My Clockwork Muse (29 page)

I explained to Gessler the puncture's
mysterious origins, how it had first appeared during the final
stages of Virginia's illness and how I had noticed a similar mark
on the neck of my still-living wife, thinking it an insect bite or
the sign of some legitimate, albeit arcane, medical procedure. I
said nothing of the cemetery.

"No doubt this has something to do with
Coppelius' serum. Oh, the man is the devil himself! This is far
worse than I had suspected. Sorry for doubting you, Mr. Poe."

I smiled, though I knew he could not see me
in the darkness. "Never you fear Inspector. I was beginning to
doubt me, too."

We had already entered the wooded vale and
were crossing the stone bridge. It was dark as night under the
canopy of trees. Gessler lowered his window. I could feel the chill
of the damp night air. He stuck his head out and called up to the
driver. "Back to Witherspoon's," he cried. "And hurry!"

~ * * * ~

Gaslight lamps were glowing all along the
empty street when our carriage clattered to a halt in front of
Witherspoon's shop. All the storefronts were locked up tight and
Witherspoon's was no exception. It looked dark and abandoned.
Gessler jumped out of the carriage and hobbled on his sore ankle to
the front door. He rattled the knob and as he thrice attempted to
thrust open the door—only to have it stopped by the lock—we could
hear the little bell inside tinkling fitfully. The sign on the door
read CLOSED, but we knew from experience that that did not preclude
the chemist's presence within.

"Damn you, Witherspoon," Gessler muttered as
he moved to the large front window and peered in through one of the
small panes of dirty glass. He cupped his hands and looked closer.
"Ah, there's a light!"

I looked myself and indeed saw a thin line of
light framing the door that led into the back room. Gessler hurried
back to the front door and began pounding and rattling the door in
its frame, at the same time calling out for Witherspoon to open
up.

A moment later, we heard a click and the door
edged open. Witherspoon's face appeared in the crack.

"Ah, it is you! Gentlemen, come in!" he
exclaimed, opening the door. We walked into the dark, empty shop.
The lock clicked home behind us and Witherspoon joined us a moment
later. The door to the back room stood ajar. A faint chemical smell
filled the air and Witherspoon's apron, tied at his neck and waist,
appeared to be freshly stained and pock-marked with tiny
brown-edged burn holes. I supposed we had interrupted some late
night work of his. He noticed Gessler's limp and his gaze was drawn
to my still black eye. He shook his head. "I'm afraid to ask," he
said. And from his expression, I believed he meant that
literally.

If not, then Gessler set him straight at
once. "You
should
be afraid, Mr. Witherspoon. I believe we
all should."

"It doesn’t get any better when you see what
I have to show you."

He flexed a hairy-knuckled finger at us and
we followed him into the back room.

"I was planning on working all night and
summoning you in the morning, but since you are here now, you might
as well see what I've found."

We followed him into the back room. I
immediately heard a wild squeaking and quickly realized that the
source of the noise was a little gray rat in a cage. The creature
was mad. It thrashed against the metal bars and seemed to be trying
to chew through them. Its teeth were smeared with blood and a loose
clump of furry scalp hung from a gash on its head. My first impulse
upon seeing the thing was to recoil. I quickly cast my eye upon the
cage door, wondering if the delicate-looking latch could withstand
the rat's onslaught. It was my feeling that the creature's
intention was not merely to escape, but to kill.

"My God, Witherspoon!" I cried. "What are you
up to?"

"This one has just awakened," he said. He
rubbed his hands together as he leaned down to regard the rat
closely as it thrashed against the thin wire bars. He stuck his
nose closer to the gnashing incisors than I would have been willing
to stick mine.

"What do you mean 'just awakened'?" I asked
with a feeling of rising horror. "You mean from sleep?"

"Oh, no," Witherspoon said. "I mean from
death."

Three other cages near the first also
contained rats—dead, from the looks of them. A fourth, set upon a
stool, held a live apparently normal rat. When I eyed the creature,
it went up on its hind legs, grasped the bars and twitched its
nose.

