3:30 a.m.
(Awakened by a mixture of determination and fear)
I will attempt to re-create my latest nightmare as best I can, turning the key of my bedside gas lamp high. In the light, the shadows of my mind lessen into a creature whose teeth recede. But goodness, my mind does have its fangs.
A street corner at dusk. I stood with the city moving around me. Before I even knew where I was, I was struck by the quality of the lamplight. It cast shadows long and deep. But, as with many things in my life of late, the shadows were a bit off. Surreal. Full of a life one would not expect of shadows.
Cast by carriages and their horses, by persons young and old, men in top hats and women with too many ruffles on their skirts to be practical, the shadows swirled like mist or a drop of ink into water. But when I looked at the shadows directly, they were only that, a shape that blocked light. The moment I focused on a passerby or an architectural detail, the shadows were off, moving into the corners of my eyes again.
Glancing about, I realized I stood in the middle of Manhattan, at the southern foot of Central Park where the city begins again with those grand blocks where the Vanderbilt mansion is lord, with its pomp and impressive circumstance. The grandeur of wealth attracts passersby at such a twilight time. It’s an hour to be seen, that particular moment of dusk when there’s a bit of magic in the air, when women don fine clothing and lovers might steal a moment in the shadows before they are expected beneath the glittering chandeliers of polite company.
The others on the street reflected my own fascination. It is hard to live in New York and not be compelled by the city’s grandeur. Each passing face was full of hopeful possibility, persons en route to a fine dinner in some nearby mansion, out to the symphony or the opera, or off to an exclusive society club.
New York, the great city of bustling desire.
It moved around me, as if I were a stone in a babbling brook.
Out of the sea of faces I then saw him, there before the estate of one of the most powerful New Yorkers. His silhouette—I would know it anywhere. Perhaps I was dreaming of the sort of life Denbury would lead were he an English lord in New York City, free from his curse, and I was looking in on his life and the places where it might lead him.
But then he turned to stare me down. This was not the face of the compelling soul of the Denbury who entranced me, but the odd, primal gaze of the one who repulsed me. His lip curled before he lunged at me. I was seized by the specific sort of panic that, from an early age, has made speech impossible.
Instinct made me run. I picked up my skirts and fled, thankful to be wearing sensible boots on the treacherous cobbles. The fiend was after me like a predatory animal, the blue eyes now replaced entirely by that eerie reflective gleam. Even a form as beautiful as Denbury’s could not entirely hide the ugliness that had overtaken it.
I was pressing downtown, or so I thought, but I abruptly found myself caught up in a tangled mess of alleys and lots instead of that magnificent stretch of Fifth Avenue. Suddenly I was in what I imagined the worst parts of the city were like, barely lit, a maze of brick and cast-iron facades with industry and horse manure and huddled hordes tucked in shadows, hardly the promenading parade. From grandeur to struggle, so too was this the heart of New York. Perhaps these were those infamous parts where the killer had struck.
A door beckoned at the end of the alley. Safety? Or greater danger?
The closer I came, the brighter the light from beneath it grew.
I reached for the glass knob, threw myself against the door, and tumbled into Denbury’s painted study.
The dear man must be commended for being so quick on his feet during urgent times, no matter the strange ties of our conscious and unconscious states. He seized me and whirled me to the side, pressing me firmly behind him as he stepped boldly forward to place himself between me and the demon who hesitated at the door, snarling.
There at the threshold, the true Denbury and his horrid doppelganger were face-to-face. And in that brief moment, the true Denbury was just as ferocious as his dark twin. What a beautiful sight that was as his righteous fury lit up the air around him.
“Demon, you’ve taken everything from me. You’ll not take this girl!” Denbury cried, and even though it hurt him to do so, he shoved his demon self back and slammed the door, crackling with fire, upon the demon’s face.
But the demon pounded at the door, taunting and calling.
I was shrinking away from the demon’s hissing of “pretty thing” and mad with fear, but Denbury grabbed me by the elbows and swung me around to look him in the eye. His confidence and conviction broke through my terror. While in his territory, clearly he would not allow anything to get the better of us.
“Natalie, you can make it go away. This is your dream. You can change what’s on the other side of that door. You are not at its mercy. If I can keep what little mind I have left, then you can face your nightmares and tell them to bugger off.”
I half smiled despite myself. He took a brief, measured breath.
“Excuse my language. But do it, please.”
I tried to form a command on my lips. I thought of the renunciations of evil used during baptisms of the young and old, a call and response between pastor and congregation, a core principle of the faith I adhered to out of respect and a bit of awe—something that had never seemed as imperative as now. My voice was faint and trembling, not what I hoped it could be: “I renounce thee…”
Denbury repeated the phrase with me, and in doing so I was strengthened.
“I renounce thee!” we chorused.
I turned around, and the demon was gone from the doorstep. But in its place was that same woman’s corpse, still in her white shift. This time it retained its head, but the body was bent slightly at the waist, creating a curtain of dark hair that made the face still unrecognizable. The arm was carved bloody, inscribed again, but with a new name: Cecilia.
Trembling and shocked, I fumbled for the words to banish the hideous specter.
“Go on,” Denbury urged. “Be rid of it. You have the power.”
I opened my mouth. An aspirated, ungainly sound came out. A few tears fell down my cheeks. Denbury cupped my chin in his hand and forced me to look into his heart-stopping eyes.
“You are stronger than this, Natalie. Now, turn around and tell the nightmares you’re no longer ruled by them.” A product of a mostly Protestant country that would have had somewhat similar liturgies to mine, Denbury then supplied the question: “Do you renounce sin, the Devil, and all his empty promises?”
And because liturgy was like muscle memory, I was able to answer: “I renounce them.”
With a bit of the Whisper, that tickling, maddening murmur at my ear, the phantasm faded. I took a deep breath.
That the Whisper was connected to such sights was a bit too much to bear, considering the association with Mother. But if she was somewhere present, I hoped the disembodied noise was in fact information or a clue. I just wished she’d be clearer about it after all this time.
I stared at the open door and the dark corridor beyond that was no longer a New York alley or a threshold for the dead but a dim hollow place of uncertainty that awaited something to light it up. Denbury gazed out into that murky fog, and his hand reached out to cup my elbow in a gentle press.
“You’re a very nice girl. A very pretty girl, Miss Stewart. Why in the world is your mind so haunted?”
I looked at him for a moment, wanting to tell him something meaningful. When he and I were alone in this place where time stood still, I spoke with such ease that it broke my heart to think that my ability to speak would be gone upon waking.
“Because my nightmares are clues. Perhaps they always have been. I am meant to see what I see.” I took a step toward him. “And those who have stared into the darkness can empathize with those who have it thrust upon them, can’t they?”
“Yes, indeed. I am grateful to have you as my only friend in the darkness.” He smiled. “I realize I’ve often called you by your first name. This place does breed familiarity. Do you mind?”
“Not a bit.”
