A hand, trailing off the side.
I closed my eyes.
I counted ten steady breaths as I removed my gloves and tucked them into my purse. And then I walked across the floor, knelt by the bed, and took the wrist between my fingers.
“Thank you,” I whispered fervently. I had been wrong: I did have it in me to pray after all. The wrist was warm—burning, in fact. I pulled back the mess of quilts to reveal Victor sprawled on his stomach, his dark curls wild, his forehead hot and dry. He was probably dehydrated. I had no way of knowing how long he had been in this fevered state. At his worst, one of his fevers had lasted more than a fortnight. And with no one here to care for him!
I cursed Henry with more fervor than I had prayed with. He had abandoned both of us—me to long-term peril, and Victor to immediate risk. He knew how Victor was! He knew that Victor was not to be left alone. How selfish of him to leave because his feelings were hurt. How privileged of him to be able to value his own feelings over the safety of others because he himself had never known what it was to be afraid.
“Victor,” I said, but he did not even stir. I stroked his cheek. And then I pinched his arm. Hard. Harder.
No response.
Satisfied that Mary and Justine would find nothing too alarming, I ran back to the door and unlocked it. Justine was crying, and Mary was livid.
“What do you mean, locking us out?” she demanded.
I inclined my head meaningfully toward Justine. “I could not bear to expose you two to anything horrific. Neither of you has the responsibility to Victor that I do.”
Justine looked up at me, her face as pale as death. “Is he—”
“He is dangerously sick with a fever. We will need a doctor. And we should move him to a more healthful location. I am certain this building contributed to his state.”
“I can go and fetch a doctor. I know one.” Mary regarded me with no small amount of distrust. “Should I take Justine with me?”
“She can stay and help if she wants.”
Justine’s eyes widened as she looked in at the dark hallway leading to the darker room.
Mary and I traded a look of understanding, and I spoke again. “Actually, yes. I think it would be best if Justine went with you. She can inform the doctor of Victor’s history of fevers.”
Justine nodded, the relief washing across her face. “Yes. Yes, I will do that. And I can hire a carriage, too. We cannot ask Mary to pay for anything.”
“Very smart! What would I do without you?” I beamed at her to let her know she was handling this all quite well. I dug a few banknotes out of my purse, my last remaining address cards falling onto the wet steps beneath us. I did not bother to pick them up; the ink would run and stain the silk lining of my bag.
“We will hurry,” Mary said.
I waved at them until they turned toward the bridge. Then I shut the door and locked it once more, not wanting unexpected visitors. I checked on Victor again; he had not moved. His breathing was shallow but steady and unlabored. I drew down the blankets farther. He was wearing breeches and a shirt, as though he had collapsed in the midst of working. He even had shoes on, scuffed and unshined.
I sat next to his head, looking down at him. He was thinner, paler. Judging by the length of his sleeves, he had grown, too. And not purchased new clothes for his changed frame. I wet a cloth that did not smell moldy, then put it over his forehead and sighed. “Look what happens when you are alone. Look how much you need me.”
He stirred, eyes fluttering open but wild and unseeing. “Do not—” he croaked.
“Do not what?” I leaned close to his face.
“Henry. Oh, Henry. Do not tell Elizabeth.”
He was delirious, then. He thought I was Henry, and he did not want Henry to tell me something. He had shifted on the bed, revealing a metal object beneath himself. I eased it free. It was a key, perhaps to the front door. I slipped it into my purse.
“Of course,” I said. “It will be our secret. What should I not tell her, though?”
“It worked.” He closed his eyes, shoulders shaking. I could not say for certain, but I thought he was weeping. I had never seen him cry. Not even when his mother died. Not even when he thought I was going to die. Victor did not cry; he raged. Or, worse, he did not react at all. What could make him cry? “It worked. And it was terrible.”
He settled back into unconsciousness. The only noise was the insistent tap of water dripping on the ceiling, like the knocking of a stranger demanding to be let in.
I looked up. What had worked?
Leaving Victor, I went back to the entry and pondered the ladder. I put out a hand to touch the rough wood. My fingers trembled, then curled in on themselves, away from the rung. I had always considered myself brave. There were not many things that made me squeamish or that I was afraid to face. But my flesh recoiled at the thought of climbing up that ladder. It knew why before my mind fully processed it.
Then I realized:
The smell.
There was nothing down here to account for that lingering scent of old blood and rotting meat. Which meant it could only be coming from whatever was above this ladder.
And I had to discover it before anyone else did.
EACH RUNG LASTED AN eternity. I lingered longer than I should have. I knew I had to see what was beyond the trapdoor, but part of me desperately hoped it would be locked.
I reached it and pushed tentatively.
It was not locked.
I shoved it open and rushed up the last few rungs, pulling myself into a space that was dim but still brighter than the windowless entry.
The sound of rain hitting an ever-deepening puddle competed with the wild pounding of my heart to make music of discord and chaos. In place of a symphony to accompany me, there was a stench.
