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The doctor reclined against the cushions heaped at the end of the divan, eyeing Will with some amusement as the other man turned the mouthpiece in his fingers in suspicion.
“You may come with me or not, as you choose. Perhaps you would like to watch for a few minutes to be sure I am not killed by the substance, eh?”
“Go with you? Surely each of us will have a different experience.”
Will narrowed his eyes at Falke. He turned his doubting face to Elke but found her as rigid and immobile in her chair as an upright corpse, her eyes dull and unblinking, her fair skin blanched to the pallor of the dead. He reached out a hand to touch hers and found his fingers resting upon ice. His gaze swiveled to Falke where he lounged against the cushions.
“Damn you, Falke, what has happened to Elke?”
Elke spoke, her voice hollow, her lips motionless. “I am here, Willsome, as I am there in that far land.”
Falke lifted his mouthpiece. “She is our bridge, Dovedale. We will journey to the same place because of her, yet it is not the only place. Not nearly. Watch, then follow.”
The doctor put the silver tip to his lips and drew in a breath as though smoking. The blood in the belly of the hookah roiled and burbled. The vapor whirled into storm, dashing its insubstantial mass against the glass and dipping into the frothing pool beneath it. Falke held for a moment the lungful he had drawn in, then released his breath with a shuddering moan. He emitted no vapor upon the air. Immediately, he took another pull on the mouthpiece. This time, when he released his breath, his head fell back against the cushions as though something vital had abandoned him. His hand fell away to hang over the edge of the divan and the silver mouthpiece dropped to the carpet. There was less vapor in the hookah.
Will watched for a few moments. Falke’s eyes had closed until only a slim, flat glimmer of color showed beneath his lashes. His mouth hung open as though he meant to speak but his breath had grown so shallow that Will could no longer hear it. Where Falke seemed suspended, Elke had taken on the emptiness of the crypt. The weighty silence in the room at last decided him, and Will raised his own mouthpiece and drew in a mighty breath. The vapor dived and splashed in its crimson bath, clinging to the fat drops thrown upon the glass as it was pulled into the leather hose and then Will’s lungs.
It filled him with the taste of stone and iron, the chill and melancholy of the foggy London night. In an instant, he was there, in the cobbled back lanes where the houses and shops leaned close and the fog throttled the light from the meager lamps. The darkness was palpable, brushing its damp pelt against his face, trying to merge with him, to possess his limbs and dwell in the haunted chambers of his heart. The sensation was both terrifying and intoxicating. It was familiar. Sweet.
His vision adapted to the deep gloom with a preternatural acuity. The sooty backs of narrow row cottages pressed around him, but the city seemed abandoned. He looked up into the night sky, unable to see the waning August moon he knew must be there and cast about for some sign of occupancy. Surely, he thought, some creature must be about, if only a rat. As though summoned, the tapping of heels on the cobbles echoed from the mouth of an alley ahead of him. A faint luminescence turned the blackness there to dirty grey, and Elke stepped forth.
“Come.” She beckoned with a languid wave of her hand. “There is someone who would look upon your face.”
Heartened, Will strode forward into the narrow passageway. Brief as it was, he seemed to walk for quite a distance toward the silhouette at the alley’s opposite end. Elke had vanished, and with her the shivery light. The air grew colder until it became painful to breathe. The waiting figure seemed diminutive, womanish; yet Will found he was loathe to approach it and despised himself for a coward.
When he was still several feet from it, he stopped. It dangled a dark lantern from one hand, its skirts stirring restlessly in an unfelt breeze. He could make out no features, but its posture was familiar in the way of a long-forgotten memory.
“Who are you? Why do you come to me?” His hand dipped into his coat pocket in search of the little pistol. Instead, it closed over the handle of a knife, the long blade sticky against his fingertips. “Show yourself,” he growled.
The figure raised the lantern and flame bloomed inside it. In the ruddy halo of light, Will saw the bruised face and slashed throat of a middle-aged woman. Blood soaked her torn skirts. What Will had taken for the stirring of folds of fabric was the swaying of ropes of intestine. She smiled at him. Her front teeth were gone, and blood smeared her chin.
“Well, me handsome lad. Polly’s come to give ye a kiss for the smile ye gave me.” She turned her chin toward her shoulder and tilted her head back … and back, until Will could count her vertebrae.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” The woman shrugged her lolling head back into place with a wet slap. In the blink of an eye, she stood before Will, her hand raised toward his face. Her nails were torn and ragged, her fingers broken and bloody, and she pressed her crooked thumb to his forehead. “Now ye’re marked and known. Hell’s waiting.”
Will drew forth the knife with a yell and slashed at the apparition, but the woman was gone. He lurched from the passageway into a street he knew as Buck’s End and flung the blade into the gutter where it dissolved into a creeping puddle of blood that filled the troughs between the uneven cobbles.
“Falke,” Will roared. “Where the devil are you?”
The filth and smog of Buck’s End trembled and warped around him, and then he was standing ankle deep in snow at the edge of a pine forest. Inscrutable mountains pushed their feet forward at the boundaries of the meadow, and snow drifted out of a leaden sky in lazy spirals. Will spun in a bewildered circle, his gaze alighting on Falke seated on a low, flat rock, his back to the dense woodland. Elke walked among the trees, her fingers trailing over their wintry hides.
“Where have you been,” Falke asked, bolting to his feet. “I thought you’d remained behind, but Elke told me you’d followed us.”
Will churned through the snow and caught Falke by his shirt front. “What devilment are you at, Doctor,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “I do not find your play amusing.”
“Take your hands off me, Dovedale. Must you act like a lunatic? We have been here for several minutes awaiting you. Elke said you had a visitor. It is extremely rare, as far as I can tell. I have never seen another soul here.” Falke smoothed his rumpled clothing, peering at Will through the snow. “What is that on your forehead?”
Will raised his hand and felt the offending mark, a sticky seal the size of one small thumbprint that melted to an oily slick on his fingertips. Looking down, he saw his hands bathed in blood. Falke followed his gaze, staring at Will’s hands, and then back into his eyes.
“What are you seeing, Dovedale? It is a message not meant for my eyes.”
“The past,” Will murmured, pushing his hands into his pockets.
"What Will had taken for the stirring of folds of fabric was the swaying of ropes of intestine." Well there's an image that's never leaving my brain! I truly cannot wait to see what horrors you concoct next Liz. This story is so full of twists and turns that it's impossible for me to guess how it's going to end.
So Falke gets scenic views and Will gets visited by his past? Interesting! (And utterly terrifying)