My jaunt resumed in a circular park that revealed no distinguishable landmarks for the first few hundred feet of exploration. The footpath I negotiated was proficiently manicured, but the area was considerably absent of other pedestrians on this new morning. As it stood, this park’s vegetation had a haze of dormancy stamped upon it. I suspected the ice had just recently thawed underfoot, for the ground was stippled with shallow puddles. Because I had already endured far crueler climates, I took the hiemal air in stride until noticing a row of stucco terraces jutting from the field’s north edge. This feature by itself hinted to my whereabouts, but it wasn’t until I happened upon a white villa erected on a bluff on the opposite side of a canal, which I identified as The Holme, that I pinpointed my proximity to the Regent’s Park in the City of Westminster.
Surprisingly, the sky above the park’s Inner Circle was wonderfully clear on this occasion. I didn’t even detect a wisp of London’s eminent fog, which normally belched off the Thames like a plume of viscous gas. A wafer of sunlight dissolved the previous evening’s fingerprints from the horizon, leaving only the daybreak’s cerulean sheet in its place. I traveled a bit farther along the trail without any mentionable obstructions, momentarily stalling to listen to an untold number of chirruping birds. Of course, I had already scanned the territory for some other itinerants in company. My efforts ultimately proved fruitful.
I nonchalantly approached a string of wooden benches lining either side of the walkway. All of these resting points were empty, save for the last one that I set my gaze upon. Other than me, one visitor determined that the break of day represented the very best hour to absorb nature’s splendor. Either that or he had engaged in a trade far too nefarious for public demonstration. As insignificant as he registered to my eye at first glance, I was compelled to lend him a second and third look. From afar, there was nothing remarkable about his stature. But after wandering closer to where he stooped as motionless as an inebriated vagrant, I became overwhelmed with an urge to discover more about him.
Although I had difficulty constructing any particular feature in the man’s visage that gave me fright, something indefinable in his appearance brought me to a standstill. My spine tingled as I centered my stare on the man’s insidious eyes. His head seemed blunter than the average man’s cranium, which in turn deepened his eye sockets. Nothing resembling humanity stirred in either of those tar-colored cavities. Even in full sunlight, an unsymmetrical shadow draped over his brow like an unsightly birthmark. Only a passerby with an audacious disposition would’ve disturbed such a troglodyte. But since I was psychologically bound to my quest, I elected to join him as an uninvited guest on the bench.
In proximity to where I now sat, my opinion of the man’s character worsened. He was tailored in a fine suit coat and trousers, but the fabric hung over his extremities as though he filched it from a taller chap’s wardrobe. His dwarfish form, however, did not diminish his capacity to repulse even the most robust observer. Since he had not yet acknowledged me, I continued my critical inspection. Initially, his hands were dissatisfying to my sensibilities. I called them hands, only because they extended from a homo sapien, but they were closer to simian than anything else. A bristly, dark hair layered his knuckles and spread between the wedges of his digits. And each of his fingernails had a jagged edge with a black substance encrusted beneath them.
He also emitted a body odor that could’ve caused a hardened mortician to retch. Despite the man’s current inactivity, his acerbic breath was laborious and irregular. But from all of this unpleasantness, I discerned nothing more grossly terrifying than his face as he turned toward me. The same dense hair on his hands sprouted from his sagging jaw. As I mentioned, although no specific deformity spoiled his countenance, the overall effect of a teratogenic disorder seemed plausible. If I had ever encountered a more repugnant man before now, I couldn’t recall it.
I remained shivering in his presence, hoping that my aggressiveness was not misinterpreted as a challenge by his standards. Yet I simply couldn’t ignore the pernicious frown plastered on his lips. He may have given the crude air of a displaced vagabond from the alleys of Soho, but an expression of gratification also factored into his spirit. Before my thoughts gravitated to conversation, I was stricken by a cogent idea. This base fellow who I so blatantly stationed myself beside was not an ordinary Londoner out for a morning turn. At one time he may have indeed merited a reputation as an affable physician among his gentlemen friend, but this was prior to him succumbing to a destructive addiction.
An unbridled man hunched before me now, borne from a chemical seed and flowered by the repression of his primordial instincts. He, who was once a peaceable and practical doctor, now transformed indiscriminately into his odious and maligned other half. The man previously known as Dr. Henry Jekyll only existed as a ruse for the culprit who consumed his subconscious mind. His defiled brain pumped the elixir of a hedonistic dreams into gullies only recently navigated. A concoction of pleasurable feats, no matter how grotesque when examined in a rationale mind, was all that remained for a criminal known to society as Mr. Edward Hyde.
It seemed grimly appropriate that I had visited this impish creation in the aftermath of one of his most atrocious deeds. By this day’s emergence, I presumed Hyde had already bludgeoned Sir Danvers Carew to death, and he revealed nothing in his temperament that hinted he’d refrain from future spectacles of random violence. I, however, had already committed myself to inciting some level of consequential discourse from this savage.
