The Story of Lanyon and Henry

As I had predicted, my nightly transformations helped clarify my mind during the day. Our body, once purged of my darker desires, was able to attend to my experiments with crystalline precision and a renewed vigor. At the same time, my lust for Lanyon waned, and I was able to regain our prior relationship, without the heady overtones of obsession that had tainted our interactions of late.

However, while my alter ego's nighttime revelries helped me function more effectively, I also began to crave those dissolute evenings that I could but barely remember. Unfortunately, they often left me exhausted, my body bruised and battered.

In the ensuing weeks, my double's excursions began to threaten the safety of our enclave on Cavendish Square. One morning—after yet another night that I could not recall—Poole informed me that a dissolute fellow, Edward Hyde, had forced entry into our home, demanding some papers from our laboratory. Poole had ejected him, but demanded to know how the impudent young man was acquainted with me. I gave him some vague explanation about the loan of some funds—a loan which, I assured my servant, had been paid in full. Poole was hardly reassured by my response.

As for me, I was astounded: My dopplleganger had given himself a name—and a clever one at that. Edward was my middle name, bestowed upon me to honor a deceased grandfather. As for "Hyde," it was clearly a droll reference to the changeling's concealment within my form. I began to wonder about the intelligence of this person with whom I now shared a body.

Rumors about the mysterious Mr. Hyde began circulating in Marylebone, culminating in the early morning assault of a young child. With the constabulary on alert, I grew concerned about the vulnerability of our home, and those worries seemed to seep through to my alter ego: Hyde changed his hunting grounds to Soho, where the community was more aligned with his dissolute appetites.

I hoped that his relocation would restore peace to 17 Cavendish Square, but it was not to be.

One night, long after Poole had absented himself to enjoy his nighttime revelries and Mrs. Willoughby and Lanyon had retired to their chambers, I remained in my basement laboratory, where I once again consumed the potion to call forth Hyde. Unfortunately, Lanyon heard my cries and chose to investigate. I recall yelling at her to leave. Then the pain overtook me.

*

My dreams that night were short, but vivid. I felt my heart soar at the feel of her flesh. The taste of a woman.

That woman. The woman.

Then I remembered nothing else.

*

When I awoke, Lanyon was by my bedside, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen. I wanted to speak, but was struck silent. What had happened—and how could I begin to apologize? What excuses could I give?

My head felt like it was splitting open. Reaching up, I felt a neatly-bandaged lump on the back of my skull. "Did you treat me?" I asked. My voice seemed strange to me, a coarse whisper.

She nodded yes, her eyes wide.

"H-how long have I been asleep?"

"You've been... asleep... for a day," she whispered.

The silence stretched between us, filled with secrets and lies, regrets and recriminations. Finally, I could endure it no longer. "How much did you see?"

"I saw... everything," she said. "You are... him. Aren't you?"

I closed my eyes. I wondered again what the fiend had done to her. What I had done to her. "Yes," I muttered.

"Why? Why did you...?"

What could I say? How could I explain that my desire for her had driven me to seek escape in my dark side? That I was responsible for the monster who had, in all likelihood, molested her?

I rolled over, hiding my face from her questioning eyes. Her sense of betrayal. Behind me, I heard a muffled sob, followed by footsteps as she fled from the room.

*

My body healed quickly, but my spirit took longer to recover. After that first morning, Lanyon didn't return to my chamber, and avoided my laboratory as if it was a charnel pit. For my part, the return of my strength and the dissipation of my headache brought a renewal of my darkest impulses. This time, however, I chose not to answer. I resolved to banish Hyde from my home and my life.

As soon as I was able, I scoured my laboratory, disposing of my potions and compounds and removing the detritus left behind by the frenzied experimentation of the prior months. I was aided in this endeavor by Poole, who seemed as eager as me to excise the fiend's presence from our home. As we worked, I told him the tale of everything that had occurred in the prior months. In his eyes, I saw something that resembled compassion. Perhaps even pity.

