After a brief examination, I was able to conclude that Miss Pinchstaff could safely be given a Christian burial. Giles showed me a small bottle that had been among the effects found on her person. I held it up to the light and could see that it contained a few drops of blood, but had likely been full until recently, as the blood was still liquid and dark red.
“Do not think ill of this poor woman, Giles. And do ensure she has the burial she deserves. Her mind was not her own when she took this blood to her master. See the reward she has earned, mangled and spat out like so much chewing tobacco. At least her master is dead.” It was then that I cast my mind back to my arrival at Burton House. There had been several guards by the gate. Ernie had been one of them. And it had been daylight.
“Bloody Ernie!” Giles grumbled at my mention of him.
I turned back to the stairs and saw thick footprints of soot, where I had trampled the filth through the house. Without further hesitation I bounded up the stairs, telling Giles to bring a rifle. “Ernie is not the master, Giles!” I called as I reached the landing.
I heard a tumbling, rustling sound from within the sickroom and Charlotte, stepping back from the sickroom door exclaimed, “Another fall of soot!”
Particles of soot drifted to the sickroom door, cast up with considerable force.
“Stay back!” I cried and grabbed Charlotte’s shoulders, drawing her back from the room before she could see what lay within.
I exchanged places with her as she cried out in protest that the sickroom was now no good for Niamh. How right she was.
My fingertips reached the door and I steeled my nerves, bracing myself for what horrors awaited me within. I heard a quiet creak from Niamh’s bedstead, confirming my fear that someone was within the room with her, someone who was neither a guest, nor staff of the house.
I committed myself to the room fully. And there I saw it, blackened from head to toe with the soot from the chimney and dressed in blackened rags. The monstrous invader stood bent over the bed with only his white eyes and white fangs glowing in the gaslight.
I screamed for him to stop before he could sink his foul teeth into Niamh’s neck. The creature turned to face me and hissed.
I did not know at the time, but learned much later, that this animal, with his torn ankle and calf muscles, with his corrupted skin mingling with soot, leaving a trail of black ooze behind him and upon every single thing he touched, was the same creature that had taken Niamh from Sacks’ Pharmacy the previous night. When the creature told me that Niamh was his, and that he had followed her scent, it made no sense to me at the time.
I protested, “Listen to me! Her blood, no amount of blood, will save you! The disease you suffer can only be cured one way. I have that cure.”
The black creature sniffed at Niamh and I prayed that if the child was to recover, she would not recover at that moment or else she might have died of fright. “Please, I beg you. You are fast enough, and strong enough to murder every person in this house if I lie to you. But see the wound on the child’s hand. See the ointment that I have applied. I implore you to sniff at it. Tell me… is there an element to that substance that speaks to your animal nature? Something that calls to you?”
He sniffed her hand as I instructed. He licked his lips.
“You smell it?” I asked.
“I smell her blood,” he growled.
“The healing element in that ointment is present in a medicine that I have perfected. I have a bottle of it here I could give you to drink. It will heal you. All I ask is that when you are healed, you leave this house and all within its boundaries, alive and well.”
The vampire released Niamh’s hand, and inspected the web of black slime that kept him connected to her. He knew that the slime was his skin. There was no way he could turn down my offer.
It was then, as the creature stepped clear of Niamh that I became aware of Giles at my side, hidden by the door from the creature’s view. I turned to him. “Giles, please, give him the cure.”
Instantly, Giles sprang into the room, raised his rifle and fired a shot that struck the creature above his left eye. Such gore sprayed across the bed and the poor child within as would turn a man’s stomach.
I charged the foul creature and shoved him with such force that his brittle ribcage collapsed inwards, bursting his putrefying organs, as he tumbled back to the window, taking the curtains with him. I struck him again with all of my strength, all of my anger and all of my hate. In that moment, this monster represented all of the monsters, and he smashed through the glass and tumbled down through the darkness, amid the snowflakes and the smoke from Ernie’s cremation somewhere on the grounds.
Shortly after the soft body of that vampire burst on the ground, there was little left to burn, but the guards did the best job they could.
We moved Niamh, still sleeping, into a room at the front of the house. It was not her own bedroom, as Charlotte did not want the child to associate her poor health with her usual sleeping quarters. I noted that Niamh’s hand had sealed up with scabs and the black rot had receded, leaving pink, healthy skin. The fever had passed. I knew that she would live.
The guards were heartened by the news of Niamh’s expected recovery and they returned to their watch with renewed energy, certain that they had seen the worst the night could offer, but vigilant all the same.
