May 30
I write so I may believe myself. I write so that I might have a permanent record of these events, events so terrifying that they burn themselves to the insides of my eyelids. Events so unbelievable and horrid that I write to convince myself they ever happened at all.
This morning, Phinea Ratcliffe and I heavily swathed ourselves in privacy veils. Phinea helped herself to one of her cousin Jacob's revolvers. Due to her backwoods upbringing, she knows how to use them.
At ten thirty-nine in the morning, Phinea and I left on our walk. I recall the time, because I glanced at the clock in the hallway the moment before the door closed on us. We took a back alley route. I can still list the streets we travelled. We took a streetcar, numbered 51.
We reached Hans Solus' property in the disreputable part of town at approximately half past eleven. The door was locked, and so Phinea crept around the side and employed her climbing skills. She slipped in an open window and let me in through the door. Phinea has her uses.
The upper part of the house seemed deserted. It was a three storey building. We saw no signs of any living being as we explored the top floors. The floor in the third storey was almost entirely fallen in. The whole thing was in a condition of great disrepair.
Noises from the deep cellars drove us downward. My boarding school days taught me how to properly employ a hairpin. I picked a lock or two, and we progressed into the depths.
There, in the cellars, the house was maintained. The walls were smooth and the floor clean as if it saw many pairs of feet. We heard noises, clinking and metallic, and the faint sound of a human voice, weeping.
We walked down into the deepest cellar. I lit a candle from my purse, one of the tools of my new trade. The light ghoulishly flickered against the dark walls. We opened the last door.
There, we saw the pale fair woman chained to the floor, dressed in her grave-clothes, weeping and crying for help.
"Even my first husband did not go this far!" I said, as I could not help it. The girl's feet were manacled with heavy steel chains to a lowered recess in the cellar. She gazed up at us, the only source of light in the darkness.
"Help me," Blancheflor Ferris-Smith pleaded desperately, "free me!"
I recall my thought was that she somehow survived Phinea's murder attempt. I had read claims of similar sensational events. It made my position dangerous, as a so-called friend of Phinea. It reflects ill to be the acquaintance of an attempted murderess.
My thought was that Blancheflor Ferris-Smith ought to die.
"Phinea," Blancheflor Ferris-Smith said, as her face stretched into a pained smile, "dear Cousin Phinea. I have been so t-terribly frightened! Hans k-kidnapped me, and said he would keep me prisoner until I married him! Please, save me. I will do anything for you if you'll only save me."
"You remember how you died, don't you?" Phinea snapped. I noted that she shook as if she was still afraid of the chained woman.
"You stabbed me, because you loved poor Lance. I forgive you." Blanceflor's eyes filled with pitying tears. "I will say nothing about it, I promise, if you only save me from Hans. I have missed everyone at home, even you."
"How did you survive?" Phinea interrogated. It was a question to which I also dearly wished to konw the answer.
"D-doctor Isling knew ..." Blancheflor whispered faintly, swaying in her chains. "It was c-catalepsy. I bled, but I was not dead. He saw money in it, so he asked Hans to b-bribe him. I am trapped here, and every day Hans comes to force me to marry ..."
I stumbled down to free her. I was innocent of crimes toward her, and I expected that she should reward me. Diary, I declare that my mind was confused.
Phinea pinched me. I still have the bruise.
"I do not believe you. I saw how much you bled," she said. "I have also seen catalepsy. The form of it you claim to have had is more common among writers of sensational fiction than reality. And then you were buried, Blancheflor. You were in an airless marble tomb for more than four-and-twenty hours.
"You are dead, and you are not coming back."
I had slipped further down the cellar steps. Blancheflor flew at me with speed I would not have thought possible. She grasped my throat, and I swear that her nails were sharp as claws.
"Set me free," pleaded Blancheflor, and her voice was still meek and vulnerable, "and I w-will not hurt your friend. I have little against her ..."
"Blancheflor!"
The door above was flung open, and Hans Solus shouted her name. Her grip gave slightly, and I pushed myself away from Blancheflor's embrace. I understood nothing of this.
"Phinea, is that you? Miss Gwilt? I am sorry to see you here." Hans Solus sketched out a bow to us, his dusky face reddened by the glow of his dark-lantern. "I realise how this looks. I am doing this because I love her, because I would like to see her free. But I know what you must think of me."
I did not know what to think of it. Blancheflor's fingers had torn my privacy veil.
"Oh, I know what she is," Phinea said. "She is one of those who live on others' deaths. The monsters birthed from the plantations. I've heard the stories, from when my parents ran away from Georgia."
"You know, Lydia," Blanceflor hissed, "Phinea's mother was a piece of white trash who ran off with a nigger."
It was not the crudity that surprised me, but the way this Blancheflor changed mood and voice so suddenly. She was a chameleon, and perhaps nearly as fine an actress as I!
"My father had Italian blood," Phinea stammered, as if it was a lie she'd told before.
Hans Solus shrugged. "These whispers are so damaging, aren't they? Trust me, I know the feeling. You've nothing to fear from me. You and I aren't so different, Mrs Ratcliffe.
"Let me tell you my story," Solus said. "At an early age, I met one of these creatures myself. The experience altered me, and since I reached my majority I have spent my time and sunken most of my fortune into finding and defeating them. We call them the Un-dead, the aluka, or vampire.
"I've wanted to find a way to turn Blancheflor back. She enslaved that poor fool Lance, but she can't help her instincts. If we can turn these creatures human once more, we'll be able to redeem their souls and give them a chance. So you see, this is how I love her."
"You can't change me or confine me like an animal, Hans," Blancheflor sang out. "I have the power to live forever, and power over weaker minds. Come here, Miss Gwilt!"
I began to do exactly as she asked. I do not believe I was thinking clearly. Perhaps it was a delayed effect of my Drops.
"I'm sorry, Blanche. But I can't allow this to happen!"
The gun's retort sung through my poor ears. Phinea fired three shots from the revolver. She showed excellent aim: not one of them hit me. She also showed exceedingly poor aim. Blancheflor, moving more quickly than any other mortal I had seen, lifted a length of chain to the path of a bullet. She should have been hit also, but she showed no pain.
The chain weakened, and snapped. Blancheflor was able to set herself free. Hans Solus shouted something, and tried to stop her with a pistol of his own. She rushed past the steps and pushed me over on her way, and with bare feet she raced through the door.
I landed next to a length of broken chain, and I saw the damage Blancheflor had done.
"A barefoot woman in petticoats running through the street," called Hans Solus, "she cannot be hard to find. Come on!" Phinea hastened after him.
But not one person on the streets reported seeing such a girl. Hans Solus called for several dubious associates to help him in his search, and yet all was lost.
"We fight the Un-dead together," he explained briefly, "Mark the Knife, Matthew Gypsy, and Cat Lucia. There are several others in the same cause."
"You've made a terrible mistake this night," said the one woman among their band, a tall spare female who wore her dress like a potato sack. "The vampire escaped, a powerful one. How many innocents will she kill?"
"I would say you've made a terrible mistake!" Phinea repeated. "I can never show my face in society again, if she has told. People will not believe what she really is."
"But ask yourself," Hans Solus said, "what does Blancheflor really want?"
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