Darker Still Read online

  “I hadn’t yet found a girl I fancied,” he replied, his British accent never more charming. “And I had determined that I would marry for love, not for wealth or convenience. My class has done the latter for generations, and it’s an abominable practice.”

  I had to bite my lip to force myself not to ask what type of girl he fancied. He dropped a pen, which fell from the side of the desk and rolled on the wooden floor until it hit the edge of the rug. I moved to pick it up and hand it to him, bending as gracefully as my corset would allow.

  Our fingers brushed together, and the surge that flooded through me rattled up and down my spine. For propriety’s sake, I should always have been wearing gloves while visiting him. Yet I’d taken off my gloves upon first entering the painting and doing so had become habit. I couldn’t imagine touching the painting—or him—differently.

  He continued his grim account. “The fiend said humanity is a vessel for great and terrible things. He spoke of the body he inhabited as a marvelous vessel for art. There was business about my name. He kept calling me John. When I asked him about this, he sneered. ‘What’s in a name?’ he quoted Shakespeare with an odd laugh, while mixing powders and liquid like a mad chemist. His body moved like a marionette’s, as if his body and the mind that controlled it were not agreeing.”

  “Perhaps the devil possessed that artist before overtaking you?” I asked.

  “At the time I thought he was merely a mad French artist. Nothing against artists, but they do perceive the world in such peculiar ways. Wonderful ways, but perhaps terrible ways too. He put this around my neck,” Denbury said, then fished beneath the layers of his cravat to pluck out a curious talisman inscribed with yet more markings, entirely different from the runes. “I’ve tried to remove it, but, as you’ve seen, things tend to burn me when I fight back.”

  If I guessed correctly, thinking back to travelogues I’d read in the school library, the markings were hieroglyphs. From Egypt. “Any idea what it means?” I asked.

  Denbury shook his head, hid the pendant beneath his cravat with a grimace, and went to a drawer, where he resumed fiddling. I thought of asking if I could help, but the business seemed to calm him. Helping would just have been an excuse to stand closer to him.

  “More talk of vessels when he placed it around my neck,” he continued. “He painted swiftly, pausing only to feed me soup and water, saying I’d do him no good if my vessel was dead. Once the painting was complete, I was struck by the likeness despite myself. Granted, it didn’t reflect my bound hands or horrified face. Once the final strokes were in place, the true terror began.

  “He gagged me so I would stop cursing him. Babbling nonsensical things and citing gods, the forty martyrs of England, and ancient prophecies, he made my head spin. He traced a circle of powder on the floor, inside it a five-pointed star, and dribbled what I thought at first was scarlet paint. But from its copper scent, it was blood. Wax and other powders were involved, some that he rubbed against the painting frame, some that he rubbed against my skin.”

  “Perhaps that’s where the smell of sulfur came from. Some compound?” I suggested.

  “Perhaps. He chanted in languages I strained to hear, some unintelligible, some phrases in Latin. I understood ‘door,’ ‘soul,’ ‘through,’ ‘blood,’ and ‘sever’ or ‘split.’ He placed the painting directly behind me and removed the truss to which I’d been lashed. My body had no will to overcome him, to move. I must have been drugged with a paralytic. He came close enough for me to truly gauge his features, which were gaunt. He was an average man but for his eyes. His eyes were inhuman. Blood moistened the corners as he blinked.”

  We both shuddered, both having seen those canine eyes.

  “His foul breath said a phrase in Latin that I dare not repeat, but it translates to something like ‘I send the soulren through the door…’ The middle word I couldn’t recognize. I knew the Latin ‘soul’ as animus but it was conjugated incorrectly. I felt as if these words had struck me and saw myself parting from my own body. It was agonizing, as if I was literally being torn in two. Light crackled around me. The artist crumpled and fell. At this, I roused with hope of victory, but it was not to be.”

  Denbury had stopped fussing. He was sitting in his chair, leaning in to me, and I had drawn close enough to perch on the side of the desk. Despite the heat of each other, only the chill of the account remained.

