Bottled Nightmares Vol. 1 by David Dwan - HTML preview

won. Look,” he gestured to Haaland’s body. “Shot him dead.

Fair and fuckin’ square.”

Christ how Jesse hated the coward. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt a strange sense of calm. He eyed the saloon looking for any possible way out. Over by the swing doors he saw a skinny kid on a tricycle and wondered if the calm he felt was actually just the beginning of insanity.

The boy was scowling down at Haaland’s body. He shook his head in what looked like disappointment and slowly backed the tricycle out through the doors.

“Jess’, they’re leaving,” May said from where she was clinging to the bar.

And sure enough the figures began, one by one, to melt back into the storm which then followed the boy outside.

“Jesus, Christ,” Cutter gasped in disbelief.

Jesse moved over to the bar and he and May embraced.

Their relationship had never been anything close to love. But in that moment, he held her closer than he had ever held anyone in his life.

“What were those things?” May whispered in his ear.

All he could do was shake his head.

“Oh,” Cutter said in an odd matter of fact tone.

Jesse looked at the man who was staring slack jawed at something behind him.

“What the fuck...” He began but stopped himself. Of course, there was a grim inevitability to it all.

He slowly let May go and turned around. He wasn’t at all surprised to see Haaland, standing there with two ragged bullet holes in his chest, but bleeding an almost viscous darkness instead of blood. The Dutchman took off his hat and dusted himself off.

He had a neat bullet hole in his forehead.

“You always was faster than me, Jess’.” Haaland said with a nod of acknowledgement before replacing his hat.

Although Jesse still had his own pistol in his hand, it seemed too heavy to raise. And his gun hand just stayed limply at his side.

Jesse watched as Haaland slowly, deliberately drew his pistol and raised it. It was as if he was hypnotised by the movement. He was aware what the Dutchman was doing, and what that ultimately meant. But he was powerless to react beyond gawping at the instrument of his death as it finally levelled at his head.

May stepped further away with a sob of pity.

“Yer fucker,” he said to his executioner.

Not much as final words go, but he could think of no others.

Haaland fired, hitting Jesse square in the forehead and the round took off the back of his skull. He crumpled to the saloon floor as the blood fled his body in great jets like a coward.

Haaland, Cutter and May all looked down at the body as it twitched on the floor. Nothing more than death throws. They each knew unlike Haaland, he would not get up.

“Hell of a day,” Haaland sighed.

This snapped May out of her shock. She backed away shaking her head like she was trying to dislodge the whole sorry scene.

Haaland looked at her, he had the distant memory of someone like her, or maybe it had been a dream he had once had. Someone who just a few short days ago had been holding him tightly as he slept in her arms, oblivious to the harsh world outside their room.

Now he didn’t know her at all, she was speaking, but he couldn’t understand a word she was saying. He didn’t even recognise the sound of her voice. She was a stranger now, perhaps someone he had met many years ago? Perhaps she was Dutch.

“H... H... Haaland?” It was Cutter. Now this guy he did remember.

“You still here?” Haaland asked.

The full force of the storm and its impatient residents blew in through the swing doors shattering the wood like glass. As they blew past Haaland he had to put a hand on the top of his head to stop his hat flying off.

They tore into Cutter with a rabid zeal. Haaland couldn’t help but wince as they ripped him apart. Their pent-up energies had made them cruel, perhaps they had feared Haaland would indeed let the man go and so they attacked him with unbridled violence.

But Haaland knew as they dragged him kicking and screaming from the saloon and into the night. His death would not be quick. Haaland had promised them that Cutter, along with poor young Billy. Would be theirs to do with as they wished.

As he disappeared in a mass of sand, thick darkness and body parts, the shotgun he had been carrying dropped to the floor where it hit, butt first.

As could be common with that particular model, the impact set off the weapon and the shot hit poor May in the side of her head. Haaland felt the spray of blood hit his back and he turned to see her bloody body slump to the floor.

He looked down at her ruined face but felt nothing. The boy and the young woman formed out of the swirling storm next to her body.

“Don’t you remember her, Sotiras?” The young woman asked.

“Don’t think so,” Haaland replied in all honesty.

Haaland could sense more than hear ‘papa’s’ horseless wagon trundling up the street outside.

“Papa can rest now,” he said.

The boy threw his arms in the air.

“The town is ours!!” He shouted.

The young woman smiled lovingly at his childish excitement.

“Sanctuary,” Haaland said.

“Home,” she replied. “Thanks to you, Sotiras.”

He liked the sound of that.

“Sotiras,” he said it out loud and it sounded as familiar as his old name had been.

The storm blew back into the saloon and whipped around him with renewed enthusiasm. The figures within it began to chant, over and over.

“Sotiras! Sotiras!”

Haaland laughed and opened his arms to welcome them. As they embraced him, the one-time outcast and lost soul slowly disintegrated, and it felt like bliss. Until finally he was truly apart of his new family.

Louder and louder, they chanted merging into one euphoric voice.

The very foundations of the saloon rattled and splintered, the windows shattered, as the cacophony became a deafening roar.

But this was music to Haaland the Sotiras. He was home. They all were.

THE MOREAU HORRORS

London: May 1875

I feel I must put the record straight regarding the true nature of the events which led to my writing what you may or may not have read last month.

Whilst that gaudy pamphlet, which had proved so very popular does indeed bear my name as author. It is little more than pale facsimile of the original document I submitted to my editor.

The Moreau Horrors.

The title is mine, and I feel truly reflects the events as they were related to me by that poor surviving soul.

The publication as you will have read it is a mere fragment of the whole sordid story as I have written it.

Watered down to little more than a shadow of the original text.

In all honesty, I was not completely surprised at the omission of certain, shall we say explicit parts of the piece.

In truth, it at times pained and revolted me to put these passages down on paper, as I knew it would be for anyone to read. But I believed then, as I do now that only the full

account, regardless of taste and discretion, as I heard it related to me, would do justice to the whole sorry affair.

Afterall, lives were lost, and not to mention the sanity of my close dear friend Charles Oldman. It was Charles who narrated the events to me, and as such I owe it to him, and those others involved in this case to be nothing more than an impartial recorder of what I heard. In all its sometimes-horrendous glory.

Firstly, my thoughts on the piece as edited and printed. As I have previously stated it is, at its heart correct, if much edited.

Such as the fire on Fiddler’s Wharfe on the banks of the Thames, where the building leased by now notorious Doctor Alphonse Moreau for the purposes of ‘medical research’ was completely destroyed by fire. The blackened and skeletal remains of the place are still there if you wish to see for yourself.

And according to the official police report, several

‘bodies’ were uncovered in the debris afterwards. However, to date only one has been definitively identified as human. The report then descends into what can only be described as vagaries when it comes to the others found in the aftermath.

Of Moreau, there was no sign. Some say he fled to the country, some that it was his body that was found amongst the ruins. And others still, myself included, that he escaped from the docks that same night and bribed his way out of England to Lord only knows where. No doubt to continue his blasphemous experiments, away from the prying eyes of civilisation.

For my part in all this, my good friend and colleague Charles Oldman and I worked as reporters for the Times here in London.

I primarily cover political matters and have on several occasions interviewed and written profiles on many politicians, of all parties, including the prime minister and many of his cabinet.

Oldman, who had been a medical student in his early twenties before his funds had run dry, was the perfect reporter for all matters medical and scientific. It was for this very reason that our editor John Thadeus Delane had tasked Charles with investigating the shadowy figure of Doctor Moreau.

Moreau had over previous years, garnered a rather salacious and enigmatic reputation in certain medical circles.

His secretive research which had rumoured to involve extensive

vivisection had always been operated in an altogether clandestine manner.

He had on many occasions, and much to the chagrin of his colleagues, refused to disclose the full nature of his experiments and had made no attempt to publish or lecture on any of the findings his years of research had produced.

I personally had never heard of the man, other than certain outlandish rumours that had circulated around the newspaper offices at the time. But Oldman had been exited beyond anything I had ever seen from the usually reserved fellow upon receiving the assignment.

On the night before he was to take up his post as a research assistant with the doctor at that mysterious dock lands building. Facilitated through a contact at the Royal teaching hospital. Oldman and another colleague, Paul Meadows and I had gone out for a celebratory dinner.

Where my friend had spent almost the entire evening trying to convince us poor laymen of Moreau’s genius. Oldman had in fact had the pleasure of meeting the scientist himself whilst he was a medical student and was clearly still enamoured by the man.

Seeing his delight at the assignment, I could tell this was in no small part to the fact that Charles had missed the opportunity, through no fault of his own, to follow a career

in medicine. And to be fair, Oldman did admit as such when I gently reminded him that he was there to investigate and write an extensive article about what he could discover about the doctor’s current experiments, and why the man had chosen to shun the public eye.

Thankfully, Oldman had taken this in the manner it was intended and had left us in great spirits to begin his appointment the following morning.

Callous as it may sound, part of me wishes that had been the last time I had ever seen my friend.

Several weeks later there had been a devastating fire that had engulfed Fiddler’s Wharf. All told seven buildings and warehouses had been completely gutted, four of which had collapsed entirely.

Oldman had subsequently disappeared, and we had all feared he had been caught up in the conflagration. An early investigation had confirmed that the source of the fire had been Moreau’s laboratory. That was when the first of the gruesome discoveries had been made.

At least one person was dead, but the body was too far burnt for any hope of identification of the poor victim. A number of witnesses had stated that there were also other

bodies within the ashes, but these were of twisted and mutilated animals.

These latter rumours were no doubt fuelled by the poor dog that had been spotted running from the premises and later found dead by the docks. The poor creature had apparently been the subject of numerous and awful inhumane vivisection procedures. And according to a police contact of mine, should not have by all rights, been able to walk let alone run so vigorously from the flames.

And so, I had thought that was an end to things. My dear friend had been missing presumed dead for over four weeks after the fire. We had held a short memorial service for him, and I had begun to move on with my life at the Times.

I returned from lunch one day to find a young messenger boy waiting for me at my desk in the newsroom.

The lad told me that he had been paid to deliver the note directly to me here at the Times by what he could only describe as ‘some poor soul.’ I must admit the youngster’s face took on a haunted expression as he spoke.

The note, which was in a spiderly shuddering scrawl, was barely legible and in a filthy state, and brief in the extreme. But it lifted my spirits more than I can explain.

It read.

John,

Kind George Tavern by the old docks – Limehouse.

I am always here.

Charles.

I knew the King George Tavern and the surrounding area more by reputation than experience.

It was one of the more disreputable regions of the city.

The pub was situated on the very banks of the Thames and as such was always frequented by transitory dock workers and sailors as well as those, of shall we say, ill-repute.

Although I was of course excited to know that my friend was not only alive but that I would soon see him again, I could not for the life of me think why he would choose such a place for our reunion. Then I remembered the boy’s three-word description and that ill-favoured look. ‘Some poor soul.’

Despite by enthusiasm for the meeting, I took care to tell a colleague where exactly I was going. Although at this stage and for reasons I wasn’t quite sure of, I omitted to say who I was going to see. I made sure to stop off at home first, not only to change into more casual attire but also to pocket my small revolver.

Much to my annoyance, I received a knowing look from the cab driver when I requested the address, which only strengthened by suspicions regarding the area. And as he dropped me off on Garford street, which was in sight of the pub, he gave me the name of a ‘young lady’ he knew in Limehouse who was very friendly to gentlemen from the city.

I paid the man but declined to tell him to mind his own business, as I must confess to feeling quite out of my depth in these new and forbidding surroundings.

Despite its brevity, as I stood outside the King George, I re-read the note, perhaps hoping I had somehow mistaken the location. But this was of course a fool’s hope I knew.

Although it was not yet two in the afternoon and the sun was unusually bright for this area of industrialization. The illumination from outside scarcely touched the interior of the tavern. Indeed, perhaps in a vain attempt to create a warming atmosphere, all the gaslights were lit in the place, but this just seemed to me to accentuate the gloom in the areas around the edges where the light refused to reach.

I took in its surroundings, trying to hide my distaste.

I am far from what you could call a snob, but I was all too aware just how different this place what to the pubs and restaurants I would normally frequent going about by job reporting on the political machinations of Whitehall. Not a

snob, but certainly privileged and more than a little naïve of such places.

The pub was furnished in a kind of haphazard nautical theme, the tables and chairs rough and dark stained wood. And the air was thick with tobacco smoke. The floor felt sticky from so many spilt drinks as I made my way over to the bar and hailed the bartender, who was conversing with another patron at the far end.

The man, in his early fifties, eyed me with that knowing look I had received from the cab driver, and I felt my cheeks redden, despite the legitimacy of my actual motives.

“What can I get you, young sir?” The bartender asked with a surprisingly light voice given his roughly honed features.

And hearing this welcoming cadence I promised myself I would put aside any preconceived prejudices I had regarding the place and its clientele.

“A small port, if you please,” I replied and turned to the murky room in search of my friend.

It was a sizable place, and the lighting only gave intermittent pools of orange light in which to take in those drinking here.

A group of who I took to be dock workers were huddled around a large table playing a card game I did not recognise.

They were speaking in German as far as I could tell and seemed in great spirits.

Two middle-aged men in overalls were sat at another table drinking from a shared bottle of some kind.

“Here you go, threepence.”

“Oh, thank you,” I turned back and dug a threepenny piece out of my pocket and gave it to the bartender.

I took a tentative sip and was surprised how tasty the port was, and again I had to remind myself not to be so judgemental.

Then, movement over at a secluded table at the very back of the bar caught my eye. And what looked like a gloved hand rose from the shadows and beckoned me over.

“Charles?” I exclaimed and moved swiftly across, quite forgetting my drink.

The gloved hand gestured to the chair opposite as I approached.

Now that I was closer, I realised that Charles was not in fact wearing gloves. His hand was wrapped in a grimy bandage.

As I neared the table, Charles deliberately sat back in his chair so that his face and body were in near darkness. I could see the lamp directly above him had been extinguished to allow for more discretion and that the table was in fact two

pushed together so that there was a greater distance between us once I was seated.

“Charles! I can’t quite believe it.”

I instinctively moved forwards and extended my hand, but he raised both of his in a halting motion and I could see the left was as bandaged as the right.

