“Little monster,” I muttered.
Elizabeth began to laugh. “It hardly broke the skin.”
“I’m glad you find it so amusing,” I said.
“He takes after you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your mother once told me what biters you and Konrad both were, when you were little. Always chomping on each other. She was quite appalled by it.”
“Victor, you’re pale,” Henry remarked, joining us.
“He has a tooth,” I said quietly, “pointed like a saw.”
“Oh, that,” said Elizabeth carelessly. “I noticed that yesterday.”
“It’s not natural.”
“Likely it’s just two teeth that’ve come in too close together. He’s growing so quickly, I’m not surprised.”
“I’ve never seen a tooth like that,” I persisted, unconvinced by her remarks. “And it wasn’t just the tooth. Its whole face changed. It happened yesterday, too. You’ve never noticed anything odd about the child?”
“No.”
I looked over at Henry hopefully, but he too shook his head.
“There’s something not right about it,” I said. The child was staring right at me, and even though I knew it understood nothing, its gaze unnerved me. “When its face changes like that, it’s like another creature altogether. It’s not Konrad.”
Elizabeth looked at me sternly. “Of course it is.”
And certainly, at that moment, the child’s resemblance to Konrad was uncanny.
“Look,” said Henry, “his eyelids are already drooping. He’ll not last the walk back.”
And with that he scooped the child up in his arms and headed for the cottage, Elizabeth at his side.
“Victor, will you gather our picnic things?” she called back over her shoulder.
“Oh, absolutely,” I said, watching them venture up the hill and into the trees, like some lovely family I was no longer part of. “Please allow me to just clean up after everyone.”
Muttering under my breath, I returned to the glade and packed up the hamper. I was about to set off when I saw I’d missed the beloved rag doll. I scooped it up and was about to cram it into my pocket when something stopped me. I looked again at the doll. On the right hand the fourth and fifth fingers had been chewed off.
“You’re making too much of it,” Elizabeth said as we locked the cottage behind us. “Children chew on things all the time.”
“It doesn’t strike you as eerie, or at least odd, that he chewed off the exact same fingers that I’m missing?”
We began our walk back toward the chateau under the unseasonable warmth of the October sun.
“He’s very observant,” Henry said. “Maybe he already recognizes the similarity between you and he’s trying to imitate you.”
“You should be flattered,” Elizabeth added.
“Hah! I don’t think it’s kindly disposed toward me.”
She exhaled angrily. “Well, no wonder, since you seem intent on denying him the least scrap of humanity!”
“Because he’s not human, not yet!” I said, and then added, “Maybe not ever.”
“What are you trying to say, Victor?” Henry asked with a frown.
“I wonder if this creature isn’t… abnormal in some way. If you’d seen the way it looked those two times, you’d wonder the same.”
“Curious, that you’re the only one who sees this,” said Elizabeth. “Have you wondered if maybe you’re seeing things? How many spirit butterflies do you have on you, by the way? Two, three?”
“Two,” I said.
“Maybe they’re clouding your perceptions, like an opiate.”
“I see very well indeed, thank you,” I retorted.
“Well, you’re certainly blind to your own jealousy,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I sometimes wonder if you’ve really accepted the fact that your brother is growing up and truly coming back!”
“Of course I have,” I said, wondering if she were right.
And then I stared, for I thought I saw something dark move across the nape of Elizabeth’s beautiful neck and disappear beneath the collar of her dress.
“You have one on you too,” I murmured before I could check myself.
“What?” she said.
“There was… something on your neck. It looked like one of the shadow butterflies.”
“I have nothing on me.”
“Have you checked?”
“I would’ve noticed, Victor, when I undress at night!”
“You should check right now,” I said. “Under the sun. It’s easiest to detect that way!”
“Honestly, Victor, you’ve got cheek!”
“ I did it on the boat!” I reminded her. “Look, we’ll turn away!”
“I have no intention of undressing in this field, thank you very much!”
Henry looked at me like I was a lunatic.
“You,” she said to me, “have definitely been spending too much time in the spirit world. You’ve moved beyond megalomania and are well into paranoia now!”
And she walked on without saying another word to me, all the way back to the chateau.
