The Cabinet of Dr Blessing (The Dr Blessing Collection Parts 1-3): A Gothic Victorian Horror Tale

by Rollins, Jack

  Their lips were an inch apart, eyes locked.

  “George it is, if you will call me Mary.”

  The voices in the room seemed to quiet down, to silence. But there was another sound replacing it. Was it music? The strain of a drawn-out violin note?

  No. A scream. An animal scream.

  Blessing was on his feet, his glass smashed off the floor, he was out the door and racing up the stairs.

  Mary was a moment behind.

  Twenty-eight.

  I was at the top of the stairs and I could see the bedroom door was open. Panic filled every inch of me, a cold, liquid sensation that momentarily turned my muscles into a sluggish gelatinous mass. A moment later and my heart was pumping hot, vicious blood around my whole being, driving me into the room – damn the danger! Damn the consequences! My child!

  She screamed again, that shrill, migraine-inducing whistle as I reached the bedroom door. Charles was there, drenched in blood – the child’s? His knife drawn, his posture defensive, his movements hesitant, his eyes fixed on something beyond the bed and the nest of cushions.

  The child had backed away into the corner of the room; she was crouched like a dog, her nostrils flaring. She was trying to locate me, terrified.

  I stepped into the room and Charles saw me in the periphery of his vision, he turned and slashed the knife through the air, nowhere near me, but warning me to stay back.

  The child pounced then, bounding across the room, jaws thrusting open and forwards. Her needle-sharp teeth bit into Charles’ leg. He screamed and slashed with the knife, slicing her back open.

  Another scream brought me to my knees. She was in my arms. I could hear the power of her suggestion, “Shhhhhh, shhhhhh.” She knew that her screams had caused me pain and she was trying to sooth me! Remarkable!

  I turned and staggered onto the landing, where Mary stood with a revolver drawn. “Put her down!” Mary ordered, levelling the revolver at my head.

  “Mary! Please! She is an innocent. We can not simply destroy her for her very nature,” I protested.

  “She is a monster! She has no nature! She has only thirst, a lust for death!”

  “And you? You would kill, under the guise of duty!”

  From over my shoulder, I heard, “So, we meet again. And that, by the way, is my gun!”

  I leapt aside, still clutching the child. My other jars were lost to me, left as they were beyond the woman and the brute. This was my only chance to escape with the child.

  The stairs had filled with revellers who had ventured to see what the commotion was and no doubt to find the source of the horrifying shrieks that had once again seared their skulls.

  The report of the revolver sent a shock through everybody, some of them leapt back and stumbled with fright. I ducked as I rounded the staircase barging my way through the tangled bodies.

  I was at the ground floor, next to the front door. Edward stood waiting for me. “My God,” he gasped. “She is wounded.”

  “She will be fine!” I assured him, still moving for the door.

  Another gunshot roared on the top floor, they were still fighting. The guests screamed. Scuffling and cries issued from the staircase. Whoever had won the fight sounded like they were stumbling over the tangle of limbs on the stairs.

  “George! Back door!” Edward called, grabbing my sleeve. Another gunshot sounded and the front door cracked, spitting splinters into the air.

  I raced through the kitchen and out into the garden. By the open gate I saw a tangle of bloody bodies, the two men I had observed earlier, they had been slashed wildly with a knife, gutted in fact. Their organs spilled out onto the path and I almost lost my footing as I picked my way through the gore.

  I darted from the garden onto a road I later discovered was aptly named Retreat Road. I recognised the area as I reached Water Lane – I was close to where I had disposed of the bodies earlier. I hoped the horse and cab was still nearby – would someone have taken them, or would the horse have bolted?

  I rounded onto the Riverside and could see the horse had gone, taken by some opportunist who had no need for, or could not quickly conceal, the cab, which stood redundant near where I had left it.

  I peered into the darkness and left and right along the tar black Thames, hoping there would be a small boat with which I could make my escape. The luck of the damned! The pier was on the other side of the river. There was no way we could both make it. I knew that the current would doubtless drag me away even without the burden of the child, so together we stood no chance.

