Heart of Perdition

by Selah March

  “As he was my world, I was his.”

  “Yet you insist he did not love you.”

  “If he did, he hid it well. I have never known what it is to feel the affection of another for more than a few, fleeting moments, and I expect I never will.”

  James lifted his eyes to hers, and she watched as the unpleasant shade of green faded into the bright blue she remembered. He reached out and brushed a tendril of hair from her face, then dropped a kiss on her nose. “Never is such a long time, my darling.”

  His face creased with a puzzled frown. A moment later, he clutched at his chest and fought to breathe. Elspeth’s lazy, rumpled joy evaporated. She rolled away from him and stumbled to her feet, covering herself with the torn remnants of her gown.

  “Do you see? Oh, James, now do you see?”

  He curled into a ball upon the floor, plainly racked with pain.

  In the library, the clock on the mantel tolled the hour. Never before had it sounded so loud, and so filled with gleeful perversity. Clutching her bodice to her bosom, Elspeth ran from the drawing room into the library, snatched up a poker and proceeded to dash the clock from its perch. She beat upon it till it lay in splinters on the hearth. Still, its unholy tick-tock would not be silenced—proof that Elspeth had no more power to destroy the clock’s inherent evil than she did to save James from his own folly. She fell to her knees upon the Persian carpet, pressed her fists against her ears and wept.

  A quarter of an hour passed, during which time Elspeth attempted to restore both her composure and her mourning frock to their proper states. When she returned to the drawing room, she found James likewise fully dressed and seated at the piano, apparently recovered from his attack. He rose at her approach and opened his arms, as if he expected her to walk into his embrace a second time and watch as death stole him away.

  Instead she told him, “I am neither good nor courageous enough to be the heroine of a popular novel. If you press me, I will relent—but please know it will be against my will. I do not want you here, James.” She cringed to see his face fall, but continued nonetheless. “You are mortal. If you stay and love me, you will die.”

  After a long moment of silence, he dropped his arms, nodded and offered her a smile, crooked and genuine.

  “I think you are more than a little mad,” he said. “This persistent solitude would drive anyone insane. But this is your domain. I cannot preach change and choice to you, and then force you to accept my love. I am a better man than that, Elspeth.”

  She watched him take his leave and wished he were not quite so good, after all.

  Chapter Ten

  1 December 1899

  She loved him; it was indisputable.

  She loved him as if it were some new manner of breathing she had invented. In his absence she found herself lost in a grief black enough to be the opposite of starlight. It seemed unlikely that anyone could experience such pain and remain among the living. She waited for death to unwrite her from the story of the world.

  It did not. She continued to breathe, and to love.

  December wore on. The weather remained unusually placid.

  One day soon, I will not be here to see the change of seasons.

  But today was not that day, for today she received a letter from her lover.

  Dear Elspeth,

  I write to inform you that I will be undergoing further surgery. Colgrave is against it, but I believe what I am doing is right, for if such a small amount of the substance from your father’s artifact has made me so strong and healthy, what might a larger amount do? Indeed, what might all of it do?

  I believe in my heart of hearts—if you will forgive the unfortunate turn of phrase—that it is my duty as a man of science to discover the limits of your father’s discovery. Or perhaps this is merely the lie I tell myself.

  In any event, I have updated my will, and although the title and family estate will pass to my third cousin’s son, I’ve bequeathed to you all my remaining worldly goods, save for a few odds and ends.

  I ask that you see to Toby’s education, and treat him well. He’s a good boy beneath all his bluster.

  Yours fondly,

  James Henry Weston, Earl of Falmouth

  25 November 1899

  2 December 1899

  “My lord, what you have done is an affront to everything for which the medical profession stands,” Colgrave declared, his expression grave. “I absolutely refuse to condone it. In fact, I am disgusted by it.”

  James dismissed the doctor’s objections with a sneer. “Look at me. I’m fit as I’ve ever been—more so, in fact, and after only a few days’ recuperation. The surgery was a complete success.”

  “Be that as it may, its performance was an ethical failure. If I’d known you’d simply buy yourself another set of surgeons—”

  “What, Colgrave? What would you have done? Poisoned their minds against me, as you did the last batch?” James stared at the steak knife where it lay on the clean, white linen before him. If he concentrated, he could imagine how it would look protruding from Colgrave’s left eye socket.

  Or perhaps he’d turn the good doctor into a work of art—slice his skin into ribbons and let him taste his own blood before he expired. Of course, the screaming would attract notice, and that was never a good thing. A dinner napkin stuffed into Colgrave’s blathering hole would save that bit of trouble.

  But there was the issue of Elspeth. She would never condone such behavior. It was crucial she not know how much of himself he’d traded away for the excellent health he now enjoyed. Eventually, he’d have to tell her, but for now—

  “Have you heard anything I’ve said, my lord? Or have those fine, healthy ears of yours gone deaf to good sense?”

  As if from a great distance, James watched his own hand close around the handle of the knife.

  Sometime later, his manservant entered the dining room.

  “M’lord?”

  James jolted awake. “Yes, Belkins?”

