The Fiend in Human (38 page)

Read The Fiend in Human Online

Authors: John MacLachlan Gray

BOOK: The Fiend in Human
13.65Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
‘Please forgive my disturbance of your repose, Miss. However, if you might please accompany me very briefly …’ He feels his cheeks redden, yet it is from intensity of purpose and not from shyness, as she must certainly suppose. He adjusts his coat collar – though he is not chilly, for he is wearing two scarves.
The effect of his continuous, nervous patter is to set the scene in such a way that it is he who seems threatened by her and not the reverse; in the meanwhile he reaches tentatively with one hand, which she shakes out of politeness (but which he knows to be pure guile), not wishing to arouse his suspicion by appearing suspicious of him – especially given his evidently timorous nature.
‘Dreadfully sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss. I should have arrived earlier but for the appalling business going on outside. Did you see it? Unimaginable, to think of such an outrage occurring not a mile from the Palace.’
Taking her arm, he helps her to her feet. Momentarily at a loss as to the appropriate response, she stands hesitantly, then silently agrees to accompany him, not through a decision having occurred, but in the
way that water proceeds on a downhill course, it being the least resistant. He guides her quickly into the crowd, sidling crab-like against the tide of wool converging upon the bar for drink. The ambience of the Crown has turned to bedlam with the sudden crush and the undifferentiated din, as a further cluster of gentlemen enter, with the two pugilists straddled upon their shoulders, their faces and breasts wrapped with blood-soaked towels.
It is as if he and the young woman have gone to sleep and are now in a dream together, in which they move with exaggerated slowness through a mass of humanity, which closes around them like water.
‘And where is the gentleman, Sir?’ she asks with affecting innocence. ‘For I have promised my protectors that I should not venture outside alone.’ In truth, she has good reason to be prudent, for the street is all but deserted. The only human presences are the impoverished grotesques who loiter next the buildings opposite, hardly visible outside the ragged perimeter of gaslight that spills from the Crown, awaiting the opportunity to cadge or to rob some befuddled reveller on his way home.
‘Very wise of you, Miss,’ he says, and the assurance in his voice contrasts with the furtiveness displayed earlier. For it is only at these moments that he chooses to reveal his true strength.
‘Sir, since I don’t see the acquaintance of whom you speak, I believe I shall return inside.’ At this he almost laughs, for seldom has he encountered such a shrewd one as this little witch. He reminds himself that this is not the time to show persuasive meekness; now is the time to show persuasive force.
‘Indeed, Miss, his carriage will be along presently – a yellow phaeton, actually.’ He speaks to her in a tone designed to create confidence in the stability of the situation, that all is well and all will be well. ‘My friend is exceedingly well-born and well-known, as you yourself have shrewdly ascertained, and should be greatly harmed were it understood that he kept such company, in an area such as this. In return for your understanding and discretion in this matter, he is prepared to pay far more than you might have previously assumed. In fact, he has authorized me to present you with a gift, a small token – a family heirloom, don’t you see. Utterly priceless …’
So saying, he guides her gently but firmly by the arm a few steps through the dense fog, the way one guides a recalcitrant child, further into Cat-and-Wheel Alley, to the secluded doorway of an abandoned
lodging-house, where they may discuss matters without interruption by any human traffic which might issue to or from the Crown.
‘Sir, I must insist on proceeding no further – indeed, your grip on my arm is hurting me.’
‘Oh Heavens, where are my manners? Might I persuade you at least to step into this doorway so that I might present you with the small present I mentioned – which, I am certain, an assessment would value at no less than twenty shillings.’
‘I don’t know that I want your present, Sir.’ Her tone of unease causes him to smile to himself, for there is nothing so delightful as the moment when they suspect that all is not as it should be.
‘Actually, it is a scarf,’ he whispers, controlling his excitement, the blood rushing to his loins in the anticipation of what is coming, while removing the white silk gentleman’s scarf from about his neck and bestowing it around hers.
‘I don’t want it, Sir,’ she says, trembling slightly. As his eyes adjust to the light he can make out the white face, the white scarf, the eyes widened like a small animal in the presence of a superior predator – utterly delicious!
‘Oh but you deserve it, Miss. You do.’ So saying, he wraps the scarf gently twice around her throat. And begins to pull.
