This Monstrous Thing (8 page)

Clémence smirked as I dodged out of its way. “Don’t fret, they don’t bite.” She pushed me forward into its path. “It’s just an automaton.”

I looked from her to Geisler. “An automaton?” I repeated. “But it’s . . .”

“Sentient?” Geisler offered. “Not to the capacity I would like.” He fed his arms through the sleeves of the dressing gown the automaton extended for him. “They have the mental faculties of a dull dog, and the ocular function as well. Only basic sight and auditory cues, but, like a dog, they can be trained, and they do learn over time. Not as fast as I’d like, but they do learn. By now they seem to know what I’m asking, though it took a hell of a long time to get them to this level.”

“You made them?” I asked as the first automaton shuffled toward me, its arms outstretched. I thrust my coat forward, which satisfied the metal man into retreat.

“Of course,” Geisler replied. “Though they are hardly the masterpiece I envisioned when I first considered giving life to clockwork. They have no capacity for original
or independent thought, no personality, and they couldn’t function without specific direction. Nothing compared to my original designs for the resurrected man.” He looked over at me, so quickly I almost thought I imagined it. When I didn’t say anything, he smiled. “Well then. Let me show you the house.”

Geisler gave me a brief tour, poking his head into each room just long enough to allow me a quick glimpse. Somewhere on the first floor we lost Clémence, and I assumed she had chosen sleep over seeing a home she already knew. The rooms were as tidy as his office had been, and everything was lit with Carcel burners—lamps with clockwork pumps in the base to circulate the oil and keep the flames burning longer, far too expensive for my family to afford. There were clocks everywhere—each room had at least one. Between the clocks, the mechanical lamps, and the automatons, which seemed reluctant to let Geisler out of sight, the whole house buzzed like a hive.

At the end of the second-floor corridor, Geisler led me into a small room with an iron-framed bed and, wedged into one corner beside a leaping fire, a writing desk. There were three clocks on the mantelpiece, pendulums swinging out of sync with each other and clicking loudly. “This can be yours,” he said, stepping back to let me in. “I had fresh linens put down, but it hasn’t been used in a while, so it may be dusty.”

“That’s all right.” I crossed the room to the window.
The first flakes of snow were starting to brush ghostlike against the rippled glass. The room looked out across the back garden, where fingers of sharp brown grass stabbed upward through the snow. I could see a coach house and a squat stone building nearly as wide as the main house, though single storied and with a thatched roof. “What’s that?” I asked Geisler, and he stepped to my side.

“My workshop. Though I hardly use it now. I do most of my work at the university.”

“Do you think you could show it to me?” I asked. “I’d love to see—”

Geisler cut me off with a laugh. “You certainly are eager. I’ll show you if you like, but there’s hardly anything out there.” He put a firm hand on my elbow and turned me away from the window. One of the automatons had come in behind us and was standing so close that I started. “I’ve left some spare uniforms from the university in the dresser—why don’t you change, we’ll take a quick look at the workshop, then have some super and a good talk?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean I wanted to see the workshop now,” I said, prying my arm from his grip. “Just . . . while I’m here.”

“Supper, then?”

“I’d rather go to bed. If that’s all right.”

He squinted at me over the top of his spectacles, and for a moment he looked like he was going to argue. Then he nodded. “Of course it’s all right. Completely sensible. I don’t know what I was thinking, of course it can all wait
until tomorrow, of course. Out!” he barked at the automaton that had followed us. It took several arthritic steps into the hallway. Geisler followed, but turned back to me in the doorway. “If you need anything at all, call out and one of them”—he nodded toward the automaton—“will come.”

“All right,” I said, though there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be calling the metal men into my bedroom.

“I’ve instructed them to make you comfortable. I do hope you’re comfortable here.” He smiled at me with such a sincere affection it felt foreign.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Sleep well, then,” he said, his face golden and warm in the firelight. Then he shut the door with a soft snap.

As soon as Geisler was gone, I stripped down to almost nothing and fell on top of the bed, which, I discovered with a stab of delight, was stuffed with feathers—I hadn’t had a feather mattress since we’d lived in Scotland. The house around me was quiet but not silent, with the three clocks ticking out of sync on my mantelpiece and drumming into my thoughts like dissonant heartbeats, joining the clamor already ringing around my head when I wondered again what I was doing here instead of back in Geneva with Oliver and my parents. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to quiet my brain enough to sleep, but everything inside me felt riotous.

