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His hands shook violently against the door handle, jamming the bronze key into the keyhole again and again with little success. His breath was heavy and loud in the inky blackness, terrifying him even further.
He had killed that man, and he had done so with his bare hands. Sentenced him to a premature, lawless hanging. His own hands the Noose to his demise. There was little else but the ceaseless beating of his heart, ongoing, unlike the gentleman he… he had…
The innocent blood stained the door as he shoved it open and once again as he closed it behind him. There was so much blood, good God there was so much. He bounded into the laboratory, crashing vials in a fruitless attempt to reach his serum. Though his hands shook and rattled the glasses around him, he couldn’t deny the faintest feeling of elation coursing through him.
He had indeed killed a man, but the manner of the murder had been an artform in itself. Few men could gaze at his heinous act without their stomach lurching forth the last meal they had consumed; and yet, he had been able to do more than simply witness it. He had brought it to fruition, and handled it as a painter would the sunrise on his canvas. Oh, it was wonderful, he could still feel that sweet adrenaline pumping warmth through his veins. If he was such a painter he would fill the corridors of his estate with replicas of his work, each piece portraying a different angle of the mangled body and the intricate patterns of the blood splattered on the pavement. Perhaps, even, he would utilise the MP’s own blood in with the paint; a perverse mixing of diverse materials, the kind which would scandalise the decrees from Leviticus, or was it Deuteronomy: “Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together.”
The utterance of the verse suddenly thrust him back to the present, where his hands grabbed hold of his serum (turning the glass a slippery crimson). He downed the contents without hesitation; the bitter taste a balm to his itching throat.
It was a horrid mix of pride, relief, and disappointment as his body morphed painlessly back into the body of Henry Jekyll. It should have been more painful, it should have torn his ligaments in two as if to mock what he had done to the man still on the cobbled streets.
Not even fully formed, Jekyll cried out in this amalgamation of sanctitude and anger. Sanctitude for the little Mercy he was offered now, in this blameless form, and anger in the same blinding sense one would feel when the sun is a little too bright in the morning or a percentage of cocaine doesn't deliver the same effects it had a night before. The transformation should have hurt him more, it should have hurt him more!
His knees fell to the ground as his body shook; his nails scraped the floodboards in such a way that they painted marks upon them. It hurt somewhat, oh how wonderful the pain. He dug and dug and dug down into the very beating heart of the wood below him.
Suddenly his eyes grew wide, his vocal cords tied around each other to choke him. Underneath him, underneath Jekyll, his hands were still red. His soiled nails carved into the wood and brought up more bubbling vats of blood. He could hear the very house screaming in agony.
Jekyll stumbled back, frantically wiping his hands on his shirt, anything to get the red off, off, off.
His back hit against something hard and he jerked around, only, to his own horror, to face himself. His hand dripped in this identical visage, which mimicked his actions. He would have been convinced it was only the glass he had installed to view his transformation, if it had only looked a fraction more human than what he was currently staring at. This reflection, this idol in a nonexistent mirror was mocking him, pointing at him, rasping in the voice of the dying MP, “You. This was You. You. You. You.”
The copy pointed at his neck, then his head snapped to the side. It fell listlessly to the floor and rolled to Jekyll's feet. The doctor could have screamed, jumping back like a wounded animal at the sight of its own muzzle stuck in the jaws of a trap.
His eyes were wide and damp as he looked around the room in a panicked frenzy. He watched the walls wobble and drip, the dark amber structure of his laboratory fell away to reveal the marble of a church hall. Except on those very walls, once pristinely white, dripped down the same ugly brackish liquid which refused to leave his hands. It sputtered from the top of the spires and traversed down, covering the glass windows until the church darkened.
Jekyll’s whole body shivered, his throat crying out pathetic whimpers at the sight before him. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, but his mind hunted for coattails to hang onto, for anything that would help him process what he was witnessing.
It had been too long since he had stepped foot into a church like this one. The guilt was eating at his soul like the rats of the sewer which just found a fresh scrap of trash in a corner. There were flashes of light as the blood moved across the stained windows, these of which brought with them joyous choruses from a time happier and easier than this. In these glimpses he saw the peace that once enveloped him at the sight of a church hall, the camaraderie he had with his fellow churchgoers in boarding school: Hastie Lanyon, who always woke him on Sunday mornings with more theatrics than required; Gabriel Utterson, the only one in the group who seemed more at home in the pews and, sometimes, at the organ, than he did in the school dormitories.
He could even recall the times, long before he had even met his closest friends, when he would walk across the nave hand-in-hand with his father. His father always had the loudest voice during worship for Mass, imposing and jubilant as he remembered the rest of his father’s disposition to be.
