“Stop it,” Sheila whispered.
“To save money, we didn’t use the hotels…we pitched a tent on a lot in the Fort Wilderness campground? And every morning we’d get our coffee at that little store, and sit on the back porch and feed those ducks that pant like dogs?”
“Ron told you this. You aren’t Ron. Please don’t…please…”
“He’s here. I’m here. We’re…together…”
A moment, and then: “What did we find near the porch?”
“What did we find? You mean…the nest?” They had found eggs in a nest right against the side of the porch. One of the ducks, too greedy for snacks to lay its eggs in a safer place, away from curious children. One day they had discovered the eggs missing, and had been of the hope that the eggs had been safely moved by some employee.
Sheila raised her head from the floor. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God…Ron…”
“Police! Don’t move!”
Of course, Belfast moved. He spun toward the voice out of sheer surprise. At the end of the hall, a police officer with a gun steadied in both fists. The screaming, someone had heard the screaming, or found Drake’s car close by, and the police had come in unheard, Sheila had left the door unlocked, and the cop saw the gun in Belfast’s fist, and Belfast saw ghosts playing across the visor of the cop’s cap and across the metal of his gun…
“Don’t!” Sheila cried at the officer, even as he opened fire.
He was a better shot than Heron had been. Belfast was kicked backwards, his weight bursting open the door of the darkroom. He fell on his back on its floor.
“No!” he heard Sheila cry. “No!”
Around him, the walls were alive with the dead. They ringed the room, their luminous tatters blowing in the winds of limbo. They reached out their glowing hands to him, elongated claws hooked with hunger. Scores of mouths yawning wide…
But the ceiling, mercifully, was still white. He kept his gaze trained there. And then, Sheila’s face entered his vision, her long hair falling down, touching his face. Somehow, the dead did not dance in the black of her eyes.
“Ron,” she whispered. “I love you.” And she touched the face she didn’t know.
“I love you,” Johnny Belfast said, and then died.
John
It was raining hard on this fall night—but so much the better. In clear weather, his outlandish garb had inspired people to follow and harass him, to lift his long black cape for a look. Tonight, at a distance, he could pass for an old man bundled against the elements, hunched over as he walked with the aid of a cane. But of course, wet weather or no, his great cap would be considered odd…and especially the sack-like veil which hung down from it, a slit cut into the material for him to see through.
“Dear God!” many women had cried, when they saw the face shrouded behind that veil. But he didn’t hear this so much any more. No, not since dear Mr. Treves had rescued him from a pitiable life of exhibiting his terrible condition. No; in his small rooms at the back of the London Hospital, his mantel was overcrowded with portraits sent to him by lovely ladies of good standing. It was two years now since his life had changed so drastically, largely due to the efforts of his friend, the esteemed surgeon Frederick Treves. It was as though he had been reborn into an utterly different realm from that squalid hell he had known for over two decades.
So why should he have returned to it tonight, having sneaked out of his rooms where they opened up into a hospital courtyard? What would Treves think of this furtive nocturnal adventure? Even as he hobbled along, guilt weighed heavy in the already unwieldy head of John Merrick…formerly known as the Elephant Man.
But Treves, above anyone, should understand him. Treves should know that his yearnings, his dreams, his desires were as strong and vital as those in any man. They were as intact as the genitals that God had, out of mercy or out of cruelty, left totally unaffected by the hideous disorder.
His genitals and his left hand were both unaffected. And Merrick had previously combined the two so as to find relief from his great loneliness…usually while staring longingly at one or more of his many framed photographs. He had felt guilty enough on those occasions…but tonight was so much worse. Still, though both his body and his shame conspired to burden him, on he went through the night. It must have been well past midnight by now…closer to one.
The great sprawl of the hospital was looming there behind him as he turned into Aldgate. It wasn’t too far from here that he had been exhibited at the time Treves found him. He shuddered at the memory of that long-ago life. The rain had diminished but the wind flapped his veil as if trying to peek beneath it.
A woman was walking toward him from the opposite direction. Merrick swallowed involuntarily. Despite the course his life had taken in recent years, the pretty face of a woman could still frighten him as much as his twisted visage frightened her.
Was she pretty, this woman? Beautiful, perhaps, as his mother had been? Yes, his mother had abandoned him as a child. Yes, left him at a workhouse, never to see him again. Another man might harbor hatred for such a mother…but she had been so beautiful.
Merrick stopped at the entrance to Mitre Square, and watched fidgeting as the woman came closer. She was petite and slender, wearing a green dress with a print of lilies and daisies, a cloth jacket too light for the weather and a black bonnet. Merrick knew why she was out at this early hour. This was why he could summon the courage to beckon to the woman. When she reached him she stopped. It made his stomach gurgle the way she squinted to see into the black hole in the gray flannel of his shroud.
“Can I,” Merrick began, “may I…”
“What d’ya want, old man?” the woman asked, mistaking him for such.
“I’d like to…to pay you…to pay you, dear lady. For…for some kindness.”
“Dear lady?” she chortled. “Kindness?” Her bark of a laugh smelled strongly of gin. She cocked her head a bit as she squinted again at the mask. “What’s wrong with you, then?”
“Please?” Merrick began backing timidly into the square.
“Are you sure you’re able, old man? I don’t wantcha dyin’ atop me!” the woman laughed huskily, but she followed him as he led her into a passageway bordered by a wooden fence, at its end a gate, and a building of brick with a window covered by a steel grate. It was not a romantic spot, admittedly. But even in his most fervid dreams Merrick knew that he could not purchase romance. He could only hope to purchase release from his physical craving.
“First show me yer face, my fine gentleman,” the woman said.
“Please, I can’t ,” Merrick slurred, agitated. “I am…very ill.”
“If you’re so ill then I shouldn’t want to be with you, should I, then?”
“Let me show you my purse instead.”
The woman smiled in the gloom of the passage. “That sounds good enough.”
Merrick reached into his heavy cloak nervously with his good left hand, his right club of an arm hanging helplessly with a mitten over its end. Thus, he was unable to stop the woman when, on impulse, she reached out and lifted the veil anyway.
“Dear god!” she cried.
The club of a right arm smashed her across the face, shattering the bone in her nose. The woman spun, fell against the brick of the building. Merrick seized her now by the collar with his good hand, and repeatedly pounded her face against the bricks until she slithered supine to the wet sidewalk.
He descended upon her, then, wheezing in his efforts. Wheezing in his lust. Wheezing in his anger.
And now she wheezed, as the knife tore horribly through her throat. He plunged its hard metal length into her abdomen, penetrating her, filling her with the heat of his passion as it opened her up to steam in the cold air. This knife he had stolen from his dear friend Treves, the surgeon, might have saved countless lives. But now it had a new function.
The knife had silenced the mocking laughter of another woman only a few minutes earlier tonight. She wouldn’t even consider his proposition. He had wanted to tear her more, but had nearly been seen and he couldn’t afford that. He was too easily identifiable.
