by C H Chelser
“If it is in my power...”
“Please allow me my freedom just a while longer.”
His uneasy smiled faltered as she stepped back. Astonished, he let her.
“But madame... you stand accused of murdering your children. And–and I found you here as the only witness to this woman’s death. How can I ignore that? How, when your husband is already searching for you and my colleagues will follow soon?” He ran a hand across his face. “Please, madame, let me take you to the station. For your own safety!”
“I will turn myself in, I promise. Just not immediately. A few hours will suffice.” She looked into his eyes. “I ask no more of you.”
***
In the recesses of his mind surfaced the echo of a weary voice. “I am your prisoner. Dispose of me as you will,” it said, over and over again. “Dispose of me as you will.”
And he had. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t, but he had broken his oaths to himself and his superiors and done the one thing he had sworn he would never be guilty of.
He had relented.
***
Inspecteur Baudoin’s big hands squeezed her shoulders, poised to apprehend her as they both knew he should. “I must admit... I’m very fond of you, Madame Fabron. Too fond, perhaps. But I’m also a policeman. How can I forsake my duty just because it doesn’t suit me?”
***
The unknown soul marker pulsed with a familiar energy. He recognised its frequency and relished it: determination, honour. Righteousness!
A thoughtful swipe of his arm accented his approval.
***
A single chill ran down her back, like a ball of ice tracing the curve of her spine. Or the head of a certain cane. Remembering Jean’s story, she understood.
“We both have a duty to do, my dear inspector. When I have done mine, I will come to you so you may do yours.”
The inspector’s bright eyes glistened, his conflicted thoughts swirling about him like crows circling the gallows. “I must report your friend’s death,” he began, chewing the inside of his cheeks between words. “That duty shouldn’t be delayed.”
***
Duty. This soul throbbed with it, yet something inside it was still stronger: justice.
***
“But perhaps... Perhaps I needn’t mention finding you here if you leave immediately.” He looked to his side. “That window. Will you fit?”
“Leave? Through the window?”
He nodded. “If no one sees you come out of that door after I came in, no one can ask questions I don’t want to answer. Go now, madame. Quickly!”
A sharp cold prickled the back of her neck, spurring her on to climb onto the bed. Mercedes hesitated a moment, but no longer. She tried her hardest to ignore the broken rune stones as well Anne’s broken body as she opened the cellar window.
“Monsieur l’inspecteur, I owe you—”
“You owe me nothing, madame,” he said, his tone heavy with defeat. “May God keep you.”
***
He observed the interaction with outright astonishment.
Could that be? Could one who served justice be required to break laws in the interest of that service? Could one be justified to negate one’s duty? Did such a situation exist? If so...
If so, then could it be that his damnable choice had been justified? That setting free his one prey, the elusive fly that had spared the spider, had been...just?
The ramifications of the hypothesis alone threatened to upend every truth he had ever known. Fighting his reeling mind, he nearly missed how a handful of salivating parasites scattered in panic to evade the shreds of an approaching shadow.
***
Worming through the cellar window, the opening proved as narrow as the chance her dear inspector had granted. Her skirts caught on splinters and old nails, dragging after her like an anchor. Thank Heavens she had forgone that wretched crinoline earlier. She pulled hard, but her dress only came loose once the fabric tore. Better that than her skin.
The patio behind the shop bordered several other tall, crooked buildings of the kind that comprised this neighbourhood. The dark outline of their rooftops was just visible against the glow of the city. Left and right cheap candles lit small, grimy windows, but little else. She staggered on the uneven dirt, bumping into barely discernible furniture and storage crates that forever littered these backdoor extensions of Paris’ cramped houses.
A wordless whisper brushed the edge of her awareness, urgent but too distant to understand. She willed her addled mind to find it, but a sudden, intense cold assaulted her from within. Around her, a gush of wind spiralled between the buildings. Her heartbeat drummed frantically through her veins, drowning out the wisps of words that floated just beyond her reach.
