The Dickens Mirror (31 page)

“Fill your bellies then,” the hag persisted, latching onto Battle. “Got me good leather. Cost ya just a fadge. For you gentlemen, I’ll part with double. Five pieces if you’ve an appetite.”

“No, thank you,” Battle said.

“
Hate
then,” and it took Doyle a second to realize that she was upping the number by three. “Can’t spare no more.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Angry and more than a little frightened now, he wedged the knob of his billy in the hag’s chest. “Aren’t you listening? The inspector
told
you …”

No
. He took back his billy.
No, don’t start this again. Walk away, Doyle, walk …

Yes. Well said, poppet
. From the corner of his left eye, something smoked so closely Doyle felt the whicker of its passage.
Let us walk this shadowy valley together
.

What?
Heart flipping, he jerked round, billy raised to strike. Nothing.
Where are you? What ya playing at?

Playing?
A shadow steamed to his right.
Darling, the time for games is past
.

“Oh, really?” With a wild yelp, he whirled, eyes wide, muscles quivering … but there was still nothing. “Then stop
playing
them!”

“Doyle?” Battle said.

He paid no mind. Another glimmer unfurled, right to left. This time, he spun so fast, his feet tangled on icy cobbles and he nearly fell. “Show yourself, ya Devil!”

“Doyle, for God’s sake, man.” Battle turned a look right and left. “What is it?”

“Jimjams,” the hag opined.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock
. Whisking to his side, Black Dog drew its long, moist tongue over his left ear.
All
you must needs do is open the door, poppet
.

“God!” He was so startled he actually bit his tongue. “Christ!”

No, dear
. Black Dog chuffed its dog’s laugh.
Hardly
.

Good Lord, first the hallucinations, the memory, and now this!
It’s never touched me, not like this!
His ear tingled. Black Dog’s hot, sulfurous breath steamed into his nostrils.
I’ve never smelled it or
almost
caught a glimpse
. What did that mean?

Mean?
Black Dog chuckled.
Didn’t you just ask me to show myself? Haven’t you conjured the very god you seek? What is that memory of your dear pap but the monster burning bright in your soul?

“Doyle?” Battle, curse him. “Constable, what in God’s name …”

“Tole ya.” The hag sounded smug. “
That
one’s in need of a good pipe; touch of the old smoke set him to rights. Maybe even a needle.”

Christ, no, no more needles!
He had to hang on. God, this was the drug, had to be. But what was Kramer’s game? His mouth filled with liquid, and he spat—and that was when he realized: his blood had no taste. None at all.
What, what?
He knew his tongue bled; he felt the ooze down his throat. But the taste was less than water.
This isn’t right; it can’t be …
He suddenly bit the tender flesh of his lower lip as hard as he could, wincing as his teeth gouged soft skin.
All right, good; I felt that
. He thought Battle said something—he caught the burr of the man’s voice—but it was Black Dog he heard most clearly:
Poppet? What are you doing?

Testing something
. Eyes closed, he sucked at this fresh cut, rolling moisture on his tongue. Nothing—and that wasn’t right. Blood had a texture and taste, and it was … 
Salt. Salt and … rust
. But there was nothing.

What’s that prove?
Black Dog was positively clinical.
What’s your hypothesis?

He didn’t know, but he felt naked, shucked. He thought that this might be what it was like for Saul, blinded by God and struck down from his mule, once the veil was lifted and the scales began to flake from his eyes, and the old world, all Saul had known, fell away.
Except I’m dogged by the Devil, and there is no light, no god
.

“Doyle.” Lantern held aloft, Battle stepped into his line of sight, ducking his head down to grab Doyle’s eyes. “You’re bleeding. Bit yourself when you slipped?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, simply, wincing a bit at the stab of light from Battle’s bull’s-eye. What else
could
he say?
I’m dissolving; I’m unraveling, a layer at a time?
“Lost my footing there a second, sir, is all.”

How metaphorical, dear
.

“I can fix ’im,” the hag said to Battle.

