A Taste for Monsters Read online

  “When will he come?”

  Dr. Treves checked the telegram. “Wednesday next. Sometime around three o’clock.”

  Mr. Merrick nodded, and after the doctor had fulfilled the obligation of his daily visit and left, my friend seemed quite contented. “How fortunate I am,” he said, both to me and, it seemed, to himself.

  I marveled at his good cheer. “Begging your pardon, but that’s not a word many would use for someone in your condition.”

  “True,” he said. “But consider that I have but to ask for a thing, say, a visit from a Cambridge professor, and it seems the world stands ready to deliver it to my door. Consider the friends I have. Consider the generosity shown to me.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Are you not fortunate to have your position here at the hospital?”

  “Indeed, I am,” I said. “But I can’t easily forget the unfortunate circumstances that made it necessary in the first place.”

  “I’d rather not balance life as a ledger,” he said. “I prefer to attend to the gains and ignore the losses.”

  “Some losses can’t be ignored,” I said, suspicious of his optimism even as I wished for it.

  He chuckled. “Then perhaps I would have made a dreadful clerk.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, and smiled back at him. “But I suppose your method of accounting is a part of what draws so many to visit you. Like the professor.”

  “Hmph,” he said.

  Or like the ghost of Polly Nichols, I thought, but left unsaid.

  After that, I saw to his dinner, the nurses bathed him, and I bade him good night. Rather than go back to my room, I decided to take a stroll through the hospital gardens, as Mr. Merrick said that he had done. The sun had set, but the sky hadn’t completely given itself over to the stars, and I enjoyed a twilit walk along the gravelly paths, a few of the flowers still clinging to their stems against the autumn death. I thought myself alone, and had brought down my shawl to enjoy the air, but as I neared a tall oak tree a figure emerged from behind it, startling me a few steps backward.

  “Good evening,” the figure said, a man. “Forgive me, Miss Fallow, is it? I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  He stepped out of the shadows, and I recognized him as the blond doctor who’d admitted the patients at the gate on my first day at the hospital. “Oh, Doctor, it’s quite all right,” I said, then curtsied. “Yes, I’m Evelyn Fallow.” I moved to raise my shawl.

  “Oh, no need to trouble yourself with that on my account,” he said. “Phossy jaw, yes? I’ve treated much worse.”

  His rough honesty snagged me mid-act. I paused, considered what he must see in the normal course of his occupation, and then lowered the shawl back to my shoulders. So far, the hospital had offered me the acquaintance of several people with whom I felt I could be open. That was part of what I’d hoped for in coming here, and it meant a great deal to me. I could feel less singular—more like a normal woman.

  “I’m Dr. Tilney,” he said. “Francis Tilney.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Doctor.” I curtsied again and moved to go around him. “Good night—”

  “Wait a moment,” he said, and stepped in front of me. “I … How do you find him?”

  “How do I find who, sir?”

  “Merrick.”

  I wondered at the source of his curiosity. “I find him most agreeable.”

  He nodded. “He is that. But his appearance … it doesn’t disturb you?”

  “I …”

  “Oh, come, come.” He looked around us, his blond hair a ribbon of bronze in the gloaming. “We’re alone on a garden walk at night, Miss Fallow. I can think of no better circumstance for confessions, and your secret shall be safe with me.”

  His brusque affability put me at ease, and somehow, I believed I could trust him. “I was quite disturbed at first. But not anymore.”

  “Truly?”

  “No, sir.”

  He leaned away from me. “You impress me, Miss Fallow. Took me the better part of three months to grow accustomed to the man.”

  “Do you know him well? I’ve never seen you—”

  “Oh, I haven’t been to his quarters for some time, since before the high society ladies started calling on him. Merrick was even more pitiful back then. Practically mute. Lonely. He’d tried walking about the hospital corridors, you see, but gave such a terrible shock to the other patients, Treves asked him to stay in his rooms. Some of us were then ordered to go and provide him with regular company.”

  “That was kind of you.”

