Mayhem (33 page)

The other two did not understand; perhaps they were too absorbed in their own roles. The priest had withdrawn into himself even more as he continued with his preparations, whatever they were – although he would not share what he was preparing for. Aaron presumed he was readying himself to kill Harrington. He himself had never taken the priest for a moral man, for all he was a man of the cloth.

Aaron himself wished Harrington dead: he wished it every morning he awoke, sweating and screaming in fear, with the stink of the river filling him. He was just too scared to do anything about it himself.

Dr Bond had changed too. They met every few days near Dr Hebbert’s house. Once Harrington had arrived home, the doctor would go out to take the evening air, strolling to the corner where he and the priest would be waiting in the shadows. The changes were obvious; even at his most fevered Aaron could see it. Did Bond
realise he had developed a nervous tic in his left eyelid? There was often a familiar sweet scent on him too, and not from laudanum. The dark circles around Bond’s eyes were now hollow caverns. If he was sleeping, it was not often.

Inside, a thick-waisted man with a huge silver moustache was ordering more drinks, and the women were laughing more loudly. Harrington was joining in, but his back was stiff, and he was clearly uncomfortable. Aaron had never really considered the man before he had started this almost constant watching. Until then, plagued by his own visions, he had seen only the
Upir
, not the host. He had discovered James Harrington to be a measured man, serious, slightly reserved – but even so, it was hard to separate the man from the monster, and knowing the parasite attached to him made him weep, especially if his dreams had been particularly bad. He could not start thinking of Harrington as a victim, not if they were to succeed in their hunt.

He was thirsty, and the heat was making his head spin a little, so he rested it against the cool bricks. He needed to drink more, but he could not bear the touch of water. He would deal with it after this was all over –
is that what Dr Bond thought about the laudanum, too
, he wondered,
that he would stop when this was all over?
In the middle of the night, Aaron could not help wondering who was really the hunted, who was the hunter? Were they three all part of the
Upir
’s game, or was everything exactly as it should be? His grandmother used to talk
of destinies. Perhaps she had been speaking directly to him.

He glanced back in the window – and his idle thoughts vanished. Harrington and another man were getting up to leave, and one of the women was standing between them. Aaron noticed how pale Harrington’s skin was – and that two small purple patches were starting to bloom on his neck.

He turned to race round to the front entrance on the main road and instead collided with a woman standing behind him, sending her tumbling backwards to the filthy ground.

‘Oi!’ she called out, ‘watch yerself!’

Aaron muttered an apology and started to push through the gaggle of drinkers, but a burly arm pulled him back. ‘You stinking bastard,’ the man growled. The hand was a dockworker’s hand, thick and muscular, and his arm felt as brittle as a stick in the man’s strong grip. His face twitched nervously and he spat a little as he spoke, spluttering out more apologies in a string of words, some English and some Polish, needing desperately to get away, to see where Harrington was. He turned his head helplessly, trying to see behind him.

‘Oh, let ’im go. He’s clearly touched.’ The woman had picked herself up and now she stood over Aaron. ‘Blimey, does ’e stink – you can wash your ’and before you touch me after touching ’im.’ She laughed, and suddenly Aaron was free. He did not wait to hear
what else the docker might say to him but darted to the front – just in time to see a flash of a red dress climbing inside before the hansom cab took off, following another a few feet ahead.

He stared after the carriages, his chest pounding. Which man had the woman left with? Harrington, or his companion?

His thin shoulders slumped. He would have to tell the priest. He stared for a moment longer, and then realised, with no small amount of relief, that there was nothing more for him to do than go home.

41

London. August, 1889

Dr Bond

‘When do you think he will be home?’

I took the dinner tray from Juliana’s lap and placed it on the table by the window. It was dark outside, and the street was empty. I glanced to the corner where the priest and Kosminski and I would meet, but the shadows held no waiting figures.

