31_days | [SEPT 21] [ORIGINAL] THE ANUBIS BOX

Title: The Anubis Box
Day/Theme: September 21: ‘Human jackals for every human disaster’
Series: Original
Rating/Warnings: PG. Some historical racism: this is set in a version of nineteenth-century London.

Young men on half profits chase through the streets, dragging barrows loaded with pulpy oranges or creased apples behind them. Costermongers shout out the names of their goods, let loose a flur and babble out of the corner of their mouths. Leven owt yenep, leven owt yenep. Entirely incomprehensible. On doog, On doog. No good.

Evangeline lifts up her skirts and steps down from the carriage, out across a sour-smelling puddle. The chill outside air smacks some of the tiredness out of her. It is less stale than the inside of the carriage, as well.

She steps through the crowds, head held high, veil bobbing before her. Inside the tight skin of her gloves, she can feel her hands sweating. When she takes them off, she is sure her hands will be grained purple-black inside her knuckles. Cheap dye. She presses on, past a knot of Orientals bending over something that squeaks and clicks in a box. Wisps of red smoke rise up; they cough, wave their hands. One hawks up a splat of phlegm onto the pavement.

The market eddies to let her through, Edward keeping steady behind her, the cabinet cradled in his arms. But people turn and stare, naturally. Cool ta the dillo nemo. She walks on, cuts under a corner of the arcade and across the square. Crumbs of coal crunch under her boots, small children darting in between the iron-bound wheels of market trolleys to snaffle the biggest pieces. Marches down a side street and down an alley streaked with yellow dog shit, damp and criss-crossed with washing, greying in the morning air.

There is no need to check the address. A tall house with severe mouldings over the windows, thick blobby glass squares in the pavement letting light down to the kitchens. A black-painted door with a spotty brass knocker.

The maid turns white, bobs.

“Please, Miss Evie, come in!”

Evangeline steps inside, gestures for Edward to follow. He ducks in after her, as usual as if he thinks he is much taller than is the case and is rather sorry about it. It is one of the things he has kept; she tries not to notice it. Today, though. Today she tries not to see it as a promise.

“It is quite all right,” she tells the maid. Hannah. “I remember the way.”

She pushes past towards the stairs at the end of the hallway. Pale grey light washes down from a silted up oculus at the first landing; a pigeon moves obscurely outside the glass. Evangeline waves away the maid as she moves to take her coat, looks up the stairs. Opens the door to the basement at their foot.

She leads the way down into the dark.

Above, the maid stands in the hall, pleats her apron. Then she drags across the splintery bamboo umbrella stand and uses it to prop the door open. She can at least do that much. Then she goes and locks herself in the kitchen.

Little rills of dust move across the empty hallway, driven by the breeze from the cellar.

It seems a long way down. There is a gaslight at the bottom of the stairs, the pipe leading to it rimed with thick wet dust. Evangeline narrows her eyes to the light, opens the door beyond it without ceremony. The air down here is warm and damp. It smells of the grainy yellow curry the doctor enjoys, thick with cornflour, swimming with chunks of potato and apple. Just like they have it in Bombay, he was fond of saying, licking at his lips.

“My dear!” says the doctor. He perks his head up at them from behind a table spread with little bones, pieces of tiny ink-heavy type, italic, gothic, arranged in intricate patterns, two red candles.

Evangeline thinks that if he tries to hug her, she will vomit.

“I have the box,” she tells him. She waves Edward forward, takes the cabinet from his arms and rests it on an empty corner of the table, flips the lid back.

The doctor stands up and peers inside. Dips a finger down, hooks up a slick of the contents, red and wet. Takes a lick. Nods.

“Very well,” he says. “I will honour our agreement, my dear. My wayward apprentice, hmm, Evie.”

Evie says nothing. She is silent throughout the procedure, Edward’s body pale and empty on the table, the secret marks on his palms, the soles of his feet, slowly fading out, or perhaps in.

His eyes opening again. Full. Full of something, at least.

After that she cannot speak; she does not look at the doctor. She helps Edward dress, his hands loose and trembly. He does not say a word, not yet. She leaves the doctor alone with his box, with her price. God knows she paid enough, in several ways, for it. It is a loss she has carefully quantified, if only to herself. She leads Edward up the stairs, his hand large and warm in hers.

Evangeline will regret, in the future, that she looked back as Edward came after her in through the doorway.

He moves just as he has done for the past six months. As always, his left hand comes out to meet the door frame, he ducks a little, bends his face down. One wants to imagine an expression of shame, but his face is blank.

On doog. No good. Good dog.

It is unreasonable, naturally. No-one forgets time spent as a dead thing, even if of course they don’t remember it, precisely. The doctor promised he wouldn’t. And it was an echo of the old Edward in the first place, his stoop over their threshold in St John’s Wood, his small smile, holding out a seeping bag of oysters. Eating them with lemon and slices of bread around the fire, the brass holding tiny points of red light at its corners amongst its broader gleam. His laugh, over the sound of the flames.

Evangeline looks back at what follows her and knows that she has not regained anything at all.