“No,” he said, before Battle could respond. Pulling himself straighter, he smeared blood—
not even sticky
—then stared at his palm, dark with strange ink. His life line was as short and broken as before.
The earth is utterly broken; the earth is split apart
. He wanted to weep and laugh at the same time; here, his mother always wanted what the Jesuits stuffed in his brain to be put to good use. “I’m all right, sir. Just a …” He let that die. “Shall we?”

“Indeed.” Turning, Battle held his lantern aloft and strode into the faceless, madding crowd. “Follow me, Constable.”

Yes, follow Battle, darling
. Black Dog whisked like smoke around his legs.
Follow that light, for as long as you can
.

“Yes, sir,” he said, wiping his not-blood on his uniform coat. “Right behind you.”

Window Dressing

WHAT FELT LIKE
hours later, Doyle finally spied a bright gray blur above a doorway that resolved into the blue lantern marking Lambeth Station. He followed the inspector into the station and then across the short entryway to the front desk as Black Dog slithered behind.

To Doyle’s right, a clutch of constables chatted and held their cold-roughened hands over a low brazier mounded with orange coals. As he passed, the faint scorch of hot iron drifted past his nose, and he felt a cushion of warmer air.

I felt that
. Relief made his knees weak.
I’m back. It was just the drug, that’s all
. If he bit himself again, would he taste his blood this time?

At the desk sergeant’s counter, he waited, trying not to fidget, while Battle leafed through a bedraggled day ledger. To his left, just out of sight, he felt Black Dog settle onto its haunches. Doyle listened with only half an ear as the desk sergeant reeled off the day’s happenings.

All right
. Doyle thought back to the faceless crowd.
An
aberration, that. This sergeant, for example … he might be a real man
. Glancing askance, he registered an impression of eyes behind spectacles and a grizzled tangle of ginger beard, the faint gleaming crescent that extended a hair beyond the collar of his uniform shirt because the man had a tin chest, belly to just below the Adam’s apple. So far, so good.
But is that because I’m filling it all in, or because the desk sergeant really sports a beard?

Excellent question, poppet
. A massive paw dropped to his left shoulder.
Your capacity for observation has grown more acute
.

STOP that
. He gulped back a shout. It was one thing for Black Dog to nip and lick and speak, but another entirely to actually clap him on the shoulder and—my
God
, was that hound
larger
? Had to be near man-sized. From the corner of his mouth, he said, “Take your bloody paw off my shoulder this instant.”

Or what?
Black Dog laughed its silent dog’s laugh.
Make me
.

“Keep your voice down.” His eyes slid round in furtive little darts. From around the station came the clap of boots and the buzz of desultory, unintelligible conversation. It never had bothered Doyle before, all that background noise. Really quite soothing, like the flow of a river or wind through leaves. (Wait, did he actually
know
either? Where had he last heard a breeze through trees? Or flowing water that didn’t come from a bucket of melt?) Now, though, he felt the noise as an annoying drag of a claw along his spine. And shouldn’t he get snippets, whole sentences? Had he ever called out to any of these men by name? Had a conversation, gone for a pint, had a smoke, warmed his hands over those coals? And would they give off heat?

Stop it
. Of course, those coals were hot; he’d felt the temperature change himself. His constable’s coat sparkled with fresh
snowmelt. Smash his fist into stone, he’d break a knuckle. There’d be blood.

Ah, yes, poppet, but would it have taste and texture?

Shut it, ya mongrel
. Those men clustered over that brazier were no illusion; they had
mouths
set in actual
faces
. (But still … so faint, every visage a smear.) He spied one with a tin hand, another with a limp that suggested his wood leg needed adjusting. As Battle and the sergeant talked, he heard a door creak, felt a balloon of colder air expand against his back (
and see
, see,
it’s snowing, freezing outside
), and stole a glance. At the bottom of the steps, two constables were shaking snow from their shoulders and stamping slush from their boots. He recognized the uniforms and the brass buttons; the numbers—pinned to high collars—were right. But as the men climbed the second, shorter flight of steps, Doyle realized that the numbers were only brassy blurs and a jumbled impression of symbols set right in the spot where you’d expect to find them.