  “It was kind of Treves, to be sure. But I was never quite up to the task, to be honest.” He paused, his eyes vacant, as if caught up in a memory. “The Elephant Man. Always looked more like … I don’t know. A tapir or somesuch, to me. But anyway, his fame spread, and soon he had no further need for the likes of me.”

  “I’m sure he appreciated you.”

  “I’m sure I made no impression on him, whatsoever.”

  “You might be surprised, Doctor. I’m certain he would enjoy another visit from you.”

  “Yes, well.” He coughed. “I’m very busy with my duties, and I’ve just been invited to lecture at the medical college, which is quite an honor, but demanding, and will be, um …”

  I shook my head a little at his excuses.

  He seemed to notice, and paused for a moment, looking into my eyes. “Do you know,” he then said, “perhaps I will. You inspire me, Miss Fallow.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  He stepped aside, opening the path for me. “I won’t delay you any further, but I trust you will maintain the utmost secrecy of our conversation.”

  I curtsied. “Of course, Dr. Tilney. Good evening.”

  “Good evening to you.”

  I strolled past him, a smile stretching my scars tight, and a moment later I heard him whistling away behind me into the night. I resisted the temptation to turn and look, and went to my room, where I readied for bed and then lay there thinking of Dr. Tilney. I was very aware he wasn’t interested in me beyond my connection to Mr. Merrick. Yet, I appreciated that during our conversation he had taken no particular notice of my scars. He hadn’t stared at them or averted his eyes from them. In his presence, I very nearly felt as though they didn’t matter at all. And I don’t think I’d ever felt that way around anyone else before.

  It occurred to me that was likely the most I could ever expect from a man, but it was far more than I’d dared hope for until then. I tried to content myself with this notion, even though it still left a painful longing that followed me into sleep.

  The next morning, I found Mr. Merrick pallid, his disposition worsened considerably from the day before, reminding me of his state following Polly’s first visitations, but this time it didn’t require a great deal of inducement for him to confess the reason.

  “This morning a second ghost came,” he said quietly from his bed, and I saw his slender arm quivering.

  My body went rigid. “A second?”

  “Polly came at the time she usually does. She said the things she always says, about William and her father. Then she left, and I went to sleep and—” His voice collapsed to silence, and few moments later, tears fell from both eyes. “But then …” His body began to rock back and forth. “She woke me.”

  My mouth had dried out. “Who?”

  He shrank from me. “She was leaning right over me, her mouth wide open, as if she meant to devour me. And she was wailing … the sound … Oh, God. I cried out, but no one came.”

  “Oh, Mr. Merrick—”

  “I hoped you would come. Maybe you would know, somehow, and maybe if you came, she would leave me.”

  “How long was she here?”

  “I don’t know. But after she screamed at me, she started sobbing, and that was when she finally departed.”

  “Mr. Merrick—”

  “I don’t want her to return,” he said. “I—I can accept Polly, but not her. Not her.”

/>   “That Professor Sidgwick will be here Wednesday,” I said. “That’s but four days off. Surely he’ll know something you can do.”

  “But what until then?” His cries had assumed the quality of a young boy that his innocence often suggested, pathetic and small. “I can’t bear it, Evelyn. I can’t!”

  “I’ll be with you,” I said, before thinking better of it, and felt regret coming swiftly on. “I’ll … sit with you.”

  His sobbing lulled. “You will?”

  I found a resoluteness, or perhaps simply resignation. “Yes.”

  “Oh, Evelyn, thank you. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Merrick.” I cleared my voice. “But let’s—let’s go about our day and try not to worry ourselves, right?”

  He sighed. “Yes. You’re right. Let’s try not to worry.”

  “Very good. This day won’t be unlike any other. Starting with your breakfast.”

  “I’ll try to eat.”