I stood, crossed the room in two strides, and ripped
open the face of the first clock. I tugged a handful of gears from inside, pinching my finger hard in the process, and the clock froze, pendulum halting as suddenly as if I had seized it. I could have stopped the clock by removing a single piece, but I wasn’t looking to be delicate or kind, I just wanted it quiet.

I silenced the other two clocks, then dropped the gears on the desk. It was quieter than before, but I was still left thinking about Oliver. No chance of ripping him out of me.

I wondered what he would say if he were here with me. Not the Oliver I had now, but the Oliver from before, the one who sought out strange adventures because they’d make a good story. Being brought to a solitary house on the cusp of a snowstorm by a girl with white hair—he’d go wild for that. It could be the start of a horror novel, he’d say, the sort Mary claimed she’d someday write. When I closed my eyes, I could picture him as he had been before he died: dark hair tousled, eyes alive with excitement, his fingers scratching at his bottom lip, always thinking. “It’s never simple, Ally,” he would say to me. “Nothing’s ever the way it looks straight on.”

He’d said that to me in Amsterdam. The first time he’d been arrested. I remembered it suddenly, like a door opening inside me, and heard his voice in my head. The image of him in my memory shifted into standing in the police station while they took the irons off him, grinning at me like it was all a stupid joke.

I’d been the only one home when an officer came to inform us my brother had been arrested for punching out a man’s teeth, and instead of waiting for my parents, I’d taken one of the bill rolls we kept stashed around our flat and gone to fetch him myself so Father wouldn’t find out. I’d stood in the waiting room at the station, lamps bright as noon though outside everything was frosty and black, and watched as the cuffs came off. The officer handed him back his coat, and I didn’t even wait for him to put it on. I turned and left the station without a word.

I didn’t say a thing to him as we walked along the frozen canals. The only way I knew he was following was the sound of his footsteps in the snow. We were halfway home before he said, “You’re walking so fast.”

My temper flared against his voice like a struck match. “I want to get home.”

“Can we stop?”

“No.”

“Just for a moment.”

“No.”

“Ally, stop.” He caught my arm, and I whirled around so fast he took a step back. “What’s the matter?”

“Are you insane, or are you really as stupid as you act sometimes?” I cried, and I surprised myself with how loud and angry the words came out—I was usually so good at keeping my temper.

Oliver looked startled too. “What are you talking about?”

“I like it here! But if you go and do idiotic things like brawling in the street, we’re going to get caught and have to leave. Or worse. And it will be your fault.” The corners of my eyes were starting to pinch, and I scrubbed the back of my hand hard against them.

When I looked up, Oliver was watching me, his face tight. “I didn’t mean to get into trouble.”

“Well, somehow you always do.” The words came out more teary than I meant them to.

We stood for a minute on opposite sides of the street, our shadows made skeletal by the lamplight. I was so angry at him. The angriest I’d ever been. Angry that he could be so careless and selfish, like I didn’t matter to him at all.

Oliver turned away from me suddenly and took a few steps to the edge of the street until his toes were hanging over the short ledge above the frozen canal. He stood there for a moment, balanced, then eased himself down so that he was standing on the ice. His arms rose like a puppet on strings.

“What are you doing?” I called.

He grinned back at me, his smile a streak through the darkness—as bright as the frozen canal. “Come here.”

“I haven’t got skates.”

“Neither have I.”

“You’re mental.”

“Come on!” I didn’t move. Oliver pushed himself off with his feet flat and slid straight ahead. He wobbled, but stayed upright. “This is brilliant,” he called over his shoulder. “Can’t believe you’re missing it.”

I hesitated, watching him glide away from me, then made an abrupt decision. I sat down on the lip of the canal and lowered myself onto the ice after him. I tried to stand like he had but lost my nerve at the last minute and sat down hard instead.

Oliver laughed. “Get up!”

“No!” I pulled myself after him on my backside, fingers sticking to the ice through the holes in my gloves.

Oliver laughed again, spinning in a half circle to face me. “Come on, Ally, get up!”

“I’m going to fall!”

“You won’t fall! I’ll help you.” He held out a hand.

