- VII -
In A Maelstrom
When they descended the cab that they had taken from Dr Seward's, Henry seemed to feel better, walking the last steps to his door without Victor's help. He had never been to the late Lord Hyde's town mansion, Frankenstein noticed, and, looking up the facade, was astonished by its rich décor. With a swift gesture, Dr Jekyll invited his friend in and showed him up the stairs of an impressively high-ceilinged, wood panelling covered entrance hall and to his luxurious sitting room. As soon as they had taken their seats on comfortably upholstered sofas, an elderly butler in neat livery entered and asked for their wishes.
"I can help myself, Mr Poole, thank you," Henry said, while pouring them two glasses of whisky from a decanter. "And now go to bed, it is late."
"As you wish, Milord, have a good night then," the butler answered and retreated in silence.
"Quite a nice new home you have, my friend," Victor observed, not without a certain hint of envy to his tone.
To his surprise, Jekyll knitted his brow and uttered a disgruntled sound.
"I hate it!" he growled, then downed the fine liquor in one draught. "All the useless space, all those unnecessary pieces of expensive furniture, the overdone ornaments... and the servants, their ingratiating, faux sophisticated fuss!"
"Is that so, Henry? Then we should swap homes, shouldn't we? Maybe you would like my decrepit old flat with its meagre, mildewy walls better," Frankenstein jested, a sour half-smile on his lips.
"Do not talk sarcastically to me, Victor, not after today!" Jekyll hissed at him.
"You are right, I'm sorry," the physician guiltily mumbled. "I don't know what it is like to get hypnotised, but it surely is an uncommon experience."
"Uncommon, yes, you could say that," Henry replied, still annoyed. "It feels like one's brain got caught in a maelstrom, and the awful memory I relived seemed just as real as you, sitting here opposite me and drinking my father's one-hundred-pound booze."
Victor's eyes widened at the description of the therapy as well as the mention of such an amount of money, but he drunk up notwithstanding.
"Do you really want to take a second session?" he asked.
"To fill in the hole in my memory, to find out why the hell I discharged that madman, yes," Henry said, pinching his nose in a gesture of exhaustion.
"Alright, my friend," Frankenstein rose from his seat and reassuringly patted Jekyll's shoulder. "We shall meet at Dr Seward's office tomorrow then."
With that he exited the Hyde house, leaving Henry to his depressed thoughts.
The pale moonlight painted stripes of silver on the floor when Lucy Holmwood returned to her mansion at midnight. She entered the library first and would have liked to greet her newest guest, John Clare, but he seemed soundly asleep at his desk, head bedded on a pile of books. The lady in white smiled at the sight, then retreated in silence, trying not to wake him.
That night in the sitting room, she had only intended to make sure the witness of the inconveniences in the park would not become a threat to her in any way, but after hearing him tell his sad story, she just had not had the heart to send him back out into the cold again. Allowing him to stay and use the library for his studies and inspiration had suggested itself. Ever since, he looked like a different person, his melancholy gone completely, and being able to support him, in return, contented her as well. Clare would not cause her any trouble.
The other one she had taken into her home, however, was quite a different case. Lucy sighed twice while she walked down the dark corridor to her study. Had it been wise to make Richard Renfield her servant? He certainly was useful, but was he reliable and honest enough?
The fact that he had made her believe he was the author of Clare's poem could be considered a small lapse, committed out of eagerness to please her, but the savaging of those birds in Hampstead Heath... Not that she would have minded the death of two swans as such, that the deed was done in a public place held, however, a certain risk for his safety, as well as her own. Mortals would notice it, they would investigate it, ask questions about it – this she knew better than she would have liked.
Lady Godalming had decided against punishing her servant with the deprivation of nourishment, for this would surely have led to even more problems. In addition, she was sure he suffered sufficiently just by being left alone, bereft of her presence.
She could sense it. With every step she made towards the study, the feeling of grave, nauseating misery intensified. When she opened the door and saw him there, sitting at her desk, his sickly complexion contrasting the darkness, pale blue eyes cast down, going through the paperwork with dithery hands, Lucy could not doubt her choice any longer. Despite his transgressions, she would care for him.
Renfield sprang from his seat, almost knocking over his chair, when he noticed her radiant presence in the gloomy room.
"Mistress, you are back!" He sounded as happy as if the heaviest load had been taken off his mind.
With three hasty steps he was at her side, and ere she could even greet him, fell to his knees before her. Then, the spark of elation on his features suddenly vanished, turning into the deepest misery again.
"Since you were gone, I never had the chance to apologise to you for my mistakes, for my fatal errors," he spoke, his voice on the verge of cracking. "Please, Mistress, please let me tell you how much I regret disobeying you, how deeply I loathe myself for betraying you!"