CHAPTER 15
NOCTURNAL VISIONS
I read at my desk, waiting for the church bells to toll midnight before I entered the spirit world. With scant nights until Konrad’s return and our departure for Italy, it was all the more urgent to collect as many spirits as I could. I’d need them for the winter. But right now I was feverishly absorbed in my reading, looking up only to scrawl things in my notebook.
Suddenly, from within the house, came a staccato burst of quick screams and then a keening wail, all the more horrifying because I knew it was my mother’s.
I was up and out my door in a second, rushing down the hallway toward my parents’ chambers. Elizabeth burst from her own room as I passed, and then, as we rounded the corner to the east wing, Father came hurrying toward us.
“Is Mother all right?” I panted.
He seized me by the shoulders, the intensity of his gaze terrible to behold. “Where were you just now?”
“In my room, reading,” I said, feeling cold all over. What did he know?
He stared at me hard. “You weren’t out on the dock?”
I shook my head. “No.”
For a moment he held my eyes with his, and then his shoulders sagged and he released me. He closed his eyes, shook his head.
“I thought not. Your mother… she woke and went to the window and began screaming. She said she saw Konrad standing. I looked and saw nothing at all. It’s not the first time she’s had such nightmares, but she seemed so certain that I felt I had to check, to make sure it wasn’t you.”
“Poor Aunt Caroline,” said Elizabeth, her eyes glinting with tears.
“She’s badly off,” Father said. “But she’s strong; she’ll rally. I just wish I’d taken her away earlier, all of us.”
Impatiently I waited for the house to settle, for the last of the servants to leave the hallways and take to their own beds.
Unlocking my desk drawer, I noticed that my hand shook slightly. I took out the spirit clock and the elixir, and as my candle backlit the tall green flask, I was startled to see how little liquid remained. I peered inside, tilting the container, trying to guess how many more drops it might yield. Why hadn’t I considered this earlier? When the elixir ran out, I’d be cut off from the butterfly spirits forever, unless-I found the recipe.
It was surely of Wilhelm Frankenstein’s making, or if not, he’d learned it from some tome contained somewhere within the chateau.
The Dark Library was, as always, the obvious place to start.
***
Furious, I shove yet another pile of books onto the floor, to make room for the next.
I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here, hunched over the table, scouring tome after tome, searching for the recipe. Damn Wilhelm Frankenstein and his mysterious ways! Why hadn’t he w
ritten it down in his notebook with the other instructions? Or left it in the metal book with the spirit board pendulum? How many secret hiding places did the man need?
Even with three butterflies upon me, I’ll never be able to read every single book in here in a single visit.
Maybe he liked to keep it close at hand.
The thought makes me look up, and a forgotten image flares in my mind.
When Elizabeth and I were leaving the spirit world together for the first time, my room revealed its former self as Wilhelm’s very bedchamber, from three hundred years ago. His initials on the sumptuous pillows. And in the wall, a small cupboard in which had rested a single book.
As if the house had been trying to show me something.
At once I am running up the stairs, through the library, and along the hallway to my own bedchamber. Inside I fix my eyes on the wall.
Show me!
The walls pulse, the floor ripples, and my gaze burns through centuries of lathe and plaster and brick until I see a small secret recess. I reach out and seize hold of the shimmering book, which solidifies at my touch.
On the very first page is the recipe, written in a hand I recognize as Wilhelm Frankenstein’s. I pass my fingers over it, committing all its ingredients to memory. It is simple, easy to replicate. I will transcribe it the moment I return to the real world. I turn the page to make sure I’ve not missed anything, and frown.
Across two pages are drawn various diagrams of some kind of hooded gown or robe. The fabric bears an intricate butterfly pattern. But when I turn the page, I see yet more drawings of the garment, closer and more detailed, and it appears that it’s actually made of butterflies. Hundreds upon hundreds, sutured together by their wings into a tight dark weave.
As though sharing my strange repulsion at the image, the three butterflies that have ridden with me now soar from my body, brilliant with color.
“Wait!” I say, for I want to bring them all back with me.
But they flutter across my bedchamber with such purpose that, for the first time, I wonder where it is they go. I hurry after them into the hallway.
