by Vered Ehsani
He didn’t make to answer and I didn’t wait. “While I shared with you all my secrets, all my self-loathing and fears, you kept yours to yourself because you knew I wouldn’t trust you if I learned how you could manipulate people’s thoughts and feelings, how obsessed you were with immortality and how you’d twisted our vows so that I could never be free.”
I was wheezing by the time I’d finished spewing out that mess of words, having not drawn a breath throughout. His expression shifted from self-righteous anger to disgust. “And what, pray tell, has any of that to do with my murder?”
“We all have our secrets, Gideon,” I said. “I’m a wretched being, but I swear I didn’t mean to kill you. You, on the other hand, intended everything you did.”
“That is a poor excuse, Beatrice Knight,” he whispered, the softness of his words only emphasizing his rage. “But don’t fear, for you shall soon be free of me.”
“Gideon,” I said but he was gone.
Shoulders slumped, I collapsed back onto the sofa. By force of habit, I picked up the teacup and drained the contents in a long gulp. Koki’s promise of death seemed disturbingly alluring after that scene and the terrible silence that followed.
Mr. Timmons remained standing, a stoic figure despite all he’d overheard.
I couldn’t bear to ponder what his thoughts were of me. Surely, I told myself, he was quite relieved that I’d refused his proposal and that he wasn’t encumbered by such a woman who would kill her husband and make no mention of it to the deceased.
“I’m sorry you had to listen to all that,” I said wearily, staring at my shaking hands.
He didn’t respond.
“I should leave now,” I mumbled, not looking at Mr. Timmons. I couldn’t bear to face his disgust, outrage, disappointment or worse, his fear that I might now turn on him. It was strangely enough a more terrible prospect than facing Gideon had been.
But I did force myself to face the truth, the stark and horrendous truth: while I’d been hunting down creatures that looked like monsters, the worst of them all was the creature I saw everyday in the mirror.
“Bugger Mrs. Beeton,” Mr. Timmons said, his voice gruffer than usual as he sat beside me and engulfed both my trembling hands in his. Against the warmth of his skin, mine was icy, a reflection of the internal landscape of my soul.
I’m unsure what startled me more: Mr. Timmons holding my hands or Mr. Timmons knowing all about Mrs. Beeton and her strict injunctions regarding social visits. Either way, I sat numb and unresponsive, allowing the bold contact he’d initiated only because, I convinced myself, I was too fatigued to protest.
After a few moments thus, he cleared his throat and asked, “If you don’t mind an inappropriate question, Mrs. Knight, what actually did happen with Gideon?”
I laughed, a brief and strangled sound that died before being properly birthed. “Considering the current circumstances, that question is hardly any more inappropriate than all that has transpired to date.”
His only response was to tighten his grip on my hands, as if to prevent me from withdrawing them and placing them in a more suitable location. He needn’t have concerned himself, for I hadn’t the will to move at all. Everything slumped: my shoulders, my chin, my heart. If Mr. Timmons had attempted to drain my energy right then, he would have found little there to consume.
Of the many stories I have collected in my life, there were three that plagued me and scarred my dreams: the disappearance of my little brother; the encounter with Koki in Lagos; and the demise of Gideon Knight.
That final story, the one in which I kill my husband, was one I’d never before shared and had hoped never to do so.
Perhaps Mr. Timmons was manipulating my energy after all, or maybe I was weary of secrets. Whatever the case, I opened my mouth and couldn’t close it until the story was complete.
Chapter 19
Gideon and I had been married not quite a year, and it was as far as first years go a blissful one. Gideon was the only normal human who knew of my real work, my true identity and the community of paranormals the Society monitored. That I could talk so freely with him only added to my happiness. In hindsight of course I now realize he wasn’t as normal as he made himself out to be.
There were of course a few dark spots, as should be expected with any newlywed couple. For a start, Prof. Runal wasn’t at all pleased to hear that Gideon was my confidant in all matters. He only grudgingly accepted that this would have to be the case when I threatened to leave the Society rather than withhold the truth from my husband.
