Sinister Sentiments (8 page)

“Beastly things,” I reply, “and a fitting horror for those that deserve it.”

“And what of lightning?” Mr Metero adds.

“Terrifying, Sir,” I say.

“And rain?”

“The very Devil’s invention.”

Mr Metero takes his hand away from the dome, stepping back towards me with a slow but graceful stride. The tape of news hanging from his brow is long and winding now, but he discards the hat and runs a hand through his thinning hair. For the first time since entering my office downstairs, the old creature looks troubled. When he finally acknowledges me again, it is from under his bushy, frowning eyebrows.

“You are a remarkably beautiful thing, Khazran,” he tells me. Before I can thank him for the compliment, he suddenly adds: “And you know it, too.”

“It’s hard not to, Sir,” I say, floundering a little, “when one is told it so often.”

The old man nods, a considered look pouting out his lips. His hand returns to hover over the top of the rose’s dome.

“You take great pride in yourself, do you not?” Mr Metero begins. “I fear that my little rose would be deposed of its prideful place here, if I were to give you this desk for a week.”

Admittedly, I don’t like the idea of staring at the nearly-dead flower every day, but the opportunity to impress the old weathermaster is one I can’t pass up. I lean towards the dome, peering in at the crinkled petals in the hue of dried blood.

“I can abide it, Sir,” I reply.

“Abide,” he repeats, a little too darkly for my taste.

The smile that returns to Mr Metero’s face is sharper than it was before. He recovers his top hat and flips it back into place, crossing past me to a drawer at the bottom of his desk. His crooked back arches like that of a cat’s as he fumbles in the dark drawer, eventually producing what appears to be a blank punch card. Shooing me out of his way, the busy little man sits down at his desk and begins to punch a series of holes into the card. Occasionally, he stops and peers at the rose, then at me, before continuing. What results is a little brown card made more of holes than substance, with a complex pattern running through its centre, which almost looks like the tooth of a savage beast.

“Well that’s that,” the old man says suddenly.

Mr Metero stands, flapping the card to and fro in the faint summer breeze as I watch it sway. He stills it then and turns, feeding it into the shining little engine on his desk, which waits patiently to receive its instructions. Though I have seen many a clerk feeding the machines downstairs, in this moment I feel that I am witnessing a spectacle like no other. The weatherman himself has created a forecast, and I’m about to see it come to life.

The card clicks into the feeder, disappearing through the slot. A few seconds pass as I stand, tensely awaiting the rumble from one of the brass pipes. It comes from a particularly thick one to our left, which rattles visibly under the strain of what must be building inside it. A tightness forms in the very pit of my stomach as I watch, grasping out to steady myself with the back of Mr Metero’s chair. My fingers grip the solid wooden rim, digging in with fear as the pipe shakes itself into a frenzy, before suddenly letting rip with a force that makes me leap half out of my skin.

The lightning shoots into the sky, but some of it snakes a path into the room itself. It shudders all around me, bright as dawn after dark, blinding every sense as it illuminates the room so intensely that one would think the office had disappeared altogether. The pain of the light is too much, and I cover my ears against its buzzing, dropping to the ground in a ball to cower from its awesome presence. It is only when I feel a withered old hand on my shoulder that I dare to open my eyes again. I can see the huge office on the edges of my vision, but the centre of my sight is still blinded by an imprint of the light.

“There now,” Mr Metero croons. “The first of your lessons is taught.”

My skin tingles as I rise, and the old man helps me into his chair. I look down at my hands, relieved to find them undamaged by the fierce lightning blast, then seek out the reflection of my face in the dome of the rose. As I take in my fine features, unblemished as always, I realise that something is different on the other side of the glass. The rose is renewed. Where the withered old stem once stood, now a verdant green stalk stands proudly, thorns and all. The petals are pink and rosy once again.

“You replaced it,” I breathe, looking to Mr Metero for guidance.

He shakes his head, resting a hand on the glass.

“My engines do not simply control the heavens,” he explains. “All nature is programmable, if one knows the correct codes.”

