harmful words and doubts.

  “I will not be afraid.” I repeated it silently as I maneuvered to my knees, wincing as a new memory came to me along with the bright spots of pain. I’d forgotten I’d cracked my bones again. I prodded my leg, relieved it wasn’t rebroken, just badly bruised from the feel of it. Determined to escape before the devil returned, I got to my feet and took in the full sights around me. “Don’t be afraid.”

  It was a nice sentiment, though like most areas of my life, it proved false as the true horror of my situation came into view. I was not alone in this basement chamber.

  Lying on a large slab, as if a tribute to the gods left on some unholy altar, was a female corpse. Half its face was missing its outer layers of skin, the angry red and white of meat and muscle glistening in the dull light. The other half seemed frozen in an eternal scream.

  I clapped a hand over my mouth, praying that I could choke my own scream down before the devil found me. I was looking at what remained of sweet Minnie.

  Her partially missing face was not the worst of what had been done to her, however. As my gaze slowly moved down what remained of her body, I noticed strips of flesh had been cut away, exposing the milky-white bone beneath. An image of the goat in the meatpacking district of New York City flashed through my mind.

  One leg appeared to have been set in a vat of sulfuric acid—there was nothing left but charred fragments of skin and the pungent scent of foul eggs. Sulfur. I inhaled again, immediately regretting it as the sweetness of decay got stuck in my nose. It was a sickening aroma—worse than any I’d had the misfortune of experiencing before.

  I’d woken up in Hell. And Hell smelled of rotten flesh and felt like eternal screams.

  My pulse was near hysteria as it rushed through my body. I forced my attention on the rest of the room, all traces of the drug burned out as fresh adrenaline coursed through me. My body understood the laws of nature—it was ready for fight or flight.

  Shadows and dust twirled and danced to their own macabre beat, spurring my heart into a greater frenzy. Nathaniel had created a hidden lair in our home to practice his dark deeds, but it was nothing compared to this castle built of blood and bone.

  Barrels lined the walls, some larger than others. Human skulls were piled high in one, and I stared, unable to comprehend the magnitude of how many people had to die for the number of skulls needed to overflow from those barrels. I swallowed my revulsion, continuing to scan what must be hundreds of victims. Some barrels were small enough to fit a—

  I squeezed my eyes shut as a tiny skull caught my attention. Was that Pearl? What sort of monster would harm a child? I knew who in an instant. It was the very same man who ripped women apart and left them in discarded heaps as if they were rubbish. The one we’d stalked and foolishly assumed was dead. This chamber reminded me so much of my brother’s secret laboratory, and yet it was nothing like it. Nathaniel’s had been dark and twisted, but it was focused on science. This… this was only a crypt filled with death. A tribute and prize of remembrance. A place of torture.

  A shiny bit of metal glinted in the flickering light. I slowly moved toward it and wished I hadn’t. It was my brother’s prized silver comb. I stopped breathing. I wasn’t sure how Holmes had gotten it, but there was no doubt in my mind it belonged to Nathaniel. Which meant the Ripper had snuck into my house in London sometime after my brother had died.

  Even though it was the last thing I wished to do, I brought myself back to that fateful November night when I’d confronted my brother with the crimes I thought he’d committed, replaying each detail as if it were a moving picture.

  I’d claimed Nathaniel was the Ripper.

  I’d accused him of committing such violent acts. But, like Mephistopheles had warned me time and again during that hellish carnival, I needed to beware of my mind conjuring its own tale. I knew now that it had been creating stories, but why hadn’t my brother confessed the truth?

  I closed my eyes, seeing that night clearer. At first Nathaniel seemed surprised, but then he’d recovered quickly. He’d fed me line after line, almost as if he’d made it up on the go. But why? Why lay claim to something so unspeakably horrid if he was innocent? Had he been coerced? What on earth would possess him to—The answer hit me so swiftly, I gasped. It was so simple, yet I couldn’t process it. There was only one force on earth with that power.