‘A pity there isn’t a glass for you to see yourself in, Miss, for your new scarf looks so very pretty on you. But is it a bit snug? Does it chafe you somewhat? I’m sorry, but I cannot hear you. I can hardly understand a word you say. What lovely eyes you have – so wide, with not a trace of a squint! And how rosy your cheeks are becoming! Do I make you blush? Do I? Does my touch inspire certain urges? Do I excite you to indecent longing? Do I cause you to grow faint?’ He pulls harder, while crooning on about how pretty she is, although in truth he cannot see her face for the fog and dark (a compliment to a lady is an acceptable untruth); applying ever greater pressure to the coiled silk scarf while inwardly marvelling at the sound of his own voice, the way it grows deeper and richer – as though the strength she loses accrues to him.
Delirious with the pleasure of utter command, he prepares to execute (appropriate appellative!) the final twist, in concert with his own spasms of pleasure, then to perform the little ritual that follows, in which he will cut off her nose to spite her face …
Inexplicably, seen only as a vague blur in the corner of his eye, her hand moves beneath her dress and now she leaps upward in a sudden
sidewise motion, and suddenly it is as though his face has been inexplicably soaked with water.
O Heavens! It is not water, but blood! Blood!
A knife glints in her hand as she collapses backward with the now loosened scarf about her neck, while he reels in the opposite direction, his back striking against the stone wall of the doorway. Blood! The smell and stickiness of it, pouring over his cheeks and eyes! Blood!
He grows sick to his stomach and vomits, turning sideways not to foul his clothes – except that his coat is now soaked and greasy. Summoning his courage, he gently probes the wound with his fingers — a long, deep gash running from just above the eye almost to the jaw. It is all he can do to keep from fainting.
The girl! Where is the girl? In the initial shock – occurring as it did right at the climax – he released her and she fell, but where? Unable to see, groping with his hands, he feels for her on the stone steps where he left her – and, O God in Heaven, she has escaped!
He cannot see properly, for his fingers, in probing the wound which continues to gush, smeared his spectacles and fouled his eyes with the sticky, metallic substance; even so, through some primitive sensory apparatus he detects a presence, standing nearby – is it she? Is there hope? Please God, let it be she! With no further thought he lunges in the direction of the figure who is surely standing just a few feet to his left, and – O horror! It is a man, stinking with the most odious filth, who now holds him by the front of his coat while pouring fetid breath upon his open wound! Desperately he works himself free of the hands, wriggling and twitching like a small animal (tearing his coat), while gouging the eyes with his thumbs, for which he is rewarded with a roar of pain and a fresh dose of foul odour – and he is free.
And blind! In the struggle, his spectacles have fallen to the ground, and he cannot find them because his eyes are filled with blood! In this hysterical condition Walter Sewell flees into the foggy dark, looking for all the world like a giant decapitated fowl.
When the crush of excited drinkers has dispersed sufficiently that he may move from his place at the corner of the bar, it is a moment before Whitty truly comprehends the meaning of the empty table by the column; momentarily it is as if some feat of prestidigitation has occurred and she has disappeared by the touch of a wand, which gaping vacuity of disbelief is replaced by anger, as though the entire population of the Crown has conspired against them, which anger is
overcome by dread, rising from the pit of his stomach, a dread the like of which he has never before felt in his life.
When he first devised this role for Phoebe to play, it was in the interests of uncovering a scandal – a young man of good family (against whom he holds a grudge), engaged in unspeakable acts; and, not incidentally, in the interests of keeping Owler’s young lady out of harm’s way. And yet, what if …
Blast!
Even in moments of journalistic excess, two sources of general terror obtain: the possibility that somebody might actually perform some frightful deed, or suffer some dreadful injury, as a result of the reading or misreading of the correspondent’s text; the possibility that he has made a dreadful mistake, with similarly injurious consequences. For indeed, truth to tell, far more evil is perpetrated on this earth through negligent stupidity than through conscious ill-doing. Hang the incompetents and set the murderers free, and London would be the better for it …
Having recruited Phoebe to his purpose, at this moment the correspondent would gladly place the noose about his own neck.
