Mayhem (24 page)

‘The river?’ His head snapped upwards. ‘Why on earth would I have been in the river?’ I had never heard him speak so sharply, and it even drew Charles’ attention from his food.

‘I say, son,’ he said, ‘Thomas is just trying to help.’

‘But who in their right mind would go into the river?’

I realised this was the first time I had had a good look at young Harrington since I had arrived, and I was shocked by his appearance. Mottled blotches covered his face and neck, and his skin had shifted beyond pale and into that slightly blue hue that I would more normally associate with a chilled corpse.

‘You do work at the wharves.’ Juliana’s voice was small; tonight she was not the confident young woman I had come to care for. ‘Perhaps the water splashed you?’

‘It’s not the river,’ Harrington said. The edge had gone from his voice. ‘I was ill before I took up my father’s business – you know that. I’m sorry, Dr Bond; I did not intend to sound rude. I’m just rather tired, and my chest is weak.’

‘He’s going to start coughing up blood soon.’ Juliana looked at me, her eyes unhappy.

‘It always passes,’ James said. ‘You should worry less.’

‘I wonder if the paint fumes at the house might have brought it on,’ Juliana said. She looked across at her mother. ‘Or perhaps the dust. I think we should move back here again.’

‘Someone needs to be in the house to supervise,’ Charles cut in. He looked somewhat disturbed. ‘I love you dearly, Juliana, you know that. But you cannot leave your house in the hands of labourers.’

‘We wouldn’t – of course not. But—’

‘Of course you can come here if you want,’ Mary said, and as their words faded out to a hum around me I stared at my plate, not really seeing the grease sitting on the surface. There was a rushing in my ears, as if it were I who had fallen in the river. My head was filled with the priest who, despite my resolve, still occupied a constant space in my thoughts. My words had been an echo of his.

A parasite. From the river
.

I looked once more at James as I replayed in my head the conversation from that afternoon. Perhaps the
Upir
was someone that I knew … My mouth dried and as I instinctively reached for my wine, my hand trembled. The warmth in my throat did nothing to soothe me; I needed something stronger.

But surely this was just a coincidence? So young Harrington was ill – it didn’t mean anything. The hospitals were filled with sick people. I was sure that if I asked any of the people in my small circle of friends and colleagues, they could each describe a similar ailment to me.

I swallowed more wine, and then asked, ‘When did you first become sick?’ I imagined that he was going to say it was something he had suffered from since childhood, and then I would be able to laugh at my own flights of fancy.

‘James did the Grand Tour,’ Juliana said, ‘all around Europe.’

‘I can talk for myself,’ Harrington muttered. ‘I’m not that sick.’ He looked warily my way, and I wasn’t sure if it was the dim light, but the edge of one of his eyes was flecked with an angry red. ‘It was something I caught in Europe, yes. But it never lasts long.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘However, I am feeling rather tired. I am sorry to be such a terrible guest, but I think perhaps Juliana and I should go home. I should have stayed in bed – I have work to do tomorrow.’

‘You should rest, darling.’ Juliana squeezed his thin hand. ‘You shouldn’t be working like this. Between the company and the house it’s no wonder you’re sick again.’

‘Maybe you would like to stay here?’ Mary asked. ‘There’s always a room ready.’

‘No, but thank you.’ James smiled, giving a hint of his usual kindness. ‘Again, I apologise.’ He got to his feet and Juliana took his arm, steadying him. I rose too, but Charles waved me down.

‘Stay here with me, Thomas. We don’t stand on ceremony, you know that – we’re all family, after all.’

After Juliana and James had said their goodbyes, Mary also bade us goodnight, leaving Charles to pour us both a brandy. I fought to steady my thoughts. So James had travelled in Europe – but where? There was so much more I needed to know, if only to stop this dread rising in my blood. My head rushed, my palms were clammy. I struggled for breath as my anxiety rose.

I tugged at my collar as Charles handed me a glass.

‘Are you all right, Thomas?’ His eyes were on my shaking hand.

