A Song of the Green Fairy [Yellow} Fandom: From Hell
Title: A Song of the Green Fairy
Authored by: vanillafluffy
Pairing/spoilers: Identity of Jack the Ripper (per the movie "From Hell")
Rating/Work-safeness: Yellow for drug use
Approximate word count: 5000
Disclaimer: Johnny Depp does not belong to me. Neither do any rights to the source material.
Summary: An homage to "A Christmas Carol": Victorian, but not exactly Dickens.... Inspector Abberline is visited by three spirits, from his angst-ridden past to his debauched present and a future far different from what he's predicted.
A/N: This was originally written and posted at FF.net on Christmas Eve, 2004. It predates my involvement with LJ, and I'd like to see it gain a wider audience.
A Song of the Green Fairy
Christmas Eve, 1891
In the third-storey rented flat, a gramophone warbled Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite". There were two inhabitants at present: Marcel, a small French bulldog, who was busily scratching fleas on his pile of cushions in a corner, and Frederick Abberline, who had drawn a bath in the old claw-footed tub and was preparing certain amenities for use during immersion. On a tray spanning the tub were a bottle of good French absinthe--a lovely peridot green!--a sturdy stemmed glass, a slotted silver spoon, a cream pitcher holding ice water, a dish of sugar cubes, a lit candle, a box of matches, and a small brown glass vial.
It was a bitterly cold night, and Abberline made certain that the heating in the room was sufficient before entering the tub. As hot water sloshed up his chest, he sighed with relief and began to perform a ritual so familiar that it had acquired a kind of precision; each motion done with studied care, flawless--until the very end. Then he discovered that the brown glass vial--it contained the precious laundanum--was empty.
Abberline sighed hopelessly. He hadn't the energy to climb out of the bath, dress, and venture to Chinatown to chase the dragon. Not tonight. It wasn't even that he was too proud to do so on a holiday; he simply wasn't up for it. Instead, he used the eyedropper to soak the sugar cube with pure absinthe instead and set that alight.
Without the sweet notes of the opium, the true taste of the fey verte came through, a bitter anisette that made his throat burn. While the liquor was enough to make him light-headed, it wasn't the same as the peaceful oblivion of the opiate. Abberline was nursing his second glass of the beverage as the clock struck midnight. The gramophone was growling at the end of the recording, and he was on the verge of dozing off in the still-warm water.
A soft sigh beside him brought him to alertness. That wasn't Marcel, who was no longer scratching--he was making asthmatic snuffling noises and trying to crawl under Abberline's bureau.
Turning his head, Abberline stared numbly at the woman standing beside the tub. Her dress was at least thirty years out-of-date, and she looked sad as she gazed down at him. She seemed oddly insubstantial somehow, like moonlight, or a reflection on water--and it occured to him that she had been about his age when she'd died.
"Mother?" he said hoarsely. This, at least, was no vision; nightmare, perhaps, but quite unreal, surely.
"Ah, Davy, what are you doing to yourself?" she asked sorrowfully. "Come with me, there are things I need to show you."
This was some queer dream. He thought he arose from the bath, wrapping himself in the old robe Rose had given him the first Christmas they were married. "Mother, why am I dreaming about you?"
"This isn't a dream, Davy. Take my hand."
No one had called him Davy since his mother's death. He reached out; his fingers seemed to brush against the frailest of cobwebs and then his head reeled. There was a sense of disorientation, and when his mind cleared, he found himself standing in a tiny office. Watching a six year-old boy with a tumble of dark curls standing there, he recognized the man with the walrus moustache who sat behind the desk: Superintendant Griswold, the head of the London Home for Dependant Boys. Griswold had died when Abberline was eight or nine; this was certainly an odd dream brought on by the absinthe without laudanum.
"David Frederick Abberline," Griswold read from some papers. "Mother died two days ago of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, father was a merchant seaman, deceased since 'sixty-four. Well, young Abberline, we already have a David in the home, so you'll be known as Frederick to avoid any confusion. Can you remember that?"
The boy nodded hesitantly. "Yes, sir."
The adult Abberline looked from the child to his mother. The dark-haired woman shook her head. "I'm sorry, my darling," she murmured. "There was nothing I could do. Even if I'd known how serious my condition was, there was no money for a surgeon. Please forgive me. I wouldn't have had you grow up in a place like this for anything."
Griswold was explaining the rules of the home to his younger self. Abberline remembered the superintendant as a good man--not soft or given to coddling the boys in his charge, but not mean-spirited. His successor had been apt to favor those boys who were studious and well-behaved, and Abberline had had no trouble with him, either. A few years after he'd been discharged, the home had burned down, killing twenty-eight of its sixty-two residents.
"Mother, there's nothing to forgive. I know you loved me." The Home for Dependant Boys hadn't been an easy place for a childhood, but Abberline knew that there were many worse places he could've ended up.
"Take my hand, Davy."
This time, the revolving sensation was less pronounced. The scene he opened his eyes to was the revelry that went on in the Home for Dependant Boys each Christmas.
"My god, it's PC Wexford!" Abberline smiled broadly for the first time in what felt like years. The young Police Constable who was joking and handing out presents had been his boyhood hero; Wexford was probably more responsible for Abberline's decision to join the Metropolitan police force than anything else. "He was a wonderful man, Mother--he dropped by the Home several times a month, always wanted to know how we all were...maybe just to make sure he knew us in case anybody got into trouble, but--" He broke off, shaking his head as Wexford handed Frederick a small parcel--it held a comb, a handkerchief, and a stick of peppermint candy, the same things everyone else had. "I wonder what ever happened to Wexford..."
"He married a few years later and has two sons and a small farm in Shropshire. Come, we mustn't tarry longer here."
For a moment, he was nonplussed. But it's a dream, he reminded himself. A farmer in Shropshire, indeed! He would've liked to try to talk to his mentor, but Mother was holding out her palm for his, and with a last glance at the man at the center of the attention, he clasped the gossamer web of her hand.
After his discharge from the London Home for Dependant Boys, Abberline had gotten a clerical position in a chandlery near the London docks, still being too young to meet the age requirements for the Force. He recognized the office-loft that looked out over the big building filled with everything a ship or its personnel might need. There was Gavin McBride, the other clerk--he knew what happened to Gavin--a hurry-up wedding to a captain's daughter.
