Wild Boy

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  “He was looking for something, but I don’t think he found it.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was in a rush. He had to get out the front door before the students came down from upstairs to search the house.”

  Rising to tiptoes, Wild Boy examined the jars on the shelves up high. Then he crouched and checked those down low. Judging from the thick sheen of dust around their bases, none of them had been moved for months.

  “Hey, look at this,” Clarissa said.

  He hurried to join her at the other end of the room, where a large oil painting hung between the shelves, set in a twisting frame of gilded leaves. The painting showed three smartly dressed men, their faces lit by sparks that flew from some kind of scientific contraption on a table.

  Clarissa tapped one of the figures. “Ain’t that Professor Wollstonecraft?”

  Wild Boy nodded slowly. It was strange to see the old showman dressed so neatly, and without his shaded spectacles. But there was no mistaking that crooked frame and wine-red nose.

  “And that man’s Doctor Griffin,” he said.

  “So who’s the other bloke?”

  The hairs bristled on Wild Boy’s back. He recognized the third man, who was taller than the other two, with a thin face, slicked silver hair, and a patch over one eye. “That’s the man from the fair,” he said. “That’s the man with the golden eyeball.”

  “It is,” Clarissa said. “Look, there’s some writing. . . . ”

  She crouched and read a brass plaque at the base of the frame. “To Dr. Charles Ignatius Griffin. For serving your country as a Gentleman.”

  “Gentleman?”

  “Says it with a big G.”

  Wild Boy stepped closer, staring at the scientific device in the painting. Sparks flew from a ball of copper tubes fixed to an axle between two wheels.

  “A machine . . .” he said.

  Clunk, thunk!

  They both turned. The noise had come from downstairs.

  “What was that?” Clarissa hissed.

  Wild Boy stood still, trying to listen for any other sounds above the thumping of his heart. There were none. He couldn’t even hear the police officers out on the street.

  “We should go,” Clarissa said.

  He knew she was right, but he wasn’t ready to leave. He felt as if he were close to finding out why the killer had come here. It couldn’t just be for this painting. Think! He had to think!

  “Wild Boy,” Clarissa insisted. “The police are just outside that window.”

  He turned, looked at her. “What did you say?”

  “I said we’d better hurry.”

  “No. You said window.”

  Could it be possible? He looked past Clarissa to the window at the far end of the museum. Then he turned back to the painting, and a grin spread across his hairy face.

  “What are you smiling about now?” Clarissa snapped.

  “There’s no window at this end of the room.”

  “So?”

  “There was outside. You tried to open it, remember?”

  “I . . . I do. Where’s it gone?”

  Wild Boy stepped even closer to the painting. He tried to think like he was back at the fair, picking out clues from the crowd. He let his eyes rove across the surface, let instinct take over. . . . There!

  “What? What have you seen now?” Clarissa said.

  “Look. Up there.”

  High up, a tiny patch of gilt was missing from the frame. It hadn’t been knocked or chipped. It had been worn away, as if something had rubbed against it. Wild Boy reached for the spot, but he was too short. “Feel under there, will you?” he said. “Where the gold’s gone.”

  Clarissa tried to look annoyed at being bossed about, but she couldn’t hide her curiosity. Elbowing him aside, she slid her hand under the spot on the frame. Her palm rubbed against the gilded wood. Her eyes widened.

  “There is something there,” she said. “Feels like . . .”

  “A lever?”

  “You mean . . . this painting . . . ?”

  “Opens.”

  Now Clarissa grinned too. “There’s a secret room?”

  “There’s a secret bloomin’ room.”

  The painting swung open with a hiss of brown air.

  Wild Boy and Clarissa stepped back, horrified by the reek that rushed from within. Whatever was in Doctor Griffin’s secret room, it smelled even worse than the classroom upstairs.

  The painting creaked on hinges hidden in the frame, and Wild Boy’s candlelight guttered in the stale breeze. “I’ll go first,” he said.

  “Why you?” Clarissa replied. “You ain’t braver than me. We’ll go together.”

