As he watched, he realised that her body was slowly coming out of its coma. It warmed and connected to the arm that was still working, the hand continuing to scratch with a violent motion, as if it contained her entire will. Its furious work had lasted for only a few minutes, but they had been the longest he had ever endured. Gull’s words about the hand’s strength came back to him, as did the insane, frail woman who had gutted herself, and the fact that the doctor had named Josephine as his most successful patient. The context of her success brought a sudden, inexplicable chill to his skin.
Gull’s questionable ethics were in the half-lit kitchen with them, two slumped figures caged in a night of fear and guilt. Had his machine produced this? What would he tell Sir William about his prized patient?
She was sleeping normally now, the black curves of her body glistening in a thin layer of sweat. He decided not to move or wake her and instead crept towards her bedroom on all fours, pushing the light before him and trying to keep it away from his beard, which brushed the floor; he intended to fetch a blanket to cover her modesty. It briefly occurred to him that it would be more natural for him to be naked too: His animal posture would then complement hers; if nothing else, it would make an excellent series of photographs, two beasts crawling in one small enclosure. All manner of naked people could be caught thus, in fragments of motion; a zoo of measured humanity.
He was about to stand when he heard movement behind him. She was across the room in a moment, standing over him, her scent overpowering, a purple musk of mammalian heat. Her eyes were luminous and locked on his. She suddenly lashed out at the candles, kicking them across the room. Now it was only her eyes that illuminated the shrunken space. She pushed her face into his, grabbing his hair and throat with massive force. He gasped but was powerless to react. Her strength had become superhuman, and all his instincts told him that, if she decided to, she could snap his neck in a moment. Their noses were crushed together, the glowing eyes staring point-blank into his. He could see nothing but the unfocused light; he felt nauseous and terrified. He tried to close his eyes, but it made him feel worse; the thin skin shrivelled under the intensity, and the glow passed straight through.
They remained meshed together in the hideous coupling for only a few minutes, but for him it felt like suffocating hours. Suddenly, she fell away, peeling off into sleep on the cold, barren floor.
He pawed at his eyes, which felt bruised inside. He was drained and trembling; it had all happened so quickly, each incident taking only moments, enormous quantities of focused energy burning for a few minutes. A few minutes. The spell of clawing had been shorter than the intense staring of her eyes…a few minutes! The sequence of minutes she spent in his machine: three, five, eight. It had worked, but it had been delayed! The flash of understanding and triumph was instantly snatched away by the thought of the next attack: He had only a few moments to escape or defend himself before she woke again and launched a full eight-minute strike.
He scrambled to get up, his legs sliding wildly from under him. Dragging himself to his feet, he collided into the sink, sending a small wooden dryer of crockery crashing to the floor next to the prone sleeper. Cups and plates shattered and spun as he grabbed the door handle to the outside stairs and his escape. It was locked. The keys were in his discarded coat, somewhere in the studio, but where? Where had he dropped them on his drunken return? There was some moonlight, and he stumbled about in it, frantically searching. He heard her stir in her proximate sleep but did not dare to stop and look. He found the coat and thrust his hands into the pockets, fingers rattling for the keys. He was at the door when he found the empty gun. He had twisted the coat inside out, and it clung to his arms. He savagely pulled at it and made it worse. No keys could be found, and his hands were trapped inside the knotted lining. Then she moved.