I pushed myself from my knees to my feet but stayed bent at the waist with my palms flat on the ice. When I did straighten, it was slowly, inch by inch, arms out at my sides and every muscle clenched. Oliver whooped encouragement.

I reached out for his hand, but as soon as I moved, my feet went in opposite directions. I tried to catch myself with a step but it turned to a stumble, and somehow I
was sliding and running and falling all at the same time. I missed Oliver’s hand and instead smashed straight into him. He grabbed me under the elbows so when I fell, we fell together, all the way down to the ice.

The landing smarted, but it didn’t truly hurt, and it was so foolish that I laughed. Oliver laughed too, but then he winced, and my smile faded. “You all right?”

He held up his hand. In the splash of the streetlight, I could see that the skin of his palm was torn up and bloody, and there was a raw scrape running up his wrist and into his sleeve.

“Did that happen just now?” I asked, alarmed.

“No, it was . . . from earlier.”

For a moment, I’d forgotten why we’d been out here to begin with, but it came back suddenly. Somewhere between the street and the canal, my anger had left me, floated away like snow on the wind, but I could still feel the weight of it between us. “The policeman said . . . He told me you punched a man. Is that how you hurt your hand?”

“No, that idiot shoved me and I fell on it. Then I punched him.” Oliver blew a foggy breath into the air, then leaned backward until he was lying flat on the ice. I was already shivering, but I stretched out beside him, our heads together, staring up at the splash of stars above us. We didn’t speak for a while. Then Oliver said, “There was this beggar on the street. He had a clockwork leg, but it was
run-down and rusted, and his skin was infected. Bloody mess. I tried to help him and some bastard grabbed me and started calling me names and knocked me down. I didn’t attack him, I just fought back. The police didn’t arrest him, though. Just me, because I was helping the clockwork chap.” He pressed his tight fist against the ice. The scrape on his wrist left a smear of pale crimson. “Nothing’s ever that simple, Ally,” he said then. “It’s never just ‘I hit him’ or ‘he hit me’ or he was right and I was wrong. Everything’s always got sides and angles and all sorts of bits you can’t see. Nothing’s ever the way it looks straight on.”

I fell asleep remembering that—lying beside Oliver on the iced canal, our breath frosty and warm as it drifted up and away from us into that black, black night.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
woke suddenly, like an impact from a high fall. The fire had died to pulsing coals, and the sky outside was black. I climbed out of bed, flinching as my bare feet connected with the cold floorboards, and cupped my hands against the window to look out. The snow had swelled into a blizzard, and thick white flakes obscured the yard. I could hardly make out Geisler’s workshop through it.

I dressed in the dark, not certain why I was up so early, or whether it was actually early or simply dark from the storm. The gutted clocks on the mantelpiece were still stuck at the same time they had been the day before and gave me no clue. So, dressed in one of the large university uniforms Geisler had left, I abandoned my room to see if anyone else was awake.

The house was dark and silent but for the syncopated clicking of dozens of clocks. At the bottom of the stairs, I spotted a light and followed it to the kitchen, where a fire was burning in the grate. A loaf of bread was laid out on the table, a knife stuck into the cutting board next to it. My stomach growled audibly.

I wiggled the knife out of the board and started to saw off a slice of bread when something knocked into me from behind. I whipped around, knife held in front of me. It was one of the automatons, its arm outstretched, coming toward me. I tried to dodge out of its way, but it knocked into me again so hard that I fell backward into the table. The legs screeched against the stone floor. The automaton took another shuffling step closer, and I considered burying the knife in it and hoping that jammed up its works, but stabbing servants—mechanical or not—didn’t seem like the appropriate way to repay Geisler for taking me in.

The automaton’s head twisted slowly until its glassy eyes were fixed on the knife in my hand. My grip on the handle tightened. “Like hell,” I said, though I wasn’t certain it understood. “You may not have this.”

The automaton reached out. I tried to duck out of its way, but its hand fastened around my fist holding the knife and squeezed. I yelped in pain as my fingers buckled beneath its iron grip.

There was a
whoosh
as a door on the other side of the
room opened, blowing in a handful of snowflakes and Clémence, wearing the same trousers and gray coat from the day before. Her white hair was fuzzy with snow. She stared across the room at me, bent backward over the table by the advancing automaton that I was certain was about to rip me to pieces with the knife it was trying to break out of my hand.