Now he is running madly through the clutch of dancers with such force that one couple staggers into a table, overturning it and showering its outraged occupants with gin. He throws open the doors and plunges into the gaslit fog of Cranbourne Alley: it is all he can do not to scream at the glowering emptiness of it, this dank, stinking hole in the pit of the universe, bereft of life or hope, where exists not the faintest glimmer of beauty which is not to be instantly snuffed out. Surely it is not necessary to die in order to go to Hell.
At first he adjudges the figure coming out of the fog to be a will-o’-the-wisp, a ragged creature such as frequents the moors of Yorkshire, wailing for the dead; for indeed it is wailing, a sound of primeval distress. His second vision is of a looming tragedy, that he is to take her in his arms only to watch her die of whatever the Fiend has done to her. And then it is all nothing, nothing but this moment in which he is holding this keening young woman – who would not hold her? – wearing a white silk scarf from Henry Poole’s.
He tastes her salt tears upon his lips. ‘Did you see him, Phoebe, dear? Did you see him?’ Even after the unprecedented desperation of the past few moments, Whitty cannot resist the awareness that the Fiend is receding even as he speaks.
‘Might you recognize him if you saw him again?’
‘Anybody will recognize him now,’ she replies.
The Holy Land
Somebody is following him. More than one. He knows this, although he can see nothing; a sensation down the nape of the neck and across the shoulders. He must remove himself from the area at once, for she will alert the Metropolitan Police, who will surround him, for that is the purpose which the Peelers serve best – as a human retaining wall. St Giles will become a ratting-pit in reverse – with a horde of dogs in pursuit of a solitary rodent. He imagines a circle of top-hatted sporting gentlemen, peering at him from above the rooftops, looming over him with intense interest, waiting for the kill.
Someone is here! Someone is nearby!
‘I have a pistol! Stay away, do you hear me?’
In reply he hears a slight rustling a little to the right. Pawing at his eyes with one hand, he uses the other to feel his way along the walls of buildings which seem to lean inward, so narrow is the street. Now he feels the outline of a window sash, and now he cuts his hand on a piece of broken window-pane!
And the Lord set a mark upon Cain …
No. He will come through. He will endure. This is but a test of his faith – did not God say that
whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold?
Thus he struggles forward, taking courage from the word of the Lord.
And now indeed he is beginning to see – a sign from the Lord that he is on this earth for a purpose under Heaven and that he will pull through. Now he can discern the outline of the street and thereby avoid obstacles before him, while feeling his way along, both hands extended, touching opposite walls – for the lane has narrowed even from what it was.
The street narrows yet again, so that he must move crabwise to avoid outcroppings, as though passing through a fissure in the earth, while avoiding the odious drain which bisects the lane, flowing with substances he does not wish to consider, let alone touch. At one instance the sides of the alley converge into a ramshackle wooden dwelling and a path continues through it; to his right he sees a cooking fire and a pot containing a malodorous meat substance. And still there is the rustling behind him.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter his kingdom.
How true that is. Wealth has made his passage to Heaven difficult. It is no easy thing to poison one’s own mother, even when it becomes clear that she was acting as a whore.
More I require of thee.
Thou shalt not suffer a whore to live.
For who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing?
No one.
Hope appears as a splinter of light, a vertical cleft in the gloom; again he must turn sideways to progress past a window which looks into a bedroom filled with a coiling mass of sleeping humanity, whose collective breath pours through the broken pane like a cloud of malodorous steam.
He has emerged! He can breathe! He is free!
Squinting in the unaccustomed gaslight, he sees a kind of square, or court – really no more than a coincidental point of convergence for a tangle of yards, a series of narrow and tortuous shadows, much like the hideous passage he has just endured, each with its little rivulet of filth draining into a common, stagnant gutter in the centre of the square.
The square is filled with parties in ragged, dirty clothing, some famished and stick-like, others bloated and red, whose features he cannot discern without his spectacles: a woman, with a pipe in her mouth perhaps, holds a snarling dog by a piece of rope. Someone coughing in a blue rug. And silhouettes: a man with one arm, carrying a broom; a man in a broken stovepipe hat.

Other books

The Only Victor by Alexander Kent
Kissing Kendall by Jennifer Shirk
Pleasure and a Calling by Hogan, Phil
Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt
The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope