The Dickens Mirror Read online

  “Nnnuhhh.” But she could feel the drug working its black magic in her veins, and when the slow slide of it next moved over her tongue, she swallowed automatically.

  From the door, Battle spoke up. “Is this really necessary, Doctor? The girl’s in a frenzy.”

  Kramer’s face darkened. “Balls. Don’t tell me my bloody business,” he muttered, too low for anyone but her to hear. Pitching his voice a little louder: “She needs calming, Inspector. Agitation only fuels the dédoublement de la personnalité, the splits in her mind.”

  “Yes.” Battle’s tone was dry. “My French is adequate, thank you.”

  Kramer turned a look over his shoulder and said … something. She wasn’t sure what. All at once, everything outside her own head was beginning to rush away. It was the drug, she knew, dissolving the last of her resistance. She heard herself let go of a long sigh, and as she did, there came an even stranger sensation of something loosening, as if her mind was a fist and just now decided to relax.

  No. A muted clutch of fear in her throat. Don’t. You can’t. I won’t let …

  But it really was too late. She felt the sudden squirm as the Other wriggled and began to work its way free, one long jointed leg rising from the dark to hook a claw on a lip of pink tissue. Then another leg, a new claw. And another and then another …

  “Yes.” Kramer’s weight was on her chest, which was going icy and still even as the Other quickened. Everything and everyone else was gone: Weber, Meme, Graves. Battle and that constable, Doyle. Bode. “It’s just us now,” he said. “There is no one to stop you. She’s been dealt with, so come. Come back.”

  “Whaah?” The word pulled at her tongue like warmed taffy. She couldn’t see properly. Her eyes weren’t working, wouldn’t focus. She’d a sense he wasn’t talking to her at all. Then who? Oh God. He was talking beyond her to the Other. No, no … Her head moved in a sluggish negative. “L-leave m-m-meee …”

  “No, shhh, shhh, don’t fight. It’s too late for that anyway.” Kramer’s tone was intimate, pitched only for her. His breath feathered over her face and neck. “Let it come back, Elizabeth. Let her return to this Now.”

  It? Her? She felt her eyes struggling to latch onto his, set deep in their sockets of flesh and tin. And he’d called this a Now. “H-how do you … kn-know a-about …” As Kramer slid his hands under her shoulders and gathered her up, her blurred vision caught on a glint of brass in his breast pocket. She squinted, forcing her gaze to sharpen. Brass, yes, and a wink of … Purple. Purple glass.

  Oh God.

  Kramer had a pair of panops.

  3

  SHE HAD NO time to wonder how, or why. That would come later. For now, what mattered was this: Kramer knew about Nows. With the panops, he must’ve seen past her mask, and he knew what lived in her, understood that she was a vessel, filled with many voices, many pieces, the creations that were her father’s doing. All those tonics and teas were to sap her resistance, and now all that she was teetered on the brink of oblivion as he called to a very particular voice and presence, the Other, to fill her up, take over.

  “Wh-what have you done?” Her awkward fingers tried working their way into his pocket for the panops. “Where … where d-did you g-get … where is m-my mother, my m-muh …” She dragged in more air. “Wh-why?”

  “Stop fighting.” The slink of his whisper was all the more awful because he was so close, he might have been a lover. “Let her take you. She will save us, Elizabeth.”

  Save them? No. I can’t lose myself. But she was sinking fast, the mattress seeming to evaporate beneath her.

  “Come.” Kramer’s voice hummed in her ear as he called past her to something—someone—else. “Now. If you can hear me … now, Emma. Now.”

  “N-nooo,” she moaned. “No, you … you m-mustn’t summon it by name.”

  “But I must. I will have her.” Kramer held her so close she could smell him: the salt tang of his skin, the mustiness of wool, the dank reek of wet, exposed muscle from the half of his face that rot had claimed. “Come, Emma, come to me. Come nowwww.”

  All of a sudden, her vision purpled; the air wavered, as when the walls tried to buckle, or Mrs. Graves’s face decided to slump. In the center of her forehead, hot pain, bright as a comet, blazed a path through the heart of her mind. She thought she must have cried out, because Bode’s alarmed shout came to her, but muffled by distance, as if she were a star, dwindling to nothing more than a flicker, drowned out by this Other, the strongest of the many voices, all the pieces of her,

  PUT ME WHERE I BELONG.