Well
, Black Dog said, positively chummy,
are you sure this isn’t so much window dressing?

No, he wasn’t. The two constables were chatting each other up and laughing; one slapped the other on the shoulder. He got the basso timbre of their notes but none of the substance. They might as well have been uncredited actors on a stage, standing well back and muttering nonsense:
Peas and carrots, peas and carrots, she’s a tart, she’s a tart
.

He had to hold on. He pointedly transferred his gaze to his bunched knuckles, white and tented with tension.
Get Battle to tell you what you need to know, and then finish this with Kramer
. Slice the doctor’s throat from ear to ear with his
sgian-dubh
considering how Kramer admired it so.

Yes
. Black Dog chucked him on the arm.
That’ll be a sight now, won’t it? Looking forward to it, are you, dear?

Yes. His lips stretched in a maniac grin. Yes, he really was.

“Something amusing, Doyle? Why, you look more up to dick there, almost jolly.” Before he could reply, Battle clapped the ledger shut. “Come. Follow me.”

“HAVE A SEAT
, Constable. Take off that coat, if you wish,” Battle said as he hung both his own coat and gray bowler on a corner tree.

“That’s all right, sir,” he said, watching as his breath steamed in the chill.
I see it; that’s from me; I’m real
. Battle … well, the man must have the internal temperature of a flounder. Behind, he heard Black Dog pad to flank the office’s only visitor’s chair while Battle fussed with an oil lamp. The office, which was left of the front desk and down a long and empty corridor, was nondescript. A gas lamp that probably hadn’t been lit in months hung from the ceiling. A rank of mounted and locked pigeonholes lined the far wall. Besides Battle’s desk and chair, there was a clothes tree and a mirror suspended over a low washstand.

“So.” Drawing down the wick, Battle eyed him over the round rim of his lamp’s slightly sooty shade. “That was quite the experience. Have a drink with me, Doyle. Take the chill off.” When he hesitated, Battle’s mouth turned in a grin made a touch ghoulish by the dance of light under his chin. “Come now. You’re in need of a restorative.”

“Why, yes, I’d be pleased, sir. Thank you.” At the thought of a nice mouthful of whiskey or brandy or gin
—anything
would
do—his mouth watered. He waited as Battle withdrew a silk pouch, secured with black ribbon, from an inside pocket of his suit jacket. Untying the ribbon, he unrolled the pouch to reveal an impressive array of iron and brass keys, many of which were long gray skeletons, and all secured on silk loops.
God
. His eyebrows crawled for his hair. He knew every inspector had such a collection, though Battle’s was huge, at least a dozen keys. He wondered what they all unlocked.
Man could get through every door in Lambeth with those
. Hospitals, chemists’ shops, doctors’ offices. Every door in this station, too, he imagined.

Inserting a small, ornate brass key into the lock of his topmost desk drawer, Battle slipped a hand inside his desk. There followed the crisp
click
of a hidden catch, and then the inspector was plucking a bottle, three-quarters full of amber liquid, from a lower drawer on the right. “Don’t know why I bother with that secret latch,” Battle said, pouring liquor into shot glasses. “Every man in this station could pick this lock.”

“If he knew where to look.” From the color, he thought the alcohol might be rye or brandy.
Don’t care what it is, so long as it actually tastes like something
.

Black Dog nosed his left boot.
Don’t let’s get our hopes up
.

“There is that. I suppose the compartment appeals to my sense of the dramatic.” Battle pushed a shot glass across the desk. “We’ve all got secrets.”

Was Battle implying something? “I suppose we do, sir.”

“Yes.” That silver squint never wavered. “Well, here we are.” Battle raised his own glass. “To your health, Doyle.”

“The same,” he said, though he felt his smile suddenly tighten to a dead man’s rictus.
It don’t smell like nothing
. There was no sting of alcohol to nip his nose.
Shite, no, can’t be!
At the first taste, he
thought colored water was probably better, and he could feel the well of a sob in his chest.
This isn’t fair, it’s not right!