Number 2 Penny Dreadful:
“The Life and Crimes of Lockhart
and Doppler”
Beasts. Part
Five
We headed directly to the Bath Institute of Mechanical and
Biological Organs. It was a clement afternoon so we took an open top phaeton.
Just as well, as the canvas was beginning to leak a little and had an odd smell
coming from it. Doctor Hessen was ensconced in her depressing laboratory.
“Ah, the hunters return.”
Hessen was seated at a highly polished desk, piled high at
one end with research papers, newspapers and note books. She had been writing
in one of these little books when we entered, unannounced, and deposited the
drippy bundle in the middle of her floor. The doctor methodically completed her
writing, rocked an ink blotter over it, closed the book and lay the pen
alongside. She unwrapped the bundle with care and control, let the canvas fall
open and inspected the contents.
The wyvern head
retained its green-brown scale colour, the eyes were misting over, milky white.
Where the neck had been severed a congealing mass had formed with sporadic
leaks here and there. Doctor Hessen began examining it with a cold metallic
implement, poking into eye sockets, lifting fleshy flaps, placing scrapings
onto a slide and peering at it through her microscope. She had, it seemed, forgotten
we were there. I began to saunter around her lab, squinting at flasks and
phials of liquids and stuff. Poking at an unidentifiable creature pinned out on
a board, lifting books off shelves; The
American Phrenological Journal, Eugenic Certification and Empirical Law,
Internal Devices, Homunculi: Fact or Fiction? Her taste in literature left
something to be desired. I pocketed a small slim volume from her writing desk.
She only acknowledged us again when Doppler, peering over the doctors’
shoulder, accidentally nudged her.
“Ach! Mind out would you!”
She ejaculated, then, as if seeing us for the first time,
“My apologies. I was eager to see how the cells had
travelled.”
She saw the look on our faces,
“I, erm, I’m not much of a hostess”,
You don’t say.
“Ladies, let me offer you a drink.”
She swished over to a tall cupboard, returning with three
glasses of, what I believed after a quick sniff, to be brandy, cheap brandy at
that. Doppler stared at it with distaste. Doctor Hessen looked a tad
disappointed. I knocked back my drink in one, thumped the glass down on her
bench and cocked my head,
“You said something
about payment?”
Ada Hessen was standing very still, staring at me in a way
that made me uncomfortable (a rare thing indeed), she clutched her glass close,
in both hands. Doppler raised hers and narrowed her eyes at it, placed the
glass carefully on a nearby shelf and approached the doctor,
“What was in it?” she demanded softly.
Turning to me,
“How do you feel Lockhart? Are you alright?”
“Fine.”
Says I, all warm and fuzzy like. The doctor asserted that
she had done nothing to the brandy, drinking hers down as proof. She was still
watching me, I felt like one of her specimens, I wanted to get out of there, away
from her stinking slabs and clinking crow. I crossed the floor with my hand
extended,
“Our payment if you please, doctor, we worked hard for your wyvern head.” (Well, successfully
snatching from a professional hunting party is kind of hard work.)
She turned to the shelf she had previously withdrawn cash
from, turned quickly,
“Are you feeling alright Ms Lockhart? You seem kind of,
pale.”
She placed the money roll in my hand. Quick as a snake, I grasped her wrist, yanked
her close in so we could smell the brandy on each other’s breath and warned,
“If anything, ‘odd’, should happen to me Doctor Hessen,
believe me, you will rue the day we ever met.”
I roughly threw her arm loose and turned to walk away. She
rubbed her wrist.
“How dare you! How dare you come into my Institute and
threaten me…”
Her slight accent had become more pronounced.
“Your institute doctor?!”
I spun around to face her,
“Be careful what you say, you may be revealing more than you
think. B.I.M.B.O is not yours. Neither are we your lackeys, though your
attitude to us would suggest otherwise.”
And finally, as a parting shot,
“You’re not even British! Good day to you madam!”
Outside the massive iron gates of the Bath Institute, I
sucked air violently. Doppler peered at me, concern writ large on her pale
features.
“Lockhart, are you sure you’re fine? I’m sure she slipped
something in your drink.”
I wrinkled my nose, what was
that smell? The sunlight seemed very bright, I shaded my eyes, I needed to
walk. I strode off, Doppler hurrying to keep up.
“Lockhart! Lockhart! Slow down, where are we going?”
I didn’t know where I was going. What I did know was my
palms itched, my stomach was hot, and my brain felt like it had a centipede
racing around inside it. I was furious beyond reason with Ada Hessen, who did she
think she was! That smell again, for some reason it made me think of The
Shambles in York. Something grabbed my arm from behind, I whirled about with my cane
raised to strike, and halted inches from Dopplers bewildered face. I
fell to my knees in shame and horror. What was wrong with me? What had I almost
done?
“We need help Lucy, we need someone good. And when you’re
made better,”
She paused and looked meaningfully back towards the
Institute,
“We shall have a word
with the doctor.”
“Painless.”
I spoke huskily.
“She doesn’t deserve it to be painless.”
Doppler crouched with me holding my hands in hers.
“No, not her, Painless Pete. That’s who we need. We need to
get word to him, Rosie Lee will help. Doppler…I think I’m dying.”
I have no idea how long it took for Doppler to arrange a
visit from Painless. I was in a deep slumber. Horrid dreams of endless
blackness and then faces rushing at me. I had formless impressions of what
seemed to be animals, shrieking, writhing. I was falling backwards into a
fathomless ocean of viscous slime. I called out. Now I was running, running through
fields of bones, white and fragile as they splintered beneath my boots. I
struck out at numerous indefinable attackers, I gouged the eye from a
shapeless, green, glutinous monster. It screamed a shrill, high pitched scream.
A granite block reared up before me, piercing the blackness of the sky, from
atop it a figure laughed and laughed at my state. Vile whisperings close to my
ear speaking of my own hideousness, my baseness, loss, profanity, cruelty. I
pressed my hands to my ears crying out for aid. A voice in the dark, a face I
recognised, a hand reached towards me, I grasped for it in desperation and was
pulled up close to gaze into the face of Rene de Cavellier. He wrapped his arms
around me and I wept…
I jolted upright. In a room I did not know. I ached all
over. My clothes were ruined. Lying on a couch opposite was Doppler, sleeping.
Dark circles clear beneath her closed eyes. I began to rise from my bed when a
figure, previously unnoticed, rose from a corner seat. He had very short, sandy
coloured hair and ginger mutton chops. Wide nosed with pale, piercing eyes
peering over purple circles of glass. He twirled a tiny phial beneath his lips,
snapped the top with his thumb and, shuddering, snorted the intoxicating
contents.
“Painless, you came.”
“G’day Lockhart, my, you have been a busy Sheila.”
To be continued…
©AlexandraPeel
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