The last he'd heard, Gavin was practically running the shipping firm--hadn't Gavin been at his wedding to Rose? Yes, and her funeral, too. That's the last time you saw him.
"Come on, Freddy! Let's go out and have some fun, since we've no one else to spend Christmas with."
"Oh, no!" said Abberline involuntarily. "Not this!" They seemed to be drawn along behind the two figures traipsing thru the back alleys near the docks. Gavin knocked on an anonymous door, a quick staccato beat, and they were admitted to surroundings far more elegant than the exterior of the shabby building would suggest. "Mother, no, please--I don't want to watch this!"
The woman beside him said nothing, just watched as her young son raised the stem of the hookah to his lips and took his first puff of opium. Abberline watched himself, a yearning for that sweet smoke tormenting him. It was no more than the dream of a memory, but his addiction supplied a ghost of the scent.
The younger Abberline began to scream. "The flames! Get them out! No, no--the back stairwell isn't safe!"
"Make it stop!" he groaned. The Home was burning, and he had Seen it with the sense he so hated. Though that particular Christmas Eve lay nearly twenty years in the past, he remembered the vision with horrible clairity.
Gavin was shaking him roughly, telling him that opium sometimes took people strangely, that everything was alright, even though both Abberlines knew it wasn't.
Watching, the older man heard the youth say somberly, "I swear, I'll never, ever, do that again!"
"I suppose you're going to show me that, too," said the despairing man to his mother. "What else? Christmas with Rose? The year after she died, when I broke my vow? What else?" He was shaking.
This time, she touched his hand, and he tried to pull away. He didn't like this dream, he wanted to wake up...and it seemed that he had, for now they were back in his flat, with the gramophone still scraping the cylinder and Marcel making renewed efforts to hide under the dresser.
"Davy, I must go now," Eleanore Abberline said softly. "But there is more for you to see. Two more spirits will attend you this night, so that perhaps the course you've set yourself upon can be changed."
"What?" He could scarcely comprehend what she was saying. Abberline was torn between consuming more absinthe in hopes that it would bring true oblivion, and fear that more alcoholic spirits would cause him to dream of the other spirits.
For several minutes after his mother's ghost departed, Frederick Abberline paced the floor. As the clock struck one, Marcel began to whine, and when the Inspector looked around, there stood a compact figure, almost a head shorter than himself, wearing immaculate evening dress. A dream, he reminded himself. No, this man was truly a nightmare.
Sir William Gull stood looking back at him, an unpleasant smile curling his lips.
"You're no ghost," said Abberline, aloud. "You're still alive."
"Am I? Are you quite sure?" There was a mocking note to the old surgeon's voice. This was not the kindly physician who had offered him help for his opium addiction---but thankfully, neither was it the ranting lunatic who'd savagely butchered so many unfortunates. "Perhaps it is I who am alive and you who are dead, lost in the mists, chasing your precious dragon. Or perhaps when they knocked my brains adrift, they set loose more than that. It doesn't matter. I'm here to show you what's happening in the here and now as it relates to you."
The silver-haired Gull seized Abberline's arm, and almost at once, he found himself in a familiar room--Sergeant Peter Godley's parlor, where Godley and his wife were wrapping packages.
"Is he going to be here for Christmas dinner tomorrow?" Godley's wife was asking as she neatly folded paper around a small box.
"I don't know, Martha. I've asked him. He said he might drop by."
She sighed. "It's a shame. He's such a nice young man."
"I know, I know. I worry about him as much as if he was one of ours."
"And he's so thin! Doesn't he ever have a good meal?"
"No, of course you don't," Gull remarked. "Not with the amount of opium you consume. Does a fine job of suppressing your appetite. Your respiratory functions too--one of these days, you're liable to just stop breathing. You may or may not be aware of it at the time. It's difficult to ask a corpse if it knows when it died." He grinned delightedly at the paradox.
"--just pushes the food around on his plate when we go to the pub every week. He doesn't care, Martha, it's like he's sleepwalking, and I don't know how to wake him up."
"And one day, he won't," gloated Sir William, watching Abberline for a reaction.
He can't possibly know about the dream I've been having. Don't be ridiculous, this is a dream, too!
The recurring dream woke him several nights a week, now: Godley, decending the stairs into Lung Jin's opium den with two stout constables to drag Abberline out of his stupor, only to find him dead and staring. He always woke with his heart pounding as Godley laid the coins upon his eyes.
"Well, it's waiting for him if he comes," said Martha Godley, adding a package neatly labelled "Frederick" to the small pile. "Or you can give it to him when you see him in a day or two."
"Stockings and handkerchiefs," confided Gull. "My, haven't we come a long way in thirty years."
Only an ingrained reluctance to swear in front of a lady--even one who wasn't in the least aware of his presence--kept Abberline from rounding on the cruel shade. Gull showed no compunctions about grabbing Abberline's arm once more.
The splendid room in which they found themselves reminded him of the first words Gull had ever spoken to him: "You don't belong here, do you?" In this case, the answer was definitely not. It looked like the smoking room of a gentlemen's club, and in two chairs near a roaring fire, the Police Superintendant discussed his fate with the head of the Special Branch as Abberline listened.
"Can't justify the budget for surveillance on him anymore! He works, gets a bottle, goes home, or works, goes to Lung Jin's and passes out. Has dinner at a pub with his partner once a week. He's harmless--damn near useless, you ask me." Special Branch shook his head.
"He does his job well enough, even if, some days, he looks as bad as some of the low-lifes he puts away." His supervisor sounded grudging. Abberline hadn't heard a breath of praise from the man in the last three years, and a spark of vindication flickered at the man's words; no one knew how difficult it was to keep focused on his work when his cravings threatened to overwhelm him.
"Enthusiastic, isn't he? He'd just love an excuse to get rid of you." Sir William oozed malevolent cheer at the prospect.
No more absinthe without laudanum, absolutely not.
"That really is a very nice port he's got," said Gull, eyeing the bottle on the low table between the men. "One does miss the little civilties...ah, well, time for one more stop!" So saying, he clutched Abberline's forearm again.
They were in Lung Jin's next...clouds of opium smoke wafted through the air...there was a pearly haze in the room, and Abberline watched the clientele engaged in their usual rituals: smoking, exploring their heightened senses in a variety of novel ways...
