The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart Read online

  “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m sorry for the emergency call, Reverend Blessing, but that’s just it. It’s an emergency. This is Lord Denbury and my friend Miss Rachel Horowitz.”

  As I expected, two heads poked curiously out from either side of the reverend: the tall, elegant greyhounds, Blue and Bunny. Jonathon gasped.

  “Well, hello, and aren’t you two beauties,” he said admiringly, his face aglow, reaching a relaxed hand out so they might sniff him as he closed the distance. In one fluid motion he had confident hands on both dogs and was speaking to them excitedly, clearly having some knowledge of their prowess and the sports in which they were used. The dogs were equally thrilled. They circled around him closely, quaking with joy, their tongues lavishing kisses on his hands.

  “They like you,” Blessing said to Jonathon.

  “Well, they’re gorgeous,” Jonathon exclaimed, remaining on his knees and beaming like a schoolboy, perfectly happy to have the dogs’ fond black noses directly in his face as he stroked their short fur.

  Rachel, watching, couldn’t help but smile at Jonathon too. She turned to me. “I really like him,” she signed to me. “You’d better keep him.”

  “I plan to,” I signed back, and we shared a girlish grin.

  “Tell me your troubles,” Blessing called, gesturing us into his parlor. Bunny was lockstep with Jonathon, hardly allowing him to sit. Blue had repositioned herself to stare at Rachel, who did not waver from returning the creature’s gaze. The dog padded up closer to her, putting a damp nose directly onto her trembling fingers.

  “Ah, my little bleeding heart,” Blessing said, nodding toward Rachel and her new friend. “She can tell if something’s wrong. Intuitive, intelligent, emotion-filled creatures,” he added. “She knows you’re here with troubled hearts, so tell me everything.”

  “Well,” I began and listed all that had brought us to this point and what we might expect at the hospital. Even the dogs listened. There was an occasional squawk from some other creature somewhere else in the house.

  When I finished, there was a long silence. Blue nosed Rachel’s hand. Gingerly, Rachel touched her, and her tensed shoulders relaxed. Bunny had returned to Jonathon. Smitten, she was practically in his lap. She had good taste, that dog.

  Blessing, who had listened with a passive face, rose, slid a well-worn Book of Common Prayer from a nearby shelf, and stood at the parlor threshold. He looked up at us expectantly. “Well, then, come on. No time to waste.”

  “And we are to…” Jonathon prompted, hoping Blessing might elaborate.

  “If spirits cannot go onward toward their eternal peace, then we must set them to rest ourselves. And if there’s a demon, that requires an exorcism, of course,” he replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “Of course,” Jonathon murmured. He and I shared a nervous smile. Rachel’s lips were thin, her slight frame trembling. If I wasn’t mistaken, Blessing had a distinct twinkle in his eye, as if he lived for days like this.

  We followed him to the door. His hands stroked the hounds until the last moment out of the house, and even then the dogs strained their necks over the threshold toward him. He grabbed what looked like a black doctor’s bag at the door.

  “Shall we take a trolley? Hansom?” he asked.

  “I need the air,” Jonathon said, and we were out for another walk in the light rain.

  To explain our group, we had agreed that while Jonathon was there on “Society business,” Rachel would escort the rest of us in for an unrelated séance in her basement office.

  Jonathon looked up at the Gothic-style building. “You know, it looks like the House of Usher,” he muttered.

  “I thought the same thing.”

  Neither of us commented on the tale being about a body buried alive, which might relate to what we’d encounter.

  Blessing pulled a purple silk ascot from his bag. He tied it around his neck to hide his white cleric’s collar, but the collar remained there beneath. Like hidden armor.

  Mr. Smith was outside on the corner with a carriage parked up the block. He took one look at Blessing, raised his brow, and folded his arms. I took in Mr. Smith’s expression and defensive stance for a moment, then stepped forward. I thought of how Mrs. Northe might bring parties together and said what I hoped would be the right words between us.

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Smith?” I asked. “I hope you understand the nature of this unconventional mission. We need warriors of two kinds. Physical…” I gestured deferentially to Smith. “And spiritual.” I nodded to Blessing.

