The Peculiars

by Kieran Larwood

  ‘If you must know, it is Mr Faraday’s Electromagnetic Impulse Generator. Not that I expect you to understand its importance.’ Mrs Crowley heaved the bag onto her back and began clipping it to her harness. She watched Sheba closely the whole time. ‘Given up on shooting me then, have you?’

  ‘Why bother when the police can catch and question you themselves? They’ll find out where you’ve hidden the children.’

  ‘I doubt that very much.’ Mrs Crowley took a step backwards. Sheba could see a circular hole cut in the glass, much like the one Sister Moon had made, except this one had an indiarubber suction cup attached to it.

  She climbed the wall, Sheba realised. Like a giant, poisonous spider.

  ‘Why? You won’t escape, you know. There are hundreds of soldiers and policemen out there.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re all going to be busy.’ Mrs Crowley took a pocket watch from her belt and flipped it open. ‘Right about now.’

  From somewhere deep inside the exhibition came a thunderous bang, followed by the sound of hundreds of panes of glass exploding. The floor beneath them shook violently, setting all the exhibits rattling in their cases.

  As Sheba threw herself to the floor, her first thought was for her friends, that one of them might have been caught by the blast. They might be lying there right now, as razor-sharp shards cascaded down. She had a sudden urge to dash back out of the room to find them all, to make sure they were safe.

  But Mrs Crowley was moving again. She picked up a coil of black rope and tied it to the remains of the iron cage she had just dismantled. The other end she threw out of the hole.

  ‘What about the children?’ Sheba cried.

  Mrs Crowley laughed, and squeezed through the hole in the glass. There she paused, her feet braced on the side of the Crystal Palace.

  ‘If you could see what I’m going to do with the children – what I could do for you – you wouldn’t care less what happens to them, believe me. Follow me and see. If you dare.’

  Then she slipped out of sight.

  Sheba ran to the window and looked down to see her shadowy shape zipping down to the ground. Somewhere to her right was the red glow of fire, and hordes of men in army uniform were sprinting towards the Crystal Palace.

  There was no time to find her friends and get them to safety. There was no way to stop the woman here and now without losing the children for ever. She had to make a decision.

  Sheba grabbed the rope with one hand, put her foot on the edge of the glass hole, and jumped.

  Chapter Eighteen

  IN WHICH SHEBA GOES TO HOSPITAL.

  Sheba spilled from the bottom of the rope and onto the grass with a thump that shook her entire body. All around was chaos, as smoke poured out from a shattered hole at the far west end of the exhibition. Men were swarming around it like angry bees round a kicked nest. She could hear the shouts and cries echoing.

  She picked herself up and looked around in time to see a dark figure dashing away from the Crystal Palace toward the cover of the trees. Sprinting to keep up, Sheba scampered after her.

  They ran through the shadows of Hyde Park, back along Rotten Row. Crowds were starting to gather, come to stare at the burning Crystal Palace. Mrs Crowley wove through them, keeping close to the trees and bushes. She was wearing a cloak over her harness. Sheba struggled to follow, turning her head every now and then, hoping to see the other Peculiars amongst the throngs of gawkers.

  But they were nowhere to be seen.

  Near the park gates, Mrs Crowley finally slowed her pace. Sheba had a chance to catch up, although she had to keep straining on tiptoe to spot the woman amongst the crowds. Can what she said be true? she kept asking herself. Was I really born in India? It was too big to think about right now. First she had to find the mudlarks, discover what Crowley was up to, and then try and come to terms with it all. It would keep.

  Finally, Mrs Crowley left the crowds and stepped out onto Hyde Park corner. A horse-drawn fire engine was negotiating its way through the gates, bells clanging. She calmly moved aside, the firemen not realising the very cause of the blaze was standing right next to them. Mrs Crowley crossed the road quickly towards a grand white building, its front covered with towering columns like all the other buildings nearby. She slipped around the side.

  Sheba was still panting for breath after her sprint, but gritted her teeth and pushed against the gathering crowds to cross the street.

  Outside the stately white mansion was a sign. It read ‘St George’s Hospital’. Hospitals, doctors. Sheba remembered Mrs Crowley’s other servant. Could he be inside somewhere? Maybe the mudlarks, too?

