by C H Chelser
Everything around her stopped dead. ‘What? You want me to fight that monster?’
‘You stood up to it before.’
‘That was blind panic! I could never do it again.’
‘You must. To save your daughter, you must.’
‘In the cards, you promised me protection.’
Jean smirked. ‘Few forces can match that of a furious mother bear protecting her cub.’
‘But I thought you—’
‘I cannot do what needs to be done. The... How do I explain? If devourers are at the darkest end of the scale of existence, guides such as myself are too far at the other end. Our energies are incompatible. But incarnated souls like you are at the very centre of that scale, and therefore crucial steps closer to bridging the gap. You are able to reach them, whereas I cannot even come close. What I will do for you is keep the child hidden while you fight the devourer, but I cannot fight with you in that confrontation.’
‘You are mad,’ Mercedes exclaimed as she shot to her feet. ‘I know about the economics of a shop and about dealing with personnel. What do I know about fighting demons?’
‘Think of your daughter. If not you, then who will? But indeed you have no chance if you were to attempt this by yourself. You do need help, just not mine.’ He rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands. ‘You will need the help of the one you believed to be the greatest danger.’
Cold dread dimmed the lights in the cathedral to a night-time glow. Mercedes shuddered as a thought of ice touched her jaw and her clothes sagged with the weight of imaginary water.
‘The water is not the herald of your enemy,’ Jean said. ‘The wind is.’
His words nudged the memory of book pages turning in the cold breeze blowing through the cellar. The wetness had only come afterwards.
So, two of them. Two dark entities, both aware of her. Both no doubt aware of Danielle as well.
‘Oh God, help me.’
Jean gave her a careful smile. ‘God is all of existence, and existence helps those who help themselves.’
‘Then... I’m alone?’
‘No. I am here, am I not? I will help you however I can. So will he, but you will need to gain his trust first. You already have his attention, which is more than...’ His pained expression looked alien on his kind features. He shook his head. ‘You have a chance to reach him. And you must succeed in doing so, because without his help, you have no hope of dealing with the true danger.’
Mercedes stared into the growing darkness. She heard Danielle’s cheerful giggles and wrung her hands. ‘This is ridiculous. Me, fighting a demon? Impossible! I cannot do this.’
‘Nor will I make you. However, you should understand that the only alternative is to wait for the next victim to fall, and then the next, each time praying your daughter will be spared. The devourer may move on to new hunting grounds in time, but there is no telling how long that will take. If you wish to take that risk, I cannot stop you, but know that I cannot keep the girl hidden forever.’
She got to her feet and began pacing, raking her hands through her fringe until her hair came loose.
‘How do I even begin to go about this?’
‘You will find a way.’ Jean rose until they stood face to face. ‘But now you must make haste. The perception of time here is very different from that of the physical world, and your body has gone too long without your soul already.’
‘But, how can I—?’
‘Go.’
‘Not without saying goodbye to—!’
The rest of her words were washed away by the river that rushed into the cathedral and swept up only her.
‘No! Jean!’
The water rushed her out through the doors, into a fathomless abyss that ended with a heavy feeling in her head and a raspy noise that resembled her name. She called out to Jean again, but her head was fuzzy and her mouth impossible to locate. In the distance, her own name echoed back at her.
The next time she heard it, the voice grew clearer and dragged her out of the depths of stupor. Her body was stiff and cold, as if she had slept too long without blankets. The first attempt at movement was slow and restrained. She shivered despite the touch and warmth of the covers making themselves felt at last, first on her limbs and then on her torso.
“It’s the laudanum,” someone said. Eric. “The maid said she had given my wife a teaspoon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the stupid girl screwed up the dose.”
“Well, from what you describe, Monsieur Fabron, a good dose was required, hmm?” grunted a second voice. “It was not too much, obviously, which is, hmm, good. However, if your wife is not used to the tincture...”
“Not anymore,” Eric interrupted. “Lord knows there were times she couldn’t do without, but these days she will not take any unless I insist.”