  They lifted their feet slowly through the frame and set them on creaky floorboards on the other side. The room was long and narrow, with a wooden worktable against one of the brick walls. Fingers of fog tapped at a window, eager to be let in.

  Clarissa edged closer to Wild Boy. Her heavy breaths tickled the hair on his neck.

  “Are you scared?” she said.

  “I . . . I ain’t scared of nothing,” Wild Boy replied.

  “Me neither.”

  They crept deeper into the thin passage. Several jars from the Doctor’s museum sat on the worktable. Except these didn’t contain human body parts.

  “Animals,” Clarissa said.

  Wild Boy leaned closer, his eyes wide with fascination. “Not just animals,” he said.

  His candle lit the suspended corpses of a cat, a puppy with its tongue lolling out, a rat shaved of its fur. It looked like the Doctor had experimented on the poor creatures. Thin copper rods stuck from their floating bodies, and wires hung from clips on their limbs. Only one of the animals had been left untouched — a fat eel coiled up and floating in the golden fluid.

  Wild Boy tapped the jar curiously. He’d seen an eel like that before.

  The eel moved.

  Wild Boy lurched back in fright. The candle slipped from his hand, plunging the chamber into darkness.

  “What?” Clarissa said. “What is it?”

  “It’s alive! That thing in the jar!”

  Blue light crackled around the room, and Wild Boy remembered where he’d seen a creature like that. Back at the fair, Professor Wollstonecraft had performed tricks with an eel that sparkled when it got angry. An electrical eel, he’d called it.

  Clarissa gripped his arm. “I can’t see!”

  “Wait . . .”

  Wild Boy picked up the jar and gave it a shake. The eel bashed its head angrily against the glass. Blue sparks shimmered around its sluggy body, flashing light about the narrow chamber.

  “Sorry, slimy,” Wild Boy said.

  There were more jars along the worktop. In these floated human body parts that had also been used for Doctor Griffin’s tests. Metal tubes stuck from the rubbery ventricles of a heart, and silver cogs clung to its fleshy sides. In another jar, a pair of lungs had been grafted with copper wires.

  “What is that?” Clarissa said.

  Beside an empty jar on the worktable sat a small cage made of thin silver bars. Inside the cage was a shriveled gray ball with a dozen copper wires emerging from its sides. The wires were connected to the bars, so that they held the ball suspended, like a fat spider in the center of its web. This rotten object was clearly the source of the stench in this chamber. Green puss oozed from its base and dripped to the bottom of the cage.

  “What is it?” Clarissa said.

  Wild Boy leaned closer, wrapping an arm around his nose to mask the smell. He recognized the object from pictures in the Doctor’s books. “It’s a brain,” he said.

  Several more books lay beside the cage, but these weren’t about anatomy. One was titled Journal of the Inductive Sciences. Another was called Electrical Theory of the Universe. Inside there were drawings of scientific devices like those that Professor Wollstonecraft had used in his circus show.

  “Electricity,” Wild Boy muttered.

  He picked up a small n
otebook from among the pile and shook the eel jar to see the pages. It was crammed with the results of the Doctor’s experiments: sketches of bodies and machines, equations, and scribbled writing. The words seemed to swirl in the candlelight as a wave of exhaustion washed over Wild Boy. So far all they’d found were more frustrating questions. He wished he could rest and think, far away from the police and the fear of getting caught.

  “Are there any clues in that book?” Clarissa said.

  “I dunno. . . .”

  “What about that worm thing? Is that a clue?”

  Wild Boy banged the jar down. “Stop asking so many questions, will you?”

  As he spoke, a spark of electricity shot from the eel jar and hit the cage. Clarissa pulled Wild Boy back as a faint blue light crackled around the silver bars, growing brighter. And then — whoosh — the light shot into the cage. Wild Boy and Clarissa watched, amazed, as all of the wires began to glow. Electricity rushed along them and into the brain. For a second the oozing organ shone bright blue, lit from inside. Then it began to twitch, shaking the cage on the table.

  And then the light cut out.

  Silence. Darkness.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Clarissa said. She rushed back along the chamber and jumped through the open painting.