  “I see you’ve made something of a mess, sir.” The servant gestured toward what appeared to be a bloodied bundle of rags in the corner of the room.

  “Indeed, it appears I have. Will you be so good as to clear it away? Discreetly, of course.”

  “Of course, m’lord.”

  Never before had he been so glad that Belkins was built of gears and cogs and levers. Like dead men, machines told no tales.

  * * *

  9 December 1899

  Elspeth received another letter. At first, she thought it had been sent by someone else writing on James’ behalf, for the handwriting was unrecognizable—bolder strokes with jagged edges punctuated by blots of ink that resembled blackened faces staring out at her from the page.

  She was mistaken.

  Dearest Elspeth,

  A quick note to impart sad news: Toby is no longer with us.

  He lost a tooth yesterday. I watched him worry at it till it came away in his hand, leaving an empty space. I forced him to show me the bloody socket. His small face felt fragile between my palms as I examined the wound, as if I could crush his skull with no more force than that which is required to break a walnut in the jaws of a nutcracker. But I did not harm him. This I swear, with Belkins as my witness.

  However, it seems I frightened him, for he fled in the night. The note he left is most apologetic, if somewhat illegible.

  It is for the best. I believe I would have been compelled to send him away before he angered me, as Colgrave has angered me.

  As for myself, I have never experienced better health or spirits. I do not sleep, and am never tired. I eat at almost every hour, and yet I am always hungry. There is a constant agitation within me that will not be soothed, abiding side by side with a stillness that is like living beneath a pool of cool, clear water, deaf and blind to the world around me.

  In this stillness, there are no voices, no cacophony of discord telling me what is right, what is wrong. There is only what is possible. There is only the bloo
d, and the breath, and the spark.

  Finally I know what it is to live.

  Yours always,

  James

  3 December 1899

  P.S. Colgrave, likewise, is no longer with us.

  JHW

  Elspeth burned this letter. Watching the last scrap of paper curl and blacken, she wondered if she could pretend she’d never read it…never even received it. She did not want to know that poor Toby preferred the deprivations of a life on the streets to abiding in the same house with whatever Lord Falmouth was becoming…or had already become.

  But I cannot turn from this, for am I not the catalyst of this transformation, just as surely as the contents of the green glass vial?

  She did not want this. She’d rather James be dead than—

  Liar, the voice in her head whispered. At times it was the voice of her father. On other occasions, she thought Mrs. MacGillvrey had entered the room unseen and profaned her to her face. But Elspeth was always alone.

  Now the seabirds came regular as clockwork to dash themselves not against the cliffs, but against the library windows. Each evening, Mrs. MacGillvrey and her niece gathered the bodies. They cooked them in stews, and roasted them over open flames, and never questioned how or why the bounty came to be.

  Word arrived from the mainland of deadly phenomena in London. Three dirigibles had exploded into flames over Kensington Palace, killing all aboard and several on the ground. An alarming number of butchered bodies—reports of as many as seventy in a day—were appearing on the shores of the Thames, turning the water red with gore. A trio of swine was found slaughtered on the steps of Westminster Abbey, their entrails shaped into a single word: Xaphan.

  On St. Kilda, the mild weather continued.

  One afternoon, Mrs. MacGillvrey returned from the village with further news. Lord Falmouth’s London townhouse had burned to the ground, along with an entire city block. It was assumed all inside had perished, although the earl’s remains were not found. The fire was said to have burned unnaturally hot, consuming even the bones of the horses in the stables and those of what few human servants Falmouth had retained.

  “I’m so sorry, miss,” Mrs. MacGillvrey told her. “I know ye was fond of his lordship.”

  Elspeth rounded on her in a fury. “I am fond of him. He lives on, and we shall see him again.”

  “Just as you say, miss.”

  As the woman turned to leave, Elspeth grasped her arm. “Do you think me mad, Mrs. MacGillvrey?”

  “That’s not for me to say, miss.” But as she left the library, the older woman made the sign of the cross.

  Elspeth spent the night recalling the faces of those who had loved her, and whom she had lost. She refused to number James among them.

  * * *

  17 December 1899

  An ashen-faced Mrs. MacGillvrey left the final letter on the library desk without comment. The seal on the envelope had been broken.

  My darling,

  I am no longer the man I was—or, if I am, he is not all that I am.

  My mind moves more quickly than the fastest locomotive. I am stronger than any ten men. But my urges are deadly, my love, and the world makes easy prey. I do not trust myself without your steadying presence to guide me.

  I know you will tell me that we must not be together, but it no longer matters if you are mad or sane on the subject of your infernal curse, for I am no longer mortal.

  I have abandoned England forever, and am moving swiftly in your direction. All of Scotland lies before me like a maiden sleeping in a grove, unarmed and unguarded. But I will not dally. Together we shall toast the birth of the 20th century and bend the world to our will.

  The time grows short, my love. Soon…very soon…and then forevermore.

  Tenderly,

  James Xaphan, Earl of Falmouth

  11 December 1899

  Without the clock on the library mantel to tell her the time, Elspeth could not know how long she sat and thought. When she could endure the stillness no longer, she rose from behind her father’s desk and made her way to the kitchen, where she filled a small lamp with oil and lit it. She carried the lamp downstairs to the laboratory.