  She followed Mrs Crowley around the side of the mansion, and emerged behind it into a maze of much older, smaller buildings. Some were in the process of being demolished, scaffolding covering their sides in rickety cocoons, and the ground in between was covered with piles of bricks and worm-eaten timber.

  Sheba spotted Mrs Crowley ducking under a tarpaulin and into one of these derelict buildings. Pulling her cape tight about her, Sheba followed.

  It was dark inside, and filled with strange smells. Decades of dust, damp brick and plaster mingled with a mixture of medical odours. Sheba smelt dried blood, soap and starch; chemicals, medicines, disease and chamber pots. All of it was old and faded. A disused hospital, perhaps? A part of St George’s once upon a time? There was a steep, winding staircase in front of her.

  Mrs Crowley’s footsteps echoed from somewhere above. Looking up, Sheba saw the woman’s shadow moving round and round and up, the bulging pack jutting out like a hunched back.

  She followed up the creaking steps – one, two, three floors – and then walked towards a door that glowed with flickering gaslight. Painted on the wall outside were the words ‘Operating Theatre’. Funny place to put on a show, she thought, but when she peeked around the door she realised it was for a different kind of show entirely.

  Mrs Crowley was in the centre of the room. She was unpacking Faraday’s Electromagnetic Impulse Generator onto a workbench and, standing beside her, as excited as an infant on Christmas morning, was the doctor. Around them were more tables, these covered in saws and knives, vials, bottles, tubes and piping. But the whole scene was taking place in a lowered pit, surrounded by six or seven tiers of benches, all descending towards the stage space at the bottom.

  It was a place for watching, Sheba realised. But the performance wasn’t a Penny Gaff show. It was chopping and slicing and hacking. Surgery.

  Sheba began to shake as she realised why Mrs Crowley might need a doctor and the mudlarks in a place like this. Something more vile and horrific than she could ever have imagined. And that was when she saw them. Bound and gagged and stacked in a pile at the back of the theatre. All ten children. Looming over them was another figure. It took Sheba a while to recognise him, as his face and hands were swathed in blood-spotted bandages, but when he looked up at her with those black-rimmed eyes she knew it couldn’t be anyone else. Baba Anish! So much for him collapsing and getting thrown in the river.

  ‘Come down, girl,’ called Mrs Crowley, as if she had always known she was there. ‘We are about to begin. And you will find this especially interesting.’

  Sheba began to descend the stairs in the middle of the benches. Baba Anish watched her all the way. His jaw was oddly lopsided, held in place by a thick bandage surrounding his head, from which his matted locks spilled across his shoulders. Ignoring him, Sheba’s eyes flicked all around, looking for something, anything that might help her put a stop to this.

  ‘It’s splendid, simply beautiful,’ the doctor was fawning over the generator, rubbing his gangly hands over the mahogany casing.

  Baba Anish was still gazing fiercely at her. He tried to shout something, but with his broken jaw so bandaged, all that came out was, ‘Mmng ug ee ooing ere?’

  ‘Hush,’ said Mrs Crowley. ‘Once I show her what we are about to do, we will have no more silliness, I’m sure. She’s a resourceful girl. And she’s here
, after all. Maybe she’ll make a good protégé. How long until we are ready, Doctor?’

  The doctor adjusted a few switches on the generator, then turned the crank handle. The metal discs on the top began to whizz around, and blue crackles of light started jumping between the coils. This made the doctor clap his hands with glee, while Mrs Crowley and Baba Anish visibly flinched. Sheba stared, amazed. It was like watching tamed lightning. He took some copper wires from the rest of his apparatus on the bench and attached them to the generator. Then he turned to Mrs Crowley and gave a fawning bow. ‘We are ready now, ma’am. We just need the first batch of ingredients.’

  As if that were some prearranged signal, Baba Anish bent and hoisted up one of the mudlarks. He heaved the wriggling, squealing child towards the operating table. Sheba recognised the big, brown eyes that stared at her above the gagged mouth. It was Till.

  ‘Wait!’ Sheba shouted. ‘You haven’t told me what you’re doing yet! What’s all this . . . all this stuff for?’

  She pointed at the doctor’s table, where the sparking generator was whirring away. Its cables led to a glass crucible on a stand, which was now starting to bubble, letting off a strong chemical stink.

