by Brian Hodge
“Deliver, he says. Oh, simple as that, is it?” Hare gave Burke a stiff poke in the shoulder. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread—you’d do well to remember that from time to time, ya bleedin’ ox. We find one o’ these ugly brutes, ‘e ain’t gonna ‘old still for no pillow across the face, I can promise you that.”
“Wot—they doesn’t die too easy, does they?” Burke said.
“No obvious weaknesses, that’s for sure.” Then, to the doc: “Anyway, ain’t you already got yourself a man what does this sort of work? Stooped chap, ain’t ‘e? Bit of a shoulder ailment?”
The old man heaved a sigh that washed them in cigar fumes and gin vapors. Hare had encountered fresher smells while unclogging the khazi.
“You appear to be confusing me with one of my students.” Pretorius brought his hands together with a moist, dismissive slap. “Perhaps I’ve overestimated your skills and your commitment to your trade. I’d apologize for wasting your time, gentlemen, but then, you’ve wasted as much of mine.”
Hare stepped forward with a grin and spread his arms wide. Right, as if he’d really want to wrap a chummy hug around this creaky fossil with the big brain. “’ere now, ‘ere now! We’re just gettin’ started talkin’ terms is all! No cause to show us the door. And you can’t fault an honest man for askin’: Does it gotta be one of them Mister Hydes? Got things ‘round ‘ere easier to kill than them fellas.”
Pretorius’ eyes rolled back in his head so far Hare thought he’d next see them emerging from between the man’s old liver lips.
“Like, say, ‘ow ‘bout one o’ them fishy-smellin’ lagoon buggers for you, eh? Trap ‘em out of water long enough and they go down slick as snot.”
Pretorius’ eyes rolled forward again with a fearsome glare. “I need something that was human to begin with.”
“Ah. Well, that does narrow it a bit, don’t it?”
“I’ll narrow it completely for you: a Hyde, or nothing. A Hyde, or don’t bother coming back. A Hyde, or you will never work for me again…and I think you’ll find that when I’m properly motivated by success in my researches, or even the hope of success, I’m able to offer a great deal of lucrative employment. So. Weigh the risks against the benefits and decide. Quickly. And one other requirement: After you’ve acquired him, he must be delivered soon. At most within the hour. Within a half-hour is better.”
Hare turned his back to the doc and pressed his forehead against Burke’s ear. They did some mumbles and whispers without actually saying anything. Putting on a show for the geezer. You couldn’t let them think they had you so easy. He turned around again and scratched at his chin.
“Sounds like you’re askin’ us to risk breakin’ our necks not once, but twice. Dead is dead. What’s the rush, then?”
Pretorius appeared to contemplate how much to divulge, but Hare knew all they had to do was wait for it. Egos as big as hot air balloons, these madders had. Give them an opening and they’d tell you plenty, just to impress themselves with the sound of their own ideas.
“You see what I am. You’re simple, but not stupid. Very little of me remains that was actually born to my mother. I’ve replaced what I can. Some parts I’ve cycled through five and six times—casualties of my own vices, I know.” Pretorius lifted and swirled a glass near his elbow. “Spare me any lectures.”
“Me, lecture a man on vices?” Hare laughed. “Give you pointers, maybe.”
Pretorius took a big wet slurp from his glass. “The effectiveness of my strategy is diminishing. It has become like trying to replace the parts of engine while the motorcar is careening down a steeper and steeper hill. I need more extreme material to work with, I’m afraid. I need the durability of the flesh and bone of a Hyde…and a controllable infusion of the life force that rages through them, and survives for a brief term after death.”
Hare scratched his chin and squinted. “A tall order, that.” He spun to Burke for a few more grunts and whispers, then back around once more. “‘ow lucrative did you say again?”
*
Fortified with all the breakfast and lunch they could hold, they went to work late in the afternoon, armed with the information bought the night before. It took them down an alley than ran red with the draining blood of hogs, whisked to pink foam by the bristles of a cleaning boy’s broom, and to an out-of-the-way tavern called The Dog’s Breakfast. The carved oak sign that hung swaying above the door showed a snarling mongrel crouched over a hairy arm ripped away at the shoulder.