Giles and Charlotte had overseen the last of the night’s preparations for the festivities of Christmas morning and the Burton house smelled so good that when I retired to my room, exhausted as I was, I thought my rumbling stomach would never let me sleep without some goose and a helping of plum pudding.
The three of us had discussed the night’s horrors, them scarcely believing it had all happened at all and mourning the loss of poor Miss Pinchstaff. Giles served me a good deal of drinks and a little of Hong’s Blessing every now and then took the edge off my other appetite for a while.
“In the morning,” Giles said, “what say we move in secret, George, you and I? Let us take off into London, to see your Chinaman, and my friend Sacks if he is well enough, and we shall come up with a plan to make this remedy of yours on an industrial scale, what?”
I agreed. “What better gift could we bestow upon London, Giles?”
“The gift is yours to give, my friend,” Giles replied. “It is your ingenuity and nobody else’s.”
Charlotte smiled at me, but her eyes betrayed such sadness as she said, “We may not bring back those we have lost, George, but we can help prevent a great many more pointless deaths.”
“And what with the weapons to destroy the creatures, and your cure to stop the others from being turned, why, we could restore this great city in no time at all!” Giles exclaimed, raising a glass in toast.
I joined him in his toast. The dream of my pardon was as warming as the whisky I sipped. Charlotte assured me that she was sure, following the horrors that London had survived, with people seeing their loved ones corrupted, that they would understand a doctor held in thrall in a similar manner, and forced to do the bidding of a monster. They may not have understood before, but she was certain that opinions had changed somewhat during the course of London’s siege. “Of course,” she added, “they would have to have the creature.”
I knew that she was right. To save myself, I would have to serve Panacea to them. How else could I justify my actions? Without opium, I knew that I would be enslaved by her again, as soon as I was near her. But to offer her up, well, then it would be left to others to deal with her. With the warm glow of intoxication in my belly, I began to imagine the unimaginable, to consider the impossible...
At long last when I retired, I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep for some hours. In that time, the only dream I had, was not a dream at all. I heard screams and horses, I heard threats of violence, I heard Hong crying out warnings, could smell smoke, feel the heat and the panic and then I heard her scream. Her scream was silent to all others and bridged the distance between us in an instant
. She was terrified. My other daughter. My Panacea.
I could no more ignore her plight than I had ignored Niamh’s.
I woke up with the scream still ringing in my head. I wiped at my nose and noticed the smear of blood over the back of my hand. I dressed and packed and hurried down the stairs, away from little Niamh, away from Charlotte’s forgiveness, away from potential absolution.
At the gates, I told the guards that I needed to collect my effects from my lodgings, as Mrs Burton had asked me to join them for Christmas. It must have seemed reasonable to them, even in the dead of night, as they let me pass. I huddled in my great fur coat against the biting chill and turned back to the Burton house. The building was a collision of the night’s gloom and light from the guards’ fires.
I gazed for a while at the window of the room little Niamh slept in and wished that I had peered in on her, just for a second, but it had not occurred to me to do so before leaving. I had been compelled to flee, without a word. Panacea had made me do that, I knew it. She made me abandon all decency and once again denied me any opportunity for my own pleasure or need.
I stood there in the snow, staring at that window, waiting for Panacea to attack my mind again. I thought that perhaps I would blink and find myself in my tent, unaware of how I had travelled there, driven by Panacea’s will.
I did not move, though. I thought that if only I saw that little face in the window, I would run back through the gate and burst through that front door. I thought about how picking that wonderful child up and holding her and showering her with kisses would be the greatest Christmas gift I could ever have.
Blessings.
When her eyes opened, the light creeping through the windows was the first thing she noticed. It was daylight.
The second thing she noticed was that she was alive. Immediately she thought that it might have all been a dream, but the third thing that came to her attention dissolved that, and that was the feeling in her hand.
She probed her hand and inspected it, and though a layer of soft, pink skin had grown, she could feel the throb of healing beneath. The injury had been real.
And because that was real, perhaps some of the other things that she thought might have been part of a dream were real too! She had heard a familiar voice, her father’s voice.
“He is here!” she cried and leapt out of bed. She flung open the curtains and looked out at the snow-covered yard and street beyond, but was confused. The light had been from bonfires on the grounds and it was still the dead of night.
