She sighed, looking up at the cracked ceiling, the exposed beams mimicking the bars across the singular window in the room. “I did the same as you for the first while. Behaved. Tried to demonstrate how undeniably sane I was so I could be released. It took me two years to give up.” She grinned, winking at me. “The last eight years since have simply flown by. So whenever you are ready to give up, there is a place on the floor right next to me.”
She patted the scratched and scored wooden planks companionably. Then she smiled maternally at my obvious horror. “Ask the other women what they are in for and you will find more of the same. Though Maude does cry and sleep an awful lot. And Liesl—well. You should be glad your husband cared enough to purchase a private room for you.” She gave me an appraising look. “Why are you here?”
I could feel my back curving, my shoulders slumping. For two years she tried to convince them of her sanity, and all she had against her was an attempt to flee a horrible marriage. For all my work learning how to be what others needed, I had not realized I was already perfectly suited to this asylum. I was exactly who they wanted me to be. Who Victor’s father and mother had groomed me to be. Who Victor had created me to be.
I was a prisoner.
All my life of surviving, of being someone else’s Elizabeth, had led me here. And what was I left with? Who was I when I was not performing for someone else?
Even now I realized I had a false, pleasant smile on my face. For whom? For what? So this woman on the floor would not judge me? So the nurses would think me sweet?
I slowly released the smile, let my face be as still and unanimated as Justine’s when she lay dead on that horrible table. Let myself default to my most natural state. Wondered what, in fact, that state would be.
The woman on the floor watched me, curious. “Well?”
“My husband,” I said, the word foul and poisonous on my tongue, “experimented on and then cobbled together dead body parts to create a monster. Once that was accomplished, he went on to murder his brother and frame my best friend for the murder so that she would be hanged. Then he tried to use her body to practice his dark science on, in preparation for eventually changing me from living to dead, and back again to a new form of being that would never corrupt or die or be parted from him. I told him I was not interested in being his wife under those particular circumstances.”
The woman’s eyes were wide, and she scooted several inches away from me, pushing herself along the floor.
“So.” I smiled, the expression that had been my instinct all these years feeling false and at the same time more true than ever as it cut meanly across my face. “We are here for basically the same reason.”
* * *
—
Over the next month, despair settled around me like snow falling on the ground, covering my dreams of vengeance. Then despair covered my dreams of life itself, until all that remained was a blank white plain of nothingness.
I would be in here forever.
But I always caught myself when I began despairing at that thought. Because being in here forever would be preferable to Victor’s alternative.
He was out there, somewhere, murdering victims to perfect his technique. I could not even count on that obscene monster to find and kill him, as it had had ample opportunity before and never followed through. Victor had been haunted not by the monster’s threats, but by his own failures.
So Victor was free, truly and fully, and I was in here. I would remain until Victor was ready for me. And then, because he was a man and I his wife, they would hand me over to him, and he would finally have full power over both my body and soul.
And no one would help me.
And no one would care.
* * *
—
I continued to pretend to be good, because I knew of no other way. The woman from the floor had spread rumors that I was truly insane, and no one spoke to me. I did not mind; I had no use for friends among the other prisoners.
I watched carefully. The cell doors were always locked. A nurse escorted me to my only meal with other people. We went down a hall that connected to the large common room. The doors leading out were guarded. Nurses worked alone, but they never left individually—always in a pair. So any idea of overpowering a nurse and stealing her uniform was out of the question.
I had no weapons. No means of obtaining one. Even if I were to devise an escape, what would I do once I got out? I could not go back to the Frankensteins, could not go back to Lake Como. I would be what I had always feared: cast out, penniless, destitute. The walls that bound me went far beyond this asylum.
Each day was the same, an infinite parade of degradations and torture accomplished by unyielding women and overseen by the condescension of uncaring men. If not mad already upon internment, surely no mind could withstand the torment of this hell.
I focused on avoiding laudanum, though I also longed for the release of it. Surrounded by blank-eyed, foggy-minded prisoners, I was both repulsed and envious. Was that how we endured? How we survived? It was how I had lived my whole life: willfully ignoring and erasing truths around myself.
I held off; the nurses did not care so long as I was manageable. But without a goal, without something to achieve, I could feel any resolve or strength I once thought I had slipping away. Soon, doubtless, I would let laudanum claim whatever time I had left before Victor was ready for me.
* * *
—
I had begun talking to the nurses, though they were rough and unkind and never spoke back. But I had to do something to occupy myself, and we inmates were not permitted much conversation at supper. I wanted to unburden my mind. To strip away all the falseness I had clothed myself in, until I stood, naked and unformed, truly myself.
Most days I spoke of Justine. Of my guilt. Of her goodness. I circled ever closer to the truth, a wound still too raw to touch. When I finally spoke the truth, I would give up. I would take the drugs. And I would look for whatever blank forgetfulness I could find.
