This Monstrous Thing (4 page)

“Then I suppose you lock me up for my own safety, is that it?” he said. “Because I’m fragile and you want to protect me, not because men would run screaming if they saw me.”

“You’re not a monster,” I repeated.

“But Geisler is,” Oliver said, and his voice peaked to a shout. “He killed me—he bleeding
killed me
,
Alasdair—but you want to go to Ingolstadt and keep his mad research going.”

“You’re alive because of that mad research,” I retorted.

“Well, I’d rather be dead!” He snatched up the copy of
Paradise Lost
and flung it against the wall. It opened like wings and fell to the ground with a hollow thud. For a moment, we both stared at it. I could feel the silence between us—thick and gasping like a living presence.

“Don’t say that,” I said. “You don’t mean that.”

Oliver pressed his chin to his chest. “Some days I do.” His voice still shook, but he’d gone quiet again. “Some days I want to tear myself apart.”

“Don’t,” I said quickly. “Don’t . . . do that. I’ll come more. I’ll come stay with you for a bit. I’ll tell Mum and Father I’m going to see about a job with Morand—”

“Just because you don’t scream out loud doesn’t mean I still can’t hear you screaming.” He turned suddenly away from me and leaned forward, forehead to the wall. His silhouette against the firelight was so strange and twisted, like a too-sharp skeleton sewn into empty skin.

I sank backward into the chaise and blew a long breath out through my nose. The goggles around my neck fogged. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not going to Ingolstadt, and I’m not letting you out. It’s horrible out there for people like you.”

“No one is like me,” he replied.

“For clockwork men,” I corrected. “Especially in Geneva. Oliver, people would rip you apart out there. They’d dissect you.”

“I know.” He jammed his pipe between his teeth and slumped down on the chaise beside me. We sat for a while without speaking. A log in the fireplace collapsed into embers, sending a spray of popping sparks up the chimney.

Then I remembered why I’d come today.

“I got you something.” I retrieved my bag from under the desk and pulled out one of the books. “Happy birthday.”

“Is that today?”

“December first, same as every year.” I meant it as a joke, but Oliver didn’t laugh. He took the book from me and stared at the cover like it was a portrait of someone he almost recognized. “Coleridge,” I prompted. “You used to like him. You and . . .” I stopped and swallowed hard. I’d never mentioned Mary, mostly for the sake of my own broken heart, and I didn’t know if Oliver remembered her.

He glanced sideways at me. “Me and who?”

“Just you,” I said. “You liked Coleridge.”

“What does he write?”

“Words.”

He elbowed me sharply with his mechanical arm, and I yelped. It hurt more than I hoped he meant it to. “What sort of
things
, you ninny?”

“Poetry. He’s a poet, I think. I don’t really know.” I reached for the next book on the stack.

“Like one, that on a lonesome road . . .”

I stopped. “What?”

“That’s . . .” He screwed up his face, eyes closed in tight concentration.
“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
.
”

Behind us, another log snapped in the fireplace. “That’s pretty grim,” I said.

“I think that’s Coleridge. I remember it.”

“Oh.” My stomach jolted at the word
remember
. I dumped the rest of the books onto the floor without looking at them and reached for my coat. “Well, you can read it in your spare time, when you’re not tearing the furniture apart.”

Oliver looked up as I stood. “Are you going already?”

“I’ve got somewhere to be.”

I didn’t say
home
,
but I knew Oliver heard it anyway. He tossed the Coleridge book onto the floor next to
Paradise Lost
and pulled his feet up onto the spot I’d just vacated. “Tell your parents I said hello.”

It was a jab wrapped up as a joke, which aggravated me more than if he’d just been mean. “They’re your parents too.”

“I thought that was your honor now. Or do you prefer
creator
?”

“Hell’s teeth, Oliver.” I snatched up my bag and my scarf—I didn’t even bother to put it on, I just wanted away from him so badly. It felt like I was suffocating. “I won’t be by much this week,” I called as I headed for the door. “We’ve got the Christmas market and Father’s going mental over it.”

“Just like every year.”

“Just like every year.”

“I remember that.”

I turned in the doorway and looked back. Oliver was cross-legged on the chaise with his shoulders slumped. He had picked up another book from my pile, and as he turned the pages, he reached up and ran his fingers over his bottom lip—an absent, deep-in-thought gesture I remembered from when we were boys.

I watched his fingers cross his lip, and thought,
I miss you.

He was right there in front of me, close enough to touch. And all I could do was miss him.

I turned the knob behind my back and offered what I hoped was at least close to a smile. “I’ll see you soon,” I said, and retreated into the castle darkness, back toward the setting winter sun, before he could say good-bye.

