The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 17 A DROWNED OPHELIA

The Mutoscope flutters and goes dark. The toy maker draws his face away, a hand clamped to his eyes. His shoulders heave. Noiseless sobs rack his body. He fights to compose himself. Abruptly, driven by a sudden resolve, he abandons the Mutoscope and strides across the empty toy store to the open trapdoor. His feet stomp down the bare wooden steps and he crosses the cellar workshop to the workbench set against the bare brick wall. He pulls the hidden handle and the door to an adjacent cellar springs open.

He takes a lantern from its hook and enters the space, passing the hulking restraining chair, and moves to a door at the far end of the space. He keys the lock and steps into a smaller room where his breath fogs the air. In previous times this was a larder for keeping meat; the thick walls are built from massive stones rendered smooth to hold in the chill. Large blocks of river ice sit stacked beneath a scattering of straw, and the flagstones underfoot shine wet from melt water. Dominating the center of the room are two tanks, one large, one small, like metal coffins clamped shut with iron straps.

He moves to the larger tank, unfastens the metal straps, and flings open the lid. The tank is filled to the brim with a glass-clear liquid that could be mistaken for water were it not for the astringent smell of alcohol rising from it. He lofts the lantern and stares rapturously into the depths. The naked body of a young woman hangs suspended. Her eyes are closed as though lost in her dreams, and in the subtle eddies of the turbid liquid, her long blond hair writhes like underwater weed.

“My beloved,” he whispers in words that fog the air.

He plunges an arm into the liquid. It is breathtakingly cold, but before his hand goes numb and loses all feeling, his searching fingers catch and cradle the slender curve of a neck. He carefully lifts and the face of a drowned angel surfaces from the liquid, the plastered hair streaming, the skin marble white and etched with a tracery of fine blue veins. As he draws the face closer, an arm floats up and a hand breaks the surface, revealing torn flesh and the chewed-off stubs of missing fingers.

“Our long years of separation are almost over. Soon, we will be reunited with our child, and we will walk together in the light.”

And then he leans close and places a tender kiss upon the stiff, gelid lips.