  “Out of that man’s body came a dreadful shadow, black like a silhouette, and I fell onto the Persian rugs painted into this reality. I looked at where my shell still stood, separated across this frame, and saw it overtaken by a dark cloud. I heard a wet and terrible sound. Everything felt on fire, with red and orange light erupting across my eyes. Then silence. A drape was cast over the canvas, and I became as you see before you.”

  Denbury sighed, exhausted by reliving the memories. He eased forward, his broad shoulders falling. “And that’s the lot of it. I’ve no sense of time. I’ve read as many of these books as will open, and those I’d already read ten times before.” He stared at me, rallying. “A man’s library should always be well used, don’t you think, Miss Stewart?”

  I nodded, trying to smile after such a dread tale.

  “So!” He pounded his fist on his desk with a flash in his bright eyes. “What do you think of my tale? Terrified?” he asked with a resigned, cold tone I didn’t like at all. I suppressed a shudder. This man was still a stranger. His events had perhaps changed him from the noble man with good intentions, and his soul might be as threatened as his body. All the more reason to get him out before nothing noble was left to save.

  “Terrifying indeed,” I replied quietly, rising and putting a few paces between us. “But full of clues.” I had information to relay and work that then had to be done. But he was a doctor. Surely he knew this was no reasonable disease. “I must go and relay the information to Mrs. Northe.”

  “I’ll see you again,” he said, part plea, part demand. In that moment I saw him as the lonely young man whose family had all been lost. My heart ached.

  “You shall,” I replied quietly. Before I could promise anything more, I slipped out again and back into the exhibition room, woozy as I came into myself, pressing my hand to the boning of my corset to test my solidity and keep myself upright.

  Mrs. Northe was at my arm. I nodded to her that I was all right. “Welcome back, my dear,” she said. “Did he tell you the terrible narrative?”

  “The stuff of nightmares,” I signed. “And I should know. If I were you, I’d have a stiff drink on hand when I tell it.”

  She nodded gravely and cupped my cheek. “You’re a very brave girl, Natalie Stewart.”

  I wasn’t sure about bravery, but if Mrs. Northe said so, I’d believe her.

  Later…

  (I hardly even know the hours or the dates anymore. My life is one odd waking, walking dream.)

  Mrs. Northe, Father, and I ate together that night as planned. Maggie too. I braced myself and tried my best to smile and act as if nothing remotely uncomfortable had passed between the two of us. To my delight, we embraced like sisters and she seemed just as happy to ignore that I’d stormed off the last time we met. She kept up her usual chatter about beautiful dresses and beautiful people, and I smiled and nodded.

  But she watched my every interaction with Mrs. Northe like a hawk. While Maggie remained ever cordial, I wondered if she felt supplanted and didn’t like it. But Mrs. Northe had said I was meant for things that Maggie was not. Who was I to argue? It wasn’t as if I understood why.

  Still, I wanted to remain Maggie’s friend. I liked her better with just the two of us together, not with the others. So, when she pulled me into the parlor before she was demanded again at home, I was eager for whatever she wished to share.

  “I dreamed of him,” Maggie confessed, splaying herself on the settee and running her hands over the fine plum taffeta of her dinner dress. She looked up at me, and her eyes were wide with excitement. “Of Denbury, I mean.”
She bit her lip, as if waiting for a response. I raised my eyebrows, gesturing for her to continue.

  “The other girls have absolutely forbidden me to talk about him anymore because they think me…well, mad, to be so fixated on a man who doesn’t exist. But they’ve no imagination! I’m sure he’s alive somewhere and his suicide is just some sort of mystery that needs solving. Do you think I’m mad, Natalie?”

  I shook my head vigorously. Maggie smiled, relieved.

  She was right. It was exactly as she assumed, and so much worse. But could I tell her that? Who would seem more mad, her and her dreaming of him, or me with what I’d experienced?

  Instead I plucked out my notebook, sharing her smile and partly confessing the truth. “I’ve dreamed of him too,” I wrote.

  “Have you? I bet it was wonderful,” she breathed, and launched into her recitation. As she first spoke, the thought occurred to me: Could Maggie also share a dream with Denbury’s mind? If he was in that peculiar state, couldn’t more than one mind have access to him? That familiar flash of jealousy flooded my body, and I forced it down. It soon became clear that we had not dreamed of the same Denbury.