He had a wide brimmed hat on which was tilted in such a way as to obscure most of his face, which as with his hands was wrapped in filthy bandages. I thought of the fire and gasped.

“Dear God!”

He reeked of a mixture of disinfectant and to be quite frank, burnt and unwashed flesh. A tilt of his bandaged head at my reaction made it clear my expression mirrored my disgust.

“Charles...” I was about to apologise when he dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

“I don’t bathe much these days,” he said. His voice was raw and rasping and seemed to pain him to speak.

Words failed me as I looked at him. Even through the shadows he hid in, it was clear he had been badly injured in the fire, and by the way the bandages were arranged it seemed to me he had been self-treating himself ever since.

His face was all but covered by bandages save for a slit cut in for his mouth and a thin strip for his eyes, which I was heartened to see still had a spark of life in them. The flesh around them, however? Even in the dim light I could see the skin was red raw and seeping.

“It’s good to see you. John,” he managed to say.

I couldn’t reciprocate given his condition.

“We need to get you to a doctor,” I said finding my voice.

He gave a low strangled laugh at this and took a drink straight from the bottle of gin that had been on the table in front of him. His damaged hands made this quite the task, but I have to admit it seemed a well-practiced manoeuvre.

“You need a doctor,” I insisted.

Again, that wet choking laugh.

“I have had quite enough of doctors,” he replied bitterly.

“You’ve been treating yourself this entire time?”

“It’s surprising what one can buy on the streets around these parts.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“We, we thought you were dead, Charles,” I finally said.

“That fire...”

“Not quite,” he replied softly. “Perhaps I should have been, but I was saved from the flames, just.”

“And what of Moreau?” I asked. “Did he survive? What happened in that place? People died, Charles. They found a body... Amongst other things.”

I was aware I was bombarding my friend, but I had so many unanswered questions that had built up over the weeks.

He took another long drink from the bottle and set it on the table. He sat back with an audible gasp of pain. My heart sank at seeing my friend in such a state.

“You don’t have to suffer like this,” I said. “Let me take you back. If it’s money you need...”

“Suffer?” He said cutting me off. “Oh, it’s quite the opposite, my friend. Despite appearances to the contrary, I have never been happier.”

It is surprising what a simple tilt of the head can convey when you cannot see someone’s facial expressions. It was clear from that slight movement the incredulity was written all over my own face.

He let out a sort of strangled chuckle which set my nerves on edge.

“I have everything I need,” he finally said. “An ample supply of morphine for the pain.” He gestured to the bottle.

“And gin of course, which I can almost taste at times.”

Again, that laugh.

“Charles, please,” I implored. “You are not yourself!”

Even from this all too brief meeting it was clear to me that the dual effects of his terrible injuries coupled with the self-administered morphine, sourced from God only knew what illicit back street trader. Had distorted his usual good sense.

“It is true, I am changed. Both inside and out,” he said. “But for the better, John. I couldn’t begin to explain that aspect of all this to you. But the rest, how I came to be seated here before you now? That I can tell.”

He shifted awkwardly in his chair, clearly trying to get comfortable. Then he regarded me with those red ringed but bright, fierce eyes.

“It is good to see you, John,” he said again. And the grubby bandages tightened around his mouth and chin in what could only be a smile.

“You asked of Moreau,” he continued. “Take it from me, he was both a genius and a madman. The things I have seen...

His work.” He regarded his current state with a sigh. “And its inevitable consequences.”

He seemed to drift off, his mind wandering, and I sat there studying him for a full minute.

“Charles?” I finally prompted.

His gaze fell upon me once more and for a brief moment there was no recognition in them. Then slowly they seemed to focus.

“John, how long have I been missing?” He asked. “It’s a strange question to ask, when I myself have known my whereabouts all this time.”

I didn’t quite understand that last turn of phrase. But the morphine I assumed was clouding his thoughts.

“Over a month, since the fire.”

His eyes widened in something akin to amusement at this.

“Over a month? Tempus Fugit as they say,” he whispered with an edge of awe to his raspy voice. “Time flies, when you are having fun.”

“Charles! What happened man?” I exclaimed more sharply than I had intended. This drugged fugue state was so unnerving in a man I had known as nothing but rational and sober.

“Hmm...” Oldman paused, his eyes narrowed, and he began to tap his temple with a blackened index finger that protruded from the filthy bandage on his right hand.

Finally, after a good ten seconds of this action, he looked me in the eyes. His own were now thankfully clear once more as his addled brain fought through the fog of the drug.

“Let me start with this. What you see before you, is the luckiest man alive...”

What follows is an account of what my good friend Charles Oldman told me that long afternoon.

I convey it as best I can in his own syntax although freely admit in parts I have clarified without deviation from the ‘facts,’ his sometimes-rambling tone. But never I assure you to the detriment of the narrative, just simply to make the piece more readable and for my own part to better reflect my friend’s previously cogent voice.

I wonder if some of the more fantastical elements of the account are due in no small part to the hideous drug coursing through his veins and the trauma the whole affair no doubt inflicted on his state of mind. But that said, I have not censored a thing, that is most important of all to note.

As for myself, I did witness the aftermath of one part of this incredible tale when I foolishly, although with good intentions, followed Oldman home after our meeting. That was one event I did not put in my original article to the Times, and I only tell you now out of a kind of therapeutic exercise.

But more on that later...

Firstly, my dear John, I must admit that my initial delight at obtaining this assignment was soon tempered somewhat by a kind of melancholy.

It brought back memories of my much-lamented attempts at becoming a doctor myself. As I prepared, I was reminded of my natural aptitude in the area, not to mention great potential.

All to be let down, through no fault of my own, by my financial situation.

It was peculiar that I would think of such things then, after all, my knowledge of medicine no matter how truncated had given me a fulfilling career at the Times. Yet this particular assignment had caused me to pause and reflect on past possibilities.

Perhaps, thinking back, it was the man himself. Doctor Moreau, who I had seen lecture at the University during my first months there and had been so utterly impressed by the man. That had rekindled those dormant feelings.

Well, be that as it may, such whimsical feelings soon faded along with the setting sun when I arrived at Moreau’s secluded and quite unconventional laboratory. From its exterior it looked like little more than a nondescript

warehouse, with nothing to outwardly distinguish it from the others that it sat amongst. That of course was a deliberate choice on the doctor’s part when choosing the location.

I was greeted at the docks, if greeted is not too polite a word, by Moreau’s servant, the boorish mister Cullen. An altogether disagreeable and uneducated man who I had, when he first approached me, thought was one of the many dock workers milling around the area in search of work, or indeed a vagrant.

But no, he worked for Moreau, and it was only later I would come to realise why such a distinguished member of the medical profession would need the services of such a man.

My contact at University hospital, Doctor Miles, who had been the one to furnish Moreau with my albeit enhanced credentials and thus secured me with the laboratory assistants position, had been at pains to warn me of Cullen. Whereas there was little known about Moreau at this time. Jacob Cullen was another matter entirely.

Although Miles had to admit it was little more than campus tittle-tattle, he had heard tell that Cullen was rumoured to have been a grave robber for some of the less discerning medical students in the past. Similar to the infamous Burke and Hare if you will.

Nothing could be proven of course, but I can attest that he had now changed his profession from acquiring bodies to the procurement of live animals for the purpose of vivisection which had, in turn, led him to the employ of Doctor Moreau.

Looking at the man as I stood there on the docks, with his ill-fitting and unwashed clothes, I would well believe the rumours. In time, I would come to understand his true role for Moreau. He was a bodyguard, animal procurer and all round villain.

Indeed, as he led me over to the warehouse, he took great pleasure in informing me that I was a hasty replacement for the precious laboratory assistant, who, in his words. ‘Had a terrible accident.’

“I trust you can keep your mouth shut,” he said unlocking a side door just to the left of the main heavy door which dominated the front of the warehouse. It was a statement, not a question.

“Of course,” I assured him.

“The doctor has certain ways of working. When he’s in the operating room, you never go in there.”

“I understand.”

He replied to this with little more than a grunt and opened the door and we went inside.

The door led to a large open area, where normally, if this were a warehouse holding goods from the docks, would be filled with all manner of crates and such. But despite its size there was nothing, but a solitary flatbed cart with a wrought iron animal cage half draped in a canvas cover on the back.

No doubt this was for the transportation of the animals Moreau needed for his work. There was no sign of the horse although I could see hoof prints gouged into the soft stone floor here and there.

The only artificial light was coming from a first-floor window to my right which was to the side of a closed double loading door, under which was our only means of ascent.

A crude lifting platform with a gate which barely came up the waist. A series of thick ropes attached the devise to two iron wheels above the loading doors which fed down into a wooden box on the platform itself. I surmised the whole contraption was operated by a pully system which was powered by a large double hand crank protruding from the box.

“This is the only way up,” Cullen said redundantly. “I hope you’re feeling strong.”

I was about to protest but thought better of it, I had to remind myself of my position here, that of a simple assistant.

And also, although I had taken an instant dislike to the man,

I knew I would have to work with him. And I must confess of being more than a little intimidated, not only by his reputation, but his considerable size.

Much to my relief, the pully system was actually very well designed, and it took surprisingly little effort to turn the crank handle and the platform moved smoothly up the ropes and to the double doors above. When the platform came to a halt, Cullen snapped on a heavy metal brake onto the gears and pushed open one of the loading doors to the side and I could now see this was on a sliding system.

We stepped off the lift and into a brightly lit if sparsely furnished office. Which consisted of a desk and chairs which were tucked away in one corner and a long row of filing cabinets along one wall. Cullen pointed to the desk.

“The doctor likes to keep very exact records of his work.

He makes a hell of a lot of notes, and it will be either yours, or nurse Kinderman’s job to work out his scrawl and write them up at the end of the day.”

“I understand,” I replied and eyed the cabinets with great curiosity.”

“The doc hardly ever comes in here,” Cullen continued.

“He’s the more hands-on type, hates paperwork, practically lives in the operating room.”

I followed Cullen across the room and over to a door, as we passed the desk, I saw a woman’s bag hanging from the back of one of the chairs.

“How many people work here?” I asked.

“Just me, the doc and nurse Kinderman. You’ll meet her soon enough. She’ll be in the operating room helping Moreau carve up some poor creature or other I imagine.”

“And I,” I said as we reached the door.

He turned to me with a dull look of incomprehension.

“You, the doctor, nurse Kinderman. And I work here.”

I must confess to a certain sense of mischief seeing the man’s mind ticking over at this. Finally, I got a grunt in response, and he opened the door. I moved to follow but he put a hand on by chest to stop me and I took a step back.

“You wait here,” he said. “I’ll let the doc know you’ve arrived. Take a seat.”

With this he went through into the next room but did not fully close the door. Naturally, I peered through the gap.

The room was large, but the part I could see was empty.

With a double door at the far end, one of which was half open.

“Cullen, that you?” A man’s voice called from the other side of the door as Cullen approached.

“Who else?” Cullen replied.

“Help me with this will you?”

Cullen stepped to one side as a hospital gurney was pushed through the doors, getting wedged slightly. Cullen said something under his breath I could not hear and took a hold of the gurney and pulled it the rest of the way out.

There was something large wrapped in a blanket on the gurney, but it was impossible to make out what it was. I judged as best I could that it was the size of a large dog, perhaps a great Dane.

Then Moreau himself came through the doors and let Cullen take the gurney.

Doctor Alphonse Moreau. He was dressed in a surgeon’s gown and a bloody apron. When he pulled off his white cloth cap his grey flecked brown hair fell to his shoulders in a thick, unkempt mane.

Seeing the man again and in his element, Moreau looked even more impressive than I had built up in my mind. Cullen was a big man, but the doctor towered above him. I must admit I had to fight the urge to barge in and introduce myself then and there.

“Christ!” Cullen suddenly cursed as he peered under the blanket. “Another one?”

His insolent tone took me aback, but not Moreau.

“It couldn’t be helped,” Moreau explained.

“Doctor, you’re becoming far too trigger happy with these specimens!”

“Hazards of the job, Cullen, you know that,” Moreau insisted. “Besides, I was able to garner much from the autopsy.”

“I can easily dispose of your specimens, Moreau,” Cullen chided. “But precuring replacements is another matter entirely. After all, these aren’t fresh cadavers like the old days.”

“That my dear Cullen, is why you are paid so handsomely,”

Moreau retorted.

“Indeed,” Cullen relented. “The new chap is here...

Charles Oldman.

Hearing my name, I ducked back into the office and hastily sat down in one of the chairs. I noticed a copy of that day’s Daily Express on the desk, so I snatched it up and feigned reading it until I heard footsteps approach and the door clattered open further as Cullen came through pushing the gurney before him.

I stood up, expecting Moreau to be with him, but to my disappointment he was alone.

“You can go through,” Cullen told me. “Straight through the double doors, there’s a storeroom on the other side, wait there and someone will be through in a bit. Don’t go any further.”

I glanced at the bulk under the blanket.

Cullen gave an impudent chuckle and teased the corner of the blanket to one side. I was immediately struck with the unmistakable stench of formaldehyde.

It took me a moment to fully register what I was seeing.

It seemed to be the hind leg of a large animal up to the thigh. I presumed it was a dog, but the fur had been shorn away and much to my surprise the ankle joint had been straightened and kept in place by two metal brackets attached to the flesh with pins. So that the whole part of the leg was completely straight.

As straight I had to admit as a human leg below the knee, complete with an ankle of sorts, despite the obvious anatomical differences.

Cullen laughed out loud at my obvious shock and pulled the blanket back over the strange limb.

“Best get used to sights such as these, Oldman,” he said.

The sheer glee was thick in his voice.

And with this he wheeled the gurney over to the double doors and the lift.

One thing I learnt very early on in my all too brief time in medicine, is that to succeed in that profession one must become accustomed to all manner of strange and sometimes horrific sights.

I could, if there were time, regale you with some of the quite remarkable deformities and injuries I had encountered during a two-month residency at a pauper’s clinic behind Kind’s Cross station. How many of those poor souls survived beyond their twentieth year is beyond me.

But regardless of this, I was much taken aback by that brief glimpse of the doctor’s work. I had heard the rumours of course, many of which had prompted my assignment. Of Moreau’s unique application of the practice of vivisection.

But just what was he trying to achieve here?

