Opium and Absinthe: A Novel

by Lydia Kang

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am. Where is your maid?”

  “I don’t know. Ada said she was going to wait—oh, there she is. Wait, they’re driving off again. Why does she keep doing that?”

  “Well, I’m here. Come on.” They walked together toward the bench. Tillie felt like she could breathe again. She realized she’d been holding her body stiffly and clenching her fists on and off all morning. With Ian next to her, her body loosened. It wasn’t so much that she assumed he’d fight for her if something happened. It was that when Ian was nearby, the landscape around her immediately felt familiar and comforting, no matter where they were.

  Tom turned his head at their approach. His eyes lit with pleasure at seeing Tillie but quickly darkened when he saw she was not alone.

  “Hello, Tom,” Tillie said, trying not to clench her teeth. Seeing him again gave her the unexpected and intense urge to strike him in the face with a brick.

  “Hello. Who’s this?”

  “This is Mr. Metzger. He’s a friend. Ian, this is Tom Erikkson.”

  Tom nodded, and Ian nodded back. Tom began, hesitant at first. “I thought . . . I assumed you’d be here alone.”

  “That’s an awfully big assumption, after what you did. You wanted to speak? Go ahead.” She folded her arms together in front of her.

  Tom shifted uncomfortably and spoke more to his feet than to Tillie. “This is hard for me, but I suppose it should be. You’re probably wondering why I’m even here, in this park. Well, I’m trying to get out of the house more. I’ve been living in that one room most of my life. I can’t change that I’m not well, but I can change some things.” He rubbed his head, as if he were kneading a headache away. He let go and tried to smile. “Would you believe I’ve taken more of a keen interest in my health? I’ve been choosing my foods carefully, working on my strength. This is my fifth time out of doors.”

  Tillie wasn’t so sure it was doing any good. He looked visibly ill, like he might close his eyes and fall asleep for a week.

  “I know,” Tom continued, “that my mind hasn’t been right. What happened with you—I’ve had nightmares where I’ve done that to people—to women. But I didn’t think I would do such a thing while awake. Strange thoughts I’ve had, and violent ones, but what makes a gentleman is one who knows right from wrong, no matter what thoughts reside within this.” He tapped his skull. “I was having trouble knowing the difference between what was real and wasn’t.”

  Tillie said nothing. He still hadn’t apologized.

  “I just want to say I am sorry. I’m so, so very sorry. It was wrong, and I should be in the Tombs, and . . .”

  As he was searching for more words, movement caught her eye. Tillie saw a man walk behind a grouping of trees in the corner of the park. He wore a black bowler hat and a light-gray coat. The clothes were ordinary enough, but his gait and the tilt of his head were unmistakable.

  “Did you see him?” Tillie hissed to Ian. Tom looked, too, but he seemed a little too forlorn at the moment to care.

  “I did. Who was that?” Ian said.

  “I think it was John O’Toole. The man we hired to guard the house. He and Ada—” Tillie stopped. This was an interruption she didn’t want to have. Was Ada close by? Would she try to speak to him about her condition? Why, why was John always afoot and watching when she did not wish him to be? “I have to speak to him,” she said, moving away.

  “Where are you going?” Tom asked.

  “Stop,” Ian said, jarred by the sudden change in Tillie’s focus. “Let me speak to him. Ask him why he’s here.” He leaned close and murmured in her ear, “This fellow here couldn’t hurt a fly. He looks to be on his deathbed. You’ll be safe for a minute, out here in the open. I’ll be back soon.” Ian took off in a light run toward the exit of the park, where they’d last seen John.

  Tom sighed, as if such interruptions were an inevitability in his life. “As I was saying—I am sorry,” he continued. He was rather white in the face, and he had started to perspire. His hand grasped the lapel of his coat. He tugged at the collar of his shirt. “God, why is it so hot?”

  “Are you quite all right?” Tillie said.

  “I think the exercise of being outside has been too taxing.” He stood, and his eyes suddenly unfocused. “My heart is beating so fast. So fast. I should go home.”

  Tillie grabbed his arm, alarmed. She helped lower him to the bench. “You do need to go home.”

