Gessler gave her a smile, but when he tried to stand found that his ankle would not support his weight. I grasped him before he toppled and set him down gently.
Mr. Landor was less solicitous of Gessler's injury. He had come running at the sound of gunfire and demanded to know the cause of the ruckus.
I explained as best I could, choosing my words carefully. At first, I thought to lie. Some elaborate fabrication immediately began to form in my mind, the end result of which would have been my secretly replacing the collection of charred bones in Mrs. Landor's coffin with no one the wiser. But I decided to tell the truth instead. I set about to explain in as delicate terms as possible the fact that the creature who had tried to kill us had once been Landor's own wife.
I immediately regretted my decision. Landor refused to believe me. The more I insisted, the more annoyed he became. His anger rose to such an extent that I feared we might have to defend ourselves from the husband no less than we had his wife. But the truth of my words was borne by the evidence all around us. Even he could not deny it. His fury soon gave way to grief as he regarded the pitiful remains of Mrs. Landor scattered on the floor at our feet.
"It was her doctor—Coppelius," Gessler said, looking up from where he sat rubbing his bandaged ankle.
Landor looked puzzled. "Coppelius," he repeated, turning the idea over in his mind.
I took up the explanation. "Yes," I began, "his treatment of your wife's illness may have ... done more harm than good." I still found myself searching for delicate phrasings. I feared my words sounded foolishly obvious.
Landor clenched his fists. "Coppelius," he muttered darkly. "The devil..."
"Devil indeed," Gessler said. He stood gingerly, without assistance. He had found my pepperbox revolver and handed it back to me. His derby had gotten smashed in. He popped it out and placed it back on his head. "It is that very devil we seek now, Mr. Landor. I'm sorry for leaving you with our ... mess to clean up, but we have dangerous business to attend and no time to lose."
Landor understood and we made our way quickly—or at least as quickly as Gessler's stricken ankle would allow—out to the waiting carriage. The driver was smoking his pipe half-asleep when we found him.
As he climbed into the driver's seat, he groused, "Took you long enough." As if we had dallied out of some lazy self-interest. I almost laughed.
~ * * * ~
Once we were underway, heading back to the city, I turned to Gessler. "The creature had this mark, Inspector." I pulled my collar down, exposing the perpetually fresh puncture wound on my neck. I could feel it sting where my fingers brushed it. The sky was darkening, so Gessler had to lean in close to see it.
"Ah, your cat-scratch."
"It's not a cat-scratch. Oh, damn it all! I don't know what it is. But Mrs. Landor—the creature, that is—had the same mark on her neck that I have on mine."
I almost added "And Virginia on hers," but I caught myself at the last instant. The truth of the matter filled me with horror. I was loath to speak of it. I had scarcely dared to believe it. Better, I had reasoned, to consider myself mad than to think of my darling Virginia one of these hideous creatures. Now I knew how Mr. Landor had felt confronting the terrible truth. I could no longer deny it.
I explained to Gessler the puncture's mysterious origins, how it had first appeared during the final stages of Virginia's illness and how I had noticed a similar mark on the neck of my still-living wife, thinking it an insect bite or the sign of some legitimate, albeit arcane, medical procedure. I said nothing of the cemetery.
"No doubt this has something to do with Coppelius' serum. Oh, the man is the devil himself! This is far worse than I had suspected. Sorry for doubting you, Mr. Poe."
I smiled, though I knew he could not see me in the darkness. "Never you fear Inspector. I was beginning to doubt me, too."
We had already entered the wooded vale and were crossing the stone bridge. It was dark as night under the canopy of trees. Gessler lowered his window. I could feel the chill of the damp night air. He stuck his head out and called up to the driver. "Back to Witherspoon's," he cried. "And hurry!"