“Hmm, wise decision to do so, monsieur. Madame Fabron? Madame, can you hear me?”
At last Mercedes rediscovered how to prise her eyes open. The bed curtains had been pulled back and a bleary morning light lit the room. At her bedside sat an older man with white stubble on his chin.
“...Jean?”
The man harrumphed, but looked over his shoulder to a lanky man who could only be Eric. While she stared, her husband’s face slowly came into focus. He was scowling.
“No idea who she means. One of her amorous liaisons, I suppose,” he snapped.
“Yes, you did mention that,” the other said. “Madame Fabron, are you awake?”
Now her vision had cleared, she could not see how she had mistaken the bespectacled heap for a kind spirit. The man sat slumped in the chair, his shoulders hunched in the folds of the overcoat he hadn’t bothered to take off. Dull eyes, one of which had gone glassy with age, lacked any form of congeniality. Her memory dredged up the accompanying name.
“Doctor Hubert, good morning.” The words slurred a fraction by her bone-dry mouth and lingering drowsiness.
“Yes, well, good evening, madame,” the old man replied with exaggeration.
Evening? The soft drumming at the back of her skull swelled. “What do you mean, ‘evening’?” Mercedes asked as she struggled to sit.
“What monsieur le docteur is saying,” Eric’s sharp tones cut in, “is that you have been unconscious all day.”
All she could manage was a blank stare as her throbbing head began to pound in earnest. She pressed her wrists to her forehead, but both Eric and the doctor ignored her distress.
“Madame, tell me, hmmm, what you do recall of the events last night?”
Mercedes pressed harder. Her head, her face, her body, everything hurt. What had happened to her? Oh yes, Eric had happened. Then the angel, Jean – wasn’t he here just now? – and Danielle. She had called for Danielle. She had called and Eric—Good Heavens!
“I had a nightmare,” she began, face still hidden in her hands. “I remember getting up and going to the kitchen to make myself some tea and— Oh God! The tea!” She gasped, but caught her tongue before she said too much. “I-I never did get around to putting the kettle on, did I?”
“No,” Eric snapped, “because you were crying and screaming loud enough you had me thinking there were burglars.”
“I did?” Her fingernails scraped across her scalp. She had been overwrought when she had cried out so. But Danielle was safe for now. Safe, not gone.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Mon cher, I swear, I must have been half-asleep still.”
Danielle was safe. Now she had to keep her end of the bargain to make sure she stayed safe. And herself. What was the time? Evening, they had said. Merde! Maybe she could still make herself a cup of the infusion before its effectiveness diminished?
Beside the bed, Eric physically turned to Hubert. “Your thoughts, doctor?”
“I have some idea, yes, monsieur, but let us not be hasty. You mentioned you suspect amorous supplication addressed to others than yourself, hmm?”
Eric’s expression became one of extreme displeasure, but he nodded. The simple gestur
e riled Mercedes’ still simmering indignation.
“Your suspicions alone do not make them true. I am faithful!” She moaned when her head protested her righteous outrage. “Always have been, too,” she added at a whisper.
Eric glared at her. “She insists on her loyalty, but her behaviour is erratic at best, monsieur le docteur. As are her explanations.”
“Only to you!” she exclaimed.
The doctor silenced Eric’s reply with a wave of his hand and a belligerent smile. “Do not worry yourself, monsieur, hmm? Compulsory lying is merely another symptom to confirm my initial diagnosis. Nothing to be surprised about.” He leered over the rim of his glasses. “The bruises on her neck and face, are they self-inflicted?”
“No,” Mercedes spat. “He—”
“They are an unfortunate consequence of my attempts to subdue her unwarranted passions,” Eric interjected.
“Naturally,” Hubert said without a trace of question. “This is not your wife’s first episode of incongruity, as I recall?”
“There have been several in the past, as monsieur le docteur well knows, but she was sombre rather than passionate then. And this is the first time I have known her to hallucinate as well.”