  “I was feeling well yesterday, when I wrote you. I had even made my own breakfast. Though perhaps the cook’s seasoning has been too harsh. Oh God.” He turned his head to the side, and a waterfall of oat gruel poured out of his throat onto the paved stones. It stank like rotten apples.

  “Ian!” Tillie yelled, turning her head in the direction where he had run off. “Ian! Ada! He needs help!”

  A carriage had stopped only thirty feet away. It was a hansom cab, not the Pembrokes’ carriage, and it wasn’t Ada inside. Mrs. Erikkson stumbled out, her face bright red, as if she’d been crying for the last hour.

  “Is that you, Miss Pembroke? Have you seen Tom? He ran off this morning, and I can’t find—oh, goodness gracious, God in heaven. What’s happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Tillie said. She looked around, frantic. Where was Ian? “Ian!” she hollered again. The rain had started up again, this time a torrent of gray that shrouded the park. The park was deserted except for them. Tillie’s hair began to droop around her eyes, obscuring her range of vision. Her dress grew heavy from all the wet.

  “Help me. We’ll get him into the hansom, and I’ll bring him home. I’m so sorry, Miss Pembroke. After all that’s happened—and now this. He knows better. He ought to have left you alone.”

  Mrs. Erikkson had grabbed Tom around his torso, under his arms. Tillie cringed at the thought of standing close to Tom, but she couldn’t let him stay here in the rain. Luckily, it was her good shoulder that she was able to slip under Tom’s other arm. Tom wobbled the necessary steps to the hansom, as she and Mrs. Erikkson struggled and slipped on the slick pavement. Mrs. Erikkson opened the door to the carriage as Tillie struggled under Tom’s weight, which had suddenly gotten heavier. She heaved his arm around her back and looked at his face.

  Tom was slack jawed, in a dead faint.

  “Sir!” Tillie yelled. As quickly as she could without dropping Tom, she pounded on the door. “Driver! Help us!”

  “Not worth a penny, these drivers!” Mrs. Erikkson croaked as she pushed and pulled Tom’s limp body into the carriage. She pushed her skirts aside and pulled Tom in by his armpits. She exited the other door and came around to Tillie’s side, where she was struggling to maneuver his feet inside.

  “What happened to him?” Tillie asked.

  “I don’t know. He never should have left the house—his heart is too weak. Please, help me get his legs in, and we won’t bother you again.”

  Tillie looked back through the rain but could not see Ian or John or Ada. Where had everyone gone?

  Mrs. Erikkson was pushing Tom’s legs, but the weight of his torso was making her efforts ineffectual. She was wheezing. With a determined breath, Tillie squeezed herself in the cab and pulled his body all the way in. Mrs. Erikkson leaned in the door and felt Tom’s face.

  “He’ll be all right. He needs more medicine. We’ve run out.”

  “Surely you can get more,” Tillie said. “You have that entire little house full of medicines.”

  “Not this one, we don’t,” Mrs. Erikkson said and pulled out a brown jar.

  “You can’t give it to him—he’s not awake yet,” Tillie said, patting Tom’s unconscious face. “He’ll choke on it!”

  “Oh, this isn’t his medicine. This is for you.”

  Tillie looked up, confused. Mrs. Erikkson had covered her own nose and mouth with a cloth. She had already unscrewed the top of the jar, and now she thrust the container forward. A clear liquid hit Tillie square in the face. Some of it splashed into he
r mouth, which filled with a pungent bitterness. Her tongue felt like it was dissolving away, numbed almost instantly.

  The liquid burned her eyes and blurred everything. Tillie began to cough uncontrollably. She wiped her face and neck, but the liquid seemed to turn almost instantly into a vapor cloud that she could not escape. Every breath, every gagging cough, she inhaled more of it. Her mind instantly became befuddled, and she could not sit up in the carriage. She lurched forward, coughing, gagging, on top of Tom’s prone body. She couldn’t seem to use her arms, to tell her legs to kick, to get up, to run away.

  Mrs. Erikkson shut the carriage door, then went to the other side.

  “It’s so nice to use ether on a rainy day. No chance of explosions or fire.” She unscrewed another jar and poured it into the back of the carriage. “There. It’ll stay close to the floor and keep you two asleep for quite a while.”