‘I imagine he is very busy.’ I closed the curtains and turned back to her, forcing a smile as I turned up the gas lamp on the wall. Juliana did not object, even though she was settling down to sleep for the night.

‘I thought perhaps he would be home more often now that this stupid strike is on. There can hardly be any work for him to do if no ships are being unloaded.’

I sat on the side of the bed and checked her pulse, which was strong and even. She looked better than she had in a few days, and had eaten a little more too.

‘But no,’ she continued, ‘he is never here.’ She sighed and leaned back against her pillows, closing her eyes. I thought she looked quite beautiful. ‘Sometimes I wonder what happened to the man I married, Thomas. I really do. He is like a stranger.’

I clenched my fist to stop my hand trembling, digging the nails into my pain.

‘Sometimes,’ she said sadly, ‘I am quite glad we are sleeping in separate rooms.’

‘It will be better when you feel better,’ I said. ‘And of course when the baby comes. You are both just very tired.’

My words seemed to soothe her, and I waited until she had drifted off to sleep before turning the light down and closing the door. It took all my strength to remain composed around her when I loathed every moment I spent in this awful house. Despair seeped from the walls, and I had no choice but to breathe it in. Even the brightly coloured wallpapers had dulled, as if the wickedness of what lived here had spread its darkness.

In the study I sought out the small box I had hidden amongst the books. I still had the priest’s pipe, and I had taken the precaution of going to my favoured den and purchasing a supply of the poppy. As usual, Chi-Chi had remained silent as he sold me what I required. The laudanum might enough to calm me during the day, but at night, in this awful house, knowing that Harrington and that
thing
were so close to me, I needed something more. I could not increase my dosage – I was beginning to have problems with my bladder, and the trembling was on the verge of turning into convulsion – but I truly needed the oblivion I had in the past sought on Chi-Chi’s cot. I needed something
to dispel the awful dread that pervaded the Hebberts’ house.

I prepared the opium and then sat in Charles’ favourite wingback chair and lit the pipe. I breathed deeply of the sweet smoke, then, with the last of my energy, put the equipment back in the box and closed the lid before relaxing. Tension eased out of the muscles of my neck and shoulders and my jaw hung slack, a blessed relief from the ache that had settled in from gritting my teeth so tightly all day.

Upstairs, Juliana would be sleeping as the child who was so determined to make her ill grew in her belly. I found the pregnancy disturbing: what was she carrying? Her husband’s child? Or was there some part of the parasite that had transferred into her womb too? Was that why she suffered so much with sickness, because she was bearing a monster’s child? The lamp was on low, and even as I drifted in the opium haze there were too many shadows for my comfort. I tried not to think about the baby; there was nothing I could do about that. James Harrington was the quarry, and all I could do was watch and wait.

I must have fallen into some sort of unconscious sleep, because I awoke with a start, feeling cold and achy, as if I had been in the same position for too long. I was at first completely lost to my surroundings, expecting to be in my bed at home, and instead finding myself dressed and upright. The shapes in the room were all wrong …

It was dark.

The fog in my brain began to clear and I slowly remembered my whereabouts. Had I turned the light down? I did not think so. Pale light trickled in from the night sky outside, but barely crept as far as my feet. I sniffed and coughed, my throat dry from breathing through my open mouth, and I looked around me. My opium box was still there – surely if I had gone to the trouble of turning out the lights, I would have put it back in its hiding place? Admittedly, what I did under the influence of the drug was not always clear but I had to presume I would act as I did normally. My back ached as I leaned forward, and I started to shiver away the drop in my body’s temperature. I needed to turn the light on. The house was oppressive enough in daylight; at night I found the tension unbearable.

I went to stand, and then froze as my eyes, now growing accustomed to the gloom, locked on something at the other side of the room: a dark outline, a figure, just behind the open door, not quite in and not quite out of the room, bisected down the middle by the dark wood. He remained perfectly still.

With my heart in my mouth, I got carefully to my feet and turned up the lamp. The clock showed it was nearly one o’clock.