The forty-fifth morning of my captivity, I lay on my cot with my eyes on the ceiling, trying to find pictures in the cracks of the plaster. The nurse came in with my food. Breakfast and dinner were choked down in solitude so we would not have our delicate nerves overtaxed by socialization.
I glanced at her, avoiding eye contact. The nurses interpreted a direct look as threatening; it was a guaranteed way to be bound to the bed for a day or two. I had begun to develop calluses on my wrists and ankles. Besides, I had just ended my monthly courses, during which I had not been permitted to leave my bed at all so as to avoid taxing my strength. I did not want to spend any more time than I had to in here.
But in my furtive peek, there was something in her clever dark eyes beneath the stiff white cap that reminded me of someone I had once known. Or maybe I just longed for a friend. Any friend.
I did not deserve a friend. I was ready to tell the truth. I closed my eyes, finally letting the memory play out as it had actually occurred.
“Can I tell you a story? Justine loved this story. But this time, I will tell it the way it really happened. I always lied to Justine. I wanted the world to be more beautiful for her. The world is ugly. Uglier now, without her. Anyhow. Here is my story:
“I needed Victor. I needed him to love me. So I climbed a tree and brought down a nest of robin eggs as blue as the sky. He picked up the first egg, holding it to the light of the sun. ‘Look. You can see the bird.’ He was right. The shell was translucent, and the silhouette of a curled-up chick was visible. ‘Like seeing the future,’ I said. But I was wrong. The future would be revealed in a few more moments.
“He lowered the egg and used his knife to crack it open. I cried out in shock, but he ignored me. He peeled back the egg, grimacing as liquid spilled out onto his hand. He never did like to get messy. Digging up the bodies must have been hard on him. That
is probably why he choked little William. No blood.
“So Victor pulled the chick free. He let out a trembling breath, and I realized he was scared. He looked up at me—and because I did not want to lose this chance at a new life, I nodded for him to keep going. ‘I can feel its heart,’ he said. The chick shuddered and shivered and then went still. He peered at it, pulling its tiny claws, its wings that would never unfurl. ‘How did the egg keep it alive? And where did what made it alive go, I wonder, when its heart stopped? It was alive, and now it is just…a thing.’
“ ‘We are all just things,’ I answered, because I had never been more than that to the people who had raised me. Victor looked thoughtful. He held out the chick to me, as though I would want to hold that little piece of death.
“I took it. He watched me closely, so I acted as brave and curious as he had been. I acted as though we had not done a terrible thing. I said, ‘You should cut it open, see where its heart is. Maybe then you will know why it stopped.’
“Victor looked how I had felt when I discovered the nest: like he had found a treasure.”
I sighed, numb with the release of finally telling the rest of the story.
Of all Victor’s crimes, of the murders I now knew he had committed, that tiny bird haunted me the most. Perhaps because it was easier to think of a bird than of Justine, or of William. But probably because I had been complicit. I had made myself Victor’s that day. I had chosen to look directly at whatever he did, unflinching, unjudging. I continued that for the rest of our childhoods together. I never asked what happened to Ernest’s arm in the cottage. I just dealt with it and took care of Victor.
I never asked, and he never told me, and we both assumed we were protecting the other. Was it any wonder he thought I would continue as his forever, after bloodying my hands at the moment of our meeting?
That was, I thought, the moment I ceased being Elizabeth and became his Elizabeth. And now I could be neither.
“God in heaven,” the nurse said. “What have they done to you?”
I sat up in shock at being spoken to. I did know her face after all, but in the bleak haze of the asylum it took me a few moments to process it.
“Mary?” I asked, incredulous.
She sat, tugging off her white nurse’s hat and setting it on the bed next to me. “You have been a difficult girl to track down.”
“How long have you worked here?” My mind spun, still unable to process the appearance of someone from my old life, here, in my new hell.
“I do not work here, silly thing. I tried to get permission to speak with you, but they would not allow it. So I stole their laundry instead. It is hard to get out of this asylum, but decidedly easy to get in.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So easy, I did it while sleeping.”
“I preferred a method that would allow me to leave when I was finished.” She frowned, studying my face. I was suddenly conscious of how I must look. My hand darted to my hair to smooth it down, but she shook her head. “I am sorry,” she said, “for what has been done to you. I suspected that you were Victor’s accomplice, but now I think you are yet another of his victims.”
I leaned forward, grasping her arms. Too hard, I was sure, but I could not stop myself. “You know about Victor? About what he has done?”
“About his murders? Oh, yes. I have figured it all out.”
“Have you seen the monster?”
Mary frowned at me, and I instantly regretted my words. She would think me truly insane and stop talking to me!
But she continued. “After you left, I did not hear from my uncle. It worried me. One day a fisherman had been dragging the river with nets and pulled up a number of bodies. Seized with a premonition of dread, I went to the charnel house, where they were being kept until someone could determine where they had all come from.”
“Did you meet that horrible man? The one who looks like a weasel?”