He screamed as she flung herself at him. Her eyes had dimmed to beyond darkness; no whites could be seen at all. She was a pure, muscular shadow. He tried to cover his throat, but she had no interest in that; it would not be the focus of her prolonged assault. She clawed at his trousers and dragged him to the floor by the ripping waistband, tearing the thick cloth and sturdy undergarments away. He kicked his legs and feebly half-punched at her head with the hand that was not entangled in the coat. She brought one fist pistoning up into his face, and his head snapped back from the sickening force, blood and stars hurtling in all directions. She dashed back to her target. He dared not strike her again: Another such blow would finish him. He waited for her to slash through his abdomen wall, but that was not her target either. She grasped his skulking manhood and threw the last remnants of its covering across the room. Gripping its base with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, cradling his balls with the others, her left hand worked underneath him, and she violently pushed her index finger deep into his anus. Now he was struggling involuntarily. She pushed her finger against his prostate and squeezed with her other hand. His erection reared up, startled and automatic from its cringing sleep. He stopped fighting and fell back, realising what her true target was. She twisted round without loosening her grip. She was over him and lowered the power of her glistening body onto his triumphant, astonished cock. Her hands leapt upwards and grabbed his throat and squeezed while she pumped violently against him. He felt himself continue to grow inside her, expanding to colossal proportions. The pleasure was beating back the outrage and he gave in. He felt the brittle china edge of the broken saucer cut into his rump just before he erupted for the first time. She did not let go, but rode him into the floor, cracking cuts and welts into his skin until the full eight minutes were exhausted. Then she stood up, dripping slowly across the kitchen to her room, quietly shutting the door. He heard the key turn softly in the lock. He tried to get up again, scooping what was left of his pride and his clothing to cover his genitals, which still looked surprised, though this time by the abrupt interruption. He finally peeled the ball of cloth from his arm and found the key to escape. Shaking, he turned his topcoat the right way out, put it on, and limped away.
—
Making a charge against her was completely impossible; he would be a laughingstock. It was bad enough trying to tell Gull, who looked at him as if he was an idiot. He gave the incredulous doctor an edited account of her violent, mad, animal behavior. Gull calmed him condescendingly and had his wounds tended to by one of the male nurses. Six hours later, when Muybridge was rested and recovered, Gull sent him back to the rooms with two of the hospital’s stoutest men. His crossing was in forty-eight hours and he had to retrieve his property and get it to Liverpool in time to make the boat. He had reloaded the Colt, and he gripped it firmly in his pocket as they entered the scene of the crime, but Josephine had gone, and she had taken all the expensive cameras and everything else that was portable and of any value. His machine was the only item left untouched; it stood in exactly the same position as when she had last been inside it. He did not have time to dismantle it now.
“Please, take great care in crating that up for me.”
“Yes, of course, sir. But Sir William said you were to keep the rooms for your next visit.”
Was he mad? Did Gull seriously imagine that he would take on another of his monsters? He could not wait to see the back of these rooms of deceit and pain. He collected what was left of his possessions and put the logbook with them in the trunk that the men carried away. The long sea crossing suddenly began to seem like a blessing after this. He could rest and heal in its progress, removing the dismal and nightmarish memories of the last twenty-four hours. They left and he locked up behind them. He kept the keys. The stitches in his buttocks and back pulled and twinged as they walked towards the waiting carriage. His instrument had worked; now he had to find a function for its genius.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The shrill steam slid through the trees: The train, ready to leave, was calling for passengers. Had his footwear been more stable, the Frenchman would have jumped for joy. Instead, he squeezed his friend’
s hand with a mighty happiness, especially for one so small, and they moved on towards the sound, the Frenchman leading and pulling the long frame of his laughing, stooping companion through the leaves and high grass.
He saw the stillness set before his eyes, heard everything stop, just before he was yanked off his feet by Seil Kor coming to a sudden halt. Everything was arrested: the birdsong, the rustle of leaves, the shudder of life’s continued existence. He scrambled up, preparing to ask his friend for explanation, when he saw his guide hollow. The electricity and moisture, the pulse and the thought, the tension and the memory—all had drained out of him, into the ground. Seil Kor crashed to his knees, breaking some of his straight fingers in their vertical collision with the earth; they snapped like dry twigs, but he did not notice. The Frenchman broke out of his shock and rushed to embrace his friend, who toppled into his arms. There was no weight; he had become a wildly staring husk. His eyes, which darted to and fro, were the only sign of life.
“Help! Help! For God’s sake, help!” he screamed towards the trains. He found the derringer with its last cartridge and fired into the air. “Help, please, help!”