‘I think perhaps James is not the only one who is unwell,’ I said. My words sounded as if they were coming from far away, and my vision shimmered as if I were separated by glass from the world. I knew these sensations. My anxiety was getting the better of me. I struggled to control it. I took a deep breath, and then a long swallow of the liquor – that would help. ‘I can’t shake this slight fever.’

I made the effort to smile at him, but it was wasted; Charles was looking down at his plate again, and there was not a trace of his normal good humour.

‘I’m sorry, Thomas.’

‘What for?’

‘This evening – we are not quite ourselves, I fear. James is ill, Juliana is worried about him, Mary is worried about her’ – he shrugged slightly – ‘and I … well, I have been having these awful dreams.’

I wanted to ask him about Harrington’s travels – I
itched
to do so – but this was not the time for it. Charles was obviously distracted.

‘Sometimes I can’t breathe for the wickedness in them,’ he whispered, and I had never seen him look so desolate. I was reminded of the time he spoke of evil at his windows. This was not my friend Charles I saw before me; Charles was a blustering man, firmly rooted in the present and full of life, even when surrounded
by death. Something was most definitely plaguing him.

He stared into his glass.

‘I see things in them.’ He did not look up. ‘I scare myself with what I see.’

‘They will pass, Charles,’ I said gently. It was all I could say. However, I wondered about the gifts the priest had spoken of. If I could sense something, then maybe Charles could too? And if Harrington truly was the
Upir
…

I couldn’t bring myself to carry that line of thought through. It surely could not be possible …

*

I excused myself not long after the young couple had left, and Charles put up no argument. We were all exhausted from our individual internal battles. By the time I got home, the bracing air had chased away the remnants of my anxiety attack, and although I was tired from its effects, I poured myself another brandy and stared out of the drawing room window at the gloomy night. The road was empty: no strange priest, no mad hairdresser. My reflection looked back at me, light and ghostly, the edges refusing to remain firm. It was like looking at myself in a river, with the night outside as black as the murky depths, and the glass the only slight surface between me and whatever might be hiding there. I shivered.

I told myself I would stick with my resolution to free myself of this madness; I would not seek out the priest.
However, I needed to prove the foolishness of my mad thoughts, and I could only do that by dispelling any doubts my unruly mind had: I
would
look more deeply into James Harrington and his travels.

My reflection refused to stop studying me, and I knew that I would need more than brandy if I were to make even a pretense at sleep that night. I turned and reached for the laudanum.

31

London. 3 June, 1889

Elizabeth Jackson

The days were warmer, but the nights were still cold, and Elizabeth could find nowhere better to shelter than under the bridges by the river. As the afternoon was turning to evening she had found a place pressed up against the wall, and in the hour or so since, more people had gathered around her. At least there was company here, although even among the destitute and lost there were hunters, those who would think nothing of taking what they wanted and throwing the original owner into the water.

She had become an expert in reading prey and predators, learning to recognise them: there was a silent growl in the way they walked, a snarl in every tilt of their heads. But none of them could match the one who was after her. She was nearly always left untroubled, almost as if those feral men realised that she was marked by something far beyond any evil they could conceive.

There were others here, though, young and old, men and women, the waste products of the ruthless city. They huddled in groups, barely speaking, but still
needing some sort of human company to make their grim, isolated existences bearable, and Elizabeth felt safe joining them. Her once-nice clothes, bought by John Faircloth for their fruitless search for work, were now dirty and ragged, and in their furtive glances they recognised her for one of their own. Elizabeth found a small comfort in the false sense of security they gave her, even though she knew in her heart that nothing could keep her safe, not even in her dreams, where she was endlessly running for a patch of light somewhere in the distance, for the darkness had started to overwhelm her.

The wall was damp and she could feel the chill creeping through her coat, but she did not care; she was glad to be off her feet. She was seven months gone now, and the baby sat low and heavy. Her thin frame was struggling with the weight; she was weak, and often dizzy, and it felt like this had been her life forever. Everything that had gone before was inconsequential. And here she was, back in Chelsea: all that running, and she had just come full circle.

