A Wolf in Victoriana: The Delivery

A chilling breeze blew through the doorway, fluttering the man’s coat Viviane wore over her long black nightgown. She stood against the wood of the open doorway, slowly lifting a glass of port to her mouth and letting its hot, sweet taste rest on her lips. In the distance, a solitary animal shrieked like a tortured child. It was after midnight and the streets were so devoid of life that the sound of another living thing lifted her lonely spirit. However, the sharp coldness in her eyes, which were so light a shade of blue that they verged on silver, betrayed no such emotion.

The clatter of hooves on cobblestone sent a small burst of heat through her insides that she complemented with a long sip of her drink. Would her predictions be correct? Had there been a death tonight, under the gold waxing moon? She would lose quite an important commission if there was, but such a thought did nothing to quell her anticipation. Money is here one day and gone the next; this death needed to happen, regardless of who was behind it.

The horses obediently slowed to a stop in front of her house. The driver, a man of fifty who dressed like he earned three pence a week, leapt from the seat of the black carriage with surprising gusto and walked to the back. With a heave he threw the back doors open and a great, wooden box fell to the ground, sending a hollow ring through the night air. The box was rough; made from little more than wood scraps nailed together. Without hurry, though very aware of the anticipation welling up in her stomach, Viviane approached her delivery.

“Evenin’ madam,” the old man spoke with his hat under one arm and a corncob pipe between his teeth. He let a burst of blue smoke fill the space between himself and his employer.

Viviane’s reply was cold: “It’s morning, Jennings.”

The man’s eyes fell onto the round glass of port cupped in her thin white hands. “That why you breaking your fast so early?”

She ignored this hint of insufferable mischief, opting not to waste her time battling wits with a low-class, and asked, “If you would, please do me the courtesy of opening the box. Or must I spend the rest of my morning speculating what’s inside?”

“I mean no disrespect, madam, but you know full well what’s inside this thing ‘ere,” he patted the box’s wooden top. “This night… it had to come eventually.”

The man was a good foot shorter than his employer but did not hesitate to raise his chin up and gaze directly into her white face when conversing. She found this particular quality endearing, rather than insolent; like a silly little terrier thinking it was equal to its master.

Before long, Jennings was letting one ragged breath after another as he worked a rusted axe on the box, the sound of splitting fibres firing like gunshots through the night. Viviane leaned in closer with every one of his swings, masking her excitement with more sips of alcohol. It’s dead, she thought. Let me know for certain that it’s dead.

A pungent smell – flesh decaying in horse manure – quickly filtered out of the splitting wood. Before long, a face was staring up at her, iridescent under the moon. Well, it wasn’t quite staring: one eye gazed out with condemnation but the other had rolled back into a deep eye socket where part of its forehead had exploded. Its pale mouth was open slightly, revealing a set of brown and bloodied teeth. The muscles around the corner of its lips were set in a permanent death-snarl.

Jennings, putting down the axe, held a lantern above the box and the orange light gave the face new life. Every small movement of his hand made the shadows of its nose, eyes, cheeks and lips move. At one point Vivian swore it mouthed her name. But no, it was dead. Very, very dead.

“They found it yesterday mornin’ laying in the gutter. But it’s been sitting in ‘ere ever since. They had to nail it shut ‘cause of the bloody smell. I wouldn’ mind if we get this over with nice and quick before the smell makes me bring up my sausages.”

“Come now, Jennings you’ve dealt with far worse working for me.”

“Nothing like this, madam. These creatures… they smell different.” He shook his head. “They’re…so not like us.”

No, she thought, they are too much like us. We fear them most because they are so much like us.

Though she would not admit it, the smell was indeed repulsive. The old man was right in saying no mere human could emit such a smell. She would know; corpses were one of her specialties.

There were scratch marks around its neck and collarbones that appeared too small to have come from a fight. They were also partially healed, so they definitely could not have been the post-mortem work of curious street vermin. The skin on its face was also sunken in a way that had not come from death: Viviane concluded that it had been starved for days before meeting its fate. She also noted that the edges around the gaping wound on its forehead were black and wrinkled. Burnt. It must have been shot with a silver bullet. Whoever committed the act knew what they were doing, and had the money to ensure the appropriate weapon was used. But why then leave it in the gutter to rot or be found by somebody else? There had been good money on this killing and now no honest man, or woman, could lay claim to it.

Its long and curled hair, receding high into a forehead that had once been whole, was caked in horse dung. The corpse’s nose was small like a child’s, totally out of place between its sharp adult cheekbones. The upper part of its ragged dress had been torn off, exposing the dirtied and scratched neck and collarbones.