Harrington stayed where he was, standing silently just behind the door, his hands hanging by his sides. He continued to stare at me, and I tried not to look at
the space around his shoulder. I could not see the
Upir
, but that did not mean it was not watching me.

‘James?’ I asked, my voice cracking slightly, ‘are you all right?’ His pale skin was coated in a sheen of sweat that looked like grease, and a patch of purple on his right cheekbone was loud against his pallor. His blond hair was untidy: it was obvious the sickness was coming for him again.

He frowned at me.

‘I must have dozed off while reading,’ I said, despite any lack of evidence in the form of a book. How long had he been watching me? Ten minutes? An hour? I shivered. ‘I should go to bed.’ I kept my tone light. ‘So should you. It’s very late, and you look rather unwell.’

‘I had a letter from Charles and Mary. I saw you were sleeping, but I thought you would like to know: they are coming back. In a week.’

He turned and walked away without waiting for any response. I heard him make his way steadily up the stairs. Charles was coming back. I could go home. I picked up the box and turned the light down, despite loathing the darkness. I tried not to imagine that the
Upir
had somehow separated itself from the host and was waiting for me in the hallway.

I still had the dregs of the opium floating in my system, but my fear had overwhelmed it. I climbed the stairs with haste, and by the time I reached my bedroom, the furthest along the corridor, I was virtually running.

I slammed the door shut and leaned against it, breathless and twitching, until my momentary flood of relief was swallowed up by the sudden conviction that Harrington was somewhere in the room, staring at me in the dark, just as he had been when I had awakened downstairs. I lunged for the wall light, my trembling hands making it almost impossible to strike a flint to light the gas. I was flinching against an immediate attack: the
Upir
was coming for me, I was sure of it.

I finally managed to light the gas, and stayed huddled into the wall for several moments before slowly opening my eyes. My bedroom was empty. I looked into each corner and the wardrobe, and then dropped to my knees to search under the bed, but there was nothing. I was safe. Harrington was not here.

I sat on the bed, sweating and exhausted, and let my shoulders slump. I looked up at the door.

After a moment, I picked up the occasional chair by the washstand and wedged it under the handle. I would leave the light on.

42

London. September, 1889

Aaron Kosminski

Sometimes in his dreams he could not breathe. His face was pressed into the floor and splinters cut into his cheeks. It was dark. He was terrified. He knew this could not end well.

The visions came too fast to keep under control: sometimes he was at the bottom of the lake, his nostrils clogged with mud, anger and hunger itching at every pore as if something wanted to explode free from his skin. Other times, he was walking the streets of London at night, tired, a weight on his back. He wanted to claw the skin from his face, to tear it free and scream his madness from the rooftops. He wanted to be
free
. He wanted to cry. He wanted to
hunt
.

Here and there, in the suffocating dark, he would see flashes of red: crimson red, with lace trim, gone in a second, swallowed up by the yawning, endless eternity of wickedness that wanted to claim him – or washed away in the river …

The river. The red. The wickedness.

The visions were trying to tell him something – but when he woke, screaming and sweating and tangled in his sheets, he could only remember the fear.

43

London. September, 1989

Dr Bond

Fate lives in the shadow of coincidence.

We collided, both full-flight, in the middle of Westminster. At first I did not recognise him, but as I crouched to help gather his papers, the familiarity of his face struck my memory. Where had I seen him before?

‘I do apologise,’ I said, handing the ruined documents to him. It had rained heavily in the night and the streets were muddy and as I picked up a ledger I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket to wipe it down as best I could. The collision was my fault, I was sure of it – as was ever the case these days, my mind was not where I was. I had moved back into my own house a week or so before, but the relief I had hoped to find had not come. I still had the awful feeling that the
Upir
was coming for me, and I had not kept the promises I had made to myself, that I would stop taking the opium and cut back on the laudanum as soon as I had left the Hebberts’.