The Tragic Tale of Doctor Fausset, by O.M. Grey

Illustration by Harry Clarke for 1925 Ed. of Goethe's "Faust"

Glass. Brass. Coal. Steam. Over and over. Day after day. This is all Doctor Fausset saw.

That, and beauty.

Every morning he awoke to perfect beauty. Every day he worked for perfect beauty. Every night, before he laid his weary head down, he whispered goodnight to perfect beauty.

Each night the last words he heard were hers.  He repeated them in his mind over and over, holding on to a hope that should have long ago been abandoned.

“Help me, love,” she had said. Then she coughed, covering her mouth with a white handkerchief, staining it with blood. “Please, help me. If anyone can, you can, my darling. You, a genius with all your inventions and gadgets, you can help me.”

“I will,” he had said. “I shall not stop until I find a cure.”

“Will it hurt? Sleeping?”

“It won’t hurt, not even a little. There will be no dreams. No nightmares. Just a deep sleep, and when you awake, you will feel refreshed and you will be cured. I promise. I won’t stop until I find a cure. Not ever.”

She kissed him then, gently. And each night, he touched his lips and relived that kiss: every detail and sensation, constantly reminding himself so he would not lose sight of his goal.

They would be reunited.

Thirty years; thirty long years. He regarded himself in the looking glass, running his hands over the lines that had gradually replaced the taught skin of a young lover. The grey hair along his temples betrayed his age. Although his eyesight had diminished, his love for Rosemary never did.

He had done one thing right in his miserable life, and that was fall in love with her. He had been a great inventor and scientist in his time, but he had abandoned all other works save one.

And there she has remained suspended in time, perfectly still; perfectly preserved in the brass-framed glass chamber. He refused to call it a coffin, although that was closer to the truth. The machine that kept her neither in nor out of time turned continuously: interlocking cogs forever spinning and grinding. He kept them well oiled, kept the hungry steam engine fed with coal. His entire income went to coal, and then more coal. The rest went to rats for testing, chemicals and other supplies.

But today, thirty years to the day, he had placed her into that dreamless sleep.  Doctor Fausset lost hope, and he wept. Images of Rosemary laughing assaulted his memory: the same scene that echoed in his mind for all these long years. A happy moment lost in time that has long since become the source of his torment. He had proposed, properly and all. Down on one knee, he had pulled the ring out of his inner pocket and looked up at his beloved, so full of anticipation. But his clumsy fingers fumbled and dropped the ring. In his embarrassment, he had scrambled on hands and knees to find it again, and Rosemary laughed. It was the sound of joy, not mockery. Then she had knelt in front of him and had taken his face in her sweet hands and kissed him. Then she breathed ‘yes’ into his lips.

He shook his head, expelling the image from his mind.  He fell to his knees beside her, and although he was not a religious man, he prayed, “Send me anything, dear Lord. Anyone who could help me. Please.”

And there he wept, wetting the glass coffin with his tears, until he slept from his exhaustion. His face pressed against the glass just above hers, and he dreamed that the cold glass was her cheek, chilled from the spring air.

A rap-rap-rapping woke him. It had been so long since he’d had a visitor, the doctor looked around the room to see what the sound could be. He checked that the engine still ran smoothly, that the cogs still turned and interlocked. Then the rap-rap-rapping came again.

“Of course.” The doctor moved to the door laughing at himself. There stood a young man with bright blue eyes. He only made note of them because they were the lightest blue he had ever seen. So blue they were nearly white.

“Doctor Fausset?”

“Yes.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir. The name is Mordecai, and I have come to help you.”

“I beg your pardon? I need no help, and I am not interested in whatever it is you are selling. Good day sir.” Doctor Fausset tried to close the door, but Mordecai stopped it with his foot.

“Did you not cry out for help?” He took a small notebook from his inner pocket and flipped it open, reading, “’Anyone who could help me.’ Didn’t you make such a request, sir? This very day, sir?”

A lightning bolt of fear and hope and gratitude and inspiration shot through the doctor’s weary heart. He stepped back from the door and, covering his mouth which gaped in surprise, turned his eyes upward.

“Wrong direction.” Mordecai grinned a most sadistic grin, pointing downward in a jabbing manner.

“The Devil!”

“Not hardly. He does not make house calls, I’m afraid. May I come in?”

“You most certainly may not! You are either what you say you are, which I can hardly believe, or you are a madman. I do not wish to have either in my home. Good day.”

“I can help you with Rosemary. That’s what you want, isn’t it? After all these long years? We are quite impressed with you, dear doctor. Quite impressed indeed. So many long years, and you never faltered. Yes. Quite impressed.”

The sound of her name softened the doctor, and his reason abandoned him.

“You can help me?”

“For a price, of course.”

“My soul, I suppose?”

“Good sir,” the demon said, looking around the dusty remains of the doctor’s laboratory, “that’s all you have of worth.”

Mordecai stayed silent while the doctor thought for a moment. And all sorts of thoughts ran through the doctor’s head. He thought of the wasted years, always failing. He thought of all the missed opportunities. He thought of his forgotten youth and all the promises it had held. But the primary thought was his final promise to his beloved Rosemary. He swore he would not stop until he found a way, and now a way had found him. And that kiss. His promise, sealed with her sweet lips.

