When her sobs finally subsided, Martin spoke up. “You have had an awful night, but now comes the morning.”
The manes of Agnes Little tore her face away from her hands and glared at Martin. “What the Hell does that even mean? Was that supposed to be comforting? Inspiring? Hang the morning! I’ve only woken from one nightmare into another!”
Martin sighed. He really did hope that what he said would have been comforting, even if just a little. “You need to calm down. We can’t destroy the Werewolf unless you calm down. Remember what I said about calm opening the gate to further--”
“Go hang your gates and your magic and your magic science!” Agnes snapped
“Please, you must remember what Dr. Morton told you. You must go to the places in your mind where he is not. He has taken from you your life, your place in society and your place in history. But there are things within you he can never touch. In those precious things you can find peace.”
“In those “precious” things? In those dirty, useless things? When I was alive, when I was Agnes Little, those “precious” things led me to ruin! They led me to his knife! And now you’re saying they can save me, those useless, ugly things?”
“They are not useless, ugly things. Please trust my words as a manesologist. You yourself said I was famous. I know what I am talking about. You are thirty years old, Agnes. He had you for but an instant. Draw strength from those thirty years. Your life is greater than his one moment. Your reputation can be so much greater than his if you would only share it!”
“Ha! Thirty years! Thirty years of stupidity and sin and filth!” the manes of Agnes Little sobbed anew.
“Please stop saying such awful things about yourself. It’s not doing us any good.”
“I’ll say whatever I want!” the manes of Agnes Little snapped. “I died, or she died, or however it should be said, the point is someone died so at least let me say what I want about myself! I’m a rotten old whore, I always have been, that’s why he killed me, killed her, whatever!”
The manes of Agnes Little sighed. “The preachers alway said I’d be sent to Hell by a man’s disease or a man’s rage--and they were right.”
“You are not in Hell.” Martin said.
The manes of Agnes Little dried her tears. Ghost tears could be dried by a ghost hand, she observed. There was that, if nothing else “No. I’m not in Hell. I’m being too emotional. They don’t have kind manesologists in Hell. God has shown me a little mercy.”
“God did not punish you.”
“Not as much as he could have, no. But he has punished me. I have sullied myself by the selling of my flesh and that is why God let the man kill me.”
Martin decided that he wasn’t going to debate the point with her any longer. If the concept of divine punishment helped stabilize her, then it had a use, for now.
“It is time for you to talk about yourself, manes of Agnes Little. Tell me about yourself at age ten, twenty, thirty, tell me as little as you wish, as much as you wish, but you must talk to me. Telling others your story is crucial for strengthening your reputation and weakening his, do you understand that?”
“No, not a bit. I get that you think talking about myself is supposed to destroy that monster outside, somehow, but I don’t understand it. There is nothing in all my life worth talking about. Please, Dr. Glass, can’t you use your gaeite candle to, I don’t know, wish him away with a magic spell? Can’t you make him just…vanish? If you manesologists have the power to make my wounds close and to hold him outside then can’t you do something to destroy him? Can’t you just try?”
“I could work an Operation that would make him vanish, yes.” Martin said.
“Then do it! Why won’t you do it?”
“Because it would not make him go away completely and forever, manes of Agnes Little. Would you like for him to go away completely and forever?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand! How can I make him go away by talking about myself? How can my reputation, any reputation, destroy him? I don’t understand any of that!” the manes of Agnes Little grabbed at her scalp in exasperation.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“You know what? Fine! Fine, I'll tell you everything! I was born in Whitechapel, my mother was a whore, she didn’t know my father, my grandmother had to help her care for me and grandmother hated my mother for forcing me upon her. Believe me, Dr. Glass, I learned from an early age that children born in families are investments, but children born out of wedlock are burdens. My grandmother sent me off to work almost as soon as I could walk. I’m glad I wasn’t a boy, she would have shoved me down into the dark and dirt. I knew boys like that, not all of them made it to manhood. I promised myself that I would spite my grandmother and mother both. I would become rich and desirable and worth something to spite my grandmother. I would become a respectable woman to spite my mother. But I trusted myself fully to a man that swore that he would always be true to me. He left me, just like how my father left my mother. He left me behind and I was ruined for other men so I could do nothing but follow the nature of my blood and become a whore. And now all the useless moments of my life have led me to…this.”
“Believe it or not, you’ve now taken the first few steps towards destroying the Werewolf of Blackwall forevermore.”
“I go with not!” The manes of Agnes Little pointed out the window. “How have I helped? He’s still there, leering like a damned gargoyle!”
