Yes, Iago admitted there was integrity in the brave final moments between two humans so inextricably tied to one another. But there was true beauty in the man about to crumble. Long, shaking hands clasped over his mouth. His posture was stiff and eyes red. Even in the man’s ragged breathing, there was music. In the over-consumption of the drink which rotted his insides, there was art. Yes, his circumstances were grim, but they were not the only factor at play. A lifetime of poor choices and negligence and devaluing human life could not be erased by a few tender moments with one’s wife.
Gloria could have her sweeter portraits of humanity, valid though they were. In Iago’s eyes, this misery was also art.
“Mr. Boeing?” Iago asked. Startled, Septimus turned and finally saw the demon who had been following him that afternoon.
“Who are you? Are you working for Doctor Victoria?” Septimus asked, hastening to wipe away tears.
“No, but I do come in regard to your wife.” He smiled warmly and shook Septimus’s hand. It was weak and clammy like a dead trout. “You love her very much. I can see that.”
Septimus answered, “Of course, I do. She is the only good that has ever come into my life. I speak too quickly. Our Ben was good but… I apologize. I’m wandering. What was it that you required?”
“I am here for your benefit, Mr. Boeing,” Iago said tenderly. “You are so deeply affected, and of course, you cannot let her see you like this. I understand the immense strain that must place upon you.”
Septimus shook his head and looked back to the turbulent October skies. “I should not think of myself right now, friend. And yet, I do. I have failed her miserably.”
“Failed her?” Iago asked with a delicate, affected innocence. “How, sir? You clearly love her most ardently, and she surely loves you.”
Septimus raised a hand to settle upon the glass, his nails pathetically scraping the window pane. “No. There are times that love is simply not sufficient.”
“True,” Iago said. “The world cannot turn by the power of love alone.”
“Our boy. Ben. I let him run off on his own the day he… perished. Hazel never knew.”
“Never knew what, sir?”
He turned back so that Iago could catch his gaze and coax to the surface the story which no other human knew. A demon’s eyes could pull the truth, word by word, to a man’s lips. Not that his weak mind hadn’t already betrayed him. Iago might have told the story himself at this point, but it always helped if his targets were able to admit their own faults and transgressions. It didn’t mean nearly as much coming from some stranger on Hell’s payroll.
Septimus said, “Nobody knows that I had indulged too heartily in drink while at the river that day. It is a battle I have long fought.”
“A lamentable habit, but one which affects so many.”
“Yes. Every man in my family, it seems. It’s a family curse. So much, in fact, that it successfully ended our family line. And it’s all my fault,” he gasped.
Iago asked delicately, “Why would you keep this from your wife? Painful though it may be, such poisonous secrets… well, I feel the old adage better out than in applies.”
Septimus nervously scratched the spot on his arm where, under his clothing, there was the image of a scarab. “There is much that I keep from her. I’m sorry—you wanted to see her?”
Iago smiled and turned to smoothly close the study door. “No,” Iago said. “Rather, I have something I would like to offer you.”
“Offer?”
Iago motioned genially to the chairs seated on either side of Septimus’s desk. “Take a seat, sir.” He did. “I wish to talk, and your wife shall not perish quite yet.” Hopefully. That would complicate things severely. Iago sat across from him. “You say you’ve failed her.”
“I know I have,” he answered weakly.
“What if I were to say I have a solution? I know how we can guarantee that your wife does not perish from this malady,” he said, and a sudden break in the clouds illuminated the window behind Septimus. Iago winced briefly. He hoped that wasn’t Heavenly light parting the clouds to take Hazel Boeing home.
Septimus’s face, though cast in shadow, brightened. “What? How?”
“Ah. Let us not jump ahead of ourselves. First, I must have some information from you,” Iago said pleasantly enough.
Septimus gaped and abruptly stood again. “You hold this above my head, just out of reach! For information?”
“Indulge me, sir. Your wife’s fate, as well as your own, is in question here. First, I must know about Thomas Atchison. What do you know of him?”
