“That is most kind and generous of the baroness,” Mr. Merrick said.
“That it is,” Dr. Treves said. “I understand the novelist Charles Dickens used the same box, from time to time. No one shall see you or disturb us.”
“I … I am overwhelmed,” Mr. Merrick said, softly enough to only barely be heard over the noise of the market.
“It is as I’ve told you, John,” Dr. Treves said, smiling. “You are beloved of London.”
“When will I go?”
“Some weeks hence. The eighth of November.”
“May Evelyn come with us?”
Mr. Merrick had earlier said he would ask for me to accompany him, and he’d stayed true to his word, but I did not wish for it in the least. After what had happened, I didn’t want to leave the safety of the hospital again, even for such a fine evening, and even for Mr. Merrick.
“I see no reason why not,” Dr. Treves said. “But the decision lies with Matron Luckes, of course. I shall speak to her about it.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” I said, “but that won’t be necessary.”
“Oh?” Dr. Treves said.
“I thank you for the invitation, but I’ve little interest in the theater, I’m afraid.”
Dr. Treves bore a frown and spoke with indifference. “Suit yourself, Miss Fallow.” Then he returned his attention to Mr. Merrick. “Have you enjoyed your evening?”
I could discern Mr. Merrick nodding beneath his cap and hood. “More than I can say.”
“Splendid, splendid,” Dr. Treves said. “I’m pleased.”
After a stroll back through the market, our outing at an end, I walked Mr. Merrick to the stairway and down to his door, and once inside I helped him prepare for bed. He chose to sleep in his chair that night.
“Where would you like me to put your new boots?” I asked.
“By my bedside,” he said.
“And your dressing case?”
“Perhaps on the table, there.”
I did as he asked, the effect of which seemed to please him enormously from his armchair. The more the appearance of his room approached that of a gentleman’s, the more he seemed to think of himself as one.
“Do you really not have interest in the theater?” he asked me. “I thought you wanted to accompany me.”
“That was before.”
“Before Charles?”
“Before everything, Mr. Merrick.”
“I wish you would come,” he said.
“I know. But you shall go with Dr. Treves, and I’m certain you shall have a grand time.”
The left side of his lips drooped in his subtle rendering of a frown, and though he said nothing more that night, I knew the matter wasn’t settled.
October’s remainder passed with the ominous tension of a humming omnibus rail, the news and rumor of Leather Apron ever present and unremitting. The police took suspects into custody and released them at a rate suggesting they wanted to simply appear to be doing something. Not even the sizable monetary rewards, offered from all quarters, managed to produce an arrest, and letters from someone calling himself Jack the Ripper had become so commonplace a hoax as to be worthless for anything other than wild speculation and controversy.
One day, Beatrice closed her newspaper, slapped it on the table, and declared, “He’s dead.”
“Who’s dead?” Becky asked.
“The Ripper,” she said.
“Do it say that?” Martha asked, looking at the paper, her voice rising in hope.
“No,” Beatrice said. “But that’s why they haven’t nabbed him. If he ain’t supernatural, then he’s dead. Has to be.”
“It were a month almost between the other murders,” Becky said. “They say there’s a pattern to ’em. That’s why the police take precautions every Saturday and Sunday. The Ripper’s bound to kill again.”
“Unless he’s dead,” Beatrice said with a quick nod.
“We can only hope,” I whispered, to which everyone agreed.
The conversation moved on to a cryptic message that had been written on a wall next to the body of Catherine Eddowes, something about the Jews being blamed. The message had been erased, apparently, so as to prevent more of the violence and hatred already escalating along Brick Lane and other Hebrew enclaves. Other papers had moved on to blaming a German, as it seemed there passed a superstition among German thieves that the light from a candle made from a woman’s uterus would have a soporific effect, and this presented a motive for the mutilations. From there, the table’s discussion moved to a group of Spiritualists in Cardiff who’d gone to the police purporting to know the identity of Leather Apron, while a competing séance in Bolton had supposedly achieved the same aim, both of which claims amused me.