"Look there...your favorite couch is empty," whispered Gull in his ear. "You could come by in a little while and enjoy the pursuit of which you're so fond." Again, he could almost taste the lovely perfume of the dragon...
There was a clatter from nearby. Rong, the proprietor, promptly beat the girl who'd dropped a heavy tray with a hookah, a decanter and several glasses. She wasn't more than nine or ten, and Abberline felt a sense of outrage. When he patronized Lung Jin, he was usually too drugged to notice or care about such acts, but now he watched angrily, wishing he could thrash Rong.
Sir William wore a smile. "Tsk, tsk. That'll teach her to be more careful." He snatched Abberline again. When they stood once again in the flat, Gull feigned concern for him. "If you enjoyed our little excursion, and discovering what a wretched specimen of a human being you are, I'm sure you'll find your next visitor most amusing--after all, you're already accustomed to seeing the future!"
The future? He'd dreamed it often enough; it might horrify him, but when the day came, those two coins wouldn't bother him in the slightest. Marcel was upset; he picked up the little dog and tried to calm him. Briefly, the French bulldog relaxed as his master held him against his robe and scratched behind his ears, but as the clock struck two, the dog began to yelp, terrible ear-splitting howls that by rights should have every tenant--and Abberline's landlord--thumping on ceiling, walls or door in protest. There was no sound at all, save for Marcel's yips. He tore free of his owner's arms and cowered, whining, under the bedcovers.
Looking around the room, Abberline felt a frisson in spite of himself at the sight of the looming, shrouded figure. It beckoned to him, and he rose stiffly from the bed and walked toward the faceless apparition. Might as well get this over with...
At the spirit's chilling touch, he found himself standing in an office--judging by the view from the window, he was in Metropolitan police headquarters, but the place had changed a great deal. There were a number of strange devices on some of the desks--he observed one constable tapping buttons with his fingers, and neatly printed pages slowly emerged from the top of the contraption. Someone else was carrying on one side of a conversation with an odd-looking metal trumpet. Electric lights had replaced gas lamps. This was the future? All these peculiar machines?
The spectre gestured for him to enter a nearby office whose door was ajar. Abberline recognized the location of the office--it was the superintendant's--but the man behind the desk--Abberline frowned, studying him. There was another man there as well, in his late twenties, clean-shaven except for a pencil-thin moustache, and he appeared to be arguing with the superintendant.
"Superintendant McNabb, please! Abberline was my partner for six years, I understand that we're short-handed because of the holiday, but I--his family--"
"Perhaps you mean to say his daughter?" inquired McNabb with a note of irony.
"Daughter? Don't be ridiculous, I don't have a daughter!" Abberline said, looking at the spectre, which spread its hands as if to say, who knows?
"Yes, it's true that Julia and I are engaged," the young man admitted. "That's hardly a secret! Please, sir, may I go to her?"
"I don't suppose I'll get much use out of you if I say no," sighed McNabb. Abberline had recognized him---currently, McNabb was also an Inspector, and his seniority was on a par with Abberline's---perhaps slightly less, as he was a few years younger. In this strange future, though, he appeared to be getting on toward sixty, at least. "Go ahead!"
"Thank you, sir!" The young man who claimed that Abberline had been his partner bolted through the spectre and out through the office door.
Abberline had just had time to notice that the monarch whose portrait hung over the superintendant's desk was not Victoria, but was, in fact, a man--when the spectre's touch grazed the side of his face.
There was something about the layout of the house that reminded him of Godley's. It was similar, but here the staircase leading upward was on the righthand side rather than the left. He glanced around. The sound of sobbing came from an open door, and without prompting, Abberline walked into the room.
It was a measure of how strange this extended hallucination had become that the sight of his own corpse laying in state barely disturbed him. At least, given the sequence of events, he presumed it was his corpse. The body was silver-haired, and while Abberline thought he could discern his own features, there were lines on the face that his mirror had yet to show him.
The sobbing came from a woman in her mid-twenties, who was heavily with child. "Poor Father, he'll never get to see the baby!" she wailed. "Oh, Davy!"
"Livy, shhh..." The man patting her shoulder drew Abberline's startled attention. He looked much as Abberline had years earlier, before Rose's death and the Ripper conspiracy had drawn him into disolution. "You know as well as I what Father's like. Was like," he amended, with a glance at the body. "He probably knew all about that baby before he--left us. Come on, it does the baby no good for you to carry on like this. Let's go out to the kitchen. Betsy's minding little Alex, and I'm sure she's got some tea on."
After they had left the room, Abberline looked again at the figure in the coffin, then at the spectre. "This isn't my life. I don't have children to weep over me, no one's going to give a damn when I die!"
Once more, the shrouded apparition gave an airy shrug.
This was ridiculous; Abberline stormed out of the room. Upstairs? No, kitchen, he decided. Let's see the rest of this so-called family of his!
The kitchen was a homey room at the back of the house, and there were a number of people there besides Davy and Livy---Olivia? A middle-aged woman in a plain wool dress was chopping vegetables, while the pair he'd already met were seated at the table with cups of tea and a man and a woman who were apparently their respective spouses. In the corner, a boy of five or six was playing with a small army of wooden soldiers.
"Julia is upstairs with Mother Abberline," said the man who was leaning over and attentively rubbing Livy's shoulders.
"Yes, Mother's terribly upset," said Davy somberly. "I think she's ready to storm Heaven and demand him back."
"Is she sure that's the right way to go?" asked the blonde woman beside him.
"Grace!" the others chorused in mingled tones of shock.
Grace looked blankly back at them. "Well, if she storms Heaven, wouldn't that just make them more determined to keep him?" Abberline burst out laughing at that. The woman was completely oblivious of the gaffe she'd just committed.
At the sound of Abberline's chuckling, the child looked up, dropped the toy cannon in his hand and shrieked, "Gran'fa!" He made a beeline across the kitchen to where Abberline stood, and tried to hug him.
"Alex!" exclaimed Grace, biting her lip. "He's too young, he doesn't understand. Alex, lovey, play with your soldiers, your Grandfather's not here."
"Is so!" insisted Alex. His grey eyes met Abberline's and he smiled broadly, showing one missing front tooth. "He's not old anymore! He looks like Daddy!" He was a beautiful child, and he was grinning at Abberline, who was in shock. His mind was playing tricks, dreaming what might have been if Rose hadn't died...a son who looked him him and a grandson who had his curse--but there was no denying it; it was a dream he would happily lose himself in.