Gessler guffawed loudly and turned on his
heel as if to leave the room. But then he whirled back almost at
once. "Mr. Witherspoon, by God, twenty-four hours ago I would have
walked out of here without a second thought. But after what I've
seen today, I have no right to doubt a thing. You're telling us
that this rat has come back from the dead?"

Witherspoon turned his head. My skin prickled
to see his bald pate just inches from the rat's thrashing claws.
"That is precisely what I’m telling you, Inspector. Five minutes
before you arrived, this rat was as dead as these others. In fact,
I believe it is dead still. Only it is now capable of movement and
seems to have a rather ... unpleasant disposition." Witherspoon
straightened, moving—to my relief—firmly out of range of the rat's
claws. "But clearly not the same rat it was. It is a sort of
living-dead version of the original, I suppose you would say."

Gessler shook his head. "Every fiber of my
being rebels at the idea."

"Nevertheless, what I'm telling you is
true."

"How did you make this happen?" I asked.

"It took me some time—and, as you can see, a
few dead rats—to hit upon the exact formula. But using the sample
you left with me, Mr. Poe, I—

"This is the result of the substance from my
vial?"

Witherspoon gave me a perplexed look. "Why,
yes, of course. I set about to work the moment you left. There is
little time, Mr. Poe. If this criminal of yours is out there using
this stuff for whatever nefarious purpose, he must be stopped at
once."

"We ran into one of his victims—and it near
cost us our lives," Gessler said.

Witherspoon frowned. "A human?"

"Just like your rat." Gessler nodded toward
the cage.

Witherspoon took a deep breath. "Then I was
right." He seemed to gaze into the far distance, lost in
thought.

"Right about what?" I urged.

"I almost gave up in frustration. I killed
these rats and many more besides before I finally hit upon the
proper ratios. But it was more than mere ratios. It was the right
procedure as well. You see, I had a feeling I knew what the
formulator of this substance was trying to accomplish and that
aided me greatly in my endeavors. At first, I was injecting doses
of various sizes into the rats and it merely killed them, as I
suspected it would. I thought it was just a matter of dosage, but
it was more than that. The death of the subject is inevitable,
but—"

"Wait a minute, Witherspoon," Gessler
interjected. "What are you saying? That Coppelius is injecting dead
people with some sort of reanimating serum?"

"Not the dead, Inspector, but the living. A
small amount of his serum, as you call it, is applied repeatedly
over time. It mixes with the subject's blood and is then withdrawn
through the lymph nodes, here." Witherspoon tapped the spot on his
neck where his lymph nodes resided. My stomach clenched when I saw
the place he indicated. "The result is the substance found in your
vial, Mr. Poe. Unfortunately, the procedure also results in the
eventual death of the subject and, as you can see, the animation of
the corpse. Using the rats, I was able to speed the process
immeasurably. But I drew an exact duplicate of your substance from
the creature you see here. Prior to its death, of course."

"But for what purpose?" I asked.

"For this." Witherspoon held up the now
half-full vial I had given him, still wearing its fraudulent label.
"This is what our fiend is after—the stuff in this vial. This," he
indicated the rat gnawing viciously on the metal bars, "is, I
believe, merely an unfortunate byproduct. Of course, that is only
my opinion."

"You mean to say that the reanimation of the
dead is not his intention?" Gessler asked.

"He may not even be aware of it, Inspector.
It is the substance he wants."

"But what does he use it for?" I asked.

"God only knows," Witherspoon said. "I only
know that, whatever its purpose, he is willing to kill to procure
it."

I was afraid to ask my next question and I
proceeded with trepidation, stumbling over my words. "But what,
pray tell, Mr. Witherspoon, were the symptoms, if any, prior to the
subject's death?"

"That I could not say, Mr. Poe. The process I
used was necessarily abbreviated to account for the urgency of our
purpose. Had I more time, I would naturally like to replicate my
findings, just to be sure, and to study the symptoms leading up to
the subject's death, as you say. And, of course, the whole nature
of the reanimated creature is completely unknown."

"What of somnambulism?" I asked without
preamble.

"Walking in one's sleep? As a symptom, you
mean?"

