“How are you feeling?” Eliza asked as she placed the bowl in front of him along with a cup of lukewarm tea.
“Tired.”
She stood at the sideboard and watched him slowly bring spoonfuls of broth to his mouth as her husband busied himself beside her. “Well, you look much better even if you do not feel better yet.”
James leaned closer and whispered into her ear, “His name is Immanuel Winter. He is highly malnourished, has a broken nose and cheekbone, and a fever probably due to more than an infection.”
“What are you not telling me?” she replied, keeping her voice low enough that the man and Emmeline could not hear.
The doctor swallowed hard. “I do not know if he will survive the night.”
Eliza sighed and stirred the pot of soup. “I told Emmeline about Madeline.”
“And?”
“She already knew.”
Emmeline crinkled her nose as the taste and smell of her dinner was invaded by the astringent tang of alcohol and iodine from the man sitting across from her. His hand trembled as he repeatedly dipped into the bowl, causing the spoon to dance and clank against the side of the china with each mouthful. Her lip curled at the sight of him slurping and struggling to keep the liquid in his mouth between noisy spoonfuls.
When Immanuel finally looked up at the girl sitting opposite him, the breath hitched in his throat. He recognized her. She was the girl from the river, the girl with the owl eyes and the sprig of forget-me-nots in her hair. Emmeline raised an eyebrow at his unnerving stare and glared back at him. Immanuel drew in a deep breath and choked down the thickness in his throat.
“You saved me?” he asked, his voice clearly audible for once.
She looked around to see who the creature was speaking to but realized it was her. “I guess.”
He swallowed hard again. “Thank you, miss.” Why did she not recognize him? It couldn’t have been that long ago that she stared up at him and spit a mouthful of muddy Thames water into his lap. “Did… did they hurt you?”
“No,” Emmeline responded curtly as she fought the urge to leave the table since she no longer had an appetite, “now, if you will excuse me I—”
A thin hand clamped down on her shoulder and held her in her seat. “Emmeline,” her aunt reprimanded with a smile, “you have not finished your dinner yet, and it would be rude to leave before our guest is finished.”
Somewhere within the darkened rooms of the house, two clocks chimed together as they struck two, but the Hawthornes were more awake than they had been all day. Eliza watched the young man sedately sipping his tea with quavering hands and wondered how thin he must be for her husband’s shirt collar to hang from his neck and the sleeves to rumple with uninhabited fabric.
Immanuel held the cup to his lips, but each time he put it down, it grew heavier as if it was being refilled with lead. When he peered into the teacup, he realized it was empty. His hand trembled as a chill passed through him, sending the ceramic cup to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered weakly as he looked up at Eliza and James.
She quickly bustled over to the other side of the table and plucked the unblemished cup from the rug. “No harm done, Immanuel.”
As she stood at his side to see if he needed anything else, he picked up his spoon and dropped it back into the bowl. His ribs rose and fell rapidly as his eye drooped shut against his will. No matter how hard he tried to keep his eyes open and his head up, he couldn’t fight the fatigue. Eliza pressed her hand to his forehead and felt the excessive heat radiating from his flushed skin. She patted his shoulder and called his name, but he only mumbled under his breath with his eyes shut as his head lolled back.
“James, he is losing consciousness,” Mrs. Hawthorne cried as she supported his slumping form. “His fever is spiking.”
The doctor ran to the other side of the table and checked his patient’s eye and pulse. “He wasn’t this hot before. Eliza, open his bedroom door for me and grab my bag from the bathroom.”
Emmeline watched as her uncle slipped his arms under the young man’s legs and shoulders before hoisting him up to carry him up the stairs. His long, thin limbs dangled lifeless from the doctor’s arms, and from behind, it was as if he was not a person but the pale form of a statue or doll. She listened for a moment as their steps faded away on the third floor and sighed as she looked around the empty room and her empty plate. Leaving her dishes on the table, she ventured into the kitchen, hoping to find a tin of biscuits or at least something interesting enough to pass the time until she could leave. She refused to go upstairs to her bedroom for fear of being asked to help them. Becoming a nursemaid was the last thing she wanted to do.