  A voice that resolved into that of a girl, some girl now storming through her body. This was a voice belonging to a girl who would risk everything: DROP ME INTO THE NOW WHERE I’ll FIND THEM AGAIN: ERIC AND CASEY AND RIMA AND BODE AND—

  Bode? It knew him? No, that couldn’t be right. Unless Bode wasn’t who he seemed either. A black fist grabbed her heart. No, not him, too. He can’t possibly be a piece. Please, God, help me, leave me something, someone … And then she was swooning into the abyss, just as little Alice fell forever; even as something else was rushing up, erupting to fill the void she—Elizabeth—left behind.

  In the next second, she felt the switch as it happened—as the Other swamped her mind, shoving everything she was to one side, and opened her mouth and …

  4

  … SNARLED, “NO!”

  This voice was huge and so fierce even Kramer started and was, for one precious moment, off-balance.

  Seizing the bone spike, the Other exploded with a new, manic energy, and on a bellow: “NOOO!”

  5

  IT WAS A miracle Kramer didn’t lose an eye or wind up with that rough dagger impaled in his throat. The Other drove hard and fast enough for either, but he was already falling back, and the bone’s jagged tip instead jammed into that tin mask. But by then the Other was on her feet, diving for that open medical bag and all those shiny knives. Neither fully Elizabeth anymore and not yet completely Emma, the Other made it past Bode, who tried a grab, and as far as halfway down the hall, where she was cut off.

  After that, things went very badly. Breaking Weber’s nose with a bell jar was quite satisfying, even though Elizabeth was receding to a bright point by then, like a spider scuttling to the safe center of its web, thinking to the Other, this Emma, This is no way out. They’ll trap you the way you’ve trapped me.

  Yet the Other—Emma—tried. The mad chase through the corridors, with the others thudding after, and Emma, the Other, chanting to herself: I am Emma Lindsay, I am Emma … I remember Eric, how he felt, his voice, his eyes … Praying to the rattling glass bauble and strips of tin around her neck: Get me out, get me out, take me anywhere but here; just get me out!

  There is no Sign of Sure. This Emma was a fool. It’s only glass. You’re a mad girl in a ruined world. What was left of Elizabeth, now so deep down inside her own skull, looked through the backs of her own eyes and saw a mirror, growing huge in her sight, and this fool, this Emma, rushing for it. In the instant before that catastrophic smash, what remained of Elizabeth registered Emma’s surprise, the girl’s shock at what she saw, and felt just the slightest sense of vindication: Yes, that’s me, you see. Look in the mirror, Little Alice, loooook.

  After that—through the aftermath of Bode and Doyle wrestling her into a strong dress, and then Kramer, again, holding her close, crooning into her ear, filling her with drugs, claiming her—well … the only mercy was that Elizabeth wasn’t really all there anymore.

  That is … most of her.

  DOYLE

  Poppet

  1

  CHRIST. EVEN BEFORE the whole debacle—that mad chase through corridors before manhandling that screeching girl, gory and slick with blood let from barbs of the mirror she’d shattered—Arthur Conan Doyle thought the whole business, this murder investigation Battle was so keen on, was a bloody mess. Now, still winded, Doyle stood with the inspector at some distance from Kramer, who sat cross-legged in a pool of
smeary, red, jagged glass, cradling and crooning to Elizabeth as if she were a child.

  God, get me out of here. Doyle skimmed sweat from his lower lip with his tongue. Three days gone without, his guts in a twist, and a positive deluge of shite ready to spew out his bunghole—if Battle didn’t let him off this bloody ward with its bloody nutters; if Doyle didn’t find a pipe or a syringe or a pint of gin or a good half glass of laudanum soon—Doyle thought he might just pop out the inspector’s eyeballs with his thumbs.

  Now, now, poppet. It was that insidious, guttural snarl steaming from the muddle of Doyle’s mind. Calm yourself. That temper will be the death of you.

  The voice was nothing new. That it was right wasn’t new either. He thought that if it had a face, it must be that of the black dog with the maddened red eyes tattooed on his right biceps. Whenever he felt the urge for another drink, one more dose, a third pipe, a second needle, his right arm squirmed like a bag of worms, and then the black dog was husky and full in his ear: Ahhh … there, my beauty, there, that’s it; take that pipe, down that drink, use the needle and aaahhhh, that’s good, so gooood.