For his part, Gideon would from time to time need to travel for his work, and those trips were such a burden to me, for I missed his mischievous presence when he was away. In addition, he was not very forthcoming on the details of his work or the nature of these trips, and oddly enough I never felt the urge to press him. Perhaps he was manipulating my energy to dampen my curiosity.
I glanced sideways at Mr. Timmons who gave no indication he was anything more than absorbed in my story. I didn’t sense any interference from him (goodness, I do seem to land up with the oddest of men!) nor did he seem perturbed in the least by my confessions.
“I do now marvel that I never thought to study Gideon, and never did I sense his efforts on me,” I mused.
Mr. Timmons shrugged his wide shoulders. “Love does blind us so,” he remarked.
Even in my depressed state, I could clearly detect the bitterness of unspoken stories lingering in his words.
“Apparently so,” I said and sighed wearily.
There was one more dark spot that year, an inadvertent discovery on my part that I have since worked diligently to suppress. At the time I didn’t comprehend how it was possible, but since learning that my mother was a witch and that I was bitten by a werewolf, it now makes perfect sense, in a perfectly horrible way.
While out on a case involving a particularly nasty Selkie with a predilection for kidnapping little children, I had cornered the creature. Although she had her seal skin over one shoulder, there was no water nearby for her to escape into.
She had a small boy in her grasp, a cherubic little thing who reminded me in so many painful ways of my lost brother. Perhaps the intensity of emotions this similarity encouraged provided the necessary impulse for what occurred next.
“If you’ll not let me pass, I’ll kill the man child,” the Selkie hissed at me, speaking with a ghastly accent that I could barely make heads or tails of. It had a gurgle-like quality as if she were speaking from under water.
The boy whimpered but I couldn’t let that distract me. “Neither of those shall happen,” I said in as cool a tone as possible.
I had decided what weapon I would use: a barbed whip that I would use to snatch the seal skin away. I knew the Selkie would trade anything, including the child, to have her precious skin returned. I was just slipping the whip out of my pocket when the Selkie grabbed the boy by the hair and lifted him.
The child’s squeal of pain and fright combined with whatever nonsense the creature was babbling about. Something snapped within me. I felt consumed by a force I didn’t recognize, yet I also knew it was part of me. Disbelief and complete acceptance overwhelmed my ability to think in a clear and logical manner.
Something blossomed out of my own energy and took shape. Faster than it just took me to describe this, there standing beside me was the energetic form of a wolf, similar to what I would see around a werewolf who is about to change.
I watched this wolf energy as if observing a scene from a distance, as if I had been lifted up to a height and was staring down at a play. I couldn’t hear the Selkie’s threats or the boy’s sobs. My entire attention and all my emotions were consumed by the wolf.
Make her stop, I thought.
The wolf attacked with such speed that its movements were blurs. My anger fueled its snarl; my pain, its teeth; my determination, its strength.
I heard the Selkie scream, a shrill expression of terror, but it was muted and had no ef
fect on me. And then I did something I am not inclined to do: I fainted.
When I next came to, the little boy was kneeling beside me, shaking me, begging me to wake up. The Selkie lay nearby, dead. There was no indication of the cause, no bite marks or blood, but I knew.
Prof. Runal was of course most intrigued by this new ability and encouraged me to explore it. But something restrained me: the memory of the thrill of it all. I’d luxuriated in the power of the wolf, in its strength and ferocity. It had intoxicated me, but it had also left me powerless over it. I hadn’t been in control of what transpired. I hadn’t wanted to kill the Selkie, only to persuade her to let the child go, but the beast within had had other intentions. Perhaps it had caused me to faint away so that I couldn’t interfere.
And both these facts — the thrill and the loss of control — scared me. I didn’t attempt to call up that beast again. On the other hand, I didn’t attempt to suppress it either, not then at least. When I wasn’t mindful, when I allowed my control to relax, I would on occasion glimpse it by my side, ever ready, ever present.