  “Stop!” Mary commanded. I turned, slowly, still cradling my wounded Panacea.

  “Mary. You will have to kill me.”

  “I can not do that, George. I have no desire to kill you. Enough innocents have died for that monster!”

  “This monster?” I boomed, stepping forwards. “Did you see what I saw in the garden? The havoc wrought by that man, capable of full and conscious thought!”

  “The creature in your arms, George, I have seen it before. I have seen many like them. I have hunted them, not for sport, but because of the things they are capable of. They hunt in packs. They communicate with their thoughts, making it impossible to tell what they plan, and when they will strike. They descend upon towns like a pack of wolves and destroy every soul they find.”

  I gazed at the wounded child, unable to believe the woman’s words. “No! She has lived with me all her life. She is able to defy her nature! She can control her urges.”

  Mary lowered the gun and was immediately pressed against me, our bodies surrounding the child. A family. Our kisses were hard, frenzied. I freed a hand from the creature and slid my fingers through her hair, wanting her, willing her to stay locked with me.

  She broke the embrace and stepped back, her eyes, blazing before, demure now. “No creature can control its urges. Not completely. Not even us.”

  She raised the gun, but I struck her hand, knocking her off her aim. I charged in low and in one movement planted the child on the cold stone of the riverside walk and lunged forwards, tackling Mary to the ground. He heard the child scamper away to cover. I pressed my weight down onto her, grasping for her hands as she clawed at my face and gripped the revolver, desperate to prevent me from taking it.

  A moment before we had been lovers, born to be together. Presently we were mortal enemies, locked in a struggle that only one of us could walk away from. I sacrificed my hold on her arms and snatched the revolver from her, immediately smacking her head with it, opening an ugly red crack at the upper right corner of her brow. I raised the grip of the revolver again. The pain of the first blow had registered with Mary. Her eyes were wide in shock and the terror that this was it. This was the end of her. She could scarcely believe that I could be quick enough, strong enough and deadly enough to defeat her. I brought my arm down again and delivered a sickening blow to the same spot on her brow, opening the wound further.

  “George, please,” she gasped. “I wanted to save you.”

  I felt a cold, sticky wetness, seeping through my shirt and quickly dipped my fingers low to see if I was injured. I was not. But Mary was. Her dark dress was drenched in blood, a tear across her abdomen. Charles had cut her badly in their struggle – she had taken this injury for me.

  Fingers, iron hard, grasped me around my neck, yanking my head backwards. I gurgled a scream as Charles’ voice came. I silently prayed the child would not reveal herself.

  “First you, then her!” he hissed, arcing the blade across to the left side of my throat. I abandoned the revolver and brought my left forearm up between the blade and my neck, and pushed. His strength was immense, the blade inched closer, closer. I felt the icy touch of the metal as it sliced into my skin.

  Charles screamed.

  The child screamed.

  Mary screamed.

  I screamed.

  Each of us fell away. Charles slashed with the blade, trying to cut the creature biting his shoulder, his legs, his fingers, his face. The chi
ld moved lightning fast, scampering about him, tearing at him with teeth and claws.

  Her shrieking stopped, my head cleared. I grabbed the revolver again, looked over Mary who lay absolutely still and turned to see the child and Charles in time to see the eruption of water as the brute fell into the Thames. The child perched at the edge of the walk. If she had eyes, one could say that she was looking down to make sure he drowned.

  After a moment, the child limped to my side. Her back bled profusely and her limbs were bruised. It clearly pained her to walk.

  When I returned to Edward’s house, it was empty. His tenuous social web did not do too well with fear, it seemed. The child slept once more, but uneasily. She was not at all accustomed to sleeping outside the confines of her bell-jar and it was clear that exhaustion was all that had allowed her any concession this night.

