Supping With Panthers (55 page)

You remember, Huree? – I could do nothing. I stood by the doorway. I was shaking so hard. Lucy had risen from her lover’s bed – a dumb, frightened animal, cornered in a trap. You shouted at me not to let her go. But when she darted, Huree … when she darted … What else could I have done? Her eyes were so staring, so fleshy and ripe. I would have picked them out. I would have fed on the tissue from the optical nerve, as though sucking the meat from the claw of a crab. And if I had held her, Huree – then right before your eyes, right in that room, I would have ripped her hard with my naked hands, I would have ripped her apart. So I let her go. For a second our eyes met, hers uncomprehending; and then she slipped past me and disappeared. I heard your cry of protest; I turned to face you, and Charlotte’s grinning head, dripping gore on to the rumpled sheets. My hatred and anger hollowed me out How I wanted to kill you! The insect’s claws were chittering now. An effort – and I turned.

I stumbled away, back down the stairs and out through the hall. It had begun to rain. My anger wasn’t cooled. I searched for Lucy; I couldn’t see her. There were die marks of carriage wheels though, left in the gravel, very recent and leading away from the house. I ran after them wildly, frantically. The rain was falling more heavily now. I had soon lost the marks of the carriage wheels.

I stood on Highgate Hill, breathing in the air. London. Below me. A stench of excrement and blood. I ran towards it for miles, through the night. I never stopped. Not until the stench was unbearable and my revulsion as ripe and vivid to match. Tonight, I thought to myself, I would enjoy the pleasures of hate. Previously, the other times, I had hurried and gorged much too fast; tonight, I wanted more time for my work. But there seemed to be policemen on every other street. What if I were disturbed? It would be unbearable: my climax interrupted, my pleasure curtailed. No – for tonight, I decided, I would have privacy. Someone’s room. But whose? I looked about me and realised, for the first time, that I was almost in Whitechapel again. I continued to hurry through the narrowest, blankest streets. I met almost no one. I smiled. So the whores were too frightened of my knife to come out? It certainly seemed so; and indeed the terror was almost palpable, as sharp and cold as the autumn winds. I shivered as I realised that my clothes were wet through. All the more reason, then, I thought, to find a room – nice and snug, with a fire in the grate. No more cold pavements for me. I wrapped my cape about me. I bowed my head. Then I stepped out from the shadows into Hanbury Street.

*

No one saw me slip into my rooms. I was glad to find they had been left undisturbed; dust was thick everywhere. I crossed to my desk. My work, again, had been left quite undisturbed. There was still even a slide beneath the microscope. I peered through the lens: Lord Byron’s leucocytes. They were as active as before, moving ceaselessly across the face of the slide. The sight of them, the flickering cells, sharpened my desire to take a life. I considered my options. I wondered about Llewellyn, whether he was on duty in the ward below. If he was, it might be difficult removing a patient from under his nose. I frowned. There had to be some way. My desire was not to be frustrated now. I bit at my knuckle in an effort to steady my hand. As I did so, I shut my eyes; then opened them again. I found myself staring at the mantelpiece. Next to the clock I could make out a key. Slowly, I smiled as I remembered whose it was. I crossed to the mantelpiece. I picked up the key. I slipped it into my pocket; then from my desk took a surgical blade. Silently, I descended the stairs and returned into the street.

It was not far to Miller’s Court. I passed through a narrow arch and entered the yard. Mary Kelly’s room was number thirteen. I paused by the door. I swallowed, then knocked.

There was no answer.

I knocked again.

A silence. Then a faint creaking from the bed. ‘Go away.’

‘Mary.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Jack.’

‘Jack?’

I smiled. There had been unmistakable fear in her voice. I composed myself. ‘Doctor Eliot.’

‘Doctor?’ Genuine surprise. ‘I thought you were gone.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘My door’s locked.’

‘I’ve got the key.’ I turned it, I pushed at the door. It swung open. I walked inside.

Mary was sitting on the bed. ‘What is it, then?’ she asked. I smiled at her … and then suddenly, she knew. She saw it in my face, just as she had seen it in George’s that time in Hanbury Street, when she had attacked him and tried to claw it from his cheeks – Lilah’s mark, the mark of death. She rose, hatred and terror disfiguring her. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, please, not you.’

‘Be quiet, Mary,’ I told her.