  “He was…shadowy,” she described. “I was taken by the hand and led down a dim corridor somewhere, I don’t know, perhaps a New York alley. It was like he was stealing me away somewhere illicit. Oh, Natalie, promise you won’t say a word. Dreamy scandal is what it is!”

  I gestured to my mouth and gave her a look.

  Maggie screwed up her face, apologetic. “Oh. I’m so sorry, Natalie. Of course you can’t say a word. I just…forget.”

  “I promise not to sign or write a word of it either,” I wrote, smiling to absolve her of her momentary guilt. She grinned, and all was well again. (Of course, the only reason anyone could forget that I don’t talk is if the person never paused for a moment to allow actual conversation. But that’s beside the point.)

  Maggie continued: “He had his…hands on me, and he was murmuring in my ear. I’m not sure what language it was, but it was…seductive. He drew back enough under the gaslight for me to see his eyes shining and his face hungry. Hungry for me. He clutched my arms tightly, and I could feel his nails on my skin as he pulled me close. I faded then, a swoon into darkness, and that was all I could recall.” She shuddered in delight.

  I shuddered too, but for another reason. That sounded like the demon, not Denbury.

  “What do you think, Natalie?”

  My pencil was on the paper immediately. “Wouldn’t he be more of a gentleman about it?” I wrote. And then regretted it. Maggie’s face fell, and the color on her cheeks heightened as if I’d shamed her.

  “He didn’t take too much advantage, Natalie. Goodness. Can’t a girl dream of touches?”

  I nodded. Of course a girl could. I’d be quite the hypocrite otherwise. I scribbled an apology. Maggie stiffed.

  “Well then, what did you dream?”

  “I was having a nightmare,” I wrote. “And he was there. He banished the horror like a guardian angel.”

  I decided to leave out the part about our near-kiss, which, in my opinion, had been infinitely more pleasant than the exchange Maggie had described. There was no need to turn this into a rivalry. But perhaps I had somehow already failed at this.

  “Maggie? Natalie?” Mrs. Northe called.

  Maggie didn’t look at me again as we rose and wandered out of the parlor, an uneasiness having settled about us again. I suppose I’m not very good at the friendship process. I hadn’t made lasting connections at school. It is hard when all manners of issues and disabilities have brought a group of people together.

  Considering the blind, the deaf, and the truly mute, rather than my selective condition, we were in separate sensory worlds. You’d think our disabilities would have made us closer. But not if, at heart, some of us are just lone wolves. Lone wolves who are very particular about things and have strong opinions, who are passionate and perhaps unconventional. While we may want a bosom friend, we don’t always know how best to relate to one.

  And yet, how could things with Denbury then feel so easy?

  Perhaps because, on some level, I wasn’t registering him as real. Anything can happen in a dream world. I could be my best self, nightmares aside. I could talk. I could be pretty, smart, and witty. The idea of interacting with Denbury in this quiet, “real” world of mine was suddenly as awkward a prospect as the picnic with the girls had turned out to be. But at the end of it all, I didn’t live in that world. I lived in this one. And I had to help him make his way home to it.

  Father again was all too happy to relax with reading, fine liquor, and tobacco, and he took to the den as if it were his own. It was then that Mrs. Northe ushered Maggie toward the door. Maggie was quick to protest.

  “But why do I have to go home if Natalie gets to stay?” she whined.

  “Because her father is, thank God, hard at work finishing my late husband’s stash of horrid cigars. They were too damn expensive for me to throw out in good conscience. Not to mention that your mother scolds me if you’re here past nine. She thinks I’m experimenting on you as a medium.”

  “But I’d love that!” Maggie cried.

  “And that’s why your mother hates you coming here, except for the fact that she’d like to make sure I remember your family when I die!” Mrs. Northe retorted. “Bill will see you home. The carriage awaits.” She gestured toward her footman standing down the stoop and kissed Maggie on the head. Maggie looked at me, forlorn, and I offered her a genuine look of sadness. I did want to be her friend. But there would always be secrets between us. Nothing could change that now.

