The Dirigible Airship Disaster Read online

  “No, a real drink this time,” Jane says.

  “I’ve always wanted to try absinthe.” Elyse flashes her sister a wicked grin over Jane’s hat.

  Jane’s head snaps to Elyse, and Elyse giggles as her sister’s eyes grow wide and her face pales.

  “Well, before Elyse goes and does a foolish thing like make herself a respectable woman, let’s all go on a flight with the green fairy.” Jane tugs them along to the bar.

  “You two have fun. I shall abstain.” Patience purses her lips.

  “Oh, come on.” Jane scoffs, imitating Patience’s repressed expression. She steers them to a rickety, swinging door, and kicks it open with the toe of her boot.

  Inside, bar stools swivel at their dramatic entrance, and the chatter quietens as they enter the dark space. Cigarette and opium smoke drifts around the dank interior like cobwebs. A man’s glass eye falls from his surprised face, and slips into his drink with a plop. Jane shrieks with laughter and Elyse turns red as she tries to contain her own amusement while Patience goes green at the cheekbones.

  They pull out their stools from a corner of the bar, the legs scraping in a screeching sound against the rough floorboards. The chatter resumes. The bar maid, a woman around their age, approaches. Her eyes are sunken and red at the rims, and the corners of her mouth give way to a perpetual droop like a daisy in the unforgiving high summer.

  “Miss, pardon me, but we three would care to ride with The Green Fairy on this balmy evening,” Jane says, with a face as serious as a funeral goer.

  Patience looks at Jane, aghast, while Elyse chortles behind her hand.

  The woman lifts an eyebrow, but everything south of that border remains stoic. She pulls the necessary paraphernalia from below the edge of the counter, and places the accoutrements before the three girls; Pontarlier glasses and filigree spoons with sugar cubes on top. Jane’s mouth widens and she practically salivates.

  Excitement and the anxiety of possible danger zips throughout Elyse’s nerves as the bar maid pours the drink into each reservoir, then drips ice water over the sugar cubes, creating an opaque drink resembling the nebulous insides of a crystal ball. She removes the spoons and flattened sugar cubes, and leaves the trio to indulge in their latest fancy.

  Jane lifts her glass, swirling the liquid around in the dim light. “Well, here’s to Elyse being a foolish and respectable woman.”

  Elyse laughs, lifting her glass to Jane’s. Patience shoots her sister a glare before following suit. They clink their glasses together, and take their sips.

  The drink is laced with a bitter shroud, finishing with a strong, herbal flavor like black licorice. Patience grimaces. “Blech,” she snorts, setting the glass down on the bar. “That is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted, like fifty-year-old licorice bits and melancholy.”

  Jane takes a generous swig of hers, almost spitting it out at Patience’s protestations. Elyse, meanwhile, sips from the glass, one then another, taking in her surroundings with an unaffected air. The man with the glass eyes rubs his lid, adjusting and swiveling the inanimate sphere around in his orbital socket. A light, bubbly feeling fills her mid-section, like it has become exempt from the merciless laws of gravity, and she laughs at the man’s plight, jabbing Jane in the arm with her elbow. She indicates to the man at the other end of room.

  Jane snorts a laugh. “You’ve found the one-eye love.”

  As the three continue to partake in the bitter drink, riding ever higher on the airy wings of La Fee Verte, a portal is opening in the bowels of The Dead Pheasant.

  Deep in the recesses of the building, a trio of witches’ chants. Their arms are outstretched to the bowing, dark ceiling like trees to a torrid sky. The whites of their eyes flash in the dimness, the only light a line of candles on the dirt floor, next to the wall. And on the rough, crumbling brick wall, is the chalk image of an ouroboros. Kneeling on the floor, between the line of candles and the diaphanous, runed skirts of the witches, is Lucius Marquis. He feeds from the neck of an unconscious laundress. Her hands, marked rough and red by her profession, clench as the vampire pushes her to the end of her death throes. The chanting reaches a crescendo, and the center of the ouroboros billows, expanding and shifting like the hot sands of the Sahara, or a roiling pitch. A ghastly black portal opens within the outline of the ouroboros, and the witches shriek a final, foreign word as Lucius lifts his head, spewing the last of the woman’s living blood as her heart gives its final beat.