  Wild Boy stuffed the Doctor’s notebook in his coat pocket, as another crackle of electricity shimmered around the rotten surface of the brain. “What the hell’s going on here?” he whispered.

  He turned to follow Clarissa, but stopped.

  There was a light in the museum.

  “Clarissa?” he said.

  No reply. The light flickered.

  Wild Boy glanced to the window, thinking he should escape while he could. But what about Clarissa? They were in this together now, and he still owed her for saving him at the fair. He couldn’t just leave her.

  His hands trembled as he edged closer to the hole in the wall. “Who’s there?” he called. “If it’s you blasted coppers, then you’d better run. Cos I’m a cold-blooded killer and I’m coming out!”

  Still no reply. Slowly he stepped into the museum, and immediately he wished he hadn’t.

  An oil lamp sat on one of the cabinets. The police were here. An officer lay unconscious and bleeding on the floor between the shelves. A tall cloaked figure stood over him. It was the hooded man. His gloved hand clamped around Clarissa’s neck, lifting her several inches from the floor.

  He looked up at Wild Boy and dark eyes glinted behind his porcelain mask. “The Wild Boy of London,” he said. “You are just in time to watch your friend die.”

  The hooded man’s fingers tightened around Clarissa’s throat. A bead of sweat dripped from the long birdlike beak of his carnival mask. Clarissa’s pale face had turned dark red. She struggled and kicked, but the killer’s grip was too strong, crushing the life from her.

  “One squeeze,” the hooded man said, “and she is gone.”

  Anger took control of Wild Boy. Before he even knew what he was doing, he leaped over the unconscious police officer and charged at the hooded man, screaming in rage.

  But the killer simply raised Clarissa higher. “It is almost as if you wish for it to happen.”

  “Don’t!” Wild Boy cried, stopping and stepping back. “What do you want?”

  “You found the Doctor’s secret laboratory. There is something I need from that room.”

  “Tell me and I’ll get it,” Wild Boy said. “Just let her go.”

  “The Doctor’s notebook,” the hooded man replied. His hand tightened around Clarissa’s neck. “You have ten seconds. If you are not back in that time, I will end Miss Everett’s life and throw her from that window.”

  Wild Boy felt the Doctor’s journal in his pocket, but stopped himself from bringing it out. He and Clarissa had come here to look for clues to catch the killer. And here he was. Perhaps he could find a way to trap him.

  Clarissa’s eyes rolled. Her red face began to turn blue. She couldn’t register what was happening anymore, and Wild Boy was almost glad. He knew she wouldn’t like his plan.

  “Five seconds,” said the hooded man. “Do not think I am joking.”

  “Wait!” Wild Boy said. “I put it behind you.”

  The killer’s hand eased on Clarissa’s neck.

  “The book,” Wild Boy said. “I hid it so Clarissa wouldn’t see it. I was gonna take it and leave her.”

  The killer’s hand tightened again. “I do not believe you.”

  Wild Boy stared at the shrouded figure, refusing to back down. “Well then, you’ll just have to kill her, won’t you?”

  For a dreadful second he feared that he’d gone too far. But the hooded man’s hand relaxed, and Clarissa gasped a desperate breath. “Which jar?” the killer demanded.

  “That one with the eyeballs,” Wild Boy said, pointing to the jar that Clarissa had picked up before. “See where the dust’s moved at the bottom? I hid the book behind there.”

  The hooded man moved back, walking with those same awkward, lurching steps that Wild Boy had noticed at the fair. Keeping one hand on Clarissa’s neck, the killer reached the other toward the shelf.

  “Wait,” Wild Boy said. “Just tell me why.”

  “Why?”

  “Why kill those people? Just for some machine?”

  And then, from behind the mask came something that caught Wild Boy by surprise — a laugh. A deep, booming laugh so loud it shook the jars on the shelves. “Some machine?” the hooded man said. “No, not just some machine. The machine. If you knew what it was, you would think it worth killing for too. You of all people.”

  “Me? What is it? Tell me!”