“Then please call me Jonathon. The world calls me Denbury: friends, colleagues, acquaintances. But you…you’re something different from a colleague. You’re…”
I held my breath. What was I?
“Very special,” he declared. “You are…closer to me. I’d rather you call me something more…personal.”
I smiled, thrilled at this, at our special, personal relationship. “Of course, Jonathon…” I thrilled at saying his name. “You’re the angel to guide me through my nightmares.” Our warm closeness was tempered by the urgency of omens. “But if my previous dream was anything like this one, we need to do something, or some poor girl named Cecilia will die.”
He shuddered. “I’ll try to demand information from the demon, should he come here again. I’ll try to fight him, Natalie, however I can.”
“As will I,” I said, and that pledge shot me straight into consciousness, as if it were rousing me to action. I had no pleasant embrace or near-kiss to slip me into waking hours, only dread urgency and the name “Jonathon” upon my lips.
Later…
The first thing I did after waking, going to breakfast, and kissing my father on the head as he read the paper was to snatch it out of his hands for a moment, scanning the headlines anxiously. He patiently waited for me to be done with it.
“Looking for something exciting?” he asked with a touch of affectionate amusement, as he always did when I was passionately focused on something.
I plucked a pencil from the breakfast table (we always have plenty lying around for communication purposes) and wrote “gossip” on the margin and smiled at him. He chuckled and thankfully left it at that.
After darting down to the newsstand on a nearby street corner, I continued to scan the papers with shaking hands, waiting with a leaden heart to see news of a dead “Cecilia” somewhere off a dim and dirty alley in some dim and dirty room.
But such a demise was nowhere to be seen. I hoped that my mind had played only a cruel coincidence in having named Barbara before her death and that my dreams were not portents but nightmares alone. Still, I couldn’t sit idly by.
The last time the demon went on a rampage, he’d inflicted a terrible scar on Denbury. And a woman named Barbara had indeed been beheaded downtown. Might another murderous rampage do Lord Denbury’s soul irreparable damage? My dear Jonathon.
Mrs. Northe had said that more women should not die for the sake of evidence, and I agree with her. Today I’ve begun making preparations. I will indeed turn and face my nightmares and go from the pursued to the pursuing.
We need information to reverse the curse. The police can’t be trusted to understand supernatural subtleties. If anything happens to the body in question—Jonathon’s double—all is lost. His body can’t be caught, not yet.
So I will follow the beast myself.
If it happens like last time, the devil will likely visit the portrait before his crime. But since the demon quite liked the look—and the vulnerability—of me, I’ll have to not be me to observe him.
I’ll become a night watchman. Using Father’s seal, I’ll forge an assignment on the lower level of the Metropolitan and wait for the fiend to appear. Then I’ll follow the abomination…into the mouth of Hell, if that’s what it takes.
The plan laid out in my mind as if it was divinely inspired. Perhaps it was. Because the moment I thought it up, I knew it was right and I knew there was no turning back. And I hoped, for my sake, that I’d have a host of guardian angels on my side. I’ll need them among the dark places the demon’s kind has created, where poor creatures lose their moral compass and where others fall victim to their own poverty and weakness. Dark places where some women are set upon because they were unfortunate enough to have been born girls.
Father has been talking of cleaning his closet for some time. In the guise of good housekeeping, I today alleviated him of an old suit. Our local tailor down the street thankfully knows my condition and is always prepared to greet my note and instructions without so much as a second glance.
Mr. Tabb thankfully did not raise an eyebrow when my note said to alter the suit for a “smaller-sized cousin.” (That “cousin” being me.) There’s no going into the belly of a beast as a woman. As a mute man, I was still at a disadvantage, but in men’s clothing the world is more accessible. Remaining unrecognizable to my target was imperative.
I’ve learned a thing or two from Shakespeare’s roles where women dress as men for protection and information. There’s plenty of artifice and espionage in great literature, so this adventure of mine will merely carry on a familiar legacy. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Truth be told, I’m terrified.
Yet the truth remains that the moment I stepped through that canvas, my life changed irrevocably. I will never be the same because of Denbury. Fantastical, difficult, and dangerous possibilities follow in his wake. And I’m helplessly wrapped up in them. In him.
Before I undertake what may be life-threatening, I need to spend more time with Denbury, to truly befriend him and get to know him, because what I’ll attempt is too much to risk for a mere stranger—though I feel I know him closely…intimately (an unsettling notion in and of itself). I need to truly know what sort of man I may be risking my life for. Madness, portents, runes, and spells aside, we need a moment to be friends. Mrs. Northe also insists that I “tend his soul.”
I’m off to the museum and I’ll write anon.
Later…
I wore my prettiest dress, feminine and appealing, a light green the color of my eyes, to the museum in the afternoon. I found Father, indicated I’d be sketching somewhere downstairs, and went promptly to the exhibition room. Staring up at Jonathon, I could see that his striking face looked exhausted. Truly, we did not have much time.
I dipped my hand into the canvas and tumbled, per usual, into the arms of the prince of this dark tale. I let him hold me and did not ease away. He took in my appearance, and from his expression, he was pleased.
“Your real self is brighter than your dream self,” he said. “More solid and sure.”
“Would that that were the case out there as well.” I indicated my body on the other side.
“Your beauty would remain the same.”
I smiled widely, and the whole room seemed somehow charged with hope, possibility, and passion.
“I do not want you to be some trapped secret,” I breathed, twirling about his space as if it were an open field. “I want to stroll proudly arm in arm with you along the East and Hudson Rivers and show you the wonders of my great city. I want to use my newfound voice to laugh, to giggle, to make blessed, normal noise, for us to enjoy the fruits of the world as a normal boy and girl might do. No dread silence, no souls split from bodies, curses, or demons to spoil it…”
“All of that sounds wonderful. We must cling to that hope.”
“Yes. I’ll need it for what I’m about to do.”
His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I have an idea,” I said nonchalantly, not wishing to arouse his worry. “About how to help you. But not until nightfall. In the meantime, I was hoping we could talk—a normal conversation having nothing to do with demons, black magic, or curses. If I wouldn’t be bothering you.”
He shifted my weight against himself, reaching down for my hand. He brought it to his mouth and kissed it. I shivered with delight. “Nothing about you could ever be a bother. But don’t you dare risk anything for me—”
I placed a finger to his lips, and we both shuddered at the touch. “I’m not sure I have any choice.”
My voice had grown soft. Danger was replaced with a different kind of tension as we drifted closer, inexorably pulled together.
But despite all the custom that we’d abandoned, I was nervous. And in this reality, nerves meant I was chatty. An opposite of the outside world, where nerves made me silent.
“Mrs. Northe told Father that she is coming for me. Which means she has ideas to share,” I said quietly, wanting nothing more than to give in to the spell of this peculiar world and to Jonathon’s magnetism, but awkwardness overtook me. “So we’d best…take care. At any moment our unlikely chaperone might arrive.” I glanced out past the frame into the museum room, staring at that odd statue of myself on the other side.
