“I know I shouldn’t, but it's so hard not to. Something inside me keeps warning me that any minute now he’ll start to bang at the door…but he’s just a shadow, now. He can’t hurt me. I’m safe. I have to keep reminding myself of that…but I believe it, Dr. Glass, I truly do.”
“You are safe. He can’t hurt anyone now.” Martin assured her.
“I know that. I know that he’s just…like a drawing. But he’s such a terrible drawing! Good God, he doesn’t even look human--well, of course he isn’t human! He’s a ghost! But he doesn’t have more than a passing resemblance to a human. I saw him burnt and shattered tonight and he just got back up, and now he’s standing there without a sound, without so much as a gasp. I’d sooner believe a scarecrow came out of a person’s dead body than him.”
Agnes returned to her coffee. Its warmth helped drive away the chill of fear. “What did you say this place was called, Dr. Glass?” she asked.
“The sign outside said Marvin’s.”
“That’s interesting. I remember there was a Marvin’s coffeehouse on Chopin Street. Two friends of mine were arrested there not more than a month ago. But that was a new building, and this one’s anything but. And that was on Chopin Street, and I can’t possibly be on Chopin Street after all that running I did. Where are we? What street is this?”
Martin looked away.
“You should finish your coffee first.” he muttered.
“Hm? What’s wrong, Dr. Glass?”
“I’m not the best manesologist when it comes to explaining things to people. I spent so much time with the magic men, the thaumaturgists, that things which seem odd and peculiar to laypersons seem mundane and obvious to me.”
“Well, just tell me what street this is. What’s hard to explain about that?”
“I apologize. I wish I knew a better way to explain this to you. But I do not. This is Chopin Street.”
The reality of her situation was beginning to dawn on Agnes Little.
“Oh. That’s…that’s odd.” Agnes looked again at the man outside. “That’s very odd.”
“Please stop looking at him.” Martin said.
“Dr. Glass, I think that ghost did something to my mind. I don’t feel well at all.”
Martin breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth.
He decided to go ahead and say it.
“The year is 1871.”
“No!” Agnes shouted. “No! The year is 1866! It’s April, I was doing my business no more than a few minutes ago and then the ghost appeared and attacked me. It’s 1866, right Dr. Glass? That’s what you meant to say--1866?”
Agnes’ pleading expression tore at Martin’s heart.
But what else could he tell her but the truth?
“1866 was five years ago. That was when the Werewolf of Blackwall claimed his first victim. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“No! No, you’re wrong!” Agnes shouted. “You have to be wrong! Look at me!” Agnes beat her fists against her skin. “See? Solid!”
“Manes can be very solid, as solid as human beings, if not moreso.”
“But I feel things! I can taste the coffee! It even burns me. It burns me, see?” she spilt the coffee over her arm.
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“Agnes, no!” Martin cried out.
The black liquid seeped through her skin. Agnes winced at the pain. “That hurt! It hurts, that’s how I know I’m alive!”
Martin slowly shook his head back and forth. He produced a towel from out of nowhere and began to clean up what he could.
“And now you’re drying me off. That’s proof I’m real.”
“I’m sorry, but you’re expressing common misconceptions.” Martin said. “Some manes can feel things, even pain, and manes are very much real, just as real as any human. You are real. Please understand that.”
‘Wait!” Agnes pushed Martin away. “I can see myself! That’s proof I’m alive! I remember this very clearly from Illustrated Phantom Stories--ghosts appear as black silhouettes inside olprt radiance, and I am not a black silhouette!”
“Another misconception. The olprt radiance renders manes as black silhouettes--to human eyes. Here, this will help you understand.”
Suddenly, Martin passed his fingers through Agnes’ face as if it was nothing more than a puddle of water. Agnes felt his fingers move through her. She saw her vision distort as her face stretched unnaturally and then returned to form.
“You are solid, but only to an extent.” Martin said.
Tears dripped down Agnes’ face. Her shoulders hung in defeat. So that was it, then. She could think of nothing else that could force down what she had suspected since the wound in her side vanished and reappeared.