“Atchison?” Septimus asked, bewildered. “He’s… he’s an associate of mine. Strange young man. He moved to Marlowe some time ago after, I understand, his sister died very suddenly.”
“Where did he come from? And his interests?” Iago pressed. “Hobbies? Obsessions?”
“I have no idea where he’s from originally. He insisted that he was a nephew of Mortimer Peebles. I never challenged the idea, but I always found that difficult to believe. Mortimer was a good man,” he said weakly, fingers moving to his arm again of their own accord. “But he was quite… well, he was a corpulent man. Very lazy. Nothing like Atchison, and as far as I know, there were no wandering nieces or nephews. The Peebles family tree is quite cut off.”
Thanks to various wasting diseases and an inclination toward gluttony. Iago recognized the name. Could that have been Atchison’s key into The Order, a fabricated family history? But why on Earth did he wish to be a member? “What else?” Iago asked.
“He’s an inventor, and I do know that he has some inclination toward… the supernatural, we’ll say. My grandmother used to make the dead very much a part of our lives. She believed she could speak to spirits, and once Atchison discovered this detail about my past, he took a shine to me. You know… as much as he can.”
Iago nodded as though the quicker his head bobbed, the more information he might draw from Septimus.
“But other than that, I’m afraid he’s very withdrawn. Why does he interest you?” Septimus asked. “Has he done something wrong?”
Iago threw up a dismissive hand. “Nothing outstandingly wrong yet,” he answered. “I thank you for your cooperation. Now, there is the matter of your wife. My dear Mr. Boeing, there is nothing in this world that does not come with a price.”
“A price?” He gulped. “And what might that price be, sir? I’ll pay it.”
“Will you? I have not yet told you what it is, Mr. Boeing.”
“Whatever it is…” The breeze pushed clouds back over the sun and rattled a windchime made of colored glass in the yard behind them in a discordant clatter. “I’ll pay.”
Iago made something of a church steeple with his fingers, albeit a corrupt one. “Time is precious here. I won’t waste words. Your soul, Mr. Boeing.”
The color did not drain from his face as Iago might have expected, but his lips disappeared as his mouth became a thin line. Another deep breath did little to steady his hands. “Of course. That is why you inquired about Atchison. His mad schemes have actually led him to a minion of Lucifer. That is my understanding, at least. You are the being he believes haunted Cox and Courtwright.”
Iago nodded deeply. “Mr. Atchison is not our concern at the moment. Neither are Messrs. Cox and Courtwright. What I offer you is simple. Sign away your soul, give yourself over to me and to Hell below… and I promise that this wicked plague shall not steal your fair wife’s breath.”
Septimus’s shoulders heaved. “I have not led a good life.”
“No. If you had, then I wouldn’t be here,” Iago answered. “Membership to The Fraternal Order of the Scarab, I’ve found, is not conducive to what most would consider leading a good life.”
“But that is another life,” Septimus insisted. “It’s not the life I live here. In this house, none of that matters. I can turn a blind eye.”
“Hmm. A valiant attempt, sir, but I am afraid negligence is an often unfo
rgivable crime.”
He dodged the statement with the expertise of a fly in the prime of life dodging a swatter.
“Hazel. Sh-She means so very much to me. When we first married, we would have picnics there in the back-yard.” Oh yes, the nearly-damned enjoyed very much to walk through gardens of memories. “She would work so hard to make them pleasant. Elegant, she said. Doilies and all. We spent many afternoons out there. Hazel is so easy to please. Give her a fresh spring day and a picnic, and she was the happiest woman in all of Marlowe. When Ben was born, he joined us, of course…”
He was a perfect and glorious and pathetic picture of sadness. But in his foul, black heart Iago felt an altogether unwelcome pang of sympathy as he thought of the wasting, tortured woman in the other room. She was a creature who truly needed relief. A doctor at this point would only prolong her suffering. She deserved relief.
Iago conjured his leather book and quill. “Give me your name, your soul, and I’ll keep my promise. You lost your son. That is done. But if you have it in your power to assuage your wife’s suffering, why waste the opportunity?”
