A Taste of Dunwich

1)  A TASTE OF DUNWICH

2014 -  Dunwich Edizioni

Via Albona, 95 – 00177 Roma

www.dunwichedizioni.it

Copyright Uberto Ceretoli – Carlo Vicenzi

Fabio Lastrucci – Pietro Gandolfi

Cover illustration by Zoom Team, used with Shutterstock license

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CODENAME: SPRING-HEELED JACK

by Uberto Ceretoli

Guy’s Hospital, October 17th 1886  07.45 hours

The orderly opened the peephole, looking inside the cell, a blocky room built according to the proportions of the golden rectangle. He scanned the far side of the cubicle where, in the shadow cast by the unreachable peephole opposite the entrance, the psychopath had hidden himself.

Morning scouring, number six. Undress yourself, sentenced the orderly as he opened the door, as armored as those found on the blockheads of a modern steam dreadnought. As the man entered the room, cane in hand, he saw the patient crouching on the floor, clinging to his chain like a fetus clings to the umbilical cord.

Reeks of piss and shit. He spat on the ground. Number six is no longer with us. Kevin, come here and give me a hand. The orderly waited. Kevin! He waited some more. "Kevin!"

It’s Cefin. I’m Welsh, ya know, the other replied. How many times to I have to tell ya?

Move your arse.

If he’s dead, you can do it by yerself, lamented Cefin.

You Welsh skiver. The other left his cane outside and entered the cell.

You old crazy, you’ve done suffering. You’ve both done suffering, since you always told there were two of you,  he continued, nearing number six. He went over the fetid trickle that ran from the body to the nozzle in the middle of the room and headed towards the cot bed, a metal panel hinged to the wall, whose mattress had not been used that night. He went over the gaunt and emaciated body on the floor. The corpse held his head, its few remaining hair white and thin, between his arms, as if to hide from his inevitable demise.

The orderly let out a sigh, then shrugged. One less to worry about. Two, if I count your craziness.

He checked the old man’s pulse by placing his fingertips on the old man’s neck. He found the skin as cold as expected, but the jugular artery was still pulsing.

Are you still alive, you old rascal?

The man heard the sound of springs and found himself with the prisoner’s metal manacles around his wrist. As the toothless grim of the old man became the last thing he saw, he felt a shivering cold skinning him alive.

Guy’s Hospital, doctor Pavy’s office, 08.05 hours

"I’d like to show number six to the boy brought to my attention by one of the brethren. I already briefed him on this striking case of dissociative personality disorder and he’s eager to put himself to work," began the rubicund guest, sitting on a wooded imperial-style armchair lined in red velvet.

Sir William Withey Gull, you always possess the power of astonishing me, laughed doctor Frederick William Pavy, comfy sitting behind the physiology manuals-laden oak desk. We’ve examined that patient dozens of times. We’ve made analysis on him, questioned him, tested him. In certain situations, he becomes violent, in others he is remissive. We have found no way of repeating the causing events. Explain to me how a welp can manage to find out what two expert physicians like us have not. He massaged his bushy sideburns, made completely white by age. The few hair left on his head were neatly parted with a line.

"The boy has a gift."

Pavy frowned. What do you mean?

Sir Gull placed his elbow on the wooded armrest and rested his hairless chin on his fist. I’d call him an expert in Pneumatology.

The science that studies the Soul? The very opposite of our medical training. Philosophy and Religion do not heal ailments, you taught me this yourself.

Pavy smoked a curved pipe; the smell of tobacco saturated the air.

I concur. But, as I like to consider, while the crazies and the savages explain things, the wise men investigate them. And I intend to investigate. In every direction.

Pavy chuckled. Why not call a priest, then? I know one from All Saints Church that would not look out of place next to this pupil of yours.

Has any doubt ever been raised about what runs through number six’s brain?

Frederick winced at the colleague’s question. "Until today I thought he believed to be two different people. It was the most probable hypothesis. Certain events would have changed his brain’s chemical balance, triggering behavior incompatible with those previously displayed. Then Sir Leopold Trussay introduced that boy to me. The youth astonished me with his premonitions. That led me to ask myself if two different persons did indeed live inside his body.

You mean, two souls residing inside the very same body? Pavy let out, enjoying his tobacco.

Something like that.

William, what you are saying is scientific blasphemy. How will you verify such an hypothesis?

I think that boy has the chance to find out.

I find this very hard to believe. There is no way to see someone’s soul, how can you see two?

"Sir Trussay has developed a quite peculiar device. He calls it the ‘Dissipator’."

Yes, I saw that contraption in operation. Pavy frowned. It was at the same time wondrous and worrying.