For a second she stood frozen, then she tried to run for the door. I seized her arm, I twisted it back. ‘Oh, murder!’ she cried. Then her voice slipped away. Gently, it slipped and spilled across the floor in a soft, steady drip. She melted into my arms. I raised her and crossed to the bed. Tenderly I laid her out. How cold she was! I glanced around the room. By the fireplace I saw a bundle of clothes; I smiled, and placed them in the grate. They were soon burning merrily. The shadows flickered with orange and red. I stared at Mary again. Dyed by the flames, her naked skin gleamed. We would both be warm now. How content I was, as I settled down to work.

Damp and fragrant, Mary tempted me to hurry; but I was not as green in my pleasures now as I had been before: the greatest delights would always ride on patience. I caressed Mary gently with the edge of my blade: I severed her head from her neck until it hung from the skin; I sliced up her stomach and removed her organs; I placed her hand in the wound, so that she could feel it for herself. No life there now; I was purging it utterly, rendering her dean. I sobbed with joy. When I had finished, not a trace of her disease would remain. I stabbed her breasts. If she had lived, a child might have suckled on those. No milk rose up with the blood, but still I shuddered. The disease might have been spread: a child might have been born. Not now, though. To make certain, I stabbed the breasts again; then I severed them both with a delicate care. I stood back. Mary’s face in the flickering light seemed to smile her approval at me. The flesh would soon peel from it, I thought, and the bones rub through; then she would smile for eternity. I kissed her; imagined I was kissing the teeth of her skull. I felt a sudden fury that she should still wear the face she had worn whilst alive. She deserved better; I had won her better. With a hacking of my knife, I removed her nose. Now she had a dead thing’s nostrils. I began to hum, carefully peeling the skin off from her brow. The flesh beneath was sticky; I would have to shred that away too. But there was no hurry. Why, I might stay with Mary’s body for days. I raised my head and glanced at the door. I should lock it. I got up from the bedside and fumbled for the key. I crossed to the door. As I did so I frowned; I hadn’t remembered leaving it ajar. I froze. I couldn’t hear a sound, not above the crackling of the clothes in the fire. I shrugged. I pushed against the door. Then I frowned again. The door wouldn’t shut.

Gingerly, I pulled it back and peered out through the gap. A glittering stare met my own. ‘Have you finished with her now?’ Lord Byron asked.

At once I tried to slam the door in his face. But he held out his arm in the gap; I felt a great strength pushing against me and I was flung to the floor. Lord Byron stood in the doorway. He stared around the room. His lips narrowed; once – just once, but I saw it for myself – his nostrils flared in an expression of disgust. He stood aside and leaned against the wall. ‘In the name of die saints,’ he muttered. ‘What is it about you medical men?’

I stared at him, then back to Mary where she lay on her bed. The red shadows flickered across her body, scarcely recognisable now as a thing that had lived – just a trunk of ordure, black with drying blood. ‘She is mine,’ I said. I inched back, still staring at my adversary. My hand, as I leaned against the bed, brushed against something moist I looked down: her liver, glistening in the light of the flames. I picked it up; I kissed it, ; then placed it between her feet. ‘You won’t have her!’ I screamed suddenly. I scooped up the cuttings of skin, and clutched them in my arms. Like a baby, I rocked them. I began to laugh.

‘For God’s sake,’ exclaimed Lord Byron. I looked up at him. I saw horror stamped upon his handsome face. And he a vampire! I laughed even more. I laughed till I choked.

Before I was even aware that he had moved, Lord Byron seized my wrists. I stared into his contemptuous, tungsten eyes. I spat in his face. ‘At least I don’t spill blood to drink it,’ I sneered. ‘I have a higher purpose.’

‘And what would that be?’ asked Lord Byron, his voice suddenly low with rage. ‘Why this slaughter-house, Eliot?’ He shuddered, and flung me against the corpse on the bed. ‘You were a good man. A compassionate man. What has happened to you?’ He frowned. His nose twitched as he breathed in my scent. ‘So I was right,’ he whispered softly. ‘You are not one of us. You are not a vampire at all. But what are you then? What have you become?’

‘Why?’ I stared again into Lord Byron’s eyes. ‘What business is it of yours?’ 1

His eyes, so harsh and glittering before, seemed almost to shimmer now. He reached to stroke my cheek. ‘I have need of you,’ he said at last.

‘Need of me?’ I laughed wildly as I stared around at my butcher’s work. ‘You want to talk about your damned blood cells
now?’