He reluctantly slid away from me, but not far.
“Tell me tales of tending the ill,” I said, flouncing my skirts around me in a dainty circle on the Persian rug, preening as I’d seen Maggie do and wanting to pose for him as if I were his artist model. “Bide the time with me until Mrs. Northe comes.”
His eyes lit, the sunken circles lessening, as if his life was rekindled. A soul without purpose withers. Recalled to his purpose, Jonathon was magnificent.
He began by telling me how he had watched many friends and extended family die of disease. Ours were both hearts that had been steeled by loss. Frightened that death was somehow a curse, he had sought refuge in science and medicine. From the age of twelve, he had studied anatomy books to learn whatever he could. He was told by professionals that he was gifted, and this encouraged him to think what he might be able to do in the world. The passion and zeal with which he spoke of medicine nearly took the weariness out of him and almost healed the scar on his face.
I could have listened to him for hours.
But I noticed Mrs. Northe, a hazy figure, standing patiently beside my body. I could not keep her waiting, as much as I wanted Denbury to keep sharing his passions and interests with me. His enthusiasm reminded me that I was helping a noble soul. He was indeed an angel in my dreams, and he embodied that in my waking hours. I needed to believe in him. It was good to be reminded why I should pin my heart on him before I undertook risk on his behalf.
“I’ll come again. I promise—”
He bent down and lifted me to my feet. “You, Natalie, I want more of you. I want to know everything about you, my partner in magic and madness, absolutely everything.”
No one had taken such an interest in me, and whether it was only because he hoped I was his savior I couldn’t know, but I didn’t care. I was important to him. I was his link to the world. I was all he had. And as for me, I’d never had something to fight for. As odd as my life had become with him, it was impossible to imagine life—waking or sleeping—without him.
He snatched my hand again and kissed it. “I want to know everything…”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by those words, but the look in his eyes had my body on fire. My experience within the painting went beyond fancy, intrigue, or schoolgirl obsession. This was undoubtedly much deeper. I couldn’t understand all the magic. But I did understand desire. If I wasn’t careful, it would distract me from my purpose. Once a girl had been kissed, everything changed. It was a matter of time…
But this wasn’t the right moment.
“Indeed,” I replied, wondering what sorts of promises my eyes were giving him. “And so you shall.”
I sank back with that uneasy drop into myself, not sure I would ever get used to such an odd feeling. Mrs. Northe steadied me, now accustomed to the dizzy wave that followed.
She didn’t ask about our chat but likely made assumptions about my blush. Instead she had turned to stare intently at Denbury’s nameplate, which read:
Jonathon Whitby III, Lord Denbury, 1880
“What’s odd about this, Natalie?” Mrs. Northe asked.
After staring at the nameplate for a while, I gestured to how the plate did not match the frame, and I ran my finger below Lord Denbury’s name, searching for another plate where I would expect the artist’s name to be engraved.
“Exactly,” Mrs. Northe said, undoing her cameo brooch from around her throat. “The artist’s name is missing, and the plate doesn’t quite go, does it? I’d be willing to bet that the body that crumpled in the Denbury estate was that of the artist used for this work, discarded when it was no longer useful. I’ll corral my contacts in England, and perhaps I can find out the painter’s identity.”
“Without a manhunt?” I countered in sign. Surely none of this could be left to the average police operation, not the New York police, nor Scotland Yard; no average detective’s methods were suited for this.
“My contacts are always discreet,” Mrs. Northe replied. “In no way do I want to jeopardize this painting or the sanctity of the body that’s been overtaken.”
She suddenly knelt, brooch in hand. Using the dainty edge to unwind the screws holding in the nameplate, she had it off in a moment. As she removed the thin brass strip, I saw that something was painted below. Another set of runes. No, not runes. Hieroglyphs.
Mrs. Northe flipped open a small pad of paper and copied down the markings. Outlined by an oval on its side, the set of markings resembled another cartouche of sorts. Mrs. Northe just as efficiently returned the shining gold nameplate to its position on the edge of the frame. “I’ll look this up tonight,” she said. “These are disparate pieces. But together they’ll make a whole.”
And she returned me home.
I’m left to contemplate what questionable bravery is ahead of me.
• • •
From the Desk of Mrs. Evelyn Northe
June 16, 7 a.m.
Dear Natalie,
I do not know if I’ll be able to meet with you today, and in the interest of your father (and Maggie—dear Lord, the girl asks me too many questions) not thinking we’re up to something suspicious, I shouldn’t see you daily. But I must tell you this:
The frame truly is a door, Natalie. The hieroglyphs found below the nameplate mean “ba.” It signifies a doorway through which the spirit may enter. The Egyptians believed that the soul had seven parts: the aakhu, the ab, the ba, the ka, the khaibut, the khat, and the ren. One of these, the “ba” part of the soul, passes through a false door set into the stone of their tombs. Ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with death almost more than life. This furthers my idea that the fiend has created and perfected the ability to split the soul (including, it would seem, the reasoned consciousness) from the body and cast it across a “ba” threshold and into a prison: a box, a painting, perhaps anything.
The frame as a doorway explains the duality of Denbury’s body both outside and inside the frame. It also confirms that the fiend has created a veritable portal that has a certain flexibility, and it is my hope that where you have been granted the ability to travel between, so may the devil that created the threshold. The trick will be switching them out, one for the other.
“Vessel” is writ on the cartouche around his neck, and “ba,” the spirit door, writ upon the frame. The building blocks of the spell are clearly labeled. I hope to determine yet further ingredients. Tell me if you glean anything more from Denbury.
And I’d like to take you shopping next Sunday. A seamstress, then a milliner. What think you? You don’t seem to own any mauve, and I think you’d look charming in mauve.
Yours, Evelyn
I received that letter first thing in the morning, and thankfully Father had left for work. I had feigned disinterest in going to the museum. (It would not do to seem predictable. Father knew me as a woman of many moods. I needed to remain consistently unpredictable so he wouldn’t question what had become of the daughter he knew.) But the daughter he knew was changed. Different. Haunted.
In love.
And scared.
But there’s much to do! I’m thankful for having the day to do it unhindered. If I’d spent time with Mrs. Northe, I most likely would have confessed my plan and she’d surely have stopped me.
This spying in disguise is not the only possible plan hatching in my feverish brain. Something else is burning at the edge of my mind, thoughts of a confrontation yet to come. The thought of it hangs like that billowing bit of white lace and the maddening Whisper of my childhood, truth just on the edge of my sight, a sound too faint to be heard.
But first…espionage.
I’m not sure where my bravery has come from, save for the simple knowledge of what must be done. This course is as clear to me as a mathematical equation with only one solution, an adventure plot with a single way forward. For as impossible as things have become, the choices I face are startlingly clear. My instincts feel guided by some higher force. Still, I’m stewing with nerves.
Considering what I am about to undertake, I wonder if I’ve gone a bit mad, at last cracking under all this strain.
10 p.m.
(The house is asleep.)
Staring into the mirror, I don’t look half bad.