***
Dr. Hawthorne laid Immanuel across the bed as Eliza rushed in behind him with his Gladstone bag. She piled up the pillows to raise his head and shoulders high enough to ease his labored breathing. His rapid hyperventilating rattled his emaciated body and whistled through his throat with each exhalation. As James ripped open the man’s shirt with buttons flying and listened to his pounding heart with his stethoscope, his wife disappeared into the small bathroom down the hall. The water sloshed out of the basin as Eliza ran back in and slipped the shirt off Immanuel’s back and arms. She dipped towel after towel into the water before laying them all over his body, especially his feet and forehead. To bring his temperature down even further, she threw open the window to let the cool night air naturally sweep away his fever. After half an hour in the cold, his eye opened no more than a crack and roamed over his room and the concerned faces peering down at him. James listened to his heartbeat again, counting them as they rushed past in a frantic tattoo.
“He is still tachycardic.”
Eliza pinched the flesh on the back of Immanuel’s hand and watched as it slowly sunk back into place. “It may be from dehydration. If the blood is thicker, it is harder to pump.”
Dr. Hawthorne nodded as he lifted Immanuel higher onto the pillows until he was sitting upright with the back of his head leaning against the headboard. Using the leftover water, Eliza filled the glass from his bedside table and put it to his lips. Between weak, puffing coughs, he swallowed sips of water. The thoughts that came so easily during dinner seemed to have slipped from the thread and dispersed before he could catch them. Immanuel weakly swatted the cup away as his heart skipped and drummed faster than he ever thought possible. It writhed and squeezed ineffectively until finally it collapsed into convulsions. Dr. Hawthorne watched with wide eyes as the young man clawed at his chest and drew in a constrained breath before falling limply against the pillows. The flame had blown out.
“Immanuel!” he called as he rubbed the bones of his chest over his heart to wake him but received no response. James placed his ear over his breast and heard only the faint sigh of air escaping his lungs. “Immanuel, please wake up.”
***
Emmeline paused with her arm elbow deep in a tin of stale, chalky biscuits and listened to the distant cry of her uncle’s voice. Through two floors of wood and plaster, she could barely hear the chaos going on only two doors from her bedroom. Venturing through the parlor and study, the seventeen year old hadn’t found a single novel or magazine amid the shelves of medical texts and encyclopedias. Her mother had led her to her uncle’s house, but why? Couldn’t she have showed her the way to the London Spiritualist Society instead? Someone, anyone, there could have given her a better place to stay than in the house of two doctors and collectors of macabre preserved specimens. The bloated and malformed organs had nearly caused her to lose her dinner.
Sticking one more crumbly biscuit between her lips, she stowed the tin in the back of the cupboard and carefully climbed down the creaking stool. When her feet reached the floor, she took a bite, wiping her hands on the pigeon grey fabric of Eliza’s dress, which had been pinned at the hem to keep her from stepping on it. Through her crunching, James’s voice rang out indecipherably again. Her lungs seized, but as she fought to cough and spit
out the remnants of cracker, only a feeble puff of flour dust escaped. Emmeline was poised to move, yet her hands and legs refused to budge. A bubble formed in her chest, squeezing her heart until her vision became fuzzy and her body sagged under its weight. With each lost breath and beat, the kitchen grew darker. At the edge of her vision, a swath of purple satin swept by, nearly touching her. Her skin tingled as if a draft had penetrated her hair and her dress, and as the wind whipped away, her lungs expanded and her body pitched forward as she caught the teetering stool. All that remained of the baffling sensation was the barely discernable scent of honey and vanilla.