When had it all changed? When did life turn around and bite him in the heels, revealing that the rosy colour of his childhood was nothing more than that: a pink veil which youth always covered his eyes with, until the realisation that it wasn’t all as simple as he had thought it to be smacked him in the face.
The sound of the blood creeping around the walls startled him again, yet the liquid avoided the ground. It churned angrily from where it attempted to cross the threshold into the pews but quickly shrunk back as if burned. As if it were not allowed to pass into the holiest place of the church.
Jekyll was so transfixed on this that he hardly noticed a rope tying itself around his neck. It was jerked tight and he suddenly gasped. His hands scrabbled to grasp it as he gagged, feeling himself being tugged back down onto his knees.
His head held back, he croaked a desperate plea, “Lord forgive me! Forgive me, please!” Was he repenting for the murder? For his absence in the church? For the absence of faith in so many years? For the acts he has committed his entire life, in the security of darkness and closed doors?
The rope pulled tighter, as if it was not convinced of his cries and disappointed in his own confusion. Jekyll’s vision pulsed at the edges, and his mouth tasted copper, likely from the blood on his hands, which still clawed at what strangled him.
“Father, forgive me, for I know not what I do!” He cried out in bitter remembrance of a verse. Right before his consciousness could be taken from him, the rope was gone. He wheezed. The air tasted stale, yet Jekyll was grateful for it. Oh how gracious the Lord is to me. The thought still burned him inside out.
Though he sobbed painfully, what rippled down his cheeks were not tears. Rather, the remnants of all the abominations he had committed, both as himself and in the body of Hyde. It was a miserable, vile confection of blood, sweat, and God knows what other bodily fluids. It almost felt worse than the blood on his hands and in his nails.
His body shook with his weeping, and his hands rubbed against the marble floor on all fours in a feeble attempt to clean the ejecta that left his eyes. If the floor was to remain clean, who was he to be the one to soil it? But all his hands did was spread the foul contents around more.
He looked up in despair, unable to cease his sobbing nor wash what he expelled. From where he crouched, his eyes landed on a large golden Cross.
The grand Cross stood stately and regal on the scarlet backdrop. It remained gold, unstained by the blood which covered the walls around it.
As his vision swam, he noticed the same rope that had tormented him earlier tied in the crook between where the arms of the Cross met the pole. It dangled down, fastened to the mangled, unmistakable body of Danvers Carew. His torso was beyond recognition as human, looking more like the scraps of meat left over for dogs.
His head was graciously covered by an execution hood, serving as the most clothing he had bar the bloodied torn rags which clung desperately to his form. His own blood dripped down his arms and legs and filtered onto the Sanctuary’s floor, soiling first the grand organ at the forefront and with it playing a haunting melody.
The symbolism would’ve screamed into his ear if it could speak. Was he so just and mighty as to sentence any man to death, regardless of the magnitude of their crimes? Danvers Carew certainly had committed crimes, and if not, his sins were well-known in the gutters of London. Even then, was Henry Jekyll right to blindfold himself and hold the Scales of Justice? Even moreso, for Edward Hyde to brandish the lever with his own hands and pull the MP down with it?
Justice or not, is both the Judge and the Executioner supposed to feel delight in the act of killing? Where one relishes in his influence and power while the other licks the blood from his hands with a grin. And neither feel the weight of regret?
Jekyll suddenly heard the Cross creak with the weight of the dead man, and it was only a moment's time when a loud crack boomed through the hall. One side of the Cross lost hold on the wall and consequently tilted the rest to the other side. The figure groaned and the body it hung swayed with it.
The disturbance forced the execution hood off of the head. What should have been Carew’s old, ashen face was instead the head of Gabriel John Utterson. The lawyer's eyes were wide with terror and staring straight at Jekyll, the last remnants of life from their glossy sheen absent except for the obvious fact that he had witnessed the forthcoming of his own demise. His mouth was sewn shut, and those same stitches could be seen around his neck. It was undoubtedly what fastened his head to the MP’s body, a subpar simulacrum to the act of taxidermy. Even the blood—commingled of both Carew and Utterson— seeped through the hastily stitched sutures.
Jekyll was terrified that the weight of the body would break the thread and leave his friend's head dangling alone on that cross, but not before he screamed a cry which scraped his insides.
He could perhaps withstand the harassment to his own self, but seeing his punishment extend to his friends was something he couldn’t handle. Utterson was the last man who deserved to die; out of anybody Jekyll had ever met, the lawyer was the most genuine and respectable of all men.