  ‘This, Sheba, is the miracle I was telling you about,’ said Mrs Crowley. She took a clay pot from the table and removed the lid to reveal a grey, pulpy cream.

  ‘It doesn’t look much like a miracle to me,’ said Sheba. The stuff stank – and it was the cold, sharp smell she had picked up from Mrs Crowley at the graveyard when they had first met.

  ‘Haven’t you ever despaired at your . . . condition?’ Mrs Crowley asked. ‘Haven’t you ever wished away your cursed differences and dreamed of being normal? I know I have.’

  As Sheba watched, Mrs Crowley reached up and removed her goggles. Underneath were surprisingly young eyes, elegantly shaped. Her nose was small, slightly upturned, but perfectly proportioned. She’s beautiful, Sheba thought.

  But then Mrs Crowley removed the black neckerchief.

  From beneath her nose and down, the features were withered and shrunken. Her lips were gone, exposing jagged teeth hanging by threads in leathery gums. It was the face of someone long dead; a mummified corpse’s mouth, like something you would find grinning up at you from an ancient grave.

  ‘Pleasant, isn’t it?’ The distorted mouth gnashed as Mrs Crowley lisped the words. ‘A souvenir of my time in India. Apparently it’s a very rare affliction. According to Baba Anish, it means I’ve been blessed by his goddess. I should be honoured, shouldn’t I?’

  As Sheba stared in terror, trying not to scream, the woman dipped her fingers into the pot and smeared some of the grey goo onto her cheek. Instantly the withered skin started to change. It became plump, smooth and pale, like the rest of her face. Sheba let out a little gasp of amazement. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was like some kind of magic.

  ‘Try some,’ said Mrs Crowley. ‘With this, both of us could be normal. Neither of us need hide ourselves away again. Not ever.’ She took hold of Sheba’s hand and smeared a dab onto the back. As Sheba stared, she felt her flesh beginning to tingle. When she rubbed her thumb over it, the hair fell away, revealing soft, pink skin underneath.

  It works! Sheba thought. For a few perfect seconds, her mind spun with all the wonderful possibilities. No more freak shows. No more hiding from the world in the shadows of her hood. Being able to walk down the street and talk to people, really talk to them, without them running away screaming.

  ‘But the effects are only temporary,’ said Mrs Crowley.

  Already, her patch of cheek was beginning to wrinkle and shrink, and when Sheba looked down she could see minute hairs pushing their way out of her skin again. Mrs Crowley tied the neckerchief back around her mouth.

  ‘That is why we are here today,’ she said. ‘The doctor has found a means to make the change permanent.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the doctor, blinking his eyes behind the huge lenses of his spectacles. ‘The problem is in the subject material. I discovered that only children’s would work, but dead ones were all I could obtain from the Resurrection Men – bodysnatchers or grave-robbers, you might call them. I realised that, to make the cream have permanent effect, I would need live tissue to combine with my compound. That, and a substantial electrical charge to “activate” the cells. To bring them to life, as it were. I tried a range of generating devices of my own design, but I couldn’t create a powerful enough current. That is why we required Faraday’s engine, here. A spectacular piece of engineering. Truly revolutionary. I think the man only realised its potential himself recently, which is why he was about to remove it from the exhibition.’

  ‘What material are you talking about?’ asked Sheba, trying to keep calm. ‘What is it you’re taking from the children?’

  ‘Why, brains, of course!’ The doctor looked at her as if she were stupid. ‘Precisely, the cells from the brain stem. In the correct solution, and with an electrical impulse to stimulate them, they somehow repair the body’s cells. Make them “normal” again.’

  Sheba suddenly realised she had some cream on her hand still. With a shudder, she wiped it off on her dress.

  ‘But the children,’ she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. ‘If you cut their brains out, they’ll die!’

  ‘And what of it?’ said Mrs Crowley. ‘They are only starving urchins. Life is wasted on them. It’s likely none of them will live to adulthood, anyway, and if they do, what will their useless lives achieve? The breeding of even more diseased paupers?’

  The doctor picked up a jagged silver saw that looked sharp enough to cut through bone.

  ‘This is just a small sacrifice so that I can go on to achieve much greater things,’ said Mrs Crowley. ‘And you can join me, free from that hideous affliction which has landed you in a degrading freak show. You should be on your knees, thanking me for this opportunity.’