***
The color rapidly seeped from Immanuel’s body as the doctor dug through his bag, searching for the tiny vial that might help to revive him. He sucked the solution of caffeine into a syringe and injected it into the boy’s arm. It might bring his pressure up. It may bring him back. James and Eliza stared down in hopes he would stir, but he remained as still and battered as before. His ashen skin clung to the bones of his face and neck, revealing the armature of his body except where some villain had broken his features and bloated them beyond recognition. His pain was finally gone, but the remnants of brutality were forever etched into his features, never to be healed. Tears crept into James’s eyes against his will. He had failed Immanuel Winter; he had failed the first living patient who truly needed him. As he reached to close the blue eye that peeked out into nothingness, it snapped open, and a loud gasp broke from his lips. The color slowly flowed back into Immanuel’s lips and cheeks with each breath and beat that came at a steady cadence.
The doctor smoothed back the young man’s golden hair and smiled. “You are a remarkable lad. Close your eyes, and soon you will get better, my boy.”
Dr. Hawthorne excused himself, leaving the young man in his wife’s more than capable hands. Standing outside the door, he drew in and released measured breaths until the adrenaline died away into the familiar, aching memory of panic and fear. Every time James closed his eyes, he saw the boy’s split face and skeletal body as he grasped for the life that seeped out of him. It had been several years since he had a live patient in need of so much care, and his first patient nearly died on his watch. School had taught him facts and treatments, techniques and causes, but they had never taught him how to tell a mother she no longer had a child. His stomach churned at the realization that if Immanuel Winter died, he never would have known whom to tell, and a woman somewhere would have always wondered why her son never came home. A potter’s grave for the mysterious boy would have haunted the doctor until they met again on the other side.
ACT TWO:
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
-Oscar Wilde
Chapter Ten:
Sickness and Soul-Stealing
“Do you think they will go to the police?” Higgins asked, his voice crackling as he crinkled his papers and dithered between the back parlor windows.
“Did she see you?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then, how could she identify you?”
The scientist stared down at the nobleman as he languidly drew on his cigarette and let the smoke billow from his mouth and nose. “You’re awfully calm, Lord Rose. Aren’t you afraid the German boy saw you?”
“No, and even if he did remember what I looked like, he does not know who I am.” Mashing the burned out butt into the ashtray beside the divan, he rose. Without breaking eye contact with the jittery little man, he drew closer until he loomed over him and Higgins could taste the ash on his breath. “What I am upset about is how your little experiment was an absolute waste of time! We gained nothing from it, and you promised me results, Higgins.”
Higgins took a step back, but Lord Rose matched him step for step. He swallowed hard before double checking his creased notes for anything he could tell the imposing man to pacify him. “I could only change one variable at a time, but maybe— maybe phase two would have yielded better data. I was certain if we hit him, it would affect her. We should have started with her first.”
Alastair snatched the papers from his shaking hands, ripped them in two, and threw them into the hearth. The man’s gaunt face twisted in agony as almost three months of work curled and crumbled into blackened dust before his eyes. As he reached in to gather what little bits he could salvage, a claw clamped down on his shoulder and dragged him to his feet. Higgins hung helplessly in Lord Rose’s grasp, forced to meet his patron’s jacinth irises, which seemed to absorb the glow of the hearth and reflect it back in a blaze of rage.
“Forget the experiment, Higgins. We are no closer than we were before to understanding it. You said you had something else to show me. It had better be worth my time because I am in no mood for more of your idiocy. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir! Of course, Lord Rose,” he sputtered as he was released from his grasp and darted toward the two wooden boxes he brought with him to Mayfair.
He unhinged the lid and withdrew a contraption of brass, glass, and wires about the size of a typewriter. The main apparatus resembled a pair of binoculars turned on end with an empty glass jar on one side and an identical one filled with a translucent yet brown-tinted liquid on the other. Holding them in place was a web of curved brass straps laid out like ribs to protect the delicate vessels, but at the shoulder, a long string of intertwined tubes and wires trailed from the solution to a gauntlet of black leather and shining metal. Rubber covered the delicate cables and branched into a strap that fit snuggly into the palm for better grip and comfort. A brace covered the first two fingers and terminated in three long, viper-like fangs. Lord Rose ran his hand over the skeletal apparatus before slipping it into the electric gauntlet. Shrugging the weighty device onto his back, he adjusted the straps and stretched his arm until the cord fell into place.