“Look at that, would you,” Hare said. “Mangy bastard eats better than we do ‘alf the time.”
Inside, they spotted their mark before their eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom. He sat in a far corner in front of a mullioned window, the rounded bulk of his shoulders blocking most of what little light seeped through the grime-frosted glass. Burke and Hare drank a round of ale a few tables away and pretended not to notice him. Not an easy thing when a fella breathes as loud as a horse after a race. His drinking manners were worse.
Burke hunkered forward across the table, eyes low and voice lower. “You was right. Back at the doc’s the other day? This ain’t such a cracking idea, maybe.”
“Courage, William,” said Hare. “We gots our plan, and if we sticks to it, we’ll be larging it again this time tomorrow. We just takes our time, make sure we gets ‘im good and rat-arsed first, and we don’t kick it off a minute sooner.”
“And supposin’ we’re too rat-arsed ourselves to do the job properlike.”
Hare waved all frets aside. “Next round I’m givin’ the barkeep the nod to water our ales.” He gauged Burke’s face for disgust and, as expected, found it. “Sacrifices gotta be made somewhere, ya bloody cabbage, now suck it up.”
When they made their first move, it came, as it so often did, in the guise of a peace offering. After Hare’s next trip to the bar, he bypassed their table and continued on to the Hyde’s, strolling up easy as you please and holding a mug filled to the brim with the big bugger’s favored whiskey.
“Afternoon, squire,” he said, friend to all men. “Any fella who can drink at this time o’ day’s either in full charge of ‘is own destiny, or needs a job bad. Now, I meself and me associate ‘ave the destiny part down swimmingly, thanks…and if it’s a job you need, well, destiny would appear to be smiling upon you as well.”
The Hyde’s head was all shag and bristles, and until now he’d been letting it hang low over his drink. When he lifted it out of the shadows and into the weak smoky light, it was like seeing the rise of an ominous moon, and his voice was all gravel and graves: “Piss off.”
“Well, bugger me—where are me manners?” Hare smacked the mug down onto the tabletop and gave it a friendly scoot. “This is for you.”
Two hands as thick as beef briskets reached out and dragged the mug back across the table. The Hyde tossed more than half of it down in a single gulping draught, then belched and drained the rest.
Hare was only a little surprised when he didn’t eat the mug. “Another, squire?”
He waved Burke over and they were off to the races.
As most Hydes were, this one seemed a sad case, caught up and done in by his appetite for thrills. You said Mister Hyde, and everyone knew exactly who you meant…but while old Doc Jekyll’s alter ego may have been the first of his beastly kind, he was no longer the only one. Get enough mad docs in the same place, and soon they can’t help but try stealing each other’s secrets or bettering their discoveries, and often making a right cock-up of it, too.
Take old Henry Jekyll’s serum—copies of that all over the bloody place. Out on the cobbles they called it Jekyll Juice, and lord but wouldn’t the punters trade their own grandmothers’ teeth for a taste. Who couldn’t go for a night of big muscles and no inhibitions every now and then? A lot of scores got settled that way by fellas with no other source of courage. Problem was, a bad batch went out a few years back. You wanted to be like Mister Hyde for a night? Try a lifetime. The transformation never wore o
ff, and it wasn’t long before most of these poor sods got to missing their old faces, and all the people they ran off.
And this big bastard taking up half their tabletop by leaning on his elbows was a textbook case. He seemed both feral and chastened, like a wolf that had been driven out of the pack to roam alone amongst the trees. He drank whiskey the way normal men drank lager…like he was going to find his old face at the bottom of every mug. Pretorius had fronted them expense money for the job, the roll getting smaller every round they poured down the Hyde’s bottomless gullet, and as the hours passed, and the more they plied him with drink, the more he seemed like any drunk in your less savory establishments. He pissed, he moaned, he blubbered about how all he needed was the love of a good woman, and for a man in his condition there were none to be found.
“Dunno about that.” Burke sucked at his teeth as he gave it some thought. “Got a tart down at the Tea & Strumpets what fancies goats. I can’t see ‘er being any too quick to turn up ‘er nose at you.”
Hare gave him a swift kick under the table. “Hush yourself, William. ‘e don’t need talk like that.”
