A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(8)
He’s all fact and no feeling. It will serve him well as a doctor someday. I know that what he’s telling me is true, but I can’t help hating him for it. “Are you sure it’s my protection you’re worried about?”
His jaw tightens again. “I’ll overlook that last comment. If you won’t think of me, of yourself, then think of Father. He’s not well, Gemma. You can see that. The circumstances of Mother’s death have undone him.” He fiddles with the cuffs on his shirt. “You may as well know that Father got into some very bad habits in India. Sharing the hookah with the Indians might have made him a popular businessman, one of them in their eyes, but it didn’t help his constitution much. He’s always been fond of his pleasures. His escapes.”
Father sometimes came home late and spent from his day. I remembered Mother and the servants helping him to bed on more than one occasion. Still, it hurts to hear this. I hate Tom for telling me. “Then why do you keep getting him the laudanum?”
“There’s nothing wrong with laudanum. It’s medicinal,” he sniffs.
“In moderation . . .”
“Father’s no addict. Not Father,” he says, as if he means to convince a jury. “He’ll be fine now that he’s back in England. Just remember what I’ve told you. Can you at least promise me that much? Please?”
“Yes, fine,” I say, feeling dead inside. They don’t know what they’re in for at Spence, getting me, a ghost of a girl who’ll nod and smile and take her tea but who isn’t really here.
The driver calls down to us. “Sir, we’ll be needin’ to pass through the East, if you want to draw the curtains.”
“What does he mean?” I ask.
“We have to go through the East End. Whitechapel? Oh, for heaven’s sake, the slums, Gemma,” he says, loosening the curtains on the sides of his windows to block out the poverty and filth.
“I’ve seen slums in India,” I say, leaving my curtains in place. The carriage bumps its way along the cobblestones through grimy, narrow streets. Dozens of dirty, thin children clamber about, staring at us in our fine carriage. My heart sinks to see their bony, soot-smeared faces. Several women huddle together under a gaslight, sewing. It makes sense for them to use the city’s light and not waste their own precious candles for this thankless work. The smell in the streets—a mix of refuse, horse droppings, urine, and despair—is truly awful, and I’m afraid I might gag. Loud music and yelling spill out onto the street from a tavern. A drunken couple tumbles out after. The woman has hair the color of a sunset and a harsh, painted face. They’re arguing with our driver, holding us here.
“What’s the matter now?” Tom raps against the hood of the carriage to spur the driver on. But the lady is really giving the driver what for. We might be here all night. The drunken man leers at me, winks, makes an extremely rude gesture involving his index fingers.
Disgusted, I turn away and look down an empty alley. Tom’s leaning out his window. I hear him, condescending and impatient, trying to reason with the couple in the street. But something’s gone wrong. His voice grows muffled, like sounds heard through a shell held to the ear. And then all I can hear is my blood quickening, thumping hard against my veins. A tremendous pressure seizes me, knocking the air from my lungs.
It’s happening again.
I want to cry out to Tom, but I can’t, and then I’m under, falling through that tunnel of color and light again as the alley bends and flickers. And just as quickly, I’m floating out of the carriage, stepping lightly into the darkened alley with its shimmering edges. There’s a small girl of eight or so sitting in the straw-covered dirt, playing with a rag of a doll. Her face is dirty, but otherwise, she seems out of place here, in her pink hair ribbon and starched white pinafore that’s a size too big for her. She sings a snippet of song, something I recognize faintly as being an old English folk tune. When I approach she looks up.
“Isn’t my dolly lovely?”
“You can see me?” I ask.
She nods and goes back to combing her filthy fingers through the doll’s hair. “She’s looking for you.”
“Who?”
“Mary.”
“Mary? Mary who?”
“She sent me to find you. But we have to be careful. It’s looking for you, too.”
The air shifts, bringing a damp chill with it. I’m shaking uncontrollably. “Who are you?”
Behind the little girl, I sense movement in the murky dark. I blink to clear my eyes but it’s no trick—the shadows are moving. Quick as liquid silver the dark rises and takes its hideous shape, the gleaming bone of its skeletal face, the hollow, black holes where eyes should be. The hair a tangle of snakes. The mouth opens and the rasping moan escapes. “Come to us, my pretty, pretty . . .”
“Run.” The word is a choked whisper on my tongue. The thing is growing, slithering ever closer. The howls and moans inside it making every cell in my body go ice-cold. A scream inches its way up my throat. If I let it out, I’ll never stop.
Heart pounding hard against my ribs, I say again, stronger, “Run!”
The thing hesitates, pulls back. It sniffs at the air, as if tracking a scent. The little girl turns her flat brown eyes to me. “Too late,” she says, just as the creature turns its unseeing eyes toward me. The decaying lips spread apart, revealing teeth like spikes. Dear God, the thing is grinning at me. It opens wide that horrible mouth and screeches—a sound that loosens my tongue at last.