  The witches collapse. A howling wind erupts from the portal, whipping Lucius’s wild hair as the woman goes limp in his grasp. The candles extinguish, and the portal assumes a ravenous, gravitational pull, sucking in the drops of blood. It gives a keening cry, like the bellows of a turbulent sea, then closes with a violent snap.

  The witch in the middle of the array stirs, snaps her fingers, and reignites the candles. Her face falls as she regards the closed portal.

  “It’s still not enough,” she groans.

  Lucius shrugs, and a child-like grin covers his face. “Well, more feeding for me then.” He stands, letting the body hit the floor with a sickening thud.

  The witch, Calista Tromperie, high priestess of the Coven of the Alpine Manticore, glares at him. She stands, towering nearly a foot taller than Lucius, and brushes off her skirts. Her hair falls to her hips in a hazy, opalescent blonde. Her two sisters groan at her feet as they regain consciousness.

  “Sisters, the portal remains closed,” Calista says.

  The two witches sigh, their shoulders drooping as they sit up.

  Lucius chuckles, and a flash of rage overcomes Calista’s cool, sharp features. She slaps him, and the mighty vampire cowers beneath the witch’s hand, her milky skin infused with wolfsbane.

  “Your lack of regard has always enraged me, Marquis.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” He gulps, looking down at his muddy boots.

  “I can have you done away with if you irritate me further.”

  Lucius nods, his wispy, silvery hair curtaining his temples. The two witches huddle together, averting their eyes from the high priestess and her vampire thrall.

  “I am committed to our cause, Mistress, our highest cause,” he whispers, looking up at her beneath long, gray eyelashes.

  “Your mendacity and ambition will be your reward, Marquis. As will mine once we return the rest of your ancient Nephilim brethren to their thrones.”

  A dreamy smile overtakes Lucius’s face.

  Calista sniffs, stepping away from Lucius. She kneels to the cadaver at his feet, pulling back a hank of stringy hair from the dead woman’s face. “You are certain this one had the essence?”

  “I am, Mistress.” Lucius begins to salivate, pink droplets of the woman’s leftover blood hitting his chin. “She was of the highest amber essence, Mistress. Oh, so rare, oh so delicate a flavor. . ..” His talons begin to extend, and his eyes brighten to a blue glow. Calista springs to her feet and slaps him again.

  “Focus, Marquis. I need more. One for each phase of the moon.”

  Lucius rubs his cheek and his eyes return to their usual yellowish-blue. “But, the police-”

  “Are mine now.” Calista raises her eyebrows, speaking slowly like Lucius is a child. “And I will be doing away with that meddling prosecutor and his ilk all in good time.”

  Lucius gulps again and nods. The faces of the witches on the floor brighten as Calista reassures her thrall.

  “Get me more. I don’t care how far you must go, but the portal needs filled before the harvest moon eclipses the sun in four years’ time.”

  “Well, don’t we have plenty of time then . . .” Lucius begins to protest, stopping as Calista raises her hand again. He cowers and nods. “Of course, Mistress.”

  She lowers her hand and regards her sisters on the floor. “We ride, ladies.”

  The two witches stand, and follow Calista to the narrow, crooked stairs hiding in the far corner of the room. She turns before the trio disappears up the steps.

  �
�And Marquis, dispose of the body.” Her skirts rustle against the narrow walls, and the witches’ footsteps fad away into the old paper mill.

  Lucius glances around the small, windowless cellar. The quickest way to dispose of the body is through a narrow door on the wall opposite the portal, leading down to the underground stream. He could then follow the muddy banks and out the other end of the papermill, finding his way back to the cobblestone streets well before dawn. Lucius hoists the cadaver over his shoulders, her body still warm, and crosses the room.

  He stops, freezing in his tracks. The rustling of skirts, the clipping of ladies’ heels, and the light, airy laughter of three voices drifts in from the other side of the door. He can smell their essence, marinated with wormwood and anise, and he gags at the abomination. Glancing around, his head turns from the closed door to the tiny stairwell that swallowed his mistress. If he creates a scene, she will have his hide, and then he will have four bodies to dispose of. To make matters worse, he is fully sated, and his head is sluggish, cloudy from the aftereffects of his recent, heady meal. He drops the body with a thud as the door begins to slide open.

  “What was that?” An angelic, slurred voice asks through the crack in the door.

  Lucius bounds up the stairwell, light as an alley cat, and disappears into the darkness as Jane, Elyse, and Patience enter the room.

  “I didn’t know the Dead Pheasant had rooms-to-let.” Jane says.

