Lanyon and Henry Ch. 03

He was watching her sleep!

I was faced with a bleak choice: on one side, I could accede to my body's demands, giving it permanent access to Hyde, until I disappeared entirely. Alternately, I could dispose of myself, wringing down the curtain on both personae. The latter option, while dire, had the benefit of denying Hyde access to the world—and, most importantly, to Lanyon.

The one option I didn't have was procrastination: with the accelerating transformations, I knew that it was a matter of days—weeks at the most—before the decision would be taken out of my hands. Faced with my own dissolution, the endangerment of my friend, and the unleashing of an unrestrained beast on the streets of London, I realized that there was, indeed, no choice. I resolved to take my own life, and so protect my protégé.

In the course of my development of the Hyde formula, I had identified several poisons that would help me shuffle off the mortal coil with a minimum of pain. Consulting my notes, I determined that a combination of laudanum and arsenic would more than suffice. In light of the decreasing intervals between Hyde's appearances and the danger he posed to Lanyon, I saw no reason to delay my departure.

That night, I wrote a note to Lanyon and Poole in which I briefly explained my decision, after which I consumed the requisite compounds and went to my bedchamber for my final rest. As I closed my eyes, I wondered if I would see Collins again. I wondered if he would permit me to apologize.

*

I awoke in a white room, bathed in light. I wondered for a moment if the religion of my youth had somehow been correct. Had I been transported to heaven? Then I groaned at my foolishness: Whatever wonders heaven may contain, I was reasonably sure that they did not include blinding headaches and a dry, sour-tasting mouth.

"You're awake," a familiar voice whispered.

"Lanyon?" I croaked. "H-Hastie?"

She leaned over me, her eyes red and shining. She must not have liked what she saw in my face, for her brows drew together. "How could you?" she hissed.

"I can't control him any longer," I said, my voice cracking. "He is trying to destroy me." Her face started to crumble as she whirled away from me and stalked from the room.

In the ensuing days, Poole informed me of what had happened: far from granting me the gentle departure I had hoped, the poisons inspired my body to force another transformation into Hyde. Thankfully, the laudanum and arsenic—in concert with what I was assured was a truly epic bout of vomiting—had slowed the fiend, and he had fallen unconscious shortly after the transformation. Then I had slumbered for two days.

To explain my rather dire actions, I informed Lanyon and Poole of the events that had led to my failed suicide attempt, including the accelerating pace of the transformations, and my hypothesis regarding my body's inclination toward the Hyde persona. I also explained the fiend's growing fascination with Lanyon and my conviction that he presented a considerable threat to her. When she realized that my actions had been undertaken—at least in part—as an attempt to protect her, an unreadable expression fell upon her face, only to be replaced with a look of furious anger. She struck out at me, and had to be restrained by Poole.

Later, when Lanyon regained her composure, she told me that she had found my laboratory journals and perused them at length. She declared that we would work together to find a potion that would heal my soul and encourage my body to definitively (and permanently!) expel Hyde.

I cannot recall all the compounds that Lanyon brought to bear on my problem, although I remember that she employed toxins harvested from toads and compounds distilled from belladonna, datura, and various other plants. This inspired pointed comments on my part about her tendency toward witchcraft, which in turn led to the rather sharp suggestion that my energies would be better spent on medicine, as comedy was clearly not my forte.

During this time, Hyde repeatedly attempted to reemerge, but with the help of Lanyon and Poole, I was able to keep the fiend at bay. I began taking a prophylactic dose of laudanum, which kept me in a relaxed, if somewhat fuzzy-headed, state. Noting Hyde's tendency to arrive at night, we also began tying me in restraints every evening. These precautions, while useful, were not without cost: in addition to reducing my cognition, the opiates left me with a profound craving, a problem in and of itself.

Eventually, we developed a compound that successfully repaired the damage that I had done to my body and soul. And, in time, we reduced my dependency on laudanum, a process that—while painful—was also a test of Lanyon's cure. Even amid the stress of that detoxification, Hyde did not reemerge.

One morning, I awoke to see Lanyon standing by my bed. Discombobulated by a near-transformation the night before and disoriented by the laudanum, I felt myself soften as I gazed at her.

"Why are you spending so much of your time attempting to save me?" I asked.

She looked at me as if I was insane. "I cannot abandon the man I love to the consequences of his mistakes."

I turned away, lest she see the tears in my eyes. She turned my face back to hers. "What is it?"

"I...cannot," I whispered. "I cannot love."

A fury gripped her features. "Nonsense!" she snapped. "I see it in your eyes, Henry Jekyll. I have since that first day on the train to London. You love me!"

I groaned. "Yes, I love you, Lanyon. Of course I do. But I cannot condemn you to that. To a life with me." I covered her hand with my own. "I have seen too much horror, done too many horrific things. I cannot bring that evil to bear upon you. I cannot taint your life with my sins."

She firmly set her jaw, an expression with which I was growing increasingly familiar. "Yet that is my price, Henry Jekyll. The price for giving you back yourself. I have worked to resurrect you, and you now belong to me. The cost of not abandoning you to Hyde is that you are now mine." She smiled at me. "And I will see to it that you honor that debt!"