  Smith looked at me a moment, turned, then tipped his hat to Blessing. “Father,” he said in a gravelly voice. Blessing nodded in turn.

  As we approached the rear entrance of the wing we knew was Preston’s, we felt the air temperature drop a few degrees. As we reached the door, it opened on its own. There was no one on the other side.

  “Well. Something must be expecting us,” Jonathon said. Undeterred, Mr. Smith was the first one in. A cool draft immediately surrounded us as we followed him.

  “Quite the welcoming committee,” Blessing noted.

  The interior was no more welcoming than the exterior, and there were still no patients to be seen, just row after row of neatly made-up white cots down the long hall. Only our footsteps broke the oppressive silence as we waited for someone to greet or stop us. We moved without notice.

  At least, no one living noticed. The chill worsened, and I glanced at Jonathon as I rubbed my arms. He nodded. We were most certainly in the presence of ghosts. Many.

  Rachel turned to me, her face a pained mask. She signed that she “was not welcome.”

  “Wait for us by the door, then,” I signed, gesturing to the front portico. Her face as pale as the neat sheets tucked into their springs, she turned toward the door but then turned back. She shook her head, signing that her comfort was not important now. The look on Rachel’s face wasn’t something to question.

  Jonathon had pulled ahead of us. At the opposite end of the hall was the frosted glass door marked DOCTOR PRESTON. He put his ear to the door.

  We all jumped back when the guard, Roth, opened it and stepped out into the hall.

  “You again.” He narrowed his eyes at Jonathon, then at me. “What’s all this?”

  “I’m here to talk to Preston,” Jonathon said as if it was obvious. “This lot is here for a séance. That’s the girl’s job. Now stop keeping me from doing mine.”

  “Preston is indisposed,” Roth said through clenched teeth.

  Mr. Smith evidently had no patience or inclination for diplomacy, for he stepped forward with a lightning-swift motion and threw a punch that made the stocky guard collapse unconscious to the floor.

  “Careful, Mr. Smith,” Jonathon said. “I probably should have warned you that was a demon.”

  And then, before any of us could respond or react further, the guard’s body started moving. Fast. It was being dragged by unseen hands swiftly, inhumanly down the hall. A basement door flew open on its own, and we winced as we heard the thud of a body down a flight of stairs.

  “Oh my God,” I said, my body lurching from still to shaking with fear. I wanted to run but couldn’t move. Did the spirits just kill that man?

  “‘Make it stop,’ they say,” Rachel signed to me. “They want us to end this.”

  “Ask the spirits if they will end us. We can’t help them if they’ll do that…” Jonathon gestured to where the guard had disappeared, “to us.”

  “If they kill us, they won’t be set free,” Blessing said. He withdrew a silver wand-like apparatus from a pocket of his bag and shook it in four directions, then at each of our heads. Droplets of liquid flicked down upon our hair and foreheads. Mr. Smith scrunched up his face and wiped his eye.

  “Only holy water, Mr. Smith,” Blessing assured with a smile. “Harmless. Unless you’re a demon too.”

  Mr. Smith snorted a laugh. Blessing placed the silver dispenser in his breast pocket. He
turned to Rachel and waited for her eyes to settle upon him. “The spirits are leading us to the basement, yes?”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Mr. Smith, while we may be preoccupied with spirits, I’d like it if someone kept an eye out for Dr. Preston,” Jonathon said, trying to keep his voice steady.

  If Smith was frightened he did not show it, but I thought his pale face lost what little color it had as he took up the rear. Jonathon took out his gun, and I heard the click of the safety. At that click, the door to Preston’s office swung wide open. Again, by unseen hands. Doors here seemed to be under the spirits’ control. No one was inside.

  Trying to master my shaking, I strode forward to Preston’s desk. There was a note scrawled in a dark red pen. I couldn’t help but assume that it wasn’t actually ink at all. The note read:

  I’m sorry. Make it stop. Room 01.

  Beside the note lay a key. Beside the key lay a scalpel.