  The three girls giggle, imbued with reckless abandon from the absinthe, and approach the body.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have gone exploring. Now we’ve interrupted someone’s nap.” Patience chuckles behind her hand.

  “Is she all right?” Elyse asks, eyeing the dead laundress with glassy eyes. The smell of mud, and the offensive memory of Sulphur from the mills heyday laces the still air.

  “Oh, she’s probably just had a bit too much fun.” Jane kneels over her, and shakes her shoulder.

  Elyse looks beyond Jane and the laundress to the line of candles against the far wall. Her eyes, slow and languid, rise to the symbol on the bricks. The blood in her veins congeals, and she grabs her sister’s arm as Jane gasps, pulling her hand back from the laundress like she’s been burned. Jane scrambles away, her hat falling to the floor as she backs up against the wall. She holds in her stomach, swallowing hard to beat back the wave of nausea.

  “We have to get Rueben,” Elyse says, pulling her sluggish sister to the door.

  “What’s the matter?” Patience asks, trying to wrench her arm from Elyse’s iron grip. “What’s wrong with that girl? We need to wake her up.”

  “She ain’t never gettin’ up, honey.” Jane pulls open the door, ushering Patience and Elyse back into the passageway.

  The trio scrambles inside, slamming the door closed.

  “What the hell is Rueben going to do? We need the police.” Jane hisses in a hushed whisper as they hurry through the dank passageway, the river hastening beside them. The hems of their skirts darken from the soft mud, and their shoes slip in the unforgiving terrain. Mist from the cool water settles on their skin, bringing on a harsh juxtaposition with the warming effect of the absinthe. They shiver. Their heads spin from the cadaverous turn of events.

  Something unseen and primordial splashes in the stream. With the crash of the water, fear courses through their veins as they stumble and hurry along in the dark cavern deep beneath the city, terrible, fearful thoughts swimming in their drunken heads.

  “I know what this is,” Elyse says, her face gone pale. Revulsion twists her stomach as the notes of Rueben’s research, drafted in a flowery scrawl, write across her hazy, frightened mind—blood sacrifices, rogue vampires, the occult.

  “Oh, come on, that’s the absinthe talking.” Jane takes Patience’s arm, steadying her.

  Elyse shakes her head, her hair coming loose and wild. “It’s not. We can’t go to the police, we can’t.” Her eyes sting as she pleads with Jane.

  Jane shivers, glancing around the shadowy banks of the river, lit only by a few measly gas sconces in the walls, their covers a rusty, wire mesh. Elyse’s earnest appeal breaks her fickle resolve. “Let’s hurry, then,” she says, quickening her pace and tightening her grip on Patience.

  The girls, although slowed by the after effects of the drink, rush to the end of the passageway, coming to the ivy-bound, corroded gate that leads to the city streets. Relief envelopes them like a warm blanket as they swing open the gate. Its hinges scream from disuse, and in the soft, familiar and comforting glow of the streetlamps, they hail a jitney back to the Delafayette residence.

  Elyse sits on the edge of her bed, the hot toddy she holds trembling against a saucer as she sets it down on the duvet. Each click of the clock above her head falls into oblivion like the dying leaves of autumn as she waits for Rueben’s return. The night is old, the morning sun soon approaching, but sleep is gone, chased away to the edge of reason by a grim and frightening occurrence deep within the city’s dark, secretive innards. Her back is tense, straight as a Doric column, although it aches like she is crushed beneath a pile of bricks. The skin around her mouth pulls in odd, unnatural directions as the wheels of her mind fly at a frightening pace—the waxy flesh of the corpse, the snapping jaws of the worms in the grave, the ghastly light of a ritual candle, and the stark décor of the ouroboros, knotting through eternity. She trembles, holding back a gasp as the door opens. Rueben crosses the room, his arms outstretched to her and she stands, falling into him.

  “You smell like that room in the papermill,” she whispers into his shoulder.

  He pulls away from her. “I’m sorry. I should bathe.”

  “No, I need you. I need you here now.” She holds him tighter, and at that tender moment, he wishes to fold her inside of him, to carry her with him forever, where she is blind and insulated from all brutality.

  “You need to rest,” he whispers against her temple.

  She nods against the warm, strong muscles in his chest.

  “We are still going tomorrow.”

  She looks up at him, her eyes like the green, brilliant stained glass of a church window casement. “You don’t need to stay?”