  She shut the door and went to drive the carriage. Tillie tried to lift her arm again to smack the side of the carriage to warn someone that she needed help. But there was no one there, no other driver, no one to hear. Her blurred eyes saw that her hand wasn’t lifted, and in the next moment she couldn’t remember why she was here or why she’d ever needed to call for help.

  CHAPTER 26

  The blood is the life!

  —R. M. Renfield

  Tillie saw the world as if through a kinetoscope. A broken kinetoscope.

  There was a carriage around her, and a warm body beneath her. There was the pungent odor of that terrible stuff that Mrs. Erikkson kept dribbling over her mouth. It made her choke on nothing. It burned her lips and tongue and made her gag. Pink-tinged froth spewed from her throat when she coughed. Holes punctured her vision and thoughts, as if someone were shooting bullets through her memory, over and over again.

  She was being dragged out of the carriage, laughing. Coughing. She spit up a wad of mucus into a dirty alleyway, tasting blood, and two strong arms went around her chest to drag her into a darkened room.

  “Don’t let him touch me,” Tillie tried to say. She spoke the words over and over, but they were garbled, like Donna donna toe or some such. Sometimes she saw the words emerge from her face, the letters twisting into a sinewy white line that floated up into the air and dissolved into smoke.

  A few coherent thoughts emerged from her garbled brain.

  This wasn’t like morphine. Morphine made her feel like she belonged in her own body. This stuff—did Mrs. Erikkson say it was ether?—this made her feel like a piece of a puzzle dropped into a stew full of shoestrings and potatoes. None of it made sense. She was not herself. She was not content.

  She was not.

  At some point, the fog of disorientation lifted. She found that she was in a darkened room that smelled of musty herbs and sharp spirits. A damp, muddy scent hung like a curtain around her, as if she were deep within an earthen hole. Tillie went to rub her nose and found her arm was tied near her side. So was her other arm, and her ankles were restrained.

  Her whole body was bound to a table of some sort. She wriggled but could not pull away from her bonds. A thick rag muffled her mouth. Her voice box felt sore and swollen when she tried to produce a cry. Frothy, metallic secretions collected at the back of her throat, and she gagged and coughed.

  There were footsteps nearby. Not nearby—above her. She opened her eyes. Above her, a ceiling made of thick wooden planks. Crumbs of dried dirt gently rained down as someone paced. The pacing ceased, and all went quiet.

  A squeaking hinge issued, and somewhere a door shut. Bright light nipped at her eyes as the ceiling seemed to yawn open in the corner. She blinked several times before she could focus again.

  Mrs. Erikkson came down a ladder, her skirts gathered in one fist. She jerked closed the trapdoor. A tiny lamp in the corner was lit, and she picked it up to bring it closer. Her face brightened with a pert smile when Tillie’s eyes met hers.

  “Awake, are we? Good. That means the ether will be gone from your blood soon. We can begin. I couldn’t have a fire before. The ether might have exploded. I could have used morphine, but morphine won’t subdue without a needle and, well”—she shivered—“I greatly dislike needles.”

  Tillie mumbled through the gag.

  “I’m sorry to say I cannot answer your questions, but I appreciate the company.” She smiled again. “It’s so nice to be able to talk to someone with intelligence. The boy was just too young to understand. Your sister and the other girl, too afraid. But you—you understand. You know all about what I am not!” She smiled and turned toward a workbench laden with large bowls and flasks. Mrs. Erikkson bent to the fireplace, and there was a spark of light. The kindling crackled and snapped as it caught fire.

  Two large bottles of absinthe rested on the corner of the table. Mrs. Erikkson poured out a tumblerful and began to drink. She winced as it went down and poured more into the glass. Her hand shook a little, spilling some onto the table. Tillie could smell the herbaceous liquor in the air.

  Mrs. Erikkson moved a pile of journals from a chair and sat down. She lifted one, licked her thumb, and turned the pages. “Patterns in infectious protection in smallpox patients.” She nodded and smiled at Tillie. “That’s you, my dear.” She flipped to another page. “Those vaccines are a good idea, but I wish to protect my Tom the best way possible. Most diseases don’t have vaccines yet. The more we can give him, the better. You’ll help.”