Septimus considered the book with his brow furrowed. He raised a pale, shaking hand to take the quill. “Hell will await me?”
“Yes.”
“And what is it like?” he asked tremulously.
Iago thought deeply for a moment. “Unpleasant,” was his answer. “I shan’t lie to you. I’m an honest man. But you grow accustomed to it. It’s quite a dry heat, and I suppose the profusion of bones and bodies writhing in torment has a sort of… wartime charm?”
“You don’t sound too convinced yourself.”
“Who knows? I haven’t been there in a few centuries. Perhaps it’s been renovated.” The state of Hell was neither here nor there. Humans always got caught up in the details. They’d rather know the exact temperature of the vats of oil on the fifth circle before they signed. Just to be certain, you know. “But isn’t it all worth it to end her agony?”
Fear prevented Septimus Boeing from immediately signing. His larynx bobbed sharply again, and he pressed the book away. “I can’t. Not yet. I need to see her,” Septimus insisted and charged to the door.
“Boeing, please think of her!” Iago called.
Septimus paused before throwing open the door. Iago followed him at a brisk pace, only to see their progress stopped in the middle of the hall. Hazel Boeing stood before them, grasping a small and frail table for support. Her eyes were like a doe’s, wide and frightened, and the braid in her hair had come wildly undone. Limbs shaking, she reached for her husband.
“Septimus,” she managed hoarsely. “Why do you run away? You’re always running. Please just sit with me!”
“She suffers, sir,” Iago insisted but could not take his own gaze from the desolate woman.
Septimus’s hand flew to his mouth, and he turned like a manic scarecrow to Iago. He gripped the book, taking the quill from Iago’s right hand and signing directly beneath Wilburn Cox. For a moment, there was only the scratching of the pen against paper. It was the calm before complete cacophony.
“Wick!” Gloria shouted as she entered the hall. “What are you—”
Hazel’s sudden screech sliced through the dead air of the hallway.
Her husband could not see the dark, spiny, and nightmarish creature which stood where he could only perceive this man, Iago Wick. It was a great and terrible beast made of shadows and broken glass. Its glaring red eyes watched intently, one hideous black claw wrapped about the leather book her husband signed.
“Hazel? I do this for you,” Septimus insisted weakly, his words vanishing into the storm of her screams.
Her hand made a claw over her heart, and she yelped once more before crumpling like a doll to the ground.
Iago had entirely disappeared from human eyes by the time Septimus rushed to her side and pulled her into his arms. It was a sad but not unusual scene, one which Iago had witnessed enough to last several lifetimes. There is little left in such a body that is reminiscent of the person which inhabited it. And still, men such as Septimus Boeing clutched them tight. He buried his face in her hair. Begging, bargaining, weeping. “We should give him his privacy,” Iago said as he walked briskly to the stairs again. Gloria followed.
“What was that?” she asked when they reached the bottom of the stairs.
“You see, Miss Ambrose? We can both be winners here,” Iago said.
“What did you do?”
“I kept my word. I told him that if he sold his soul to Hell, this illness would not claim his wife. Indeed, it didn’t. It was another malady altogether. I sensed her weak heart in her bedroom.” He smiled distantly. “She died of fright.”
“And what, Mr. Wick, was she so afraid of?” Gloria questioned.
Iago chuckled. “I allowed Hazel—and only Hazel—to see me in my true demonic form. I’m quite a fright, Miss Ambrose.” Gloria shook her head and looked up the dark stairwell. “And so, I took his soul and left you hers and without so much as a lie. Humans often hear what they want to hear, you know.”
“True,” she admitted.
The demon continued, “My conversation with you earlier, Miss Ambrose, gave me great thought. Hazel had the ending to her story, bittersweet though it was, within sight. My actions may violate standard demonic convention, but I did not feel that ending was mine to take from her today. Just this once, you understand.”
“Yes. She will be with her son once again,” Gloria answered as she placed a firm hand on Iago’s shoulder. “But don’t become too self-righteous. You still damned Boeing.”