A pretty youth.
Beauty, no matter its gender, has opportunities and advantages—an English lord surely knows that.
But my inability to speak worries me most. My vocal success, thanks to the world of the painting, has not translated into my reality. All I can emit are strangled sounds unable to be connected into words. I know I need to practice, but I can’t bear the sound or the idea that my household might discover me healed and rush to entirely readjust my world as I know it. No, one upheaval at a time. And on my terms.
As for how to justify my silence, being simply mute as I dare to enter a den of iniquity would be begging for trouble. How could I lend my silence a threatening quality? The answer made me grin despite myself.
I went to a small box I cherished from school. A makeup kit.
When the Connecticut Asylum attempted a theatrical production, it was a pitiful event, but I admired the teachers for their optimism and their efforts. I was the resident wizard of the brush; my artistic skills with greasepaint and prosthetic were legendary. Our presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the height of irony, for our Titania was blind and could not see when Bottom had gained the head of an ass, and so the entire comedy of her infatuation was moot. However, the effects I offered the fairies and mechanicals were highly praised.
This evening, in under an hour I created such an ugly, off-putting gash around my throat that no one dared question why I was silent or, hopefully, the type of company someone with such a token would keep. It would be my most identifying mark, one that would disappear at the end of my night.
And where was I headed? Well, wherever the demon would lead. If his first strike was any indication, and if, like ghosts, he was a creature of habit, he would go again to the Five Points.
The infamous, legendary Five Points. A few miles south from my home but a whole world away. While the crime in the area was severe, I wondered if legend had made it larger than life. I recall some of my father’s friends championing the area as having been one of the most culturally interesting places in the city—a place where boundaries hardly existed and cultures mixed freely. That was the area’s virtue and its bane.
But the horrific Draft Riots had changed all that when I was a toddler. Negro men, women, and children were chased, mobbed, and beaten, a man even torn to pieces by angry Irish mobs who resented being drafted into the Civil War when the rich could buy their way out. So the ward certainly had its historical demons, let alone any who wished to terrorize it today.
As for the logistics of getting to this infamous neighborhood, I’d follow the demon’s lead and take a carriage—I would have one waiting for me. Handing a large enough bill to the driver would ensure service. I dearly hoped my poor father didn’t count his bills each day, lest he miss these few grand ones that would hopefully gain me entrances and keep me alive. I’d beg fresh ones from Mrs. Northe and claim dire necessity. Surely she’d understand the urgency.
I have tucked my small yet trusted knife into my pocket. One may wonder how a young lady might come to be in the possession of a knife. I’m not ashamed to tell you that I’d gained it by disarming a boy at school. Having threatened me, this boy justly deserved to lose the ivory-handled piece. If I’ve learned one thing about boys, it’s that they dearly need to understand the notion of consequences for their actions.
Here I pause to recall the moment of glory. I disarmed the cretin myself (I grow prouder of this moment the more I recall it), and while he was far larger than I, I was a quick study.
I’d been watching a fighting class from my window, looking down onto the green where the deaf and the mute boys (not the blind ones, of course) practiced fencing, sword fighting, and basic moves with a staff. I stole any moment I could to practice thrusts and parries, a stick in hand, while watching from two flights above.
I was, at least in perfect imitation, quite good. And so when the heathen (certainly no gentleman) brandished the knife in front of me, I disarmed him. He was appropriately shocked and too embarrassed to ask for it back, and I wouldn’t have given it to him anyway, as I had earned it. But I digress.
This is the story of my trip to the Five Points, not about my personal armory. However, the knife story is one that should go down in my annals, and so it has, to bolster me. But enough of proud memory. I tucked the knife in my trousers, in a place of close reach, and there it remains. A small comfort against the enormity of my nerves. Say prayers for me, dear diary. I’ll need them.
Later…
Here I sit in my hiding place at the museum, waiting for the fiend’s visit.
I could have easily walked the distance from home to the museum, but when I saw an available carriage, I hailed him by stepping in front of his lanterns.
Holding out a previously written note for the driver, I stared at him with hard eyes that didn’t wait for him to ask why I didn’t speak instructions to him. He nodded, and I jumped in. In moments I was out again and starting up the museum stairs, wondering how long I’d have to wait before a familiar, beautiful face with the shade of a devil might tread these same stairs.
The moonlight was bright and illuminated the redbrick and gray granite details of the museum, making it look like a Gothic palace in a haunted tale. I’d heard talk of renovations and expansions to create a building that would loom large and luminously white over Fifth Avenue. How much more grand and ghostly would the museum look in the future?
I had no guarantee that the beast would come here. But instinct—and my dreams—told me that his visit was likely enough for me to try.
As I ascended to the arched doors, I held the keys Mrs. Northe had made for me tightly, feeling guilty for having lied to her. I had promised her I would do nothing rash and nothing alone. Denbury exists in the painting, a friend in this odd quest, though trapped and unable to lend a hand. But I couldn’t put Mrs. Northe in jeopardy in what’s clearly my task. I have been chosen for this. Forces beyond me have stated this implicitly. Perhaps I was born for this. I am just as capable as the young men I’d read about in adventure books (save that I’m mute and a girl). Then again, adventure often favors the improbable.
At the door, I flashed the guard a note saying I had been hired as a rear post. The note was stamped with a Metropolitan seal that I’d gained from Father’s desk. The guard could have cared less and opened the front doors for me. I’d hoped the guard would be lax, but his indifference did make me fear for the safety of the art.
As I descended to the exhibition room, I straightened masculine coat sleeves that felt oddly at angles on my body and wondered what Jonathon would think. There was no turning back, I thought, as I drew back the curtain. I did not hesitate to slip my fingers onto the canvas and into the cool pool, and to step through.
I fell, as usual, against him. But instead of the embrace I’d grown unashamedly accustomed to, I was greeted with: “Who the devil are you?”
“It’s Natalie,” I replied.
Jonathon gaped. “What on earth are you doing dressed as a boy?”
“When your double comes to call, I plan to follow him,” I replied.
His eyes widened. “You cannot be serious.”
I shrugged. “I cannot involve the police. They’d arrest your body, and then what would you do? We need information! We need to know about the runes and the poetry, the carving on your arm, the cartouche, and the ritual. We need to discover our lynchpin, to find out how it all comes together. I won’t interact with the beast, merely observe.”
Shaking his head, he stated, “I cannot allow you to undertake such risk on my account, to descend into the very depths of Hell itself.”
“It’s not Hell, it’s the Five Points. Though I have heard the two equated.”
“I will keep you here by force.” He grabbed my arm, his face flushed, defiant, and never more handsome.
“And what good will that do either of us? Let me take my hiding place in the alcove around the corner so that I may listen, slip out behind him, and see what occurs.”
“You’re mad!”
“Do you want out of this mess or not?”
Jonathon gaped at me. “You’re not frightened?”
