by Tara Brown
Roland continued, “They’re not looking for you, my dear—just read.” His words were ominous.
I didn’t know what to say. Nothing about the last twenty-four hours felt like the real world.
“Read.”
I picked up the first book as Roland left the room, hoping that if I stared at it he’d leave me alone. I could plot how to escape and pretend to read.
Pulling back the thick cover, I recognized the writing as my father’s.
May 8, 1802
It would appear the street cats will outlast any other animal. Particularly, they seem impervious to the temperatures being higher. Every other species has succumbed to the fever the chemicals induce. I will continue my work with them.
Thoughts of escaping flashed through my head as I cringed, imagining my father torturing animals for science. He wrote like a mad scientist, too passionate about finding the answers he sought but never explaining why he was searching. The first journal was entirely about his desperate need to create a formula so that the street cats could survive long term. It would be an amazing creation. It sounded like it would transform a cat into something more, maybe a beast.
I neither saw the need, nor the reasoning behind his mad writings or why I had to read them but the writing pulled me in. I saw everything as if it were a movie in my mind. The date of the final entry in this book was June 7, 1803.
I closed it and examined the cover again, brushing my fingertips along the leather binding. It appeared handmade.
After a moment of trying to understand so much as a single droplet of this, I opened the book once more and took a deep breath, checking the date again. It still said 1803. How was that possible?
It wasn't, which meant my father was insane.
A chill crept up my spine as I realized why they were keeping me there. Why my father wanted me to read his journals. He was nuts and maybe I was too.
Maybe none of this was actually happening.
Oh shit!
Roland entered the study with a huge tray. “How’s the reading going?”
“Weird.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “So my dad is—was crazy? Are you saying I might have his craziness?”
“Why do you think that?”
“He wrote in this journal like he was imitating Frankenstein and it says it’s from 1803?”
“He wasn’t imitating anything.” He put the tray down. “And it gets much more interesting the farther you read. The least of the fantastical things you need to understand is that this all started around 1803.”
“Was he in an insane asylum?” I lifted the fresh steaming cup of coffee and sipped. “How do you know how I like my coffee?”
“You’re a teenager. You all like those two sugar, two cream coffees. Only later will you discover espresso on its own. At the most, you might need some steamed milk to make a perfect cup of coffee.”
“I don’t think age has anything to do with liking espresso. I won’t ever like it on its own. I like lattes.”
“Wait five years,” he muttered and left the room again.
Drumming my nails on the desk, I contemplated just leaving—just walking from the house and finding out if any of it was true. If Rebecca was really dead and if the scene from my nightmare was real.
But a cold whisper hung in the air, suggesting maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should stay and finish reading the stupid journal. It was the last thing my father said to me. And if he was crazy, there was a serious chance I was too.
The book did call to me in an odd way.
Giving in, I picked up the second journal. My father’s writing grew more and more fanatical and impassioned. He wrote of destroying his lab with fire, in anger. I noted how he wrote only of his research work. He had no life outside the lab. He wrote of no women, no friends, no relations. I couldn’t imagine what his life had been like, living in isolation as he had. These had to be the journals from his time locked away. Maybe he was sentenced to a stint in a nuthouse.
Halfway through the third journal, something shifted. I paused and reread the last few pages to see where the change took place. He spoke of the freedom from his lab. He spoke of people—particularly a woman named Mary. He loved her. They went to a ball and danced the night away. Once more, he reiterated how he had a sense of freedom.
I read feverishly as the story began to get interesting. He had met a man, a young man, who wanted to discuss his work. His name was Marcus Dragomir. My father noted the young man was more than he had initially appeared to be. He was an unmarried baron who became his only friend and eventually helped my father finish the formula he had been working on. He spoke of trials but never mentioned animals again.
My father wrote of a string of murders that concerned him, people ripped to pieces or trampled within London’s city limits. Needless to say, my fascination grew as I read the third journal.
“It’s bedtime, Miss Hanna. A quarter past one in the morning.”
Blinking myself out of the black-and-white world I had visualized, I lifted my head and tried to focus on Roland standing in the doorway. Seeing him made me feel as though I were inside the story—the Tudor home, the English butler, mysterious journals, a dead father, and a girl who killed him right before vanishing into thin air.
My arms brushed against the tray of dinner dishes in front of me, but I couldn’t recall eating the meal.
“What?” I asked after a second. “How long have I been—”
“All day. You should rest.”
“Yes.” I stood, bringing the book with me and speaking as though in a trance. I tightened the blanket I couldn’t remember having wrapped around my back and walked alongside Roland.
“Engrossing, isn’t it?”
“It’s insane. He was a madman. Although I feel like I know less about him. How long was he locked up? Is this fiction from his time locked up?” Whatever was wrong with him was wrong with me, so I hoped it was fiction. His ravings and lunacy were why I still hadn’t left or called the police.