Suddenly, Jennings dropped the lamp, spilling orange light all over the cobblestones and causing Viviane to jump.

“Lord almighty, Jennings, have a little self-control!” Viviane rebuked while stepping away from the corpse, desperate for fresh air.

“Beg your pardon, madam. It’s just…” he said, his quivering hand pointing at the corpse.

“What is it, Jennings?” she asked impatiently.

“I…” he gulped, “I just heard a noise in there.”

She downed a sip of port. “Ridiculous. I heard nothing.”

The old man edged closer and gave the box a kick with his toe. “Maybe the smell’s just dulling my wits...”

But she then heard it too; a lonesome animal cry muffled and weak inside the box. Very much like what had touched her heart earlier that night.

“Good Lord, what in the devil’s name is in there?”

Jennings finally regained some of his composure, “Never mind it, madam. Probably a curious cat that got into the box when no one was looking. Must be sick, being cooped up in there for three days.” He found the axe around his feet and began hacking again. His mistress found the scattered lamp and held it high, never spilling a drop of her precious drink as she leaned over to see. The orange glow bled into what was now a larger hole, revealing a large swelling under the corpse’s dress that quivered and whimpered.

“One minute, I’ll get the little beast out.” Jennings plunged a free hand in and tore at the sullied clothes, revealing a black ball of fur, shining with dirt and animal oil. Lifting it by the scruff of its neck, Jennings held it at eye-level. It had an inconsistent coat, Viviane noted; certainly a mess of dark fur on top but its limbs were very bare, covered in dirt and dried blood. No tail, and far too big and unusual to be a cat.

“By Jove, we got ourselves a kid ‘ere!” Jennings declared, shocked by such a discovery. Viviane couldn’t deny it: it was dirty like a gutter rat and lashing out with animalistic vigour, but it was a child nonetheless. Wretchedly thin and was barely larger than an infant, it danced like a broken puppet as Jennings shook firmly. It also shrieked with a voice that one would never imagine coming from one so young.

“My word,” Viviane whispered, downing another mouthful of port.

Jennings giggled and teased like a simpleton as the little body rattled in mid air. His excitement was short-lived as the child quickly reached out and clasped both hands to the sides of its captor’s head, drawing its face down…

Jennings’ scream was enough to wake the entire street. “You little wretch!” he cursed, holding a bloodied nose where the child had bitten him, and the child fell to the cold stone ground. “I’ll dash your brains over the road for that!”

Viviane watched in amazement as, rather than darting down the street away from its captors, the dirty street urchin climbed back inside the box, clutching the soiled corpse and crying all the more wildly. Jennings threw one hand inside, desperate to find something to grab on to as dark blood oozed over his mouth and chin.

A stab of pain awakened inside Vivian’s at the realisation of what was occurring before her. All her anticipation for the corpse’s delivery had abandoned her; now she fought with anxiety and confusion. She could not have been prepared for this. The child… belonged to it.

Another terrifying shriek and it was torn out of the box again, this time taking bloody clumps of the corpse’s hair with it. Viviane could no longer bear to stand by doing nothing.

“Give it to me,” she commanded the old driver. He either didn’t hear over the struggle or deliberately ignored her, something she would not tolerate.

“Jennings, I said give it to me!” She dropped the lamp and threw her empty hand to the driver, her long fingers curling like the gnarly branches of a tree.

“Let me ‘andle it, madam. Feral thing’s probably gonna bite and scratch you, too.

However, Viviane did not ask a third time. She moved forward with expert swiftness and grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, catching the old man in a moment of weakness. The child was lifted through the air and she soon had it under an arm, holding it still while it continued to thrash and scream like a demon.

She was surprised by how small and light it was, where on earth did it get so much energy? But of course, she knew where from; it was just part of its nature. And this simple fact made all the difference in the world. The creature she now carried under her arm was one of them.

Viviane never acted on a whim, so she couldn’t justify her actions even to herself, even in years to come. She knew she would have to turn it over to the authorities in the morning. She would have the box taken away and the corpse destroyed, and let the child go elsewhere.

No, the most suitable course to take would be to let the child share the same fate as the corpse. One silver bullet. For the sake of society and the sake of her reputation.

The child continued to wriggle violently in her grasp and she tightened her arm, feeling the tiny ribs cave in and the air being pushed out of its little lungs. Finally, it was beginning to lose strength.

“Jennings,” she huffed, stepping over the threshold of her front door, “I will be requiring your assistance downstairs. In the basement.”

The old man rubbed his swollen nose with the back of his hand and tipped tobacco ash from his pipe. It caught in the wind and spiralled up to the yellow moon.

On the horizon, a crack of blood-red light spilled over the horizon, marking the birth of a brand new day.