"Oh, Alex!" sighed his mother, but Davy exchanged a look with his sister.
"Alex," asked Livy, "what's your grandfather wearing?"
"A robe. It's dark blue and there's yellow lines on it." The boy sketched zigzags in the air with his finger.
"Jesus," said Davy, staring in the direction of his son. "I remember that robe...Mother detested it. It got so disreputable, I think she finally threw it in the fire--accidentally on purpose. Father pitched a fit at the time...I was about Alex's age."
"He's got such a vivid imagination," said Grace, a bit too quickly.
"Don't worry, Alex," Abberline crouched down to be at eye-level with the boy. "It's a bit like having dreams when you're awake. Just remember, not everybody dreams that way, and sometimes they're not nice dreams. You look like a smart boy, I'm sure you'll be just fine."
"You dream too?" said the little boy.
"Yes, Alex, me too."
The little boy beamed at him. He turned to look at the adults, frozen around the table, and as Abberline hurried out of the room, he could hear the childish treble saying, "Gran'fa dreams like me too!"
At that point, Abberline didn't know where the spectre was, nor did he care. This family of his--it was a wistful dream, one he'd long since given up on in waking life. The front doorbell rang, and a door opened upstairs. A young lady, her loveliness marred by signs of weeping, dashed down the stairs and past him, beating her brother to the door.
As the young man from police headquarters entered, the young miss threw her arms around him. This must be Julia, the one who was engaged to this so-called partner of his. She seemed to be a year or two younger than Livy, while Davy was apparently the eldest. The couple headed toward the parlor. He had no desire to see himself laying in state again. Going up the stairs, Abberline prowled around until he found a room where a woman lay face-down on a large bed, broken sobs coming from the pillows.
A sheaf of whitened hair fell so that he couldn't see her face, not that it mattered. This must be his widow. Alledged widow, he corrected himself. I have no wife to grow old with, no son to carry on my name, no grandchildren. "No one is going to weep for me," he murmured.
"Frederick?" The woman raised her head. Her face was red-eyed and puffy with crying. "Please? Oh, God! If you can hear me---!" She was listening, sniffling--she was so visibly grief-stricken that he felt a pang of sympathy for her. It was impossible to tell what she looked like with her face so distorted from crying, but she had certainly produced some attractive progeny. She addressed a different section of the room from the one he was occupying, but her voice was low and sincere. "I love you, Frederick. I've loved you for an awfully long time, and I don't know what I'm going to do without you..." Tears spilled down her cheeks.
"You've got a family, woman, don't forget about them on my account," Abberline told her. Impulsively, he patted her lined cheek, and for just an instant, he could see where little Alex had gotten grey eyes.
"Thank you, Freddy," she said, calmer now. "I expect you'd think I'm being a fool, getting all soppy." She stood up and began to arrange her hair before the mirror. "I'll just...pin up my hair," she struggled for control for a moment, "splash some water on my face, and go downstairs to make sure Julia and Teddy aren't billing and cooing over the coffin. Rest in peace, dearest. I'll be with you soon enough. Just let me get Julia married off and settled."
For a moment, he regarded her. She didn't sound like a madwoman, but she wasn't Seeing him the way Alex had, either. At the same time, she seemed to be aware of his efforts to comfort her. Perplexing. He watched as she methodically pinned her hair up and practiced a resolute smile in the looking glass. Whoever she was, she had a strong character.
A flash of darkness in the mirror heralded the spectre's return. Abberline said nothing as he was returned to his flat, Marcel moaning beneath his pillows.
"Hey, wait, you!" he demanded, and the shrouded figure turned. "This is all a dream, isn't it?"
The apparition moved so close that Abberline felt the chill of its shroud against his bare legs. Its skeletal hands lifted, and pushed back the hood concealing its face, revealing Abberline's face, save that it was as pale as mist and its eyes blazed like fiery embers. The death mask met his startled gaze for a moment, then smiled, a terrible smile that was full of teeth. Then it was gone.
Marcel was whining and whimpering as Abberline sat on the side of the bed, truely confused. This was his room, this was his bed, his dog, his life. There had been no ghosts, only too much absinthe because the laudanum had run out. The gramophone had wound down during his absence--his trance, he corrected himself. His extended dream-state.
Images whirled through his mind: Wexford raising sheep in Shropshire, grey-eyed Alex and his grey-eyed grandmother, Peter and Martha worrying about him. Gull, taunting him with the empty couch at Lung Jin's... Abberline frowned. With sudden resolution, he begin donning his clothes.
Two hours later, as the church bells struck six, Abberline knocked at the front door of a respectable home in a good neighborhood. On any other day of the year, the man of the house would have been irate to be visited at such an unholy hour, but since a houseful of children on Christmas morning can barely be restrained until dawn, he greeted his unexpected visitor cheerfully enough.
"My god, Freddy! Of all the people to turn up on my doorstep--and who's that you've got there?"
"Your new scullery maid, I hope," said Abberline awkwardly. "She was in a very bad situation, I hope you can find it in your heart to take her in."
"Why don't you and Rose--? Oh god, I'm so sorry, Frederick--I forgot."
"That's alright, Gavin. We haven't exactly stayed in touch, have we? I hope you won't let that go against her."
Abberline had wrapped the girl from Lung Jin's in his jacket; though he shivered from the winter's chill, he knew she was far colder. She hugged the shabby tweed to her thin body and looking warily from one man to the other as they spoke. There was no telling how much English she understood, but she was all too familiar with being hurt.
Gavin McBride tugged one of the bell pulls. "Mrs. Dougherty," he instructed the woman who presently arrived. "This young lady will be joining your staff. Find something for her to eat, won't you? Good woman." He looked at Abberline. "Stay for breakfast, won't you, Freddy?"
"I'm expected elsewhere, or I'd love to," said Abberline, wondering what he could surprise the Godleys with. Himself, he decided. He'd be a surprise all by himself. After finding the bruised and welted child at Lung Jin's, just as he'd seen her with Gull, he had to wonder if he really was going to receive stockings and handkerchiefs from them. If he did, he just might have to rethink his night's adventures. Perhaps it wasn't a dream, or perhaps dreams could come true.
