The Jekyll Revelation Page 7

  “You’re injured. I can do it.”

  Rather than argue the point, he kept one hand, shielded by her ruined hat, on the trunk, while pressing his boot to the bottom of the boards where the leak seemed to have sprung. Heidi paddled and prodded the boat back to the nearest bank, and before he could tell her to look first and maybe give the water a warning swirl with the oar, she had hopped overboard. The water was only a foot or so deep here, but Rafe was still wary.

  “Watch yourself,” he said.

  “I’m a very good swimmer,” she joked.

  He grappled the trunk as well as he could, then toppled it over the side of the boat. It splashed into the water, and he had to drag it across the gravel and mud and up onto dry land, where it lay like a beached green whale.

  “Now what?” she said, still in the water and yanking at the rope.

  “Now we have to figure out how to drag—”

  “Ow!”

  Heidi doubled over, her hands plunging below the surface to grab at her ankle.

  “Ow-ow-ow!”

  He didn’t need to ask what had happened—he could see the little ripple in the water, racing away. He grabbed Heidi by the arm and pulled her onto the shore. She was clutching at the skin just above the top of her soaking boot.

  He made her sit on the trunk while he wiped away the weeds and mud that mottled her shin. He could see the fear beginning to dawn on her face.

  “Was it a rattlesnake?” she asked, her voice beginning to tremble.

  Rafe looked closely at the skin and saw not a row of tiny bite marks, which would have been preferable, but one deep one. The other fang appeared to have hit the top of the boot, which showed a puncture wound of its own.

  “Keep calm,” he said. “That’s the best thing you can do right now.” Panic only increased respiration and blood flow, and the most important thing was to get her to a hospital before the venom managed to circulate to her heart.

  “Take off your shirt,” he said, and quickly scanned the surrounding ground for anything that might help. Spotting some wilted yarrow, he yanked up a handful, then ground it between his palms and slathered it onto the sticky wound.

  “Tie your shirt just above your knee, tight, like a bandage.” The starch in the yarrow would act as a natural coagulant, drawing out the poison. Sucking out the venom, as had traditionally been recommended, only poisoned two people instead of one, while introducing other possible infections to the wound.

  “Am I going to die?”

  “No trainee of mine has ever died.”

  “How many have you had?”

  “You’re the first.”

  It was critical that she not go into shock. If the rattlesnake had managed a full clean strike, she would already be losing consciousness; what might save her yet was the fact that only one fang had hit its mark.

  “I want you to get on my back and hang there, like a sack of potatoes. Let your legs dangle.”

  Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she climbed onto him. He slipped his hands back under her thighs to give her some support, then, leaving his backpack and antenna behind, hustled up the hillside, furiously calculating how long it would take him to get to the jeep and drive back down the bumpy, twisting fire road. The jostling wouldn’t help her.

  By the time he reached the crest, he was nearly out of breath, and after dropping her into the passenger seat of the jeep, he took a second to breathe deeply and assess Heidi’s state.

  He didn’t like what he saw.

  She was pale and listless; her eyelids were beginning to droop. Her chin was dropping down toward her black sports bra.

  “Heidi,” he said, lifting her chin and looking into her eyes, “you’ve got to hang in there for me.” He strapped her into her seat belt, then jumped behind the wheel, backed the jeep up, and shot down the fire road. With every twist and turn, he put a hand on her shoulder to keep her steady, and he kept talking to make sure she remained conscious.

  “You with me?” he asked, and if she murmured yes, he made her repeat it.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, without telling her where there was. “You’re going to be fine. You know that, right?”

  There was a white froth forming on her lips.

  “This is going to be some story to tell,” he said, trying to sound lighthearted. His own fear was taking a firm hold on him. His little sister kept coming to mind, and that terrible day at the public swimming pool.

  He had to banish the thought. Heidi would not end up like Lucy.