I gazed down at our interlocked hands. It really was inappropriate, but who was here to judge? The railway workers who had cultures as different from Mrs. Beeton as a zebra is from a hippo? Lilly who was married to a bat? Cilla who was in love with a werewolf? The Stewards who had left home penniless and shamed? Mr. Timmons who clearly had no interest in social niceties? Hadn’t Dr. Cricket, of all people, suggested that this was a place we could all start over and forget the restraints of English society?
We surely were a band of misfits, all of us having left our homes out of a necessity to start afresh.
“Is that what killed Gideon then?” Mr. Timmons asked as my silence lengthened.
I didn’t have the energy to nod my head. “Yes,” I whispered.
Prof. Runal visited me one evening. Gideon had yet to return from his day’s work, and the Professor was earnestly seeking to persuade me to venture again to West Africa on another assignment.
I was on the brink of relenting, despite the anxiety that flared up at even the thought of it, when Gideon returned in time to join us for tea. Upon hearing of Prof. Runal’s plan however, Gideon declared he wouldn’t consent to the voyage. He went as far as to accuse my mentor of lacking any concern for my mental and emotional well-being.
“You know what she suffered on that other trip,” he shouted. “How could you consider sending her back to that abominable place? Have you no heart, no concern at all?”
Oh yes, he could shout. Before he was a ghost, Gideon had quite a voice. It was a voice that could sing a lullaby to sooth the rawest nerves or fiercely argue with a werewolf not accustomed to having anyone stand up to him.
The two men were reclining on sofas facing each other, while I was on a chair, the location of which formed the bottom part of the U-shaped sitting arrangement. Thus I glanced from side to side as each man spoke, feeling like a spectator at a tennis match that was about to end in blows.
“Now, now, dear chap, she is under my employ, Beatrice is,” Prof. Runal said in his booming voice, his hairy face twitching, his bulky form tensing.
“And she is my wife and thus part of my household,” Gideon rebuked him, his voice now lethally low and soft, as a dagger sheathed in silk might be.
Prof. Runal leaned forward, his knees creaking and his teeth bared as dogs and wolves do when defending their territory. “So you follow current social norms, do you, in which a wife cannot make her own decisions without a husband’s consent?”
Gideon glared across the small room at the Director of the Society. “I follow social norms to the extent that I as her husband am duty-bound to care for her and protect her, and that I shall do.”
Prof. Runal shook his head and clucked in a disapproving tone. “Poor Beatrice, to be controlled thus.”
“You, sir, will refer to her according to her station as my wife, as Mrs. Knight,” Gideon commanded in a tone so different from his usual light-hearted one that I cringed in my chair.
Prof. Runal’s nostrils flared and I trembled. Did I dare interrupt? Should I offer more tea, more biscuits, or the door out of the room?
The Professor stood, his sheer mass dwarfing everything in the room, the smallness of which only added to his size. Gideon rose too, not intimidated at all, although I wished he would be. For looking upon these two men, one my mentor since I was orphaned, the other my husband, both of whom I knew so well and loved so dearly, I was certain that they were about to fall upon each other. Despite his bravado and his quick wit, Gideon surely didn’t have a chance against the strength of an enraged and experienced werewolf.
I stood too, my legs quivering, my heart stammering, my voice silenced by emotions that overpowered me.
That’s when the wolf appeared by my side.
I wanted the men to stop. That’s all I wanted.
But werewolves are pack animals, and Prof. Runal was an alpha. In the mind of the wolf, there was never a question of whom it would defend.
Gideon didn’t know what killed him. He was dead before his body hit the floor.
Or so Prof. Runal informed me after resuscitating me from my faint.
“It wasn’t your fault, Beatrice,” he said with all the gentleness a father could muster for his child. “Not your fault at all.”
