In this manner, he had tracked them all day long as the dandy led him a merry dance back and forth across the city. And so it was that he now found himself skulking in the shadow of the Victoria Line, Quicksilver’s Silver Phantom pulled up outside Schafer’s tenement building once again. However, this time, they had all returned to the scene of the crime to find that the building had been taped off by the police, a ginger-haired inspector in a dull tan trench-coat haranguing his men at the same time as interviewing Schafer’s neighbours, demonstrating all the tact of a disgruntled bull.
Throughout the whole day, Schafer had managed to remain hidden, his pursuit of his beloved and the dandy adventurer going unnoticed and unhindered. This had been mainly due to the fact that he had never once returned to street level.
Even now, back in his more familiar, and less bestial, form, he found himself able to perform feats of great agility and possessed of a strength he would never have believed himself capable of.
He was human again – at least as human as he could ever be now – but there were still aspects of his most recent agonising metamorphosis that lingered: the raised ridges above his brow, the protruding knuckles on the backs of his hands, the hard black scales covering his back. And the memories of what he had done whilst in that altered state seemed less dream-like in nature now and, as a consequence, all the more nightmarish.
It wasn’t the fact that he had killed those thieves, or that family of beggars, or his neighbour Dr Rathbone, that troubled him the most, it was the cruel recollection of how he had defiled their bodies afterwards that had driven him to the brink of madness.
It had made him vomit the first time he had realised what he had done. But seeing the clumps of hair and a gold tooth at the centre of the red splatter, disgorged from his stomach, weighed so heavily on his soul that he feared for his sanity – what little there was left of it.
The molten orange orb of the sun appeared through a break in the Smog, making him blink and forcing him to half-close his eyes. It would be dark again soon.
His whole body tensed. Would he become the beast again as night fell? Was that how it worked? Or was it some other external provocation that unleashed the beast within? Or was he on a slippery slope now, doomed to descend into a bestial world of madness, mayhem and murder no matter what?
Why had he followed Constance back here, he wondered. He knew that she and him could never be together now, but it gave him some small comfort to know that she was close by, with him watching over her as he had pledged to do long before they ever boarded the Neptune on its maiden voyage around the world.
But then another thought struck him. How could he be sure that she would be safe when the beast emerged from within once again? It had taken a supreme mental effort to stop himself from attacking Quicksilver as the dandy pursued him over the rooftops of Pimlico.
Each time he had changed, the alteration to his physical form had become more extreme, had come about more quickly, and had lasted longer. How could he be sure that he would be able to resist the urge to maim and kill next time? And, if he could not control the beast, how could he be certain that Constance would be safe with him around?
Welcome it, an insidious, slithering voice whispered from the primal core of his brain. Embrace the change!
“I can’t!” Schafer wailed. One of the pigeons perched nearby ruffled its feathers and put its head on one side, giving him a beady-eyed look of avian curiosity.
Why not? Look what you can do already. Imagine what you could achieve if you gave yourself over to the metamorphosis completely. Imagine what you could achieve then. No man could stand in your way.
“I have to keep what I am in mind, before I forget I am a man altogether. It’s turning me into an unholy freak – some kind of blood-thirsty, savage animal!”
And what’s so bad about that?
“Constance could never love me like that. But if I could be a man again...”
Who says she wants you anymore anyway? the voice cut in.
“How can you say that? We were to be married.”
Were you? Perhaps she was only hanging on to you until something better came along. Look how quickly she’s taken up with that dandy Quicksilver.
“That’s not what’s happening here!” Schafer railed against his own traitorous subliminal thoughts.
Isn’t it? Look how quickly she’s changed her allegiance now that you’re out of the picture. See how she behaves around him? What she obviously needs is a real man.
“Shut up!”
But you could be that man, the voice wheedled, not letting him alone for a moment while his ability to resist was at its lowest ebb. Embrace the change.
“Shut up!” Schafer raged. “It’s making me worse.”
Feeling a sudden, sharp pain, like hot needles stabbing into his bones, Schafer looked to the backs of his hands. There was something moving there, beneath the open wounds.
“I’m getting worse!” he shrieked.
You’re getting better, the voice said. Embrace the change. Be the man you’ve always wanted to be.
XI
Beauty And The Beast
“HELLO, MAURICE,” ULYSSES Quicksilver said, catching sight of the trench-coated inspector on the other side of the police line as he helped Constance Pennyroyal from the car.
Shooting wary glances left and right, as if worried that someone might have heard the dandy use his first name, Inspector Allardyce of Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police jogged over to the barrier formed by the flapping piece of tape where Ulysses stood. They could never have been described as best friends, but since their shared experience in North Yorkshire six months before, they now shared a certain understanding.
“Quicksilver,” he said, shaking the dandy’s proffered hand. “What brings you out here?” The policeman’s expression suddenly darkened. “Don’t tell me, you already know that we found a stiff upstairs and that another bugger’s gone missing.”
