Wait for that moment…
Aaron still held the laudanum bottle in his hand and his eyes now drifted to it and back at Ovee, then from Ovee and onto the bottle. An impossible thought crept into his mind and he stared, dumbfounded at the remaining vials assembled on the far end of the table, his eyes suddenly bulged.
A crippling spasm caught Aaron unaware. Buckled by pain, he brought the vial to the lamp on his desk. Squinting in vain to read the blurred label, he examined the colour of its contents. His jaw dropped. A bone chilling fear ran through him. Overcome by nausea, Aaron scrabbled across the desk for the poison he’d intended for Ovee. The label did not lie. It was the laudanum. “How!” he roared. How had he mistook the two? But he had not.
The two vials had been swapped. Aaron doubled over in pain. He reached for the revolver, aimed it towards the Power cage, then spun round, still aiming. But the astute Ovee had slid away unheard. It was already gone, hiding in the cellar, out of sight. It knew how to disappear.
“To the devil with you!”
Aaron looked around in desperation. There was little time. The poison had yet to invade his bloodstream. He had an hour at most. He was much larger than Ovee and perhaps he would find a way to delay the poison with a little milk. Then he would lock this place forever.
He fumbled to his journal, found the last page and tore it. Then, casting one last sorrowful look at the underground chamber that had failed to fulfil his dreams, he clambered up the staircase.
Days later when Mrs. Cleary, having wondered at length where he was, forced open his bedroom door, she discovered Aaron’s corpse on his bed, his altered will upon his lap. Upon fishing the document from a pool of vomit, she glimpsed the words, “Be wise and do not enter the cellar until the spring”, scribbled in frantic ink at the foot of the page.
She never looked beyond the bed, into the chimney ashes. And it did not matter, because the private letter Aaron had torn from his journal, in shame, was no longer there. The page had long been devoured by the flames, taking its secrets with it:
“It knows. It knows she is gone, never to return. It smells her death on me.
A quiet malice has possessed it since Calista has gone, and it grows more violent every day.
Last month, as I wrote in my journal, I felt it emerge from the Power cage. It was the first time I had witnessed this behaviour. Calista suspected it for weeks prior to her death, but I could not fathom it and so I did not believe her.
Now my fears have been made real, for the beast not only left its rightful place, but it seemed quite content to exist outside the water for almost an hour. And during that time, I felt it advance stealthily towards me.
For a few moments I dared not turn my head but I could feel its presence behind me. It has no voice, but the curling limbs possess in them an essence that screams of evil. I am to blame as the creator of its wrath.
In an instant, and shaking violently, I had seized the revolver in my drawer, loaded it, and aimed my weapon at this creature who had come to a halt near me. It stared back at me with such malevolence I might have thought it had in it some wickedness that resembled revenge.
I don’t know what came over me, but as I studied its eyes, I was overcome by a frightful notion. I could not move. I believed it to be her, my wife, and I could not pull the trigger.
In the meantime, it had somehow understood I meant to kill it, and it promptly returned to the water, still staring at me with its blue and black eyes.
I have asked myself for the last months – why would I believe that Calista continues to live through Ovee? There is no answer. In my delusion, I have come to wonder whether the two of them might not remain bound by her magnetic energy, which has not only eluded death, but flowed elsewhere.
Have I erred?
For every time in the past years when I foolishly believed Calista dissipated the anger and the pain in each of these creatures, was she instead absorbing their rage inside of her?
And is she now returned, bound to this creature, animating it with the rage she carries within her?
If not, where has this rage gone to? It cannot be gone. For how can I explain the new dark patterns which the creature has exhibited before me ever since Calista’s death?
I have pondered now for months.
And each day, not a moment goes by when its bestial eyes are not upon me, following my every gesture. What can it see? What can it understand?
Does it suspect I intend to take its life? That soon, I will pour the poisonous liquid into its watery cage while it rests, and I will put an end to its wickedness.
Chapter 16
How to disappear
London, May 1853
WHITSUNDAY brought a throng of visitors to Regent Park. A great part of the thousands were regulars, taking advantage of this rare glorious day for an outing in London’s beautiful park. On
