The Dark Deeps

T
HE BOY HADN’T ALWAYS
been yellow. Once he had been lily white, had worn cravats and fancy shoes instead of rags. But that was before he was brought to this island to help the old doctor with his work; before the salt pills, the elixirs, the teaspoons and teaspoons of ingestible compounds, and the horrible injections. It was only after the first year in the employ of the doctor, his eleventh year of life, that the boy understood that he was the subject of a long-term experiment.

The boy often dreamed of his mum and father arriving on a steamship and taking him away from this cruel place. Mum would sing and lull the evil dogs to sleep, their mechanical jaws slowly clanking shut. Father would climb up to the cave, throw the wicked doctor over the cliff, carry the boy to their ship, and steam far, far away.

The boy knew the dream was impossible, since his parents
had drowned in the same shipwreck that had stranded him in this part of the world. The boy had survived because he was small enough to cling to a broken section of the ship’s mast and his mum and father had pushed him as far as they could before their bodies weakened. Mum’s last words to him were “I love you, dearie,” and his father’s were “You have a great destiny, Griff, my son.” Then the two of them waved goodbye as the boy drifted on.

His “great” destiny was to spend six months surviving on a deserted island, eating berries and other fruit and muttering to himself. He grew thinner as he shivered through the cold nights. His clothes turned to rags and he wore reeds and leaves. And then nothing at all. At least the daylight hours were warm.

Then one day the hounds arrived and pursued him from one end of the island to the other, jaws snapping like traps. Their skulls were made of metal; their eyes reflected fiendish light. They didn’t bark or even snarl. They ran with the speed of panthers and the weight of bulls, crashing through brush at his heels and finally cornering him on a rocky cliff. They were soon followed by soldiers in gray, who were just as silent. One grabbed Griff by the hair, dragged him to a steamship. They transported him to a larger island and threw him down at the feet of Dr. Cornelius Hyde. “You asked for a servant,” the soldier said. “We have delivered one.”

And so that became the boy’s role. Hyde rarely spoke to Griff, other than to tell him to fetch powders or scalpels from the shelves or to lug crates of medicines from the
docks. Griff learned what he could about the doctor from his rambling and his many rages. Hyde’s accent was English. Upper-class. He said he’d been betrayed by “those blackguards at the Society of Science.” And Griff had learned that the doctor liked dogs.

The cave was not a pleasant workplace. Chimpanzees trembled in cages. Puppies yipped in boxes. The place reeked of animal excrement. Griff grew used to that, and to sleeping on the straw pallet next to the cages. Slowly his childhood memories of Liverpool, of growing up in a small house that overlooked the bay, were lost to him.

Despite the drudgery, many things captured his fancy. From what he could tell, the island was owned by a man called the Guild Master, who must have been very rich to have his own cannons, steamships, and small army. The soldiers were constructing a massive building at the far end of the island.

What the boy loved most was the airship that returned every few weeks, bringing the red-haired woman with a metal hand. She was thin and very beautiful, and moved with animal grace. She was powerful, he knew by the way she carried herself, and by the way the soldiers saluted her. Her accent was odd; her voice commanded attention, but she sometimes spoke as softly as his mum had. He picked flowers for the woman every time she visited.

“You will grow up to be the greatest man who ever lived,” she’d told him during her latest visit. “The good doctor will see to it.”

“Yes, this is true,” Dr. Hyde said. He was always kinder
when the woman was near. “You shall be the first human to experience a new state, a new form. Now, swallow this sugary treat.”

Griff did so. The pill tasted acidic and burned like a hot coal in his stomach. But he didn’t wince—he so wanted the woman to see how strong he was.

She gently held his shoulder with her human hand. “One day you’ll be so much more than you are now. You must train. You must follow the doctor’s advice. And always take your medicines, my dear little Griff.”

“I will,” he whispered. “For you I will.”

That afternoon he watched her stride down to the docks. He didn’t return to the cave until her airship had disappeared behind the horizon, even though Dr. Hyde would be angry at his tardiness. Griff wept, knowing it would be weeks before he would see her again.