My subsequent laugh sounded a bit hysterical, my nerves now on display. “Oh, quite. But Mrs. Northe has assured me that our fates have become entwined whether we like it or not, so I might as well try to be useful.”
“You’re the bravest woman I know…” He approached me, taking my hands, lifting my cap to touch my curls, and seeking the me who was more familiar to him. “Don’t do this—”
“Hush, don’t be sentimental and don’t act like I’m going to die, please,” I grumbled, though I couldn’t help leaning into his outstretched hand a bit. It was then he noticed the tip of the red gash I’d fashioned and he gasped.
“Good God—”
“Theatrical effect,” I assured him. “To explain my lack of voice in a way that denotes the company I keep rather than my weakness.”
His horror turned to admiration. “That’s brilliant. You are absolutely brilliant.”
“I’ve read too many books,” I replied, and we shared a grin.
“Promise me you’ll be careful. I couldn’t bear anything happening to you,” he said achingly.
“Of course you couldn’t.” I smiled. “Without me you’ll be doomed.”
“In more ways than one.”
My heart fluttered.
As he caught my hand, I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to second-guess this or have time to think of all the terrible possibilities. I needed momentum to propel me forward, but he grasped my hand and cupped my cheek, and I truly thought he was going to kiss me after all. My knees weakened at the thought of it, but he seemed to remember himself and kissed my forehead instead.
“You beautiful fool, be careful,” he murmured. “I’ll be with you. If your dreams are connected to me, then surely I can project myself to you.”
“Like my guardian angel.”
“Always.”
I think that if I hadn’t been dressed as a boy, we might have kissed, then and there. I resolved to come back very soon. In a dress.
“Why are you putting yourself at such risk for me?” he asked.
I paused and almost said it was because I loved him. But a nervous wash came over me and kept me from the words. I wasn’t sure how he’d take them. “It feels like destiny,” I said instead, breaking from his gaze. “When the demon comes, press him for answers—where he’s going, what he’s doing. Mrs. Northe insists our best clues lie in why. Make him explain himself.”
Jonathon smirked wearily. “You mean we can’t rely on literary convention and wait for the beast to simply state his evil plot to his unwitting prey?”
I chuckled. “Oh, it’s a better tale if you bait him. And if you’re furious, I daresay he’ll tell you more.”
“Of course. I’ll do whatever I can,” he promised.
I smiled, turned, and stepped forward. He instinctively reached for me but drew away as I stared at his hand. “I’ll see you soon, Jonathon,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ll return in a dress.”
I tumbled back out and into my disguised self, and turned to the portrait, where his lordship stood as handsome as ever, if not a bit worried looking, at the center. I took my place behind the small, nondescript locked door opposite the open one that awaited the demon of the hour.
It’s here that I’ve written down these most recent accounts while I wait. Since having fallen through worlds to meet Lord Denbury, time seems so differently fluid, even when I am outside the painting.
I feel the temperature around me chill.
There’s a hissing crackle.
The beast has come!
Fifteen minutes later
Back in the carriage, I’ve instructed we maintain pursuit. I must take down details!
It was a shock to see the devil of Denbury again in the flesh. From the keyhole I could see him framed in the doorway, standing in my reality, his beauty unmatched in this world or in any other.
My breath stilled. There stood the man who had changed my life. A strong impulse made me want to fling open the door and run to him, to shake him loose of the demon, to speak as I knew him, to save him by my very presence. He already knew me and was already intrigued by me. He wanted me. Meeting in our mutual world could set him free to be my prince after all.
But then the creature laughed, and I was jarred by the cruel illusion. I couldn’t trust my senses. If the painted world of Jonathon’s spirit had witchcraft that lured me, his bodily reality had the same magic outside the prison. But this stolen vessel was a murderer, made beautiful and cruel. The trouble was that both Denburys continued to have a profound effect on me.
Looking at this Denbury played tricks of the mind, so I stayed against the wall, straining to hear through the keyhole. The villain spoke, pressing his face in through the barrier of the painting, as if it were a basin of water. His words careened around the room through a supernatural echo like wild birds flapping desperately with no way out. I shuddered. The demon owned Jonathon’s voice but with something inhuman layered upon his fair British tone.
“Hello again, my vessel,” it said. “My, you look well. We’ll soon fix that right up, though.”
There was a rustling sound, muffled but angry. I felt a surge of pride. Jonathon was doing what we had asked, baiting the demon with his fury. The more defiant he became, the more the demon would drive home his hopelessness. It was the way of evil. Just as Iago condemns Shakespeare’s audiences into becoming accomplices to Desdemona’s murder by the provoked Othello, so were we, Jonathon’s soul and I, condemned to this eager confession.
“You can do nothing to stop me, boy. Barbara’s blood is hardly dry, yet there is plenty of other tender, vulnerable meat directly nearby.”
There must have been a further challenge. I could not hear it, but the creature made a chuckling reply: “It is human nature. Hypocrites will tear down one house of sin only to help build another next door. Sin moves easily, a vagabond, and we move fluidly within our own. I feed on the weak, and you suffer the consequences. It is as the Creator intended—”
I started at this blasphemy and so did Jonathon, evidently, for his response had the beast roaring with amusement.
“Yes, yes, blind fealty to your Creator, but where is He now? I walk among you, but He does not. Fitting to do my work in your form, you who are so fond of weaklings. Where are the holy namesakes of these women as their lifeblood runs through my fingers?” He cackled, a disgusting laugh. “The world is not prepared for our new dawn. These first sacrifices are but the birthing pains. We’ve an empire to build, my dear Englishman.”
And then the beast withdrew from the painting. He walked away whistling, life and death his playthings.
Thankful for deep shadows, I followed, my heart in my throat and terror at the ready to overtake me in a swoon. But I thought of Robinson Crusoe and the Count of Monte Cristo, of the Musketeers and all the idols whom I’ve worshipped since I had first devoured their adventurous tales. I was doing them all proud.
The hired carriage awaited per my instructions, sheltered from moonlight by a copse of trees on the uptown side of the building and ready to follow surreptitiously down the avenue. Knowing the building intimately, I slipped out a shaded side entrance devoid of guards and hurried to the driver, pointing at the fine carriage already paces ahead. He nodded, and we were off.
The demon’s words ring in my mind, my dread of him pounding in syncopation with my heartbeat. I had hoped for an insight into the beast’s specific madness, not premonitions of some infernal revolution…Forgive my bobbing script. It was good that I hardly ate anything at supper; otherwise, I might lose it as the carriage tosses and turns.
We proceeded on a slanting course down Broadway, where the finer blocks are lit by gas lamps but many others are not. We passed the occasional theater, stable, and grand palace where ill repute supposedly reigns in back rooms. Farther down we passed the even grander shopping palaces lining Ladies’ Mile, a place I’ve always yearned to promenade.
But promenading is the talk of fine ladies. Fine ladies don’t journey to the Five Points to track a demonic murderer inhabiting the body of the man they love.
Well, if I’m indeed living an adventure novel, there must be a love story. There’s always a love story. I’m so fond of literary tradition, and right now, its consistency remains my only comfort.