She saw a shape at the gates, a man. The man was waving at her. She waved back, her heart pounding with excitement. He had come back for her! Another man appeared and Niamh realised that both of them carried rifles. They were guards. They were happy to see her, and blew kisses to her and called Happy Christmas to her, not caring who heard them or if they woke the whole city. The men shook hands with each other and whooped and danced, making her laugh at their silliness.
Giles burst into the room, weeping and calling out, “My flower! My little flower, but I thought we had lost you!” And he showered her with so many kisses and spun her around.
“Do not over excite her, Uncle Giles! She must still rest!” Charlotte warned, playfully, from the doorway. She looked very tired, but overjoyed to see that Niamh was well again.
Giles rushed out of the room as Charlotte took his place, smothering Niamh with affection.
“It is so good to see you, my child. Just wait until your-”
Giles coughed by way of interruption, returning to the room. Charlotte looked at him and he shook his head. “Gone.”
“Who is, Grandpa?” Niamh asked.
“Errr, nobody, my dear. Just one of the guards.”
Niamh’s face glowed with happiness. “My father was here! He saved me, did he not? Tell me it is true!”
Giles shrugged at Charlotte, not knowing what to say for the best. “He was, my lamb. It is true. He had only enough time to make a miraculous cure for you, but he had to vanish before the sun rose!”
“Like Old Christmas!” Niamh exclaimed.
“Exactly!” Giles agreed. “Just like Old Christmas.”
Niamh returned to the window and looked out to the road and the dark city beyond. “And now he is off to save everyone else, is he not?”
“He is, my pet. That is precisely what he is off to do!”
“I knew he loved me! I knew he would come back.”
“And he shall return again, my flower. He will again. Now, let us see if Old Christmas did not leave a little treat or two for you!”
I wish that I had been there to see that, to see her wake from that sleep. As it was, however, I made my way from that gate. Not very far, but beyond the sight of the guards and the glow of their fires.
There in the darkness I felt an intense crack of pain through my skull and when my head smacked the road and I lay there, with half of my face freezing in the snow I thought at first that Panacea had assaulted me, psychically, from afar. The feet around me told me otherwise however and when darkness overcame my vision and I felt myself carried aloft I felt sure that I had died.
In and out of consciousness I drifted, occasionally feeling the movement of the carriage, and hearing the clattering hooves. I heard a Scottish accent; I heard a polished London accent.
When I woke, I found myself in the cold, with wind whipping around my head, which was covered in a sack or heavy cloth of some description.
My captors must have detected from my breathing or my struggling against the ropes bonding my wrists and ankles to my chair, that I was awake. I thought that perhaps I had been captured by the same parties who had caused Panacea her distress and I wondered then if she was alive or dead. I wondered what they would do with me.
My captors did not leave me to my wonder for very long, as my head was soon uncovered and I saw a great expanse of the East End of London laid out before me. Vast portions of it had been reduced to smouldering rubble. I realised after a short while that I was looking down from within the scaffolding at the tower of the new parliament buildings.
Then came her voice.
“Gaze upon your work. Look at the destruction you have wrought.”
She stepped into my view, brandishing a slender blade which I knew she had probably kept concealed in the sleeve of her dress. “It is, however, lovely to see you again, George.”
“Likewise, Mary.”
End of Part 3.
Correspondence
Dear reader,
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Jack Rollins
January 2014
Dedications
In the original e-books these stories were dedicated as follows: Dr Blessing’s Curse, Or, The Baby In The Bell-Jar dedicated to my good friend David Basnett Dr Blessing’s Rapture, Or, The Beast And The Bell-Jar Dedicated to my brother Kevin A Christmas Blessing
Dedicated to Mam and Dad Dr Blessing will return…
Jack Rollins Jack was born and raised among the twisting cobbled streets and lanes, ruined forts and rolling moors of a medieval market town in Northumberland, England. He claims to have been adopted by Leeds in West Yorkshire, and he spends as much time as possible immersed in the shadowy heart of that city.
Fascinated by all things Victorian, Jack often writes within that era and his period gothic horror works include The Séance and The Cabinet of Dr Blessing.
Jack’s contemporary horror pieces currently published are as follows:
Dead Shore, featured in Undead Legacy Anti-Terror, featured in Carnage: Extreme Horror Jack can be found online at:
> Twitter: @jackrollins9280
Facebook: www.facebook.com/doctorblessing
Website: jackrollinshorror.wordpress.com
The Cabinet of Dr Blessing (The Dr Blessing Collection Parts 1-3): A Gothic Victorian Horror Tale Page 26