END.
Reviews are shiny.
Authored by: vanillafluffy
Pairing/spoilers: Identity of Jack the Ripper (per the movie "From Hell")
Rating/Work-safeness: Yellow for drug use
Approximate word count: 5000
Disclaimer: Johnny Depp does not belong to me. Neither do any rights to the source material.
Summary: An homage to "A Christmas Carol": Victorian, but not exactly Dickens.... Inspector Abberline is visited by three spirits, from his angst-ridden past to his debauched present and a future far different from what he's predicted.
A/N: This was originally written and posted at FF.net on Christmas Eve, 2004. It predates my involvement with LJ, and I'd like to see it gain a wider audience.
A Song of the Green Fairy
Christmas Eve, 1891
In the third-storey rented flat, a gramophone warbled Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite". There were two inhabitants at present: Marcel, a small French bulldog, who was busily scratching fleas on his pile of cushions in a corner, and Frederick Abberline, who had drawn a bath in the old claw-footed tub and was preparing certain amenities for use during immersion. On a tray spanning the tub were a bottle of good French absinthe--a lovely peridot green!--a sturdy stemmed glass, a slotted silver spoon, a cream pitcher holding ice water, a dish of sugar cubes, a lit candle, a box of matches, and a small brown glass vial.
It was a bitterly cold night, and Abberline made certain that the heating in the room was sufficient before entering the tub. As hot water sloshed up his chest, he sighed with relief and began to perform a ritual so familiar that it had acquired a kind of precision; each motion done with studied care, flawless--until the very end. Then he discovered that the brown glass vial--it contained the precious laundanum--was empty.
Abberline sighed hopelessly. He hadn't the energy to climb out of the bath, dress, and venture to Chinatown to chase the dragon. Not tonight. It wasn't even that he was too proud to do so on a holiday; he simply wasn't up for it. Instead, he used the eyedropper to soak the sugar cube with pure absinthe instead and set that alight.
Without the sweet notes of the opium, the true taste of the fey verte came through, a bitter anisette that made his throat burn. While the liquor was enough to make him light-headed, it wasn't the same as the peaceful oblivion of the opiate. Abberline was nursing his second glass of the beverage as the clock struck midnight. The gramophone was growling at the end of the recording, and he was on the verge of dozing off in the still-warm water.
A soft sigh beside him brought him to alertness. That wasn't Marcel, who was no longer scratching--he was making asthmatic snuffling noises and trying to crawl under Abberline's bureau.
Turning his head, Abberline stared numbly at the woman standing beside the tub. Her dress was at least thirty years out-of-date, and she looked sad as she gazed down at him. She seemed oddly insubstantial somehow, like moonlight, or a reflection on water--and it occured to him that she had been about his age when she'd died.
"Mother?" he said hoarsely. This, at least, was no vision; nightmare, perhaps, but quite unreal, surely.
"Ah, Davy, what are you doing to yourself?" she asked sorrowfully. "Come with me, there are things I need to show you."
This was some queer dream. He thought he arose from the bath, wrapping himself in the old robe Rose had given him the first Christmas they were married. "Mother, why am I dreaming about you?"
"This isn't a dream, Davy. Take my hand."
No one had called him Davy since his mother's death. He reached out; his fingers seemed to brush against the frailest of cobwebs and then his head reeled. There was a sense of disorientation, and when his mind cleared, he found himself standing in a tiny office. Watching a six year-old boy with a tumble of dark curls standing there, he recognized the man with the walrus moustache who sat behind the desk: Superintendant Griswold, the head of the London Home for Dependant Boys. Griswold had died when Abberline was eight or nine; this was certainly an odd dream brought on by the absinthe without laudanum.
"David Frederick Abberline," Griswold read from some papers. "Mother died two days ago of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, father was a merchant seaman, deceased since 'sixty-four. Well, young Abberline, we already have a David in the home, so you'll be known as Frederick to avoid any confusion. Can you remember that?"
The boy nodded hesitantly. "Yes, sir."
The adult Abberline looked from the child to his mother. The dark-haired woman shook her head. "I'm sorry, my darling," she murmured. "There was nothing I could do. Even if I'd known how serious my condition was, there was no money for a surgeon. Please forgive me. I wouldn't have had you grow up in a place like this for anything."
Griswold was explaining the rules of the home to his younger self. Abberline remembered the superintendant as a good man--not soft or given to coddling the boys in his charge, but not mean-spirited. His successor had been apt to favor those boys who were studious and well-behaved, and Abberline had had no trouble with him, either. A few years after he'd been discharged, the home had burned down, killing twenty-eight of its sixty-two residents.
"Mother, there's nothing to forgive. I know you loved me." The Home for Dependant Boys hadn't been an easy place for a childhood, but Abberline knew that there were many worse places he could've ended up.
"Take my hand, Davy."
This time, the revolving sensation was less pronounced. The scene he opened his eyes to was the revelry that went on in the Home for Dependant Boys each Christmas.
"My god, it's PC Wexford!" Abberline smiled broadly for the first time in what felt like years. The young Police Constable who was joking and handing out presents had been his boyhood hero; Wexford was probably more responsible for Abberline's decision to join the Metropolitan police force than anything else. "He was a wonderful man, Mother--he dropped by the Home several times a month, always wanted to know how we all were...maybe just to make sure he knew us in case anybody got into trouble, but--" He broke off, shaking his head as Wexford handed Frederick a small parcel--it held a comb, a handkerchief, and a stick of peppermint candy, the same things everyone else had. "I wonder what ever happened to Wexford..."
"He married a few years later and has two sons and a small farm in Shropshire. Come, we mustn't tarry longer here."
For a moment, he was nonplussed. But it's a dream, he reminded himself. A farmer in Shropshire, indeed! He would've liked to try to talk to his mentor, but Mother was holding out her palm for his, and with a last glance at the man at the center of the attention, he clasped the gossamer web of her hand.
After his discharge from the London Home for Dependant Boys, Abberline had gotten a clerical position in a chandlery near the London docks, still being too young to meet the age requirements for the Force. He recognized the office-loft that looked out over the big building filled with everything a ship or its personnel might need. There was Gavin McBride, the other clerk--he knew what happened to Gavin--a hurry-up wedding to a captain's daughter.