  The fire in the brick hearth was now burning merrily. A cauldron Tillie hadn’t noticed before had begun to simmer. As the fumes rose, she crinkled her nose at the acrid, unrecognizable odor.

  Mrs. Erikkson caught her looking. “That was extracted from a boy who suffered from a leg infection that cured beautifully under my husband’s care. His blood has been cooking down for nearly three days now. When it’s done, I’ll divide it up and dry it down. Tom has not been taking his medicines for far too long.”

  Tillie mumbled against the rag. Mrs. Erikkson shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. She sighed. “Ah, good. The absinthe is working. And now, I can give you some morphine to help with the discomfort.” She opened a syringe kit and drew some medicine up. “I get so dizzy at the sight of sharp instruments. But like all womenfolk, I manage because I must.” Tillie cringed and tried to wriggle away from the needle, but there was no escaping. Mrs. Erikkson didn’t bother to lift up her sleeve or skirt, simply touched Tillie’s leg with one hand and jabbed the needle in with the other.

  “There. You’re looking a little purple, my dear. Let’s get some oxygen into that good, thick blood of yours before we begin. Now, if you scream, I’ll just say it was me, and then I’ll cut out your vocal cords with this.” She held up a short curved knife that shone in the firelight.

  She loosened Tillie’s gag a little, and Tillie was able to breathe. She gasped, wild eyed.

  “Please don’t do this! There are people looking for me. They’ll come soon, I know it.”

  “Oh, they came by already. They found nothing. And they’ll find nothing until I’m done.” She busied herself organizing some metal instruments on the table.

  “Tom will know!”

  “Tom is sleeping, and he thinks you’ve gone home safely.” Mrs. Erikkson turned and smiled, looking around the tiny dark room. “I love my little oubliette. You know that word, do you not? It comes from the French word ‘to forget.’ No? You don’t know the word? What about abattoir, then? Another pretty French word.”

  Tillie knew that word. Abattoir. Slaughterhouse.

  Mrs. Erikkson continued. “From the verb abattre. ‘To strike.’ Though I think oubliette is a bit more pretty.” She tucked a stray gray hair into the knot on her head. “I’ve learned a bit from reading your article. I can’t have all my marks look like vampires. This last one, I sawed off his head after I was done. With you, I’ll tear your throat out after, like you were attacked by a dog. I thought the fear of vampires would be a wonderful way to lead them away from a person like me, but no longer. I have to be more ca
reful. And I can’t be pretending to be a candy seller either! That only worked once, with that Weber boy. Anyway. There are other ways to bleed and be unseen.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Tillie began to whimper. “My sister too?”

  “That’s just a bad happenstance. Your family will get over it, just like I’ve gotten over my regrets in life. But I must work to take care of my Tom until the treatments begin to take effect.”

  “Treatments? What treatments?”

  “The blood. After certain sicknesses, it protects people from getting sick. And it will protect my Tom too. My harvests have nourished his stews and soups and drinks, though he doesn’t know it. His stomach is like mine, very delicate. He shall get so strong. But in the meantime, he doesn’t even know what he needs.” She patted a bottle next to her. Fowler’s solution—Tillie had seen it at the druggist. “The arsenic in it keeps him quiet and gentle. It’s not good on the stomach, and Tom dislikes it so, but he doesn’t need to know.”

  Tom had said he’d been fixing his own meals and had felt stronger. Until today.

  “You gave him some this morning, didn’t you?”

  “I did! And then he ran off before I could sedate him with a good fat dose of morphine.”

  “You’re not helping him. You’re keeping him sick to make him better? I don’t understand.”

  “You wouldn’t know. You haven’t a mother’s feeling,” Mrs. Erikkson said tartly. “Tom is all I have. We lost the first child, and I shan’t lose the second. And his father pays no attention to the new findings in the medical news every day.” She lifted up a journal and shook it. “I couldn’t be a doctor. There was no money, and my impediment.”

  “Impediment?”

  “The needles,” Mrs. Erikkson said. She picked up the bottle of absinthe and poured herself another tumblerful, drinking it quickly. She shivered. “This is the only thing that keeps my neurasthenia at bay.”

  “You’re careless. You keep leaving bottles behind when you leave your victims.”

  “Nobody cares, nobody knows,” Mrs. Erikkson singsonged. She was getting drunk.