by Scott Thomas
Joseph Warren’s Invention
One
Ever since that day in the shade and summer dampness of his grandmother’s garden, Joseph Warren believed there was a dimension of reality that others rarely glimpsed. While the wispy grey hand had appeared only briefly, groping the air before slithering back beneath the clustered mums, it had imprinted deeply upon him, more so than the echoy Sunday morning jargon of the priests. Their stilted renderings of soul and spirit and afterlife paled in comparison to the proof that his own four-year-old eyes had witnessed.
Two
Joseph, aged forty-seven, slept little now that his young Molly’s condition was deteriorating more quickly than he had anticipated. The day and most of the night was spent in his workshop. The few remaining hours of the day he kept vigil by her bed, dozing sporadically.
Sometimes he was awakened by her voice and felt fleetingly hopeful, but her words were the work of delirium, as one look at her failing beauty reassured.
The ephemeral ten-year-old machine that housed Molly’s soul had become a frightful thing. The typhoid had started as it had with his wife, the flat red spots on her chest, then the fatigue and fever, the glassy eyes and hollowing pallor. If God existed, the man mused, Molly had been a glorious testament to His artistry. But the basic construction was flawed; the human body was too complicated, too frail—Joseph had made his fortune designing more efficient, more permanent devices.
The man bent close to the sleeping girl, a tender hand on the damp gold of her bangs and whispered, “Don’t go yet, my dearest, I’m not finished.”
A stone-coloured sky settled over Grafton and the Blackstone River rushed through the woods, past the brick mills clattering and whirring with the machines Joseph Warren and the other inventors of that age had devised. The world of men was moving faster, driven by a metal heart, the Industrial Revolution well underway—new opportunities for convenience and toil, depending upon one’s social position. Trains rattled and hissed across the New England countryside, their smokestacks poking up through the trees like burning top hats. Joseph only half heard as they rumbled by, not far from his house.
The morose face of a boy appeared in one of the workshop windows. Joseph waved angrily.
“Off with you, Franklin!”
His son flinched and was gone. He had been warned many times not to disturb his father, especially now that there was a vital task at hand. Joseph turned back to the table and the strange figure upon it.
Time had betrayed him; he had hoped for the chance to create something more appealing, but Molly was going faster than her mother had, so he was forced to make do. Joseph’s creation was a facsimile of the human form comprised of wood and metal, a skeletal thing with an unfinished face. It was his intention to have a skilled craftsman carve and paint his daughter’s likeness for the wooden head—there would be time for those details later, but the major elements could not wait.
Determined not to tremble, Joseph inserted a small glass globe into the chest of the thing, between the black iron ribs. His fingers lingered on the glass long after it was fastened and he prayed to whatever would listen.
“You loved me,” Franklin said, sitting on the cool grass, a hand on the cool stone that bore his mother’s name. “Adolly loves me, too, or at least she did; I’m not so certain now; she seems not to recognize me. When she is gone I will have no one.”
A crow spoke, a breeze shifted the leaves above and they let out quiet voices. Wildflowers, gathered by the nine-year-old boy, lay wilting.
“Father never cared for me. Now he shoos me away as if I were a dog. He cared only for her. She was his prize. He taunts me, says that she, even in her wasting state, is filled with more life than I have ever exhibited. She was always filled with glee and he showed her off like a painting, but no longer. She’s not so pretty anymore.”
The trees conversed further—a timid language of wind.
“I think Father is going mad,” Franklin said, “Doctor Hawes says as much. He’s building a machine to hold Molly’s soul, you see. When she...”
The boy rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“When she dies, he expects her soul will go into the thing he’s making so that she might live forever.”
The boy reached down to a deflating posy and picked off a petal. “I can’t imagine someone wanting to live forever, not that she has any say in the matter.”
Three
Late August saw the year nodding toward autumn; the first colours were on the trees and the bracken fanging the edge of the woods behind the house took on a jaundiced hue. Even the house looked weary, though towering and impressive with its steep gabled roof and wraparound porch.
The shadows lingered longer and dusk pressed to the white clapboards as if trying to digest them.
Joseph rushed to light more candles as the dark crept into his workshop, then he made some adjustments to the figure on the increasingly cluttered table that dominated the room. There was a small valve leading into the front of the central globe that, with a switch-mechanism, could be sealed readily when the time came. A flexible copper tube would be fitted to the opening for the actual transference, the opposite end of that shaped into a mask that would fit over Molly’s nose and mouth.
The man was desperate now, ever mindful of the possibility that Molly could expire before the project was completed. He no longer resembled himself—a man of power and wealth—and even the servants looked at him as if he were some feral and volatile creature. One night, having worked in the shop past the toll of midnight, he had caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror and been startled by what he saw. Now his distorted image showed in the glass dome that would house his daughter’s soul as if he, in miniature, were trapped inside.
There came a familiar knock at the door. It was the walrus-like Doctor Hawes, his small sympathetic eyes above gravity-tempted spectacles. He entered and nodded a greeting, closing the door behind him.
Joseph glanced up from his work. “Doctor.”