The last he'd heard, Gavin was practically running the shipping firm--hadn't Gavin been at his wedding to Rose? Yes, and her funeral, too. That's the last time you saw him.
"Come on, Freddy! Let's go out and have some fun, since we've no one else to spend Christmas with."
"Oh, no!" said Abberline involuntarily. "Not this!" They seemed to be drawn along behind the two figures traipsing thru the back alleys near the docks. Gavin knocked on an anonymous door, a quick staccato beat, and they were admitted to surroundings far more elegant than the exterior of the shabby building would suggest. "Mother, no, please--I don't want to watch this!"
The woman beside him said nothing, just watched as her young son raised the stem of the hookah to his lips and took his first puff of opium. Abberline watched himself, a yearning for that sweet smoke tormenting him. It was no more than the dream of a memory, but his addiction supplied a ghost of the scent.
The younger Abberline began to scream. "The flames! Get them out! No, no--the back stairwell isn't safe!"
"Make it stop!" he groaned. The Home was burning, and he had Seen it with the sense he so hated. Though that particular Christmas Eve lay nearly twenty years in the past, he remembered the vision with horrible clairity.
Gavin was shaking him roughly, telling him that opium sometimes took people strangely, that everything was alright, even though both Abberlines knew it wasn't.
Watching, the older man heard the youth say somberly, "I swear, I'll never, ever, do that again!"
"I suppose you're going to show me that, too," said the despairing man to his mother. "What else? Christmas with Rose? The year after she died, when I broke my vow? What else?" He was shaking.
This time, she touched his hand, and he tried to pull away. He didn't like this dream, he wanted to wake up...and it seemed that he had, for now they were back in his flat, with the gramophone still scraping the cylinder and Marcel making renewed efforts to hide under the dresser.
"Davy, I must go now," Eleanore Abberline said softly. "But there is more for you to see. Two more spirits will attend you this night, so that perhaps the course you've set yourself upon can be changed."
"What?" He could scarcely comprehend what she was saying. Abberline was torn between consuming more absinthe in hopes that it would bring true oblivion, and fear that more alcoholic spirits would cause him to dream of the other spirits.
For several minutes after his mother's ghost departed, Frederick Abberline paced the floor. As the clock struck one, Marcel began to whine, and when the Inspector looked around, there stood a compact figure, almost a head shorter than himself, wearing immaculate evening dress. A dream, he reminded himself. No, this man was truly a nightmare.
Sir William Gull stood looking back at him, an unpleasant smile curling his lips.
"You're no ghost," said Abberline, aloud. "You're still alive."
"Am I? Are you quite sure?" There was a mocking note to the old surgeon's voice. This was not the kindly physician who had offered him help for his opium addiction---but thankfully, neither was it the ranting lunatic who'd savagely butchered so many unfortunates. "Perhaps it is I who am alive and you who are dead, lost in the mists, chasing your precious dragon. Or perhaps when they knocked my brains adrift, they set loose more than that. It doesn't matter. I'm here to show you what's happening in the here and now as it relates to you."
The silver-haired Gull seized Abberline's arm, and almost at once, he found himself in a familiar room--Sergeant Peter Godley's parlor, where Godley and his wife were wrapping packages.
"Is he going to be here for Christmas dinner tomorrow?" Godley's wife was asking as she neatly folded paper around a small box.
"I don't know, Martha. I've asked him. He said he might drop by."
She sighed. "It's a shame. He's such a nice young man."
"I know, I know. I worry about him as much as if he was one of ours."
"And he's so thin! Doesn't he ever have a good meal?"
"No, of course you don't," Gull remarked. "Not with the amount of opium you consume. Does a fine job of suppressing your appetite. Your respiratory functions too--one of these days, you're liable to just stop breathing. You may or may not be aware of it at the time. It's difficult to ask a corpse if it knows when it died." He grinned delightedly at the paradox.
"--just pushes the food around on his plate when we go to the pub every week. He doesn't care, Martha, it's like he's sleepwalking, and I don't know how to wake him up."
"And one day, he won't," gloated Sir William, watching Abberline for a reaction.
He can't possibly know about the dream I've been having. Don't be ridiculous, this is a dream, too!
The recurring dream woke him several nights a week, now: Godley, decending the stairs into Lung Jin's opium den with two stout constables to drag Abberline out of his stupor, only to find him dead and staring. He always woke with his heart pounding as Godley laid the coins upon his eyes.
"Well, it's waiting for him if he comes," said Martha Godley, adding a package neatly labelled "Frederick" to the small pile. "Or you can give it to him when you see him in a day or two."
"Stockings and handkerchiefs," confided Gull. "My, haven't we come a long way in thirty years."
Only an ingrained reluctance to swear in front of a lady--even one who wasn't in the least aware of his presence--kept Abberline from rounding on the cruel shade. Gull showed no compunctions about grabbing Abberline's arm once more.
The splendid room in which they found themselves reminded him of the first words Gull had ever spoken to him: "You don't belong here, do you?" In this case, the answer was definitely not. It looked like the smoking room of a gentlemen's club, and in two chairs near a roaring fire, the Police Superintendant discussed his fate with the head of the Special Branch as Abberline listened.
"Can't justify the budget for surveillance on him anymore! He works, gets a bottle, goes home, or works, goes to Lung Jin's and passes out. Has dinner at a pub with his partner once a week. He's harmless--damn near useless, you ask me." Special Branch shook his head.
"He does his job well enough, even if, some days, he looks as bad as some of the low-lifes he puts away." His supervisor sounded grudging. Abberline hadn't heard a breath of praise from the man in the last three years, and a spark of vindication flickered at the man's words; no one knew how difficult it was to keep focused on his work when his cravings threatened to overwhelm him.
"Enthusiastic, isn't he? He'd just love an excuse to get rid of you." Sir William oozed malevolent cheer at the prospect.
No more absinthe without laudanum, absolutely not.
"That really is a very nice port he's got," said Gull, eyeing the bottle on the low table between the men. "One does miss the little civilties...ah, well, time for one more stop!" So saying, he clutched Abberline's forearm again.
They were in Lung Jin's next...clouds of opium smoke wafted through the air...there was a pearly haze in the room, and Abberline watched the clientele engaged in their usual rituals: smoking, exploring their heightened senses in a variety of novel ways...