“Who do you think called it in?” Ulysses grinned.
Allardyce scowled. “And I suppose you can tell me who the missing sod is and his inside leg measurement.”
“His name’s John Schafer but you’ll have to give me a minute on the leg measurement.” Ulysses glanced at Constance who was anxiously observing their exchange. “So, he’s not come home yet then?”
“No,” the police inspector returned. His features knotted into an expression of intrigue and suspicion. “Why, are you expecting him to?”
“More hoping, really.”
“You’re honestly expecting him to return to the scene of the crime?”
“Well, you never know. Instinct is a hard impulse to conquer.”
Constance suddenly gave a strangled cry, causing Ulysses to look up.
Sweeping down out of the purpling sky towards the group gathered before the tenement building was a grim gargoyle of a silhouette, malformed bone and stretched skin forming what looked like a pair of leathery membranous wings.
The thing opened its mouth horribly wide and a hissing shriek escaped its altered throat.
“Down!” Ulysses shouted and such was the vehemence in his voice, not only Constance but also Inspector Allardyce and a pair of jumpy constables did as he commanded too.
Ulysses’ sword was out of its darkwood sheath in a second, ready to meet the distended, chitin-edged blade that the creature’s arm became, even as Ulysses measured his adversary’s approach.
Metal met chitin, denying the beast its killing stroke. But the very next moment, the force of its landing sent Ulysses crashing to the ground, the hissing monstrosity on top of him.
Constance screamed. Nimrod was out of the car in seconds, pistol in hand and levelled at the gargoyle, his knuckle whitening as he applied pressure to the trigger.
Seeing what Ulysses’ manservant was about to do the woman screamed again: “Stop!”
Hearing her cry, the monster snapped its head around and hissed, a black, blistered tongue flicking from between its gaping, sn
ake-like jaws. Its face had been disfigured by bony protuberances that exaggerated its features, giving it the appearance of a grotesque more usually found clinging to the crenulations of country churches.
Its disturbingly human eyes narrowed, fixing Nimrod with a venomous look. But then its gaze fell on the young woman, and it took in the look of abject horror on her wretched face.
With the beast momentarily distracted, Ulysses brought a knee up into the creature’s stomach. Dropping his sword, he pushed at its knobby shoulders with both hands, rolling sideways as he did so, managing to throw the beast from him.
As he lay there on his back his hand went to a jacket pocket.
But the frighteningly agile creature twisted its spine as it fell and it was on its feet again in a trice, crouched like some lithe devil carved into a church pulpit, before Ulysses was able to even sit up.
Snapping and snarling it came at him again. Ulysses pulled his hand free of the pocket as the gargoyle lunged, knowing that the creature’s claws would be round his throat in seconds.
A shot rang out sharp and clear, echoing like a thunderclap from the surrounding buildings.
The gargoyle was punched out of the air and landed several yards away, its scales scraping across the paving stones as it slid to a halt.
A second shot rang out before anyone barely had time to react to the first.
Constance was screaming again: “Stop! Stop! STOP!”
Managing to get to his feet at last, Ulysses scanned the fretful faces all around him. “Cease fire!” he commanded.
A suffocating hush fell over the street.
Ulysses studied the faces of the gathered policeman. Nimrod’s finger was still tight around the trigger of his pistol, but the weapon remained undischarged. It wasn’t the butler who had fired.
Blue smoke curled from the barrel of a gun held in the shaking hand of a policeman standing at Allardyce’s shoulder. Ulysses glowered at him.
“What did you do that for?” His voice was like acid in the blushing constable’s ear.
“That thing was going to kill you!” the constable protested feebly.
“I would like to have seen it try.”
“But you had lost your blade. You were defenceless.”
Ulysses held out the closed fist of his right hand for both the policeman and the inspector to see. “No, I wasn’t.” He opened his hand. “I had this.”
Lying there in his open palm was a large syringe with a needle as thick as a pencil, a fluorescent green liquid sloshing within the glass tube beneath the plunger.
“And what’s that?” Allardyce asked. “A fast-acting neuro-toxin or something?”
“No,” Ulysses replied. “A potential cure.”
“John!” Constance wailed, suddenly breaking through the police cordon and running to where the metamorphosed creature lay.
The men watched, dumbfounded, as she knelt beside it, heedless of the fact that she was kneeling in a spreading pool of the monster’s blood.
“Oh, my poor darling,” she said, gently lifting the creature’s head from the pavement and cradling it in her lap.
The gargoyle’s eyes flickered open. “Conssstance,” the creature slurred.
“Don’t worry,” she said, as she stroked the creature’s face. “It’s all right. They can’t hurt you anymore.”
And as he watched, in the fast failing light of dusk, it seemed to Ulysses that the gargoyle was morphing back into something more like the man it had once been.
Allardyce stared at the shape-shifting thing in appalled horror. “What is that thing?”