I try to process what he’s telling me, finding it hard to keep all of my thoughts in a sensible order as I gape at the beautiful rose once more.

“You said something about a lesson,” I say as recollection dawns.

“Yes,” Mr Metero answers. “Lesson the first: nature has a fine balance to its energy. In order to renew the rose, energy had to be extracted from somewhere else.”

I furrow my brow.

“But from where?” I ask.

The old man taps his hooked nose, still grinning.

“That’s your second lesson, and it isn’t for me to tell you,” he replies.

Before I can fathom all that I’ve seen and heard, Mr Metero plucks a valise from under his desk and adjusts his hat. He begins to stride briskly from the desk, back towards the aubergine corridor where the elevator lies waiting. I rise from the chair to find that my legs are shaking, crashing back down into its creaking curves as I grasp at the very air before me.

“Wait!” I cry. “You’re not going already, are you? What am I supposed to do?”

The old man doesn’t so much as look back, he just waves me off over his shoulder.

“Don’t fret Khazran,” he shouts back. “I don’t do much around here anyway! Instructions in the bureau in case of a dire emergency.”

When he reaches the elevator door, I can barely make him out, save for the gleam in his glossy eyes. He tips the brim of his hat to me as he opens the golden contraption, and then he’s encased within its glass walls. As the weathermaster sinks out of view, I have the awful feeling that something very bad has happened to me, though I haven’t the faintest idea what it could be.

The life of a factory owner is not the glorious affair I had imagined it to be. I spend the rest of the afternoon looking out of the window in the huge third-floor space, and not a single person comes to visit or sends any kind of correspondence for me to attend to. Feeling like little more than the glorified babysitter of a sleeping giant, I am glad to board the busy omnibus that will trundle me home. The craft passes various bands of weather; it seems today that every street has its very own climate. The atmosphere on my own little avenue is far more cloudy than I would have expected. With a wry grin; I ponder the possibility of changing that tomorrow as I ascend the porch steps.

The door opens without my having to ring the doorbell, and as I enter I am greeted by three terrified faces. Our two young maids and the cook’s assistant are gathered at the bottom of the staircase, glancing at me and then back up towards the top floor of the house. Startled by their strange behaviour, we stand in an odd silence as I watch their trembling lips form the right shapes for hesitant speech.

“Mister Steed, Sir! You have to help us, Sir!”

“We didn’t know what to do with it, Sir!”

“We don’t know how it got in here, Sir!”

The tirade of fretting grows in volume as the three young women crowd around me, their pleading faces fuelled with frenzy. I raise my hand to try and stop them speaking, calling over their woes to make them talk one at a time, but it is only a noise from upstairs that forces them to stop. With sudden haste, all mouths are fastened shut and the women look to the stairs again. The cook’s assistant clutches my arm in a most impertinent manner, fingers digging hard into the muscle. The noise comes again, and this time I hear it clearly. A thunder-like rumble, as though something momentously heavy is walking around on the top floor of my house.

“Please Mister,” one of the maids pleads. “Butler and Cook went to get help, but they ain’t come back, Sir. We reckon they must have run away, Sir.”

“Run away?” I ask, almost laughing. “How absurd! Run away from what, girl?”

None of them will say, they simply keep looking to the stairs.

“Where is Annette?” I ask.

Still no reply. I fling the cook’s assistant away from my arm and she clutches at the door frame instead, as though she needs something to steady herself upon. I look into her frightened eyes as my frustration burns.

“Where is Mrs Steed?” I demand. “Girls, where is your mistress?”

The cook’s assistant leans forward again, her lips barely moving as the whispered words come tumbling out.

“We think it nabbed her, Sir.”

I shake my head immediately, pushing past them all towards the stairs. They begin the tidal wave of woes again, fretting after me like fishwives at a market stall as I take the first few steps. I stop sharply, turning to stare them all down.

“Now see here,” I chide. “I don’t know what hysteria has enraptured you three, but I mean to put a stop to this foolishness now. I shall go upstairs and explore the situation for myself.”