And she
laughed
. “You’ve got to let it slice the bread.”

“What?” The automaton took another step forward, knees cracking against mine, and I flinched.

“It wants to serve you—that’s what it’s made for. It won’t back off until you let it cut the bread.”

“Are you certain that’s all it’s keen on cutting?” I asked.

Clémence flopped down beside the fire and raised her hands to the flames. “Never mind. Let it break your fingers if you want.”

I glared at the back of her head, then loosened my grip on the bread knife so that it slid from my fingers to the automaton’s. The mechanical man straightened immediately, and I wiggled out from between it and the table as it took a lurching step toward the bread and began to saw at it. When it had a slice, the automaton pivoted sharply and extended it to me.

I took it. “Er, thank you.”

Its spine snapped straight, then it turned and headed out of the room, each step ticking.

Clémence was watching me with her mouth twisted
up in that stupid smirk. I glowered at her, then sank down in front of the fire and started to eat. The automaton had scared the hunger straight out of me, but I had gone to too much trouble to get the bread not to eat it.

“Sleep well?” Clémence asked.

“Yeah, good enough.” I glanced over at her and realized she was shivering, arms wrapped around herself and cheeks pinched scarlet. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re freezing. Here.” I cast around for something to warm her, but she cut me off.

“I said I’m all right. Let me save you the trouble of stripping off your shirt in an attempt to be gallant.”

“Can I make you tea?” My eyes darted to the hallway. “Will they come after me if I try?”

“Not if you’re sneaky about it,” she replied.

I stood up and retrieved the kettle from the counter. It was already full. “What were you doing out so early?” I asked as I hung it over the fire.

“What are you doing up so early?” she returned.

“All the traveling mucked me up,” I replied. “And my father always has me up early. It’s habit. What time is it anyways?”

“I’m not sure.” Clémence stood up for a better view of the clock on the mantelpiece, which, I realized after a silent moment, wasn’t running. “Damn, it’s stopped.”

“Probably just needs to be wound.”

“No, they’re not made to be wound. Geisler started them with the pulse gloves.” She flipped open the lid of the clock and stared at it as though unsure what she was looking for. Then she shut it and slumped back down onto her stool. “Never mind, he can fix it when he gets up.”

“Here, let me.” Clémence passed me the clock and I opened the face. I saw the problem right away—the gears were still moving, but the balance wheel slid out of place. As soon as I tugged it forward on its axel, the clock sprang to life, and I replaced it on the mantelpiece.

“Well done,” Clémence murmured.

“Couldn’t you fix it?”

She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re
Geisler’s assistant. How’d you come about that job if you don’t know how to fix a clock?”

Clémence stared into the fire, and I wasn’t sure if it was the reflection of the flame on her face or if she was actually blushing. Then she looked back at me, pale as ever, and I guessed I had imagined it. “I could have fixed it,” she said. “I just wanted to see if you are as clever as Geisler seems to think you are.”

W
hen two of the automatons took over the kitchen to fix breakfast, I carried my tea into the sitting room and settled in a chair beside the fire. Clémence followed me, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, and took a spot on the chaise across from me. “Are you afraid of them?” she asked.

“Of the automatons?” I shrugged. “They’re a bit unnerving, aren’t they?”

“More than living men who are half mechanical?”

“At least with clockwork men, there’s some bit of them that’s human.”

“That’s not a common opinion. Most people think you surrender your humanity if you adopt clockwork parts.”

“I grew up a Shadow Boy—I’m not
most people
.” I took a sip of tea and winced. It needed sugar, but there was no chance I’d brave the kitchen now that it was full of metal men.

A gust of wind blew down the chimney, and the flames in the grate parted for a moment. Clémence turned her gaze out the window. “We’re lucky we beat the storm,” she said. “It’s not usually this bad.”

“It used to snow like this all the time in Bergen.”

“You lived in Bergen?”

“When I was young.” I took another sip of tea, stupidly hoping it would taste better. It did not. “My family was thrown out of Edinburgh when my father started working with Geisler, so we went there.”

“I’ve heard Norway is cold and dark all year.”