  “No, Arthur has agreed to stay behind and take care of things. How is your sister? And Jane?”

  Elyse sighs, pulling away from him. “They’ve retired to her room. Jane was beside herself; Mrs. Ewee had to make her a laudanum tincture.” She smooths her hair back from her face. “Stay with me until I fall asleep?”

  Rueben nods, the flesh around his eyes dark and sallow from exhaustion. He pulls the covers off the bed, and they settle in for what remains of the night.

  Elyse barely dozes, her head stuffed full of phantasmagorical visions that flash before her tired eyes in the undulating shadows of the room. The pastel leaves and the floral motif of the wallpaper morphs into the cold, gnarled and stiff hands of the corpse, stretching across the floorboards and tugging the ends of the duvet. Her stomach swirls with a heavy, pervasive poison, and she drifts along that knife’s edge between wakefulness and the dead of sleep. Every snore, every sigh and turn of her bedmate jolts her awake, like the merciless executioner’s switch. And a moment before the first rays of the sun creep into her muntined window, chasing away the gruesome apparitions, she falls into a restless slumber, only to be disturbed by the shutting off of the spigot in the adjacent bathroom. The poison in her stomach from earlier has migrated to her head.

  She attempts to sit up, but an explosion bursts behind her eyes—red-hot embers of pulsating, unforgiving pain begin their deluge. It burns; a raging, cranial forest fire. She stays still, cradling her head against the crook of her arm. The door creaks open as Rueben enters, and the flames in her head roar with the sound. The disturbing whimper of a wounded animal catches in her throat. Rueben leans over the bed and squeezes her shoulder. His skin is hot from his bath, and hers crawls like it is made of an army of fire ants.

  “Get Vera,” she whispers, her voice twisted and thick with agon
y.

  “It’s back?”

  The pillow rustles from her hair as she gives a weak nod, and she groans as a wave of incendiary pitch washes over her brain, burying all coherence. Rueben quickly dresses, and hurries from the room. The pain is unbearable, and only hurtling toward its own unpredictable apex. Two hours, or three more days, its unknown duration twists her into an all-too familiar panic.

  “She woke up with it?” Vera Ewee asks from the parlor as she stacks the family’s luggage onto a brass pushcart. She glances at the clock on the wall and grimaces – only six hours until they must depart.

  Rueben, his expression dark and worried, nods, helping her lift a particularly hefty and dusty old trunk. It lands on the pushcart with a heavy thud.

  “Take up a kidney pan to her. I’ll be back.” She turns on her heel, leaving the room, and adjusts her chapeau in the hall mirror.

  Rueben scurries to the kitchen for the pan as Vera leaves the house at a brisk pace. The door closes behind her with a soft sigh, and Rueben’s brow furrows as he glances over his shoulder at her strange exit. He passes Mangus’s office, the curl and acrid smell of cigar smoke lingering in the air, but the room is empty. Worry twists in his chest, and the ceramic and tin pots and pans rattle beneath the drain board in the kitchen as he procures the kidney pan from the stack. With the cold tin grasped firmly in his hands, he races up the stairs to the bedroom, now a sick bay.

  She is there like a crumpled, fallen petal tinged with rot around the edges, her hands in a mad grip at the edge of the duvet, her body curled into the knot of a brittle mollusk. He places the pan beneath her face and pulls her hair back as the bile spews forth. The desire, and the damnable pain that he cannot take this monster away from her chews at him like the worms in the grave. His brow furrows as he settles in next to her on the bed, rubbing her back as she drifts in and out of consciousness before Vera returns with the medicine man, Cho Huang.

  Huang’s silken, red and gold robes rustle like leaves as he enters the room behind Vera, placing his bag on the console and rummaging around inside for the necessary accoutrements. With deft, pale hands, Huang prepares and vaporizes a small bud of opium as Vera and Reuben look on with equal parts hope and a curious, dour fascination. Vera takes the kidney pan into the bathroom, and the rush of water plays a soothing backdrop to the curious event as Rueben pulls back Elyse’s hair and Huang puts the end of the pipe to her lips, lighting the business end of it. A buttery, milky smell fills the air as she inhales the medicine, then promptly sinks back into the pillows with closed eyes. Huang gives a curt nod, returning to his bag and repacking it as Vera enters the room once more, drying her hands on her apron. A few hushed words are exchanged between the two, although Rueben cannot discern Huang’s speech through his accent.