The Divided Letters

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Penned on the final night of his former self, this letter carries the solemn clarity of a man prepared to divide the soul and step willingly into shadow.

It is with a steady hand and a soul unburdened that I now take to paper, for I believe the hour has come at last. If these words find you, stranger or friend, let them not serve as lament, nor call for alarm, but rather as the farewell of one who has dared where others shrank, and who, with the tools of his trade and the clarity of reason, has gazed into that hidden recess where man’s true self resides.

Let the world wag its tongue and wag its finger—I am no longer concerned with the reproaches of those who speak only from ignorance and cowardice. I have spent the better part of my life under the yolk of appearances: bound by propriety, yoked to reputation, bowed before the great idol of respectability. It is a shrine to hypocrisy. Let it crumble.

Tonight, in this quiet chamber, I stand alone, and for the first time—I am unafraid.

This letter is not penned in despair, nor shaded with the pathos of some dying confession. No, mine is a letter of hope, and—though the mind recoils at the word—a kind of joy. For at long last, I have done it. After months of relentless inquiry, after experiments performed under the cloak of darkness, beyond the hearing of the curious and the censorious alike, I have distilled the draught. Before me now, on the table, lies the glass phial—clear, faintly luminous, its contents quiet as moonlight, and yet within, a tempest more profound than thunder.

I do not believe in magic, nor have I pandered to the occult—what I have achieved is science, however bordering upon the sublime. I shall not make the error of overexplaining the method: the tinctures are many, and the processes intricate, but the essence of it is transformation. Not in the vulgar sense—not some distortion of form or facial feature—but a division of substance: a parting of the indivisible self.

Why should man be bound to a single visage? Why should the soul be subject to one uniform temper, when every beating heart knows the divisions that cleave through it? There is virtue in me, yes—patience, kindness, industry—but there is also wrath, want, and a terrible yearning that I have had to bury deeper with each passing year. The good man grows weary. The bad man festers. I seek to liberate them both.

This is no longer idle conjecture. The potion stands ready. My hands are clean, my instruments cooled. My will is resolved.

I know the world would frown upon such a venture—some would call it profane, others deranged. But I have grown tired of the judgment of men who hide behind law and scripture while harboring thoughts darker than I have dared to name. My studies have not made me a monster, but a mirror. And what man, upon seeing his full reflection, would not tremble?

To be clear, I do not expect catastrophe. The effects should be brief, controlled, and reversible. But I am no fool—I do not step lightly. That which lies on the other side of this threshold may yet startle me. Still, it must be crossed. I would rather know the truth and die of it than live in a prison of my own self-censorship.

The candle burns low, and I must conclude. This letter I shall seal and place within the drawer beneath the mantle, to be found in the event that I do not return by morning. It is not death that I fear, but the notion that I might pass from this world misunderstood. Should this experiment succeed, I shall have done something no other has dared: not conjured spirits nor cured disease, but split the human soul along its natural fault, and allowed it to speak in both its voices.

And so, to the reader of this page—whomever you may be—know that Dr. Henry Jekyll departed his lab tonight not in madness, but in resolve, not to escape the world, but to meet it with his eyes wide open.

I lift the glass.

I bid you farewell.

And I drink.

Penned with violent conviction, this letter speaks not in apology, but in triumph—the final declaration of a man born from appetite, reveling in the ruin he left behind.

Do not reach for pity. I would not know what to do with it.

Do not speak of sin, for I do not subscribe to your pale definitions.

And do not, I beg you, mistake this for remorse. I write not in repentance, but in defiance.

I am Edward Hyde, and I am what you are when no one watches. I am the face behind the curtain, the whisper in the alley, the impulse your mouth would never admit. Jekyll loathed me, but he built me. He feared me, but he fed me. And in the end, it was not I who took his life—it was he who offered it up, trembling, grateful, like a man kneeling before his god.