I made my way across the large empty room and over to the doors. I paused, wondering what I might find behind it, but any reticence was more than overtaken by my curiosity, and of course the prospect of meeting Moreau himself.

I opened one of the doors and slipped inside. It wasn’t as I had first thought an operating theatre or indeed a ward occupied by strange and twisted animal experiments. Much to my disappointment I was met with a large and quite frankly cluttered storage area. The walls were stacked from floor to ceiling with all manner of boxes and bottles. Including

several wooden hutches for keeping rabbits and small vermin.

As well as sacks filled with various animal feeds.

A large wrought iron cage, much like the one on the wagon downstairs only considerably bigger sat in one corner. The top of the cage came up to my chest and was as long again in length. I absently tried one of the bars, but it did not move an inch. Whatever animal it had held would have been considerably bigger than the dog, if that what it truly was, I had just seen Cullen disposing of.

There were the remnants of straw bedding and what looked like animal droppings inside and I feared one of my first tasks would be to clean this.

I moved over to a long table which had many bottles and packages stacked on it. I picked up one of the bottles and read the label. Chloroform, this could be used to anaesthetise both human and animal subjects alike. I noticed serval empty bottle of the same amongst the clutter.

The chaotic state of the partition put me in mind once more of my time at Kind’s Cross whereas time was often of the essence, housekeeping was always the first task to fall by the wayside. As a lowly medical student, clearing up after a long shift was part of my more mundane chores.

Perhaps that was why, before I knew it, I had absently begun to tidy up a little here and there as I snooped.

“You must be Oldman,” a woman’s voice said from behind me.

“Charles,” I replied automatically as I turned to greet the speaker.

Now John, I am all too aware of my current, shall we say medicated state of mind. The morphine can at times not only dull the pain but also induce hallucinations and a sense of disassociation.

It may colour, I fully admit, my recollections of much of what I am about to tell you. That cannot be helped. But on this point, I am adamant when it comes to my first reaction upon seeing nurse Mary Kinderman.

She was standing in the doorway to the next room, dressed in a bloody surgical gown, much like Moreau’s and was holding her white surgical cap in her hands. Her pale young face was drawn and fatigued, but I can truly say I have never seen a more beautiful and bright-eyed woman in my life.

She was perhaps twenty-five at most, but in all honestly looked like she was barely nineteen her complexion was so fair. Her straw blond hair was cut much shorter than is the fashion these days, more out of practically than style. She smiled and quite honestly, I could have written a dozen poems about how that made me feel. But this is, as you will agree, neither the time nor the place for such frivolity.

Strangely though it may sound, her perfect face was somehow accentuated by the haunted look in her eyes, at the things this young woman must have seen lately. A darkness in contrast to her visual luminescence.

She seemed to blush as I stood there dumbfounded and bowed her head as if to examine the cap in her hands.

“I must look quite the sight,” she said. Her voice was as light as a summer’s breeze, barely a whisper but with a musicality that set my heart racing.

“Oh, erm, no,” I stuttered like a love-struck schoolboy.

“Not at all. You have been hard at work, I assume.”

I gestured past her through the doorway to the next room.

I could what looked to be an empty bed, perhaps this was a recovery ward or some such.

“Indeed,” she replied and walked over to me.

She wiped her hand on the gown which left a faint trace of blood, then she extended it to me.

“My name is Mary Kinderman, Mary to you. I am Doctor Moreau’s assistant.

I took her hand instantly and gently shook it. She seemed pleased with this, and I realised in that moment that this had been some kind of a test. She was clearly fresh out of surgery and the fact I took her blood-stained hand without

hesitation spoke volumes to her regarding my lack of squeamishness.

“Has the delightful mister Cullen advised you of your duties?”

“Not as such, mostly about note keeping.”

She gave the hint of a knowing smile at this.

“Yes, I hope your handwriting is up to scratch,” she said. “It may take you a while to decipher the doctor’s hieroglyphics, so I will help you with that part. I will dictate, you will transcribe.”

She spoke with a confidence and a directness that I must admit I found quite affecting.

“Understood,” I replied.

“Then,” she continued. “It will mostly be a matter of tidying up this pig sty and cleaning the instruments from the operating room. And assisting as and when required.”

“Can I see the operating room now,” I asked a little too eagerly.

That was when I saw a hint of fear in her grey eyes.

“No!” I could tell from her expression she was all too aware of how she sounded.

“As you wish,” I replied evenly.

She seemed to wrestle with some internal dilemma for a moment, then waved a dismissive hand.

“Time enough for all that later, the doctor is just finishing up in there at the moment and he does not like to be disturbed.”

She ushered me through to the next room, which was as I had first thought a small make-shift ward of sorts with four freshly made, but empty, beds.

“I’m sure you have seen one of these before.”

“Beds, for animals?” I enquired.

“That will not be the strangest thing you will see,” she replied with a light laugh. “If you do continue to work here for a time.”

This put me in mind of Cullen earlier. ‘ You will see stranger things than this. ’

“I, for one hope I will be working here for some time,” I told her. “And I am most eager to see more of what you are doing here. And meet the doctor, of course.”

“All in good time, Charles. For the meantime, please restrict your comings and goings to the front office and the storage area.”

Her face grew stern and again that flicker of inner conflict.

“What the doctor is doing here, will change the very perception of modern medical science.” She seemed to check herself before continuing. “But, for the time being these things are of no concern of yours. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes of course.”

“The doctor is very focused on his work, and if you do happen to meet him, he may seem very taciturn. But please, do not take that as rudeness. He is simply a man of very singular vision and focus.”

She spoke of the man with such obvious reverence that I inexplicably felt a pang of jealousy. How strange our emotions can be.

Despite this odd reaction from myself, I truly could not wait to meet the infamous doctor Moreau. Perhaps more now than ever. And I had to remind myself of the true purpose for being here.

Although Moreau’s work was shrouded in secrecy, their need for an assistance and the eagerness in which I had been approved, did show me on my initial first impression that they were not adept at subterfuge. And it was clear to me that their passion and single mindedness could be exploited to ingratiate myself into their inner circle and whatever wonders lay within before too long.

Cullen, I mused, might be a different proposition entirely, but I would just have to count on his utter dismissiveness at my being here as little more than a means to an end. If I stayed out of his way, he would no doubt stay out of mine.

“If you will excuse me,” Mary said after a time. “For today, I would be grateful if you could make a start on the storage area. As you could plainly see we have a lot that needs tidying and disposing of. We have been a little short-handed since...”

Her voice trailed off, she was of course talking about my ill-fated predecessor. The one who had been in an unfortunate accident, as Cullen had so gleefully informed me.

“It would be my pleasure,” I assured her.

She gave me a curt nod and went through the only other door in the room. And I got a brief glimpse of a metal operating table before the door closed behind her.

Much to my disappointment, I only saw Doctor Moreau fleetingly over the next week or so and was never formally introduced.

As Mary had advised he was a man of few words outside his conversations with herself and of course Cullen. I did, on occasion, warrant a grunt or a nod, which I at least took as a sign I could stay.

It was a strange few days for me personally. It was my first assignment of this kind and as I gradually felt more uncomfortable with my role in the scenario. I found myself questioning my integrity. As you well know I fair jumped at the chance to enter this clandestine world, but I had not truly realised what that actually meant.

I was used to attending lectures on the latest medical practices and procedures and visiting hospitals for the poor and such as part of my journalistic duties. But this was quite different, I was, for all intents and purposes, a spy here, and I had not really thought through what that would entail.

It did not help that I was growing closer to nurse Kinderman. We would spend hours together, going through the doctor’s notes and observations. She would do her best to patiently explain to me the vague nature of their work, without, I noted, going into too much detail at this stage.

Perhaps fearful of what I might think.

When I was alone, I made copies of several of the transcriptions, which I would study during my time off at home. But found my medical knowledge was sorely lacking in such advanced surgical practices. Indeed, in those early days I could barely understand the end motives of these increasingly bizarre procedures.

What I did glean though, was that Moreau was working towards some kind of animal evolutionary advancements. But through surgery and certain unnamed chemicals of his own concoction. Natural selection it seemed was too slow for the good doctor’s liking. But again, to what purpose I could not say.

Thankfully on this front, as the days turned into weeks and I proved my worth to the project, Mary grew more and more open about Moreau’s work. It was plain to see that he was the source of great admiration to the young nurse.

“I wish I could show you more,” she said as we sat on the docks watching the Thames flow by on a rare afternoon lunch break outside.

‘If you must eat,’ I had heard Moreau bellow on many occasions from within the warehouse somewhere. ‘Then eat on the go, eat on the go!’

I looked out over the water. This part of the Thames was hardly what one could call picturesque, but I found myself filled with contentment as we sat together sharing our modest meal.

“I know it will take time for the doctor to trust me with more important duties,” I told her.

“And he will,” she assured me. “He can have a sour disposition to be sure, but he is a brilliant man, Charles.

Sometimes he just forgets his manners that’s all.”

“No doubt!”

That was when she turned and lightly touched my arm. I felt a chill run through me, but it was a welcome one.

“I trust you, Charles,” she said softly. “I will see what I can do. If anything, I’m desperate to share what I have seen with someone.”

It seemed to me in that moment that she was suddenly fearful that I would become disillusioned with Moreau’s lack of attention and leave my position, and her.

That lovelorn boy inside of me stole my voice for a moment, I squeezed her hand and looked her in the eye with a reassuring smile. And once again, looking into those twin pools of grey I was struck by the hint of darkness behind them, in such conflict with her delicate features. Her porcelain like cheeks reddened and she broke our eye contact and looked back out over the river.

“We are at the beginning of something quite miraculous,”

she said wistfully. “Yet...”

Her nose wrinkled and I thought I saw tears forming in those haunted eyes.

“Mary?”

She let out a light, if forced laugh.

“Just tired, Oldman,” she said dismissively, and that moment of vulnerability was gone.

By God! I felt like such a villain, John.

If only she knew the true reason I was there, I think it would have broken her already fragile heart. She saw me as a would-be confidant, and what would I do with that knowledge she was so desperate to unburden? Use it to sell newspapers, perhaps even a book on the subject!?

You don’t know how hard it was for me to drag myself to work the following days after. But I did, for my sins I did.

Recalling time scales during this period is hard for me at the moment.

So much was packed into so little time, not to mention that tricksy opiate coursing through these veins. But what I believe to be sometime into my third week or so there, I began to gain more trust from the doctor, at Mary’s behest no doubt.

Even the delightful Cullen seemed to begrudgingly accept that I was here to stay.

I was tasked with cleaning and replacing the surgical instruments in the small, crude, but functional operating room which had been set up in the room next to the recovery suite.

This meant I was left unsupervised to examine the place in peace. It consisted of a long metal table flanked on two sides by large gas lamps with round reflectors attached to enhance the light. I had seen similar such theatres in my time at medical school and this one put me in mind of a rudimentary and functional military field hospital. Stripped back to the very bare bones.

Along with the table and lamps was a small metal topped table for keeping the instruments on and a large sink against the wall.

At the other end of the room was a very curious door. It had been re-enforced with a sheet of metal bolted to the wood with a heavy bolt and padlock attached.

I had been given express orders from Cullen, and again more sedate ones from Mary, that under no circumstances, regardless of what I may hear from the other side, was I to enter that part of the building. Which as you can only imagine fuelled my curiosity.

Now that I was beginning to gain further access to the building, I began to compare the outside of the warehouse with what I knew of the interior.

I managed to work out where each room I knew of, was situated. But as I considered this, it became increasingly clear to me that there was still quite a lot of the structure that still remained unmapped.

I knew there must be at least one room beyond the operating room. But from what I could ascertain from the outside there must have been at least another two, perhaps three large areas beyond this.

No doubt where they kept their ongoing experiments.

During my time there, I had seen Cullen wheel out three covered and clearly dead of such specimens, just as I had that first day.

I had subsequently learnt that he stored the carcasses of such euthanized animals in a back room on the ground floor for disposal of later. The smell of which got worse by the day, but still he refused to remove the bodies ‘until he had enough to warrant the risk.’

One thing I had noticed during my time there was that Moreau would often carry a large thick leather-bound notebook with him, about the size of a ledger. And I would from time to time, in his more unguarded moments, see the doctor reading

through his notes and drawings, amending here and there. His face set in a frown of concentration.

As I had been unable to discover much from the cryptic notes Mary and I were transcribing and had only been given fleeting glimpses into the contents of the more curious filing cabinets in the office, which Mary always kept so diligently locked.

I knew if I had any chance of fully understanding Moreau’s work, I would need to get my hands on that mysterious notebook.

Once or twice, when he had been at his busiest and as such most distracted, I had seen the book left on a table or in the operating room, left tantalizingly open, but I had barely noticed myself, let alone got a chance to read the erratically inked pages before Mary or Moreau had swooped in to reclaim the tome.

I had come to fear I would never truly be able to gain access to that book or the secret rooms beyond the metal door.

Then the incident occurred that would not only banish these frustrations forever and, although I did not know it then, set in motion the horrific chain of events that would lead me to be sitting across from you now, in this much changed state.

I was in the storage area when an ashen faced Cullen burst into the room.

“You need to leave,” he snapped.

He grabbed me roughly by the arm and before I knew what was happening, he was half leading, half dragging me through to the office and over towards the lift, all whilst looking nervously back the way he had come.

“Cullen, what in God’s name is going on?”

“The doc, and Mary have an emergency operation to perform, no time to explain, just go!”

“Perhaps I can help,” I said and pulled my arm away.

The big man squared up to me and with one powerful hand in my chest he pushed me against the lift door. His always bloodshot eyes seemed to glow in rage.

“Do as you’re told, come back tomorrow, Oldman, I’m not going to argue with you.”

I was about to reluctantly do as I was told when what I can only describe as an unholy howl erupted from deep within the building. And the rage in Cullen’s eyes turned to fear.

“What in God’s name...?” I uttered in horror.

It was truly like nothing I had ever heard before. It put me in mind of the shriek of a madman. I had the misfortune of hearing something similar in the mercifully

short time I had spent in an asylum for the criminally insane, where I had done a piece for the Times a year or two ago.

Those horrible and desperate cries of anguish from some of the more disturbed inmates had haunted me for months after.