  “Now, then!” Mrs. Northe stated brightly once Maggie was gone. She took me by the arm and led me into her library, where she filled a small glass of cordial for us both and lifted her glass. I did the same.

  “To the mysteries of the universe.” She lifted her glass, and we clinked the fine crystal.

  “I’ve been thinking about the murder in the Five Points,” she began. “I believe it’s the beginning of some ritual. The intruder to my home might not have been trying to steal Denbury at all, perhaps merely to haunt him, as you yourself saw at the Art Association. The demon will likely haunt his likeness again, provided he’s not interrupted. I believe these…things are creatures of habit. That is the way with many psychopaths and followers of the foul and vicious. If we could spy upon Denbury’s possessor, we could follow him, having heard his plan, and learn of him. The trick would be how to spy on the creature without it suspecting it may be followed.”

  And that was when I began to entertain a whole new brave and foolish notion. But first: “Tell me of the runes, and then I’ll tell you his ‘spell,’” I prompted, using a mixture of signing and writing out words.

  “I’ve done the translating already.” Mrs. Northe plucked two books and a piece of paper from her table. “Very modern, this demon. Likes to think he’s an intellectual, playing at culture. It’s not a spell. It translates roughly to a poem. I recognized it as Baudelaire. I’ve the first edition here. But the carvings on the painting have one word missing, in the last line. Here’s the poem in its entirety. It’s from his Flowers of Evil. A troublesome work. Some critics adore it, but many think it as silly as it seems. The poem is aptly titled ‘The Possessed.’”

  I shivered as she set the books and paper in my lap. I looked first at the runic alphabet as translated into our common alphabet and then at a manuscript in French. An odd combination, I thought, but then again, it wasn’t as though this all made a great deal of sense.

  LE POSSÉDÉ

  Le soleil s’est couvert d’un crêpe. Comme lui,

  Ô Lune de ma vie! Emmitoufle-toi d’ombre

  Dors ou fume à ton gré; sois muette, sois sombre,

  Et plonge tout entière au gouffre de l’Ennui;

  Je t’aime ainsi! Pourtant, si tu veux aujourd’hui,

  Comme un astre éclipsé qui sort de la pénombre,

  Te pavaner aux lieux que l
a Folie encombre.

  C’est bien! Charmant poignard, jaillis de ton étui!

  Allume ta prunelle à la flamme des lustres!

  Allume le désir dans les regards des rustres!

  Tout de toi m’est plaisir, morbide ou pétulant;

  Sois ce que tu voudras, nuit noire, rouge aurore;

  Il n’est pas une fibre en tout mon corps tremblant

  Qui ne crie: Ô mon cher Belzébuth, je t’adore!

  —Charles Baudelaire

  Mrs. Northe presented me with another paper. “I’ve done my own translation, with a few liberties, perhaps, but the gist remains.”

  THE POSSESSED

  The sun in crepe has shrouded his fire.

  Moon of my life! Partly shade yourself as he.

  Sleep or smoke. Be quiet and be dark,

  In the abyss of dullness drown whole;

  I love you this way! However, should you care,

  Like a brilliant star from eclipse emerging,

  To flirt with folly where crowds yet surge—

  Gleam, pretty blade, from sheath and stab!

  Light your eyes from glass chandeliers!

  Illuminate lust-filled looks of louts who pass!

  Morbid or petulant, I thrill before you;

  Be what you will, black night or red dawn;

  No thread of my body drawn tight,

  But cries: “Beloved——I adore you!”

  Mrs. Northe continued: “There’s a blank space where the word in question should be in the English translation. That was the word missing. As you see in the original French poem, that word is Belzébuth—translated, it is Beelzebub…a name for the Devil.”

  I stared up at Mrs. Northe, gulping. She concentrated on the poems.

  Her subsequent scoffing response amused me. “Really, I’d thought love poems to the Devil would be too low and messy for high magic like this, too dramatic and silly. I’m surprised.”

  That made me think of something Denbury had said, and I wrote out his exact phrasing for her: “Artists perceive the world in such peculiar ways. Wonderful ways, but perhaps terrible ways too.” Mrs. Northe nodded, squinting in thought.