I
was six minutes late for supper.

When I let myself into our flat above the shop, both my parents were already at the table, Father staring at his pocket watch, Mum looking rather sheepishly at me as though apologizing for the whole show of waiting. I knew it hadn’t been her idea. The table between them was laid with a roast goose, flanked by a dish of leek-and-potato
papet vaudois
and a whipped meringue. It was a far cry from most of our suppers, which were usually cold and
stale and eaten standing up in the workshop between appointments.

Father snapped his pocket watch shut and glared at me over the top of his spectacles. “You’re late, Alasdair.”

Oliver had worn me out, and I was in no mood to joust with my father, so I sank into my place at the table without a word. Mum had put out embroidered napkins, and a bouquet of snowdrop flowers was nestled in a teacup between the candlesticks.

For a long moment, none of us said anything. Mum stared down at her empty plate, Father glared at the goose, and I looked between them, wondering which of us would speak first.

It was Father who finally raised his glass. I thought he would make a speech, because he was always one for lectures, but he simply said, “Happy birthday, Oliver.” His features sat in their practiced scowl, but I saw the tremor in his jaw as he finished, “You are missed.”

Mum nodded, her thumb pressed against her lips.

Father looked over at me, and I dropped my eyes to my own glass. “Would you like to say something about your brother, Alasdair?” he asked. “Something you remember.”

There were so many things I remembered about Oliver, but the harder I tried to cling to them the faster they seemed to slip away. The images of our vagabond youth—children of the Shadow Boys, back when we
were knotted so tight together—had been washed away by my latest memories of him in Château de Sang, raging and snarling and tearing apart the furniture. The fight in him that I had once admired had been transformed from glowing and bright into something you could fall and cut yourself on, and that was what was left of him—a man I didn’t know who wore his ill-fitting skin and spoke in his voice. My brother, obliterated by himself.

All at once I felt like crying, and I stared hard at my fingers around my glass to stop my eyes from burning. The scars on my hand from the loose gears and wires on resurrection night flickered from red to white. The flesh memories of the nights I had killed my brother, and brought him back to life.

“To Oliver,” I said, and I drained my glass in one swallow.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

M
orand came by the shop the next afternoon to collect his arm.

He was a short, stocky fellow about my father’s age with a head of thick graying hair that he wore long and loose. We saw him twice a year, consistent as clockwork, when he left his boardinghouse in Ornex for Geneva to pick up false identification papers for the clockwork men and women he harbored. The forgeries left mechanical parts unlisted, which made it easier to get a job and travel.

Morand liked a good catch-up when he came, so it was usually Father who did the installation, but today he let me take Morand back into the workshop on my own. I thought that meant he was beginning to let out my lead,
until he murmured, “We’ll see about your half-inch stock” as I passed him behind the counter.

Inside the workshop, I did a quick lap around to light the lamps. Morand shifted my breakfast dishes off the chair and settled down, already rolling up his sleeve over the tarnished socket fused to his elbow.

“So how’s Geneva treating the Finches?” he asked as I tugged my magnifying goggles over my eyes and hefted the clockwork arm up from the workbench.

“Good. Fine.” I fit the arm into the socket, twisting until the bolts lined up, then started to tighten them. The gears settled with a soft groan.

Morand laughed. “I forgot, you aren’t the chatty one, are you? Your brother used to—” He stopped and looked down at the floor.

I kept my eyes on my work. “You can talk about him. I don’t mind.”

He grunted, then rolled back his shoulder as I finished with the bolts. “He was always one for a good conversation, Oliver Finch. You look just like him, you know.”

I mustered a smile and reached behind me for the pulse gloves. As I moved, the lamplight caught a bronze badge in the shape of a cog pinned to the lapel of Morand’s coat, same as the old man on the omnibus had been wearing the day before.

Morand caught me staring at it and grinned. “Are you admiring my Frankenstein badge?”

I nearly dropped the gloves. “What did you call it?” I asked, though I’d heard him clearly. I could see the word spelled out in gold leaf on the spine of the book Mary had sent.

“Frankenstein badge. Haven’t you heard that? It’s what my boarders coming out of Geneva call them. All the clockworks here have to wear them now.”

“I know,” I said quickly. “I just hadn’t heard them called that before.”

“Have you read it—
Frankenstein
?” he asked as I strapped on the pulse gloves and started to get a charge building between them. “Nobody knows who wrote it, not even the newspapers. I heard it’s about Geisler, though. Your family doesn’t speak to him anymore, do you?”

“No.” The electric current gathering between my hands snapped like an affirmation. “Why would someone write a book about Geisler? He’s still a wanted man in most places.”