But even those poor tortured souls had sounded nothing like this. It was barely, if at all, human.

The look on Cullen’s normally stoic face was almost as unnerving as the cry. He was terrified and just stood there, eyes wide in horror staring at me.

“Cullen!” I prompted. “What in God’s name is going on here?”

Then I heard Moreau bellow in the distance.

“Cullen! More Chloroform, for Christ’s sake!! Where are you man?”

I could hear the panic in Moreau’s voice, even from here.

Cullen seemed frozen to the spot, he shook his head slightly, a motion that could have been either incomprehension at the order or a refusal at its instruction.

I thought of Mary, struggling with whatever ungodly thing they had back there.

“Cullen!!” I shouted and shook the man by the shoulders.

He looked at me for a moment like he had never set eyes on me before in his life, then seemed to come to his senses as that belligerence of his gradually returned.

“Cullen!” Moreau cried out.

“You,” he snapped at me in an almost accusatory tone.

“Get out of here!”

As he turned away, I caught his arm, and he looked down at my hand incredulously.

“I moved the Chloroform the other day,” I lied. “You’ll never find it in time.”

It was a spur of the moment attempt at deception. How could I just leave this bedlam and simply return home? God help me.

He wrenched his arm free and gave me the most murderous look it has ever been my misfortune to see. He began to move away, and I thought that my ruse had failed.

“Well, come on the, Oldman,” he called over his shoulder.

“Just be careful what you wish for.”

I followed the man through the office, across the interconnecting room and into the storage room. I paused as he stopped by the door leading to the recovery ward.

“Well, find it!” He shouted.

It was now that I realised what I had done. I had lied to the man so as not to be ejected. If I went straight to the Chloroform bottles, which I knew only too well were in plain sight where they had always been, Cullen might realise my deception. But if I took too long feigning a search, this might cause harm to the doctor or Mary.

I glanced at Cullen, who I now saw had drawn a revolver, and was paying me no mind. Something crashed to the floor in what I calculated was the operating room.

“Doctor! Watch her claw,” Mary called out. “The strap has come loose.” Despite the obvious panic around her I was surprised and a little in awe of just how calm and methodical her voice was.

Then it hit me. Her claw.

And was that a low animalistic growling I could hear?

“Hold it, hold it!” Moreau cried out. Then. “Cullen!”

I selected a bottle from the shelf and took it over to Cullen.

“Here, do you have any gauze in there? A syringe?” I asked.

Cullen clutched the bottle in his free hand.

“I’ll be damned if I know,” he replied curtly.

I tried to look past him and across to the door to the operating room, but he shouldered me back.

“You wait in here, no matter what. Under no circumstances are you to leave this room. Better still go back and wait in the office.”

I took two steps back but had no intention of going all the way back to the office. Cullen didn’t seem to pick up on this as his attention was once again on the commotion taking place nearby.

“I’ll call you if I need anything,” he said not looking at me.

He slammed the door shut and I waited, calculating just how long it was safe to pause here until I dared open the door to the recovery room and hope to see what was occurring in the next room beyond that.

After what was perhaps a full minute, I slowly opened the door and peered into the recovery ward. I came inside, the door to the operating room at the other end was only slightly ajar and I could see the two lamps inside were blazing away but not much else from this position and try as I might I could hear nothing of the previous commotion, nor any sign of moment from within.

Spurred on by this I came across the ward and paused by the door.

“Hello?” I said and braced myself for a torrent of abuse from Cullen, but there was no reply.

Emboldened by this, I nudged open the door a little further and poked my head inside. There was no sign of Moreau, Mary or Cullen and I must admit with no little relief that neither was their ‘patient’ that had wailed so hideously and caused such a commotion.

Before, if you will recall, I likened the small operating room to a make-shift military hospital and that was the scene I was presented with when I finally summoned up enough courage to step inside, and one after a particularly rough shift.

The instrument table was on its side, its contents spilt all over the blood splattered floor. One of the two large lamps was at an odd angle and was swaying slightly which created eerie shifting shadows on the walls.

There were dozens of bloody footprints and smeared patches on the floor some of which led to the metal door which was shut. I tip-toed to avoid the blood and discarded instruments and bundles of gauze and bandages which littered the floor.

It was then that I noticed the heavy table they used for the surgery had actually shifted some two feet or so, the base

of the legs having gouged out deep splintered drag marks in the wooden floor.

The table itself was splattered here and there with blood and a tangled mass of what as I got closer, I could see were actually strips of leather. I took these for being what they must have used to strap the patient down as a precaution during surgery.

I ran my fingers across the cold surface and could feel several dents and also long indents in the metal. I crouched down so the light reflected better off the metal and could see they were in fact claw marks. ‘ Doctor watch the claw, the straps have come loose’. I shuddered at the thought of just what powerful creature could have caused such damage.

I turned, intent on going back to the storage area as I had been instructed, fearful I was lingering too long. I had seen enough for now, indeed I had the feeling I had already seen too much. As I turned my foot kicked something on the floor, I glanced down thinking it was a box or some such.

It was the notebook laid amongst the debris. Moreau’s most jealously guarded secret. Save whatever lay beyond the metal door of course, I mused grimly.

I picked up the book and placed it on the operating table. It had what looked to be a thin ivory bookmark placed between two pages towards the end. I opened it at that page

all the while mindful I may be disturbed at any moment and thus, I only intended to take a quick glance. But what I saw on those two pages threw any caution to the wind.

At first glance it seemed to be a series of six sketches, each complete with highly detailed notes underneath. And showing what I can only describe as the theoretical evolution of a large normal jungle cat into some kind of grotesque human-animal hybrid. As I looked closer at the first drawing, I saw the distinct patterning of a leopard on its flanks.

The next showed the creature with its hind legs extended unnaturally straight, which reminded me instantly of the dog Cullen disposed of.

Each drawing was a more obscene and horrifying progression in this hopefully imagined process. The surgical changes to the thing’s body would it seemed be kept in place with metal plates and leather straps. The legs by what looked like the type of callipers used to straighten children’s legs who had succumbed to polio. All bolted or stitched into the skin itself. Moreau had detailed the proposed methods for each stage with a kind of lunatic care.

I barely took in the remaining pictures as they grew closer and closer to some bastardized human form. I turned the page with a shaking hand and a growing sense of nausea.

At once terrified and fascinated as to what I might find.

These next sketches were of the poor creature’s head.

Again, showing in several drawing the progression from simple animal to a final obscenity, which I must confess put me in mind of a child’s animal mask, the type of which you would see at a carnival or one of those satirical political cartoons you can find in our very own Times.

Anthropomorphized they call it, animals given human traits, but this was to be rendered in flesh and bone and not harmless papier-mâché, newsprint or wood.

Most sickening of all, if such a thing were possible. It seemed Moreau intended to perform brain surgery on the creature. There was a detailed diagram of a human brain compared to that of a leopard, which highlighted motor function, speech and cognitive areas amongst other things.

I only prayed these were theological ramblings, but the evidence was all around me, and I dreaded to think just how far down this path of madness they were. But still! It was surely insane to believe it were possible to create such an abomination.

I closed the book as a wave of nausea overcame me. I looked at the tangle mass of leather straps and had to bite my lip so as not to shout out loud as the realization came to me.

These weren’t meant to bind and restrain the creature. These were meant to twist and maim. To force an animal’s natural

physiology from its God given design and into Moreau’s twisted, blasphemous, man-made conclusion.

“Madness,” I whispered as my thoughts spun like a maelstrom of monstrous images in my head. “Sheer madness.”

I staggered back out of the operating room and into the recovery area. How many poor creature’s, the victims of Moreau’s tortures had lain on these very beds, I wondered grimly. I sat on the edge of one, suddenly not caring if Cullen and the others discovered me here or not. I was glad to be seated when a fresh realisation hit me like a blow to the stomach.

Mary was an all too willing participant in all this.

Sweet, delicate Mary. She had called the doctor a genius and said they were on the verge of something great.

Cullen I could believe, it seemed to me his type would take great pleasure in the lunacy of it all. But to imagine Mary assisting Moreau in those experiments just broke my heart. And I vowed then and there to leave that instant and to expose this monstrous endeavour for what it was, and my feelings for Mary be damned.

And were it not for what happened next, I have no doubt that I would have. And yet, in all honesty, as I sit here before you now John, I thank Christ that I didn’t. For if I

had managed to leave that charnel house of a place and fled back to the warm reassuring arms of normality...

I would never have met her, and my life would have returned to that soulless day to day drudgery it had always been. Living, without truly being alive.

Oh, how destines can turn on a sixpence my dear friend.

I was just summoning up the energy to get to my feet and leave, when all hell broke loose.

I heard the metal door burst open and I leapt to my feet and came to the operating room doorway. Moreau and Cullen came staggering into the operating room carrying Mary between them. There was such a chorus of howls and ungodly screeches behind them that I half expected a pack of demons to be at their backs.

I stood there dumbfounded as they led Mary over to the operating table and Cullen stepped away, ashen, covered in blood as Moreau help her to sit on the edge. Neither man reacted to my presence as they were too busy with Mary and whatever was in the room beyond the now open door.

“I’ll kill the fucking thing!!” Cullen hissed through gritted teeth and drew his pistol from his belt. His eyes were as wild as a madman’s.

“No!” Moreau bellowed in response. “Secure that cage, we have come too far to waste such a precious specimen.”

It was now that I saw Mary was bleeding profusely from a wound on her left shoulder. She had her right hand clasped over the wound to stem the flow, but blood was still pouring through her finders and down her arm.

“Mary!” I exclaimed and flew over to her.

Cullen looked across shocked as I approached the table.

He moved to speak but shook his head, he seemed wracked with indecision. He frantically glanced from myself to Moreau, Mary, then through the door to whatever was making that nerve shredding sound.

“What in God’s name happened?” I said as I scooped up a roll of discarded bandages laid amongst the debris littered on the floor.

Of all things. Moreau gave me a look of incredulity.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

I treated the remark with the contempt it deserved and went to tend Mary. She had clearly lost a substantial amount of blood, her features, which had always been pale at best, were sheet white and her blood speckles cheeks were waxy with sweat.

“Charles...” She said dreamily and gave me the faintest of smiles and I could see the dullness of shock in her eyes.

I gently took her hand away from her shoulder and pressed the bandage against the seeping wound. I only had the briefest of glimpses, but I caught sight of two deep claw marks, some three inches long through the blood and matted fabric of her surgical gown.

“Cullen,” Moreau’s attention was once more on the man in the doorway. “Secure the cage, nothing more.”

Cullen clenched his jaw in frustration.

“Doct...”

“Nothing more!” Moreau said cutting him off.

“Blast you, Moreau!” Cullen replied, but still he relented and went back into the other room and away.

“Moreau!” I exclaimed. “What happened in there?”

“She got loose,” he replied absently, still looking at the empty doorway.

“Moreau!” I shouted this time. Then softer. “We have to suture this wound.”

This seemed to do the trick and he focus once more on the task at hand.

“Yes, good man, yes.”

Although it had been sometime since I had assisted in an emergency procedure such as this. Working together, Moreau

and I soon stopped the bleeding and the doctor disinfected and then stitched up the wounds on Mary’s shoulder.

I was amazed at just how calm Mary remained during this.

Once we had finished, she even insisted on inspecting the doctor’s handywork before we dressed the wound.

And then it took much cajoling from the doctor to get her to take a rest in one of the beds in the recovery ward. In truth, she was soon asleep despite her protests, thanks to a sleeping tablet from Moreau.

“She is quite the woman,” Moreau said as he gently pulled the bedsheet up under her chin as she dozed.

“Indeed,” I agreed.

I was about to address him about the commotion in the back room, which had led to the injury. The book, perhaps everything, when Cullen came into the room. His face red with exertion, and probably I thought, the odd jolt of whiskey to calm his nerves.

“Fucking bitch will not settle,” he said breathlessly.

“Mister Cullen,” Moreau said calmly. “I can appreciate this has been a traumatic incident for all of us, not least of all nurse Kinderman. But please reserve that type of language for your drinking pals.”

“What? She can’t hear me,” Cullen replied with a nod to Mary.

“No, but I can,” Moreau retorted.

Cullen shook his head in disbelief at this. He even glanced at me, and I must admit I shared his assessment of the doctor’s reaction. After everything that had just transpired, a little salty language seemed the least concern.

“But is she secured?” Moreau asked after a moment.

“Well, it’s back in its cage, but it’s done itself some right mischief, I can tell you.”

“We cannot lose her,” Moreau said with great concern. “I will need to examine her straight away.”

“Huh! Good luck with that,” Cullen replied sullenly.

“That’s what caused all this kerfuffle in the first place.”

I was amazed at how openly they discussed all this in front of me. Clearly, they could not hide what I had seen and heard, but the subject was never even broached from that moment on.

“We will need to give her a sedative,” Moreau said and without further ado set off back into the operating room.

I followed unbidden with a mixture of morbid curiosity and fear.

“Bollocks to that!” Cullen snapped with venom not moving from where he was standing in the recovery room.

This stopped Moreau in his tracks, he turned back.

“Need I remind you, who you work for? Mister Cullen.”

“I’ll shoot the thing if needs be, but I am not setting foot in that place again.”

There was an awkward pause as both men stood their ground.

“I can help,” I said breaking the tension.

This won a thin, cruel smile from Cullen.

“Be my guest.”

Moreau seemed to weigh this up and then he finally looked directly at me. Perhaps for the first if I recall correctly.

“Charles?”

“That’s correct, sir,” I replied as firmly as I could.

“Charles Oldman.”

He gave me a cursory looking over as one might when perusing a horse or some such animal for sale.

“So be it,” he said and strode into the operating room.

And I followed with my heart in my mouth.

“Straighten that instrument table, would you? And find me a usable syringe.” Moreau ordered.

I was glad to see the metal door was closed once more and did as I was instructed.

The first syringe I found was on the floor and cracked and thus useless and I was about to do back through to the storage area for a fresh one, when I spied one amongst a pile of instruments in the corner. I picked it up and examined the glass. It was still intact and complete with needle, but not even remotely sterile.

“I will need to boil this,” I told Moreau and held up the syringe.

“No time,” he replied dismissively with a wave of the hand.