“I won’t ruin that for you. It divulges more later.” He opened my bedroom door and smiled kindly. “Try to sleep. All your answers are there, waiting for you.”
“I’m pretty tired.” I viewed the huge bed and sensed the need for sleep but wanted to read some more.
Deciding sleep was my best option, I put the book on the nightstand and drifted quickly.
I slept soundly. My dreams were vivid.
They were black and white, the way I envisioned the novel my father had written. But now I was in the tale.
I stood in an alleyway, dressed in Jane Austen-period clothing, watching as my father stepped out into the alley. He glanced around suspiciously and pulled a vial from his pocket. He drank from the vial.
His clothes became colorful instead of black and white. The surroundings remained black and white. The only color came from my father’s clothing.
He strolled down the street, smiling and greeting people. He was outgoing, not at all how he’d described himself in his journals.
Along his path he met a woman. She had dark hair and a dark dress. They walked hand in hand, laughing and strolling until a young man came upon them. He was devastatingly handsome. Even in black and white, it was obvious; he was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. He tipped his hat at the lady on my father’s arm and smiled as he spoke. When the conversation was over, he walked away slowly. Before turning to mist, he made eye contact with me as if he knew I watched him. He gave me a knowing smile filled with a confidence I didn’t understand, but I suspected he was Marcus, the young baron from the journals.
In the morning, the next journal proved to be as engrossing as the last. My father wrote of successes with his formula and enjoyed his time with Mary. He even wrote more of his growing friendship with the young baron. He sounded on top of the world with the only bother being the amassing deaths in London caused by the horrid monster sighted afterward.
I finished the journal, enjoying the flourishing romance between my f
ather and the mysterious Mary. The year was 1806 and all was well with the world.
I gazed out the window, lost in the story as I pictured it.
The yard was full of blossomed cherry trees. My father was there, walking hand in hand with the remarkably beautiful Miss Mary. He wore his top hat and bowed like a gentleman. He was kind and sweet, caring for the young lady more than anything in the entire world.
I turned back to the books, realizing straightaway that the next journal contained another switch.
My father came to some kind of a realization after he awoke with blood on his hands and his clothing torn. I thought back to my own memories, wondering if finally, I was at the part I needed to read to understand my own dilemma.
He again burned the lab, not in anger, but in fear and desperation. He ran, unable to understand the changes he had undergone. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, a monster.
He didn’t fully recall how long he’d been a monster, but he linked the numerous deaths in London to his changes. He traced his vials of elixir back to deaths and monster sightings.
His words mixed with true memories of my own.
Our symptoms were exact.
Chills.
Torn clothing.
Blood on hands and face.
Aching body.
Memory loss.
Weakness.
Exhaustion.
Severe hunger.
They were all there, every one of my symptoms.
The worst for us both was the missing memories. He was desperate in his attempt to rekindle his memories.
He missed Mary.
He missed being normal.
Slowly, he became the same recluse he had been, before the magical potion had saved him from himself.
He recalled the smallest of details—her lips, her smile, her eyes as they sparkled, speaking to him while her mouth remained unmoved. He wrote of the way her cheeks flushed when he touched her chin, lifting her face to meet his. His heart broke as his mind cracked.
The ramblings of a madman returned as he became lost in his work, hiding from the world and himself. He was crazy—insane even.
My own memories, though really only flashes, frightened me as his did him. The insanity was no doubt hereditary. I too would lose my mind in time.
That was the warning in it all: I was going crazy.
Tears slipped down my cheeks as I read, knowing his pain. I then knew why Roland had been so adamant for me to read the journals. I couldn’t help but see my father in a different light.
My father wrote of paranoia and mysteries he couldn’t solve. He was similar to a man with schizophrenia, believing the world he lived in existed separate of everyone else. Even when the world tried to reach him and pull him back, his paranoia won over the reality in front of him.
One page in hundreds contained sentences I understood, words that made me believe he had come out of his stupor. He would write of love and anger, but in a sensible way I could comprehend, only to have it all contradicted pages later.
The next two journals were no different. He remained lost and alone.
The next journal brought back a character from previous journals—the same man who had so actively befriended my father—the young baron, Marcus Dragomir. He had searched high and low, traveling the world over, combing for my father.
He found him in Paris, hiding below a church. Father had survived on the kindness of a priest who saw the man behind the madness. My father’s rarely occurring clarity had convinced the priest that he must help him. The priest believed God was testing him.
Marcus brought him to an inn with fineries he had not seen in years. He spoke of Mary who had long since married as the year was now 1810.
She had mourned and waited considerably longer than was expected of her, but after several years, gave in to the fact my father wasn’t coming back.
He wrote of a pain in his chest he had never before experienced. It was an agony that ripped through him, destroying the man he had been. He was left the cold and solitary person I knew nearly all my life.