Then, just as he heard people running to their aid, the sound of something else reached his ears, turning his blood to water: a laugh, so close that, for a moment, he thought it was Seil Kor himself. It hung in the air around his dying friend.
“Hello?! Hello! What is wrong?” bellowed an approaching stranger. “Where are you?”
The Frenchman retrieved his voice from a sickly, viscous shell beneath his stomach and called again for help, in the feeblest of tones.
—
They carried Seil Kor to the wooden hut station and laid him on one of the hard pews. Nobody knew what to do. He was cold and stiff, with not the faintest sign of breathing, but his eyes worked frantically, seeking the faces of all in the room. They sent for the overseer from the workforce on the train. The Frenchman held his friend’s damaged hand, two of the fingers pointing comically at the ceiling. He thought about straightening them in an attempt to change the reality of the moment, to tidy the discordant and form a splint to normality by fussily adjusting the details. Maclish arrived and was confused by the tableau.
“Please help my friend!” pleaded the Frenchman.
Maclish came closer, putting his hand on Seil Kor’s chest and touching his fingers to Seil Kor’s throat. He saw the darting eyes and recognised the condition, quickly realising that the intended recipient was not the man lying prone before him: The Orm had taken the wrong man.
“Your friend?” he said, his anxiety inappropriate and incongruous but lost on the flapping state of the Frenchman.
The Frenchman agitatedly explained their journey and what had just taken place. Maclish’s culpability turned him stern and distant. “He can’t stay here; we have to get him back to the city,” he said brusquely, stepping outside and shouting commands along the platform. Two of the workers looked up and loped towards him. He pointed at Seil Kor and barked out more instructions, in a tongue that nobody else present understood. They lifted him from the pew and started carrying him along the platform, past the hissing train and its waiting carriages. There was no urgency in their actions, and the Frenchman was enraged to see that both of the Limboia were grinning.
“What are they laughing at?” he demanded of the Scotsman.
“It’s just their way; they are not all there,” he said, tapping his forehead with his index finger.
The Frenchman suspected at once that this was true and was convinced of it when he saw the vacant men carry his friend past the carriages and off into the perspective distance drawn by the flatbed trucks, which now bristled with stacked trees. “Where are those idiots taking him?” he squealed, rushing after them.
Maclish groaned and stomped after his loping run.
“Stop! Stop, take him back!” the Frenchman shouted at the grinning workers, as they carted his friend into the distance like a piece of game. They ignored him and plodded on, getting farther and farther from the passenger carriages and the Frenchman’s comprehension. Maclish barked again and they slowly halted, like clockwork winding a slow release. The Frenchman tugged at his friend, but he was held firm between the workmen, who looked down at the small man without interest or recognition, the smiles never leaving their greasy, blank faces.
“Tell them to take him back to the compartment!” demanded the Frenchman of the Scot.
“He is not going back on the train,” said Maclish; “he is going back on a flatbed with the trees.”
For a few moments, the Frenchman was lost for words, panting and twitching on the other side of speech. Then he let fly with a tirade of demands and abuse while the Scotsman became red and even more stoic, as if his growing colour was a swelling gauge of his inflexibility.
“He’s dead, man!” said the Scot emphatically, as if talking to a child. “He is not going in any of the carriages!”
The Frenchman was stamping with rage, so much so that his left shoe finally gave up the ghost and sprang from his foot with a flourish of something like embarrassment. The Limboia ignored the growing argument as the hanging body, slung limply between them, swayed slightly, its eyes paying fierce attention to the discarded shoe.
“He is not dead! You will be made to pay for this outrage!” the Frenchman bellowed at Maclish’s back as the Scotsman resumed his walk towards the back of the train.
Maclish shouted a command over his shoulder and wound the Limboia into walking mode again, the deflated Frenchman hobbling slowly behind. They halted at the last flatbed and deposited the body on the hefty wooden floor, securing it with heavy metal chains. A wall of equally lashed trees lay steeply next to Seil Kor, their sap oozing everywhere. Maclish pulled on the chain to test its fastening. He spoke again to the Limboia, who lost their smiles and ran back to their compartment. On his way back to the head of the train he passed the Frenchman, who spoke first.