“...And you’ve looked at me, as a black silhouette, this entire time?” Agnes asked.
Martin nodded.
“Oh, damn you!” Agnes aimed a clumsy slap at Martin through her tears. It landed a little below his neck. “Damn you! Then say so! Say what I am!”
“I tried to ease you into this revelation. I’m sorry.”
“Say it!”
“You are a manes.”
Agnes gave a small despairing whimper and buried her face in her hands.
Martin rubbed his neck and felt stupid and useless. Robert Lumen, the thaumaturgist who brought together Ernst, Morton, and Glass and protected them from the shadows, once told him that he was the Ariel of his group. He was, like the Ariel of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a miracle worker, even when compared to two other miracle workers. He could go places they could not, do things they could not, but right now, he felt like the most useless member of the trio.
“This would happen to me.” Agnes mumbled. “A dirty old whore, cut up and left to die. This would happen. This should happen. It is justice.”
“Please don’t say such things about yourself.”
“I trusted myself to the good moods of bad men. I have no one to blame but myself for this. Oh, Dr. Glass!” Agnes raised her face, and it was a horrible thing for Martin to see, for in the form of a blank silhouette, he could only guess its grief-twisted features. “Why did he kill me? We were all together, all us Londoners, along the Thames in 1865!”
“That he killed you has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the deficiencies of his mind.”
“How could I have survived the London fireball, and yet die to the blade of one who also survived that horror? It’s inhuman. It’s inhuman to do that to someone after we were all together, huddled in tents by the water! I tempted an inhuman monster to my side!”
“Stop blaming yourself for his sin.”
“You don’t understand. Of course you wouldn’t understand, a young man, an educated man, a good man. The things I allowed them to do to me, all because they gave me money. It was only a matter of time before one went too far. So, Dr. Glass, what becomes of me now? Five years into the future, even if the Manes Charter didn’t cut a ghost out of the inheritance of her body, I would have nothing--so I have nothing now. Do I go to one of those “earthbound afterlives?” Do I go to the Ring Tower, Asphodel Street, where?”
“I am sorry, Agnes, but there is something more you must do before you can rest.”
“Don’t call me Agnes! That’s not my name anymore! That’s the name of a dead woman!”
“There is no reason why you can’t still use the name Agnes Little.”
“The name Agnes Little has no meaning now, not to law, and not to the people that knew her. Five whole years…time devoured everything that was Agnes Little. I am not Agnes Little.”
“The issue of how a manes’ identity relates to the identity of the deceased body that bore them is a contentious one, but I assure you, many philosophers would argue vehemently that you are indeed Agnes Little, if that is who you wish to be.”
“But it isn’t who I wish to be! Listen! I remember being Agnes Little and thinking over the idea of my eventual ghost in my head. Agnes Little wasn’t smart, but she did think about things from time-to-time. She came to the conclusion that she didn’t have to worry about her ghost, because in the end, her ghost wasn’t her. And now I’m that. So let me tell you, Agnes and I are in agreement here. We’re two different beings, so you go hang your philosophers, Dr. Glass!”
“If I cannot call you Agnes Little, what would you like for me to call you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. Just stop calling me Agnes Little!”
“May I then call you the manes of Agnes Little?”
“Fine. It doesn’t matter. Now where did you say I’m going?”
“I didn’t. There is still work for us to do.”
“Oh…” Agnes whimpered. “What on Earth are you talking about?”
Martin gestured to the man outside, still lurking, still glaring. “I’m talking about the Werewolf of Blackwall.”
“What? What do I have to do with him? I’m not a manesologist!”
“Would you like to help me send him away forever?”
“You mean you can’t?”
“Allow me to explain, manes of Agnes Little. The Werewolf of Blackwall exists through his reputation. His reputation is his body. But you have a reputation as well, and I believe that yours can be the greater.”
“What the Hell are you talking about?”
“We can put your reputation against his. You will crush him, and destroy the Werewolf of Blackwall forevermore!”
The manes of Agnes Little began to sob again, for she could not understand what Dr. Glass was telling her.