  “Well, then,” Jonathon said. “At least we know where to go.”

  I snatched up the key. Rachel signed the room number with a questioning look.

  “Rachel,” I assured her, “you don’t have to—”

  She nodded vigorously, signing, “I must see this through.”

  It wasn’t as if any of us could volunteer or bow out. It was simply a fact that we were drawn into this and had to see how it would play out.

  Inexorably we moved down the hall. I glanced at Blessing. His dark skin had a sheen of moisture despite the dropping temperature, but his expression was calm as he removed his ascot, revealing his cleric’s collar, and took a small wooden cross from his pocket.

  Halfway down the tight stairwell, I paused.

  It was that basement, of course, the one from my dreams. I gasped in recognition, and Jonathon turned to me, his hand immediately reaching out to steady me.

  “I’ve seen this place,” I said.

  The long corridor with all the dim rooms. The yellowed hand slamming against the glass. Rachel, the boxes, the body parts. My dream images flashed before my eyes. Would we open a door to a pile of dead, dismembered pieces? Each with a ghost trailing its detached limb or appendage, a most cruel and unnatural tether to this world? I didn’t know if the reality we found would be better or worse than that theory.

  Room 01 was at the end of the hallway. In my dreams, the end of the hall was where things grew most dire, where I was most startled, where I would be attacked…

  Rachel swooned suddenly, and Mr. Smith caught her by one arm. The cold in the corridor dropped another few degrees. “She is most certainly not welcome here,” Blessing said, gesturing that Mr. Smith should continue to support her. He complied while the rest of us pressed on.

  “Where’s the guard?” I asked. Jonathon kept his gun raised.

  Just then all the doors flew open at once of their own accord.

  We couldn’t help but jump. Jonathon smoothly swept the gun from side to side. But no one came out of the rooms. On both sides of us, the rooms were empty and unlit except for the occasional lantern trimmed low. One of the rooms would have been Rachel’s “office,” I presumed. Still, something had thrown open the doors. Was it better to see that something or not?

  Room 01 was ahead of us on the right. The room marked “Morgue” was on our left. The morgue door was open. Room 01 was not.

  Which way should we look, and what terrible sight would we see?

  I took a deep breath and tried to no avail to keep my dream of the rising dead out of my mind.

  Something flew out at us in a flurry of red and white. I’m sure I made some sort of noise, but it was lost in the crack of the gun firing.

  The next moment, a bloody sheet lay crumpled on the floor with a bullet hole somewhere in it. The spirits were certainly proving themselves active.

  We slowly turned to our left. Inside the morgue a body lay on the metal table. It was Roth, his bright suit of an obnoxious pattern ripped open, the golden fabric of his cravat streaming down to the floor, and his head hanging at an odd angle. Perhaps the fall had broken his neck. The fact that the spirits, or whatever they’d become, had enough power or anger to hoist his body up on the table was a feat I considered with terrified wonder.

  “Poor sot,” Jonathon said, calmly approaching the body to feel for a pulse. He shook his head. As Jonathon stared down at the sternum, he drew back, repulsed. I came closer.

  Glancing down, I saw that Roth’s sternum and breastbone had been carved. Marked with runes.

  Where then was the demon that had inhabited the body? Was it still trapped within or was it a danger? Jonathon and I stepped back as Smith stepped forward, letting Rachel go for a moment. She steadied herself on the doorframe as Smith came closer and looked down at the body with a satisfied smile.

  The movement was swift and fast, but before I knew what had happened, Smith flew across the room and Roth’s fist fell back lifeless once more against the table. It would seem Smith’s punch had come back to haunt him. Shaking off the pain and wiping his split lip, Smith staggered forward, drawing out his long-barreled pistol and aiming it at Roth’s body, which was now twitching in a most unnatural way. “Son of a—”

  “No.” Blessing cautioned Smith with an outstretched hand. The reverend set down his bag, his cross in one hand and a small, worn, red Bible in the other. “We can’t treat this like a human body any longer. Any further anger or violence might encourage it to take you as its next host. It must be banished to the abyss.” Blessing began reading a passage of Scripture.