"The substances that visualize those spectrums, or those signatures, as Sir Trussay calls them, have been suggested by this youth. He says that he was inspired by a copy of the Sigsand Manuscript."

Frederick William Pavy was startled. That one work compiled by that Danish monk in the fourteenth century?

The very same. The monk was Norwegian however, you are not very sharp on this subject. Sir Gull grinned.

Frederick laughed: And you neither: that volume has been destroyed in 1700.

"The youngster has a copy, I’m telling you. And it deals with subjects dear to John Dee and certain alchemists from which we draw inspiration from. There is something scientific, a cause-effect connection whose repeatability cannot be looked over from a statistical point of view, in what we have always called magic." The last word was uttered with difficulty.

Doctor Pavy was perplexed. He went to the window and looked upon the entrance courtyard of the Guy’s, with its steel railings and the more early-riser relatives coming to visit their sick loved ones. The silence in the room became harsh, cold and heavy as granite. The physician tilted his head. Times change. War changes and it’s fought in ever different ways. The economy changes. He looked at the grand machinery at work building the foundation of Horace Jone’s project: the Tower Bridge. The way of building bridges changes: now they can be raised and lowered. Why shouldn’t Medicine itself change? Let’s try this one out.

The two medical doctors stepped out of the warm and cozy office, finding the boy waiting for them, sitting on an armchair in the antechamber. He wore a jacket and matching trousers, a dark shirt and a bowler hat. He was tall, thin and wore his dark hair with a line in the middle. His neatly handlebar styled moustache preceded two greedy eyes which never stopped on a single detail for more than a second. Sir Gull introduced him to his colleague. "And here is the boy I was talking about: Thomas Carnacki. He has wits and gifts. He shares with me an interest for William Blake’s works. More precisely, an interest for what may have inspired them.

Thomas shook hands with Frederick without removing his gloves. I beg your pardon for this rudeness, doctor Pavy, but I’ve recently experienced nightly visions, or, more precisely, nightmares, concerning the people whom I met in physical contact.

Parvy winced. "I was told that you possess a copy of the Sigsand Manuscript."

The young man nodded. I have the translation here with me.

He then opened the brass-reinforced edges case he carried on a sling and removed a leather covered notebook, filled to the brim with notes and pages exploding with words.

And how have you translated it? Isn’t cyphered? Asked Pavy.

Yes, it was dictated to me, actually.

Dictated? By what genius? Such a talented person would be quite beneficial to Science.

Thomas Carnacki did not catch the irony. "I don’t think you would enjoy his acquaintance, he is one of the outer beings, as I define them at the moment. He saw doubt in the physician’s eyes. At the beginning, I thought they were ghosts, the same as the signatures we have managed to dis-veil thanks to Sir Trussay’s devices. The signatures, however, should be electro-magnetic polarizations residual of strong emotions, as if the places we inhabit were the silver plates of an immense daguerreotype. I wouldn’t want to sound arrogant but I’ve operated a distinction in these two categories: the signatures, as I told you just now, and the outer beings. The latter, contrasting with the former, possess their own will and you can interact with them via the adequate pneumological precautions. I ensure you, I shall formulate a more appropriate name to define them very soon. Getting back to our issue, I can attempt the rituals to drive one of those beings out suggested in the manuscript, if they indeed are possessing your patient.

You want to administer some kind of exorcism?

Yes, it is my belief that such religious practice is intended to have the very same goal. It has different methods but the result is that of driving the outer being out of the body.

He has already done so in front of my eyes, confirmed Gull, serious and irritated in equal measure. Pavy shivered. If you ensure me so... come, then. Let’s try this this one too.

He had them go down the marble stairs leading to the basement, where metal doors overlooked a plaster-less brick hallway.

What the hell? Doctor Pavy froze as he saw the first orderly of the morning shift, Cefin Pritchard, lying on the ground, a blood bruise where his head had been banged against the edge of the table.

Frederick raised the alarm as Gull and Carnacki made for number six’s cell.

An assistant came down, took Pavy’s commands and ran upstairs. The doctor then joined his two guests, opened the ajar door and punched the metallic entrance. On the far side of the cell, chained and naked, lay the other orderly, Matthey Postelwhite.

Pavy entered the cell with his hands shaking in sorrow and rage. And what would be that thing? He pointed to a phrase written on the metal wall, its sign growing shakier when the old man escaped.

Who will aid the Widow’s son?

"I believe that ‘the Widow’s son’ could be a freemasonic expression," Carnacki explained.

Pavy looked at Gull, signaling his complicity, then decided to play dumb. And to whom would this be destined?

"I have no idea. Maybe the one that was formerly your inmate deems it necessary for a freemason to take care of things. Or maybe it’s for whom made him interned here, as if to say ‘I