"Look there...your favorite couch is empty," whispered Gull in his ear. "You could come by in a little while and enjoy the pursuit of which you're so fond." Again, he could almost taste the lovely perfume of the dragon...
There was a clatter from nearby. Rong, the proprietor, promptly beat the girl who'd dropped a heavy tray with a hookah, a decanter and several glasses. She wasn't more than nine or ten, and Abberline felt a sense of outrage. When he patronized Lung Jin, he was usually too drugged to notice or care about such acts, but now he watched angrily, wishing he could thrash Rong.
Sir William wore a smile. "Tsk, tsk. That'll teach her to be more careful." He snatched Abberline again. When they stood once again in the flat, Gull feigned concern for him. "If you enjoyed our little excursion, and discovering what a wretched specimen of a human being you are, I'm sure you'll find your next visitor most amusing--after all, you're already accustomed to seeing the future!"
The future? He'd dreamed it often enough; it might horrify him, but when the day came, those two coins wouldn't bother him in the slightest. Marcel was upset; he picked up the little dog and tried to calm him. Briefly, the French bulldog relaxed as his master held him against his robe and scratched behind his ears, but as the clock struck two, the dog began to yelp, terrible ear-splitting howls that by rights should have every tenant--and Abberline's landlord--thumping on ceiling, walls or door in protest. There was no sound at all, save for Marcel's yips. He tore free of his owner's arms and cowered, whining, under the bedcovers.
Looking around the room, Abberline felt a frisson in spite of himself at the sight of the looming, shrouded figure. It beckoned to him, and he rose stiffly from the bed and walked toward the faceless apparition. Might as well get this over with...
At the spirit's chilling touch, he found himself standing in an office--judging by the view from the window, he was in Metropolitan police headquarters, but the place had changed a great deal. There were a number of strange devices on some of the desks--he observed one constable tapping buttons with his fingers, and neatly printed pages slowly emerged from the top of the contraption. Someone else was carrying on one side of a conversation with an odd-looking metal trumpet. Electric lights had replaced gas lamps. This was the future? All these peculiar machines?
The spectre gestured for him to enter a nearby office whose door was ajar. Abberline recognized the location of the office--it was the superintendant's--but the man behind the desk--Abberline frowned, studying him. There was another man there as well, in his late twenties, clean-shaven except for a pencil-thin moustache, and he appeared to be arguing with the superintendant.
"Superintendant McNabb, please! Abberline was my partner for six years, I understand that we're short-handed because of the holiday, but I--his family--"
"Perhaps you mean to say his daughter?" inquired McNabb with a note of irony.
"Daughter? Don't be ridiculous, I don't have a daughter!" Abberline said, looking at the spectre, which spread its hands as if to say, who knows?
"Yes, it's true that Julia and I are engaged," the young man admitted. "That's hardly a secret! Please, sir, may I go to her?"
"I don't suppose I'll get much use out of you if I say no," sighed McNabb. Abberline had recognized him---currently, McNabb was also an Inspector, and his seniority was on a par with Abberline's---perhaps slightly less, as he was a few years younger. In this strange future, though, he appeared to be getting on toward sixty, at least. "Go ahead!"
"Thank you, sir!" The young man who claimed that Abberline had been his partner bolted through the spectre and out through the office door.
Abberline had just had time to notice that the monarch whose portrait hung over the superintendant's desk was not Victoria, but was, in fact, a man--when the spectre's touch grazed the side of his face.
There was something about the layout of the house that reminded him of Godley's. It was similar, but here the staircase leading upward was on the righthand side rather than the left. He glanced around. The sound of sobbing came from an open door, and without prompting, Abberline walked into the room.
It was a measure of how strange this extended hallucination had become that the sight of his own corpse laying in state barely disturbed him. At least, given the sequence of events, he presumed it was his corpse. The body was silver-haired, and while Abberline thought he could discern his own features, there were lines on the face that his mirror had yet to show him.
The sobbing came from a woman in her mid-twenties, who was heavily with child. "Poor Father, he'll never get to see the baby!" she wailed. "Oh, Davy!"
"Livy, shhh..." The man patting her shoulder drew Abberline's startled attention. He looked much as Abberline had years earlier, before Rose's death and the Ripper conspiracy had drawn him into disolution. "You know as well as I what Father's like. Was like," he amended, with a glance at the body. "He probably knew all about that baby before he--left us. Come on, it does the baby no good for you to carry on like this. Let's go out to the kitchen. Betsy's minding little Alex, and I'm sure she's got some tea on."
After they had left the room, Abberline looked again at the figure in the coffin, then at the spectre. "This isn't my life. I don't have children to weep over me, no one's going to give a damn when I die!"
Once more, the shrouded apparition gave an airy shrug.
This was ridiculous; Abberline stormed out of the room. Upstairs? No, kitchen, he decided. Let's see the rest of this so-called family of his!
The kitchen was a homey room at the back of the house, and there were a number of people there besides Davy and Livy---Olivia? A middle-aged woman in a plain wool dress was chopping vegetables, while the pair he'd already met were seated at the table with cups of tea and a man and a woman who were apparently their respective spouses. In the corner, a boy of five or six was playing with a small army of wooden soldiers.
"Julia is upstairs with Mother Abberline," said the man who was leaning over and attentively rubbing Livy's shoulders.
"Yes, Mother's terribly upset," said Davy somberly. "I think she's ready to storm Heaven and demand him back."
"Is she sure that's the right way to go?" asked the blonde woman beside him.
"Grace!" the others chorused in mingled tones of shock.
Grace looked blankly back at them. "Well, if she storms Heaven, wouldn't that just make them more determined to keep him?" Abberline burst out laughing at that. The woman was completely oblivious of the gaffe she'd just committed.
At the sound of Abberline's chuckling, the child looked up, dropped the toy cannon in his hand and shrieked, "Gran'fa!" He made a beeline across the kitchen to where Abberline stood, and tried to hug him.
"Alex!" exclaimed Grace, biting her lip. "He's too young, he doesn't understand. Alex, lovey, play with your soldiers, your Grandfather's not here."
"Is so!" insisted Alex. His grey eyes met Abberline's and he smiled broadly, showing one missing front tooth. "He's not old anymore! He looks like Daddy!" He was a beautiful child, and he was grinning at Abberline, who was in shock. His mind was playing tricks, dreaming what might have been if Rose hadn't died...a son who looked him him and a grandson who had his curse--but there was no denying it; it was a dream he would happily lose himself in.
