Such Wicked Intent (7 page)

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Father, holding his lantern close to one painting. “They must be very old indeed.”

Elizabeth and Henry were soon among us, gazing about with wide eyes.

“Incredible,” Henry breathed.

“So beautiful,” said Elizabeth, smiling at me with such simple joy and wonder that I could not help but smile back. For a few blissful moments the pain that drummed in my missing fingers almost evaporated.

“It keeps going, this way,” said Klaus, holding his lantern high and showing us a passageway with corrugated walls that made me think of some great leviathan’s gullet. Though the passage was narrow, its ceiling was vaulted high, and on the stone were yet more animals—giant bulls with bristling crests of hair, and great horns, powerfully painted in a rich terra-cotta so you could practically feel the sheer bulk of their flanks, the bundled muscle of their haunches.

“Look!” said Elizabeth, pointing. “That one has a spear in its side.”

“Well spotted,” said my father. “And this one’s been felled.”

In the wash of his lantern light, I saw one of the mammoth creatures on its side, head drooped lifelessly.

“It’s like some kind of primitive art gallery,” Henry said.

“Museum, too,” Father said. “Look at these markings here, beneath the fallen bull.”

I saw the series of simple black marks with strokes through them. “It’s like a tally,” I remarked. “They wanted to keep track of their kills.”

Father nodded. “Whoever made these pictures was recording their history.”

The passageway turned to the right and opened up into another cavern. Elizabeth called out excitedly, “An ibex, look! When did ibexes last live in Geneva?”

“Is that a bear?” Henry said.

“Must be,” I remarked, “though I’ve never seen one so big. Look at it there, compared to the bull! What a monster!”

A short tunnel led out from this cavern into a series of narrow vaulted galleries. We walked through them, sometimes awed into silence, other times excitedly calling out the new animals we saw in this underground bestiary. One gallery was filled with brown stags. In another knelt a strange horse with a horn growing from its forehead. Crouching beneath it was some kind of tiger, ready to pounce and kill, with two great teeth curving from its upper jaw. And beside the tiger was something I’d not seen before now.

“A handprint,” I said. It was red, made with paint—or perhaps blood.

“Is it like a signature, do you think?” Elizabeth said. “An artist taking credit for his work?”

Instinctively I went and placed my spread fingers against it. The print dwarfed my own hand.

“They were bigger than us,” I said.

Klaus was looking ill at ease, his eyes straying into the darkness, as though half expecting someone or something to emerge.

“There are more here,” said Henry, swinging his lantern to a stretch of wall where there were numerous handprints, of all different sizes.

“‘This is us,’” Elizabeth murmured.

I looked at her strangely. “What do you mean?”

“The handprints—it’s like a way of saying, ‘Here we are. This is us.’ Maybe it showed how many people lived in their family, or clan, or whatever it was. A family portrait.”

“Why didn’t they just draw pictures of themselves?” Henry asked. “They were obviously excellent artists. Doesn’t it seem strange they wouldn’t have done any people?”

“It does indeed,” said Father, “especially when they had language, too.”

“Language?” I looked at him, startled. “How do you know that?”

Eagerly he waved me closer with his hand and showed me, in the flicker of his lantern, a long string of curious geometric markings.

“Surely these are words of some kind,” he said, “though in an alphabet I’ve never seen.”

I had seen some strange scribblings in alchemical tomes, but these were altogether more primitive.

“They’re nothing like Egyptian hieroglyphs,” I murmured.

“No,” said Father, “and yet the longer I look at them, the more variety I see.”

“You’re right,” I said. “There seems an infinite number of ways they’ve arranged the lines and dots.”

He placed a hand upon my shoulder, gave me a squeeze and a
smile. It felt good to be together like this, talking and sleuthing. I hadn’t felt this close to him for a long time, and in the coldness of the cave, I felt the warmth of his large hand all the more.

“Passage branches up ahead,” Klaus said.

“Then we must stop here,” Father said. “We’re not equipped for a proper exploration, and I won’t risk getting lost.”

“Do you think Wilhelm Frankenstein knew about the caves?” I asked.