“Hello my friend.” The doctor regarded the progress, touched the smooth wooden forearm of the thing on the table. “I don’t think it will be long now...”
Joseph did not respond.
“Joseph, I think you should prepare yourself. This mannequin of yours will not work. You must come to terms with the situation.” “When I was a boy,” Joseph said, “I saw a hand—a ghostly thing— rise up from the bed of my grandmother’s garden. I have known, since that day, that the body is a mere machine, that the true essence of a person survives—all it needs is another vehicle to occupy.”
The doctor sighed. “All right, what if your experiment works, what sort of existence would Molly have? Have you considered that? How will she see without eyes, hear with no ears? How will she communicate?”
Joseph lifted one of the creation’s hands, the sharp black metal fingers glinting. “She will write.”
“Without eyes?”
Joseph turned and snarled. “I will make her eyes and ears and a voice! Once she is safely in the machine, I will have time to make further modifications. I will not stand by and see her spirit abandoned, like that hand in the garden.”
“I’m sorry, Joseph,” Doctor Hawes said, backing toward the door. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
Four
Franklin buried the last of the toys in the apple-scented shade of the tree where he and Molly used to sit, when youth seemed an inexhaustible cup and summer ran warm in their blood. He knelt on the upturned earth, amidst the fallen fruit, clasped his dirty hands and prayed for the toys, for wasn’t it true that children imbued their playthings with a magic essence derived from their very spirits? This entombing of the toys was a ritual worthy of prayer.
Afterwards, Franklin sat on a low branch, legs dangling, hating everything, even the empty air beside him—vast and betraying—where Molly once sat. He could see the distant house and the predatory dusk that crowded around it and the lights in his father’s shop. Hours passed until
, at last, the windows went black and still Franklin waited. No one came looking for him.
The house was silent and dark when Franklin returned, his small feet barely creaking on the steps that led to the bedchambers. A light flickered gold in the hall and he listened at the door before stealing in.
A single lamp shone weakly and the room was filled with the sound of breathing, damp resonating sounds like drowning wings. Molly lay in her bed, small and pale, her dark mouth open, her hollow eyes themselves like shadowy mouths. Their father was slumped in a chair by the bed, his chin on his chest, his face frightful in its own right, more shadow than flesh. The strange faceless figure of skeletal wood and metal lay beside Molly.
Franklin moved quietly to the bed and found his sister’s damp hand. He kissed it and whispered, “Goodbye.”
Five
Joseph’s dream was a succession of memories. Molly, four years old, had wandered away (as was her custom) from the rest of the party picnicking near Hoccomocco Pond in Westborough, where Joseph’s brother lived. She bounded down, close to the water, a clump of bread clenched in each hand. The tall black and brown geese intrigued her. She flung a piece of bread and chuckled as two of the birds came waddling. Another bit of bread brought more geese, honking and eager— the others standing by the dark water turned their attention her way.
By the time Joseph reached the girl she was nearly in tears, running away from the twelve or more charging geese. He scooped her up and the birds milled expectantly.
“They mean to eat me!” the girl cried.
Joseph held her tightly to his chest, her rabbit heart racing.
“Nothing will ever harm you,” Joseph had assured her.
He saw her again at age six; it was dusk and she was humming, poking in the herb garden with a stick, trying to locate the shooting star that had carved a brief arc of light across the sky. Then there was the time he found her crying by the goat pen—her doll had fallen in and been wrenched apart by the strange-eyed beasts.
He saw her at seven, holding his hand as they watched where the sinking August sun had stained the sky pink above the Grafton hills. He saw her tragic blue eyes as her mother’s box was lowered into the earth, felt her small warm hand as she reached up to push his tears away.
A rasping sound jolted Joseph from his dream. He turned to the bed and saw Molly’s face. It was white and wide-eyed, the mouth hollow.
“No—wait, Molly, wait!”
Joseph leapt at the bed, grabbed the copper tubing that ran to the globe in the chest of the queer figure beside her, and pressed the mask end over the girl’s mouth.
“Please, Molly, please...”
He waited a number of minutes, trembling, looking from the girl to his invention and back.
Neither stirred.
“Please.”
Joseph worked the switch to close the soul inside the globe, hoping that there was indeed a soul inside. Again he waited, but nothing happened.
“I am too late,” Joseph moaned, turning away at last. “I have lost her.”
The man covered his face with his hands and sobbed.
Doctor Hawes, who had dozed off in one of the library chairs, was awakened by the sound of the wood and metal creation toppling down the cellar stairs where Joseph had thrown it. He found Joseph standing in the door frame, glaring down into the dark, muttering to himself.
“Joseph?”
The man spoke without turning, “I was too late, Doctor.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Hawes led the other man into the library and gave him brandy.
“You’re certain she’s—”
“Go see for yourself,” Joseph groaned.
The doctor took up his bag and slipped from the room. Joseph sat staring into the black of the fireplace, numb, only half-hearing the train that rumbled through the close woods. Once the train had passed, the silence returned.