Martin pointed at the table and a cup of coffee appeared. “Perhaps you would feel better if you had another--”
The manes of Agnes Little grabbed the coffee and hurled it at the window. Being made of ectoplasm, the cup passed through the window, and the man, being made of a thinner kind of ectoplasm, allowed the cup to pass through him before it became lost in the darkness.
“Excuse me.” the manes of Agnes Little said. “I suppose that was one more poor decision on my behalf.”
“I can see I’ve made a mistake here, again.” Martin said. “I haven’t elaborated on the right things. I’ve left you confused.”
“Yes. But I haven’t been helping things, have I?”
“Dr. Morton is better at talking to people than I am. I went too fast with you. You don’t even understand what’s happened to you, not fully.”
“I think I understand enough. I think. One night, Agnes Little did her rounds. A madman stabbed her. I came out of her body. I was chased and assaulted by the madman’s ghost and now thanks to you and the two other manesologists, I’m safe. I’m still confused, but at least I’m not being cut up.”
“I would like to go over the entire event, as it was told to me, as it was told to the public of Blackwall and England. I want to impress upon you the public’s perspective of you, the Werewolf, and what happened that night.”
“I think the public’s perspective of a dead whore needs no elaboration.”
“It is extremely important that you understand how you are remembered and how he is remembered.”
“But why is it important how I’m remembered and how the Werewolf is remembered? Why is it important that I ramble about my past to you as if I were a character in a Dickens novel?”
“It will be easier to explain that to you once you understand how your reputation stands in light of the Werewolf of Blackwall’s own. I do not wish to under-inform you, as I have previously. Please allow me to, as it were, put all the cards on the table.”
“Then go right ahead, Dr. Glass.”
“Very well. Here is what was told to the public, to me, to everyone: On August 15th of 1875, Agnes Little’s body was found in the early morning by steam beast workers walking to work. It was quickly determined by the nature of the wound that she had been attacked with a knife.”
The manes of Agnes Little grabbed at where her wound was. “How many times did he stab her?”
“Only once.”
“Only once? What did he do when he caught up to her?”
“Nothing. The physical evidence determined that he stabbed her once and only once. She ran from him and he chased her. Her blood left a long trail that ran down almost the entirety of Chopin Street. He allowed her to bleed out until she expired. They said it was like how a wolf would wound its prey and then stalk it until it fell. That’s why they called him the Werewolf of Blackwall.”
The manes of Agnes Little shivered.
“Are you alright, manes of Agnes LIttle?” Martin asked.
She nodded. “Yes. I’m just remembering the…end. I couldn’t remember the end while I was being chased by him outside, but now I do. It wasn’t a bad end, I think. There was no pain at that point. When I ran I was hot, sticky, and everything flowed out of me, it seemed. Everything flowed out of her, I mean. But she was cold, in the end. And then it was just like going to sleep on the stones. That wasn’t so bad. There are worse ways to die. There are, aren’t there? You would know, as a manesologist.”
“It’s rather morbid to compare physical ends. I prefer to focus on what a manes can do in the present beyond the demise of his or her body.”
“But there are worse ways to die?”
Countless cases ran through Martin’s mind, countless images of corpses--corpses broken and mangled, corpses bloated and blue, corpses eerily intact as if they were alive and sleeping…
“Yes.” Martin answered, simply and truthfully.
“I don’t know why it makes me feel better to hear that. But it does. I guess I’m at such a state that any comfort feels wonderful--even if it isn’t my comfort we’re discussing, truthfully. So, did anyone see the Werewolf? She was screaming so loud, someone must have heard.”
“There were witnesses to the crime, but no one tried to save her.”
“Really? No one?”
The manes of Agnes Little was heartbroken and angry. “Not unexpected of Chopin Street.” she said icily.“I bet they watched the damned rats sniff at and then nibble at my body. Did they at least put something over it?”
“No.”
“Not even a blanket? They left…” the manes of Agnes Little paused. She wanted to be very careful with her words and felt “my” forming on her lips. It was so hard, not being herself anymore, but she felt that she could get used to it over time--and she certainly had a lot of that now that she couldn’t die.
“...They left her body to stink on the stones until sunlight?”
“The body was found uncovered. I’m sorry.”
“Cowards! Bloody cowards! A gentleman like yourself wouldn’t know this, but there were other girls on Chopin Street, many girls. They knew what was happening, they could have done something, they could have gotten someone! Bloody cowards! They all ran and left me behind!”
“The body was then claimed by Mary Little.”
“Mother would’ve had to claim the body, wouldn’t she? I mean legally she was probably obligated to. I hope she had more than a little trouble making all the arrangements.”