“Wot? Just tryin to ‘elp!” Burke pointed across the table. “See there?”
The Hyde had roused with a rumble of interest and a gleam in his eye—hardly a welcome sight. The last thing they needed was a night on the town trying to get this bugger shagged. Maybe Burke was thinking they could do the deed while he was distracted in mid-rut, but this might be a disastrous change in plans. Hydes could be bad enough without their horn up, and if this one got to feeling too frisky, why, what if he wasn’t particular about where he put it?
“What I mean to say, squire,” Hare told their mark, thinking fast, “is that you’re clearly a fella of good breedin’, and if it’s a woman you want to court, and never mind the goats, then you’d do well to be flush with a bit o’ wedge. Can’t show up with nothin’ to spend on the fair lady, now can you?”
The Hyde’s heavy face slid into a scowl of disappointment, and he swiped at a runner of drool slipping down his lantern jaw from the corner of his mouth. “Awww. Right. Job, you were saying. Job doing what?”
“’eavy liftin’, mostly, but that don’t look like it’d be any stretch for you.” He gave Burke’s shoulder a slap. “Me and William ‘ere owns a boarding ‘ouse a few blocks away. Doing some repairs, like. Came in to slake our thirst and discuss the dire matter of ‘ow you can’t find good ‘elp these days…but then I sees you and says to William, ‘Now that looks to me like a fella what could really move a tub o’ grout.’ Interested?”
The Hyde swayed in his seat and let loose with a belch that could’ve set ships to sailing. “Pay…n’grub too?”
“Absobloodylutely! Long as you don’t eat the grout.”
The Hyde nodded his head from the breastbone up. If he chundered, they were all goners. “Deal.”
“Brilliant!” He gave the Hyde the old grin—friend to all men, and to the many monstrous variations thereof. “What say we go back and show you ‘round the place, and toast this association proper?”
*
Out of the alleys and back in the streets, they trudged home toward the boarding house, and this time weren’t alone. The Hyde lumbered alongside them like an unstable behemoth and occasionally tried to burst into song, except it always came out as a low, garbled wheeze that might have been made by a despondent bull.
Burke ticked his head at Hare and they dropped back several paces.
“I think ‘e’s as rat-arsed as ‘e’s gonna get, but I dunno if it’s enough,” Burke whispered. “That front money Pretorius give us…we got any left? Maybe we should keep the rest and call it quits.”
Hare cuffed him on the back of the head. “That was gone before the sun went down. We’re more than a little deep into our own dosh now. Got no choice but to see this through.”
Burke glared daggers at the broad back swaying ahead of them. “Bloody moose, ‘e could drink a distillery dry and move on to the nearest alehouse for dessert.”
When they got the Hyde home, once they were past the steps, steering him was no easy task. He had shoulders made to fill doorways, and didn’t look as though he’d be any too graceful even on a sober night. Get him through one doorway without his wobbling head cracking the frame, and it was time to consider the logistics of the next.
No tenants to worry about, at least. They’d run them out first thing this morning. Work like this was best done uninterrupted.
In the parlor, Hare raided the liquor cabinet—scant offerings there, but enough to keep up appearances—and poured a toast to gainful employment. He let the Hyde finish the bottle, then made a sorrowful show of holding up the empty.
“Got more upstairs, if you like.” Hare winked. “Ain’t about to keep me best stuff down ‘ere where some of the thievin’ toerags who pass through the place can get their mitts on it, now am I?”
The Hyde grinned and gargled a sloppy laugh that washed his chin with his tongue. And that bristly mat of hair jutting from his head and neck—if critters didn’t call it home, they were missing out on some prime real estate. Slow and unsteady on his feet, he stamped one forward, and then the next, like a brat learning to walk. With Hare leading the way, and Burke bringing up the rear, they began to ascend the stairs.
That was the brilliant thing about old houses like this: high ceilings, steep stairways. Get near the top and it was a long way to the bottom. The moment he set foot on the second floor landing, Hare turned around.
“Right, William,” he said.