  The dark eyes narrowed behind the killer’s mask. “It is a very powerful machine. It is a machine that changes you. Imagine that, Wild Boy of London. Imagine a machine that could make you normal, like everyone else.”

  Wild Boy was too stunned to reply. What the killer had said wasn’t possible, was it? He could never be normal. No, he couldn’t think about that. He had a plan and he had to stick to it. He edged closer, watching the hooded man lift the jar of eyeballs from the shelf.

  The killer looked behind the jar. “I am disappointed,” he growled. “What exactly did you hope to gain by that charade?”

  “This!” Wild Boy yelled.

  He launched forward and slammed his side against one of the cabinets. The impact sent a bolt of pain up his wounded arm, and a cry roaring from his mouth. But it worked. The cabinet swung down, straight at the hooded man.

  The cabinet crashed over the hooded man, and the killer fell back, letting go of Clarissa. Glass jars smashed on the floor. Stinging vapors swirled into the air, and golden preserving fluid washed across the museum, sloshing with slippery organs.

  Wild Boy rushed to Clarissa. He feared that he was too late, but she was breathing — hurt, gasping, but breathing.

  She turned, looking groggily around the shattered shelves. “Where is he?” she groaned. “Where did he go?”

  The hooded man had gone, but there was no time to worry about him now. The police outside would have heard the crashes.

  Wild Boy wrapped an arm around Clarissa’s shoulder and helped her stand. They began to shuffle toward the door, but several jars fell from the shelves in front of them. Clarissa screamed and they staggered back, but now more jars shattered to the ground behind. Acid liquid splashed up, soaking Wild Boy’s hair and stinging his eyes.

  A black shape streaked behind the shelves — the hooded man. Another cabinet toppled over, colliding with the next, falling like dominoes.

  Wild Boy gritted his teeth, trying to fight the pain, to think. They had to get out of here but the path to the door was blocked by fallen shelves. They’d have to take their chances with the window.

  “This way!” he cried as another cabinet smashed down to their side.

  He gripped Clarissa tighter, leading her to the secret room.

  “The copper,” she said.

  Wild Boy looked
back and cursed. The police officer still lay unconscious on the floor. One of the shelves could fall on him at any moment.

  It ain’t your problem, he thought. Leave him.

  But he knew he couldn’t. He swore again, and kept swearing, as he rushed to the officer and dragged him away from the chaos. As he ran back to Clarissa he glimpsed the hooded man dart behind another cabinet, just yards away. He heard Clarissa yell a warning, saw the cabinet swing down. . . .

  Wild Boy threw himself to the side, trying to dive out of the way. But he was too late, too slow. He hit the ground and cried out as the cabinet slammed onto him, showering him with glass and body parts. The killer’s lamp fell to the floor and set fire to the preserving fluid. A wall of flames roared up around the museum.

  Wild Boy tried to move, but his long coat was caught under the shelves. Flames licked across the floor. The hair on his face crackled with heat.

  Clarissa staggered to him and tugged his coat, but she was still too weak to tear it free.

  “Run!” Wild Boy said. “Get out of here!”

  Then another voice spoke. “Give me the book.”

  The hooded man came closer, walking in those awkward, jerky strides. The tattered leather trail of his cloak caught fire as it swept over the wreckage of the museum. The flames must have scorched his legs but he didn’t make a sound as he reached down and took the Doctor’s notebook from Wild Boy’s pocket.

  And then he brought out a knife.

  “No!” Clarissa screamed. “Leave him alone!”

  With a powerful sweep of his arm, the killer shoved her away.

  Dark eyes glinted behind that mask. For a moment, Wild Boy thought he recognized them — he couldn’t see their color, but he knew he had seen them somewhere before.

  The killer’s knife shone in the firelight as he held the weapon closer.

  Wild Boy gritted his teeth, stopping himself from crying out. If he was going to die, he wouldn’t give his murderer the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

  But the hooded man didn’t kill him. Instead, he swiped the blade and cut Wild Boy’s coat from the shelves. Then, in one quick movement, he leaped into the Doctor’s secret chamber.