~ * * * ~
Gaslight lamps were glowing all along the empty street when our carriage clattered to a halt in front of Witherspoon's shop. All the storefronts were locked up tight and Witherspoon's was no exception. It looked dark and abandoned. Gessler jumped out of the carriage and hobbled on his sore ankle to the front door. He rattled the knob and as he thrice attempted to thrust open the door—only to have it stopped by the lock—we could hear the little bell inside tinkling fitfully. The sign on the door read CLOSED, but we knew from experience that that did not preclude the chemist's presence within.
"Damn you, Witherspoon," Gessler muttered as he moved to the large front window and peered in through one of the small panes of dirty glass. He cupped his hands and looked closer. "Ah, there's a light!"
I looked myself and indeed saw a thin line of light framing the door that led into the back room. Gessler hurried back to the front door and began pounding and rattling the door in its frame, at the same time calling out for Witherspoon to open up.
A moment later, we heard a click and the door edged open. Witherspoon's face appeared in the crack.
"Ah, it is you! Gentlemen, come in!" he exclaimed, opening the door. We walked into the dark, empty shop. The lock clicked home behind us and Witherspoon joined us a moment later. The door to the back room stood ajar. A faint chemical smell filled the air and Witherspoon's apron, tied at his neck and waist, appeared to be freshly stained and pock-marked with tiny brown-edged burn holes. I supposed we had interrupted some late night work of his. He noticed Gessler's limp and his gaze was drawn to my still black eye. He shook his head. "I'm afraid to ask," he said. And from his expression, I believed he meant that literally.
If not, then Gessler set him straight at once. "You should be afraid, Mr. Witherspoon. I believe we all should."
"It doesn’t get any better when you see what I have to show you."
He flexed a hairy-knuckled finger at us and we followed him into the back room.
"I was planning on working all night and summoning you in the morning, but since you are here now, you might as well see what I've found."
We followed him into the back room. I immediately heard a wild squeaking and quickly realized that the source of the noise was a little gray rat in a cage. The creature was mad. It thrashed against the metal bars and seemed to be trying to chew through them. Its teeth were smeared with blood and a loose clump of furry scalp hung from a gash on its head. My first impulse upon seeing the thing was to recoil. I quickly cast my eye upon the cage door, wondering if the delicate-looking latch could withstand the rat's onslaught. It was my feeling that the creature's intention was not merely to escape, but to kill.
"My God, Witherspoon!" I cried. "What are you up to?"
"This one has just awakened," he said. He rubbed his hands together as he leaned down to regard the rat closely as it thrashed against the thin wire bars. He stuck his nose closer to the gnashing incisors than I would have been willing to stick mine.
"What do you mean 'just awakened'?" I asked with a feeling of rising horror. "You mean from sleep?"
"Oh, no," Witherspoon said. "I mean from death."
Three other cages near the first also contained rats—dead, from the looks of them. A fourth, set upon a stool, held a live apparently normal rat. When I eyed the creature, it went up on its hind legs, grasped the bars and twitched its nose.
Gessler guffawed loudly and turned on his heel as if to leave the room. But then he whirled back almost at once. "Mr. Witherspoon, by God, twenty-four hours ago I would have walked out of here without a second thought. But after what I've seen today, I have no right to doubt a thing. You're telling us that this rat has come back from the dead?"
Witherspoon turned his head. My skin prickled to see his bald pate just inches from the rat's thrashing claws. "That is precisely what I’m telling you,
Inspector. Five minutes before you arrived, this rat was as dead as these others. In fact, I believe it is dead still. Only it is now capable of movement and seems to have a rather ... unpleasant disposition." Witherspoon straightened, moving—to my relief—firmly out of range of the rat's claws. "But clearly not the same rat it was. It is a sort of living-dead version of the original, I suppose you would say."
Gessler shook his head. "Every fiber of my being rebels at the idea."
"Nevertheless, what I'm telling you is true."
"How did you make this happen?" I asked.
"It took me some time—and, as you can see, a few dead rats—to hit upon the exact formula. But using the sample you left with me, Mr. Poe, I—
"This is the result of the substance from my vial?"
Witherspoon gave me a perplexed look. "Why, yes, of course. I set about to work the moment you left. There is little time, Mr. Poe. If this criminal of yours is out there using this stuff for whatever nefarious purpose, he must be stopped at once."