“Should I gown up?” I asked as I passed him the syringe.

“Yes,” he replied and took a small brown bottle out of his white coat pocket.

He stuck the needle into the top of the bottle and began to measure out the dose. I set off towards the recovery ward intent on retrieving a fresh gown from the storage area when Moreau called out to me as I reached the door.

“No, wait, come as you are.”

I turned and he looked me over again, then he did the same to himself comparing my civilian clothes to his white medical attire.

“I think perhaps, seeing someone not in a white coat, and all that is associated with that, might help.” he added.

“If you think that is best,” I replied somewhat perplexed.

“I understand from Mary, you are quite bright, Charles.”

“I like to think so.”

“What we are doing here... What you will see beyond that door. It’s like nothing that has ever been attempted before in the history of vivisection. It will shock you, but I must insist you remain as calm as possible.”

He sounded to me in that moment like a carnival barker at the entrance to the freakshow tent. ‘Roll up, roll up and see the unimaginable horrors right before your disbelieving eyes!’

I thought of the sketches in the notebook and wondered with a shutter as to what stage they were at in this artificial evolution.

“Can I trust you?” Moreau said as he held out the syringe.

I held his gaze.

“At this point, I don’t think you have any choice,” I stated firmly. “Do you?

I think I caught the slightest hint of a smile on his weary face. He gave me the syringe, the turned the handle of the metal door and barged it open with his broad shoulder.

“Shall we?”

I followed Moreau though into the next room, by head full of the horrors that might await us. But to my surprise we entered a brightly lit room. I was put in mind of similar rooms I had encountered during my university days. Rooms usually situated away from prying eyes, where the medical department kept their animal specimens for use in vivisection.

Whereas the university could keep dozens of rabbits, countless mice and several dogs. There were only two dogs left in here and I could only imagine how many they had started off with.

There was in total ten cages of various sizes and strengths, eight of which were empty, but the first two contained a dog in each. Both I could see were beagles, approximately a year or so old.

One which seemed to be at first glance unaltered, lazily lifted its head as we entered, then rested it back on its paws. I could tell straight away it was drugged, probably to keep it compliant upon seeing what I imagined were the horrors inflicted on the other animals that came and went.

Such was the case with the animal to its left. This creature was less fortunate. As we walked briskly past, I glanced at it, but only briefly. Its body looked to have been dissected in two, length ways and then re-attached with what I can only describe as metal clips neatly in a row down its partly exposed back bone. It had a dressing on its head and again I was reminded of the sketches in Moreau’s damnable book.

At first, I thought, hoped, the animal was dead, but much to my distaste it languidly lifted its head and tried to bark but the sound came out as a pitiful wet cough. As it moved, I could see one flank was open, but the innards were held in place by a clear material which afforded me an all to vivid sight of its organs. It was like some obscene living anatomy model.

“Christ, Moreau,” I breathed and tore my gaze away.

And to think this was only a taste of what was to come.

“That was one of my more successful early endeavours,”

Moreau told me in an obscenely casual tone as we reach the next door at the other end of the room. “It’s back was broken, but now with painkillers it can walk.”

Somehow, I didn’t think its spinal injuries were the result of an accident, but I held my tongue.

I could see a new door at the other end which was similarly re-enforced with sheet metal and a heavy bolt. I saw that there was fresh blood on the floor, from Mary’s wound or the creature within I didn’t know, but would, for my sins, soon find out.

Moreau slid the heavy bolt, and the door opened an inch.

He paused and turned to me.

“No sudden movements, Charles,” he warned in a whisper.

“She’s in a cage but beware she can be lightning quick.

And with this he eased open the door and I peered past him and inside.

The room was in near total darkness as the only light came from the room at our backs. The first thing I became aware of was the smell. An odour of animal droppings, damp straw, reminiscent of a visit I once made to the big cat animal enclosure at the London Zoo as a child. But also, the unmistakable odour of blood.

As my eyes became accustomed to the meagre light afforded by the gas light behind me, I could make out a row of three large cages lined up against the wall. The room itself was much smaller than I had anticipated given the spacious rooms I had encountered in the rest of the building. It was little more than twenty feet square at most.

“In you go,” Moreau whispered. “It’s best I stay here.”

I slid past the doctor and took two tentative steps inside. As I did so I heard a low guttural growl coming from the farthest and largest cage which was situated in the corner. Followed by the sound of something big, shifting in the shadows within.

The light dimmed as Moreau closed the door slightly behind me at the sound. Leaving only the merest of gaps in which to illuminate the room. I felt cool brick at my back as I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. There I waited, not only for my eyes to become accustomed to the light, but so I could better hear the creature in the corner.

It was breathing in short sharp breaths, and I could hear it shifting in the murk of the cage, perhaps raising itself up on all fours. Then a shadow within the shadow moved, lightning quick from one side of the cage to the other and again that deep unnatural growl, but this time tempered if I wasn’t mistaken with what I can only describe as pain. The sudden motion had clearly caused the creature no little discomfort.

Then it moved again, slower this time and two piecing circles of light flashed in the darkness. The eyes of the creature, suspended in little more than a dark shadow within a lighter one. Looking across at me with a weary cunning.

I clutched the syringe in both hands like a weapon and it took all my courage not to just get to my feet and run from the room. From the whole damned building if I am honest.

I suddenly became aware that there were still two other cages I had ignored, both of which were closer still. I peered into them and much to my relief saw they were empty.

The creature, Moreau’s creation was alone in here. Alone and undoubtedly in excruciating pain from the attack and Moreau’s surgical butchery.

Those hideously detailed sketches in the doctor’s notebook came to my mind once more as I looked at the shadow, which was in turn looking at me. And again, I wondered at what stage in Moreau’s man-made evolution the poor creature was.

As my eyes adjusted, a kind of murky white body came to view. The creature, which now seemed massive, as it stretched out, panting on the floor of the cage, was wrapped almost entirely with bandages from head to toe. From head to toe, such a strange expression, but this first meeting is, I must confess somewhat coloured by my later knowledge of her much-altered physiology.

I could not see much of her actual body in the paltry light coming from the gap in the door at this time, but what became clearer by the second were her eyes. So bright in the

darkness, so alive and alert and yet so heartbreakingly full of pain.

It was her eyes that broke me in the end. This was not the dull unintelligent daze of a dumb animal. Whether by Moreau’s design or not, there was a bright, sharp intelligence behind them, and it was as if she was looking deep into my very soul. In search of if I were truly friend of foe.

There was a definite sentience at work here, behind those eyes. The likes of which it is impossible for me to relate with any real clarity to you or anyone now.

I must have stared into those soulful eyes for quite some time, it was almost hypnotic, and I make no excuses for fair wallowing in her gaze. And without realizing it, I had shuffled along the floor towards the cage, and when I finally broke that connection, I found I was within three feet of the bars.

We had shared an instant undeniable bond in those few seconds. It was as if it were some primeval hypnosis, which I gave myself over to willingly. Thinking back, that was the moment I was truly lost to her. And before long, all the happier for it.

“Charles?” It was a whisper from a dream of reality, but harsh enough to break this wonderful spell.

“Charles, her leg.”

It took me a moment to realise it was Moreau, squatting by the door, whispering to me.

The creature heard him too and let out a low threatening growl, but I was not afraid. It was Moreau the tormentor she hated, not me.

“Her leg, it’s right up to the bars, inject it.”

I looked down to the creature’s bandaged back leg, unnaturally straight, held in place by metal callipers and bound with leather straps. Which were stitched and bolted, just as the notebook instructed, into the flesh and bone itself.

I remembered the syringe, which was on the floor by my side. The creature growled again as if in anticipation of what Moreau wanted.

I looked back into her eyes, which seemed to calm her.

“This will take the pain away,” I said softly.

Whether she understood the actual vocabulary or not, she clearly understood my intentions and that I meant her no harm.

I was an unexpected ally in this house of horrors, and she knew it.

So much so that she then did something miraculous. She extended her front paw through the bars and held it out to me.

I leant forwards and gently took it. I didn’t examine the limb too closely, but I could see that her paw had been fashioned into some kind of rudimentary hand. An obscenity I hated Moreau for instantly.

I heard Moreau utter an oath behind me at the action. I gently squeezed her ‘hand’.

“I will help you,” I assured her as best I could.

And again, her eyes seemed to acknowledge this.

Then I heard a voice, as clear as day in my head.

Dea.

“Dea?” I whispered and to this day I will swear on my life she nodded.

My Latin is rusty at the best of times, but ancient mythology was a hobby of mine when I was a child.

Dea, the Latin word for Goddess. How fitting, I thought as I whispered it back to her again.

I injected her, Dea, and stayed with her as one would with an ailing loved one, until she drifted off to sleep.

“If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it!” Moreau announced as he paced the recovery ward, gesticulating wildly as he recounted the scene to a now awake, if groggy Mary.

“It seems you have quite the connection,” Mary said and sat up rubbing her temples. “Should I be jealous?” She teased.

She was still under the influence of the sedative Moreau had given her, so I simply smiled, but despite myself blushed all the same.

“Sounds downright wrong to me,” Cullen offered from where he was lurking by the storeroom door.

“It’s as you said, doctor,” I said, not believing a word of what I was saying. “It was probably due to my not wearing a white coat or gown.”

“Interesting,” Mary said.

“She undoubtedly associates our surgical trappings with her discomfort,” Moreau said.

Discomfort!? I held my tongue, not for the first time since we returned from Dea’s room. Whilst she was unconscious, I had insisted on dressed her wounds in the cage myself, not wanting to move her too much.

And all I could do as I tended to her, was to avert my eyes as best I could as I worked. The torment and sheer brutality Moreau had wrought upon that once majestic body sickened me to my very core. And for what? What possible medical advancement could this be leading to?

It seemed to me this as all just to feed Moreau’s ego and morbid curiosity. But I kept my council, content in the fact that due to my undeniable connection with his precious subject, I was now indispensable to the good doctor.

And it was during my trip home that night that I determined to use this newfound role to somehow free Dea from her tortured existence. But how? I could not, as had been my original reason for being there, expose Moreau for the heartless butcher he was.

The first thing the authorities would do would be to euthanize the poor soul and the two remaining dogs. Or worse still, keep her alive so they could study and conduct just as brutal experiments on her already desecrated body.

No, I would need to bid my time as best I could, until an opportunity and more importantly a solution presented itself.

Over the coming days, I was the only person allowed within the room with ‘the patient’.

Indeed, it soon became apparent that I was the only one she would allow to tend to her. And as such our bond grew exponentially stronger with each visit.

I would sit for hours, simply talking to her as I cleaned her wounds, fed her and changed her bandages. The latter of which I began to loath over those days. As this forced me to see the true extent of Moreau’s defilement of her body.

Her snout had been reduced so that her face resembled the drawings in Moreau’s precious notebook. A child’s mask but wrought in flesh and bone. Worse still, if such a thing her possible, the back of her skull had been partially removed so that the doctor could gain access to her brain.

Thankfully I never had to witness these monstrous experiments, but I knew they had included inserting needles into certain parts of the flesh to illicit the involuntary movement of her limbs and also to attempt at locating the parts controlling her vocality centre.

To this effect, Moreau had told me one evening that he hoped this tinkering would lead to the location of the portion of the brain which controlled speech. So, the madman intended his abominations to speak!

All her limbs had been broken and surgically reset into the approximation of arms and legs. Kept in place as I have previously stated by a system of brackets, plates, straps and

callipers attached to the flesh itself. It was clear his intention was to have her walking on her back legs like some circus trick.

It was a wonder she hadn’t, like so many others, succumbed to these invasive procedures.

Moreau for his part was more than happy with this new arrangement. His patient was complaint and had been healthier than at any other time since the surgeries and manipulations had begun.

Cullen was hardly ever around anymore and when he was, he had the appearance of being quite drunk more often than not.

I had even, and much to my own surprise, reconciled my feelings towards Mary. Despite her willing roll in this whole endeavour, she had always seemed genuinely concerned for her patient and even the two dogs. I had even seen her secretly feeding the two beagles treats whilst Moreau was preoccupied.

And yes, I had to admit my feelings towards Mary had grown beyond friendship and I flattered myself that she felt the same. Such as when her gaze would linger on me longer than normal and how she would laugh at my terrible jokes.

This all culminated one night when we were alone in the building. We were in the operating room, and I was checking on the all but healed wound on her shoulder, whilst she sat in

the edge of the table. As I finished my work, she took my hand in hers.

“I’m so glad you are here with us,” she said softly.

I looked into those haunted eyes, only now I knew why they were so inflected. And it took all my resolve not to simply unburden myself to her then and there regarding my plans for Dea.

She had a good heart and I believe she would have understood up to a point. But she was too loyal to Moreau to let me proceed or indeed help me.

Without thinking, I gently kissed her.

“Lord! Mary, I’m sorry,” I blurted out and pulled away.

She smiled and laughed lightly and took both my hands in hers.

“And I thought you only had eyes for your girl in there,”

she said good naturedly.

She drew me close, and we kissed again. Lord how I so desperately wanted to ask her to help me free Dea. Alone as we were, it would have been the perfect time to take her away.

But then my heart sank at the impossibility of it all. Away to where?

She slid off the table and pressed her head against my chest as we embraced. We slowly began to move in time

together, dancing to some unheard melody, and I felt myself falling in love with this woman, who in truth I barely knew.

But despite the bliss, this was a bittersweet moment as I knew, soon enough, I would have to ask her to choose between a possible future together, away from all this, and the different but all too real love she felt towards the doctor.

Deep down, as we danced, I knew which path she would choose.

New love in truth is no match for hero worship.

I must confess to being in somewhat of a daze when I visited Dea later that night.

Whereas before she had always been affectionate and compliant in my presence. It was as if tonight she could sense my mood. She froze the moment I entered and the dim light from the room at my back glinted of her vicious teeth as she bared them in a snarl.

I did my best to sooth her as I approached, and as I held out my hand to her, she sniffed it and I swear I saw a flash of suspicion in her eyes. She back away until she could go no further.

My heart sank as I was reminded, all be it reluctantly, that deep down she was still a wild animal. She could smell Mary’s scent on me and if I didn’t know differently, I would have said that she was jealous.

