Call Me Ismay (15 page)

The remains of that work day were a total loss for Langston. As he sat at his desk- pretending to examine and edit all of his assignments- Langston's heart raced and his hands felt like ice. A person, an actual physical being tied directly to the mysterious letters, had just been outside his workplace, tantalizingly out of reach. Based on what the staffer had told him, he mused that perhaps his fantasy of the writer being a young, lovely relative of Lyons hadn't been too far off. He was quick to internally chastise himself for such thoughts, however, recalling the gruesome details of each and every communication up to this point. Mostly he obsessed over one detail in particular that the staffer had offered: she appeared frightened.
Why frightened?
he thought.
Has something bad happened, or is something horrible about to happen?

Langston had excused himself from the newsroom of the
Chronicle
on this Wednesday morning. The assignment on most everyone's minds seemed to be the British War Minister's visit to Berlin, but he couldn't be bothered to care. Indeed, Langston sensed that his preoccupied behaviour was starting to wear thin with his superiors, but with so much serious secret information coming forth regarding Edward Lyons, he increasingly felt a semblance of duty was all that was required of him.

Langston had investigated, to the best of his ability, what connection the name of Lillith may have held to Edward Lyons, but had turned up nothing. Lyons was by all accounts a confirmed bachelor, and Langston had fearfully considered the possibility that perhaps those frightening letters he'd been receiving were the vengeful work of a jilted lover. The MP had endeared himself to many legions of women throughout his vociferous support of suffrage, and there was no telling whom he might have alienated along the way. Perhaps he'd been victimized by attracting the attention of someone unstable. Maybe the name Lillith was a falsehood, a fraud cruelly perpetrated by a male saboteur unsympathetic to the suffrage movement, making an attempt to smear and discredit Lyons. Still, that would not explain the frightened young woman who had appeared, apparently, at the
Chronicle.
He even worried for a brief while that maybe someone at the newspaper was having a laugh at his expense-perhaps no one had come to see him that day at all. However, he soon realized that would have to involve a conspiracy far too serpentine to possibly be true.

In any event, Kerry Langston once again found himself exposed to the elements, shuddering in the cold while trying to sort out a confounding mystery while Lyons, quite possibly, sat at home, comfortable, with his feet propped up by a crackling fire. Langston tossed the dwindling remnants of a cigarette out into the empty street. His glasses were now fogging up with regularity as he blew onto his hands for warmth. He could hear in the distance the
clip-clop
of a horsecart, the only indication that any other soul was nearby.

Langston had his hands in his pockets, his cloth cap pulled down tightly in an effort to contain some bodily warmth, when the soft, cautious voice of a young woman drifted over his shoulder, from about ten feet away.

“Mr. Langston, sir?”

Langston turned. She was wearing a black dress with a white collar and cuffs, an impractical frilly apron bundled under her arm, and a matching cap that covered soft, dark ringlets of hair. A white shawl hung like a protective cloud over her shoulders, and her young features bore an expression that Langston could mentally compare only to a frantic little sparrow.

Langston was startled by her apparent nervousness and yet entirely mesmerized by her languid eyes. After a moment, he allowed himself to speak.

“Are you... Lillith?”

“Yes, indeed, sir, I am.” Hers was a dignified but sad presence.

“'I grasp your spirit in the palm of my Hand'.
Are you truly the author of those words?” Langston took a furtive step towards her, but she immediately raised her hand.

“Sir, please do not come any closer. I must know, do you have any of your tools with you?”

“My- my tools?” Langston sputtered. “Do you mean...the kit? The
vampire
kit?”

“Yes sir.” The young woman was urgently concerned, her sad brown eyes seeming to search his face for unspoken cues.

“No, I do not. Should I have?” he asked, warily.

Lillith's shoulders relaxed, if only a small measure. “No. Not necessarily. Mr. Langston sir, I do not have much time. This is my only day off and yet I have only a few moments to share with you.”

“Your day off?” Langston queried. “Pardon my presumption, madam, but judging by your clothes, I must ask you- are you a chambermaid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you...” Langston's mind was racing, and yet he could feel the pieces of a puzzle starting to congeal. “Are you employed by the MP Edward Lyons?”

Lillith's darting eyes provided her response. She started to fidget as Langston enthusiastically put forth a theory. “
Of course!
There wouldn't publicly be an association with your name- I could find no trace of a 'Lillith' in any of the circles that Lyons travels within. That would explain it! No offense, madam, but servants, of course, in the natural order of things, are to remain invisible...” Langston paused, realizing his face was blushing from both embarrassment and excitement, and that Lillith was obviously uncomfortable. “I beg your pardon miss. I should be commending you on your courage for agreeing to meet with me, for sharing such sensitive information with me for so long-”

“Please, please, Mr. Langston,” she interrupted, at once gentle and firm. “My time with you today is short. I've come to warn you of an action that Mr. Lyons might take...”

“A moment,
please,
Miss Lillith,” he pleaded, in soft but urgent tones. “You must understand the horrible burden your information has placed upon me. I do have many questions about the kit-”

“The kit should be the least of your concerns,” she interjected, once again using a tone that was quiet, and yet forceful. “My last missive to you explained that Mr. Lyons is headed west.”

“Yes, yes indeed,” Langston nodded. “But my interest isn't so much on where his next move is, but
why.
And
how
. And what it is that Lyons intends to do. There has to be- and there had
better
be,” he added, with a slightly annoyed chuckle, “a plausible reason as to why you would direct me towards a kit that bears such a dark purpose. I've risked far too much of my own reputation and livelihood on something that may be fantastical. Miss Lillith, I do feel that I am owed some answers and an explanation.”