  The body shook and black fluid bubbled from Roth’s mouth. I heard low, chanting whispers as an undercurrent beneath Blessing’s words. Familiar from my dreams, those whispers, insidious and maddening. Jonathon had moved into the hall, examining the sheet that had been projected at us. I stood at the threshold, supporting Rachel and trying to pay attention, but the whispers were very distracting.

  “This may take a moment.” Blessing turned to us between Scriptures. The body might have convulsed off the table had Smith not held down the feet, hatred burning in his eyes, his lip still bleeding. “But when I’m finished,” Blessing continued, “we’ll have to leave the body here. Bodies are the stuff of the police. Souls are our business. We must determine what the spirits want. We must be willing to see and listen.”

  “I think what they have to say is fairly clear,” Jonathon said grimly, opening the death shroud to reveal a bloody message, written messily:

  Make it stop.

  I shuddered and turned to face Room 01.

  “Rachel will have to help you there. There’s nothing you can do here,” Blessing said. He closed the morgue door on himself, the demon, and Smith as his assistant. There were growls and shouts. I winced and moved to the door, but Rachel urged me back toward Room 01.

  “No more waiting,” she signed.

  Its number was marked in small black script. The door was locked, a sullen yellow light emanating from behind the frosted glass. We moved to it, from one dreaded door to the next.

  Jonathon moved ahead of me. “I’m sure this won’t be a sight for a lady.”

  “Oh, I know it won’t be,” I said. I took out the key, unlocked the door, and swung it wide.

  We were met by a sharp medicinal smell with an underlying scent of decay. That I knew well from my dreams.

  Nothing leaped out at us. Nothing moved. Not at first.

  Within Room 01 was a body-shaped mass beneath a white sheet, surrounded by trays of equipment and surgery tools. Upon a nearby cabinet were glass bottles filled with fluids and marked with letters and chemical words I did not recognize. And wires. Wires were everywhere. The room was dreadfully cold.

  What had my dreams foretold?

  “Oh, yes, that’s right.” I murmured to myself. “This is the part where the body sits up.”

  Jonathon raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Be careful,” I said as Jonathon approached the body. “If it moves. It…it might move. Just…to warn you.”

&n
bsp; At least there wasn’t a room full of bodies, as there had been in my nightmare.

  “Do we dare?” Jonathon asked, one hand on the sheet, pistol in the other.

  There was no argument either way, so he drew back the sheet to reveal a tall body of yellowed flesh and a good bit of stitching.

  Fine work, really. Smooth and delicate, a steady hand had done up a properly articulated human body, not a rough-hewn rag doll. Patchwork, yes, but it was—it had been human. I couldn’t really tell if it was male or female. The face was large but somewhat graceful in its yellowed state, almost as if it had been pickled.

  The smell of astringent medical fluids was nauseating, and I supposed it was something funerary—embalming fluid, perhaps.

  Jonathon set the safety and tucked the pistol in his breast pocket.

  I moved to the corpse. There was a small tag on the base of the metal table and a clipboard and notebook hanging from a metal chain. I turned the tag to read it in the dim light, bruised feet with jagged toenails a few inches from my knuckles.

  Laura.

  “Oh,” I said with regret rather than surprise. “Laura.”

  “That was the name of Dr. Preston’s dead wife, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Tell me, Laura,” I asked the body, “does the Society prey upon lost loved ones, feeding into a sad man’s grief so he makes experiments out of the dead? Is that what’s going on here, and in other places? Is that what’s happening to Samuel?”

  “Why would someone do this?”

  That was the question for which none of us had an answer, other than perhaps for some remembrance of Laura…. And then I remembered the Society’s avenues of experimentation: Soul splitting. Pharmacology. Reanimation.

  Rachel just stood there staring in horror. I took her hand, but she didn’t even acknowledge me.

  Jonathon was examining every inch of the wires and equipment, writing notes on a small pad with the stub of a pencil. I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness for that poor creature, a patchwork of human parts, a collection of souls but no true self. An abomination, surely, but that wasn’t its fault. And what made the difference? Between living and dead flesh?