Morand shrugged. “It might not be about him, but it’s a definitely about a Shadow Boy. I don’t know, I haven’t read it, I just hear about it from my boarders. Something about clockwork men and whether or not we’re actually human. And then there’s a doctor in it who makes a mechanical monster from a corpse and it turns on him.”

“Hell’s teeth.”

“Sounds like Geisler’s work, doesn’t it? It’s set here in
Geneva as well. I sort of expected the whole city to be in an uproar over it. It’s quieter than I expected.”

“Well, we’ve got to behave for Christmas.”

He laughed as he stretched out his legs. “I had a man come from Geneva a few weeks ago called Emile Brien. Got his leg blown off at Waterloo and walks on cogs now. You know him?” I shook my head. “He said he was enlisted by a group of clockworks here who are trying to get some trouble started. Know anything about that?”

“No.” I suddenly realized the plates on my hands were crackling with current—I’d been so intent on what he was saying I’d forgotten them. I touched my palms to the conducting plates on Morand’s arm and a bolt tore from the gloves into the machinery.

I knew I was right about the half-inch stock, but I still held my breath as the gears leapt to life and interlaced, smooth and soundless as the summer Rhone. No sparks or broken teeth. No sticky ratchet. And no strain on the center wheel. Morand bent his arm a few times, then worked the silver fingers in and out of a fist.

“Feel all right?” I asked.

“Outstanding,” he replied. “Well done, Alasdair.”

I nodded like it was all business, but I was pleased. Father would have to admit I’d been right about the half-inch stock. He was brilliant in matters of flesh and blood—back in Scotland, before he’d been recruited by Geisler for his fleet of Shadow Boys, he’d been a navy surgeon—but only
passable at machinery. He’d never admit that cogs and gears spoke to me in a way they never had to him. Father was a doctor, same way I was a mechanic. Some things you just are, deep and true inside your bones.

Morand retrieved his hat from where he’d hung it on the back of the chair. “Tell your father if he ever tires of Geneva, I have a job for him. My boarders could use a Shadow Boy. Or maybe you’re interested. You’ve got quite the talent for it.” He looked at me like he thought I would answer, but when I stayed silent, he added, “Or, God forbid, if you’re ever in trouble, you can always find your way to Ornex. You know that. So do your parents.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He extended his metal hand and I shook it. “You’re a good lad, Alasdair,” he said. “Be certain you stay that way.”

I hung back in the workshop when Morand went to say his good-byes to Father. As soon as the door hissed shut behind him, I reached for my bag and the copy of
Frankenstein
Mary had sent. I’d rather have my teeth pulled out than read most books, but I’d be damned if I didn’t slog my way through one about Geisler and his work.

It wasn’t there. I emptied the bag, ran my hands along the pocket, even held the whole thing upside down like an idiot, but the book was gone. I thought for a moment I’d left it up in the flat, but I’d stowed my bag in the workshop before going upstairs to dinner. Perhaps I’d left it on the bus or dropped it on the way up to the castle. Perhaps I’d
given it to Oliver by mistake with the other books.

I groaned aloud at that thought. If it was truly about Geisler, that was the last book in the world I wanted him reading. I’d have to go by later and see if I’d left it.

But it was already late. Father would have things for me to do, and wouldn’t let me slip away as easily as he had the day before. I could go tomorrow, I thought, but then remembered we had the Christmas market. The next day, maybe, but I knew I’d be exhausted. Perhaps after that. Wait until Sunday, when everything was settled.

A thousand reasons not to go.

I lamented less the loss of the book and more Mary’s letter that had been tucked inside it. I cursed myself for not reading it as soon as I got it. Damn Jiroux and the clockwork veteran on the bus. Damn my stupidity for losing it. Damn the way Mary still had a hold of me, my heart as true as a compass.

I still couldn’t fathom why she’d sent the book. Perhaps she’d heard it was about Geisler. She’d known we were familiar with him, and she’d left Geneva before he and Father had their proper falling-out over Oliver’s death, so she wouldn’t know we’d parted ways. Perhaps she’d seen it was about clockwork and thought of me. Or perhaps she meant it as a warning. I thought of that small brass badge blinking up from Morand’s lapel.

I pulled my legs up on the bench and stretched out,
lying flat on my back and staring up at the dark shadows that the lamplight carved on the pocked ceiling. Mary had been nineteen the last time I saw her. She’d be twenty-one now, same age as Oliver was. Would have been. I wasn’t certain how I was meant to measure that anymore. We had that dreary summer together and the warm fall that followed it—Mary, Oliver, and I, thick as thieves, my mum had called us. Until Mary came along, I hadn’t known what it was like to sit in the sunshine on the lakeshore and think about absolutely nothing except the pale triangle of freckles peering from the bunched neckline of her dress. Life had never been that simple before, and certainly hadn’t been since.