“Most probably. He would’ve discovered them when he laid the château’s foundations. And no doubt it was he who built the false well to conceal them.”

“But why would he keep them hidden?” Elizabeth wondered. “They’re so wonderful.”

“He was a mysterious and secretive man,” my father said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know the extent of it, or what happened to him.” He regarded us more sternly now. “You’re not to go exploring alone. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, and I truly meant it. Despite the caves’ appeal, my thoughts were fixed on different matters.

“Good,” Father said. “The last time you went caving, you nearly perished. Your mother could not endure any more trauma at the moment.”

“You won’t seal all this up, will you?” I asked.

He looked at me carefully a moment, as if trying to gauge my trustworthiness. “I mean to send word to a historian acquaintance of mine at the university. He’ll be most interested to see all this, and I’m sure he’ll have a better idea of its origins than we do.”

*   *   *

“Where’s Mother?” I asked at lunch, for I was eager to tell her about the caves.

“She won’t be joining us,” my father said.

“Is she unwell?” Elizabeth asked with concern.

I watched Father, waiting for his answer.

“No, she’s not ill, just tired.” But his leonine head seemed to sag upon his broad shoulders. How had I not noticed until now? “During the past weeks, since the funeral, she’s been very strong for all of us, but now she needs her rest.” He tried to smile reassuringly. “You’re not to worry. It’s not uncommon after a great sadness. All she needs is time, and she’ll be up and about again.”

The food set out before us suddenly lost its appeal. I felt ashamed of myself. Elizabeth had been right when she’d said I was blind to any but my own suffering. I wondered if my mother’s frantic pace had been her way of escaping grief—but grief was the swifter, and had overtaken her in the end. And I wondered if there were some way I could vanquish her grief. What if it were in my power?

“Perhaps, sir,” Henry began awkwardly, “this is not the best time for me to stay.”

Father shook his head. “No, no, Henry. You’re like family to us, and we’ll miss you sorely when you go on your trip. Until then, stay. Your presence brings light into our house.”

“That’s very generous,” said Henry, looking uneasy, and I wondered if he, like me, was thinking of what we planned to do tonight, in darkness.

*   *   *

After the church bells in Bellerive struck one, first Henry and then Elizabeth joined me in my bedchamber, fully clothed like myself.

By the light of a single candle, I took from the locked drawer in my desk the spirit clock and the green flask of elixir.

“Are you ready?” I said.

Elizabeth was staring at the green flask, chewing on her lower lip. I thought she might be shivering.

“Have you chosen a talisman?” I asked her.

From her wrist she carefully pulled a bracelet made of tightly coiled hair. “It’s from my mother. After she died, my father cut some and had this fashioned for me. It’s one of the only things of hers I have.”

I knew this was a common enough practice, making keepsakes out of the departed’s hair, but I still found something rather ghoulish about it.

Henry cleared his throat. “I would just, at this point, like to make one final—probably doomed—plea for reason. I urge you not to do this.”

“Thank you for that, Henry,” I said. I looked at Elizabeth. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said, “if that’s what you think.”

“I never think you’re afraid,” I told her. “You’re the bravest person I know. But I also know you think this is a—”

“What I
think
is that we’ll both hallucinate and prove this is all nonsense. And that will put a stop to it. But if you’re right, well… then I’ll be proved right as well.”

“How’s that?” I asked, confused.

“If there’s a world beyond our own, a life after death, that means there’s also a God.”

“Does one have to follow upon the other?” I asked.

“You two, please,” said Henry, “not another riveting theological debate right now.”

“So that’s the only reason you’re coming?” I said mockingly. “To make a believer of me?”

She couldn’t help smiling. “To save your miserable little soul, that’s right.”

“Nothing to do with Konrad whatsoever?” I inquired. “Just pass me the elixir.”

She took a deep breath, hesitated for only a second, and then placed a drop upon her tongue and handed the flask to me so I might do the same.

“You can recline on my bed if you like,” I told her.

“I’ll be perfectly comfortable in this armchair, thank you,” she replied, settling herself and gripping her hair bracelet in her left hand. “You have the spirit clock ready?”