  “That’s good, Mr. Merrick,” I said, and for the rest of that day I did my utmost to hide my fear and maintain an air of confidence that could not have been more false. I was nearly frightened out of my senses at the thought of what awaited me at Mr. Merrick’s bedside, but I would not abandon him to face the spectres alone. I wondered who she might have once been in life, but it wasn’t until the afternoon that I considered the possibility that the leather-aproned demon prowling Whitechapel had claimed another victim. Beatrice confirmed that suspicion later in the evening over our dinner as she read from the Star.

  “Cheese and Crust, he’s killed another one,” she said.

  “He never!” Martha said.

  Becky sat beside her, eyes wide, shaking her head.

  “Says it were over on Hanbury Street near Osborn,” Beatrice said. “Says her throat were cut and her abdomen—oh … oh dear Lord in Heaven.”

  “What is it?” Martha asked, leaning forward.

  Beatrice covered her mouth. “Her—her viscera were—”

  “Stop it!” Becky shouted. “Stop it, stop it! It is too dreadful!”

  “Easy now,” Beatrice said. “I’ll not read on if it upsets you so.”

  I felt my gorge rising, as much due to what I imagined Beatrice had been about to read as to the surety that Mr. Merrick’s new visitor was in all likelihood the very same woman whose murder Beatrice detailed, and I’d promised to be there when she came to haunt. I resolved to find out what I could about her before she came.

  “What time was she murdered?” I asked Beatrice, for if she followed after Polly’s manner, she would arrive upon the hour of her death.

  “Uh …” Beatrice looked the paper over. “Between a quarter to five and a quarter to si—Cheese and Crust, them’s daylight hours!”

  “What was her name, Beatrice?” I asked.

  “Annie,” she read. “Annie Chapman.”

  “What does it say about her?”

  “Let’s see. She’d quarreled with a woman who kicked her breast. Didn’t have enough money for her lodging last night. She was seen drinking at the Ten Bells pub with a man. He was five foot six with a dark mustache and—”

  “Does it say anything about her?” I asked. “Her family? What sort of woman she was?”

  Beatrice shook her head. “No, nothing like that.”

  I nodded, feeling frustrated and afraid of the unknown.

  Beatrice went on. “But they’s charging a penny for those what wants to get a look at the scene of the crime. The dried-up blood is still there, it says. Twenty-nine Hanbury Street, behind the—”

  I rose from the table with a suddenness that stopped her speaking. “I’ll hear no more of this,” I said, and stalked away, down the corridor to my room, where I lay down in exhausted horror. It didn’t shock me that someone would charge for such a thing, nor that others would pay, but it disgusted me.

  A few moments later, Becky rushed in after me and flopped onto her bed, followed by a trudging, sullen Martha. “I wanted to leave, too,” Becky said to me. “Martha didn’t. Beatrice is back to going on about it.”

  “Ain’t you curious at all?” Martha asked, still standing by the door.

  “No,” Becky said. “I got no desire to have that in my head. And if you do, you can go back to Beatrice by yourself.”

  “Right, then,” Martha said, pointing her nose up. “I will.” After which, she did, leaving me and Becky alone in the room.

  “That Martha,” Becky said, lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. “She don’t have no sense or thoughts of her own. Let’s not talk about it, eh? Let’s not say one word about it.”

  I closed my eyes. “Very well.”

  “It’s not right, dwelling on it. It’s like thinking on the Devil.”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Not supposed to think on the Devil. Gives him power over you.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “I’m not gonna think on this—this maniac, either.”

  “Good.”

  “My head don’t need filling with … with blood and entrails and—and let’s not think on it.”

  “Let’s not.”

  “Why Martha wants to hear about all that, I’ll never know.”

  “Likely not.”

  “She do well to put it out of her mind. Like us.”

  So it went for some time, until Becky had talked her way out of her fear, and Martha had returned to the room, her curiosity likely unsatisfied, for I doubted it was curiosity about the mud that drove a hog to wallow.

  After they’d both gone to sleep, I lay awake in an unremitting state of disquiet, both from this monster, Leather Apron, who might even now be skulking just outside the hospital walls, and from the ghost of his latest victim—Annie Chapman—whom it seemed I was shortly to meet.