Wind and cold permeating from the shadows. L’Autre.
She hurried across the patio, towards the street lanterns beckoning her from the far end of the nearest alley. But halfway, thick cast iron bars, higher than her, blocked the only exit. The light promising her freedom now etched the sharp spikes along the top of the fence, their sole purpose to discourage climbers and impale those who tried regardless. She quickly searched for the latch, but her exploring fingers discovered a clump of weather-beaten chains instead.
Locked.
A chilly draught nipped at her calves, creeping up her thighs. Mercedes strangled a cry of frustration and shook the fence. Two men, reeking and rowdy, passed on the other side, but they only laughed at her predicament. Their slurred curses drowned out her pleas.
“Help me,” she whispered, no longer to anyone. “Please, help me?”
In her palms, the bars grew cold, almost freezing. Her jaw clenched.
“Leave me alone! You shall not have me, too!”
Another spot of moisture spread on the underside of her jaw. Sharply defined and no larger than her fist, it tilted her chin upwards as she had last time she had felt this sensation.
“M’sieur?”
The rusty chains rattled against the bars. She found the lock, but the cold metal bit into her skin. Pressure and droplets manifested around her, as they had in another alley not far from here in time or distance. Back then, two thugs had received a merciless beating. Now, the padlock began to twist. Fraction by fraction it opened, pulled apart by shadows alone, until the weathered links slipped out and the chain clattered onto the sparse cobblestones of the alleyway.
The unseen cane jutted her side. Hurry. Your distasteful colours will not discourage it for much longer.
Mercedes ignored his crass honesty and ran, down the narrow alley towards the yellowish lantern light, the rattle of hoof beats, cartwheels and voices in the nearby rue de Constantine.
Too slow. The other is closing in. You must cross.
His uncompromising thought brooked no argument, and she offered none. She would leave her body behind, but not out in the streets. Not where that meant throwing herself to predators of all kinds.
Safety is arbitrary. There is no sanctuary once the creature strikes.
“Sanctuary?” She dithered a moment at the corner of the sidewalk, catching her breath and considering her options. “Oh, how foolish of me.”
Joining the busy main street, she only slowed to circumvent the crowd of people and carriages. People paid her no attention but to yell whenever she brushed them too roughly in passing. ‘Dirty beggar’, ‘gypsy’, ‘filthy whore’ and worse. She bit back her indignation, and kept running as she turned into rue de la Cité, heading in the direction of the Petit Pont.
She had not yet covered half the distance when sharp stitches in her side forced her to stop for breath again. Gasping and whining against the corset to draw in the air her body demanded, she leaned heavily against the polished panels of a storefront. A group of young men approaching from the opposite direction sneered at her, their every remark more derogatory than the last and thinking it great sport.
The other is closing fast. Your body hinders you. Leave it.
“Not.
.. yet.”
Despite the spots swimming before her eyes, Mercedes started down the street again, although at a slower pace than before for fear that she might lose consciousness. She wiped a strand of hair from her face, her bun now entirely undone. Clothes torn, face bloodied and dirt everywhere. What a fright she must look. Small wonder passers-by only deigned to gaze at her with utmost contempt. As with Anne. The same people who paid handsomely for her services would ostracise her in public. Or at least they had.
“My dear Anne...”
She hid the onset of tears behind her dishevelled hair and hurried into the relative seclusion of rue Saint-Christophe. The porch of a shop promised a modicum of shelter, but a crystal of ice bloomed in her aching side.
Keep moving, M’sieur insisted.
Mercedes fought her corset for every breath. “...I can’t.”
You must.
The memory of Anne morphed into Danielle’s scared eyes and her outstretched little arms.
You have no choice.
She wasn’t certain who had said those last words, but Mercedes pushed herself out of the porch and ran again. Lanterns lit up the milling chaos of Parisians, Their etched and pocked faces all equally hostile, as if they knew her every sin, her every shortcoming. Her limbs grew heavier with every step.