“What is it?”
“It is a portable version of the machine your predecessor created. Technology has advanced a lot in thirty years, and I couldn’t let you revive the prince consort with a bulky, outdated machine,” he answered with a grin, revealing his crooked and yellowed teeth. “If you can persuade Dr. Hawthorne to finish his part of the project, you won’t need the boy’s potion.”
“How does it work?”
“In the case of your business with the Crown, you simply load Prince Albert’s vial where the empty jar is, flip this switch,” the scientist explained as he turned it on and the machine awoke with a gurgling, crackling growl, “insert the prongs into the side of the corpse’s neck, and pull the trigger in the palm of the gauntlet. The more interesting aspect of this machine is it has the opposite function when the switch is flipped the other way.” His thin voice vacillated with excitement as he clicked it down. “If the prongs go into a living person and you pull the trigger, electricity will flood the body while the solution goes into the empty jar. This makes the jar the same charge as the body normally is and draws the soul out of the body and into the container.”
Alastair watched as Higgins turned back to the second box and kept his voice level and calm. “This is quite ingenious, Higgins. I am impressed that you were able to condense Leopold’s creation from the size of a man into a breadbox. Do you have reserve jars and solution?”
The self-satisfied smile refused to leave his lips. “Oh, yes, I have plenty of it in the lab.”
Lord Rose flexed his fingers until the gauntlet sat as comfortably in his hand as a pair of brass knuckles. The cords and veins in the scientist’s gaunt neck bulged each time he reached inside the bin, unaware of the other man’s probing gaze. As Higgins turned around with a second jar in his hand, Alastair plunged the fangs into the man’s neck and squeezed the trigger. Electricity rushed through his body, contorting his muscles and making his eyes pop further in their sockets. The nobleman stared into his eyes and watched as the light drained out of them. Higgins slumped to the floor, but his eyes and mouth remained open in surprise. On his neck were three
red pinpricks arranged in a triangle that barely bled. Alastair removed the machine before powering it down and opening the latch that held the brass webbing in place. He unscrewed the jar with its self-healing membrane and stared into it. At first it seemed empty, but something inside shimmered as it drifted around the edge. Stepping over the body, the nobleman pulled the bell-rope and lit another cigarette.
***
Adam Fenice held down the skeletal doorbell again as he tried to shield his bag of books from the glacial November rain. He was about to turn around and leave when the front door opened and a dark-haired young woman stood staring up at him. Her eyes ran over his coiffed henna hair and pencil mustache before surveying his bright blue eyes and handsome features with keen interest.
“Hello, is Eliza home?” he asked slowly as she continued to eye his motley waistcoat.
She stepped out of the way to let him in as she noted the family resemblance. “Are you her cousin?”
“Yes, and you are James’s niece?” When Emmeline nodded, he bowed and gently brought her hand to his lips. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Jardine. I have heard so much about you.”
Her cheeks reddened as he followed her into the parlor. “And you, Mr. Fenice.”
As Emmeline moved to take a seat on the sofa, he offered her his bag. “I believe Eliza said you wanted some books to read.”
The girl let out a high-pitched squeal of delight and snatched the leather satchel from his hand. She threw it open and pulled book after book into her lap with child-like abandon until her entire hoard was on display. There weren’t any penny-dreadfuls or Jack Harkaway adventures, but there was plenty of romance and adventure to be had between the covers of Austen and the Bröntes to keep her occupied for a while. There was even a book of Shakespeare’s plays from which she could become all the passionate and witty women of comedy and tragedy. That was all she wanted, to be anyone but herself and escape for a little while.
The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 34