“Yes,” I said, lying back against my pillow. “Do you taste it, metallic in your mouth, and feel the strange heat washing through your body?”

She nodded. “Henry, you’ll watch over us carefully?”

“I will indeed,” he promised.

“It comes quickly,” I told her. “The blink of an eye.”

I yawned and—

*   *   *

—look over. There she is, sitting on my chair: Elizabeth.

She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Her amber hair
spills like silk around her radiant face, over her shoulders. Her eyes are open, and she smiles at me. I smile back. There is absolutely nothing between my gaze and her face. It’s like I’m stroking her skin. It feels almost wicked, deliciously so.

There is no need of candlelight, for beyond the windows of my bedchamber comes a surprisingly strong white light from the thick, impenetrable fog.

I push myself up off the bed and stand, feeling that same vital energy coursing through me. And with every step I take, with each hot squeeze of blood through my veins, with each flex and pull of my muscles, I am thrillingly aware of myself as never before. It’s as though every hair on my head, every pore, every surface of my body is twice as sensitive.

There is nothing I could not do here.

I put the spirit clock in my pocket, slip the ring back onto my finger. I step toward Elizabeth. My nostrils flare to take in her scent—her hair, her skin, her breath. Her hazel eyes draw me closer. I have a distant memory of two wolves in the night forest.

“Are we here?” she asks.

It takes me a moment to understand, for
here
is so immediate and real, how could there be anywhere else
but
here and now?

In answer to her question I stretch out my right hand and show her how my two missing fingers have been returned to me. In amazement she frowns and reaches out—and I know, beyond any doubt, that once we touch, we will be unable to resist each other.

But this current of desire is severed suddenly by a few simple notes of music wafting through the air.

Elizabeth lets her hand drop as she stands. “Piano,” she says.

Eagerly she walks past me and opens the door to my bedchamber.

“Konrad played that piece all the time.”

Played it for you,
I think, for I remember how they used to steal away to the music room to be alone.

I follow her as she strides purposefully down the hallway.

“Konrad?” she calls out, and the music abruptly stops. We reach the doors of the music room, and Elizabeth throws them wide and walks in ahead of me.

Half turned on the bench, arm shielding his eyes, is my twin. I see his rapier, tipped up against the piano.

“Elizabeth?” he breathes.

She weeps with total abandon, tears spilling down her cheeks. Despite what I’ve told her, she steps toward Konrad to embrace him.

“I’d give anything to hold you,” my brother says, standing and retreating, “but I can’t.”

“It’s too unfair,” she says, her words jerking out.

“Your heat’s so intense, it nearly sears me, even from this distance.”

I see his eyes move to me briefly, squinting, and he smiles.

“Victor. You came back.”

“I promised I would. This light of ours, we can’t see it.”

“It radiates from you like an aura. You’re like something drawn with the sun’s fire, and I can take only little glimpses of you.”

He stands now before us, his head bowed, like a man awaiting sentence from the magistrate. I feel like both angel and devil,
radiating glorious light but also demonic heat, and once again I feel a surge of excitement to think myself so powerful.

“How long have I been dead?” he asks. “Time seems to have no meaning here.”

“Nearly a month,” Elizabeth tells him. “I never even had the chance to say good-bye to you. It was so sudden.”

“Tell us,” I ask him impetuously. “What was it like?”

“To die? I can’t really say. When I first woke in bed, I was alone. No one answered my calls. So I got up—and was surprised by my strength. I felt completely well, like my old self. I wanted to tell you all, but when I left my room, I couldn’t find anyone. The house was completely deserted, and seemed somehow unfamiliar, even though everything seemed to be in the right place. That was when I first began to wonder if I’d died in my sleep, though I hoped it was just a nightmare. But I didn’t wake.”

“You don’t…
look
dead,” I tell him.

He gives a small laugh. “Well, I’m glad to hear it.”

I am suddenly ravenous with curiosity. “Do you float above things, or do you feel the floor beneath your feet?”

“I feel the floor.”

“And you can open doors, exert force on objects?”