  Mary lay asleep in the guest room. I had tended to her wounds as best I could. There seemed to be nothing wrong that clean dressings and a good rest could not fix. Inspecting her bag I found no clue as to her organisation or the whereabouts of the island she had mentioned. I did find vials of poison and small daggers that looked as though they could be held between the fingers when boxing to deliver horrific damage. After playing with the grip of the daggers I discovered a small compartment inside, just the right size to house a vial of poison. I could see in the tip of the dagger a tiny aperture.

  She really was a killer.

  Yet she had not killed me.

  “You are sure that I can not join you, George?” Edward asked, taking my attention away from the bag and that damned woman.

  “Perfectly sure. Your letter of recommendation to Mr Smokey will be enough. She prefers me to have no close friends or family. I fear your presence would only cause you to be harmed.”

  Edward thrust a scrap of paper into my pocket. “Here, these are the directions to Smokey’s camp. He will be there tomorrow and gone at night. Do not miss him. I shall try to delay this woman as long as I can.” Edward sighed, his disappointment undisguised. “I would have helped, you know. We could have had a great adventure together!”

  I am sure we would have, but the problem with Edward is, he is so easily bored. Hiding a secret like the child would not be made easier by fraternising with a creature of Summerscale’s personality and with his appetites.

  “Perhaps, when I have found a resolution to my present circumstances, I will find it possible to return. Who knows.”

  “Until then, keep moving, old boy.”

  “Do not forget the letters for Flanders and Charlotte, my friend?” I reminded him, momentarily arrested by a nagging doubt that Edward was the right man with whom to entrust matters of a financial nature.

  “Late tomorrow, or first thing the next day, depending upon my success at delaying this spectacular woman. And I shall look in on Niamh regularly, have no fear.”

  I collected my jars and slung the sack about me, from shoulder to shoulder and did the same with a makeshift sling fashioned from a torn curtain, with both ends pinned together to form a loop. Into this sling I gently placed the child and opened the material about her, to cradle her and keep her warm.

  And with that, we set off into the night once more.

  Twenty-nine.

  Charles clambered out of the Thames and rolled onto his back on the grassy bank. The act of drawing himself out of the water had taken a quarter of an hour, once he had floated to a suitable point of egress. Waterlogged as he was, and with so much blood shed and energy expended over the course of the day, the effort required to move was immense.

  His chest heaved and jets of mist rose from his mouth with each long, slow breath as he tried to return his breathing and pulse to a normal level.

  The bites burned and he wondered if that thing might have rabies. He wondered if he might now have rabies.

  His exhaustion overcame him and his vision clouded over. Through the icy cold he managed to sleep on the riverbank for an hour.

  Once awake, he rose up on his stiff legs and began the journey back to the West, back to Richmond Upon Thames. Back to Edward Summerscale’s house.

  He knew that Blessing would be long gone, the creature with him. But it was a matter of time before he would track the doctor. Summerscale would give him information eventually. Charles had nothing to return to, no reason to head back to London, no reason to stop hunting his quarry.

  He thrust his hands into his pockets and found a small cylinder in one of them. He picked it out and recognised it even in the darkness as the finger he had severed in one of his fights that night.

  There are so many ways to get information from Summerscale, he mused. The severed finger made him think of ten ways immediately.

  He threw the finger into the Thames and continued his relentless march.

  Thirty.

  Her head throbbed. Immediately Mary knew that she was alive. This was a shock for her as the last thing she could remember was a certainty that she had reached the end. Thrusting the curtains open she could see that the sun was high overhead. She had slept until late morning at least, but all the same, her body felt like it had been trampled by a team of horses. She needed to tap into those pressure-points and induce the trance that would refresh her.

  She knew that she was still in Summerscale’s house, in Richmond Upon Thames. She knew that when she had lost consciousness, she had been at the riverside. Who had brought her back? Summerscale himself? It was possible. Charles? Unlikely. George? Under the close influence of the creature, was he any more likely to help than Charles was?

  Mary could not decide that one.