A stench of things rotten.
A stench of things dead.
And above and around it all, burning fumes that made me cough and gag.
I pulled out a handkerchief and covered my nose and mouth, wishing I could cover my stinging eyes, as well. But I needed them.
The dripping noises were different up here, though. Now that I was in the room, they had a faint metallic quality, hitting something other than the warped and blackened wood floors. In the center of the room, illuminated by the cloud-choked day, a pool of water rippled and shifted, gathering in the center of a table before dripping off the sides to meet with the water on the floor. The table was situated directly beneath the open roof panels.
I stepped closer. Broken glass crunched beneath my boots. The table had held my attention, but now that I looked down, I saw that the entire room was littered with shattered glass containers. Someone had gone to a tremendous amount of trouble to break everything in here.
Most of the larger glass pieces were sticky and wet with whatever had been held inside. It smelled to me like some death-tainted form of vinegar. Chemicals that preserve yet corrupt in equal measure.
Some of the glass remains bore…other substances. Gelatinous mounds on the floor. Poor, sad pieces of—
I pulled my gaze away. Something about the nearest spill made my eyes refuse to focus on it. It had no recognizable form, and yet I knew—I knew—I did not want to look at it.
My boots crunched and scraped as shards of glass embedded in their soles. I crept toward the table. Whether because it was the center of the room or because it was the best-illuminated feature, I was drawn toward it, pulled on a current.
The table itself was metal, as large as a family dining table. Around it were various apparatuses I did not know the meaning or use of. They looked complicated, all gears and wires and delicate tubing. And every one, like the glass containers, had been smashed beyond repair.
A pole, also metal, wrapped in some sort of copper wiring, extended from the head of the table to the wind
ows in the roof. But it, too, had been warped. It was bent, the wires dislodged and hanging from it like hair ripped from a doll’s head.
The water pooling on the table was thicker and darker along the edges, as if rust had been pushed outward. It smelled sharp and metallic, but with something organic beneath it all. Something like—
I pulled my finger back from where I was about to touch the near-black stains.
It smelled almost like blood. But whether the water dilution or the chemicals in the room had affected it, I did not know. Because I knew the scent of blood. And this was so close, and yet different in a way that repulsed me more than anything else here.
“What were you doing, Victor?” I whispered.
A clattering noise surprised me, and I whipped around. My bare hand brushed the side of the table, giving me another shock like the door handle had. I cried out, stepping away. My arm was numb. Though I could command it to move, I could not feel the movements.
Terrified, I searched for the source of the sound. Again! This time, of sharp things scratching at a surface. A flurry of movement, black darker than the shadowy corners of the room. I lifted my arms to defend myself from—
A bird. Some misshapen carrion thing, scratching and pecking at a massive trunk that took up nearly the length of the wall on the side closest to the riverfront. The bird must have gotten in through the roof opening.
Cross with it for scaring me—and with myself for being so easily frightened—I reached down for the nearest thing on the floor to throw.
My fingers closed around a long knife unlike any I had seen. It was shaped like a surgeon’s scalpel, though no surgeon would need a scalpel this large. Other points of metal among the glass on the floor winked invitations for exploration. A saw, too small for wood. Clamps. The wickedly sharp and absurdly long metal tips of needles, glass vials attached to them broken and jagged.
The bird cawed darkly, a sound like laughter.
What was in the trunk?
* * *
—
It was the fall before the first winter I would spend cocooned inside with the Frankensteins. The leaves were so scarlet that even the light had a crimson tinge. Birds circled overhead: those that were leaving and those that were hardy enough to survive the long dark of the mountain winter.
Victor and I were walking the paths we had made in the undergrowth when we heard a desperate thrashing.
We crept toward the noise, both of us silent without agreeing to be so. Victor and I often functioned that way—I could respond to his needs without being told. Some sense, some careful attunement, always guided me.
I gasped when we found the source of the commotion. A deer, far bigger than either of us, lay on its side. Its visible eye rolled wildly, chest heaving as it panted. One of its legs was twisted at an unnatural angle. The deer struggled once to rise. I held my breath, hoping, but it crashed back to the forest floor and lay still save its desperate breaths and an odd keening sound. Was it some instinctive, unconscious noise? Or was the deer actually crying?
“What could have happened?” I asked.
Victor shook his head. His hand, which had grasped mine, slowly released. I could not take my eyes away from the deer until Victor spoke. The trembling determination in his tone pulled all my attention.
“We cannot let this chance pass,” he said.
“What chance?” I saw only the wounded thing in front of us. “Do you want to help it?”
“There is no helping it. It will die.”
I did not want it to be true, but he was right. Even I knew that if prey animals could not run, they could not survive. And this deer could not so much as stand. It would slowly starve to death lying on the cold forest floor, covered by the falling leaves.
“What should we do?” I whispered. I looked around for a large rock. As much as I hated to even consider it, I knew that the kindest thing we could do was end its suffering. It never occurred to me to run to the house for help. The deer was ours, our responsibility.