  Love.

  Not necessarily romantic love. My brother likely felt so deprived of true companionship that he’d been led onto a dark, twisted path. I imagined the murderer had seen the hunger in him for the love and acceptance of a friend and exploited it. After my mother’s death, Nathaniel was emotionally broken in so many ways I hadn’t seen, but someone else did.

  And used it against him.

  My brother was mad about science and Frankenstein and reanimating the dead; perhaps carrying that dark secret had been a much bigger burden than I’d imagined. He could have shared those desires with someone who he thought understood. Who didn’t judge him. Who encouraged his mad beliefs. All the while hiding the dagger behind his back.

  If that were true… hatred coiled in my core. I would take pleasure in killing this devil not only for Thomas, but for my brother as well. Nathaniel had never been Dr. Frankenstein; he’d been twisted into the creature. One who’d taken the blame for his creator.

  I was unsure how Nathaniel had managed to do so, but he’d tricked Thomas with his lies as well. In my mind’s eye, I relived Thomas stumbling down those laboratory stairs, his expression frantic, until his attention landed on me. Back then I didn’t recognize the depth of his fear—how his own emotions had interfered.

  I was both Thomas Cresswell’s weakness and his strength.

  When he feared for my safety, his deductions were rushed, less razor-edged than when he had no emotional ties. He’d claimed cuts on Nathaniel’s fingertips had indicated he was the Ripper, but what if there was another reason for those? My brother had been handling sharp bits of metal, fusing them into his contraptions. Those actions could produce the same wounds. I opened my eyes, seeing the clues in an entirely new light.

  “Dear God above.” Terror, I soon realized, had its own taste. It was sharp and coppery, much like blood. Each hair raised itself from my body as if it hoped to sprout wings and take flight. If Nathaniel had help with creating his laboratory, then any deficiencies in the design had most certainly been worked out. This house was a weapon itself, ready to destroy those who dared cross its threshold.

  My home was the prototype. This was the grand masterpiece.

  I glanced at the skulls and poor Minnie’s body, which had been partially skinned. If this chamber was located under the hotel—then I was only in one small portion of the underground maze. The hotel took up an entire city block. I almost sank to my knees. Getting out with my life would be nearly impossible. Maybe this was always how my story was suppos
ed to end, in this earthly version of Hell. Perhaps if I let him have me, his murderous rampage would come to a close.

  I stopped looking at the mangled corpse that used to be the bright and cheerful Minnie. Would her fate soon be my own? A cadaver ripped apart into something hardly recognizable as human? A flash of Thomas’s body crumpled with poison battled against my fear. I promised I’d make it home to him. I would not let this murderous castle or its owner win.

  This time when I scanned the chamber, I was searching for items to assist with my escape. Much to my surprise, my dragon cane lay against a barrel. I retrieved it, not looking any closer at the skeletal remains than was necessary.

  For the sake of moving as stealthily as I could, I ripped my hemline into strips, then tied them about the bottom of my cane. Ignoring the ever-screaming corpse, I took a turn about the room, my breath catching at each muffled sound of my cane meeting the floor. It wasn’t the best, but it would make it harder for anyone to hear me moving around.

  I crept over to the door, pressing my ear against the cool metal, listening for any movement on the other side. I stayed that way, doing my best impression of a statue, until my good leg prickled with needles. Not one sound stirred. Slowly, I reached out, trying the handle.

  I winced as metal slid over metal, creating a sound much too loud for my liking in the oppressive quiet. I froze, waiting for the door to swing wide as Holmes came charging from the opposite side, knocking me backward, but no such force came.

  Bolstered by my small victory, I leaned against the door, adding more of my weight, ready to rejoice at freedom—it was locked. Of course. Part of me wished to kick it, to beat it with my cane until either it or I surrendered to this fate.

  “Be still,” I commanded myself as Liza had done after my ruined wedding. “Think.”