Do not let the void inside you overpower your colours. We will need them in the fight to come.
Void? Her mind failed to comprehend, but her instinct drove her onwards. Not far now.
At last the street opened to the large square of Notre Dame Parvis. On the other side, the holy citadel of the cathedral’s towers rose like a beacon of stones and light. No living man would dare defy the sanctity of Notre Dame, and no incorporeal miscreant would dare enter its unseen angelic walls. Inside, she could do what needed to be done without inviting further risks. Inside, she would be safe. Truly safe.
The calls and laughter of the people on the square merged with the din of the city, which faded from her awareness entirely the instant she saw Jean standing in the arch of the cathedral’s open doors, waiting. A surge of hope sprang from her very core, revitalising her body and mind.
However, as soon as this energy unfurled through her limbs, she clearly sensed the demons in her wake. Both had guarded their distance before, yet now a resurgence of keen, lustful attention caused their hallmark pressure to accumulate with lightning speed.
Without hesitation, Mercedes rushed across Notre Dame Parvis with little regard for the traffic that still populated the square at this hour. Pedestrians hummed about, forcing any number of carriages to proceed with due diligence. She paid them no more heed than they did her. The cobblestones felt solid under her feet, but as she ran the city seemed to dissolve around her, as if not she but it was shifting to another plane of existence. A plain where l’Autre appeared as a massive feline creature that gained on her in leaps and bounds.
A shrill neighing cut through the dense air. Instinctively she glanced over her shoulder, just in time to see a ghostly white horse rearing in its harness to avoid the twisted monster crossing its path. L’Autre snapped at the animal out of spite. Then the creature coiled up for one last pounce.
Mercedes stood transfixed, pinned down by her own fear and the pressure of the devourer’s all-consuming hunger as it hurtled towards her. She heard Jean calling to her, the glow of the cathedral warming her back. But when the razors that had consumed Anne’s soul bared themselves to devourer her, too, her instinct to evade the inevitable crumbled.
Perhaps facing l’Autre as his next prey was her last hope of fighting him. And why not? All else had failed.
She closed her eyes, waiting for teeth and claws to tear her apart, when black water rose like a wall between them and knocked l’Autre off balance. In shock, she cast a spray of orange around her. The fine mist revealed the monster writhing at her feet, entangled in the snares of M’sieur’s shield.
Cross. Now!
She prepared to do just that, but before she could gather her focus, a churning mass of wood and steel crashed into her.
Chapter XXVII
Distant aches wrapped around her like barbed gauze. Bright bolts shot through the billowing clouds, but lit nothing. She was no more than a ball now, throbbing with a pulse that grew weaker with every beat.
An instant; a lifetime; another beat. Repeat, endlessly, unmarked. Another beat. Submit; relinquish. Give in.
Give up…
‘I cannot give up!’
A sudden gasp drew broken glass into her lungs. Above her, the fabric of her confined little universe tore and the skies opened. Scents, sights and sounds crashed into her, pounding her malformed body into the bedrock beneath her. Uneven stones pressed into her flesh, but beyond that, her existence was defined by red-hot nails that traced her skin and bones, like pins in a roll of cloth. Fresh pain shot through her skull. Incessant, paralysing, but welcome. To feel meant that she had survived.
L’Autre had missed her when M’sieur had stepped in.
‘M’sieur!’
She could not leave him to fight l’Autre alone. He would destroy himself, too. And she had promised! So many promises, all of which now hinged on her reaching him. On her taking part in this battle.
Cross. She had to cross!
She attempted to count the virtual steps, but her thoughts scattered like butterflies from a net full of holes. Only the stings that mapped her arms and legs affirmed the present as well as herself. Struggling to regain some form of control on this side of the threshold if not on the other, she willed her limbs to move.
“Careful, madame. Better you lie still.”