Elizabeth sighed. She had always known she would end up back here, ever since she saw him on the Embankment, looking –
hunting
. Time had melted into one long, endless moment of survival, but she was sure it had to be at least two weeks ago, maybe even longer. It was before she had seen Mrs Minter in the street – when the kind woman, an old family friend, had taken pity on her and given her the Ulster coat she now wore.

It had been very late, in the silent hours, when she had seen the tall figure moving through the sleeping bodies, but she had known instantly it was him. She would always recognise him, the way his shoulders moved, his gait, even if he had lost his natural shy stiffness to whatever unnatural instinct now drove him.

She had pressed her face into the ground and he had walked past her. She knew then that it was only a matter of time; he
would
find her. She was sure he could smell himself as he grew inside her, and he would not let that go, just as whatever was growing inside her wanted to be near him and the river – it was the reason she was here; it had drawn her back. It sounded like madness, even in the confines of her own thoughts, but she knew it was true. She had been living in Purgatory since the night he had violated her. All that was waiting for her in the future was Hell. She had lost the will to keep running from the devil.

Even when she and John had been on the road north she had known that Chelsea would drag her back. Finally, after John Faircloth was gone and she was back on the streets, she had walked into its clutches. She had gone to her mother first. Her pride was gone – it had not taken many nights out in the open in London for that to happen. She was ready to beg to be able to stay, if only her mother would give her the chance, but the woman who answered the door was a stranger
who brusquely told Elizabeth that her mother was in the workhouse, and nor did she know where her sisters were, or care. Elizabeth had cried then. The wickedness that had marked her out was touching them all.

She went to his street – the street where she had worked for six happy years – and watched both houses with an aching heart. She looked at them for so long that she could see their reflections as shadows behind her eyes when she closed her eyelids. She peered around corners and tried to stay out of sight. It was all so painfully familiar that for a while she wondered if perhaps she had just gone mad; that she had never seen anything the night his family fell ill – maybe his mother had been sick already when she came to Elizabeth with her worries.

When she saw the woman coming from his house, her fingers gripped the wall so hard that two nails snapped. The woman was tall and elegantly dressed, but she was not much more than a girl, really – she might have been younger than Elizabeth. Her shining hair was a deep red, and thick, curled neatly under her hat. She existed in another world, one of warmth and security and comfort. As she stared more intently, Elizabeth saw that the redheaded girl’s mouth was tugging down in a frown that aged her, and the sight of it closed the divide between them. She understood the cause of that worry, probably far better than the girl did. A shape moved behind the window and there he
was, looking out, his pale, thin face a contrast with the dark shadows behind him. Even from a distance and through the glass, Elizabeth felt a wave of revulsion, looking at the man who was now a stranger to her.

She gagged as the night he had filled her belly came flooding back. She had been with rougher men since, but she had never experienced anything so inhuman, so cold, so utterly terrifying. The girl on the pavement glanced back, as if she too could sense his presence. Elizabeth wanted to run to her and pull her away, wanted to tell her to save herself; to leave and never look back.

She felt his eyes on her. Her breath hitched and she turned her head back to the window. His lips were curled in an unpleasant smile and she felt herself, huddled against the wall and trying to stay out of sight, exactly where he had expected her to be.

All thoughts of the finely dressed lady were devoured by dread. She tore her eyes away from his gaze and ran, her exhausted legs somehow finding the energy as she pressed her filthy hand into her mouth to stop from crying out. He was coming for her; she knew that. It was only a matter of when.

And now here he was. She looked up at him, and although she felt that awful dread, it was mixed with a resigned calm: this was Fate at work and there was nothing she could do about it. The wall was rough, even through the coat, and several strands of matted hair fell across her face. The river gurgled and
somewhere a few feet away, a baby cried. Inside, her own infant squirmed, perhaps aware of its father’s presence, desperate to be free of her body. She felt no urge to protect it – but then, she felt no urge to protect herself.