“It looks as though you’ve been out gallivanting all night,” I remarked. Hyde’s sinewy hands clasped the bench’s slats, nearly cracking the brittle wood. He still held a smirk in his expression as if he had a joke’s punch line to dispense. Eventually, after I outstayed the period of tolerance he provided me, Hyde’s raven-black eyes narrowed.
“A bloke such as you could come into some rather severe trouble in the wee hours of morning,” he hissed. The voice was as hoarse and whispery as I might’ve imagined. But as much as I loathed Edward Hyde, I still recognized his value to my plight. I decided to take a delicate approach into the core of this tormentor’s depravities.
“I hope I’m not intruding on your privacy,” I offered.
Hyde’s tone became distinguishably baneful when he asked, “What do you seek from me, sir?”
My hesitation to answer Hyde was spawned from uncertainty. What could have I expected to learn from a man who functioned at the most primitive level of our species? The slightest misinterpretation of any of my words could’ve coaxed Hyde into an unorthodox frenzy. I wasn’t prepared to defend myself from such an onslaught of brutality, but at the same time I knew that I needed to confront what I feared most about my own existence.
“I just stopped to talk to someone,” I responded, but my hope of passing this conference off as a chance encounter became increasingly remote. “If I’m being truthful, you’re the first person I’ve seen today. The park is rather empty.”
“January mornings don’t breed crowds here,” answered Hyde in a gravelly voice. “But since it was your choice to sit beside me, I must conclude that you’re either supremely brave or stupid. In either case, you are at a disadvantage.”
Hyde’s swarthy lips twisted as if he chewed on a coil of barbed wire. A film of froth encircled his mouth, giving him the diseased indicator of a rabid beast. His Cimmerian eyes looked as though they belonged to an incubus rather than a once-docile physician. Had I not known of the extraordinary history that enabled Jekyll to unleash his shadowed side so wholly, I wouldn’t have fathomed that there was a connection between them anymore than Dr. Lanyon had done before his own sudden death.
“Shall we begin, sir?” Hyde murmured. His bid for civility was disguised poorly in this instance, and I rapidly felt cornered by his insistence to communicate. “It’s unlikely that you haven’t been told about me by someone,” he mused.
“We have a common acquaintance,” I said in an attempt to salvage time. “I learne
d about your haunts from Mr. Utterson.”
“Ah,” said Hyde, “now there’s a fine chap who’d forward nothing but propitious notions in regard to my character.”
I still maintained a feigned ignorance to the duality of his condition. “He, like others, still view you as an enigma. Your friendship with Dr. Jekyll, if I may call it that, is something he doesn’t yet comprehend.”
Hyde’s voice impaled my eardrums like a handful of rusted needles when he trilled, “Don’t mention that abhorrent name to me ever again.” A seedling of rage germinated in the scoundrel’s eyes, causing his pupils to sprout with an unparalleled ugliness. “It’s fair to say that Henry Jekyll has inhibited me for the entire course of my existence. I detest the very fabric of his being, but at the same time, I cannot separate myself from his company. Even now, as I seek a respite in this park, I wait hatefully for his inevitable return.”
I realized, of course, that at this stage in Jekyll’s experimentation, the mutability between gentleman and malefactor was as interchangeable as London’s fogbanks. Jekyll’s consumption of the formula was no longer necessary for the transformation to commence. In essence, what I witnessed now was a more malevolent force besieging the last traces of kindness from an inferior persona. At this point, I should’ve retreated from the monster’s presence. But as much as I reviled this stunted demon, I felt fixated on his remarks. His wild words influenced my character as if I had quaffed the elixir from the same phial as the now nearly extinguished Dr. Jekyll.
Feral beasts often moistened their jowls in anticipation of a feast, and Hyde’s mannerisms served as a mirror image to this innate reflex. The fiend’s pale tongue squirted between his pursed lips like an ivory dagger. “By now you must have cast aspersions against me,” he continued. “But what if I was to boast to you, sir, that I had a capacity to dine with the finest statesmen in Westminster on one evening, and then frolic seamlessly among the undesirables in Cheapside the next?”
“I’d admit that you were quite skilled at living a double life,” I replied.
Hyde cackled at my insight, and wasn’t intimidated by a possibility that I had already solved the riddle he had so surreptitiously kept. Yet as much as I knew of his double identity, I never sensed a distinct advantage during our conversation.
“Do you perceive me as a fierce man?” Hyde asked. Once again, I found it advantageous to broach this subject as though it was as potentially volatile as the compounds in Jekyll’s laboratory.
“Is that how you wish to be seen, Mr. Hyde?”