“The medium in Bolton says the murderer is a middle-aged navvy with a mustache, living on Commercial Road,” Martha said. “She summoned the spirit of Elizabeth Stride.”
I chortled. “No, she never summoned Long Liz.”
“Oh, Long Liz, is it?” Beatrice said. “You have tea with her or something?”
“That’s what they called her,” I said. “And no one has summoned her spirit.”
“How d’you know?” Becky asked.
I had not the will nor desire to convince her. “Because I know,” I said with a sigh.
The others carried on chattering in their ignorance of the spectral realm, but a moment later, Becky turned to me and whispered, “You all right?”
“Yes, why?” I said.
“You been so touchy lately,” she said. “You got your shawl pulled tight so I can’t hardly see you. For weeks you been … disappearing.”
I wanted to tell her she was right. To disappear was exactly what I wanted. “Everything is as it should be,” I said.
She frowned and worry creased her eyes, but she kept whatever remaining concerns she had to herself. Another week passed after that with no capture of Leather Apron, in spite of the information supplied by the supposed Spiritualists, but also with no murder. I wondered if Beatrice were right, and somehow the fiend had met his end in a way that would forever leave the mystery of his crimes unsolved.
In the afternoon on the day Mr. Merrick was to go to the theater in Drury Lane, Dr. Treves brought him a new suit to wear, and Miss Flemming and Miss Doyle bathed him early for the occasion. Throughout his preparations, which did not involve his boots or his dressing case, Mr. Merrick asked me repeatedly to reconsider my decision, but each time I refused him as politely as I could.
When he and I were alone, in the hour before his departure, he finally declared, “I don’t understand! Do you not wish to be seen with me? If that is so, rest assured, Dr. Treves told me the whole affair will be conducted in secret—”
“Mr. Merrick!” I said. “I assure you, it is not that! If anything, you have greater cause to not be seen with me.”
“You know that is not true.”
“I know no such thing,” I said. “What I do know is that I do not belong out there.”
“Then …” He looked down at his new suit. It was of fine gray woolen fabric and had been tailored to his irregular form, which served to accentuate his deformity rather than hide it, and gave him the appearance of pitiful imitation, a boy in a man’s clothing. “Then do I not belong out there?” he asked.
My heart fractured in the way of ice beneath a warm kettle. “Mr. Merrick, you belong anywhere in this world you choose to be.”
“But you do not?”
“No.”
“Why?” he said. “Why, Evelyn?”
“I am a monster,” I said, remembering the gorilla Charles had mocked. “And I have accepted my cage.”
“Am I not a monster?”
“No,” I said. “Look around you at all these gifts. At your suit. At the theater where you go tonight. Others do not see you as a monster, Joseph. They see you as a man. Unfortunate and deformed, yes, but a man. I’d begun to hope others might see me as a woman, but I know now that will never be so. Not re
ally.”
“You say this because of Charles?”
“Charles merely confirmed what I already knew but had forgotten.”
He bowed his head low enough I wondered if he would be able to raise it again, but he did, and he spoke in his beautiful voice. “I look at my body, and I know my life will be short. I know there is much I will never do as a normal man. You read to me from Emma, but I know I will never … love … a woman. But if I could, you—your scars … such a thing would not prevent me …”
Whatever he had been about to say, he seemed to have lost the nerve to say it, and I felt so overthrown by his sentiment I could but stand in silence as I fought to keep the beating in my heart confined to my chest.
“Do you understand?” he asked.
Each time I tried to open my lips to speak, I felt certain a sob would escape, so I kept them closed until I could safely manage a halting reply. “Mr. Merrick, there isn’t a woman good enough to deserve you.” Then I turned away from him. “Dr. Treves will come for you soon. He said he will look after you upon your return from the theater, so I’m to go to bed. I shall see you in the morning.”