Hubert took off his spectacles and began to polish the lenses with his handkerchief. “Nightmares, screaming, lying, sexual promiscuity, hallucinations.” He checked the glasses and, satisfied, put them back on. Mercedes wanted nothing more than to rip them from his nose again, but anything she said or did now would only confirm the doctor’s list of supposed symptoms.
“Yes, I have seen enough.” Hubert got up from his chair with great difficulty. “A moment to speak with you alone, monsieur.”
“Certainly.” Eric leaned in and tilted Mercedes’ chin up with a finger. “Rest a while longer, madame. I will send in the maid to see to your needs.”
“Thank you, mon cher.” The last two words stung like acid and her left cheek throbbed, but she forced a smile. Groggy as she was, the situation was perfectly clear: decorum was of great essence. So she waited with faked resignation for the men to exit.
Yet the moment Amélie came in, Mercedes jumped out of bed on unsteady legs and shooed the maid back out the door.
“I need to hear what they are saying,” she hissed under her breath. “Amélie, be my ears for me. Quickly!”
The door shut again, the sound of it thundering through her aching head. Her back was stiff with tension of all sorts and her empty stomach roiled. Hubert had been a good doctor in his prime, but with her medical history, she held the same distrust of doctors as she did of priests. Lord only knew what he imagined she was suffering from, never mind how he intended to treat it.
She had no time for this nonsense. The only medicine she needed was Anne’s tea, but with Gagnon in the kitchen, she couldn’t get to it, even if she did find a way to be alone long enough to prepare and drink the putrid infusion without anyone noticing.
Mercedes sat down on the bed, leaning on the footboard as she shivered her numbed extremities back to life. No, she would have to wait. Wait for Amélie, wait for Eric’s next move, wait for the dead of night to make her tea and pray it would still work. And wait for a chance to do what Jean had asked of her.
Or had he? Her body and mind felt like they had all those years ago, when laudanum was all that allowed her to sleep. She had only taken a dose of the tincture to spare Amélie Eric’s wrath, but good intention didn’t change the fact that her sleep had been drug-induced, and thus her dreams as well. The light, the shelter of Notre Dame, Danielle. Had any of it been any more than a figment of her desperate imagination?
A thud on the floorboards by her feet. She started and looked down, just in time to see the dark glass bottle of laudanum roll away under the bed, out of sight.
Her mouth opened to shape a name, but she swallowed it. If Eric or even Amélie overheard her call someone in an empty room, no doubt Hubert would have a name for that, too. She refused to give them that satisfaction.
You need not speak to be heard.
The voice had been faint, muddled by her laudanum-frayed thoughts, but a part of her recognised it at once. However, what Jean meant by it got lost when the opening door demanded all her attention.
“The doctor has left, madame,” Amélie said as she hurried in with a pitcher and a cup. “I went to the kitchen to fetch you some water, and I stopped by the parlour door on the way, as you asked.”
Mercedes waved the words away. “The how does not interest me. What, what did they say?”
“Sorry, madame, I didn’t understand everything. But I did hear the doctor say to monsieur that there are excellent treatments these days.”
“Treatments for what?”
Amélie cowered a fraction. “I-I don’t know the word, madame. It sounded a bit like ‘hyacinth’, only it ended with an ‘a’, I think?”
That narrowed the possibilities down to one. “Hysteria,” Mercedes whispered under her breath. Her headache intensified.
“Monsieur told the doctor he couldn’t spare you from the shop, and the doctor said that, well, making yourself, um, useful. He said that would help.”
From there, the maid’s words muddled into an indistinct mutter.
Hysteria. She had heard the term first after Danielle’s death had broken her mind, but it had never been the final diagnosis before.
“Did the doctor say anything more about those treatments?”
Amélie fidgeted with her apron. “Yes, madame. At least, I think he did, but then he used all these words I don’t know.” She shrugged her uneven shoulders. “I’m sorry, madame.”
“No, it is... You did well, girl. And thank you for the water. I really am thirsty.”