I felt an answering smile set itself upon my face. "To be clear: I cannot protect you from the beast that lives inside me, and I cannot protect you from the horrors that I have experienced, so you have determined that I will either dedicate myself to you, or you will leave me to the depredations of Hyde?"

"For a brilliant doctor, you are surprisingly dense, Henry." She whispered. Something inside me melted. "I have loved you since the first time I saw you. I have been yours since before you ever knew me. You are mine. And I will claim you."

When faced with an unwinnable situation, I discovered, it is sometimes wisest to surrender the field.

Lanyon found the solution. And then she found herself a husband. And for several years, we were happy.

15 September 1893

I wonder if there is some pattern to my transformations. After perusing my journals yesterday, I retraced the steps I took the last time I uncontrollably transformed, beginning with testing my blood. As before, I was unable to detect any of the compounds that I had used to effect the change—no mercury, no strychnine, no cocaine. There had been no change in diet or level of stress that could account for the transformation—in fact, my daily routine was following a path long set, with no significant changes.

My next step was to track the transformations: based on my vivid dreams and morning exhaustion, I determined which nights I had most likely transformed. Plotting them on a calendar, I could detect no discernable trend. There was no connection to days of the week, moon cycles, or any other natural phemomenon. I even compared them to the liturgical calendar, but the mystery of my transformation seemed beyond the scope of even the Church of England.

While this seeming randomness was frustrating, it also gave me hope: unlike the last time I changed, my transformations were neither accelerating nor decelerating. As near as I could tell, they were almost completely haphazard; although, on a larger timeline, they appeared to be arriving roughly once per week.

I was growing upset, a state that, I feared, could potentially be a catalyst to a spontaneous transformation. Unwilling to resort to the sweet oblivion of laudanum, I increased my consumption of liquor, an indulgence that helped reduce my distress and tranquilize me. During one of the rare nights that Lanyon and I shared dinner, I poured myself a third glass of wine, a rarity for me.

I looked up to see Lanyon's eyes fixed on the decanter in my hand. "Would you like some, my dear?" I asked.

"No, not tonight." She muttered, briefly locking eyes with me. She quickly looked away.

Something in the intensity of her gaze unnerved me. When I finished my glass of wine, I retired to the salon and shortly thereafter to my bedchamber.

Last night, my Hyde dreams returned.

19 September 1893

I awoke to memories of Hyde and Lanyon. To recollections of her eyes gazing up at my face, her expression showing the war between her iron will and her eagerness to please. To submit.

I awoke to despair.

Lanyon joined me for breakfast, but was again unable to meet my gaze. She avoided my attempts at conversation, eventually excusing herself. Pleading a day full of pressing errands, she left our home quickly, almost seeming to flee my presence.

As I pondered Lanyon's odd behavior, I realized that I was alone in our abode—an uncommon occurrence, as my wife usually sequestered herself in her conservatory. I had resolved to retire to my own workspace in the basement, but something about Lanyon's expression the previous evening gave me pause. There was a covertness to it, an anticipation. That... and something else that I could not identify.

Was it possible that she held a clue to my unexpected transformations? Her absence, I realized, gave me a rare opportunity to investigate her conservatory and determine what, if any, role she had in the mysterious reemergence of my alter-ego.

It was no small accomplishment to find her journals. I quickly discovered the notebooks that she left on her worktable, which contained precise accountings of her work developing cures for the treatment of cramping, irregular menses, and other so-called "womanly complaints." Of course, these were exactly the sorts of scientific explorations that one might expect of a female chemist—and, not coincidentally, the exact sort of notes that would be most likely to turn the stomach (and defuse the attentions) of a curious husband.

I wondered if they might be some sort of decoy. My wife was no fool, but her journals rang false. They seemed just a little too clever, a little too obvious a diversion. And I'd long since learned was that Lanyon rarely did the thing that I expected.

I searched all the most obvious places, like her cabinets. Then I searched the less-obvious places, like the backs of drawers and behind the lithographs of plants with which she had decorated the walls of the Conservatory. As I was moving items through the drawers on her worktable, I noticed that one sounded odd. As I slid things across its surface, there was a hollow sound, rather than the familiar scrape of the other drawers. Pulling the drawer out, I emptied its contents upon the table, only to discover that there was a slight gap between the bottom of the drawer and its front. Carefully, I pried it up with my fingernails, revealing a small stack of leatherbound journals.

She had written the dates at the beginning of every entry, so I selected the most recent journal and opened it to a random page, somewhere towards the middle:

7 June 1893

After many nights of work and days of study, I have succeeded! I have again effected the transformation, and now my research can progress. He has even agreed to support me in my pursuit of knowledge—an offer that, I'm sure, will mean the difference between success and failure.

But what shall I be forced to grant him in return for his existence? And how shall I ever gain my Henry's forgiveness? It is a great step forward, but it comes at such a cost...

Still, I must persevere. If there is one thing I learned from Henry, it is that scientific discovery comes with a steep price, and dedication is measured by one's willingness to pay the piper.

And yet...

And yet, I cannot abide being in the debt of such a man as Edward Hyde.