"Oh, Alex!" sighed his mother, but Davy exchanged a look with his sister.
"Alex," asked Livy, "what's your grandfather wearing?"
"A robe. It's dark blue and there's yellow lines on it." The boy sketched zigzags in the air with his finger.
"Jesus," said Davy, staring in the direction of his son. "I remember that robe...Mother detested it. It got so disreputable, I think she finally threw it in the fire--accidentally on purpose. Father pitched a fit at the time...I was about Alex's age."
"He's got such a vivid imagination," said Grace, a bit too quickly.
"Don't worry, Alex," Abberline crouched down to be at eye-level with the boy. "It's a bit like having dreams when you're awake. Just remember, not everybody dreams that way, and sometimes they're not nice dreams. You look like a smart boy, I'm sure you'll be just fine."
"You dream too?" said the little boy.
"Yes, Alex, me too."
The little boy beamed at him. He turned to look at the adults, frozen around the table, and as Abberline hurried out of the room, he could hear the childish treble saying, "Gran'fa dreams like me too!"
At that point, Abberline didn't know where the spectre was, nor did he care. This family of his--it was a wistful dream, one he'd long since given up on in waking life. The front doorbell rang, and a door opened upstairs. A young lady, her loveliness marred by signs of weeping, dashed down the stairs and past him, beating her brother to the door.
As the young man from police headquarters entered, the young miss threw her arms around him. This must be Julia, the one who was engaged to this so-called partner of his. She seemed to be a year or two younger than Livy, while Davy was apparently the eldest. The couple headed toward the parlor. He had no desire to see himself laying in state again. Going up the stairs, Abberline prowled around until he found a room where a woman lay face-down on a large bed, broken sobs coming from the pillows.
A sheaf of whitened hair fell so that he couldn't see her face, not that it mattered. This must be his widow. Alledged widow, he corrected himself. I have no wife to grow old with, no son to carry on my name, no grandchildren. "No one is going to weep for me," he murmured.
"Frederick?" The woman raised her head. Her face was red-eyed and puffy with crying. "Please? Oh, God! If you can hear me---!" She was listening, sniffling--she was so visibly grief-stricken that he felt a pang of sympathy for her. It was impossible to tell what she looked like with her face so distorted from crying, but she had certainly produced some attractive progeny. She addressed a different section of the room from the one he was occupying, but her voice was low and sincere. "I love you, Frederick. I've loved you for an awfully long time, and I don't know what I'm going to do without you..." Tears spilled down her cheeks.
"You've got a family, woman, don't forget about them on my account," Abberline told her. Impulsively, he patted her lined cheek, and for just an instant, he could see where little Alex had gotten grey eyes.
"Thank you, Freddy," she said, calmer now. "I expect you'd think I'm being a fool, getting all soppy." She stood up and began to arrange her hair before the mirror. "I'll just...pin up my hair," she struggled for control for a moment, "splash some water on my face, and go downstairs to make sure Julia and Teddy aren't billing and cooing over the coffin. Rest in peace, dearest. I'll be with you soon enough. Just let me get Julia married off and settled."
For a moment, he regarded her. She didn't sound like a madwoman, but she wasn't Seeing him the way Alex had, either. At the same time, she seemed to be aware of his efforts to comfort her. Perplexing. He watched as she methodically pinned her hair up and practiced a resolute smile in the looking glass. Whoever she was, she had a strong character.
A flash of darkness in the mirror heralded the spectre's return. Abberline said nothing as he was returned to his flat, Marcel moaning beneath his pillows.
"Hey, wait, you!" he demanded, and the shrouded figure turned. "This is all a dream, isn't it?"
The apparition moved so close that Abberline felt the chill of its shroud against his bare legs. Its skeletal hands lifted, and pushed back the hood concealing its face, revealing Abberline's face, save that it was as pale as mist and its eyes blazed like fiery embers. The death mask met his startled gaze for a moment, then smiled, a terrible smile that was full of teeth. Then it was gone.
Marcel was whining and whimpering as Abberline sat on the side of the bed, truely confused. This was his room, this was his bed, his dog, his life. There had been no ghosts, only too much absinthe because the laudanum had run out. The gramophone had wound down during his absence--his trance, he corrected himself. His extended dream-state.
Images whirled through his mind: Wexford raising sheep in Shropshire, grey-eyed Alex and his grey-eyed grandmother, Peter and Martha worrying about him. Gull, taunting him with the empty couch at Lung Jin's... Abberline frowned. With sudden resolution, he begin donning his clothes.
Two hours later, as the church bells struck six, Abberline knocked at the front door of a respectable home in a good neighborhood. On any other day of the year, the man of the house would have been irate to be visited at such an unholy hour, but since a houseful of children on Christmas morning can barely be restrained until dawn, he greeted his unexpected visitor cheerfully enough.
"My god, Freddy! Of all the people to turn up on my doorstep--and who's that you've got there?"
"Your new scullery maid, I hope," said Abberline awkwardly. "She was in a very bad situation, I hope you can find it in your heart to take her in."
"Why don't you and Rose--? Oh god, I'm so sorry, Frederick--I forgot."
"That's alright, Gavin. We haven't exactly stayed in touch, have we? I hope you won't let that go against her."
Abberline had wrapped the girl from Lung Jin's in his jacket; though he shivered from the winter's chill, he knew she was far colder. She hugged the shabby tweed to her thin body and looking warily from one man to the other as they spoke. There was no telling how much English she understood, but she was all too familiar with being hurt.
Gavin McBride tugged one of the bell pulls. "Mrs. Dougherty," he instructed the woman who presently arrived. "This young lady will be joining your staff. Find something for her to eat, won't you? Good woman." He looked at Abberline. "Stay for breakfast, won't you, Freddy?"
"I'm expected elsewhere, or I'd love to," said Abberline, wondering what he could surprise the Godleys with. Himself, he decided. He'd be a surprise all by himself. After finding the bruised and welted child at Lung Jin's, just as he'd seen her with Gull, he had to wonder if he really was going to receive stockings and handkerchiefs from them. If he did, he just might have to rethink his night's adventures. Perhaps it wasn't a dream, or perhaps dreams could come true.
END.
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