  At the bottom of the fire road, he saw the old chain drawn across the entry, but there was no time to waste dealing with the padlock. Instead, he revved the engine, stretched one arm firmly across Heidi’s chest, and barreled right through it, the chain snapping in the air like a whip, one of the posts it was attached to popping up out of the ground and skittering across the main road. The jeep did a wheelie, a passing van’s horn blasted in fury, and Rafe hit the gas again and took off for his trailer. There wasn’t time to get her to a hospital; the antivenom, which had to be kept refrigerated, was stored in his minifridge at home.

  Heidi, only partly aware of what she was doing now, started to lift her leg to fiddle with the improvised tourniquet, and he had to push the limb back down again.

  “Keep your feet on the floor,” he said. “Try not to move, okay?”

  “’Kay,” was all she got out.

  When the roadside sign for the Cornucopia appeared, he swerved across the opposite lane, hitting the horn to make sure Tripod was out of the way, steered the jeep to within a few feet of his trailer, and leaping out while the dust still filled the air, unbuckled Heidi’s seat belt.

  Lifting her out of the car, he saw Laszlo stepping out onto the back stairs of the shop. At the sight of Rafe carrying a limp girl in a bra into his trailer, Laszlo bobbed his head approvingly.

  “Call an ambulance!” Rafe shouted.

  “What for?”

  “Just do it!”

  Throwing open the door, he carried her inside and laid her on the single bed. She was sweating profusely, and her pupils were alarmingly enlarged. Ducking down, he threw open the minifridge, pushed the bags of carrots and cherries aside, and fumbled for the snakebite kit. He’d done this on dummies, during training, but never on a live person.

  Much less one who might die if he did it wrong.

  He snapped open the kit, uncapped the vial of antivenom, then ripped the plastic off the syringe. His hands were shaking, and he had to force himself to slow down enough to stick the syringe into the bottle and fill it, press the plunger to make sure there was no air bubble, then smack Heidi’s sunburned forearm to bring up a good vein. She was squirming on the bed, a bit delirious.

  “Hold still. This will take just two seconds,” he said, “and then you’re going to be perfectly okay.”

  He inserted the needle—it went in smoothly, he was relieved to see—and watched as the antitoxin flowed from the syringe into her vein. Go, baby, go, was all he could keep thinking, as if he could will it into greater efficacy.

  When the syringe was empty, he gently withdrew it, dabbed a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic on the spot of blood—wasn’t that supposed to have come first? he thought—and removed her boot. The skin around the wound had taken on a faint purple tinge.

  Trip was barking outside the trailer door.

  Heidi’s breathing perceptibly slowed, which was either a good sign or a bad one, he couldn’t tell for sure.

  He covered her with a blanket, then slumped to the floor.

  He heard footsteps rapidly approaching, and looked up just as Miranda stepped up into the trailer. “Laszlo called 911,” she said. She saw the girl on the bed, the open snakebite kit on the floor. “Oh my God, is she going to be okay?”

  Rafe’s mouth was so dry he couldn’t have replied even if he’d known the answer to that.

  6 December, 1881

  The two weeks following my dramatic episode in the grand salon have been a nightmare f
rom which, I fear, I have yet to awaken. The next morning, Fanny escorted me to Dr Rüedi’s examining rooms. Symonds insisted on coming, too, claiming that, as it was his speech that had brought on the attack, the least he could do was see to its aftermath. ‘I do not wish it chalked up to my account that I put an end to the brilliant career of one of Scotland’s most promising authors. I will not be able to show my face on the lecture circuit.’

  But Dr Rüedi left him cooling his heels in the hall, and only with some reluctance admitted Fanny to the room.

  On the desk was an alarmingly lifelike replica of the human torso, its rib cage and viscera fully exposed. Using a pointer, from a distance that in no way required one, Dr Rüedi tapped at the model to illustrate his thoughts as he spoke.

  ‘As my colleague in Berlin, Dr Robert Koch, has recently demonstrated in his study “The Etiology of Tuberculosis,” it is a mycobacterium that is the cause of the disease from which you suffer, Mr Stevenson, and it is your left lobe’—he tapped a blue plaster lung—‘that is most affected.’

  The pointer made a hollow clicking sound as it struck.