Mary, the first girl I ever loved. First girl I ever kissed. The girl who’d dug up my brother’s body with me. The sorts of things that stay with you.

The workshop door hissed, and I sat up as Mum appeared in the doorway. “You want some supper?”

“If you’re offering.”

“Come upstairs, then, it’s hot. Your father’s closing up early to get things in order for tomorrow. Were you sleeping?”

“No.” I looped my arms around my knees. “Just thinking.”

She came and sat beside me on the workbench. We weren’t a very familiar family—never had been—but she
put her hand on top of my knee and her thumb worked in a slow circle. “It’s a hard time of year, isn’t it?” she said, and I knew she wasn’t talking about the Christmas market. Then, like she’d overheard my thoughts, she asked, “What did Miss Godwin send you?”

“A book. And a letter.”

“What did she have to say?”

I didn’t want to admit I’d lost it, so I said, “Just a hello. Nothing important.”

“Is that the first time she’s written to you?” When I nodded, Mum made a soft humming noise with her lips pursed. “She was such a strange creature, wasn’t she? Always running around with you two.”

“Oliver and I weren’t
that
strange.”

Her mouth twitched. “I meant . . . well, there are rules about that sort of thing. About a young woman being out on her own with two lads. Though that never seemed to bother her. She was so contrary.”

“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,” I said without thinking, then laughed. It was what Oliver and I used to call her—I had forgotten until I heard myself say it. Mistress Mary, quite contrary, like the nursery rhyme, because Mary seemed not only to ignore the rules everyone else lived by—like ladies don’t drink beer in pubs, they don’t say exactly what they think about clockwork rights, they don’t go gallivanting around Geneva with Shadow Boys—but to make a display of how much she didn’t care to follow them.

Maybe it was the book from Mary, or maybe it was seeing Oliver, or maybe it was both those things squashed together in one day, but all at once I remembered standing at the top of one of the grassy foothills with the pair of them, the sky above us gray and rumbling with a storm. Oliver was saying we were going to race down to the tumbled pine tree on the lakeshore where we launched our rowboat when we didn’t have money to use the docks.

“Wait a moment,” Mary interrupted, and bent down like she was going to take off her shoes, but suddenly she was hiking her skirts up around her waist, so high I could see her stockings up to her knees. All the blood left my head so fast I nearly fainted, and I turned away on reflex, though I would have been happy to keep staring. Next to me, Oliver was looking pointedly up at the sky, but when he caught my eye, we both started to laugh.

“What?” Mary demanded. “Running properly in skirts is a nightmare.”

We looked at each other again, then chorused, “Mistress Mary, quite contrary.”

“Oh, don’t pretend like a lady’s legs are the most shocking thing you’ve ever seen, Shadow Boys.” She swatted at us, and we dodged in the same direction and smashed shoulders, which just made us laugh harder. Mary took advantage of our hysterics and shouted, “Ready, go!” Then she took off down the slope without looking back.

Oliver shoved me off him with a shout and started to
run, and I took off after. The tall grass was still sparkling with that morning’s rain, and it whacked sharp and wet against my shins. I was faster than Oliver—always had been—and I had passed him before the ground began to slope in earnest. He made a grab for the back of my shirt to slow me down, but I skated away. “Dammit, Alasdair,” he shouted, and though he tried to sound cross that I was winning, a laugh shattered inside it.

I passed Mary as well and slammed into the tree ahead of both of them. Clutching at the stitch in my side, I turned back and watched them hurtle toward me, Mary with her skirts flapping around her knees and her hair coming loose as the wind grabbed at it, Oliver just behind her, his steps so high that each one seemed a leap.

And in that moment I remember a very clear and sudden certainty that there was no one in the whole world that I needed but them.

“How long has it been since Miss Godwin left Geneva?” Mum asked, and I had to blink hard to clear that overcast sunshine from my mind.

“Two years,” I said.
Same as Oliver.

W
e didn’t say much over supper. Father was eating at top speed, and I swore I could feel him making mental lists of everything that needed to be in order before the morning. Then he put down his fork and looked across the table at me. “I spoke to Morand before he left
today.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “He said he offered you a job.”

Mum looked up as well. “Alasdair?”

I tore a piece of bread in half and traced the rim of my plate with it. “Not really. He just said he could use a Shadow Boy in Ornex. I think he meant it more for you than me.”