Page 57 of Of Fate and Phantoms
He sat on the bed beside her. "You wanted to know if I am aware of others like us?" He placed his hand over hers, but she didn't move. I could see that she'd inherited her father's large hands. Feet, too. "Thereareothers, as it happens."
"How many?"
"I don't know. All I know is they do exist. I grew up thinking I was alone, you see, that nobody like me existed. My parents died when I was young, so no one ever told me what I was. I could control my changes easily, and none learned what I could do. Not even my wife. Not until…" He looked sadly at Harriet. "Not until Harriet changed from a baby into her other form as she slept. My wife went mad from the shock. She screamed whenever the nurse tried to give Harriet to her. I had to pay the nurse handsomely to keep her quiet about my daughter's condition, and I had my wife committed to an asylum."
An asylum! The poor woman. Poor Harriet, although I was quite sure she didn't know her mother's fate. She'd told Lincoln her mother had died.
"Harriet doesn't know the truth," he said, following my thoughts. "You have my permission to tell her, if you think she can cope with it. Otherwise, please keep it to yourself."
I nodded, somewhat numb. "Go on."
His large chest rose and fell, as if he took in a deep breath, although he no longer needed air. It would seem that breathing wasn't a habit easily broken. "I thought Harriet and I were the only ones in the world who could change, but then I read a newspaper article about some wolves seen in London."
"Wolves?"
"Wolf-like, was how they were described by the witnesses. They ran on all fours, had fur, a muzzle, claws and teeth. According to the article, they didn't harm anyone, just ran through the streets at night, sometimes howling."
He paused and I repeated what he'd told me for Lincoln's benefit.
"Did they appear at a specific time?" Lincoln asked, speaking for the first time since Lord Erskine's spirit arrived.
"One of the witnesses said only at a full moon, but others made no such comments," Erskine said.
I repeated this for Lincoln.
"Animals roaming the city's streets isn't unusual," Lincoln said.
"No," Erskine said. "But what was unusual was that they simply disappeared. When witnesses chased them, they came across only other people. Naked people. When asked if they were attacked by wolves, these people claimed they were not and showed their unmarked limbs to prove it. They laughed off their lack of attire as if it were nothing."
"Extraordinary," I said, and told Lincoln what Erskine had said. "You think these people were the wolves, back in their human form?"
Erskine nodded.
"Were any names given?"
"No, but I inquired at the newspaper office. The reporter gave me addresses of the witnesses and I sought them out. They laughed it off as a silly joke, a trick of the light, and claimed they must have been mistaken. They said the newspaper sensationalized the incidents and that it was really nothing."
"Why would they laugh it off? Didn't they believe their own eyes?"
"It was dark, for one, and the lamps in that part of the city often don't work, particularly in those days. But it was largely because of the people they came across after chasing the wolves who convinced them they were deluded. They were well known in the area, you see. The witnesses believed them without question."
Again, I repeated his story for Lincoln.
"Did you investigate further?" Lincoln asked.
Erskine said he did. "I tried not to think any more of it after speaking to the witnesses, but I couldn't stop. Then the more I thought about it, the more I became certain these people were like me, capable of changing shape. The notion consumed me. Ihadto find them and know for myself. So I returned to the slums and asked the witnesses for names of the people they'd seen that night. I then went to speak to them, but was met with silence and threatening glares at every turn. I wasn't sure if they wouldn't speak to me because I was an outsider or because they had a secret to keep. Their silence frustrated me." He spread his hand over Harriet's then curled it into a fist. "I couldn't stand it anymore, so I told one of them that I could change shape too and that I was searching for others like me."
Revealing himself had been a risk. "And what did he say?"
"He gave me the name of a man, a leader of their group, I suspected. I visited him and he didn't dismiss me immediately, at least."
I shifted forward on the chair, my gaze riveted to Erskine. "Go on."
"He asked me to prove that I could change. So I did."
"He wanted you to change in front of him? Without proof thathecould do so first?"
Harriet made a little sound in her throat, part horror, part surprise. She must have guessed her father's answer.