The carriage ahead of us slows. The puddles are thick—the street hasn’t been cleared of horse manure or foul human waste. We must be nearing the Five Points area. The carriage appears to be slowing near Anthony Street. Searching for what, I don’t know. Number 66. And there goes my quarry! Down from the carriage and gliding up the stoop. I shall wait a moment and then follow him. You, dear diary, will remain tucked into the bandages binding my chest, right over my heart. You may make a nice shield against a bullet or a blade.
• • •
I’ve been captured! I know not where I’m going. I’m in a carriage. Heading north, I think. I can write only a quick note:
Dear Father, if you find this diary, please know that I love you and that all of my actions have been to try to help a dear soul who deserved help. You’ll never believe a word of it, but it’s all true. I love you and thank you for everything you’ve done for me.
Later…
Obviously I’m not dead.
Thank the Lord, I live to write these words. I must recount what happened inside that frightening residence turned house of horrors.
I’ll have to tell you of Cecilia and Midge and the whole of the events in the Five Points, but first let me say what happened in regards to my capture.
You see, I had relaxed too soon. All seemed well and my escape assured. I had gleaned important information while inside 66 Anthony Street. Upon leaving the premises and breathing a sigh of relief, I was grabbed roughly and tossed into a cab heading uptown. I tried the door—willing to fling myself into the street to escape—but it was locked from the outside.
Could Crenfall have trailed us or discovered that I was a spy? How could anyone have known? I was so unremarkable…Or maybe my disguise was absurd.
I did recall that a carriage had pulled in behind us, making a trio as we headed downtown. It was a cab that had sidled onto Fifth Avenue from the shadows. In my recollection, the traffic had been heavy around Longacre Square and Forty-Second Street, a place so filled with carriages that it was impossible to determine whether we still had a tail. I gazed out the window and couldn’t stop shaking.
Surely it was Crenfall, I thought. My father wouldn’t have the good sense to have me followed.
The team of horses came to a halt, and I couldn’t help a sigh of relief at the familiar sight outside the window. Mrs. Northe’s Fifth Avenue town house—
But then panic seized me again. If she’d called upon my father, I’d never be let out of my room. I’d lose any freedom my post at the Metropolitan had offered, and I’d be off to the convent for sure.
The man who had collared me outside 66 Anthony Street dragged me roughly out of the carriage and nearly pushed me up the walk to Mrs. Northe’s home. He likely expected me to ask him who he was or make some claim of protestation. Maybe he knew I didn’t speak. He didn’t say a word either but gripped my arm as he pressed the bell. I shrugged him off to stand proudly. I had nothing to be ashamed of.
And yet, in the next moment, I stood ashamed and dressed as a boy in Mrs. Northe’s foyer as she looked me up and down.
She examined me as if measuring my disguise, circling me and clucking her tongue. Despite my fear and embarrassment, I detected a bit of pride in Mrs. Northe’s face.
“You,” she said, her tone scolding, “have read too many books.”
She waited. I assume she wanted me to agree. I shrugged.
She continued. “And you put yourself in grave danger and I shall not easily forgive you for it. And I may have to tell your father.”
I furiously signed pleas, begging her not to doom me.
And then she smiled. “Unless you tell me everything that happened. I had my man follow you in case you did something unforgivably stupid. He was to bring you directly to me once you satisfied your…curiosity.”
“Your man?” I signed. “He was hardly a gentleman,” I added, rubbing the arm he had grabbed.
“I don’t pay him to be a gentleman. I pay him to be quiet and brilliant.”
“I was gathering evidence,” I signed. “You said we couldn’t sit back—”
“Indeed. Do tell. But only after you’ve made yourself back into a woman. And good God, wipe that terrible thing off your throat. That’s hideous. But quite well done, I must say.”
I loved this woman. Once dressed, I did tell her everything, and she escorted me home at a full three in the morning! I slipped in and up the stairs while everyone was asleep. I still wonder how she knew to have me followed. Her instincts were usually uncanny, yes, but that had been downright psychic.
But without further ado, here’s the tale of 66 Anthony Street.
It was so dark in the place that one could easily get away with murder. And so likely the fiend assumed, rightly so, that he would not be recognized again—even with the newspaper descriptions. He did not bother to remove his hat or his cloak, which served to further obscure his face.
I did not immediately slip in behind the creature, of course. I have more sense than that. I waited until a few minutes had passed and then mounted the crumbling stairs and slipped into another world. It was as distinctly different a threshold as stepping through a painting…
I did not worry that the vile possessor of Denbury would notice my entrance. The place was hazy with smoke and deep in shadow. Even after the darkness of night, my eyes needed a moment to adjust. I was shocked that the place was unlocked, though I had noticed silhouettes at windows, likely paid to watch the front door from up above and from across the street. This was an area the police were loath to visit. Vice had a reprieve here.
From the exterior, the building looked like an average town house, not terribly run down, but its drawn curtains and shuttered windows hid the hazy, acrid reality from outside view.
Once inside, I could see that the main parlor was strewn with bodies. The fiend walked among them, keeping his face to the shadows and tucking a wad of money into his pocket. I shuddered anew when I saw another familiar face already within the establishment. Standing against the wall and looking like an awkward statue as a shaft of light unpleasantly illuminated him was Crenfall.
It was good indeed that I was in disguise. A frisson of fear ran through me. Almost immediately, I felt a hand upon my shoulder. But no one was there. I saw a faint pulse of hazy white light. My angel. He was reaching out to me, aiding me in a way only his soul could.
And I suddenly felt invincible.
I thought I’d walked into a veritable morgue, but the bodies strewn about stirred listlessly, a swarm of nearly naked flesh with pipes hanging from their mouths. Permeating the room was the stench of body odor, perfume, sweat, and smoke. The smoke had a peculiar scent, and then I realized what it must be: opium. An opium den. As I reached that realization, a portly man towered over me. His eyes were slanted in suspicion—the proprietor, no doubt. His Irish accent was brash.
“I don’t know ye, boy. And I know everyone who walks through that door,” he said, and then his eyes flickered over to the fiend possessor with confused fear.
Likely, as Denbury’s possessor had said, the familiar clientele had merely moved to a new address, and I was not a welcome member. I had prepared my written tablet and prayed to God that the proprietor could read.
I want a girl, my paper said.
The proprietor laughed. “And yer too scared to say so? How old are ye, thirteen?”
I shifted my cravat to reveal the scar. I turned the page of my notebook, the phrase having been written: You do not want to know how I received that.
The proprietor seemed delighted and intrigued, and his nervous glances toward Denbury eased with this new game. “Pick yer lass if ye got the money,” he said.
I lifted up a promising bill. His watery eyes widened.
“How ’bout the quiet one? Ye’ll make quite a pair.” He reached into the shadows—with frightening nimbleness for such a round man—and pulled a scrawny young woman, likely my age, into the lamplight. She cringed and would not look me in the eye. My heart broke for her.
