Dan Vyleta - Smoke

Together, she and Charlie finally work their way closer, aware that the fighting has slowed, that it is just one figure beating the other now; that the Smoke is dying down. The Soot that coats the floor is slick like axle grease and they find themselves skidding, then falling gracelessly alongside the prone figures. Thomas is on top. What is on the bottom is motionless and running red with blood.

And still Thomas is beating him, one fist rising into the space above his head and coming down on chest, head, neck, like a toddler in a strop, hammering the floor. She bends down to him, tries to reach him, the mask on his face. He feels her tug at him, turns, goggles black and bulbous. Then he pins her, puts a hand around her throat, throws his weight on her. His fingers are slick with blood, move from her throat, to her face, her hair, tear at her clothing; his body heavy and hot. It’s Thomas, she reminds herself, struggling; Thomas . She manages to hook a hand around the rubber tube that juts from his jaws and yank it up, dislodge the mask; something dark rising in her worse than fear. Then Charlie is there, riding his friend’s back, pushing him down beside her. They hold him wedged between their bodies.

She watches the change: his mouth snarling, threatening her skin, the very teeth turned black with Soot. Then, like a child emerging from a tunnel, something else starts surfacing in Thomas’s eyes. Intelligence. Recognition. It is followed by such an intense burst of shame that she wants to turn away from him, not to burden him with her witnessing. And still his weight lies heavy on her, on her chest, her thighs. She scrambles away, bumps into the lump of flesh that is Julius, the mouth a cavity of tooth stumps, hair ripped out in clumps.

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“He was starved, weak. Skin and bones. Nothing but rage. He did not stand a chance.”

That’s the first thing Thomas says. His left shoulder is dislocated, his hands swollen to twice their size, his shirt ripped to shreds. “Renfrew was right all along. I’m a killer.”

“You were not yourself.”

“Wasn’t I, Charlie?”

He is crouching in a corner, chin curled into his chest. Thomas has yet to look at Livia. She wants to make it easier for him, but it’s hard, past the memory of his body forcing its weight on hers. Her face and shirt are covered with both cousins’ blood.

“It’s over now” is all she manages.

At this, his eyes rise. No tears. That same unblinking stare. Never flinching from the facts.

Not even now.

“Yes, over. My nature is out.” He rises, takes a step towards Mrs. Grendel, then stops. “You do it. See whether she is all right.”

Mrs. Grendel has yet to move. She is sitting on a stool in a corner of the kitchen, huddled into herself. One of her eyes is swelling shut. Other than that she is not visibly hurt. Livia crouches in front of her, tries to talk to her. But the woman stares right through her. It is not that she is unconscious and does not see. Her eyes look beyond, at Julius. On her large, ruddy, working-woman’s hands, the veins crisscross like parcel string.

“We must go,” Charlie whispers behind her. “Find Mowgli.”

“Yes.” Livia stands up, looks down herself. The miner’s shirt is ripped and stained, the blood already half dried. She thinks she can smell it. “I must get changed.”

“There is no time. And you have no other clothes.”

“I must get changed,” she repeats, brusquely, then rushes into her mother’s room.

When she emerges Livia is wearing one of the dresses Sebastian brought for her mother. It is too large for her and feels alien after days spent in men’s clothing. It is as though she has stepped back into another life. She raises the hem as she steps over Julius.

The boys stare at her when she enters the kitchen, even Thomas, beaten, miserable Thomas. She has scrubbed her face and hands with lye soap and a boar-bristle brush. Her body underneath the dress remains as filthy as ever. There just wasn’t the time.

“Hurry,” she says, needlessly. The two boys rush past her at once, each eager not to touch her, now that she is once again a lady. There is a bulk to the petticoat that gives new width to her hips.

Before leaving, Livia returns to Mrs. Grendel one more time.

“Are you all right?” she asks and then, when the woman does not respond: “What is your name, Mrs. Grendel? Your Christian name?”

The delay in the answer is such that Livia has already turned and walked three steps before she hears it.

“Berta,” the beaten woman says. “Berta Grendel.”

They do not say “Good-bye, Berta.” They simply leave.

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Thomas leads. He is spent, broken, hollow-eyed with fear. And yet he leads them, towards the sewer entrance he discovered. Livia and Charlie follow, hand in hand. Her fine dress elicits comments, catcalls, caps doffed in mock homage. London, a city of louts; sleepless, even in the middle of the night, a steady stream of figures peopling its streets. She trades pallid Smoke with her hecklers, stains grey the ruffles of her sleeves. There is, in her Smoke, a tiny whiff of her own thrill at being noticed.

It isn’t long before they reach their destination. An unmarked building, its gateway leading to a courtyard; and there, set into the courtyard’s wall, the brick-rimmed entrance to a stairwell, leading underground. A squalid place, anonymous, the site of an old cesspool now pumped empty. The courtyard is littered with construction materials. A chalkboard screwed into a wall marks the rota of work shifts. Thomas told them that when he found it earlier that day, the entrance had been guarded by a foreman with a ledger, ticking off names against a list. There is no foreman now, nor any workers, no one to tell them that they must not enter at their leisure. There is only one hitch, a problem so simple it has eluded their plans. The entire gateway is blocked by an iron gate.

When he sees it, Thomas covers his face with his hands.

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They try the handle, rattle the doors, study the hinges. The lock is complex and made of steel; the bars sturdy and firm. There are no more than a few inches between the top of the gate and the top of the gateway; less space at the bottom. A cat could squeeze through; a rat. No doubt a thousand have.

Charlie articulates it first. “There we are. After all we have been through. Defeated by a lock.”

His bitterness is fed by Thomas, who continues to stand passively, smokelessly by his side. Livia watches him in his impotence and despair; lets drop again the hand she has raised to touch him. At another time, another hour, they would sit and talk to Thomas, help him mourn. But this is no time for funerals, not even to bury your best friend’s soul.

For five, ten minutes they simply stand there, wallowing in their defeat. Then Livia gathers her skirts in front of her and marches off. The boys follow.

“Where are we going?”

She only answers Charlie when the hotel comes into sight. Two porters stand outside its front steps, each flanked by a lamppost. The rest of the Regency lies in darkness, save for a window on the upper floor. Aschenstedt’s window. She remembers following him to this square; remembers his opening the shutters and looking out.

“We need to find Mother. And there is only one person in the whole world who can tell us where she is.”

“It won’t work. Sebastian has no interest in showing us the way. Besides, you heard what Mrs. Grendel said. He’s being watched.”

Charlie is merely being reasonable. Nonetheless she grows angry at once.

“What else do you want to do? Wait and do nothing?”

They watch the square. Despite the late hour there are quite a few people there, some drinking, some talking, some merely passing through. The longer they watch, the more they are aware of a number of men who do none of these things but simply stand there, in thick overcoats, their eyes on the hotel.