But Hyde was harder to banish than I expected.

A month after his assault upon Lanyon, I was once again in the laboratory, hard at work on a new project. While I had abandoned my plans for transformation, I was still obsessed with finding a way to control the angels and demons that battled within me. This time, however, I resolved to develop a compound that would quiet the demons without feeding them. Something to tranquilize the user—a sort of liquor or laudanum, but without the loss of cognition that accompanies inebriation.

As with most of my endeavors, it was exceedingly ambitious—perhaps overly so. Over the following days, as one avenue of inquiry after another proved hopeless, my frustration grew. One night, facing yet another failure, I felt all the anger and disappointment of my failures bursting within me. I was suffocated by my weakness, my impotence. I surprised myself by screaming as I hurled an Erlenmeyer flask at the far wall of the laboratory.

I crumpled to the floor. Yet again, I was a failure. My heart pounded and I struggled to breathe. Panting, I clutched my head. It felt full, crowded with thoughts that were screaming to be released. Was I never to achieve my goals? Was there always to be another impediment in my path?

But then a calm coolness seeped into my brain, smothering the pain and fever. Why was I wasting my nights in a laboratory, working on yet another failed experiment, when all of London was stretched out around me, its myriad wonders awaiting my delectation? Why, indeed, was I wasting my energies maintaining the façade of virtuous Dr. Jekyll when the joyous world of Hyde was at my fingertips?

I was bliss. Bliss and lightness.

*

I awoke the next morning in an unfamiliar chamber. It was a rented room, with scarred wooden walls and a general air of neglect. I was tangled in stained and sticky sheets, clasped in the arms of a young woman I had never seen before. Her lank, heavy hair lay across my chest and she was redolent with the scents of too much cheap gin and too little soap. I endeavored to gently extract myself from her clutches, but it soon became clear that I needn't have worried: Whatever revelries she had entertained the night before had left her all but dead to the world.

My clothing was strewn across the floor, and I quickly attired myself. Leaving the lodging house, I realized that I was in Soho, near Hyde's old haunts. I had some memories of the area, and was easily able to find my way home on foot—a blessing, given the emptiness of my wallet.

On my long trek to Cavendish Square, I struggled with a growing disquiet. The previous evening, my body had transformed without my potions, much less my consent. When I returned home, I rushed to my laboratory, where I extracted a quantity of my blood and began testing it for mercury, strychnine and the other compounds that I had previously used to transform into Hyde. None were in evidence.

A week later, I again lost consciousness and again awoke in a strange bed, penniless and exhausted, with clothing that stank of smoke and sex and cheap liquor.

Five days later, again. And, again, three days after that.

I hypothesized that, having instructed my body in the mechanics of transformation, I had set it loose from its moorings. Now it was doing as it had been taught—transforming into a strong, robust form in order to conquer what it perceived as a cruel and difficult world.

When I first suffered a spontaneous transformation, I prayed that it was an anomaly, but subsequent events proved that it was but the beginning of a most upsetting process. I had hoped that time would cure to my condition, but it was not to be. Tracking the occurrence of Hyde's visits, it was clear that—if the trend continued unabated—I could expect Hyde to completely overwhelm me in short order. I had no way to halt the disappearance of my very personality, my soul.

To make matters worse, my alter ego was still showing an interest in Lanyon. In flashes of memory from his time in my body, I saw her through his eyes, asleep in her bed.

He was watching her sleep!

I was confronted 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 fiend 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 fuss. 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 farewell note to Lanyon and Poole, in which I briefly explained my decision. Afterward, I consumed the requisite compounds and went to my bedchamber to await 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, and I had been transported to heaven. Then I groaned at my foolishness: Whatever wonders the afterlife 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 release 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 hampering my thought processes, 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 tumult 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 fiend that resides within 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.

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.

That 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 tad 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. Sliding its contents across the drawer, I noticed that 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.