I left her that night conflicted. I had been somewhat elated by my flirtation with Mary and the possibilities that might bring. But now this was tempered with a feeling I can only describe as guilt. As if I had betrayed that miraculous creature by my fledgling affection for Mary. Who was, lest I forget, one of Dea’s tormentors.

Thankfully, Dea’s memory of our last interaction had faded by the following day. And she was once again attentive and calm, which was of much relief to me. But I knew I would need to take care around her when it came to my burgeoning relationship with Mary.

I spent most of that day in the room with her, quietly talking to her and soothing her wounds. We had also begun to play simple games with a ball, as one might with a dog.

Yet she was so much quicker to learn, and I did begin wonder if Moreau’s intrusions into her brain had indeed had some sort of beneficial effect after all. But I was more of the belief that these improvements in her abilities were more down to my benign presence and gentle encouragements.

One thing I had noticed over the previous days that she had begun to develop a strange aptitude for mimicry, but even these seemed more pronounced today.

Little motions and ticks I had missed at first, but as I took greater note, I became more aware of these

idiosyncrasies. The way she would tilt her head slightly when I spoke. Those eyes shining with concentration. She had even reached out of her cage to awkwardly pull her food bowl towards her before I’d had a chance to do so myself. She had even tried to pick it up with her surgically malformed hands, only to fail with what I swear was an audible sigh of exasperation.

I was of course acutely aware that I may have been projecting these attributes on to her, but that said I had the overwhelming feeling that, given time, she could truly develop some rudimentary human-like motor skills.

Unfortunately, as I left that night, full of the day’s progress, I discovered that Moreau had been watching these interactions with that cold analytical eye of his.

I was in the office preparing to leave as I was due to meet with Mary later for a quiet dinner. We had much to discuss since our kiss and I didn’t want to do so in the building where Dea was dwelling, after today’s success’ I did not want to jeopardise that relationship again.

Moreau entered with Cullen in tow as I was putting on my coat, my thoughts already on the evening ahead with Mary.

“She’s quite the mimic,” Moreau said, and I must had started in shock as Cullen let out a low cruel laugh.

“Indeed,” I relented, trying to make light of the progress.

“We should sell tickets,” Cullen sneered.

“It is quite remarkable,” Moreau added with a withering look to silence Cullen. “I must confess I had thought her usefulness was coming to an end. In the light of her attack on Mary the other day. But you, it seems, have a calming way with her.”

I shrugged as nonchalant as I could. The phrase ‘her usefulness was coming to an end,’ chilled me.

“All I did was show her a kindness,” I replied.

Moreau frowned slightly at this. And was that a flicker of humanity I saw cross his features?

“It’s a wild animal!” Cullen exclaimed.

“That’s enough Cullen,” Moreau snapped. “See to that matter we discussed,” he added curtly, and Cullen skulked off back into the building with a sour look.

“The man is a dullard,” Moreau told me with an exasperated sigh. “But in his brutish way he is correct. The leopard is quite a remarkable achievement, she had progressed far and above what I had expected.

“Due in no small part to your participation. But in the end, that’s all she is. An animal, a thumb nail sketch of what is to come.”

He fell silent as he let the gravitas of his words sink in.

“Best remember that Charles,” he finally added before exiting without another word.

My evening with Mary was a welcome distraction to the events of the day and my interaction with Moreau.

We skilfully avoided any talk of the laboratory, and it was clear to me, to both of us I venture, that our bond would undoubtedly grow closer in the coming weeks. A fact that had me fair walking on air as I escorted Mary, hand in hand, back to her lodgings.

As we walked, I finally broached the subject of her thoughts on what Moreau’s intentions were towards the patient.

At this she grew reticent, rapidly changing the subject and distracted me with an impromptu kiss on the cheek.

After I bid her a goodnight and saw her safely into her boarding house, I could not help but worry something was a foot back at the laboratory. Perhaps it is in hindsight now, but as I walked home, I had the distinct impression things

would soon come to a head. I thought back to Moreau’s dismissal of Dea and her place in his ever-expanding work.

Just a thumb nail sketch of what is to come.

Of course, if I knew then, what I know now, I would have returned to the laboratory then and there and freed her regardless of the consequences. But I suppose in the end, things eventually turned out better than I could ever have hoped for.

One death notwithstanding.

When I arrived at the laboratory the following morning, I could feel a sense of anticipation in the air.

My three colleagues it seemed had already been hard at work long before I had hauled myself up the rope lift and entered the office.

Just as I took off my coat and hung it on the coat stand, Mary appeared in the doorway, she seemed oddly flustered, but gave me a thin smile of welcome all the same.

“Mary?”

“Charles, now listen. Moreau has had a bee in his bonnet about all this mimicry with the patient.”

“I don’t understand,” I said with a growing sense of dread.

I moved to edge past her, but she gently took my arm and I paused.

“Mary, what is going on?”

“I, I came back here after we parted last night, on Moreau’s request.” She paused and I could tell she was racked with indecision.

“Mary, please!”

I pulled my arm away, perhaps a little too roughly, and she gave me such a look of surprise, fear even.

“Charles, let me explain...

I moved off through the building before she could finish, by mind was a maelstrom of horrific thoughts and scenarios as I stormed from room to room.

As I walked into the recovery ward and over towards the door leading to the operating theatre, I had visons of finding poor Dea dead on the table. Her body dissected into nothing more than a mass of flesh and bone.

I slowed as I approached the closed door, suddenly afraid, torn between the need to know her fate and what I might find. I heard Mary rushing to my side. She took my arm again and I allowed myself to be pulled to a stop.

“Charles, please let me explain,” she begged.

“Is she dead?” I asked plainly.

“Dead?”

It seemed to take Mary a moment to take in what I had asked.

“No, Lord no,” she replied.

She door opened and Cullen came out. I could see his clothes her more dishevelled than usual and his face was flushed and bruised. A thin trickle of blood ran down his left temple, which he wiped away with his sleeve. He looked shocked to see me.

“What have you done?” I asked with venom.

Cullen composed himself somewhat and straightened his shirt.

“Stand down,” he said and jabbed a finger at me. “Calm yourself, Oldman or I will knock you out.”

I clenched my fists and glared at the man. Truth be told I knew I was no match for him, but in that moment, I didn’t care, fuelled as I was by a red rage.

“Get out of my way, Cullen,” I ordered, but I was not surprised when he did not move. Still, I got no little pleasure from the shock on his face at my belligerence.

Mary squeezed my arm.

“Charles, you need to calm yourself,” she said. “She’s alright, scared, hurt a little but no more.”

“Where is she?” I asked, my gaze still on Cullen.

“Back in her cage,” Mary replied. I could hear the emotion in her voice. “You should go through, go to her.”

This won a snort of derision from Cullen. He moved his tatty shirt to one side to reveal the pistol in his belt.

“Huh, I could calm the thing easily enough,” he said.

“Cullen, enough!” Mary said.

She then stepped between us and took my hands in hers, much the way she had done on that night we kissed. I looked at her enraged, but my temper lapsed seeing the tears in her eyes.

“It was a mistake,” she said. “We should have waited until you came in. But Moreau wasn’t sure you would even help.”

“Help with what?”

“Come,” Mary said softly and led me passed Cullen and into the operating room.

As I stepped inside, I braced myself for what I might see. But of all the horrors I had expected to see as I

entered that accursed room, the surreal sight of Moreau setting a table with cups, saucers and a silver tea service was about as far from anything I could have imagined.

Moreau smoothed out the tablecloth which had been spread out over the operating table and straightened a teaspoon next to a China cup and saucer. And moved a chair so it sat in front of them.

Words escaped me momentarily as I took in the strange scene. I could see the floor had been freshly swept and a pile of smashed crockery was in one corner. Here and there specks of blood were flecked on the wall and floorboards.

The doctor looked at me as he straightened his back with an audible crack and winced. Just as with Cullen he looked to have been in a fight, he had a freshly cleaned wound just above his right eye and his surgical gown was splattered with blood and ripped in several places. Dea’s handywork I thought with no little satisfaction.

But what of her condition?

“What in God’s name...” Was all I could muster at such a sight.

Moreau studied me closely for the longest time much as he would one of his experiments in a cage.

“You are quite the enigma, mister Oldman,” he finally said. “I have mapped that creature’s anatomy down to the

minutest detail. I have altered its limbs, manipulated its brain, in an attempt to create something almost entirely new, or at this stage a flesh out sketch of its potential.

“Yet despite all that, I am unable to control its actions without medical intervention. And then here you come and in just a short period of time, you have gained its trust, taught it things even I would never have thought possible.”

Again, he ran his eyes over me as if looking for the source of his vexation. And I had the feeling in that moment, that he would have dissected me if he could.

I looked again at the contents of the table, and the smashed crockery.

“You tried to get her to drink tea!?” It was lunacy to think of such a thing from one so well educated, but the evidence of my eyes could not be ignored.

“A mistake, I admit,” Moreau said ruefully.

“This is madness! She can copy simple gestures, she’s not some circus freak you can teach tricks!”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Cullen said from the doorway behind me.

“Cullen, enough!” Mary snapped from my side.

“The mistake was to attempt this without you to guide her,” Moreau said. “For whatever reason, Oldman. You are the key.”

“I want no further part in this madness,” I told him firmly.

And by God I meant it, but again my resolve was tempered by what fate would befall Dea if I left.

“We are in the process of procuring another specimen,”

Moreau said, all the while observing my reactions through narrow slitted eyes. “A panther, courtesy of our good friends at London Zoo. It will be a much better subject than the leopard, which is half dead itself. And if you will not help us...”

He deliberately let his voice trail off.

Mary pressed herself to my side.

“Charles, I know you care for her. But without you we cannot control her any longer.” She gestured to the debris on the floor. “Look what happened when we tried...”

“Look, for Christ’s sake!” Cullen announced and stepped forwards. “The doctor and nurse Kinderman are too kind and cultured to spell this out to you. But I’m not.”

“Cullen,” Moreau cautioned, but the brutish man cut him off with a look.

“That thing in there, which was once the good doctor’s proudest achievement. Is but one thing now. Considering the panther is apparently better suited for this kind of butchery.”

Cullen sneered and theatrically paused for Moreau or Mary to object.

The silence from both was deafening. I looked at Mary who flushed and looked away.

Cullen’s not so subtle inference was all too clear to anyone, but still the man continued his crude soliloquy.

“That thing,” he repeated and pointed redundantly to the door. “Is... How did you describe it, doctor? Arh, yes.

Now we are to secure a new, better subject. That accursed creature, in its current belligerent state, is only useful at best for one thing. As a template for his new experiments on the panther.”

“What mister Cullen is trying to say,” Moreau finally said taking a step closer to me. “Is quite simple. Alive and with you assisting in its training. She can still be of great use to me.”

“And if I don’t help?” I asked as my stomach hit my boots.

“Regardless of your help, she will be, either way, as mister Cullen so eloquently put it,” he fixed his coldly

indifferent gaze on me. “A guide for which I can use to transfer her existing surgeries to the panther. The only question is, and this is entirely down to you, mister Oldman.

If she is a living breathing guide, or just another dead specimen I can utilise in the exact same way.”

I heard Mary let out a long forlorn breath at my side at Moreau’s bluntness and cruelty. But still, she did not protest.

So that was to be Dea’s fate. To live or die and only I myself would be the one to choose.

As I stood there, with three pairs of eyes boring into my very soul, I wrestled with this monstrous dilemma. I cursed myself for becoming so attached to her. But it was true, I felt a strange kind of kinship with Dea, and at her own telepathic request, even named her Goddess.

If I refused, she would be killed. Then at least her pain, and my tie to this accursed place would be over, I reasoned. I could for my part return to normality, and with a renewed conviction to expose Moreau as the butcher he was.

And she would be at peace. But in that moment, I felt as if I were deciding the fate of a family member, and indeed, yes, a loved one. And would it not be reasonable to fight for that life in any way I could?

“Charles...” Mary lightly touched my shoulder. “You can make her life better, she responds to you. Think of it, with you by her side, she would be so much less stressed and afraid. And think of the things we could all achieve together.”

The anticipation to my response was like a physical presence in the room.

“I must be here for every single session,” I said firmly and looked Moreau in the eye. “You, or anyone never so much as looks at her without me. That is my condition.”

Moreau raised an eyebrow at my demand and seemed more amused than threatened.

“Agreed,” he finally replied, and I thought I caught a hint of admiration in his voice.

“Very well,” I said. “Let me go to her now, in time I will try and coax her out, show her that with me present, this room can be a place of calm, amusement even. And not just a place of pain.”

I emphasized the word pain and as I did so, I deliberately, coldly, look first to Moreau, then to Cullen, and finally to Mary.

Only Mary had the decency to look away.

Moreau gestured to the door.

“As you wish.”

“Don’t expect miracles,” I said as I walked over to the door.

“But miracles are what we do here, Charles,” Moreau replied.

I didn’t honour that remark with a reply, but simply made my way through the door and into the room with the two caged dogs in. The unmolested of the two sat up as I entered, it’s mutilated counterpart, lifted its head slightly and regarded be with soulful eyes.

To this day, I am unsure why, but as I passed, I gently slid the bolts from the doors of their cages. Perhaps it was that look from the dog or perhaps I intended to free the pair later when given the chance. And I would have done so, if events hadn’t soon escalated horribly.

I pressed my ear against the cold metal of Dea’s door and held my breath in a vain attempt to listen for any signs of life coming from within.

I braced myself for what I might find inside, I could only imagine the injuries that had been inflicted on her in that ludicrous attempt to have her sit at a table.

Utter, utter madness.

I slid the heavy bolt back and let the door open a few inches under its own weight.

“It’s alright,” I whispered. “It’s Charles.”

I did wonder if her pain and confusion might blind her to my benevolence. After all they had man handled her without any thought to her condition and I could only imagine the fear she must have felt.

“I’m coming in, Dea.” I pushed open the door further and slipped inside.

I peered into the darkness of the room and saw that the door to her cage was open, and it took me a moment to find her as my eyes adjusted. And it wasn’t until she lifted her head that I saw the dark shape, she was curled up awkwardly in a corner at the very back of the room.

I stepped inside with my hands out defensively to show her that one, it was me, and also that I meant her no harm.