She shook her head. “No. They said the man who ran it had disappeared not long after you left. I went to see the bodies, but I had been misled. It was not bodies so much as it was parts of bodies. Arms. Legs. Torsos. One body had the head and torso intact. Even its jacket was still in place. The face had been ravaged by its time in the river, bloated and picked at, unrecognizable and so horrible I will never forget it. But I knew the jacket. I reached inside and withdrew a tiny gold-filigreed book of scripture that my uncle always kept. The pages that he loved had dissolved in the water, leaving only the empty shell of it.”
She paused, looking haunted. “The empty shell of the book, the empty shell of my uncle. It was him.”
Mary stood, pacing the tiny room. “They would have assumed the parts were other bodies that had been decomposed until they came apart in the water. But my uncle’s condition prompted them to look closer. Because above where his ravaged face should have been, the top of his skull had been neatly, surgically sawed off.”
She finally stopped, looking at me with her chin raised. “They found all the bodies downriver from Victor’s residence, which had a chute running directly from the second story to the river. I know he is well connected, and I know how precarious my own situation is as a single woman. I already cannot collect on what is owed my uncle because men simply refuse to see me. If I were to accuse Victor of murder, I would lose any credibility left to me through my uncle’s name. So I cannot go after Victor without risking all I have left. That is why I looked for you. It was not easy. But I was determined. You know more than you had ever said.” Her lips twisted wryly. “And your presence here confirms it. So please, I beg of you. Tell me the truth. Tell me all of it.”
I stood, taking her hands in mine. Her pretty face was braced against pain, and there was a determined set to her jaw. This new revelation made me sad for her. It also forced me to revise what I had assumed yet again. How many times would I be wrong about Victor’s activities and motivations? I had not known, had never dared to suspect he had killed before William and Justine. I assumed his murders had started with them. My old reflex of turning away from the worst of him had not been abandoned, apparently.
But of course Victor would want only the best materials. Of course he would not be satisfied with flesh long dead. He had moved from the graveyard to the charnel house to picking his own supplies.
No wonder Frau Gottschalk had locked the doors so insistently. No wonder rumors of what happened if you were out at night alone plagued the city. There had, in fact, been a monster in Ingolstadt.
Henry, I remembered with a sharp stab of panic. But Victor had told me Henry was still alive. And he had not been lying, had had no need to lie after confessing to the murders of his brother and my Justine. I had not failed Henry, then. Perhaps through my conniving unkindness, I had saved him alone of those I loved!
I wiped beneath my eyes, startled to find my face wet with tears. “I did not know until now Victor was murdering people in Ingolstadt. I swear to you. If I had suspected, I would never have protected him,” I told Mary, then paused. Was that true? I did not know. Not for certain. It was so hard, sorting through what was left of me when I cut off the parts that existed for others. I did not think even old Elizabeth would have been able to overlook the murder of strangers. But she did not need to. She had deliberately and willfully looked the other way, as always.
Mary’s sharp, unyieldingly intelligent gaze had forced me even back in Ingolstadt to be honest. Perhaps if I had stayed with her, I would have come to these truths sooner.
I shook my head. It did not matter now. Nothing mattered now. “I could have investigated more thoroughly. But I thought the bodies were stolen from graveyards and purchased from charnel houses. I thought that he had lost his mind, that I was protecting him from the censure of the world, not from justice well deserved. I should not have rushed to help him. I am so sorry. Please know that being complicit has cost me everything I love in the world.”
She gripped my hands, her clutch almost painful. I leaned into her touch, starving for it.
“I am not sorry,” she said. “I am furious. And you should not be sorry, either. He has taken too much from both of us. From the world. He cannot be allowed to win. Will you help me?”
I laughed bleakly, looking around the box that held me. “I cannot even help myself.”
She reached under her skirts and removed a second nurse’s uniform hidden there. Nurses always left in pairs. The two of us could walk out of this nightmare.
“Elizabeth Lavenza.” Her black eyes narrowed with intensity. “It is time to kill your husband.”
THE MOON HERSELF HID her face from our violent intent, shrouded in clouds as though ready for burial. The gates of Geneva were closed, but we had no use for the city, no desire for witnesses.
Mary and I sat side by side, rowing our way across the lake that long had been the border of my home. Now it carried me to my dark purpose: to end the boy who had brought me there. Waves blacker than the night slapped at the sides of our boat, gusts of wind carrying spray to our faces. I imagined the lake baptizing us, consecrating us for our unholy task.
Surely nature abhorred Victor.
A low rumble of thunder passed through the valley, echoing off the mountains in the distance. The waves grew choppier, the wind stronger. Hanging on the gusts was the distant, lonesome cry of some beast in agony.
My heart had made the same cry too many times. I turned my face from the unseen creature’s pain. I could not shoulder anyone else’s, not even that of a poor dumb beast.
Tonight, I would kill Victor. Tonight, I would destroy the last remnants of the foundation I had spent my entire life building. Would I be left to sift through the rubble, to see whether anything I was, was worth salvaging? Or would I fall, too?