“That is John Schafer – your missing suspect,” the dandy replied, with no hint of triumph in his voice.
“But why did it attack like that, with so many police around? It’s like it wanted to be killed.”
“Suicide by police firing squad, you mean?”
Allardyce turned to Ulysses, his features knotted in annoyance once more, but said nothing.
“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” John Schafer told his sweetheart, his voice changing along with his appearance. “That was why I called it off. You do understand, don’t you? Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” she whispered, bringing her face close to his, her lips caressing the bat-like point of an elongated ear. “But you didn’t need to have done.”
“What?” the shape-shifting Schafer croaked.
“I love you, John.”
“But how could you love the monster I had become?” he asked, his eyelids slowing closing again. “How could you have loved a thing like that?”
The young woman’s tears splashed onto the man’s face, trickling in rivulets from its bony bumps and ridges. “Because it was still you, and I love you,” she sobbed.
But her fiancé didn’t say another word.
“I’ve always loved you, John Schafer.”
XII
’Til Death Do Us Part
JOHN BENEDICT SCHAFER was buried in haste, three days later, on Saturday 23rd May, the day on which he was supposed to have married his beloved Constance Beatrice Pennyroyal.
At least, they buried what was left of him, which was little more than a husk by the time the undertakers had set to work. Who could have known that the formula with which he had been infected could have caused his innards to decompose so quickly, causing the body to shrink and split along the length of its spine like that?
The undertakers – Morley and Sons – had decided not to report on the condition of the body to the deceased’s family or fiancée. It had been decided right from the outset that the family would not be opting for an open coffin, so what was the point in worrying them?
So it was that what was interred in the soil that warm May morning was little more than a shell of the man John Schafer had once been.
“EARTH TO EARTH, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the minister intoned, “in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life.”
The vicar’s monotonous tones drifting across the graveyard, Constance Pennyroyal – clad all in black, from her veil and hat to her silk gloves – stepped forward and cast the first handful of dirt into the grave, the crumbling soil skittering across the surface of the coffin lid. Kneeling at the grave-side she let a single black rose drop into the hole to land atop the brass plaque engraved with the words, “John Benedict Schafer: Requiescat in Pace.”
“Goodnight and God bless, my darling,” she said softly, blowing a kiss at the coffin’s lid, her eyes fixed on the rose and the one petal that had been shaken free by the fall.
When it was his turn, Ulysses Quicksilver also took up a clod of earth and cast it into the hole but said nothing, preferring to keep his thoughts to himself that day.
“HOW WILL YOU cope?” he asked Constance as they paced between the grassy hummocks of old graves once the committal had been concluded, genuine concern colouring his words.
“How will I cope?” she asked, turning her gentle face towards his, a soft smile forming on her lips.
“Without him, I mean. Today was supposed to have been your wedding day.”
“Oh, John’s not gone, not really,” she said, unconsciously stroking her belly with one silken-gloved hand. “I feel that he’s still there, inside of me.”
“You know, if there’s anything I can do...” Ulysses began.
“I only need ask,” she finished.
And with the sun climbing high beyond the smudges of Smog discolouring the London sky, the two mourners walked on, arm in arm, along the green paths between the lichen-patterned gravestones, where the dead slept.
Day 24
Despite my best efforts to procure the body so that I might carry out my own autopsy of the subject, on this occasion I was unsuccessful, hence this experiment is concluded.
But Proteus 12 can, I believe, be considered a success and the results observed in this case shall spur me on when it comes to creating the next version of the formula.
Onward and upward!
> HIS FINAL OBSERVATIONS entered into his personal Babbage engine, he saved the file and then shut down the machine. A moment later there came a knock at his office door.
“Professor, the trustees are ready for you.”
“Thank you, Leckwith. Tell them I won’t keep them a minute.”
Turning off the cogitator he turned his attention to the device on his desk. At first glance it looked like a mosquito – an overgrown mosquito made of glass and metal – but insect-like in form nonetheless. At barely four inches long it was clearly the work of a master artificer.
Its cylindrical body was the glass receptacle of a syringe, its proboscis the hypodermic needle. But it was more than merely a medication delivery system. Firstly there was the tiny motor that rotated the mosquito’s wings a hundred times a second, enabling it to fly, and then there were the twin tiny cameras mounted in place of the insect’s compound eyes, a radio transmitter ensuring that its controller saw everything it saw.
Carefully he picked up the delicate device and placed it back in a desk drawer. Closing the drawer again he locked it before placing the key in his pocket.
It was a shame that the first field trial of Proteus 12 had come to such an abrupt end but during the few short weeks it had been in operation he had learnt a very great deal, plenty that could be applied when it came to concocting the next version of the serum. If he could change a man into a monster, then he would surely have the means to change a monster back into a man.
However, he would have liked to have found out whether the old man’s cure would actually have worked. But no matter, he would simply have to select another subject and try again, hopefully without Ulysses Quicksilver getting in the way this time.
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