“I’ll do it.”

“Oh my, dear doctor. How you must have suffered. It usually takes more convincing than that, but no matter. I like a man who knows what he wants.”

“She will be well again? You can make her well?”

“I can.”

“And all for my soul? Truly, a few moments with her would be worth it. I would give everything to hold her one more time, to just have one more kiss. How long will I have with her? For I am not a young man anymore.”

“She will live a long life, and you are not quite ready to die.”

“Yes. Yes. Let’s do it. After all this time, how can I even hesitate? Cure her and let me hold her again.”

“Oh no, sir. This, as in all legal matters, must be in writing.”

Mordecai produced a piece of parchment on which words were written in the blackest ink. “Read this contract fully, Doctor, for it is binding and irreversible.”

The good doctor read the words in full, and a chill rippled down his spine as he did. He read the document twice, the second time aloud.

“I, Doctor Jedediah Fausset, being of sound body, mind, and soul, do hereby commit my immortal soul to the demon known as Mordecai, on this fifteenth day of March, in the year Eighteen Ninety-Two, in exchange for healing my most beloved fiancée Rosemary Briare of all her physical and mental ailments. A single kiss will awaken and heal Miss Briare, and she shall fall irrevocably in love with him, forsaking all others, thereby to live in joy and love for the rest of her long days.”

Doctor Fausset clasped the parchment to his breast, wrinkling it. But after only a moment, he consented. “Give me the pen. I shall sign.”

“Very well.” Mordecai pulled a quill with a long, black feather out of his inner coat pocket, and just as the doctor reached for it, Mordecai jabbed the sharp nib into the doctor’s finger, drawing blood. Dr. Fausset drew his injured hand back and regarded the demon with a growing anger.

“It must be signed in blood, of course, sir.”

Doctor Fausset snatched the quill from the blasted demon and placed the nib against the accumulated droplets of blood. After the red liquid filled the silver nib, the doctor laid the parchment down on his desk and signed it with his own blood, knowing what he sacrificed and knowing that a life of joy and love with his beloved Rosemary would be worth an eternity in Hell.

He signed it gladly.

Mordecai took the quill and refilled the tip from Doctor Fausset’s injured finger. He scrawled his signature right below the doctor’s, and as soon as he did, both signatures burned into the parchment with a spark of flame.

“Tis done.”

Light filled the doctor’s eyes and he suddenly felt young again. He turned toward the glass and brass case, ready to take his love into his arms at last and forever, but he stopped for a moment and just looked at her, admiring her beauty just as he had done every day and every night for the past thirty years. Tonight, she would admire him in return. Tonight, they would be as one. Tonight and for the rest of their long days, and it was worth it.

Grasping the latch, the doctor turned it and pulled open the lid. The seal broke with an expulsion of air. Without a moment’s hesitation, he gathered her up into his arms, causing her head and arms to loll limply. Tenderly, he supported her head with his trembling hand. Then, he kissed her. His lips pressed against hers and tasted the sweetness there. Even after the long years of suspension, she was the sweetest woman who had ever lived. The doctor pulled back from his beloved with tears in his dark eyes. He longed to see her awaken and see him, her savior, and love him as he loved her.

But she did not waken.

He kissed her again, this time more forcefully.

Nothing.

He kissed her again and again, kissing her lips, her cheeks, her neck, her ears, her hair. Tears fell down his cheeks, wetting her face as he bathed her in kisses.

Nothing.

Doctor Fausset turned to Mordecai with fire in his eyes. “It didn’t work. What is this? The contract is void! You did not hold up your end of the deal! With a single kiss, you said. It is written! I demand my love or dissolution of that bond!”

“Let’s look,” Mordecai said with a smile in his eyes that he did not even try to hide, although he kept a very solemn look. Mordecai unrolled the scroll of parchment and mouthed the words as he read, “Ah yes, here is the problem. It is written ‘a kiss’. Most certainly ‘a kiss,’ but it does not, sir, say your kiss.”

Doctor Fausset balled up his fists and started toward Mordecai, who just smiled. Doctor Fausset stopped just as suddenly as he started, realizing the full weight of his decision. He sunk to the floor his arms covering his head, and he wept.

“I wonder just whose kiss will wake the fair lady. And she is quite beautiful, sir. In fact, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen with her auburn locks and fair skin. And, oh look, there is a blush to her cheek, even in her slumber.” He moved over to her and ran his hand down her cheek.

“Get your hands off of her!” The doctor jumped up in his fury, but with a wave of Mordecai’s hand, he was thrust back against the bookshelves, upsetting the books and his long-forgotten gadgets. He watched, frozen against all the books he had not read in thirty years, against his inventions that went unfinished, all for her. It had been all for her. He watched in horror as Mordecai lifted his beloved and kissed her gently. Just as his infernal lips left hers, her eyes fluttered open and she sat up on her own.

“My love,” she whispered.

And he kissed her again.

Doctor Fausset let out a wail so piteous that the very depths of Hell heard his agony.

Rosemary looked over at him and tilted her head in curiosity. “Why is that old man so upset, my love?”

“Oh, sweet lady, there are troubles in old age that we shall not know for many years. Come. I have a wondrous world to show you.”