“I’m not one for pretense. Frankly, a man should be recognized for what he is at an intrinsic level, but our society doesn’t make allowances for such behavior. Instead, we are conditioned to stifle our inborn impulses. And here lies the root for all the debauchery knotted between us, sir. Most people are too ashamed to examine the yearnings that strike beneath the surface of their flesh. Unless you are quite adept at deciphering what is less than obvious, you’ll likely never distinguish between good and evil.”
“I know something of your past,” I confessed.
“Now we’re getting to it, aren’t we, sir?”
The pale skin surrounding Hyde’s nose and ears twitched as if it itched from the reverse side of his face. Then those menacing eyes glowered at me like two kilns set ablaze. Mr. Utterson once cogitated that if the devil had ever imprinted his signature on a man’s face, then it would’ve most likely resembled Mr. Hyde. Even though I rarely imagined Satan in any configuration, I couldn’t find an error with such a comparison presently.
Hyde’s voice mutated to almost a husky plea as I pondered my next tactic. “Tell me something about my sins, sir.” I sensed as though he sought to asphyxiate me with my own words, as if my trepidation was a prerequisite to being lynched. But in this instance I decided to challenge this insalubrious creep.
“I’m aware of the murder of one particular gentleman,” I announced. “Given the victim’s elderly age and meekness, such a ferocious and unprovoked attack hardly seemed merited.” My information silenced Hyde momentarily, but only until he managed to collect the air in his lungs to project a maniacal laugh in my direction.
“I wondered if they ever caught the culprit who clubbed Carew into the cobblestones,” he snickered. “From what I’ve been told of the gruesome incident, a heavy cane inflicted much of the fatal damage.”
“The Met hypothesized that the murder weapon belonged to Henry Jekyll.”
Hyde cringed at the pronouncement of his inferior half’s name. He then rocked his torso deliberately upon the bench, perhaps gleefully anticipating his next response to me. “Do you want to know why the old stooge needed to die?” The question, of course, was rhetorical, because Hyde intended on informing me of his incentive whether I shut my ears to it or not. “He lived his life as a liar, and I suppose that’s a recipe for any man’s demise.”
“Why do you presume that Carew was dishonest?”
“He reeked with an air of goodness. I viewed him as a false paragon of virtue. In the channels where I’ve come to analyze men, pretentiousness bleeds most profusely.” The madman stopped swaying his body and wrapped his short arms around his knees like a grouchy lad. His voice became increasingly sonorous as he proceeded. “Some hide their darkest motivations better than others. But as surely as we are resting together here on this bench, we know of the wickedness that men do. Think about how fortunate you felt when you first heard that Carew was trampled in the street. I, for one, smiled with a sense of relief.”
“The maid who witnessed the assault literally passed out. Does that sound like relief to you?”
“The fear of what we are instigates such maladies in a commoner’s mind.”
“But we both know that you aren’t like the average Victorian man, Mr. Hyde,” I countered. Hyde suddenly found it difficult to contain his hysterical laughter, which offended me. “Why do you doubt me? I never rejoiced in another man’s anguish. I only pity men who wish harm to fall upon others.”
“A thread’s thickness divides pity from pleasure,” said Hyde derisively. “But I will say this much: Carew was quite masterful in his masquerade for morality. You, on the other hand, lack the same expertise when it comes to living incognito.”
“What are you implying?”
“Oh, nothing that you don’t already surmise for yourself, sir.”
“You’re far closer to insanity than I realized.”
“Be that as it may, you needn’t play coy with me any longer. You must realize that I find it strangely refreshing to converse with a fellow who dons his impieties like a thorny crown.”
This rogue ’s knack for manipulating people to mend his purposes shouldn’t have startled me, but I still felt compelled to defend myself from such slanderous accusations. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I countered. “I’ve never hurt anyone in my entire life.”
“Ah, but you’ve contemplated it, sir.”
“Why do you presume that?”
“Wolves hunt in packs just as maggots feed in hoards. We know our own kind well. But don’t be ashamed for embracing your instinctive desires, sir. There’s an entire city of plebian dwellers already living under such a restrictive code. Wouldn’t it be foolhardy to join their ranks for the mere convenience of anonymity?”
I despised Hyde as much as any man ever loathed anything, and this revulsion festered in my brain like a blister. My choice to depart his company seemed obvious, yet I couldn’t budge from the bench. It felt as though Hyde had latched me into place with the brute force of his hands, but he made no motion toward me. I simply elected to stay on my own freewill and absorb his noxious words like a drug flowing through my veins.
“Tell me what riles you, sir,” Hyde resumed.
“Why must there be anything at all?” I questioned.
“There’s always something.”