You will say I am monstrous. I make no protest. I am no martyr. I never wept at graves, nor prayed to empty ceilings. But I never lied, either. That makes me purer than any preacher’s tongue.

They ask, “What did he do?” as though the deed defines the man. Fools. It is how it was done. It is the pleasure taken that makes it mine.

That girl in the street—do you recall? The one whose scream pierced the fog like a church bell cracked? I stepped on her like one might a beetle, not out of rage, but ease. The street cleared before me as though nature itself knew to make way. They dragged me to a door, spoke of reparation. I paid. They shivered when I touched the coins.

They sensed it—my difference. My deformity. It was not my stature, not my face. It was recognition. Something in me answered something in them, and they recoiled because they knew: they, too, could be me.

The man in the cane—Carew, was it? I do not remember his name, only the music of bone upon wood. I struck him because I could, because the rhythm pleased me. Do you flinch? Then you have not yet looked within. You are still clinging to your veil. I tore mine long ago.

You think Jekyll tried to rid the world of evil. No. He wished to keep his hands clean while I fed. He longed for virtue without sacrifice, restraint without effort. He wanted to be lauded in the day and let loose in the night. A coward. A hypocrite. A fool.

And yet he made me.

He fed me tincture after tincture, marveled at my form. I was smaller, yes—compressed, distilled. He was diffused, clumsy in his contradictions. I was whole. I was free.

He cowered each time I returned. But he always came crawling back. He could no more resist me than a drunkard his flask, than a priest his envy. I gave him life—real life, the sort that stings the throat and leaves a mark.

He tried to stop, oh yes. He threw away the key, smashed the glass. But even as he preached reform, he thought of me. He felt the gnawing. He missed the thrill. He longed for the moment when the veil would fall again, and I would take the reins.

In time, I needed no potion. I came without it. A flicker of rage, a hunger, a dream—and I was there. He lost hold of the body. I drove it like a horse. His voice grew faint. Mine filled the skull.

He says he fought. Let the record show he invited me. Over and over. He let me press lips to skin, fists to flesh, feet to pavement. He handed me his sins, and I bore them gladly.

And now he scratches in the dark, desperate to be heard one final time. Let him. Let him spill his ink like tears. I will leave him his last page.

But I will not go gently.

I am not shame. I am not error.

I am the truth you bury.

And if these are my last words, let them be etched, not wept.

My name is Edward Hyde. And I am your honest reflection.

Penned at the end of all division, this final testament belongs not to Jekyll or Hyde—but to the ruin left behind when the line between them is lost.

If there remains anything of me that may still be called a man, then let this be my final act—not of science, but of conscience. Let it not be said that I died silent, nor left the world to wonder at the horror that overtook my life. I have no more time for method nor modesty. My hands tremble. My breath comes in shadows. The end draws nigh, and it is not death I meet, but the extinction of what was once called Henry Jekyll.

I write this from the edge of that black gulf, the precipice beyond which no man may return. The powders are gone. The key has snapped. The last of the draught is spent, and with it, so too my dominion over this form. Hyde crouches at the door, ever watchful, ever patient. Soon, he shall leap forth and I—I shall vanish like a breath upon the pane.

When first I drank the potion, I did so with the arrogance of one who believed himself wise enough to guide a storm. I thought I might unlock the soul, divide its chambers, walk freely among them as a guest in his own house. But I was not the guest. I was the door. And I opened it wide.

You must understand: I did not set out to do evil. Mine was not the ambition of the charlatan or the madman, but of the idealist. I sought the freedom of the virtuous self, untainted by appetite. I sought the innocence of a man unburdened by inner war. But nature is no respecter of man’s ideals. She does not divide gently.

In Hyde I found my freedom—but it was the freedom of the grave robber, the cutpurse, the beast. He was not born in my image—I was unmade in his. I gave him life, and he took mine.