He placed a pillow under my head and covered me with a blanket. I tried to push myself up, to see what had happened to Gideon, but Prof. Runal insisted I remain at rest and I didn’t have the strength to resist him.
In the doctor’s report, the cause of death of Mr. Gideon Knight was a heart weakened by excessive consumption of narcotics.
Only Prof. Runal and I knew the truth, that Gideon’s heart had been destroyed by my wolf energy as it defended its pack member.
When I received the death certificate, I didn’t protest the implied slight against Gideon’s reputation, for he was already dead and what did it matter if people believed he had overused a drug? For his part, Prof. Runal never mentioned the wolf again, nor did he send me to West Africa. We never spoke of what had transpired.
A few days later, Gideon’s ghost appeared.
Chapter 20
My head fell back as my story ended.
Why hadn’t I told Gideon the truth from the beginning, that night he first appeared by my bedside to sing me a lullaby? Perhaps I feared losing him again. Or perhaps his lack of initial understanding regarding his new circumstances restrained me, for how much can a mind bear to hear? To be told one is now deceased is challenging enough. How could I have added the burden of knowing it was his wife who was the cause?
Ultimately, despite all my excuses, it was fear that restrained me.
Fear of what I’d become.
Fear of losing him.
Fear of his anger.
Despite all my precautions, my fears had all transpired into a reality far worse than I’d imagined it could be. I had accustomed myself to his presence. I’d never fully mourned his death because he was still with me. Now, I had a furious ghost who in all likelihood hated me.
“Prof. Runal was right,” Mr. Timmons finally spoke. “It wasn’t your fault.”
I closed my eyes, overcome with a bone-deep exhaustion. “Fault or no, I am the cause of his demise. And that’s all that matters really.”
“Intention must count for something,” he countered.
“Are you actually trying to make me feel better about killing my husband?” I demanded, opening one eye to squint at him.
“Shocking, isn’t it?” he said with a shameless grin.
“From anyone else, yes,” I said, wondering if now would be an opportune time to retrieve my hands from his grasp.
The man must’ve seen my intention, for he tightened his grip. “Now that you’ve unburdened yourself, Mrs. Knight, perhaps we can revisit the issue of my proposal?”
Both my eyes flipped open and I stared at him, aghast. “Surely you can’t be serious.”
He shrugged his
shoulders. “I see no reason why not.”
“No reason?” I spluttered. “Mr. Timmons, I’ve just informed you that I was the cause of my first husband’s death, that I have a murderous wolf spirit I can’t fully control, and you see no reason to reconsider your generous but ill-advised…”
“Generous? Ill-advised?” he interrupted and laughed. “Mrs. Knight, I assure you I’m not providing charity. Nor am I seeking for anyone’s advice on the matter. And I don’t fear this wolf of yours.”
“Well, perhaps you should,” I snapped. I was amazed that he could approach the issue with such a flippant manner, although I must admit that a duplicitous part of me was relieved and just a tad bit hopeful. “Really, you are a fool.”
“Yes, indeed,” he agreed amiably, stroking my hands as he spoke. “That’s what love does or so I’m told.”
That treacherous hope cheered within me, rallied by the implication of his words. “Well, how big a fool are you then?” I asked, not daring to breathe.
“Terribly big,” he conceded and he sobered up, his stormy grey eyes fixing me with an unblinking gaze. “To the extent that in the face of a lethal and unpredictable wolf spirit, a husband’s incensed ghost and a woman’s stubborn refusal, I still persist in overlooking all that and resubmit my proposal for her consideration. A big enough fool to hope that she might reconsider all these hindrances and my own eccentricities, and do me the honor of becoming my wife.”
The lightheaded sensation that threatened me with a fainting episode reminded me to breathe, so I did with a great gasping breath that could almost be mistaken for a sob.
In fact, it was, to my mortification, a teary-eyed gasp, and then I realized I was nodding my head with utter abandonment.
I immediately took firm control of myself, but even still was unable to smother the smile that might well have been wider than Mrs. Cricket’s face-splitting one.