  Why he’d gotten the tattoo of this hulking, muscular, fire-breathing black hound with its hellishly infernal eyes and slavering fangs was a mystery, though it was probably because he’d been drunk as a lord when he let the first mate have at him with his needles. God, he missed all that. Best kip of his life was his berth aboard the Hope after a long spell on the ice: reeking of seal blood, biceps and thighs aching, exhaustion creeping ever so deliciously from the tips of his toes to the roots of his scalp. Never slept better than when he’d bashed the brains of fivescore baby seals with his spiked club.

  Although … here was something he didn’t understand. If he tried to dredge that first mate’s face from memory? Nothing came. Same for the ship, its captain, the other men. Hope was correct, but there was nothing meaty under the word except those few sensations—the twinge in his muscles, the stink of dying seals. The tattoo of a ravening black dog on his arm was real enough. But the rest was mist.

  Probably the drugs muddying his memories. Or that damned Peculiar. God, he needed a drink. A needle. Or a pipe. Something. His eyes felt full of pins. Anything.

  Or what? The black dog bunched under his uniform coat. You’ll make paste of Battle? Have a care, poppet. Your lolly daddles have always been a problem, ever since you were a wee bairn running the slums of Edinburgh. The black dog was nothing if not a little mocking. And oooh, who can forget that nasty business with your pap?

  Plug your cakehole, can’t you? He may be a cock-up, but he wasn’t stupid enough to talk out loud to something that wasn’t there, thank you very much. Anyway, his father

  ARRRTIEEE … ARRRTIEEE

  was ancient history. He never thought of the man. Never.

  Why, of course not. The black dog slavered. I suppose that’s why you carry his sgian-dubh everywhere, isn’t it? That’s why that black blade’s at your hip this very moment—because you never, ever think of him.

  No, he didn’t. Ever. Regardless of the knife, which he really oughtn’t have whilst in uniform, but he didn’t trust the weapon not to find legs and walk out of his rooms in the policemen’s dormitory. Anyway, the pipes, the needles, the drink all did their jobs, thank you very much. Of course, exhaust his supply as he’d done and the old nightly jimjams would return: when he jolted from sleep convinced that some great green and moist moldering monster—dripping with rotted flesh and absolutely crawling with maggots—hunched over his bed. Then he might be in for a touch of trouble.

  A touch of trouble? The black dog seemed to croon. Battle’d be keen to know, don’t you think? Say … about your little problem? That left arm? I’m sure he’d find your black blade’s provenance of great interest. Black blade, black dog … poetical, don’t you think?

  No. He didn’t. Absurd. The Peculiar’s going to eat us alive until London’s nuthin’ but skin ’n’ bones, and ya think anyone’s going to care about a Billy born drunk? History was winding down. Besides, who would Battle ask, anyway? Edinburgh had gone silent … oh, ever so long ago. Not exactly sure when. Didn’t matter, didn’t.

  He exhaled, slowly, through his teeth. He needed to get out of here, this asylum. Place worked on his nerves. The close, chill air stank with a lunatic fug of sour flesh, rancid piss, and sweaty desperation. Worst of all was that gabble, so like that miserable top flat on Sciennes Hill Place, where they’d crammed into squalid rooms in an even filthier tenement: mother, father, a brother, and, good Christ on a cross, more sisters than he could count yammering day

  NOT EATING THIS SLOP, NOT FIT FOR A MAN

  and night.

  In a way, this place was like that. It was the many voices rising like steam through floor-set iron grates; all those fists and feet and heads thumping walls and doors; and the mad wailing, Letmeoutletmeoutpleaseletmeoutletmeout.

  That sound was, he thought, how it would be at the end, when the sky blacked completely, cold settled on a buried city, and the fog, that Peculiar, finally lowered itself like a specimen jar to trap them all like so many doomed flies.

  2

  “ARE YOU ALL right, Doyle?” A voice, gruff and peremptory, by his right elbow.

  “Fine, sir,” he said, turning Battle a tight smile whilst strangling a groan. His guts clenched, the long innards twisting and knotting as if a giant had plunged in his fist to rummage around Doyle’s belly after a dropped penny. “Right as rain.”