“No, not at all. At least Bergen isn’t. It looks out on this bay and across the fjords, and they’re mostly green and lovely.” I remembered something suddenly, and almost laughed before I’d told the story. “There was this poem Oliver—my brother—was really keen on when we were
younger. It’s about a pond or a lake or something. Some sort of body of water. And Oliver read somewhere that the pond—the real one, the one the poem is about—is outside of Bergen. So one day he took me out into the country, up into the fjords, and we walked for hours looking for that stupid pond. . . .”

I trailed off. I hadn’t spoken about Oliver like this—stories from before—to anyone since he died, not even to my parents, and suddenly I could see him so clearly from that day, the sun on his face and the wind running its fingers through his curly hair as he darted up the path ahead of me, then turned back to wait until I caught up. Oliver, the way he used to be. The memory snarled something up inside me.

I watched the flames stretch up into the chimney, hoping Clémence wouldn’t say anything more about it, but after a moment she asked, “Is there an ending to that story?”

“It wasn’t really a story,” I replied. “Just something I thought of.”

“Did you find the pond?”

“No, turns out it
was
fictional.” I picked up my teacup and drained it in two swallows. “Not a real place at all.”

An automaton came in with its arms full of kindling, and we fell silent. I didn’t want to talk about Oliver anymore. I didn’t want to talk at all, but Clémence was watching me like she had more to say. I searched around
for something to show I was done with her, and my gaze caught on a book on the end table. I recognized the green binding, and knew what it was before I picked it up—
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.
The same book Mary had sent, with that strange title and no author, and I remembered that Morand had told me it was about Geisler.

I flipped through it, scanning the pages without really reading, wondering if I’d see his name somewhere. A block of text stood out, centered and lonely, and I stopped.

Like one, that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows, a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

I had to read it twice before I realized why it sounded familiar. It was the Coleridge poem Oliver had recited last time I’d gone to see him. It felt like such an impossible coincidence that I scanned the rest of the page. The last sentence jumped out.

“Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides,
endued with a figure hideously deformed by the infernal engine that made me; being formed of metal, I was not even of the same nature as man.”

My stomach lurched. The words were familiar—not because I’d read them before, but because they sounded like Oliver. I flipped a few pages further, so fast I sliced my finger on the edge.

“‘Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a mechanical monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?’”

I slammed the book shut hard enough that Clémence glanced up from her tea. “You all right?”

“Fine,” I said, but the words were beating in my brain like blows from a hammer, a hollow echo of every conversation I had had with my brother over the past two years.

This book wasn’t about Geisler. It was about resurrection.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

I jumped and almost dropped the book. Geisler was standing in the sitting room doorway, wrapped in a maroon dressing gown with his spectacles perched on his forehead. I jammed
Frankenstein
between the cushions and stood up. “Good morning, Doctor.”

“Hardly morning yet.” He brushed past me and sat down in the chair I had just vacated. Clémence had sat up straighter and was watching him warily from across the room. Geisler returned her stare. “You have work elsewhere, mademoiselle,” he said to her. She stood without a word and glided from the room like a ghost. I tried to catch her eye as she left, but she kept her head down. Geisler gestured at her empty place on the chaise. “Please, Alasdair, sit down.”

I perched on the edge of the stiff cushion as one of the automatons came in with a tray. “Would you like some tea?” Geisler asked me as the automaton poured him a cup.

“I’ve already had some.”

“I’ll have it left if you want more.” Geisler frowned and reached between the armchair’s cushions, emerging a moment later with
Frankenstein.
He smiled at the cover, then held it up for me to see. “Have you read it?”

“No, sir,” I replied, though the words
accursed creator
were still ringing around my head like church bells.

“Really?” He set the book on the table and took up his teacup. “As a piece of fiction, it’s sloppy and inept at best.” He glanced at me over the rim, then, just before he touched it to his lips, said, “But it has its merits in other areas.”

I nodded, though books—even ones about clockwork and resurrection—were the last thing I wanted to talk
about. I was burning to ask why he’d called me here, but I kept my mouth shut. He went on sipping his tea and staring at me with that same keen intensity he’d had when I first arrived. I felt dissected. Finally he set down his cup and steepled his fingers before his lips. His spectacles slipped off his forehead and settled on the tip of his nose. “How very like your brother you look,” he said softly. “In this poor light, I could almost swear you were Oliver sitting across from me two years ago.”

I didn’t say anything. Behind me, the windows rattled as the snow struck them.