A larger, fierce-eyed woman launched herself from the wall upon which she’d been leaning and moved closer. Her gaze flickered from Denbury’s body to me to the proprietor to the girl he had grabbed. The girl also regarded the form of Denbury with horror. The women strewn about the ground were too drowsy and in the haze of opium to notice him. That could be the last mistake of their lives.
I nodded to the girl and then turned to look at the other woman.
“You’re a pretty lad. Why don’t you take me and leave poor Cecilia alone? You need a woman to teach you a thing or two, boy, not another mute.”
Cecilia.
My heart convulsed. I heard the Whisper. This is why I was here. I would yet save a life tonight.
I had to calm my racing heart and focus on the larger woman protecting this girl. I liked her for it, though I shuddered to think they actually believed I was a boy. I stared at Cecilia. Another mute? My heart broke further. I wished I could help any and every woman who had fallen into this trap. This entire situation was unbelievably upsetting.
The proprietor was hovering. “No, Midge, the boy takes Cecilia. We need to get her…”
He trailed off when I handed him another bill, hoping money would ensure his cooperation or at least keep him from being meddlesome. The wealthy had long made a habit of getting away with things relative to how much they could pay for silence. I made a motion for him to leave us in peace. He whistled and did so.
Cecilia stared at me blankly. She took my hand in her tiny one and began to lead me down the hall. I resisted and held up a hand, motioning for her to wait. I was on the lookout for the beast in Denbury’s body. He had taken up the pipe of a hookah and was sitting with a woman splayed across him. My blood roared in my veins to see a man I cared for so sullied. It took everything in me not to draw my blade upon the beautiful creature, to call him out for everything he was and demand he be accountable. My own reaction was startling. My protectiveness toward Jonathon had made me brave. Or stupid.
There was another stilling hand upon my shoulder, a reminder sent to me upon the wings of our tied souls. The man I cared for was not physically here. I needed to stay on task for him.
The tall woman, Midge, leaned close. “You’re interested in that dandy, aren’t you? Your eyes keep flickering over to him and have since you walked in. Are you here for him, rather than for a good time?”
I shook my head, not wanting my business known. I took Cecilia’s hand with more authority and began to lead her into one of the open rooms lit by a tallow candle just a yard away. At the door I paused. Cecilia led me into the tiny room furnished only with a bed and reeking of smells I do not wish to recount.
She shut the door behind her and turned to me, trembling, in her moth-eaten chemise and thin skirt. These were her underthings, and the idea of having to sit in rooms only in one’s undress was horrifying. She batted mousy brown hair out of her eyes and began to fumble at my cravat, noticing the scar with a frown.
Moving her hand aside, I backed away. She looked at me, confused, and gestured to herself as if her body was self-explanatory. I shook my head. I was with one of my kind, which was perfect—no one would know what we were talking about!
I signed: “I need help. Information.”
She stared at me blankly. “There’s a man out there.” I gestured beyond the door and kept signing. “Handsome. But odd—”
She kept staring at me with a hollowed gaze. My heart sank. Of course she didn’t know sign language. I scribbled the same sentences on my pad of paper. She stared at the paper, then up at me, and shook her head. Of course she couldn’t read.
I was a privileged fool, and I made note to thank God and my father more often for what I had been given that so many women of the age had not.
Her tired face with its sunken cheekbones softened, and it seemed almost as if she wanted to laugh. We were quite the pair.
I pulled out the newspaper. Perhaps the picture would help. I pointed to the police sketch resembling Denbury. Cecilia pointed out to the main parlor. Her eyes widened. I pointed at the picture and opened my hands, helpless. I hoped she would see that I needed information, and then I’d find a way to warn her of the danger I inexplicably knew she was in.
Cecilia held up a finger and left the room before I could reach for her. The proprietor was immediately barking at her, telling her he’d kill her if she abandoned a client. He then started barking at Midge. I opened the door and held out another bill into the hallway. I didn’t want to attract the demon Denbury’s attention.
Cecilia returned with Midge, who laughed and closed the door behind her. “I suppose Cecilia still doesn’t know how to take off a man’s clothes.” She started in on me, and I had to bat her hands away. “Oh, don’t be scared, little boy.” The tall woman chuckled. I shook my head.
I again lifted the newspaper article. I wrote on my pad. I would try again with Midge.
“Did you know Barbara? What do you know about him?” I wrote and gestured to the hall. The tall woman could read, at least passably. I was relieved. But her eyes widened.
“Jesus, the police are sending them young these days. How old are you, thirteen? You’re too pretty to be much older. You some sort of spy? If you’re here to arrest us, I’d like to see you try.”
I vehemently shook my head.
“Or…perhaps you knew Barbara?” she asked. I made my gaze tortured. “Ah,” she added. “I see. I’m sorry. Terrible way to go.”
“Did you see ‘Barry’ that night?” I wrote.
“No,” Midge replied, “but my friends, they did. He’s been about the area for a week, I’d say, ’round the Points. Hadn’t thought him the violent type, big with the smoking and taking a lot of women. He’s a fine-looking one but weird, they say.”
Poor Denbury, his gentlemanly body thrown to such depths.
“Weird, how?” I wrote.
“The other girls at Cross Street said he wanted to know all their names. Like he was obsessed with them, so the boss tries to make nice and Knox starts rattling off a list, you know, and when he got to Barbara, Mr. Fancy over there let out a strange noise. ‘That one,’ he said. ‘I want that one. I want her head.’ Right crazy, if you ask me,” Midge muttered.
Something jarred me, and my mind struggled to make sense of it. Names.
“He got what he wanted, didn’t he?” Midge said sadly. “Beheaded her. And now he’s back. Seems he’s paid the whole block so much money no one will turn him in. No one ever listens to us anyway, sure not the police. They want nothin’ to do with these acres of hell. But a beheading, shouldn’t that count for something? Aren’t we human? Don’t we deserve better than that?”
I nodded my utmost agreement.
And then it came to me. Barbara. Beheaded. There was a girl back at the asylum obsessed with Catholic saints. Mary O’Donnell had relished telling of all the awful, ungodly ways in which they were martyred. Saint Barbara was beheaded. Jonathon had said that the beast mentioned the forty martyrs of England before overtaking him. Mary had listed those martyrs to me all in a torrent that was quite impressive. I recalled that several of them were named John…Jonathon. But the beast had wanted to call him John, like the saints.
“What’s in a name”…indeed. The beast was going to kill as many saints as possible. They were offerings to his mad quest. Sacrifices. Martyrs.
My eyes widened. The women were staring at me.
And then the proprietor pounded on the door. “Cecilia!” he cried. “When yer done in there—and with a boy that young, I daresay it won’t take long—ye’ve got another one who’s taken with ye. A right British gent.”
Cecilia’s eyes grew wide.
Poor Saint Cecilia, how did she die?
