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I. Jekyll Interred
"You should listen better. When I said," he grumbled as he wedged out
through the narrow opening, "that you'd die, this was not my intention."
The Jekyll sepulchre was an imposing peice of masonry, with the family
name carved over the now-ajar door, but Hyde thought less of that than
the fence:
wrought-iron and as tall as a man, the bars topped with spikes that
angled inwards. "Did you have this installed, Henry? That wasn't
very sporting of you, not at all." Fortunately the large lock on
the gate was mainly for show, and he got out without too much trouble after
all.
From the first, Hyde steadfastedly ignored the small matter of Jekyll's death. The only concession he made to it was, on his second night out, to pay a visit to Utterson, who gave him title to Jekyll's house, as Henry had provided.
"Where's the rest of it?" Hyde demanded.
"That's all there is," Utterson replied uncertainly. He had seen Jekyll die, and Edward Hyde was Jekyll. But logic be damned, Hyde had shown up for his inheritance.
Hyde gestured, the thin envelope slashing downwards. "This? I mean the rest. He had family money."
The lawyer felt himself on firmer ground here. "Well, you see, Doctor Jekyll changed his will, shortly before his death. You see - here - the house and the laboratory are yours, but in the event of his marriage, the rest of the estate belongs to his wife. My apologies." He knew better than to smirk.
Hyde examined Utterson's bland expression for a moment, then nodded sharply. "I see." Without an apology for waking the man in the dead of night, he stalked off.
Having the run of the house improved his attitude considerably, at least
in the short term. The doctor kept a small cache of money in the house
that had
remained unplundered in his absence. In the following weeks, Hyde sold
the bulk of Jekyll's medical library, as well as some hideous antiques
Henry must have been keeping for sentimental reasons. His good mood at
stripping the house of the doctor's belongings lasted an entire week.
Shortly after that, boredom began to take over. Even Hyde's usual excesses were doing nothing to curb it. Whores and blood were hardly new to him. He thought briefly of pursuing Henry's widow, the flighty Carew girl, but brushed it off as too much trouble. It would have required an attempt to treat her like a human, and Edward Hyde did that for no one. And so the boredom crept on, hanging like the curtains he didn't bother to open anymore.
He stayed at home more often, and talked to himself far too much.
Six months after the whole mess ended, Hyde forced his back door open, then crossed the overgrown garden and unlocked the laboratory. The door had warped and was now no easier to open than Jekyll's tomb had been half a year earlier.
The chamber had a dry odor of dust and rot, but the equipment was largely intact. Including, fortunately, nearly all of the chemicals.
It had to work. It didn't matter, that he was... It would make no difference. His hands shaking slightly, he mixed the formula from memory and stabbed it into his leg.
And waited.
He grinned wildly as his body spasmed and fell against the table. Hyde found himself unable to separate the euphoria of the drug from his own pleasure at being right. While he could think, he grabbed a stray pencil - the ink was long dry - and scrawled over Jekyll's careful print in the dusty notebook, "Welcome to Hell, H--" before his fingers tightened and the pencil snapped in his grasp and he dropped it and lay in the dust on the ground laughing until the pain was too much and the world went black.
II. Hyde Beshrouded
Doctor Jekyll was arguing with himself again. Unfortunately he still refused to listen to reason.
"No, don't."
"But why not, Harry!" Hyde asked petulantly, laughing at himself. He followed the length of the mantel, his hand resting on it to steady the rest of him, absently upsetting a vase.
"Haven't you done enough to her already?"
Hyde chuckled again, his mirth unfocused. "Oh, I thought she rather liked me, Harry... I should go pay a visit - for old times' sake."
"Leave Lucy alone," the doctor reproved, keeping the edge of desperation out of his voice.
"I think I will. Your company leaves something to be desired, Harry. Her, to be exact!" Hyde rushed up the stairs as if by that he could outstrip the opposition.
He dressed in Jekyll's finest clothes - which were just too ill-fitting to be respectable - and strolled casually to Whitechapel through an unusually thick fog. Lucy wasn't performing, he saw, but even that disappointment barely penetrated the strange delirium that left him senseless of his surroundings, even of the uniformed police on the streets.
After the show, he went around to Lucy's room and rapped on the door. He thought he might not punish her tonight, even if she were with someone else. With that charitable thought, he waited.