“I am still a demon, Miss Ambrose,” Iago said. “And really, he did most of the work himself. I merely appeared at the end to take all of the credit.”
They glanced up the staircase to see Hazel Boeing looking back at them, with a heavenly halo and a white gown draped to utter perfection about her person. She was like the subject of some grand Renaissance painting with all of the glory and none of the gratuitous naked cherubs awkwardly floating about. The damned didn’t get such fanfare, and her presence made even an old demon like Iago smile.
“You’re welcome, by the way. You see, I am not wholly wicked,” Iago said.
“Wickedly holy, perhaps?” Gloria asked as she climbed the stairs to take Hazel’s hand.
“Perhaps once in a while,” he answered, but before he could turn to leave, the angel stopped him again.
She smiled knowingly. “Wick, good luck in the future. Do give my regards to Mr. Lovelace.”
“Best of luck to you, as well, Miss Ambrose, and I shall remember you to Mr. Lovelace. I am meeting him for dinner and a show…” He glanced to his pocket watch. “…twenty minutes ago. He’ll be a touch prickly at my tardiness, I am sure, but he’ll recover.”
With one last adieu, he turned and trotted out the front door, resolute in the notion that there were certain tender details of the afternoon which might need to be altered for Dante’s consumption.
VI.
The dancers of Colonel McCormick’s Mechanized Wonderland were beautiful ladies with rouged cheeks and flaring French skirts. And if his automatons occasionally needed a bit of oil to keep them limber, then that was only a part of their bizarre mechanized charm. The Colonel, who admittedly had never served in any military capacity, took good care of his girls as he paraded them around the country. Some argued that he was a little too obsessed with his dancing girls, but that was hardly a topic of decent conversation.
Demons, however, weren’t known for their decency.
“I’ve heard he defiles the machines,” Iago said in Dante’s ear. “I don’t know what’s more ghastly, the fact that he violates them so, or the fact that he designed them for such intercourse in the first place.”
They took their seats prior to the Colonel’s show. The performance would be a bit more plebian than Iago and Dante’s usual tastes, but when one is immortal, one can afford to sample everything, from the penny dreadfuls to the grandest opera.
/> Dante Lovelace was not nearly as irritable as he might have been at Iago’s tardiness. After a century and a half, he had come to embrace Mr. Wick’s habitual lateness as a vaguely irritating but endearing character flaw.
“Dinner was a complete tragedy this evening,” Iago said with a grimace.
“Why? Did you not enjoy your shoe leather under glass?”
“Shoe leather might have been more palatable. Not even dessert could lift my spirits after that disaster of a dinner.”
Dante barely touched his roast pullet, but rather watched the clientele. He so adored surrounding himself with the creatures whose lives he destroyed. He called it observation, an attempt to understand them. He would never confront him about it, but Iago often wondered if Dante harbored some desire to be human himself. This was more than observation. There was appreciation in his dark eyes.
Whatever the reason for their continued patronage, Iago preferred his dinner, should he eat one, to at least be chewable.
Dante said, “Well, perhaps the food will be better next time.”
“Oh, of course, there will be a next time,” he lamented. “My insides rebel at the thought.” He would simply have to stay faithful to the raw oysters.
Iago lazily cast an eye about the theater, a small but antiquated and elegant place. The wealthier citizens in the boxes above considered it to be the crown jewel of Marlowe society. Everyone else merely considered it something to do on a Saturday night, and it was a rite of passage amongst the city’s youths to sneak into the auditorium and catch a glimpse of whatever revue the rich folks were clucking about. It had become worn over the decades. These days, the velvet drapes and gilded fixtures were as dusty as the ancients in the box seats.
Iago considered it a way to think, to sometimes glean some inspiration for his own work. And yet, in the end, so much of it was ephemeral. Most of Man’s art and culture faded eventually, or at the very least, its meaning was twisted and lost to time. It took a grand artist to transcend that tragedy.
Now Man himself… indeed, what piece of work is a man, he thought. Surely the intricacies and artistic beauty of a man’s soul would never diminish. At least, he hoped.
The Last Temptations of Iago Wick Page 7