I desperately tried to recall the other names Mary had imparted to me. As Lutherans, we’re not as enamored of the saints, but such gruesome deaths were ingrained in me. Saint Cecilia had withstood many death attempts—suffocation, beheading, crucifixion. I could only imagine how Denbury would try this in a brothel room.
“You must get her out of here,” I scribbled furiously, and Midge read my note aloud to Cecilia as I wrote. “She has the name of a saint. It’s about the saints. Tell any woman who has the name of a saint to change it, until he’s caught.”
Cecilia looked as if she was going to faint.
Midge pursed her lips. “Boy, we’re all named for saints. There’s a hell of a lot of them,” she retorted. I gave her an exasperated look. “Well, we’ve nicknames too. Best use those. Come, I’ve a place we can go,” Midge murmured, gathering Cecilia. “I’m not letting anything happen to you, girl. I swore to protect you, and I mean it.”
Midge turned to me. “Thank you, lad. I don’t know who but God sent you. May heaven and the saints be praised indeed. I’ll tell any girl I know.” She opened the door cautiously. Stepping outside, she grabbed Cecilia and hid her tiny frame in front of her as they moved quickly to a rear door. I followed, not wanting to face that beautiful demon again. The reality of how closely I had flirted with danger was overwhelming, and I felt sick to my stomach.
We were out the door before I heard the proprietor’s yelp. Midge and Cecilia didn’t wait or say another word. They were off into the shadows down alleys they knew far better than I did. I was between tenement buildings, a pile of wood scraps on one side of me and a stinking pile of trash on the other, rats squeaking between the two.
I was wondering how to get back to the front of the building and the carriage I hoped was still waiting where the streets opened onto a grim open space as the five streets came together, hence the name Five Points.
And that’s when Mrs. Northe’s man clapped me. The dread of the situation had begun to take hold once I saw panic on faces other than my own, so I’m surprised I did not have a fit right there when I was seized. I think the saints were with me after all.
I related all of this to Mrs. Northe, who was incredulous, but she commended me so highly for my deduction about the saints that you’d have thought I’d cured some disease with my brilliance. I couldn’t stop blushing. Once I was presentable as a lady again, she seated me in her study and we discussed the matter.
“This is the key!” she cried. “Not only to the victims, but perhaps to even more. Well done, Natalie!”
She took her seat opposite me and leaned in, speaking excitedly. “Naming has great power,” Mrs. Northe said, “despite Shakespeare’s protestation, a phrase our devil was all too eager to quote. Countless instances in works of folktale and faith invoke the power of the name. Poor Hagar, banished when she was about to give birth, is unnamed in the Bible until God calls her by name and establishes her for the ages. There are times when names are avoided, as in the case of something very evil, when things or persons shall not be named. Speaking the name is thought to give the unspeakable some power. Other instances may occur to you.”
I grinned and a small sound of amusement came from me. I signed out many letters. “Rumpelstiltskin.”
Mrs. Northe laughed.
I gestured to my forearm, thinking of my dream, Denbury’s arm, and Barbara’s corpse.
“It would seem carving the names is part of harnessing that power. I can’t piece it together yet, and that may speak to greater spell-crafting. I can’t think this only has to do with poor Lord Denbury. This devil has a bigger game afoot.” She scratched her head. “Runes. Allusions to many faiths mixed with base signs of witchcraft and paganism, the stuff from which all faith was born. It has no one ownership. And that frightens me.”
“Why?” I signed.
“Well, if it were just full of the telltale signs of the Golden Dawn, theosophy, or some sort of subverted Masonic rite, we could just adhere to that for our answer, couldn’t we? Just find the right restricted, scandalous book? But this is something new, and like I’d said, all those jealous gods pitted against one another in this ragtag assortment of religious weaponry. Jealousy makes sane men mad and gentle persons into murderers. Who knows what demons may do with it? Now how do we turn that very power back upon the beast?
“Let’s think through the procedure Lord Denbury related. It’s that phrase the demon said. I know that’s the key, but it’s not complete enough to send him back.” She pointed at the phrase, running her finger over it and tapping one particular word. “This word does not make sense. It is not Latin. Part of it, but not the whole.”
I cringed as she said a few of the words aloud, but she did so in English, rather than Latin—so that any power of the word was hopefully dispelled in translation.
“I send the soulren through the door…” She made a face. “In Latin or English, it doesn’t make any sense. But once we wrap our minds around that final piece, we’ll have the spell. Perhaps with the name thrown in—do you recall if he used the name Jonathon or John in the midst of the incantation? Because I find it hard to believe the beast wouldn’t have been specific about it.”
“John,” I signed. “But the fiend gave no name. Without his, can we reverse the spell?”
“I don’t know, and how could we gain such access? How do we lure and keep him close without his suspecting?”
An idea began to form like a ghost in the back of my mind. It terrified me, but the moment I began to dream it up, much like following the fiend, I knew it was right. I could speak in Denbury’s world. It was time I started speaking in this one. No one would suspect me. Until it mattered most.
I took a deep breath and tried to speak, ignoring how much I hated the sound. The words were rough, and they came at great cost, amid tears, and it took a long time to wrestle with each sentence, to muscle each word. Mrs. Northe took my hand, patiently encouraging me.
Something supernatural had cured my voice. I had to imagine it possible here.
I thought of the press of Jonathon’s spirit, a helping and encouraging hand, from one heart to another. I tried. And I spoke, though it seemed to take years to make my point.
“I spoke in Lord Denbury’s world,” I said, my voice slow. Dull. I struggled against my distaste. But I thought about the ease of my voice within the painting. It had grown strong there, and that helped me now. “I need to speak…in this world. If the devil comes…in ritual…I’ll lure him close enough…to reverse the spell. He saw me. At the Art Association. And…I do not flatter myself to say that he liked what he saw.” I shuddered. “He made that quite clear. But he won’t suspect a woman he thinks mute, will he?”
Mrs. Northe watched me, worried, as if she wanted to fight this but couldn’t.
“The longer we delay…the more women will die,” I said.
We sat in silence for a while before Mrs. Northe said, “You must go to Denbury once more. Keep up his spirits. We need him whole. He’ll need to be a strong anchor of soul and conscience if this can be reversed well. You bring hope into his darkened world. And he’ll need every shred of it. Do you love him?”
I was unprepared for the question, but there was no use fighting it. “Yes.” The word came out very clearly.
“Good. That will help.”
Mrs. Northe did not agree to my plan, but she did not argue against it. The struggle on her face told me she wasn’t sure she could. Then she arranged to take me home, and I crept in here to my bedchamber to relate all this.
I shall begin practicing, softly and in English, the phrase that must be said. Mrs. Northe and I will puzzle over the word we cannot make sense out of—I dare to use the Latin—animusren. A word that is and isn’t Latin at once. But if I don’t know what it means, then I have no power. But once I do…I will take the magic. And wield it.
Facing the impossible seems to be what I was made for, and I only pray my courage matches the boldness of my plans. I pray for Cecilia and all her kind. May they be safe this night. May Providence grant them a way out of a life that few would choose to live.