The timid voice that answered was not hers. "Lucy Harris?" it echoed, "I've never heard of her, I'm sure."
Hyde started, stared at the closed door. Where could she have gone - the letter! He'd sent a letter?
He considered this possibility as he walked home. A letter, yes. With money for Lucy to run away on. The little whore! He even remembered reading it to her. "Oh, Lucy-" The night swirled in his eyes and a roar rose as it tilted crazily...
When the tide slowly receded, Hyde felt cobblestones under him, his good clothes stifling and soaked through. He picked himself up and stumbled home as the fog throbbed, turned lurid red in his mind. He laughed blackly to himself. "Lucy, didn't I tell you you'd never, never escape me?"
Hyde began to plan.
III. Jekyll's Letter
The letter, that was the thing. He saw, in a flash of memory, himself standing by the table, reading the letter to her. Hyde paced frantically, worrying at the puzzle. His cloak billowed about him - he had neglected to change clothes from the previous night.
"Henry? Answer me now, why did you go to Lucy yourself to read the letter? You'd never have gone down there to see her yourself! Answer me!"
His frame jerked, but barely broke stride as Doctor Jekyll spoke through lips not his own, for all the world a ventriloquist's dummy. If he didn't answer on his own, Hyde would use the formula again to bring him back. And every time he did that, they lost something more. That Jekyll could break through like this was a bad enough sign. Their gaps in memory and Hyde's obvious deterioration were worse - and the physician had no idea where it would end.
"I gave... I gave the letter to John, Edward. Of course I couldn't go myself."
Hyde smirked. "When you want something messy done, get a lawyer to do it. Some friend you were, eh?"
The room was dim and smoky - Hyde's natural element - and he quickly picked out his prey. "Ah, Utterson. Fancy meeting you here." He loomed over the seated man across the table. "I'm looking for a girl and a letter. The letter you delivered to Miss Lucy Harris for the late Doctor Jekyll."
"Harris? Oh - the dancing-girl." Utterson was drunk, which made the questioning easier. "Shouldn't you know? I read it to her, left it with her. She was going away..."
"Away."
"Yes - out of London."
"She said she was. Did she?" Lucy, Lucy, when I find you, I...
"I wouldn't know," returned Utterson. "It was hardly my affair."
"Bad answer, my man, bad answer." He pulled the other man out of his chair and slammed him against the closest wall until he went limp, then threw him back at his chair. Utterson missed, spinning into the railing, which held him on his feet. Hyde stalked after him, grinning maniacally. The wood splintered as he slammed the lawyer into it again, and he narrowly missed following Utterson to the floor below. By the time he reached the door it was clear that the lawyer would never rise again.
His mood lightened somewhat by the encounter, Hyde returned to pacing his laboratory. Lucy had left, he concluded. But Utterson said he had read her the note, said he had delivered it. So she'd known what it said when he read it to her. Who had he been, then? He couldn't remember, and it was important somehow.
"Jekyll...why did you go there?"
"I didn't, Edward."
"Why?"
"No-"
He snatched up the syringe.
"-I didn't-"
"LIAR!" He plunged the liquid savagely into his leg and collapsed as it imploded dully in the back of his head.
IV. Hyde's Solution
Some time later, Henry Jekyll huddled on the stone floor. He'd done it again. "Edward..." his own voice echoed hollowly, "Edward, Lucy..." Lucy was gone. Utterson had read her his letter, and before she left he had gone to see her and read her the letter again.
Hyde had gone to see her.
Painfully, Jekyll began to laugh. Oh, this would be bad indeed...
Jekyll's answer came to him before Hyde had come to himself. He knew it when he opened his eyes to see his own face in the mirror Jekyll had thoughtfully set up for him. Lucy was dead, by his hand.
There was no fog now, to shield him from that truth.
Or from any other.
He was a wanted man, condemned to death. And like a fool he had let himself be seen a dozen times, lived here openly.
They were coming. He could hear a distant sound - someone pounding on the front door. And Lucy was gone - had escaped. That was too much. "Never," he muttered, "never, never escape. Only Hyde..." Hyde always escaped. He could never let himself be caught..
He chose another of the chemicals. Here was the solution, Jekyll's solution.
It was simple, after all. He raised the glass and drank - it shattered
on the floor a second before he dropped, still at last.