The renewed onslaught of noise, unexpected and so very close, spread blinding agony through her skull. Confused and alarmed, her body convulsed. Her stomach turned with surprising force, but the tightness of her corset left her no strength to heave. As she fought for one ragged breath after another, instinct spewed images in a frantic attempt to make sense of where she was and why an increasing myriad of voices surrounded her.
Amidst the chaos, only the cathedral stood out, crisp and clear like the winter sun.
“…Notre Dame.” Her lips were numb, but she recognised the whisper as her own.
“Notre Dame?” the nearest voice said. “Sure thing, madame. Hey! Someone go to the cathedral and fetch a priest!”
The needles raking her skin no longer pierced so sharply. Her body felt like a rough log and she still ached all over, but gradually she recovered some measure of coherent thought.
Notre Dame. She had to reach the sanctuary of Notre Dame!
Her fingers seemed ridiculously far away as they sought purchase on the slick cobblestones, but at least her hands responded to her commands. With tremendous effort, she began to push herself up.
A heavy weight stopped her. “Best you don’t move, madame. You took a nasty blow.” A stranger’s face hovered over her, vague and fuzzy through the slits of her eyes.
“Notre Dame,” she whispered. “I have to go inside...”
“Not right now, madame. But don’t worry, we’ll have the Holy Mother come to you.”
She spluttered to argue this nonsensical notion, until a strong light spread behind her eyes and replaced the stranger’s undefined features.
“Jean…?”
“Afraid not, madame,” the now faceless voice said kindly. “Just keep still. Can you do that?”
Of course not! She had no time for this, but neither did she have the strength to fight what impeded her. So far from the walls of Carmen’s infernal asylum, yet trapped already.
From somewhere beyond, a roar rolled in. “Let me through, you imbecile,” it hammered in her ears.
Mercedes shuddered violently. In this moment, in this place, the unmistakeable timbre of that exclamation hurt far worse than the agony that all but paralysed her body.
“Unhand me, oafs! That’s my wife!”
God, no. “Jean? …help me…?”
The faceless voice drifted in. “Jean?
Is that the name of your husband?” A moment’s pause. “You there! Yes, you. C’mon here. Alright people, let the fellow through!”
Whatever protest she made only produced a few broken sobs.
‘Please, Jean. I beg of you, of anyone. Please, help me?’
No one answered, but the bustle about her faded away and the light behind her eyes intensified. Its warmth embraced her wholly, took her by the hand, and pulled her up.
Upon crossing the threshold, she encountered only absence. Not the emptiness of solitude, but rather the desolation of being alone in a room full of people. Any glimpse of others disappeared before she found her focus. Forlorn, she cried out. To Jean, to Danielle, even to the warring demons, begging them to give her some sign that they still existed. That she existed.
No response.
One glimpse lingered. Though blurred by the planes between them, it regarded her and she it. A kind presence, good and wise. At the merest trace of its energy, her spirit soared as it had only ever done in the presence of her dearest friend.
Could it be? Had the fear at finding Anne dead befuddled her senses and good judgement? She clung to that hope with fierce desperation.
‘Anne? Anne, are you here?’
The universe replied. With utter silence and devastating finality.
Her guttural scream drew out to a storm that stripped her of herself and rent what was left to ribbons. Wave after churning wave of anger, loss and sorrow whipped about her disjointed core, threatening to shred even the last of her very essence.
‘Remember yourself.’
A touch, subtle but undeniable, pierced the gale and charged her to focus on the cloud of diamonds that had manifested in front of her. Stunned into relenting, she allowed these diamonds to weave the ribbons together, until at last she recognised her own presence.
And that of the gamin from the quay.
‘Remember yourself,’ he intoned.
Mercedes bucked at the emotions that besieged her. ‘Anne! Bring her back! Bring Anne back!’
The boy brushed off her rage. ‘Your friend is gone,’ he said. ‘You cannot help her. She is beyond help—’