Tears welled up in his eyes when he looked up at her, features contorted with the most despaired expression she had ever seen on him.
"Mr Renfield..." Lady Godalming tried to calm him in a gentle tone, but he interrupted her with more humble lamentations.
"I will never fail you again, never ever displease you again! I promise, I promise!"
"Mr Renfield..." she attempted a second time, with emphasis evident in her voice.
Her servant didn't listen, instead reached out to clutch at the fabric of her skirts with trembling hands.
"Forgive me, Mistress! Oh, please forgive me!" he cried.
"Richard!" Lucy hissed, both utterly irritated and worried now.
To her satisfaction, the sound of his first name seemed to startle him out of this strange state of frantic submissiveness and he finally stopped wailing, now staring up at her with eyes wide in awe.
"Richard, it is true that you have disobeyed me, but rest assured you have not betrayed me in any way," the lady said, her tone calm and caring.
She then let her lace gloved fingertips wander over his head and along his temple, gently brushing away a loose strand of hair. "Of course, I forgive you."
Eventually, the expression of conscience-smitten torment on his face dissolved into grateful relief and he leant in to her caress as if her hand could grant eternal salvation.
"Oh Lady Lucy, thank you, thank you so much! What an act of kindness!" he sighed happily.
A smile on her crimson lips, she stroked his cheek now.
"I forgive you for that little outburst of yours," she repeated, her tone serious. "But you must beware of showing your true nature in public ever again, and since you seem hardly able to control your instincts in certain situations, I will from now on keep you closer to me."
At her last words, Renfield's eyes widened even more, and his lips began to quiver with elated expectations.
The moon stood full and round in the clearest sky and its gentle light leaked in through the study windows, bathing the room in pure silver, when Lady Godalming bend over her humbly kneeling servant and whispered: "Now bare your neck for me, my boy."
O beauty, passing beauty! Sweetest sweet!
How can thou let me waste my youth in sighs?
I only ask to sit beside thy feet.
Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes.
Might I but kiss thy hand! I dare not fold
My arms about thee – scarcely dare to speak.
And nothing seems to me so wild and bold,
As with one kiss to touch thy blessed cheek.
Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control
Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat
The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke,
The bare word "kiss" hath made my inner soul
To tremble like a lute string, ere the note
Hath melted in the silence that it broke.
– Lord Tennyson
This could not be real! This had to be a dream, another lecherous fantasy of his! And though everything seemed so different, so much more vivid.
At first, he had thought his Mistress's return had been tonight's luckiest moment, then she had called him by his first name, and he had considered himself the happiest man in England, a moment later she had forgiven him all his sins, rendering him speechless with gratitude... and now this!
With trembling fingers, he hurried to loosen his tie, to unbutton the collar of his stainless shirt, granting his Lady access to the vulnerable white skin beneath. He could sense the exhilarating coolness of her breath against his ear, causing every hair on the back of his neck to stand on end, and his pulse quickened to an almost critical velocity, as if his heart attempted to spring from his chest. When her soft lips touched his throat, a thunderbolt of pleasure shot through his whole body. And then he felt it, the sweetest pain! – her fangs piercing his skin, bringing pure, white-hot ecstasy, engulfing him in a vortex of blissful vertigo. Richard Renfield couldn't help but flaccidly fall into Lady Lucy's arms, moaning aloud.
The Westminster Gazette
HAMPSTEAD HORROR
ANIMAL CRUELTY CONFIRMED – CLUE TO POSSIBLE PERPETRATOR
In the case of the cruel killing of two swans in Hampstead Heath – the Westminster Gazette reported – fascinating new facts have been brought to light. Due to the warmer weather, our interviewer was unable to make out any traces of a human assailant at the lake where the dreadful deed was committed. Jacob Barnaby, the park's caretaker, however, attested he saw footprints in the snow when he first found the carcasses of the birds. In addition, an anonymous letter reached the Westminster Gazette yesterday morning, the writer claiming to be a witness visiting the park the night in dispute and to have noticed a strange figure at the waterside. They describe the possible perpetrator as male, tall, having long black hair, pale scarred skin, and inhuman yellow eyes.
Is it a madman or a monster we need looking for in this horrifying case of animal abuse?
The Westminster Gazette will keep you informed.
Dr Seward only briefly skimmed the newest headline, wondering why her secretary kept buying that lurid rag of a paper, before she called her next patient in. When Dr Jekyll entered her office, again accompanied by Frankenstein, she noticed that he looked more composed than the day before. Florence greeted him in a professional manner and showed him to a sofa. She wanted him to be as calm and relaxed as possible this time, so he would be able to fully concentrate on that lost memory. When she told him to, the chemist lay down without any protest and after taking a deep breath, closed his eyes. Soon, the ticking of the clock drew them both into a whirlpool of past events again...