Presently, there came a sound beneath the floor, then quiet, then another sound, like a heavy foot on the wooden steps of the cellar. Joseph sat forward, put down his glass. Another step sounded below.
The man rushed to the basement door and flung it open, staring down into the musty gloom. Was that a faint bluish glow, he wondered, squinting. A distinct thud on the steps.
“Molly?”
He could see it now, his eyes adjusting, the thin figure coming up the stairs, the glossy wood of the arms, the soft gleam of metal ribs and the unfinished face emerging from the blackness.
“It is you, my Molly, it is you!”
A final step brought the figure a mere foot from its creator.
“Molly?”
The figure’s arm came up suddenly and Joseph was slapped back against a wall, fiery pressure where the metal hand had struck his chest. The figure moved past him in a rush and made its way to the back door.
“Molly, wait!”
Joseph hurried after the thing, out into the night. He caught a glimpse of it as it moved—a ghastly puppet—away from the house, past his shop, into the woods. Moonlight shone lightly on its thin limbs and there was a soft emanation from the glass ball in its chest.
Doctor Hawes, who was coming down from the dead girl’s room when he heard the commotion, now followed out of the house with lantern in hand. He called for Joseph, saw vague movement in the dim maze of trees. He heard the rustling of leaves and a distant hum as a train made its way through the New England night. He huffed along, his lantern’s light shifting crazily, the smell of apples on the close air.
He nearly collided with the figure dangling from the apple tree.
“Dear God!”
The doctor staggered back and thrust the lantern up into Franklin’s face, saw the blank blue eyes, the tongue, the rope around his neck. He touched the boy’s wrist; it was cold—the boy had been dead for some time, longer than the girl.
Six
Franklin pushed on through the woods, his new, awkward limbs smashing through the foliage. He could see, he could hear, he could feel; he had been cheated of his release! How could it be, he wondered. His body had passed before his sister’s, and the boy’s longing spirit had been inexplicably drawn to his father’s creation, occupying it before Molly’s spirit could. Now he could hear his father moving closer from behind and another sound, a rumbling, a clattering, and he shifted toward it, saw the tracks ahead, slick-looking in the moonlight. He would not be deprived of his death.
“Molly, please, wait!”
The thin figure had reached the tracks—it paused, swivelled its blank wooden face toward the closing form of Joseph Warren. The Cyclops light of the train was rushing through the dark, making a silhouette of Franklin.
“My dear girl...”
Franklin looked back into the light of the roaring train as it travelled closer; he hesitated long enough for the man to encircle him with trembling arms. It had been so long since Franklin had been hugged that part of him wanted to welcome the sensation, but the embrace was not meant for him and he shoved his father away and stepped onto the tracks.
Doctor Hawes burst from the woods in time to see Joseph Warren throw himself at the strange thing standing in the path of the rushing train. Both rescuer and the machine, like some otherworldly upright insect, were met by the steam-gushing black monster, the impact hurling them, its progress uninterrupted.
It took the doctor several minutes to find the bodies. Joseph, flung several yards into the woods, was face down beneath the red-spattered white of a birch trunk. The limbless machine that the man had tried to save was on its back in a bed of ferns, the wooden head split, though the curiously glowing glass bulb had been preserved by the metal ribs.
Doctor Hawes bent over the thing and, after staring for several long moments, reached down to the globe and worked the switch that opened its valve. A misty blue light sighed free and faded into the quiet moonlit air.
Sleep of the Flower God
New England, 1890
When she was young, Constance found herself invoking smal
l gods. They were close in the dark of closed eyes, perched in her internal ether, waiting. When she wanted a new doll, or a pretty dress, when she wanted sunshine, or thunder, she had merely to think them near. All the gods had secret names, but she dare not speak them aloud.
The doll god was clumsy and dull-eyed with weeping-willow hair and a dress that changed colour in accordance with the conjurer’s disposition. The rain god was a damp grey face at the window. The dress god, or goddess, really, was a shape that swirled under veils and silk.
In May it was the flower god that tickled the night grass with its strange steps. In the morning there were blooms. But Constance caused its death one night in February. A storm of snow had covered the town and the heavy sky had pressed down. How she had longed for spring, lying in her bed with covers across her lips and the dark ceiling hanging above her eyes. She had closed her eyes and filled her head with a warmer darkness and whispers.
Constance had envisioned flowers burning up through the winter crust, defiant colours blurring out of the cold. She saw the small god in her mind, stepping its curious steps, like a dance under water. It looked like an unfed child, but its feet were seeds and its face was a smooth, unfinished sculpture.
Constance fell asleep with the snowy wind brushing her windows and in the morning, when only servants stirred, she dressed and hurried down the stairs. Quietly venturing outside the house, the girl looked at the colourless stretch of land onto which tumbled the last lazy flakes. All was white beneath a potion of milk and ash. No flowers showed.
While many of the birds had long since flown south, there were those that braved the harsh New England winter. Some of these had found something beneath the snow. They fluttered up when Constance approached. She noticed strange almond-shaped impressions in the snow, intermingled with the bird prints, that looked like small broken crosses.