  Sheba looked at the terrified face of Till, strapped to the table and about to have the top of her head sliced off like a boiled egg.

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘Never! You can’t do this. It’s wrong!’

  Before she could reach for her pistol, or run at the insane doctor, she felt a pair of huge, steely hands close about her arms. It was Baba Anish. She hadn’t even noticed him get behind her.

  ‘Pity,’ said Mrs Crowley. ‘Too sentimental, that’s your problem. Just like your pathetic mother.’ She looked at Baba Anish, who Sheba could feel growling behind her. ‘Make her watch this first one,’ she said. ‘Then you can send her to your goddess.’

  Baba Anish held Sheba tight as the doctor moved closer to Till and lowered the saw to her head. Mrs Crowley stood nearby, holding a metal basin and some kind of slicing scoop.

  ‘We have to be quick,’ the doctor was saying. ‘The tissue must be placed in the charged solution before the cells start to decay.’

  His words seemed to echo in Sheba’s ears as if he were drifting far away. Suddenly she felt very hot, and it was difficult to breathe. The blood pounded and thrummed in her head, each heartbeat seemed to last a minute, and she realised she was fainting. Stay awake! she screamed to herself. Stay awake and do something!

  She saw the teeth of the bone saw pressing against Till’s forehead. She saw little drops of blood form as they dug into her tender skin. She saw the doctor’s goggling eyes, focused on their horrid task. A tiny bead of sweat was creeping down his temple at the speed of a snail.

  She saw Mrs Crowley’s eyes crinkling at the corners, as if that hideous mouth of hers was smiling underneath its black silk neckerchief.

  And then she saw something silver flash across the table. It thudded into the doctor’s arm, sending tiny teardrops of blood flying outwards, like a red rose unfurling.

  It was followed by a bang that made Sheba’s ears ring, and Mrs Crowley fell backwards in slow motion, the bowl and scoop she was holding flying up into the air. Sheba’s terrified mind couldn’t fathom what was happening. All she could do was stare at
the doctor’s arm. The thing that had hit him was shaped like a star. A perfect silver star twinkling in the gaslight.

  How on earth did a shooting star get in here? her addled mind wondered.

  And then she understood, and with understanding time sprang back to normal.

  She looked up.

  Sister Moon perched on one of the wooden benches, drawing another throwing star from her belt.

  Mama Rat stood on the steps, rats clustered about her shoulders, smoking flintlock pistol in her hand.

  Behind them came Gigantus, yelling a battle cry, and Monkeyboy clinging to his back, face white with terror.

  ‘You’re here!’ Sheba shouted, tears of joy in her eyes. ‘You’re safe!’

  Behind her, Baba Anish let out a muffled roar. He moved one hand from her shoulder to draw his sword, and Sheba took her chance. She sank her needle-sharp fangs into his other wrist and then, when he let go with a roar of surprise, sprinted to the other side of the theatre.

  ‘Save Till!’ she shouted at her friends.

  Even as the Peculiars ran down the steps to where Sheba stood, the doctor was already turning to flee. Wailing with terror, he paused to snatch the generator from the table, scattering and smashing bottles everywhere in the process, and ran out of a narrow side door. Mrs Crowley pulled herself up and followed him, slamming the little door behind her. Mama Rat’s shot had hit her side and she clutched it as she ran.

  ‘Get the others!’ Sister Moon shouted. ‘I take the painted man!’

  The bandaged hulk drew his curved sword. He moved towards Sister Moon as she unsheathed both her swords and moved into a fighting stance. Sheba ran to the door, but found it locked tight. She frantically searched for a keyhole to pick, but Gigantus gently moved her aside.

  ‘Quicker if I break it, I think.’

  As the big man started to pound on the door, Sheba turned to watch Sister Moon fight the Indian.

  Baba Anish had looked murderous before, but now he was horrific. The paint daubed around his eyes was criss-crossed with fresh red cuts from the window glass he had been thrown through. His nose was squashed and crooked, the nostrils caked with dried blood. He looked at Sister Moon with a fury hot enough to melt lead, then, with a lung-rending howl, he launched himself at her, his sword whistling through the air, forcing her further up the stairs to the plate-glass windows at the very back.