  She unfastened the dress and lifted it over her head. She noted that the garment was ruined and guiltily reasoned that Margaret would not miss it. At the washstand she inspected herself in a dinner-plate sized mirror. Her abdominal wound had been expertly cleaned and stitched. As had her head injury. George.

  Flashes of the fight at the top of the stairs returned to her. Wrestling for the revolver. Wrestling for the knife.

  Charles’ hands gripping her hair, hurling her against the wall. His startling strength. Her elbows smashing against his jaw, his temple, his nose. Her palms extended, thrusting into his face, desperately trying to drive his nose into his brain. The nagging in the back of her mind that she should have brought the poisoned dagger from her bag – she could have ended it all with one punch.

  Next to the bed she found her bag. It had been searched, nothing was in its usual place. Something extra was there, a note, from George.

  Leave my father alone.

  From the child, then, she thought. It had completely infiltrated his mind. It was at the reins – George himself a mere puppet. There were moments when the creature allowed him his humanity, but these moments were becoming fewer and further between. When the creature needed protection, when she needed food, she manipulated him. She could play on that paternal instinct of his, that healing nature, and make him act for her. Her hold exceeded the degree to which that paternal instinct and healing nature applied to his family, friends and patients, whom he had abandoned, hurt or even killed.

  Mary reasoned then that George had kept Niamh at arms length. She wondered if this had been to protect her from the creature – minimising the need for her to be eliminated when the creature decided that it was time to run.

  Had he recognised this, and left her behind, to spare the child what he knew would surely follow? His downfall.

  His humanity still shone through. Those eyes could never change, she reasoned. Those beautiful eyes of his.

  She closed her fist around the note and threw it on the floor. Never, she thought, in reply to the message.

  She put the torn dress back on, despairing slightly at the rip across her midriff, and the crust of blood that had stiffened the velvet. She would attract some attention on her journey back to London.

  Mary put on her shoes and picked up her bag. She tried the door. It was locked. She peered into the keyhole and could see that a key was still s
ecure in place. She quickly found her picklock and fitted it to the aperture. She tried to nudge the key free so that she could operate the tool properly. Her fingers were shaking. She needed to eat.

  Mary knew there was a quicker way out. She opened the sash window and peered down. She was on the second floor. Looking to the left she saw there was a drainpipe within reach. Easy, she thought.

  A minute or so later, she was making her way along the streets, heading for the train station, London and whatever lectures Doctor McEwan had in store for her.

  Had Mary managed to open the door, she may have found that Edward had left the key in place in haste after locking her in upon detecting an intruder, to protect her rather than imprison her.

  On the other hand, his motivation may have remained unknown to her even if she had found Edward, being as he was, unconscious on the kitchen floor, with six severed fingers lying next to him.

  Thirty-one.

  There was no turning back. My transformation was complete. Doctor George Blessing had been discarded like old clothing, worn threadbare to the point of indecency. I had emerged from my chrysalis stronger than ever.

  Three months before, in the dying moments of my old life, I had clung to regrets, to sadness, to guilt. Those things I had stored away, safe as Panacea in her bell-jar.

  In clinging to hopes for improved medicine for mankind, I had succumbed to evil. Even if I could cure every disease in the world, there was no way to bring Margaret back.

  My only hope for salvation was that Summerscale had carried out his duties as agreed, and had taken the adoption papers to Charlotte, and the financial instructions to Francis.

  I imagined Charlotte receiving that letter. I imagined her haste to summon a driver, to rush to Niamh’s quarters. I imagined her, eager to improve the situation of a new, vulnerable little girl – the ghost of me standing behind them, observing with pride. I could see them, even as I sat in the tent with tears in my eyes. I saw them, a picture together, shopping for dresses. I saw quite clearly Niamh listening attentively to a governess, as Charlotte beams, sewing in the corner of the parlour, her pregnancy more obvious by the day. And there they are in an afternoon, arranging ferns together and placing their displays on the mantle, with care.