“Where shall I go?”
Maclish bit his tongue and directed his gaze away from the Frenchman’s eyes. “Wherever you damn well please,” he said.
The small man took in the length of the train, trying to conjure a decision from his confusion. The whistle jolted him, but it was suddenly too late: With much clanking, the train started to move, the engine’s iron wheels shrieking on the sap-wet iron rails, its massive load teetering forward. He ran to Seil Kor and threw himself on the flatbed as it gained momentum, the other shoe flying off and disappearing into the undergrowth.
As the train gathered speed, its load shifted, shaking the flatbeds with bone-jarring regularity. Seil Kor showed no signs of life; his body trembled with the bumps of the track, but all else was inert. The Frenchman held on tightly, one arm covering his friend protectively, the other hooked around the chain. He had closed his friend’s eyes: The intensity of them staring out of the handsome, expressionless face had been too much for him to bear. It had taken four attempts to shut them; he eventually resorted to smearing the thick tree juice over his friend’s lids. It broke his heart to treat those once-beautiful eyes so roughly, but it felt necessary. He still believed that the energy they showed was a sign of survival and that his friend’s present condition might be a form of coma or sleeping sickness; similar things, seen before in his lifetime, allowed him to retain a little optimism. He would find a doctor the moment they arrived in Essenwald, with enough knowledge to awaken his beloved friend and restore him to brimming health. This was his best hope as they sped through the darkening forest, rattling and slipping together.
—
Seil Kor’s eyes opened and flashed at the speeding trees as they hurtled past. The Frenchman could not remember his name or why he was clinging to his cold, hard body. He knew he loved him, but not why. The terrifying situation was exacerbated by the stranger’s mad eyes. He tried to look away, but the movement made him slip again. He was sliding in a black, sticky pool that was blood or sap, viscous and sickening. Thin rain had made it spread and stretch, the darknes
s taking away its identifying colour. He had been shaken to the side of the prone man; he wanted to reach out and close the lids of the snatching eyes, but the train jolted and he grabbed hard at the chain instead, scared of being thrown clear. The flatbed juddered and swayed more violently, its cargo of butchered trees shifting and straining against its fetters. He knew if the chains came loose they would both be crushed, or swept over into the racing night to be broken like kindling against the tracks.
He gripped the staring man and began to sob. His heart hung like a pendulum in a long, hollow case of hopelessness, abrupt shudders discordantly jangling the weights and coiled chimes, which whimpered and knocked, while the other man’s eyes ticked away all life.
Sleep was farther away than the city, and he dared not let fatigue cajole him. The trees grunted and struggled, shifting the weight of their enormous carcasses again. He tried to focus on the stars, but the engine’s smoke and the vibrations made them bleary and out of focus. He knew he was lost if he could not anchor his mind. He thought of his mother and of Charlotte; he must not let their memory be erased. He even conjured some of the faces and bodies of the street boys, but they would not stay, and his purchase slipped away. He looked for God and was considering Satan, when his genius spoke up to save him. His books! Those unique works of fiction, and the one he would write next: The very thing that made him significant had almost been forgotten in the wrath and momentum of this, his mad time in exile from them. He should not have been in this dismal forest, putting his life at risk with ignorant savages. All he needed was a locked room, ink, and sheets of virgin paper. This was his anchor, and he embedded it with the few scraps of energy he had left. He instinctively knew that memory and imagination share the same ghost quarters of the brain, that they are like impressions in loose sand, footfalls in snow. Memory normally weighed more, but not here, where the forest washed it away, smoothing out every contour of its vital meaning. Here, he would use imagination to stamp out a lasting foundation that refused the insidious erosions buffeting around him. He would dream his way back to life with impossible facts. He gripped the man and the chain harder as they thundered towards dawn, the chapters unpeeling across the wet miles.
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