  ‘That is why’, the doctor continued, ‘I intend to collapse it.’

  ‘Isn’t it nearly there already?’ I asked, recalling the flapping sensation in my chest.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘But what purpose would be served by collapsing it altogether?’ Fanny asked. ‘I don’t see the use in that at all. He has trouble enough breathing as it is.’

  ‘The technique, a new one, is called plombage. I believe it offers the best hope. By removing a small portion of the fourth rib’—now he touched the pointer to the corresponding bone—‘and deflating the lung, we can allow the organ to achieve complete rest. Rather than producing more of the tubercle bacillus, it will become dormant, which will in turn allow it to heal.’

  ‘Won’t that leave a cavity, if you will, in the chest?’

  ‘Well observed, Mr Stevenson. And that is why we will fill the vacuum with paraffin wax.’

  Fanny looked highly dubious, and no doubt so did I. Before I could ask it myself, Fanny said, ‘And once the lung has been deflated and the paraffin introduced, how long before the lung is restored?’

  Dr Rüedi tilted his head this way and that. ‘Several weeks. Perhaps a month. Or two. Much depends upon the patient.’

  Subjecting myself to the surgeon’s knife has always presented itself only as a last resort—a measure to be taken in extremis, if you will, when all else has failed. But for years—nay, decades—I had travelled the Old World (from the spas of southern France to the Highland peaks) and the New (from the Adirondack Mountains of New York to the redwood glens of distant California) in search of a cure, and all of my journeys had proved futile in the end. I had washed up, like the broken mast of a shipwreck, on this unlikely shore.

  ‘Frankly, Doctor, I do not like the sound of this,’ Fanny said.

  ‘Frankly, Madame, that is of no consequence to me,’ Dr Rüedi replied.

  Though it was not out of keeping with his character, I was nonetheless taken aback by his rudeness, as was my wife.

  ‘If you have come to me for idle conversation,’ he said, thwapping the pointer like a riding crop against the palm of one hand, ‘I do not have time; I thought I had made that clear upon your arrival. If you have come to me to be healed, however, you may do as I say, or seek help elsewhere.’

  ‘We may just do that,’ Fanny said in a huff.

  ‘The coach leaves at one o’clock this afternoon. As soon as you have settled your bill,’ he said, ‘you may use it.’

  It was the mention of the bill that was the most telling, and that set even Fanny back on her left foot. We had been anxiously awaiting funds from my father in Edinburgh, but heavy snows had no doubt delayed the post, and in the meanwhile, we had accrued a sizeable debt—twenty francs a week for the suite, the same for board, and various fees for consultation and treatments. If our departure depended upon our accounts being brought into balance, then we were in effect being held hostage at the Belvédère.

  As it was nearly time for my daily sun bath, I allowed Fanny, fuming, to return to the room while I went with Symonds out onto the wide verandah. He was full of genuine concern for my welfare, for which I was grateful, but I did not wish to share the grim prognosis, or plans. I spotted Lloyd, a woollen scarf wrapped tight around his throat, walking Woggin on a long leash around the snowy front lawn of the hotel. Randolph Desmond walked with him, a friendly, even avuncular, arm around his shoulder. Though the difference in their ages was not more than ten years, Desmond had taken a great interest in my stepson, for which I was glad. Lloyd’s father was off in Nevada, prospecting for gold or oil or whatever other will-o’-the-wisp beckoned to him—Fanny had often described him to me as a ne’er-do-well who could not resist a shot of whiskey, a loose woman, or a bad bet—and as for me, I was a poor substitute in that regard, too. Although I did my best to broaden Lloyd’s horizons and stimulate his faculties, I could not provide him with the kind of physical companionship a boy of his age desires. Some of my fondest memories were of taking long journeys to remote lighthouse sites with my father, and watching as he supervised the construction of the tall stone towers and the installation of the all-important beacons at their top. Lloyd, by comparison, would remember travelling with an invalid to a cold clinic on an isolated mountaintop.

  Or, perhaps, making maps of imaginary islands where pirate treasure pretended to lie.