And there I waited, unsure if she would recognise me at all, until finally I heard a whimper of pain, and she began to slowly crawl towards me.

Even in that meagre light I could see patched of exposed fur and flesh where her bandages had been torn away in the struggle. The bandage wrapped around her head and face was in a bloody state and a length of the material hung down by the

side of her face which strangely put me in mind of an unravelling turban.

I moved over to her as briskly as I dared so as not to startle her, and she flopped to the floor with a strangled sigh. I knelt in front of where she lay, and gently took her head in my hands and shifted her onto my lap as best I could.

She looked up at me and I could see the pain in her eyes. And I am not ashamed to admit that tears came to my own.

“Oh, beauty. What have they done to you?”

At the time I didn’t truly believe that she understood every word I said. It was more the tone of my voice and my unguarded gentle manner around her.

I brushed the length of ragged material from her face and adjusted the bandage on her head so that it once more covered most of the surgical scaring around her shorted snout.

Protecting her dignity in this much exhausted state.

Tears came freely now as I looked down into those deep mournful eyes of hers. And despite her distressed state and the darkness of the room, the sentience I had previously seen in them still shone through.

“Sssh, it will be alright,” I cooed softly. “I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”

How could I continue to let her suffer like this? I asked myself as we sat there. It was almost as cruel to let

her live than fool myself into believing I could truly save her.

Although it pained me horribly to admit it, she was a creature that, through no fault of her own, should not, could not exist in this world. To kill her as painlessly was possible would be a kindness.

And being the miraculous creature that she was, I believe she saw that in my eyes as surely as if I had said it out loud. She reached her cruelly fashioned hand up to my face, and although, given my current, shall we say medicated state, I swear to you she wiped the tears from my cheek.

I caught a flicker of light as someone moved in the doorway behind me.

“Good Lord...” Mary uttered in shock.

That impatient fool Moreau must have sent her to observe my progress.

Dea stiffened at the sound of her voice. Her porcelain white teeth bared in a snarl.

“Easy, beauty,” I coaxed as calmy as I could. “Easy now.”

I could feel her uncoiling like a spring in my lap and I swear I felt my bones rattle as she let out a low guttural

growl. I remembered in that moment how she had reacted just at the faint scent of Mary on me that night we kissed.

Again, that flicker of light as Mary gasped and thankfully moved away from the doorway.

“Ssh, Dea, Ssh,” I tried my best to sooth her.

But it was too late. Mary was a threat, one of her tormentors, one of those humans in white coats who had caused her so much pain and anguish. But it was something so much more than that, she was a threat to that almost preternatural bond we undoubtedly shared, an interloper into those moments of bliss.

And this cocktail of emotions was something her true animalistic nature could only deal with in one way. She was an apex predator protecting her own.

I realised this all too late, I barely opened my mouth in an attempt to offer more calming words, when she leapt from my lap with lightning speed. Despite her injured state, she sprang up and for the briefest of moments stood before me on two legs. Oh, how proud Moreau would have been I thought bitterly in that split second before he finally pitched forwards and, despite the callipers, reverted to her natural four-legged stance.

I moved to speak, to try and somehow reassure her Mary was no longer a threat but she let out a most hideous roar and

bounded from the room with remarkable speed and agility before I could draw breath.

I heard a crash from the next room followed an instant later my Mary’s shrill scream of terror and then Cullen shouting in shock and fear.

I scrambled to my feet and by the time I had reached the door, to my horror, Dea was already upon Mary knocking her backwards through the other door and into the operating room.

“Dea! Stop!” I cried and raced through towards the assault.

A shot rang out from within the next room. Cullen.

I had to leap over several overturned cages, including the two which had housed the dogs, both of whom were nowhere to be seen and despite my fear addled brain, I hoped they at least had managed to escape.

I stumbled through into the operating room and was met with a scene of utter horror. Dea was on her hind legs once more with her teeth snapping at Mary’s neck as she vainly tried to fend off her far superior attacker.

Cullen was on the floor, his nose a bloody mess and he got to his knees and aimed his pistol grasped between two shaking hands. Moreau had back away and was standing with his back against the far wall, his eyes twin saucers of disbelief and shock.

“Cullen, don’t!” I shouted and ran towards Dea and Mary.

“Dea! Stop!!” I screamed.

Another shot rang out and I felt the bullet zip by my head as it imbedded in the wall to my left. I instantly flinched and brought my arm up to my face. Another shot a moment after from that idiot Cullen who was firing blindly now. I felt a splash of blood hit my chest and splatter my face. My first thought was that I had been shot, yet I felt no pain.

It wasn’t my blood.

Dea had her teeth in Mary’s neck, who screamed but the sound was drown out by the fountain of blood which spurted out from the wound in alarming jets and bubbled up into her throat.

Dea viciously shoot her prey and came away with a large chunk of flesh with a sickening wet ripping sound. I stopped, frozen by the sight and it was only the sound of Moreau’s cry that pulled me from the brink of madness.

Dea picked up Mary’s now limp body and flung it across the room like a rag doll, where it crashed into one of the large gas lamps sending it crashing to the floor. The gas tube pulled out from the wall as it fell, and I could hear the

unmistakable hiss of escaping gas. In seconds I could smell its oppressive odour as it filled the room.

I began to run to where poor Mary had fallen but instantly I slipped on the blood-soaked floor and landed hard on my back. I rolled over, now a bloody mess myself and scrambled over to Mary, who was convulsing violently.

I clamped my hands on her throat in a desperate attempt to stem the flow of blood from the deep wound, but her eyes had already glazed over, and she stared sightlessly up to the heavens as the last of her life drained away and a moment later she lay still.

“Stay back you monster!” Cullen cried.

I turned to see the old villain was propped up against the wall by the door, aiming unsteadily at Dea, who was still on her hind legs, as she moved slowly, deliberately towards him like the predator she was meant to be. She snarled, a nightmare of fresh blood and teeth.

I saw the back of Moreau as he made his way through the recovery room, wailing like a lunatic as he tried to make his escape. Against my better judgement, I called out to Dea to stop, but she dropped back down onto all fours into her more natural position.

The gas was now so thick in the room, it was becoming hard just to take a shallow breath and I could feel its

effects starting to take a hold as my thoughts became clouded and I began to feel faint.

Cullen raised his pistol as she approached.

“Cullen, the gas...” I choked out, but it was barely audible even to myself.

One of the last things I remember, was Cullen firing just as Dea moved to pounce and then the whole air around me igniting in a hellish conflagration.

Then just fleeting images as I was ingulfed in the inferno.

The room alight, poor Mary’s body ablaze as I rolled in a vain attempt to extinguish the flames ravaging my clothes and flesh. I remember Dea, a mass of flames herself crawling towards me and we held each other, waiting for death to take us. Together at least for one last time.

I have no recollection of the fate of Cullen and Moreau during this fiery nightmare. The last thing I do remember is the sensation of falling as the wooden floor beneath us gave way. Falling, I assumed to our deaths.

As his rasping voice faded, Charles Oldman slumped back in his chair.

His already painfully slight frame seemingly diminished all the more at the effort of unburdening himself. He reached for the bottle on the table, as he had done many times during his fantastical story. Only to pull away again realising it was empty.

His chest rose and he let out a long forlorn sigh, which clearly caused him great pain.

“Whether it was I who pulled Dea from the flames, or she who rescued me, I cannot say.”

I lent forwards conspiratorially, quite captivated my it all.

“And what of the creature?”

His eyes narrowed and he fixed me with a look of distaste.

“She,” he emphasised. “Is quite safe now.”

I held out my hands in way of apology.

My friend’s terrible wounds were beyond denial, and his sometimes-colourful tale did bear up somewhat to what I already knew of the aftermath of the fire on Fiddler’s Wharf.

It seemed more than plausible that this Cullen character had survived at least the initial fire, as his body was not found amongst the debris. And then spirited Moreau away

before the authorities arrived. And now it sadly seemed I had a name for the only human body found in the ashes.

Nurse Mary Kinderman. It would be a little comfort for her family to know that she was no longer missing. They must have been worried sick these past weeks. They would finally know for sure, however painful it was, and yes, at least have their loved one’s body to lay to rest.

All this I could believe without question. But Charles’

assertion that this creature, Moreau’s blasphemous creation had somehow lived? Despite its injuries and not to mention the torturous experiments already wrought on its body, for God only knows for how long previously? That I could not reconcile with any good sense.

Charles was, after all, gravely injured in the conflagration. Then there were the weeks of self-administered medical care and the morphine he so freely admitted using. It was enough to turn any rational mind to flights of fantasy.

“It’s quite a story,” I said after a long silence fell between us.

“I can appreciate how it sounds, John,” Oldman conceded.

“But it happened, more or less as I have told you.”

“But what happened to you after the fire? You were missing for so many weeks.”

“I must admit I have very little memory of the hours directly after our escape. Fleeting moments, seen through a vail of pain and shock. Small things, unfamiliar surroundings, as we half walked have dragged ourselves through the docklands as night drew in.

“I must have lost consciousness countless times. Until before I knew where I was, it was daylight, and from what I have gathered since, I came to some resemblance of consciousness in what I can only describe as a makeshift camp or commune which had been constructed under a wooden jetty by the river.

But somewhere the rising tide could not wash away, it must have been there for years. All I know is that my wounds had been dressed, not with any great skill mind and with less than sterile bandages. But the intention was greatly appreciated.”

I had to bite my tongue at this latest fantasy. Did he really mean the creature had somehow treated his wounds?

He must had read this on my face, as he let out a short grunt of amusement.

“We had been found and cared for by a small community of, what I would have once thought of as derelicts. Some twenty or so lost souls who had created a makeshift village of their own, made from the discarded flotsam and jetsam of an

unfeeling, uncaring city. All of them forgotten by the rest of the... Shall we say, civilized world?

“A world I am now ashamed to admit to being a very willing part of, I too before this revelation would have thought nothing of passing them by in the street and turned my nose up at the squalid way they lived.

“But they, to a man and woman, accepted Dea and I for what we were, outcasts just like them. I can only imagine what a sight we pair must have made when they came upon us.

But they accepted us, welcomed us into their world without judgement.

“And so, we were kept safe, and in time we could even move freely through the back alleys and hidden streets of the city. Even the police shunned us, after all, what were two more rag clad figures to them?”

This new revelation shocked me more than I can say. My good friend, terribly wounded and cast adrift in the indifferent streets of London. Had I myself, like so many others, walked past him during this time?

“My God Charles, you could have come to me, I would have helped you. Gotten you real medical attention, food, clothing.”

“That’s just the thing, John. I had everything I could ever need, right there. Our new friends kept us, especially

Dea, safe. And then when I was able, I secretly returned to my flat with a small group. I had money there, and gladly let them take whatever they wanted, clothes, valuables to sell. I knew I would never return there, how could I after everything I had seen and experienced. And more to the point, I didn’t want to return to that old life.

“Moreover, my new friends, family really, showed me where I could procure morphine for the pain. And in time, they helped us secure a modest flat in Limehouse, where we now live.”

“Charles, listen to me,” I insisted. “You’re not thinking clearly, and with all due respect, look at yourself.

You are in desperate need of proper, professional medical assistance. And all this talk of morphine? Procured, I very much doubt from a reputable chemist. It’s poisoning you!”

“I didn’t ask you here for a lecture, John. Just to assure you I am still very much amongst the land of the living. And so that, for myself, I could get these quite remarkable events in some semblance of order in my mind. Now that I have, you may do with all this as you will. I imagine it would make quite the article for the Times.”

With this he placed both damaged hands on the table’s edge and with great effort, pushed himself to his feet. I

could see the pain such a simple motion had caused him in his half-hidden face.

“Charles!” I exclaimed. “Please...”

He silenced me with a wave of his bandaged hand, which I now saw was bleeding through the material.

“This is an end to it,” he said with a cold finality.

Still, I rose, I desperately wanted to say more, something, anything to urge him see reason. But deep down, as I watched him shuffling out from behind the table, I knew any reason he once possessed had long since been drown in a cocktail of morphine and alcohol.

“It was good to see you, John,” he said as he gingerly adjusted his wide brimmed hat to further obscure his damaged features.

“You too,” I replied. Resigned to losing him once again.

“Do you need anything? Money, anything at all?”

“No, thank you. I have everything I need back at home.”

Back at home, where the creature is, I thought grimly.

Had that thing truly survived? Was it even now, as Charles insisted, waiting for him to return?

I tried to push the thought from my mind. It was madness to think of such things. Wasn’t it?

I watched silently, and with a heavy heart as my friend, Charles Oldman walked away and towards the door. He suddenly paused for a moment and shook his head and seemed to chuckle.

He looked back at me over his shoulder.

“I was thinking, in his way, Moreau transformed me too.

Just as he transformed my strange, wonderous companion.

Perhaps I should be thanking him.”

He laughed at the lunacy of this and went through the door and away.

I stood, looking at the now empty doorway.

I waited for a moment, conflicted, before striding after him with a renewed purpose. I knew the moment Charles left that I had to follow. Now my ego would dictate that at that time, my reasoning for this clandestine pursuit was solely out of concern for my friend’s wellbeing. And that would have been correct up to a point.

But in hindsight, I no longer try to deceive myself into believing my motives were completely altruistic. I have tried during my remembrances of Oldman’s outlandish account to be as faithful in recounting his words and my own feelings without prejudice.

So, I must continue to do so regardless or in the end the whole endeavour would be rendered pointless, and I might as

well have left that crudely edited pamphlet version of what you are reading as the only public record.

Of course, I was concerned about my adrift, yet oddly contented friend. But I cannot say that this was my overriding reason. I simply had to follow, as would any curious soul who had heard such a story. To see for myself if this impossible creature, to which Charles so lovingly spoke of, and indeed named! Was not only real, but more even than this, an actual living, breathing creation eagerly waiting for his return.

To my surprise it was almost dark outside when I stepped out into the cool early evening air. I looked around and for a brief moment of panic I could not locate my friend. But then up ahead at the entrance to a dimly lit side street, I caught Charles’ unmistakable gait as he walked slowly on, keeping to the darkening shadows.

As I have said before, I was aware of this area of London only by its dubious reputation, and as such I was glad I had decided to bring my pistol with me. Although it was approaching dusk, it was still quite early in the evening revellers to emerge, and the area was still quite deserted.