‘Why not?’ His voice was so cold, it froze my laughter dead. ‘What better time could there be?’ He frowned; he picked up the folds of Mary’s dead skin and held them to the light. A muscle twitched in his cheek, and he dropped the shreddings down on to the table. ‘With the proofs of your transformation so fresh about you …’ Suddenly, he had seized me by the hair. It was me he studied now, me he held to the light. ‘I knew,’ he said slowly, ‘when you vanished, that you must have fallen.’ He glanced down at my knife. ‘Jack the Ripper. The Whitechapel phantom. The bloodthirsty butcher with the surgeon’s skills. Who else could it have been? So I started looking out for you, Doctor. I put a watch on Rotherhithe. Tonight we saw you leave. I knew you would lead me to Lucy. And I was perfectly right. You led me straight there.’

‘You have her now?’

‘In the carriage.’

I laughed again. ‘Then Polidori will be pleased.’

‘He wanted me to have her?’

‘That was why he let me escape.’

Lord Byron frowned. ‘But it wasn’t Polidori …’

‘Who made me what I am?’ Again, I could barely gasp through my laughter. I shook my head. Lord Byron, to my surprise, was smiling as well. He seemed almost relieved by my words.

He waited until my laughter had run its course. ‘Of course it was not Polidori,’ he murmured at length. ‘He could only have made you a vampire like himself – not the creature that you are,’ He paused. ‘So do you hate her?’

‘Lilah?’

He nodded.

I stroked Mary’s skinless brow. I shook my head. ‘Why should I?’ I asked. ‘When she has given me this …’

Lord Byron’s expression did not change. But his stare was icy again and, once trapped by it, I could not escape. ‘I had hoped, actually,’ he said, still standing over me, ‘to find you at your kid. That was why I left you alone tonight, you see. I had wanted to surprise you with the mark of your slaughter still on your lips, your victim in your arms, so that your self-disgust would make you utterly mine. The vampire may have no choice but to drink – but that does not mean he cannot regret what he is. Some of his former self will always endure. That is the greatest torture of all: to understand what it is that he must do. You, though …’ He frowned. He held my cheeks. Deeper and deeper his stare seemed to bum. ‘You have no sense of guilt. Not the faintest vestige of horror or shame. So my hope is confirmed – you are not a vampire at all. But
what
are you, Doctor? The time has come – we need to find out.’

I turned away from him, back to Mary, kissed her blackened lips. ‘I don’t understand,’ I murmured. ‘Why should it concern you what I have become?’

Suddenly I felt his thoughts inside my skull. What was he doing? ‘No,’ I muttered, ‘no.’ I clung to Mary’s trunk. I felt Lord Byron’s fingers on my head. He pushed my face into the skinless flesh.

‘See what you have done,’ he hissed. Again I felt him stabbing through my mind. I shuddered. I could feel my exultation burning up, it was all gone. White, blinding white; irradiating white; and then nothing but Lord Byron’s voice deep inside my brain. ‘There must always be death,’ he whispered, ‘so long as there are butchers – generals – creatures like myself … But this? Look at it, Doctor. What has happened to you?’ He dragged back my head. ‘Look at it!’

I did. And suddenly, I understood. Hellfire, and before me her skin peeled off – Hell. I had done this. The horror was my own. ‘No!’ But still I had to look. I stared at Mary Kelly’s eviscerated corpse and suddenly, in the shambles I had created, in the mess of blood and intestines and flesh, I saw my own oozing form, lying in Lilah’s arms, melting slowly across the warehouse floor.

‘Yes,’ Lord Byron whispered from deep within my thoughts. ‘That is very good. And now show me all. What happened to you, Doctor? What happened next?’

I closed my eyes, but there was no escape. Even shut, my eyes could see. I looked about me. I was floating through a sea of transparent blood. Cells the size of my head were splitting and mutating before my gaze, while again – as they had done before when I had melted into Lilah’s flesh – steps in strange helixes were coiling from me, twisting into patterns and forms yet stranger still. They were thickening all the time, and I began to struggle against them, for I could feel them against my limbs like strands of algae, sucking and soft, and as I brushed against them, so I was absorbed into their touch, and was no longer myself. I struggled, but I was fading fast away, for there was nothing now but these double spirals above me, below me, all around, and I screamed, for my consciousness no longer seemed my own, and then, as before, there was nothing but dark.

‘Very good,’ said Lord Byron.