Hyde must’ve uncovered an internal rage that I had not taken time to nurture. But he had an ability to skim the layers
of goodness from my character. With this thin mantle now stripped away, the spitefulness fermenting beneath my flesh ignited every synapse within my brain. I had no current means to determine if my own physical shell had altered as much as Dr. Jekyll’s, but Hyde studied me as if I had finally submitted to the bitterness whipping inside of me like a rancid wind.
“Are you ready to confess yet?” Hyde goaded me.
“I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“If we must speak in particulars, sir, then tell me what wrong you plan to do.”
“There’s no plan,” I shivered.
“You lie as only a man can,” he persisted.
The more consideration I devoted to Hyde’s inquest caused me to realize that he was not entirely wrong about me. He tenaciously erased my lines of denial, leaving me powerless to confront the part of my persona that I was most ashamed to face.
“There’s one thing that troubles me,” I admitted. “It’s about my wife.”
“Do tell?”
“I’m convinced she’s been unfaithful. I haven’t been dealing with the aftermath very well.”
“I see,” said Hyde, wetting his scaly lips with his tongue. “There’s more to this story though. Let me have the details.”
“She’s been sleeping with my best friend. Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s more than what any man needs to fashion a motive.”
“A motive for what?”
“Remember, sir, we’re alone here. Don’t be obtuse with me. Stop cowering behind a paper shield. We both know it’s far too shredded to protect you now. It’s time you nurture and release your rage on the deserving parties.”
“This is my wife and best friend I’m talking about.”
“Ha! Who better to bear the bloody brunt of your shame than an adulterous wife and traitorous friend? The fact that they still breathe the same air as you and me is a mark against your masculinity.”
“Stop it!” I implored. “Do you really believe I could ever be as villainous as you, Mr. Hyde?”
“You are me, and I am you. Have we not already established our connection?”
“No,” I resisted. “You’re the type of vile man who’d trample an innocent child in the street, as you have already proven. I don’t operate with the senseless hatred that fuels your actions. If there was anything ever good about you, I’m afraid it has mostly withered.”
Hyde entwined his knobby fingers and settled his hands across his lap. For a moment he seemed content to let me marinate in my own words. Once again, I revisited the detestation I felt for this instigator, but it wasn’t potent enough to cause me to retreat from him. If anything, I leaned in closer to mount my futile defense.
“My wife is a good woman,” I told Hyde. “But even good people can make poor choices.”
“Very well, sir, but would you extend the same concession toward the man who murdered Sir Danvers Carew? Couldn’t it be stated that his choice to kill was merely a momentary lapse of reason and outside the boundaries of his normal behavior?”
“Murder is never justifiable.”
“But revisit your own feelings when you first discovered that your wife was bedding your best friend. Didn’t you wish them both dead? Consider this: two forbidden lovers, writhing in the filthy sheets together, and laughing like lunatics at your gullibility. How could you not want to orchestrate their suffering and demise?”
“Vengeance won’t make my pain disappear.”
“But it will numb the symptoms for a spell, sir, as efficiently as any apothecary’s drug.”
“I won’t hurt my wife!” My voice trembled with a ferocity that I didn’t even realize existed within my vocal cords. Hyde kept his eyes focused onto mine as he evaluated my pledge’s credibility.
“Perhaps your wound is still much too fresh,” he pondered. “In such cases, the infection must be permitted proper time to spread. Be mindful, however, that if the lesion doesn’t heal, it shall become gangrenous and destroy you.”
“That won’t happen. I’ve overcome many hardships in my life before. I will not succumb to my own bitterness. You will never be able to convince me otherwise.”
Hyde looked at me pitifully before saying, “Well, I suppose this is where I should thank you for turning my way in the park this morning. You’ll stand by your convictions for as long as it remains reasonable to do so, but every good fellow eventually finds his way back to me. What you may currently refer to madness, sir, will ultimately be your salvation.”
I closed my eyes and wished for Hyde to dissolve from my nightmares forever. Yet even after the reprobate departed, I sensed traces of his presence lingering in my consciousness. I sought to dismiss his theory of my disposition as nonsensical prattle, but the darkness he spoke of wasn’t as absurd as I originally hoped. I felt it coursing through my bloodstream like a virulent medicine. Just as Dr. Jekyll had discovered, once the potion invaded my bloodstream, it would not release me in the identical condition as I once was.
As I brooded about my uncertain future in the Regent’s Park, isolated from everything but my own ruminations, I listened to the wind wrestling with the trees’ naked limbs. I felt my heartbeat softening as the sun’s rays dappled my face like a warm ointment. In such moments, with the sunlight soothing my skin, I sensed an inner peace with my surroundings. Why couldn’t all my moments be so uncomplicated? Until now, I presumed I was virtually invincible to all the impediments in my life. But the Hyde hidden within me was not encamped too far away. It waited to awaken like a dormant parasite primed to devour what remained of my humanity.
Chapter 45
1:12 P.M.
The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs Page 45