“Be careful, Sir,” one of the maids whispers. I’m ashamed to say it unnerves me as I continue upwards.

The occasional rumble is coming from my bedroom, and I can only surmise that some sort of pest has gained entrance and frightened the staff. At the closed door to the room, I put my ear to the wood and listen hard for noises. There is a faint snuffling, and a panting like that of a wounded dog, but no snarls or howls erupt from within. I consider knocking, but it seems unreasonable to think that whatever’s inside would stand on propriety. Instead, I push the door open, standing in the archway as I let it swing wide to reveal the room.

My first instinct is to charge the thing I see, and I race forward to grab a chair before my good sense returns. The creature before me is at least my size, and I upend the chair to poke its legs out in front of me for the sake of defence. A curved, hairy back full of auburn fur rises and falls with heavy breathing. The animal has been roused by my entry, but it is reluctant to turn and reveal its head. We stand in a defensive stalemate as I take in its sharp, clawed feet and long, strong limbs.

No wonder the maids were terrified. I have never seen a beast of this likeness before. But where is my Annette? An overview of the room tells me that no blood has been shed, and the beast is scarcely big enough to have swallowed a grown woman whole. Is she hiding somewhere to escape from the rancid thing? Or did she leave the house with the butler and the cook? Growing braver in view of the creature’s frightened posture, I knock the chair-legs to the ground a few times to get its attention. Its hairy back flinches with every sound.

“All right beast,” I snarl courageously. “What have you done with my wife?”

The creature’s massive shoulders slump down and I start as it quickly rotates on its paws. Its head is like that of a lion, framed by a shaggy brown mane, which hangs down as it droops its face towards the floor. It looks like an oversized dog, begging its master for forgiveness. I edge closer with the chair raised high, to get a better look at its face. As I do, the strangest scent fills my senses. Citrus and lavender water.

“No,” I murmur, rage bubbling in my blood. “You’ve eaten her, you wretched thing!”

I smash forwards with the chair, ready to bring it down upon the head of the beast in my blind rage. When the creature senses my attack, I am treated to the full extent of its massive strength. With a single paw, the beast flings me and the chair clean across the room, and I land with a painful crash at my back. A shattering sound follows and I raise my hands to shield my head as the shards from my beautiful mirror come raining down about my face. Cowering in a ball amid the debris, I don’t hear the beast approaching until I can smell Annette’s scent near me once again. Shaking and fearing the end, I lower my hands to look into the eyes of the thing that is coming to kill me.

Those eyes. Those almond-shaped eyes with their bright hazel hue. I know those eyes, and I have never seen them look so sad as they do now, framed amongst fur and nestled above the frowning muzzle of the beast. I shake my head. The beast only nods hers, extending a paw to sweep away some of the glass that has collected beside me. I don’t understand what has happened, but the expression in Annette’s eyes is impossible to misinterpret. The beast has not taken her; she has become it.

Where her paw was a moment ago, there is now a crumpled slip of writing paper. I can hear my heart thumping in my head as I lean forward to pick it up, unfurling the message and smoothing out its creases. A curling, shaky script greets my eyes.

Lesson the second: know the parameters of nature before you broker a deal.

The letterhead bears the Metero logo. The beautiful rose in the glass dome flashes through my memory. In order to receive from nature, one must give to it. Mr Metero has given my Annette’s beauty to a mere table decoration. At my request.

“Annette,” I say. The beast looks bright, her eyes gleaming gratefully at the sound of her name on my lips. “Can you speak, darling girl?”

When her thick, dark lips open, all that sounds is a mournful wail. The sparkle of her sharp, canine teeth makes me wince with fear, and Annette shuffles back on her haunches away from me, turning her head. I try to reach for her, but I don’t know where to hold her. It would be wrong to soothe her the way one would a horse or a dog, but she has no shape that I recognise in this four-legged, arch-backed form. My hand falls away in mid-air, despair deadening every sense in my body.