  “You don’t look fine.” Something the inspector saw or heard didn’t tally, because his eyes narrowed to an analytical look that was cold silver. “Are you quite … Good God, your arm.” Battle used his chin to point. “Do you know you’re bloodied, Constable? Did she bite you?”

  “What?” Startled, he spied a wet purple pucker halfway up the right forearm of his grimy uniform coat. For a bizarre second, he actually thought the black dog might be chewing its way free. How could he not know he’d been hurt? Thank God, the left arm wasn’t cut. Roll up that cuff and sleeve and, besides the souvenirs from his dear pap, there was a scattershot of some truly fascinating scabs and nicks and pricks. Even an exhausted sclerotic and inflamed vein or two. (A wonder he’d not yet died of blood poisoning, actually.) He wasn’t eager to be examined, in any event.

  “Must’ve cut myself on the mirror glass, that’s all.” Doyle clamped his hand over the squelchy rent. Blast. While rumpled and a touch threadbare, this was the only uniform coat he owned. He thought about digging out his kerchief to staunch the flow, then discarded the idea, not from pride or the concern that he wouldn’t look very manly—and sod Battle, the old gob—but the kerchief hadn’t seen a wash in nearly a month, same as his uniform. The pathetic brown shard of soap he’d been issued had to last ten more days, and here he was, down to practically nothing more than a bare fingernail. That his smirking sergeant had the balls to call it soap and go on, boys, let’s see you scrub yourself pink and pretty … oh, that was hilaaarious. Soap felt like pulverized gravel held together with crumbly candle wax. Scrape your arse to bloody ribbons.

  “Thank you for your concern, sir. But it’s just a scratch.” He pulled himself a little straighter, aware of the rancid tang of hair oil rising in a cloud from his scalp to mingle with the ward’s general reek. Come on, Doyle. Hold yourself together a few more minutes. “I’ll manage, sir.”

  “Don’t look it. Is there something troubling you, Constable? You’re fidgeting. Or”—Battle’s eyes, so light blue they seemed like chips of mica, sharpened—“have you something to tell me? How that girl came by your Christian name?”

  “My name.” Doyle’s mind was a complete blank. And besides, it was an excellent question, wasn’t it? Because that girl, Elizabeth—after she’d battled her way out of her room and right before she turned to run pell-mell into that mirror—had known him … as Arthur. But how? Fresh, clammy sweat oozed into his constable coat’s high collar. He’d never told her his Christian name. So how could she know a thing like that
?

  He turned a look down the hall at that ghoulish doctor and the girl. Elizabeth’s pale features were smeary from that nasty gash on her forehead, over which Kramer had slapped a crude bandage that was going the color of claret from the ooze. Still, she was a beauty. A girl like that, he was positive he’d recall meeting before the night she appeared, covered in blood and on a scream.

  Bad luck that, too. He was no place he’d any business being at the time, him off his beat like that, hustling to purchase a bottle of morphia; then—poof!—there she was, as if a curtain had suddenly drawn aside to let her through from someplace off stage. Then, of course, he’d had to lead Battle back to the scene. But the most ridiculous part of it all? He couldn’t bloody remember precisely where he’d been. At all. Not the street, the lane, the alley, the buildings, or if there were carts (there were always carts) or Judys (there were always Judys and dollymops happy to oblige) or a pub on the corner (plenty of them, too, though whether you trusted what was in that pint glass, considering the trains had stopped running long ago and no grain to be had or even potatoes … well, your funeral). He’d wandered for hours, hoping to recognize something that would lead them to an entrance and then to catacombs or tunnels or caves or whatever in which the girl claimed she’d been held, where she’d come on her father doing something over bodies that she couldn’t quite remember.

  Came up empty. He’d have more luck finding his own bunghole with two hands and a candle. Worried him. How could you forget a thing like that? Maybe his brain was going spongy from all that morphia.

  Whatever the case … nothing. No trapdoors, no hidden passages, no catacombs, no caves, though there were bodies, apparently. Only later had Battle taken himself back and found … well, whatever he’d found; the gob was playing it close to the vest. Other than Battle, no one else had seen the bodies, not even the police surgeon.