"Yes. It seems to me not so far off from the
... the terminal condition. Perhaps one learns to function in the
land of dreams as a kind of prelude to his functioning in the land
of the dead."

Witherspoon frowned in thought. "Hmm. A
curious notion. But—possibly, yes." He ambled over to the table
where he kept his books, pulled out a paper and, using the stub of
a pencil, scratched a quick note. "Now that you mention it, I did
notice one thing," he said, looking up.

"Go on."

"One of the rats, before it died, displayed a
hyper-sensitivity to light. As I moved its cage under my lamp to
observe the creature, I saw that the light seemed to cause it great
discomfort."

I was flabbergasted and afraid. "How did you
know?"

"Well, as I say, I moved the cage into and
out of the light and observed the rat's reaction—"

"No, I don't mean the rat—I mean me. Look!" I
pulled down my collar and lifted my chin, exposing the wound on my
neck. "Is the process reversible once it has begun?"

Witherspoon gave my neck a cursory inspection
and then, producing a small magnifying glass from a pocket in his
apron, examined it closely. "Hmm," he said. "Interesting..."

"Well, is it, Witherspoon? Tell me."

"I—I don't know. I need more time to study. I
know only that all the rats died—"and one came back. Are you saying
that this wound on your neck bears some connection to—"

"Coppelius was my doctor, too, Witherspoon.
He tended my wife, and also the living-dead creature that tried to
kill us today. We all have the same mark. And only I, of the three,
still live."

"Then that is a point in your favor, Mr.
Poe," Witherspoon said, replacing my collar with a tender pat and a
smile. But I could see the fear underlying his expression. He was
trying to humor me with his easy manner. But I knew the danger I
was in.

I suddenly became afraid for Olimpia's life
as well. She had gone to reason with the devil, an argument she
would surely lose. Yet, while I knew that no crime was out of reach
of a man capable of the horrors we had witnessed, I found it hard
to believe that even the vile Coppelius would harm his own
daughter.

I knew nothing for a certainty.

What I did know was that I was afraid.

Afraid that he would take her from me.

Afraid that I would die without ever seeing
her again.

Though it was night, I put on my shaded
glasses. Then I pulled the pepperbox from my pocket and began
loading it. "We're going to Coppelius'.
Tonight.
If I am
doomed to die of his hideous disease ... I shall take him to Hell
with me."

A storm was brewing as we barreled through
the dark, empty streets in Gessler's carriage. Gusts of wind
buffeted us and I could hear it whistling through the open gaps
around the windows and doors. Nebulous flashes of lightning
revealed mountainous storm clouds on the horizon, coming our
way.

A storm was heading Coppelius' way as well—if
I had anything to say about it.

"If he has done anything to harm Olimpia, I
shan't be held responsible for what I might do." I patted the
pocket of my frock coat, comforted by the feel of the loaded
revolver inside.

"The law will take care of Coppelius, Mr.
Poe," Gessler warned.

I could almost admire the inspector's
guileless optimism, even if I could not share it. "After what we've
seen? Oh, no," I shook my head, "Coppelius is quite beyond the law,
Inspector—be they society's laws or those of nature itself."

"Pshaw! He is still only a man. We will find
him bound in irons when we arrive. Never you fear, Mr. Poe. My men
will have prevented any harm befalling Miss Coppelius, one way or
the other."

"I knew it was dangerous," I said wistfully.
"I should never have allowed her to go."

"There was no stopping her," Gessler said.
"My men will keep her safe."

"If he has not already whisked her away."
This, of course, was my deepest fear. Nearly unlimited resources,
Olimpia had said. This opened the entire world to him. He had to
know we were coming. If he wanted to lose himself, I doubted our
capacity to find him.

When we arrived at Coppelius' house, the wind
had picked up substantially. The gnarled black trees thrashed in
the gusts. Torrents of skittering leaves swirled under our wheels
as we clattered along the carriage drive toward the porte-cochere
entrance. A bolt of lightning streaked the night sky and, for a
frozen instant, the vine-covered house and overgrown grounds flared
in stark detail.