"We ran into one of his victims—and it near cost us our lives," Gessler said.
Witherspoon frowned. "A human?"
"Just like your rat." Gessler nodded toward the cage.
Witherspoon took a deep breath. "Then I was right." He seemed to gaze into the far distance, lost in thought.
"Right about what?" I urged.
"I almost gave up in frustration. I killed these rats and many more besides before I finally hit upon the proper ratios. But it was more than mere ratios. It was the right procedure as well. You see, I had a feeling I knew what the formulator of this substance was trying to accomplish and that aided me greatly in my endeavors. At first, I was injecting doses of various sizes into the rats and it merely killed them, as I suspected it would. I thought it was just a matter of dosage, but it was more than that. The death of the subject is inevitable, but—"
"Wait a minute, Witherspoon," Gessler interjected. "What are you saying? That Coppelius is injecting dead people with some sort of reanimating serum?"
"Not the dead, Inspector, but the living. A small amount of his serum, as you call it, is applied repeatedly over time. It mixes with the subject's blood and is then withdrawn through the lymph nodes, here." Witherspoon tapped the spot on his neck where his lymph nodes resided. My stomach clenched when I saw the place he indicated. "The result is the substance found in your vial, Mr. Poe. Unfortunately, the procedure also results in the eventual death of the subject and, as you can see, the animation of the corpse. Using the rats, I was able to speed the process immeasurably. But I drew an exact duplicate of your substance from the creature you see here. Prior to its death, of course."
"But for what purpose?" I asked.
"For this." Witherspoon held up the now half-full vial I had given him, still wearing its fraudulent label. "This is what our fiend is after—the stuff in this vial. This," he indicated the rat gnawing viciously on the metal bars, "is, I believe, merely an unfortunate byproduct. Of course, that is only my opinion."
"You mean to say that the reanimation of the dead is not his intention?" Gessler asked.
"He may not even be aware of it, Inspector. It is the substance he wants."
"But what does he use it for?" I asked.
"God only knows," Witherspoon said. "I only know that, whatever its purpose, he is willing to kill to procure it."
I was afraid to ask my next question and I proceeded with trepidation, stumbling over my words. "But what, pray tell, Mr. Witherspoon, were the symptoms, if any, prior to the subject's death?"
"That I could not say, Mr. Poe. The process I used was necessarily abbreviated to account for the urgency of our purpose. Had I more time, I would naturally like to replicate my findings, just to be sure, and to study the symptoms leading up to the subject's death, as you say. And, of course, the whole nature of the reanimated creature is completely unknown."
"What of somnambulism?" I asked without preamble.
"Walking in one's sleep? As a symptom, you mean?"
"Yes. It seems to me not so far off from the ... the terminal condition. Perhaps one learns to function in the land of dreams as a kind of prelude to his functioning in the land of the dead."
Witherspoon frowned in thought. "Hmm. A curious notion. But—possibly, yes." He ambled over to the table where he kept his books, pulled out a paper and, using the stub of a pencil, scratched a quick note. "Now that you mention it, I did notice one thing," he said, looking up.
"Go on."
"One of the rats, before it died, displayed a hyper-sensitivity to light. As I moved its cage under my lamp to observe the creature, I saw that the light seemed to cause it great discomfort."
I was flabbergasted and afraid. "How did you know?"
"Well, as I say, I moved the cage into and out of the light and observed the rat's reaction—"
"No, I don't mean the rat—I mean me. Look!" I pulled down my collar and lifted my chin, exposing the wound on my neck. "Is the process reversible once it has begun?"
Witherspoon gave my neck a cursory inspection and then, producing a small magnifying glass from a pocket in his apron, examined it closely. "Hmm," he said. "Interesting..."
"Well, is it, Witherspoon? Tell me."