  ‘Have you seen the oracle?’ Desmond inquired upon seeing me.

  ‘We have.’

  ‘And what did he have to say?’

  As I had no more wish to share the news with Desmond than I had with Symonds, I merely said he had examined me and prescribed some changes to my regimen.

  ‘He’s got Constance drinking so much of that damn goat’s milk’, Desmond complained, ‘it’s a wonder she doesn’t bleat.’

  Even after all this time, I had not found the proper occasion or opportunity to ask about her affliction. Although she was pale, she did not appear to me to be any more a consumptive than so many of the other young ladies of fashion who, conflating the illness with melancholy romance, deliberately affected a white complexion. Whatever Desmond had brought her here to remedy, it was of some other nature and, were I to hazard an unsavoury guess, venereal.

  Woggin, bored with all this stationary talk, pulled so hard at his leash that he broke free and ran to the toboggan run where, nose to the snow, he burrowed about. Several of the other guests laughed at his antics, and even the nurse, propping pillows behind a patient as he settled in his chaise longue, smiled. Digging furiously, he nipped at something frozen to the ground, then yanked it up as if dragging a rabbit from its burrow.

  But this prize glittered in the sunlight, and when I called, he trotted over with a silver chain dangling from his mouth. It took two or three attempts before he would relinquish it, but once I had brushed away the snow and ice, I could see that it was a gaudy, bejewelled crucifix. I glanced at the spot on the toboggan run where he had found it, and it corresponded directly with my recollection of that night when Yannick and his assistants had dispatched the bodies . . . and he had slipped on the snow.

  ‘Didn’t that old Italian woman wear something like that?’ Desmond said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She disappeared rather abruptly. Was it the menu, I wonder? Not enough spaghetti?’

  I put the necklace, still redolent of her perfume, into my pocket.

  The look on my face, however, must have communicated something more, as Desmond fell silent, then rallied to slap Lloyd on the back and say, ‘What about a sled race?’

  Lloyd, jubilant, ran off to claim the sleds, and I went to my customary chaise longue, where the nurse was waiting impatiently with a blanket folded over one arm. At the appropriate time, I would find an address to which I might forward the memento mori.

  That evening, I found my thoughts turning in an unusually morbid direction. Though mortali
ty had never been far from my mind—a lifetime of fevers and coughs, night sweats and chilblains will no doubt leave a mark—I had long trained myself to marshal my thoughts like the little tin soldiers that I played with as a boy. Arranging them on the counterpane of my sickbed, I had marched the figurines into battle in orderly rows and battalions, but tonight I could not do the same with my imaginative fancies. They would not assemble to the bugle call; they would not do my bidding. I tried to focus them on the old blind pirate tap-tap-tapping his way up the lonely road to the Admiral Benbow public house, where young Jim Hawkins and his mother scraped together the barest subsistence. But instead they ran amok, flitting from visions of the old Italian woman, wrapped in a shroud and sent hurtling down the dark mountainside, to corroded lungs, flat and useless as a spent bellows. Unable to sit still and write, I paced the confines of my garret, hands clasped behind my back, my red brocade dressing gown buttoned to my Adam’s apple. Woggin, head resting on his paws, kept a close watch.

  After one such turn, I happened to glance out the window to the back lawn at precisely the moment a great, beautiful stag warily skirted the smokehouse and approached the salt lick. It was a noble creature, head held high, crowned by an elaborate rack of antlers. Indeed, it took some manoeuvring before the beast could get them out of its way enough to allow its tongue to lap at the salt.

  I watched, a handkerchief already soiled with blood balled up in one hand, for several minutes. Moonlight glinted off the fresh, powdery snow and the overladen boughs of the evergreen trees. An owl hooted somewhere in the darkness. It was a scene as tranquil as any that could be imagined. My peace of mind somewhat restored, I was just about to return to my desk when my eye caught a gleam of something among the trees.

  A flash, like a mirror reflecting a bolt of sunlight . . . but moving stealthily towards the lick—and towards the oblivious stag, whose head was craned low and at an odd angle.

  What would happen next was not difficult to predict.