I remember the moment I awoke in Hyde’s body without the draught. I had not called him. I had not wished him. Yet there he stood—small, wild, breathless—and I within him, horrified. It was then I knew that I had passed a point that could not be retraced. My soul had become a battlefield, and Hyde no longer required invitation.

I have watched through his eyes as he committed unspeakable acts, and though I recoiled, I did not stop him. Why? Because part of me—some wretched, groaning part—took pleasure in it. Do you recoil at that truth? Then you have not understood the lesson of my life. There is no Jekyll without Hyde. There never was.

Sir Danvers Carew lies in his grave because I struck him. My hands. My will. My design. I may blame the form, the fury, the intoxication of evil—but the crime was born in me, not merely my shadow.

How swiftly the soul corrodes when once it is divided! At first, I thought Hyde a temporary indulgence, a sin I could discard. But he was no cloak—I could not hang him on a hook when the daylight came. He clung to me like mold to bread, like smoke to stone. The more I denied him, the stronger he grew. The more I fought, the deeper he rooted.

And now, I am undone.

I have taken no food. My limbs waste. My eyes blur. I scarcely know which name to answer. When I weep, it is Hyde who laughs. When I speak, it is he who echoes.

And so, this page. This final effort. I leave behind all estate, all science, all legacy, not in triumph, but in warning. Let none who read these words imagine they may do what I did and emerge whole. The soul is not a formula. The heart is not a crucible. Good and evil are not stones to be sifted—they are blood. Mixed. Inseparable.

Had I been wiser, I might have learned to live in balance. To tame the tiger without becoming its prey. But I wanted purity, and what I made was ruin.

I do not know how much time remains. Minutes, perhaps. He stirs now, eager. My own fingers curl against me. The pen will fall. My mind will dim. When next this body draws breath, it will not be I who breathes.

To all who knew me—Utterson, Lanyon, those whom I wronged and those whom I loved—I ask no absolution. Only this: remember me not for the man I became, but for the man who tried, however feebly, to understand.

This is the hour of my death. The clock strikes not for Hyde, nor Jekyll—but for both.

We go into that final darkness together.

May God have mercy on us all.

—Henry Jekyll

They were found together—three letters folded with precise care, ink faded but unbroken, sealed not by wax but by the hush of time itself.

Beneath the cabinet floorboards at Cavendish Square they rested, untouched for decades, each page bearing the tremor of a soul unraveling. No journal entry. No name upon the envelope. Only the simple mark scrawled in the corner: “To Whomsoever This May Reach.”

There was no diary in which to place them. No laboratory notes to give context. These letters stood alone—undated, unclaimed, and yet unmistakably authentic in their hand, their cadence, their horror.

Scholars argued their origin. Some called them forgery. Others, a lost appendix. But those who read them in earnest knew the truth: no fiction could tremble quite like this.

Within these pages, we do not merely see a man divided—we see a mirror held to the face of mankind, fogged not by fancy but by breath.

Jekyll believed he could draw a line between virtue and vice, between mask and marrow. Hyde believed he was that marrow. Neither survived their wager.

Yet these pages endure.

Let them be studied, yes—but also let them be feared. For they do not ask merely what became of Dr. Jekyll and Edward Hyde.

They ask—quietly, inexorably—what becomes of us when we look too long into the self.

And so we close The Divided Letters not with resolution, but with recognition.

The ink is dry. The shadow remains.

The Divided Letters™ is a work of fiction inspired by Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

© 2025 Paranormal Candle Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Jasmine • Chestnut • Scorched Spice

A scent divided—where jasmine clings like a pressed handkerchief in Jekyll’s breast pocket, and chestnut warmth lingers like a memory too sweet to trust. But beneath it all, the ember stirs. Chili pepper cracks through the calm, hot and unruly—Hyde’s appetite unchained.

Embervale is the moment the glass is raised. Gentle becomes jagged. Sweet turns savage. And the man, once whole, begins to burn.

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