Burke hunkered down and planted his forearms like a beam behind the Hyde’s knees while Hare gave the bastard as hard a shove as he could muster. Gravity and the Hyde’s mass did the rest. Toppling across Burke’s back and flailing both arms in empty air, he went ankles-over-arse and down the stairs like a loose boulder. Wood cracked and banister slats went flying. He made a funny bounce at the bottom and took out the newel post, and a moment later, with its supports gone, the lower half of the banister splintered away.
Bloody hell—gonna need a handyman for real now, weren’t they?
Burke wasted no time, after the Hyde before he finished sprawling across the floor. He grabbed a fat cushion from the nearest parlor chair and slapped it over the dazed Hyde’s face. Burke threw his body weight across it to hold it in place, and Hare piled on next to keep the legs from kicking. From beneath the pillow came muffled bellowing, a prelude to a flurry from the Hyde’s arms, swinging wild like a pair of blind anacondas trying to fight it out. He found his range and began to smack those big brisket hands at Burke’s ribs.
“Steady pressure, William!” Hare cried. “We got ‘im now!”
Ah, the hubris. The Hyde got a knee free and sent Hare rolling. He came to a stop against the china hutch, then his gaze lit on the banister—as long as it was kindling, might as well put it to good use. Hare snatched the broken length from the floor and used it to beat the Hyde up and down both legs, give him something else to think of while Burke rode the heaving shoulders.
And then, of all the damnable fortune, the Hyde aimed the luckiest blind kick in the world and sent the club bouncing back to deal Hare a glancing blow to the skull. He dropped smack onto his arse and couldn’t do more than watch as the Hyde redoubled his efforts and sent Burke flying back onto the stairs.
The Hyde sat up, his unruly tufts of hair now an utter frightshow. Tame stuff, though, compared to his swollen maroon face and the fury in his unfocused eyes. As he began to wobble up to his feet, he let loose a roar that could have been no more bloodcurdling if it had been dredged up from Hell’s deepest cesspits.
“I’m open for ideas,” Hare said.
Burke had none. How could he? Bloody coward was beating a retreat up the stairs. Hare thought sure he was a dead man when he looked groundward again and saw the Hyde’s overstuffed shoe coming for his head. He rolled away on instinct and the kick caved in the front of the hutch. On his back now, Hare waited for the end—surely a good stompi
ng was next—but the Hyde had lost interest and was limping toward the stairs. Like a dog, his instincts appeared to send him chasing after whatever was running.
As soon as he’d cleared his head, Hare was on their heels, following the sound of clamor and chaos, bypassing the second floor and up to the third. He found them in one of the empty boarder’s rooms, the Hyde giving Burke a swat that bounced him across the bed and through the flimsy doors of the chifferobe. Hare leaped on the big bastard’s back and clamped his choppers on the nearest ear, hanging tight as Burke righted himself and pummeled away at the Hyde with whatever was at hand.
And so it went, the three of them tumbling from room to room, springing doors from their hinges and putting holes in walls. They’d beat on the Hyde awhile, and then he’d beat on them awhile longer, back and forth, until they’d worked their way down the hall to a corner room. The only thing saving them from annihilation was that the Hyde didn’t move well now, that pounding with the banister rail having taken the starch out of his legs.
But bloody hell, he remained plenty durable. Something was going to have to give here, and quicklike.
Corner room, lots of windows—a couple of clever fellas could work with that. Hare disentangled himself from the melee and told Burke to fend for himself for a minute. He tromped downstairs, kitchen first and then the basement. Wished he’d known the situation was going to end up topside—could’ve laid in the proper tools to begin with. Sometimes fate forced a bloke to improvise.
After the return sprint upstairs, Hare took the stout rope he’d fetched from the basement and knotted one end tight around the top floor’s newel post. Hoped this one held better than the other. Then he fashioned a quick slipknot noose while stepping lightly down the hall, uncoiling the rope’s length behind him. He let it lie outside the door, then charged back in to finish the job.
Not a moment too soon, either. Burke on his own was having less luck than the two of them together and was reduced to flatbacking it, kicking at the Hyde’s ribs while the bugger hunkered over him trying to rip Burke’s arm from its socket. Hare ran up behind the savage hippo and, with a looping swing, buried the kitchen cleaver crossways in the back of his neck. He went stiff, then shot upright with a howl and went jittery. Now they were getting somewhere.