The folks working on the docks would not be off shift and out on the streets for a little while yet. Charles had chosen

his time to exit with care. No doubt from bitter experience given his freakish appearance.

A little further on, as he walked up a particularly steep road, lined on both sides by large factory walls, he suddenly stopped, and I had to duck into a doorway for fear I had mistakenly not left enough space between us and that he might turn around to discover my prowling.

I waited a moment, then peered up the gloomy road. I hadn’t been seen after all. Charles was crouched over, seemingly struggling with something in his coat pocket and was not aware of me at all. I was too far back to see what he was doing, but he leant heavily against the brickwork to his left and continued to wrestle with something.

He paused, seemed to stiffen for a moment, then his shoulders slumped, and he seemed to be breathing in short sharp breaths and I had to fight the urge to go to his aid.

Finally, he straightened and set off again at a surprisingly quick pace. I set off once more in pursuit and actually found myself having to jog just to keep a reasonable distance between us.

As I reached the spot where he had stopped, something on the ground caught my eye. My heart sank, it was an empty vial of what I can only imagine had contained morphine. To think this bright, eager and ambitious man had been reduced to

injecting this poison into his body on some back street of London, just to keep his pain at bay.

Seeing that discarded vial, I felt a sudden stab of remorse. I had been so keen to see what wonders and horrors would await me if Charles’ wild tale was true, that I had put his plight to the back of my mind. Yes of course I was curious about his supposed companion, but seeing him slumped there, in the grips of addiction, shamed me.

As I followed on, doing my best to keep pace with Charles’ increased agility, I also couldn’t help but wonder if all this talk of the creature and its alleged empathic nature, wasn’t simply some drug fuelled fantasy he had concocted in his opium addled brain, perhaps to physiologically ease his mental distress brought on from the undoubted trauma he had suffered at Fiddler’s Wharf.

Presently, Charles turned down a side street and onto a narrow road which at first, I took as a row of derelict houses on either side. I waited by the corner and watched as Charles crossed the street and entered one of the less rundown buildings, and it was now I noticed a light shining from one of the upstairs windows.

I made my way down the road and stood in the shadows on the opposite side of the street and pondered my next move.

Now that I was here, in this strange rundown area, I must

confess to feeling more than a little reticent about my chosen course of action.

I reasoned as a cold fear gripped me, which was half tinged with curiosity and a more reasonable sense of self-preservation. That, as I now knew the location of Charles’

residence, it would be more prudent to return during the day, if I was indeed to proceed, for better or worse in entering.

But could I in truth, after everything, wait that long?

From where I was positioned, I could see the front door Charles had entered through was slightly ajar. If I could summon the courage, I could gain entrance through there without any hindrance. I had, as my more curious side told me mischievously, come this far already, so it would be a folly to retreat now.

Alas, on this occasion that side of me won out all too easily.

The light in the upstairs window flickered which drew my gaze to it. I could see the outline of Charles, though the thin net curtains as he entered and threw off his hat and coat. He gesticulated wildly to I assumed someone in the next room and my heart rate quickened.

Although it was impossible to make out any of his features, especially with his bandaged face, it was clear from his exaggerated movements, no doubt fuelled by the fresh

injection of morphine, that he was enthusiastically relating what I can only imagine was news of our meeting to his unseen companion.

Could it be the creature after all?

Charles rushed away from the window and out of sight. I silently cursed my indecision and glanced to my left and then right to ensure I was alone on the street, which thankfully I was, as I could not have cut a more suspicious figure if I tried.

Again, the light flickered, and I uttered an oath out loud. Two figures now! Frustratingly indistinct, silhouetted as they were by the dim light behind them. And then, to my utter amazement, they began dancing.

I recognised Charles’ outline, but his companion, who he seemed to be guiding, as they spun awkwardly around the room, was little more than a shadow. And try as I might, I could not make out her features. Yes, I realised, it was a woman, seemingly wearing a dress and bonnet on her head.

Mary Kinderman was dead and so if his story was to be believed, this could be the creature. Couldn’t it?

She was taller than Charles, even given her head wear, with her arms draped around his shoulders. They disappeared from view several times only to emerge again as they danced.

“Could it be?” I said out loud.

And before I realised it, I was making my way across the road and over to the house. My initial observation had been correct, the door, which in truth looked like it had been kicked in before, was slightly open, sitting as it did on uneven hinges. I could see the lock had been set but due to its warped condition, the latch bolt had slipped away from the brass bracket on the frame.

I gently pushed the door open and quietly stepped inside.

The hallway was in almost compete darkness, but I could just make out the faint glow of gas light coming from the top of a rickety staircase.

The smell of damp and rotting wood was almost overpowering as I carefully made my way to the bottom of the stairs. I was almost glad I could not fully see their condition as I could only imagine how dilapidated they were.

Any more illumination and I might not have had the courage to continue fearing for my safety.

I paused at the sound of manic laughter coming from the floor above. Then, satisfied no one was on the landing, I began to slowly ascend the stairs, testing each creaking step before putting my full weight on it and continuing to the next.

I held out my hand towards the banister to my left but pulled it away again sharpish as the whole length of it moved

a good foot or so with the sound of soft cracking. Thus, I guided myself up the rest of the way using my right hand against the wall to my right, which was slick with mould, coating my palm in no time wherever I touched it.

When I finally reached the top of the stairs, I wiped my hand on my coat in disgust. The landing was short with one door to my right and another straight ahead towards the front of the building, which had light seeping through the crack underneath.

All too aware that I was trespassing, I proceeded with caution and as I approached the door, I could hear Charles inside, excitedly chattering and laughing almost to the point of hysteria and not for the first time I cursed that demon morphine.

I paused, should I knock? I raised my fist in an automatic motion to do so, but something stopped me. Charles’

voice was, by the sound of it moving off into another room, further into the flat I presumed. This was confirmed when the light under the door flickered and faded as I imagined him taking the lamp through into another room. Then there was silence.

With my heart in my mouth, I reached for the doorknob and turned it as slowly as I could, honestly expecting it to be

locked, but I was rewarded with a soft ‘click’ and the door opened.

What madness was this? The more logical part of me screamed. But this was all but drown out by the stronger, more reckless urge to discover Moreau’s horrendous creation for myself. A leopard, my God, and one that had been surgically altered to walk on its hind legs, and, if my eyes didn’t deceive me, dance! I was also drawn on my Charles’

assertion that there was a spark of sentience behind those slitted feline eyes.

Terrified, I slipped silently into the room, which I now saw in the gloom consisted of a small kitchen and living room in one space. I recoiled slightly at the smell which was almost unbearable, even in relation to the damp and rot of the stairs case and landing. The stench of rotting meat and vegetables mingled with the damp and smell of weeks old unwashed clothes and much I could not identify.

The incessant buzzing of flies filled the rank air, and despite the lack of adequate illumination, I could make out stacks of unwashed dishes still lousy with rotting food laid by a sink filled to almost overflowing with stagnant water.

I noticed a pile of filthy bandages discarded on the floor and I could only imagine what poor Oldman looked like without them.

That manic, high-pitched laughter again, which set my teeth on edge, came from behind a door across the other side of the small room. And I could once more see the lamp light coming from under it through the gaps around the frame.

I froze at the sound of shuffling movement from within the room, and then the sound of something like a heavy weight falling onto complaining bed springs. The next room was a bedroom, and I was suddenly hit with the awful thought that perhaps Charles was in there with a normal woman, one of his beloved street people.

I had seen them at the window, dancing as one might with a lover. God, I had been so intent on believe in Charles’

tale of the creature’s survival, that I might easily have projected some other meaning onto the scene than a simple tryst.

I had a choice to make as I stood in that squalid room, to decide how my part in this surreal tale of mad doctors and twisted creatures would end.

I could leave, before potentially making a complete fool of myself, and also in no small part betraying the wishes of my friend. Or give in to my urge to discover once and for all what wonders and yes horrors awaited me beyond that door.

Now I think back, it was really no choice at all. I could flatter myself and call it my innate journalistic

inquisitiveness, but that would be a lie. It was an overwhelming, morbid curiosity, and one I was powerless to resist.

I stepped back into the room and resisted the compulsion to just barge in on the pair. I had to remember I was the trespasser here, but I could also reasonably lay claim to a genuine concern over my badly injured friend’s wellbeing.

“Charles?” I was taken aback at how loud my voice was within the small room.

I noticed the light coming from under the door had dimed somewhat as the lamp had been turned down. Perhaps the pair were settling down to sleep.

I listened, but there was nothing but the incessant buzzing of the flies in response. And so, I waited for what seemed like a good half an hour but was I’m sure just five minutes at the most. Still nothing from within, the pair much be asleep I reasoned, more I’m sure to reassure myself than anything. Still, it made sense considering Charles’ drugged state and the exertions the day’s events must have taken on him.

“Charles? Anyone?”

Nothing but that buzz, buzz, buzzing in my ear.

I moved purposely towards the door, more to stop my nerve giving out than anything.

“Charles, I’m coming in.”

Another step and I was at the door, I gripped the doorknob and turned it, then paused, waiting for any shouts of protest from inside. But there was nothing but those damnable insects, so I pushed.

As I opened the door, the first sensation that threatened to knock me onto my backside was one of absolute nausea. The air was thick with a mass of fat black flies, there were so many of the awful insects at first, I thought I had disturbed a hornets nest they were so loud.

I gasped and put by hands to my face as the smell then hit me. And were it not for the sight on the bed which terrified me into inaction, I would have fled screaming from that auditory and malodourous assault. And I don’t imagine I would have stopped running until I was home, where sanity and reason reigned.

There, on a rancid and stained mattress was my colleague and friend Charles Oldman, stripped naked, exposing his burnt and gangrenous flesh to the ravenous appetites of the flies as they swarmed around him.

Worse still, if such a thing were possible, was the abomination he had in his embrace. At first glance I thought it was the mummified remains of a long dead burnt woman.

Swathed in filthy, ill wrapped rotting bandages.

The face, which the bandages only partially covered, was malformed beyond all recognition its snout was short, a metal plate down the bridge of the nose to keep the illusion of humanity in place. What little skin was left, was a tangle of mottled, blackened animal fur.

Its right arm, which was draped obscenely over Oldman’s right shoulder, ended in a kind of paw, which, as Charles had articulated, had indeed been fashioned into some kind of rudimentary hand.

Here and there, on the more exposed parts of its body, I could see leather straps, sown into the charred flesh and a pair of mangled callipers holding its legs almost straight, contrary to its natural state.

Moreau’s prized blasphemy of made-made evolution.

Charles, who I now saw was awake, did not acknowledge my intrusion.

He was staring lovingly into the blackened pits of the creature’s long-gone eyes. He began to gently caress its cheek, whilst whispering something I was all too glad I could not hear. He then, to add horror onto horror, he passionately kissed the creatures’ twisted mouth.

I think I screamed, but I couldn’t tell for sure as Charles didn’t so much as flinch and as for myself, I had the feeling of being out of my body. And in that brief moment, I felt what madness must be like. The impossibility of what I could plainly see with my own eyes but could scarcely believe.

As finally, the subconscious, sane part of my addled mind, pulled me back from the ever edge of lunacy. I turned and fled that accursed place and out into the night air, and just as I thought, I did not stop running until I bolted myself back in my own home.

I spent the rest of that night in a kind of malaise, haunted by what I had seen, and the sheer madness of it all.

Half expecting Oldman and his unholy partner to come barging through my door, as I had theirs.

The night seemed to drag on for an eternity as I shivered and hid from the darkness, clutching my pistol for all the good it would do and awaited the light and the hope of a new day that would bring.

I wept like a child when that faint red glow began to appear over the rooftops outside my window, as the dawn finally banished the night.

When the bright early morning sun was fully over London, I ventured out and informed the police of what I had witnessed. In truth, I only told them the location of the

missing Charles Oldman, and that he was badly injured and in a much-agitated mental state.

They would have to make of what they would, anything else found there.

Apparently, and much to my great sorrow, I later learnt from my editor that Charles had howled like a banshee when the police arrive and fought with such apoplectic violence that two of them ended up in hospital. All this despite his much-debilitated state.

But most telling of all, and despite my best efforts questioning the police afterward, there was no record, official or otherwise of anyone or anything being found with the unfortunate man.

And if I hadn’t been given a knowing, haunted look from one of the officers who had been on the scene when I asked him, I might well have questioned my own sanity.

The authorities had plainly subdued this more disturbing aspect of the case. And I for one couldn’t blame them.

Thus, when I submitted my account of what Oldman had told me in the pub, I said nothing of the creature in the bedroom.

I imagine it is, as I write this, being examined under intense scrutiny somewhere as they try to understand how Moreau could create such a thing.

It is my heartfelt wish they do not try to replicate those many horrific procedures.

As I have previously stated, my newspaper published a much censored and sensationalized version of the text which is what compelled me to write this piece and for better or worse, include its horrific conclusion.

As of today’s date, Charles Oldman is a patient at a secure hospital here in London.

I will, in time, summon up enough courage to visit him.

I fool myself that my reticence to see my friend is due to wanting him to be in a better physical and mental state upon our reunion. But I know, in truth it is out of a sense of guilt that I have yet to venture there.

I have received much praise, not least from Oldman’s own family for saving his life. But I am still haunted by that look of utter love in his eyes as he lay there with the dead creature. A more contented man I have never seen. And I wonder, if it might have been kinder to leave him to that fantasy, until he finally succumbed to the effects of his wounds and addiction.

I have spent much of my time since that fateful meeting with my old friend, drinking heavily, trying, in vain, to wash away the sight of that horrific couple on that squalid bed. A

sight made all the more painful for the contentment they shared.

Sometimes, when I am at a low ebb, I see that creature...

Dea, laid beside me in bed, but much as Oldman would have seen her, alive, sentient and strangely beautiful in her surgically altered feline uniqueness. I think perhaps I am jealous of what they had.

And in these moments of despondency, I wonder what other such creations are out there in the world, as their unhinged, but clearly brilliant creator toils away somewhere to perfect his obscene art.

Where he escaped to, no one knows. I just pray it is far away from these shores and any form of civilisation.

So that no other sane mind will ever encounter the Moreau horrors again.