Page 94 of If Looks Could Kill
The train eases out of the station. Jack settles into his seat and wraps his scarf more tightly around his mouth and nose. No one has recognized him. He pulls his leather gloves up more snugly around his wrists. His are, after all, the most famous hands in the world.
The train picks up speed. Each chug of the engine takes him farther from the detectives and the prying press. And that horrid landlady and her silently menacing husband.
And the girl. Pearl. The great mystery. He had cut her. He knows it. He saw her bleed.
He ended up lying low another day at the boardinghouse, sweating in anticipation of a body being found and blame pinned upon him. But nothing happened. Had he dreamed it all?
The line between dreams and reality is wearing thin. Delirium fevers. Corpses. Snakes. Every man a pursuer. Every woman a fiend.
He’s leaving all of that behind. His reign is over. Peace and solitude are all he asks. In the pure boredom of his sister’s home in Waterloo, he will recover from these nervous tics.
He has a private compartment. No one will disturb him. All he needs to do is sit here until the train reaches Albany, then transfer to a westbound line.
He jumps at the sound of a knock at the door.
“Ticket, please,” barks the conductor from underneath a walrus mustache.
Jack’s heart rattles in his chest. He produces his ticket and holds it out shakily.
“You cold?” inquires the mustache, noticing the gloves.
The conductor leaves. The city thins; bits of green begin to appear between buildings. Jack watches his breath fog the window. After the sleepless dread of these last days, the soporific spell cast by the train’s movement works its magic upon Jack, and he drifts off to sleep.
But he finds no rest in rest. They dance, they dance. They haunt his dreams. The snake women, encircling him, closing in like a noose. The corpse women, too. Wherever he goes, they will find him. They buzz in his skull like the whine of a mill saw. We are anathema to you.
He wakes. One of them leers at him, inches from his face.
“Hot roasted peanuts?”
Carrot-red snakes spiral down from under her uniform bonnet.
“Get out!” he screams. “Begone, witch!”
He bats at her. It upsets her tray. Peanuts clatter like hailstones onto the floor.
“Just thought you’d want a snack,” she says reproachfully. Her snakes flick their tongues.
“Get out !”
“That’s eight bags you wasted,” she says. “A dollar’s worth. They’ll dock my pay. If you had any decency, you’d buy ’em.”
He raises his feet off the floor, away from the pollution of her poisoned peanuts, and hugs his knees in close, curling his body into a ball.
She stands expectantly in the doorway, holding out her hand for her wretched dollar.
He pants in terror and rocks back and forth on his hips.
Make it stop. Make it stop. Make her go. Make them leave me alone.
“Mr. Gaspard,” she calls down the corridor, “something’s wrong with this man.”
The conductor returns. He acts as though a snake woman is a perfectly normal sight. He’s in on the mockery too. They both peer through the doorway at him.
“Pardon me, sir,” the conductor begins, soothingly. “Shall I fetch you a doctor?”
His laughter shrills in his own ears. “I am a doctor,” he tells the man. “Get her out.”
“I just offered him peanuts,” she tells the man. “He knocked my tray out of my hands.”
The conductor sighs. “Well, clean it up, then, Louella.”
She bends to scoop peanuts off the floor.
“Don’t touch me!” Jack cries. “Leave me be! I’ve done nothing. I’m innocent!”
The man and woman exchange a look. Why isn’t the conductor slumped on the floor in a coma of her making? Even now, her serpents bare their fangs at Jack.
“Perhaps we’d best let this gentleman enjoy his privacy,” the conductor says.
The snake woman’s voice fades away as she leaves. “That rat owes me a dollar.”
Jack leans against the cold glass. This was a close one, but thank God, he got away.
When he opens his eyes from his next little doze, two well-dressed women sit opposite him. They smile invitingly. One is—no, she can’t be. The other—but all females look the same.
“Good morning,” says the dark-haired one. “I’m Giselle. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? I’m in the entertainment business.”
“This is a private car,” he barks.
“And this,” she says, unpinning her hat and her hair, “is Nicolette, my French protégée. I believe you’ve already met?”
Down the corridor, the conductor and Louella share a they-don’t-pay-us-enough-for-this glance as the train’s whistle only partly drowns out the eccentric doctor’s screams.