And now here he hung, not even fully himself but attached to someone else, dead. Wherever the rest of his body was, it must have certainly been treated with an equal level of disrespect than his head had been. Utterson’s hair was matted and stained with brown blood, in a level of disarray that the man would never allow, were he alive. His eyes were bloodshot, and from his position on the floor, Jekyll could see more blood seeping out of the edges of his waterline. If it were not for the stitches on his lips, the lawyer’s mouth would have been wide open, screaming even beyond life.
It was finally clear what this was. A sudden chorus of voices in a minor key to some common hymn echoed: “This is your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault.”
Judgment Day. This was Jekyll’s Judgment Day.
Jekyll fell to the ground and begged. It was all he knew what to do. Simply beg. For forgiveness, for mercy, for renewal. Anything. Anything.
His breath choked as he watched in abject horror how the blood, which still waterfalled from the hanging body, slowly began creeping toward him. Already having overtaken the entire organ, the music stopped, thrusting the church into sudden and terrible silence.
This liquid was what conquered the floor. Unlike what the blood on the wall had been able to reach, this one spiraled around the entire Sanctuary floor and slithered down onto the nave, where Jekyll lay.
It slowly crawled closer to him. The doctor found he was frozen to the ground on all fours, where he had bowed to beg; like a dog to its owner. Utterson's blood crept towards him, and stretched like tendrils or fingers on a hand. It attacked Jekyll's own hands first, mixing beautifully with Carew’s blood which had already stained his skin.
It continued, spiraling up his arms like ivy; up his chest, up his neck, across his chin, and forced its way between Jekyll's lips. He could only whimper as the metallic taste filled his mouth and puddled across his tongue. It was warm and almost saccharine, yet he couldn't find it in himself to swallow.
The rest wrapped around his knees and torso, finally wrapping his body in the forever-morphing pungent warmth. The entire church was red, bright and dark and washed; acrylics and oils and watercolours, all encompassing the building in a live warmth which he couldn’t escape. Only his eyes were clean, open and twitching. He looked at the church hall, now flooded to the brim, before his own blood gurgled from his mouth and soaked into his eyes.
There was little he could do except accept his own sentencing and succumb to it. He closed his eyes and crumpled to the ground, nothing more than a whimpering puppy to the Master of the universe. Unworthy, unhappy, and eternally damned.
October 21, 18—
Gabriel John Utterson hummed to himself on his way to Dr. Jekyll’s. The events of the day were still fresh in his mind, and the shifting lights of early evening were making themselves known through the dense fog. He had decided to go straight away to the doctor’s after investigating the murder for the entirety of the morning, and was delighted to be admitted easily by Poole.
After crossing the distasteful theatre, at which the lawyer gazed about in reserved wonder, he reached the red baize door of Jekyll’s cabinet. The door was unlocked, and he let himself inside without trouble.
It was dark inside the room, not only from the fog that had made its way inside the room but from the lack of lighting in its entirety. Only a small lantern and the fire were the sources of respite from the darkness.
“Good evening, Jekyll,” the lawyer began, partly in trying to identify where the doctor even was. He saw the stirrings of life from a chair directly in front of the fire, and made his way over to his friend.
It was a surprise to him when the doctor did not rise to welcome him, as Jekyll usually did whenever Utterson visited him. When the lawyer turned to look at him, adjacent from the fire, he was almost shocked still at the deathly-ill state his friend was in. He looked half a dead man, his face paler than it had ever been before, and the warmth from the fire seemed to be the only thing keeping his veins from freezing over.
Utterson, however, ever the unobtrusive gentleman, kept these thoughts hidden; and instead held out his hand for Jekyll to shake.
“Good evening, Jekyll,” he repeated in an attempt to rekindle some conversation. Jekyll looked at the outstretched hand and received it. The doctor’s palm was cold to the touch and a jarring contrast to Utterson’s own perpetual warmth.
The lawyer watched as Jekyll stared at his hand, still not letting go after shaking it. He looked at it as if it weren’t real, almost twisting it from side to side to double check. This greatly perplexed the poor lawyer, who cleared his throat cordially enough.
“Welcome, Gabriel,” Jekyll’s voice was raspy and hoarse, changed from the silkiness it usually was, and still not letting go of the other’s hand. Utterson showed no outward reaction to the sparse use of his Christian name, yet inside he turned impossibly warmer.
After endless minutes, Jekyll finally let go of Utterson’s hand, and the lawyer sat in a nearby chair after deciding to ignore the whole affair.
Jekyll’s eyes, as hazy as they were, never left the lawyer’s face.
Utterson cleared his throat again, and turned gently towards his friend. Right, for what he came here for: answers.
“And now,” said Mr. Utterson, “you have heard the news?”