“Evelyn …”
“Good evening, Mr. Merrick.” I hurried from the room without his farewell and ran to my own bed, but the tears had sprung free before I reached it. I cried into my pillow for some time, beset on all sides by angry echoes, each attempting to shout above the others in my mind. I listened hard for Mr. Merrick’s gentle voice, but could not hear it over that of Charles and the matron and every other man and woman who had told me exactly what I’d daily held myself against. I had come to the hospital believing the streets had not really changed me. They had tried, but I thought I’d been stronger, even as unbeknownst to me the harsh words and violence had eaten away at my soul just as the phosphorous had my bone. Now I knew the truth of it. The streets had changed me. They had shown me who I was, and still waited for me even then, cursing me.
At some point, I fell asleep to that vicious sound, and did not awaken even when Becky and Martha came in to bed. Instead, it was the pain in my jaw that woke me.
I lay abed with my eyes pinched shut, quaking, the pain somehow deeper than the roots of my teeth, deeper even than what was left of my jawbone. It stopped my breath and caused me to groan, worse than it had ever been, worse even than after the surgery to cut out my glowing, phosphorus-poisoned bone. I could barely rouse myself through the agony, but thoughts of Mr. Merrick eventually opened my eyes.
A figure stood in a far dark corner of the room, vague, looking like the shadow of a woman who wasn’t there, its breathing a gurgled sucking.
I sat up and scrambled backward on my bed into my own corner, curling my legs up, my hands flailing before me. Becky and Martha appeared to sleep on soundly, even as the shadow stepped toward me, dragging the darkness of the corner with it, as though pulling a moldering shroud over the room.
“P-please,” I whispered, my voice nearly inaudible. “What—”
The ghost was not like the others. It had not gone to Mr. Merrick. It had not been drawn to him. It had been drawn to me, and from it I felt nothing but hatred and malevolence. I couldn’t shrink far enough away from it. I couldn’t escape it, and as it drew nearer, I saw its pale face and looked into the pits of its eyes, the darkest two points in the room, into which all light fell.
It stretched its hand toward me and pushed the tips of its wispy fingers into my mouth. I tasted nothing, but choked and gagged as it seemed to reach its hand down my throat and pull the air from my lungs.
It made no sound, but somehow smothered all other sounds to become the loudest silence in the room. I closed my eyes again as it came close enough for an embrace, the pain in my jaw severe enough to loosen my hold on consciousness. I retained enough of my shattered senses to know when the ghost touched my chest with its other hand, like the sharp tip of an icicle, and then it stabbed that icy dagger into my belly and sliced upward.
My eyes shot open, and I kicked and convulsed, feeling my skin tear as the black, icy woman burrowed inside me, stretching into my gut, my chest, and then my arms and legs, as though I were its clothing. It strained me so taut I couldn’t even scream, and felt I would surely be ripped asunder. But after a few moments’ struggle, the ghost settled, and I blinked my eyes and found my chest and the rest of my body intact. I lay there in my bed as I had been when I’d awoken to the figure in my room, only it was no longer standing in the corner.
It was inside me. I could feel it stirring, like bubbles rising from the sewage-laden Thames. I could hear it hissing and whispering insistently at the back of my thoughts, but I had to listen carefully to understand its meaning, and within a few moments, I was able to discern words and phrases.
Kill her.
“What?” I said.
Kill her.
The sensation of these utterances inside my own head set me writhing, and I leapt from my bed as though to escape it, but the voice followed me.
Kill her.
I quickly dressed and pulled my shawl about me.
Kill her.
I fled the room, raced up the dormitory stairs, then through the foyer and out into Bedstead Square. It was four o’clock in the morning, made darker and colder by a mizzle that wet every stone, cobble, and brick, but the shock of the chill in my nose and lungs restored some clarity to my mind.
Kill her.
The voice still followed me, and I quickly settled on the idea that I had become possessed by the ghost, much as the Spiritualist mediums professed to be. I fought the urge to tear at my chest as Annie had torn at her arm, to pry the spirit out of me. “Who—who are you?” I asked it, my voice still quavering.