Lillith sighed slightly, then grudgingly gave Langston a morsel. “The kit was stowed away in Winkleigh two years ago by my brother, who lives near Blindwells Copse in Devon County. He never knew what was inside, I only told him that it was very precious and that it must be hid. I started to send you what little information I could about Mr. Lyons after I read your tribute to George Meredith when he passed away a few years ago. My niece taught me how to read and write using his poems. I felt that I could trust you.”

Langston gazed at Lillith with intensity, fearing that somehow she was trying to endear herself to him using the unlikeliest of examples. He had completely forgotten the piece he'd written on Meredith until she mentioned it. “Well, I'm obviously flattered that you would remember it, although I do find it a bit strange that you chose to put me on the trail for Bartholomew Gidley because of it. I'm sorry to say that I did some serious damage to Gidley's monument while trying to retrieve the kit- then again, I inflicted that damage upon a marker for a man who supposedly is not even dead.”

He took a step forward, continuing to address her
sotto voce
. “Miss Lillith, you simply must give me more information on Gidley and Lyons. I cannot put a seal on this for much longer- I won't. I beg your pardon for my harsh tone, but I'm going to have to insist that you be totally open and frank with me, and no more of those blasted vague infuriating notes!” Langston heard himself expressing his frustration in anger, yet felt like an observer while doing it.

“I had no choice for the wording of those notes. Mr. Langston, sir... you must understand the sort of danger that I am placing myself in simply by meeting with you today.” She turned and quietly took a seat on a nearby wooden bench, the sort that featured a center arm rest to deter street people from sleeping on it at night. “I might even be making a horrible mistake that could place
you
in danger.”

“I'm in danger
right now
!” Langston exclaimed, taking a seat on the other end of the bench, beginning to plead his case passionately. “Miss, have you not heard what I have said? I fear that my very livelihood and reputation is in peril while I try to borrow time from a group of editors who probably think that I'm hiding an illicit love affair, or perhaps even an addiction to alcohol, from all the assignments I've begged off of. Indeed- we are on the cusp of perhaps the g
reatest social change
in our time- women being given the liberty to vote- and instead of putting attention where it should be, where have I engaged myself as a journalist? I've been nowhere to be seen. I have been off playing parlour games- word play, occult nonsense, and hunting down the likes of Count Dracula, apparently, with the help of a chambermaid who supposedly works for a necromancing MP.  My words may seem harsh, Miss, and for that I do ask you to forgive me- but these nebulous clues of yours simply are no longer going to be acceptable.”

Anger flickered for a moment in Lillith's eyes, then passed. “Mr. Langston,” she resumed, her eyes cast downward, “I can understand the anger that you must feel. But I can assure you and you must believe me, sir, that everything I did by writing to you was meant as an act of survival, of hope, of dreaming of the freedom to escape. This is a very powerful man, Mr. Langston. I had to act cautiously- and you must also do so, now, sir.”

Langston stared at her, searching for signs of deceit or insanity, but found none. “Miss Lillith,” he spoke quietly, “I know that we are on the edge of something most Britons are going to find hard to believe, unless you've some special knowledge- and it has to be something tangible, something real, something irrefutably damaging. There is simply no chance of me going back to the
Chronicle
with any hocus-pocus nonsense- and again, I mean no insult to you by my words, but you must understand the position that I find myself in. I cannot, and will not, pursue this any further without any truly solid information. The fact that you've revealed yourself today, however, leads me to believe that you must have something real to offer.”

Lillith gulped slightly, for a moment seeming to struggle to regain her voice. “I- I do. I can.” Langston reached into his coat pocket for his diary. “Please don't take any notes down,” she protested, her eyes darting around the cold, desolate garden. “If we are seen today, we must be seen as only two people meeting for an exchange of words, nothing more. You
will
remember every word, you will not need to write it down, I promise you.” Langston somewhat reluctantly relented, leaving his diary in his coat.

“I will be honest, sir. You asked that I be frank. I will be. I will be short, but you will be able to benefit from everything that I am about to tell you.

“Mr. Lyons took me into His employ about three years ago. At first, I was delighted. I was going to be working for a powerful man, someone who had served with distinction in the Royal Navy, someone that I thought had great character and charm. My view began to change when, six months in, He first put His hands on me...”* She gazed at Langston very intently. “I was surprised but not unwilling. Mr. Lyons was a handsome bachelor- He still is- but as I was to learn, He had many women that He called special. Very many. So many women who called themselves suffragettes were very enthusiastic about keeping His company, caring very little about women's rights or even their own dignity. He courted me the most often, but there were so many others....” Her voice trailed off as Langston concentrated on her, spellbound. “I was to learn though, that it wasn't all genuine interest coming from Him, not even for me.

“Mr. Lyons and that horrible little man who works for Him- Bartholomew Gidley- strut around like martinets and pound Their hairy chests, claiming that women must be allowed to vote in the name of human dignity... but it's nothing to do with rights, Mr. Langston. And this is where I have something real for you to follow.

*
The use of capitalization of certain words is deliberate strictly within the dialogue of the vampires. The intent is to emphasize the self-importance of the male vampires when discussing themselves or each other (We, You, etc.), while any mention of the lone female vampire is never capitalized. Likewise, the female vampire's dialogue goes into capitalization whenever there is mention of the male vampires, but not of herself. This is meant to symbolize the imbalance of men and women at the time of the story, when the suffrage movement was in full force.