Eager to please, Amélie poured her a cup. The water was lukewarm, but welcome nevertheless. The bad taste left by the laudanum diluted a bit more with every sip. The foul taste of the situation, however, was more persistent.
“Madame?”
“Yes, girl.”
“If I may ask, what is high... his...?”
“Hysteria?”
“Yes, madame.”
“It is what doctors call a woman who is sick, but not from any conventional illness.”
The maid paled. “Are you ill, madame?”
“No.” She tried to smile, now recalling bits of how shaken Amélie had been last night. “I do have nightmares, but so does everyone, on occasion. Possibly I was sleepwalking last night.” She wondered if that was a symptom of hysteria, too. Hubert probably considered it so and by extension, so would Eric.
“But if you’re not ill, then surely the doctor saw that, didn’t he?” Amélie blurted.
He should have, but he hadn’t. Therein lay the danger.
As she mulled that thought over inside her, the tension in her body gradually mutated from apprehension into anger, and finally into fury. The cup in her hands shook, but that was all she would show of the storm within.
“Amélie, tell Gagnon to fetch me a light dinner on a tray. I will dine here. Then prepare my dark blue dress for tomorrow.”
The maid looked momentarily confused, but bobbed a quick courtesy. “Yes, madame.”
Alone again, Mercedes poured herself another cup of water from the pitcher. Amélie’s parting words reminded her of Jean, and of Danielle. She couldn’t say for sure whether her dream of them had or hadn’t been just that. Tomorrow, when she was calmer and her head no longer felt like it would cave in, she would try to find confirmation either way. For now she would be a good patient and keep to her bed. The prospect of sleeping next to Eric repulsed her after what he had done to her yesterday and then this evening, but likely she needn’t worry about his company. Knowing him, the shops’ accounts would take her place tonight.
***
The sanctuary of solitude enveloped him as he floated on the dark currents. After the confusion at the outer edge, the silence of his haven had cleared away the unwanted memories assaulting his mind. Their interference had not ceas
ed entirely, but in the soothing cold they had been reduced to mere background noise. An annoyance, no more. Even so, he would have preferred to be rid of them altogether. Recent events were far more interesting than haphazard flashes of a time that no longer mattered.
What he had found down in the deepest darkness galled him. Devourers in their very essence were abominations, outcasts of life that clung to the bottom of the drain. The fact they existed at all was abhorrent, but that they did suggested that existence grudgingly accepted these miscreants. Provided they stayed where they belonged.
This one hadn’t. Moreover, its very presence in the higher planes had caused unprecedented upheaval. Damnable creature!
Of course, a certain amount of chaos could not be avoided. Like the living city he haunted was never rid of criminal and dissident intentions, the astral side of existence had its own malefactors. But inevitability it did not equate to approval. On the contrary. It merely meant that the task he had taken on himself would continue indefinitely.
The hunter’s fire roared in his chest, yet he maintained his dispassionate air with rigid determination. Beyond, night had fallen. It was time to make his move.
He surfaced slowly from the cold currents and climbed the fog to street level. Once his feet touched the pavement, the fog rolled back far enough for him to recognise the shadows of the Cité. Humans and carriages passed him by. Between them, among them, ghosts went about their own business.
He let his mind search the ether. Numerous intentions crossed his awareness, but he discarded them without a second thought. Some tempted his appetite, but petty prey was not what he was after tonight.
When he at last caught the energetic scent he was looking for, he set off along the threshold between the physical and the astral planes to find the source. Hunting big game took preparation, and some hunts were best conducted with assistance.
Humans hurried past him through what looked like heavy rain. He saw the drops fall from the sky, but only when he chose to. If the others’ ghosts skulking around him registered such trivial details of their neighbouring plane, then they ignored them in favour of getting out of his way. Thus either world disregarded the other, although they were equally clear to whoever cared to walk this fine line between them. He rarely did. Doing so required concentration better employed to increase his focus. He would have made no exception tonight, had the trail he followed now not teetered on this threshold.