The ghost went silent within me for a moment, and then said, I am Black Mary.
“Who?”
I saw you.
I didn’t know what that meant. “You saw me? Where?”
The Ten Bells.
I shook my head, trying to clear away enough fear to remember. I recalled that was the name of the pub in Spitalfields, near Christ Church, where I’d gone with Charles in search of someone who’d known Annie Chapman. That establishment had been nearly empty, but there had been a young woman who’d poked her head in, asking the barkeep if he’d seen a man.
“I remember you,” I said.
Kill her.
Her teeth bit me anew. “What do you mean? Who?”
She who killed me.
I struggled to make sense of that, for I’d assumed the ghost inside me to be another of Leather Apron’s victims, and yet she spoke of a woman having killed her. “Who has killed you?” I asked.
She who killed the others killed me.
“Others?”
Kill her!
I clutched my head against the loudness of the voice, but could not avoid it by closing my ears or stepping away from it. “Please,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
The others came.
“The others?”
The others came and you aided them.
My confusion spread wider and reached deeper, for Black Mary seemed to be saying the other ghosts that had come to Mr. Merrick, the four I had helped, had been murdered by the same person who had murdered her. Such a conclusion would mean Leather Apron was not a man at all, but a very different kind of fiend.
Kill her.
“You want me to kill … Leather Apron?”
Yes.
Kill her.
“No,” I whispered. I’d already done much more than I would’ve thought I could, and endured more than I would’ve thought I could bear. To think of going back out into the city, to confront the murderer, the one who had evaded capture and slain five women in so brutal a fashion, was enough to bring me to the edge of madness. “I won’t do it,” I said. “Don’t ask me.”
Kill her!
“No.”
Kill her! Rip her! Bleed her!
“No!” I shouted, my voice resounding up the walls of the hospital to either side of the square.<
br />
I will leave you, Black Mary said, and I sensed her sliding and tugging on my sinews, in the direction of Mr. Merrick’s door. I will go to him instead.
“No, please!” I said. “I beg of you. He can’t take anymore. Leave him be!”
Kill her.
I looked from Mr. Merrick’s door toward the hospital gate through which I had thought never to leave again. I felt the city brooding beyond its bars, waiting for my return, eager to reclaim me as its own, and I realized then my stay in the hospital had been but an indulgence, a delusion I had been allowed, but it had now come inevitably to its end, and I was to return home. I had thought I could escape my death there, but the truth was that my fate had long since been decided.
“This will be my end,” I said.
Go. Kill her.
I knew Mr. Merrick might be awake, perhaps still bedazzled by the spectacle of the Drury Lane pantomime, but I did not wish to burden him with a farewell he could not understand. My refusal of him the night before had only brought him pain and confusion, and I could explain this no better. He had always walked above the streets, whilst I had been made by them, as had Leather Apron, and that remained the difference between Mr. Merrick and me that he would never see, because of who he was.
I turned toward the gate and roused the porter to let me out.
“Bit early for an errand, eh, Miss Fallow?” he said. “Not quite five yet.”
“Some things must be done when they must be done,” I said.
“True enough,” he said. “Mind yourself, though. That devil ain’t caught yet.”
“Not yet,” I said as I passed through the gate. I then turned up East Mount Street toward Whitechapel.
Hurry, Black Mary said.
“I don’t know where I’m going.”
I will lead you.
A subtle strumming on my fibers and tendons propelled me forward, guiding me along the street. At the end of East Mount, it pulled me west, and since it was too early yet for the omnibuses to be running and I’d left my money behind in my room, I walked. The crossing of Whitechapel proved perilous, for rain had slicked it with mud, and the carts and wagons careened, but on the other side, next to the greengrocer’s, I came to the boarded-up waxworks where Mr. Merrick had been displayed. There I stopped, kissed the tips of my fingers, and laid them against the mildewed wood.
A Taste for Monsters Page 26