She found herself in a vault-like room full of shelves, glass vials and tubes piled up to the high ceiling. Dr Jekyll stood at a workbench with his back turned to her, preparing some blue concoction she assumed to be the serum he had been talking about. When there was a knock and he called "come in", Florence excitedly waited for the door to open and finally reveal the mysterious woman's face. To her surprise, however, there was no fragile female figure stepping over the threshold, but two burly warders, dragging along a third man, who seemed to be restrained in a straitjacket. Even before she could make out his face in the dim light, she recognised the voice of her former secretary.
"Let go of me, you filthy brutes! I don't want that useless treatment again!" he frantically yelled, but the men relentlessly pushed him down into a barber's chair.
He writhed in their grip, struggling to get free, and they had to fasten him with strong leather straps. When one of the warders reached over him to pull the buckle tight, Renfield's head shot up, mouth wide open and teeth bared, trying to bite off the man's ear. The other, however, was faster in slamming his fist right into the patient's face, whereupon he slumped back, losing consciousness for a moment.
Dr Seward took the chance to have a closer look at Renfield. He appeared even more inhuman than in Jekyll's previous memory, his cheeks hollow, the unhealthily pale skin nerved in blackish veins, lips dry like parchment. Florence was both fascinated and repelled by that change of condition. In a strange way, she pitied her former employee. But that trace of sympathy did not last long, for suddenly his eyes snapped open again, faintly glowing in an unnatural, opalescent blue, and slowly he turned his head to Dr Jekyll, who had approached him, syringe in hand.
"Ah, the incompetent quack doctor..." Renfield drawled in a bizarre tone of exaggeratory cynicism. "Will you puncture my brain again with that mingy little needle of yours? How pathetic!"
Jekyll just knitted his brows, seemingly used to the madman's waffle by now.
"Don't you see that you cannot cure me with that sodding rubbish of an elixir, you moronic botcher?!" the patient spat, his voice harsh again.
Henry wordlessly gestured for the warders to also strap Renfield's head down, so he could precisely place the injection into his eye.
"Leave me be, you goddamn cunts!" the patient screamed, desperately trying to free himself, to twist out of Jekyll's reach, but in vain.
When the syringe slowly pierced his eyeball, releasing the auspicious drug right into his prefrontal cortex, he went still for a moment and both Drs Jekyll and Seward curiously observed him, eager to discover any effect. But there was none. With the needle gone from his eye, the surge of infamous insults poured down onto the chemist again.
"Oh, if you just went back to the fucking colony slum you came from, son of a leprous bitch!"
That had been too much. Jekyll's hand shot forward, seizing Renfield's throat, choking him with all the strength he could muster.
"Silence!" he growled, his voice contorted by violent rage. "I will hear no more of your disgusting defamations!"
Although bereft of breath, the maniac just grinned at him in an almost amused way, baring abnormally pointy teeth. Jekyll let out a scream of white-hot wrath and pressed down on his patient's windpipe even harder. Dr Seward wanted to take a step forward and grasp the chemist's arm, for if he went on with this, he surely would get Renfield killed, but she was confined to watching, unable to alter this memory. Eventually, the warders did what she could not, reaching for Jekyll's arms and forcing the furious doctor away from the barber's chair. Renfield coughed, then, however, burst with unhinged laughter like the raving lunatic he was.
Henry's eyes snapped open, and in an uncontrolled reflex action he struggled to get up from the sofa. Panic-stricken and seemingly unaware of his surroundings he roughly pushed Dr Seward aside and stumbled towards the door. He surely would have fled the psychologist's office, had Victor not been there, blocking his path and seizing his shoulders.
"Henry! Stop!" he called. "Where do you think you're going?"
It took some tantalising long moments, before he came back to himself again, at first staring at his friend in confusion, but then he turned around to face Florence, and suddenly grew so riotously furious in a way that Frankenstein had never seen him before.
"This was the last time you have messed around with my mind, you sick old hag!" he spat, his dark eyes flashing in wrath, pulsing veins protruding on his temples. "Making me relive all those loathsome memories without finding the tiniest hint to whatever fucking caused my amnesia! I wonder who you slept with to get that ridiculous doctorate of yours!"
Before Seward could utter any word to her defence, Jekyll headed for the exit again in long, resolute strides, this time shoving Frankenstein out of the way violently.
"I'm done here! I'm done with both of you!"
With that he slammed the door behind him, leaving a shocked physician and a disturbed psychologist to their thoughts.