  It was a cold night with but a thin, soap shaving of a moon that could barely light my way across the courtyard. I reassured myself that, brazen as he seemed, Leather Apron would not dare ply his death trade within the hospital grounds. I was safe, at least, from him. I did not know if I was truly safe from the ghosts of his victims.

  When I reached Mr. Merrick’s room and entered, I found him in his armchair near the fireplace, his good hand resting atop his other. “Thank you for coming,” he said, but his voice sounded as though it had reached me from someplace much farther away than his body.

  “Of course I came, Mr. Merrick.” I took a seat next to him, my exhausted body all ahum with unease. “Did you still doubt I would?”

  “I never doubted it,” he said. “But I’m grateful.”

  “You won’t be alone,” I said. “No matter what comes through that door.”

  He seemed to be as tired as I was, anticipation as hard a work as any factory labor, and we said nothing more as the minutes seemed to creep around us in their slow passage through the room. I gradually acclimated to my fear as one might to a chill, and soon found myself somewhat entranced by the undulating shadows smeared from the coals across the floor. The pipes and musculature within the hospital walls creaked and trembled around us, as if the building understood what was coming, echoing the state in which we waited and waited.

  Polly appeared at her usual time, and though Mr. Merrick seemed quite undisturbed by her arrival, I was not so accustomed as he, and I startled when the door opened, seemingly of its own accord. When Polly drifted into the room in her gossamer wedding gown, the pain flared up in my jaw as though the white phosphor still burned my marrow. The ghost’s complexion had sickened since the last time I’d seen her, her cheeks sallow, her eyes diminishing into sockets of black.

  “Hello, Polly,” Mr. Merrick said.

  She came right toward him without granting me a glance or nod, though I sat but a foot away from him, and as she passed me her dress brushed against my knee. The shock of that touch stripped me of all warmth, and I gasped. I felt no more maliciousness from her than from a child carrying the plague, but she nevertheless had brought death with her.

  “You kn
ow me?” she asked Mr. Merrick.

  “We have talked before,” Mr. Merrick said. “It is your wedding day.”

  “It is,” she said. “I’m on my way to Saint Bride’s. And I do feel I know you.”

  Mr. Merrick leaned toward her. “I want to tell you something. I want to tell you that William will not leave you, even if he knows the truth about what your father did to you.”

  Polly retreated from him, seeming to lose some of her substance. “How do you know about that?”

  “You told me,” Mr. Merrick said. “It wasn’t right, what he did. It was his wrong, not yours.”

  “You haven’t told William, have you?” she asked, and her voice became a wind in my ears. “You mustn’t tell him! He’ll toss me over!”

  “I haven’t told him,” Mr. Merrick said calmly. “And no, he won’t forsake you.”

  “He will!” she shouted, and I felt her distress crash over me.

  “He won’t,” Mr. Merrick said again.

  “He will! And he’s waiting for me! He’ll think I’ve jilted him!” With that, she turned and rushed from the room, the short train of her gown a wisp of mist, and the door shut behind her. The pain in my jaw subsided with her departure.

  “Why does she come?” Mr. Merrick reached his good hand toward the door, as though he would pull her back. “I can do nothing for her! It does not matter what I say to her. She is inconsolable.”

  “I don’t even know if a spirit can be consoled,” I said.

  He shook his head and then he closed his eyes. “The other one will be here soon.”

  I checked the time on his mantel clock. It was a little after half past three in the morning. Annie Chapman had been murdered between quarter to five and quarter to six, according to what Beatrice had read. “I believe we have perhaps two hours, Mr. Merrick, before she comes.”

  He opened his eyes. “How do you know that?”

  I reluctantly told him about the murder, during and after which he sat forward and became quite agitated. He blinked repeatedly and waved his good hand as his mouth opened and closed like a stuck hinge. “What is … this … this monster? How can he … how can it … do such evil?”

  “I think that’s the question every decent soul in London is asking.”