  The door to the hidden room remained sensibly shut, but the wallpaper around it hung in shreds, evidence of James’ drive to obtain the artifact once she’d located her father’s hiding place.

  Quite the impatient fellow even then.

  She approached the door with slow steps, knowing too well what lay behind it—darkness, thick enough to produce a greasy residue on the fingertips, bitter enough to leave an ugly aftertaste on the tongue. She dug a small tablet from the pocket of her apron and made a note with the stub of a pencil.

  Iron bolts, three inches in circumference—at least four of them. Five would be better.

  She pushed open the door and stepped inside. The stench of sulfur was not so overwhelming now, nor was the oppressive heat that had emanated from the room for weeks after James had removed the artifact from the premises. Still the atmosphere was close and unpleasant, and without windows to let in fresh air, it might remain so.

  Beeswax candles, and dried herbs scattered in the corners. Several good lamps. Shelves for books, a chair for reading.

  She lifted the lamp to inspect the walls, and recalled how astounded James had been to discover her father had lined the entire room with rusted bands of iron crisscrossing each other at two-inch intervals.

  “Even the ceiling?” he’d muttered. “Such a shameful waste of expense and effort for the sake of superstition.”

  Elspeth reached out to the orange, pitted surface of an iron band, then touched her fingertip to her tongue. As she’d expected, it tasted of salt.

  A seawater scrub for the walls, and more salt piled along the outside of the door. A small table and a pair of chairs. A large store of canned and dried foods, cutlery and china. Several barrels of fresh water. A bed, large enough for two, made up with the finest linens in the house. We shan’t need a source of heat, I expect.

  She turned and surveyed the room a final time.

  Iron shackles bolted a foot deep into the wall above the mattress, just as a precaution.

  She shoved the tablet and pencil into her pocket, adjusted her grip on the lamp and exited the laboratory.

  * * *

  31 December 1899

  She woke Mrs. MacGillvrey at dawn and told the housekeeper to pack her things and abandon the premises.

  “Be gone within the hour, and take your niece with you.”

  The woman refrained from commenting on such unjust treatment, just as she’d refrained from asking questions regarding the alterations to the small room adjacent to the laboratory. She’d toiled in silence to refurbish the room to Elspeth’s specifications, and never once complained—not even when Elspeth forgot to wish her a happy and blessed Christmas.

  Now Elspeth suspected she was relieved to go. Only when the moment of departure was at hand did she pause at the kitchen door, not quite meeting Elspeth’s eyes as she spoke.

  “Ye could come with us, miss. Ye needn’t stay alone. We take care of our own on St. Kilda.”

  “But I’m not one of your own, am I? And in any event, I will not be alone much longer, as I’m certain you know.”

  Elspeth looked past the housekeeper to where her niece stood waiting with the handcart. The girl’s eyes were wide with fear. She spread her hands over her swollen belly as if to shield it from Elspeth’s gaze, sending a thrill of foreboding to the depths of Elspeth’s soul.

  “Go,” Elspeth told them, “and no matter what you hear or see, do not return to this place.”

  When they were gone, she went to each corner of the house and removed her father’s brass wind chimes. She looked out over the village and watched the smoke from the peat fires drift with the breeze, and wondered how hot a blaze was required to consume the bones of a horse.

  When twilight arrived, she raced from room to room, throwing open the doors and windows. The blue-blac
k darkness seeped inside, and she let it, ignoring the lamps and the fireplaces to revel in the shadows. She sat at the piano and played the music-box waltz to guide James home.

  At a quarter to midnight, she stood on the front steps of the house, her breath fanning out in great swaths of steam and vanishing into the icy air. The scent of sulfur grew sharp, like a threat…or a promise.

  His skin will taste of smoke and blood beneath my mouth.

  A reddish, roiling ball of light appeared in the eastern sky. Elspeth could not tell whether it was the moon rising late, or the sun come too early, or something else entirely. All she could do was wait, empty of fear, beyond hope.

  The winter would grow fierce again, no doubt. But neither hostile weather, nor lethal curses, nor a thousand suicidal seabirds could threaten their love—not safe inside their nest of salted iron bands, with a soft bed, and food and books enough to last till spring.

  And after that? How will we manage?

  Elspeth shrugged. There was time enough to construct a plan. She was the daughter of Aurelius Shaw, after all, and sole heir to both his fortune and his scheming turn of mind.

  She watched as the stars flickered in and out of the coasting clouds. She kept alert for James’ footfalls on the path; she listened for her name upon his lips.

  And when she heard it, she smiled.

  To be continued…

  About the Author

  A lifetime lover of all things dark and disturbing, Selah March nevertheless makes wifedom and motherhood her chief occupations. Luckily, these pursuits leave time to entertain her less-wholesome inclinations. Selah holds a degree in English, and has been writing professionally for twelve years. She enjoys solitude, long walks after nightfall, and the bracing joys of winter in upstate New York.

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