“We should study it.” Victor leaned closer, laying his hand on the deer’s flank.
I did not want to do that again. Not ever. But I mournfully supposed that once the deer was dead, it would not much care what was done with its body. And as always, Victor’s happiness was my first priority.
I nodded, misery siphoning away the afternoon’s happiness like the winter cold slowly sucking the color from the trees. “I will find a rock we can use to kill it.”
Victor shook his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. Where he had gotten it, I had no idea. We were not allowed knives, and yet Victor nearly always had one. “It will be better to study while it is still alive. How else can we learn anything?”
His hands shook as he lowered the knife; he looked sad, but more than that, he looked angry. He almost vibrated with intensity, and all my instincts were to soothe him. To distract him from this. But I did not know how to calm him, whether I should calm him at all.
Then the knife went in. It was as though that thing I saw sometimes beneath Victor’s surface, struggling to get out, had been released with the first cut. He sighed, and his hands steadied. He no longer looked afraid, or angry, or sad. He looked focused.
He did not stop. I did not stop him.
Red leaves. Red knife. Red hands.
But white dresses, always.
The deer stopped keening. It did not die as Victor tugged the knife through the skin over its stomach. I had imagined it parting like the crust of a loaf of bread, but it was tough, resistant. The sound of tearing made me sick. I turned away as Victor strained to make progress with blood coating his hands and making the knife slippery.
“It will be harder,” he said, breathing heavily with exertion, “to get through the ribs before the heart stops beating. Run to the house and get a bigger knife. Hurry!”
I ran. I did not beat the failure of the heart. Frustration and disappointment twisted Victor’s face as I held out the long, serrated knife the cook would be blamed for losing.
He accepted the knife and got to work on the now-still rib cage. I turned away again, keeping my eyes on the scarlet leaves trembling above us. A single leaf fell, and I marked its lazy path down until it landed in the darker crimson pooled at my feet.
I saw nothing. I heard everything. Knife ripping skin. Blade against bone. All the delicate viscera that support life spilling like slop onto the forest floor.
Victor learned about the paths blood takes in a living creature, and I learned the best ways for cleaning that blood from hands and clothes so that his parents would never know the course of our new studies.
When I crept into Victor’s room that night, I found him drawing the deer still alive, but flayed so that all the parts he had seen inside were showing. He shifted to let me into the bed. I could not get the deer’s noise out of my head. Victor actually fell asleep before I did for once, his face at peace.
That winter was long and cold. Banks of snow as high as the first-story windows sealed us in, away from the world. And while his parents did whatever it was they did when they were not with us—we were utterly uncurious about them—we played games only a child like Victor could design. He had been inspired by the deer. And so we played.
I would lie silent and still, like a corpse, as he studied me. His careful, delicate hands explored all the bones and tendons, the muscles and tracings of veins that make up a person. “But where is Elizabeth?” he would ask, his ear against my heart. “Which part makes you?”
I had no answer, and neither did he.
* * *
—
The metal scalpel in my hand was a sort of comfort. Though nothing in this room threatened me, I could not fight the instinct telling me I was in danger. Telling me to flee.
“Shoo!” I stomped toward the bird. It fixed one baleful yellow eye on
me, clacking its murderously sharp beak.
“Get out!” I ran the rest of the way, startling it. In a flurry of feathers, it flew past me and into a black hole in the wall I had not noticed. I followed it, finding the beginning of the chute that ran from the building to the river. It was large enough that I could have comfortably crawled through. Doubtless it had been added to dispose of refuse. But it was so large! What had been the purpose of this building before Victor?
Chest heaving, I looked down at the trunk that had so fascinated and occupied the wretched bird. The trunk was made of wood, painted with thick black tar to seal it. An inelegant but effective form of waterproofing.
I tried to lift the lid, but it was locked. Crouching, I found a heavy padlock securing it. With trembling fingers, I pulled out the key I had found beneath Victor.
It fit.
I wished desperately it had not.
With a well-oiled click, the padlock sprang open. I unhooked it, opened the latch, and then heaved the long lid upward.
The force of the smell was a physical blow. I fell back onto the ground, cutting my hand on a shard of glass. The scalpel skidded away along the filthy floor. I turned my head and vomited, my stomach seizing my whole body in spasms to propel me from this.
Coughing, I found my handkerchief and held it to my face instead of binding my hand. I stood, my legs shaking, and looked down.
There were…parts.
Bits and pieces, like sewing materials discarded but saved for the day when perhaps they might be useful. They could not have been too old, because the decay was minimal. Bones and muscles, a femur so long I could not guess what animal it had come from. A hoof. A set of delicate bones like a puzzle waiting to be pieced together. Some of the parts had been roughly sewn together.
A sheet of parchment, tacked to the lid of the box, shifted in the breeze from the open roof. It bore lists: Types of bones, types of muscles, missing parts. The name of a butcher shop. A charnel house. A graveyard.
This was a supply box.