Marcus then offered him a deal. As he was numb and closed off, he accepted without thought. It would be the fresh start he needed to redeem himself. He suspected he was guilty of many crimes at the end of the eighth journal. Perhaps too many crimes to be redeemed, but he would try in Mary’s honor.
The final journal depicted a rebirth for my father. He was determined again and started his experiments in a new lab which Marcus had built for him in Paris. He tried to create a new elixir, one that would stop the changes he was aware of. He asked Marcus to watch him in the night, watch him sleep. He believed that was when he became the monster he assumed himself to be.
Marcus had confirmed his worst fears. In my father’s sleep, he transformed into something Marcus troubled to describe. Father roared, attempting to escape the chains and shackles he donned every night before sleep.
His clothes had ripped, his skin had stretched, and he had become something he would call his alter ego, Mr. Hyde.
I put the journal down, completely leaving the story behind.
“Mr. Hyde?” I spoke, my skepticism aloud to no one. “My dad wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Am I being punked?” I glanced around the room in disbelief for a moment before I continued reading, suddenly even more cynical.
His first elixir had worked in creating a man who was more, but in the attempt, he had separated his good from evil. He had made himself something unnatural. He recalled the many times he had woken in the hall of his home, or on the step of his back door, covered in blood. He recalled his tattered clothing.
Some nights the blood on his clothes had been his own, waking with injuries he had barely survived. He feared Hyde was trying to kill them both. His only chance at survival was the blood of the young baron. It had healing properties my father had yet to experiment with.
The murders in London had his name upon them.
Marcus disagreed, convincing him that he had no responsibility for what his alter ego did. He could only take the blame for his actions as a waking man.
My father listened to reason but knew deep inside he was to blame, and the guilt would rule his life for nearly two hundred years.
I put down the ninth journal, saddened that mental illness had taken my father from Mary and me. Tears filled my eyes as the impact of this hit me with full force.
Roland entered the room with a tea and a box of tissue. “You must see that it is not your fault.”
“I have schizophrenia; of course it’s not my fault. But I need to see a doctor. I’ve committed murder just like my father did in London. I’m a monster like he was. You need to lock me up.” The words left my lips as a whisper.
“No, my dear. It’s not what you think at all.”
“I need to Google those deaths in London. What year was it really? Like eighties?” I got up, feeling faint almost. “I need to see how bad it was.” My haziness became nausea as a cold sweat covered me.
“Google? You won’t find anything pertinent. The deaths were covered up.”
“Just tell me exactly how you found me and what happened to Rebecca. I deserve the horror of that.” I felt as my father had. I remembered the smallest things about my friend. I remembered her smile, her tears over a broken heart only six months prior, learning to skate, and laughing at the horror movies we’d shared a love for. And now she was gone.
She would never grow up, would never marry, would never have children. She would never become the nurse she’d always wanted to be. When everyone dreamed of being a princess or figure skater or veterinarian, Rebecca had wanted to be a nurse. That hadn’t changed in a decade.
It stemmed back to her older brother’s death. Rebecca was four when her brother Tyler died of leukemia. The nurses became part of her family. They lived at the hospital with him for nearly a year as he slowly declined. Only the nurses brought a smile to his face. Only the nurses knew the smallest, sweetest things to make him happy when the pain became too
much for an eight-year-old to bear.
I cried, wishing it were me—if only it had been me. I wished for death and wondered why my father had never just killed himself, or me?
Roland rubbed my back softly. He stayed quiet just as I needed him to. Slowly, I would become what my father had been, a shell of a human.
“I want you to have me committed. I need to stand trial for the murder.”
“Come with me.” Roland took my hand and led me down a hallway to a room. I trembled as he helped me sit.
He flicked the lights off and walked away.
I heard nothing but my breath as I sat alone in the dark.
Suddenly, light filled the room from a projector behind me.
A black-and-white movie began to play on the wall in front of me. I checked around for Roland, but I was alone in the room.
The movie was of my father but poor quality. It was old fashioned and silent.
He stood in a boxing ring with a man who had his back to the person filming. My father nodded as the man swung out violently and struck him in the face. My father was knocked back. The man quickly ran from the view of the camera.
My father staggered slightly and then began to tremble.
The camera got closer to him and his skin began to ripple as if something were trapped underneath, trying to get out.
My stomach tightened as his legs grew. He fell back onto the mats.
I covered my eyes as his clothes tore away from his expanding body.
It was special effects, I was certain of it.
I peeked through my fingers, gasping at what I saw.
Where my father had stood, a giant monster took his place. Its face and body were hideous. It bulged muscles from every limb. It pivoted around. It realized it was being filmed and ran after the camera that was dropped instantly.
The movie stopped as it closed in on the monster’s face. I focused on the eyes and they were his. There was no doubt.