"I—I don't know. I need more time to study. I know only that all the rats died—"and one came back. Are you saying that this wound on your neck bears some connection to—"
"Coppelius was my doctor, too, Witherspoon. He tended my wife, and also the living-dead creature that tried to kill us today. We all have the same mark. And only I, of the three, still live."
"Then that is a point in your favor, Mr. Poe," Witherspoon said, replacing my collar with a tender pat and a smile. But I could see the fear underlying his expression. He was trying to humor me with his easy manner. But I knew the danger I was in.
I suddenly became afraid for Olimpia's life as well. She had gone to reason with the devil, an argument she would surely lose. Yet, while I knew that no crime was out of reach of a man capable of the horrors we had witnessed, I found it hard to believe that even the vile Coppelius would harm his own daughter.
I knew nothing for a certainty.
What I did know was that I was afraid.
Afraid that he would take her from me.
Afraid that I would die without ever seeing her again.
Though it was night, I put on my shaded glasses. Then I pulled the pepperbox from my pocket and began loading it. "We're going to Coppelius'. Tonight. If I am doomed to die of his hideous disease ... I shall take him to Hell with me."
Chapter 20
A storm was brewing as we barreled through the dark, empty streets in Gessler's carriage. Gusts of wind buffeted us and I could hear it whistling through the open gaps around the windows and doors. Nebulous flashes of lightning revealed mountainous storm clouds on the horizon, coming our way.
A storm was heading Coppelius' way as well—if I had anything to say about it.
"If he has done anything to harm Olimpia, I shan't be held responsible for what I might do." I patted the pocket of my frock coat, comforted by the feel of the loaded revolver inside.
"The law will take care of Coppelius, Mr. Poe," Gessler warned.
I could almost admire the inspector's guileless optimism, even if I could not share it. "After what we've seen? Oh, no," I shook my head, "Coppelius is quite beyond the law, Inspector—be they society's laws or those of nature itself."
"Pshaw! He is still only a man. We will find him bound in irons when we arrive. Never you fear, Mr. Poe. My men will have prevented any harm befalling Miss Coppelius, one way or the other."
"I knew it was dangerous," I said wistfully. "I should never have allowed her to go."
"There was no stopping her," Gessler said. "My men will keep her safe."
"If he has not already whisked her away." This, of course, was my deepest fear. Nearly unlimited resources, Olimpia had said. This opened the entire world to him. He had to know we were coming. If he wanted to
lose himself, I doubted our capacity to find him.
When we arrived at Coppelius' house, the wind had picked up substantially. The gnarled black trees thrashed in the gusts. Torrents of skittering leaves swirled under our wheels as we clattered along the carriage drive toward the porte-cochere entrance. A bolt of lightning streaked the night sky and, for a frozen instant, the vine-covered house and overgrown grounds flared in stark detail.
The carriage stopped. Even from the base of the wide stone steps, we could see that the front door had been ominously left ajar. Gessler drew his revolver, and I mine. Then we started carefully up the steps.
"Inspector," I said, halfway to the top. He turned. "If anything happens to me... That is, if I don't make it, you must promise to burn my body." Oh, the words that I had been forced to utter since this affair began! I would never have dreamed to hear myself say them. But the image of Mrs. Landor rising from her coffin was seared in my memory. That such a creature should bear my face—
"You'll be fine, Mr. Poe," Gessler said. But I saw in his eyes that he did not believe it, either. "Don't give up hope. We may have stopped him before it was too late for you."
"It was too late for my Virginia. And Mrs. Landor. I only hope it is not too late for Olimpia."
We crept up the remaining steps. Gessler placed his palm on the door and pushed it open.
The house was dark and cold. It felt empty. A bright flash of lightning illuminated the foyer. A great crash of thunder followed. Gessler pushed the door closed behind us. I heard the soft click of the latch. To my mind, the sound bore a chilling finality. An oppressive darkness assailed us and I felt sealed inside the house, as if in my own coffin. The wind howled forlornly through the cracks. Rain began to patter against the door and windows. We stood for a moment, frozen, listening for any sound. But the old house was silent as the grave.
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