They fly back into the deserted library, cross the room, and slip through the seam of the secret door. I follow, down the stairs, and then down the shaft to the caverns.
As I jog through the vaulted galleries, the ancient paintings are more luminescent than I’ve ever seen them. Several times I turn quickly, for it seems a bison has just pawed the ground or tossed its head. Every surface of my body is alive: My fingertips taste the air, my nostrils inhale color. A strange sense of inevitability builds within me.
I’m curiously unsurprised when I’m led to the cave with the image of the giant man. He towers above me, his stick arm outstretched, generating such power that I can feel the small hairs on the back of my head lift, as though anticipating lightning.
I follow the butterflies as they descend the steep passage to the burial chamber. They fly directly to the pit and then spiral down, as if drawn by a powerful current. I rush to the edge and stare, stunned by what I see.
The strange, vast form at the pit’s bottom is no longer encased in stone or swathed in a cocoon but is now contained in a fleshy womb-shaped sac.
My three butterflies land upon it, and instantly all the color drains from their wings and bodies and they become black once more. And at that very same moment the membranous sac trembles and becomes momentarily translucent. I see a quick, dark swirl of movement-limbs, a torso, and a glimpse of an enormous skull turning, as though looking up at me. Then the membrane is opaque once again and convulses violently as though pummeled from within by a thousand fists. A furious and frustrated wail rises up from the pit.
And for the first time in the spirit world, I feel terror, for I suddenly realize that even as the butterfly spirits have been giving, they’ve also been taking away. They give me speed of mind, instinct, but they drain me of something else, which they are bestowing upon this pit creature-life.
I take a step backward, relieved by the trembling of the spirit clock in my pocket. I turn and rush from the caves, desperate to be away from the pit and the thing that rests there, fitfully waiting to be born.
I returned to the real world, my crippled hand pulsing with pain, for I had no spirits upon me now. In my panic to escape the burial chamber, I’d not sought out any. More than that, I was afraid of them now.
Wearily I exhaled. Outside, the wind thrashed branches and rattled the windows, and with a shudder I thought of the restless white mist encircling our chateau in the spirit world.
I replaced the ring on my finger, then swung myself off the bed to lock away the spirit clock and the flask of elixir. Halfway to my desk I heard stealthy footfalls pause outside my bedchamber. My door for some reason was not fully closed, and creaked open a hair’s width.
For a moment I stood paralyzed, my skin chilled, for I’d had a nightmare about this moment, the certainty that someone was waiting just beyond the door. I dragged a deep breath into my lungs, my muscles tensed, my teeth clenched, and I rushed toward the door and wrenched it open, a roar ready in my throat.
Nobody was there.
But I heard a soft tread down the hallway. I hurried after it.
By the time I caught sight of her, Elizabeth had already reached the first landing of the great curving staircase, and I could tell at once from her eerily serene gait that she was sleepwalking. It had been her habit, since she was very young, to sleepwalk when anxious. I dared not call out to her now, for I didn’t want her to wake and stumble in alarm. So I followed her silently as she walked with graceful ease down the stone steps toward the main entrance hall. She wore only her nightdress, and her feet were bare.
I kept pace with her. I wondered if her slumbering mind was worried about the child in the cottage and she meant to check on it. I couldn’t let her wander out into the night like this. She surprised me with a burst of speed, turning away from the main entrance and rushing down the hall past the chapel and armory. I lost sight of her briefly as she hurried down a side corridor, then caught up as she entered the cloakroom that exited near the stables.
In the near dark the coats and riding cloaks glowered from their pegs like mourners. The heavy door was bolted for the night.
Elizabeth stood directly before the door, arms at her sides, motionless.
Behind her I watched, wondering what she meant to do. Her posture was so expectant, I felt the hair on my neck bristle. Outside, the wind gave a moan. Within me swelled a terrible fear that someone was about to knock.
“Elizabeth,” I said softly, stepping closer. “We’ll check on him first thing in the morning.”
She gave no indication of hearing me. I drew alongside her, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the wide, oblivious smile on her face, as though she awaited the arrival of someone beloved.
I looked at the door, and my dread became a shrill sound in my head, a metallic taste in my mouth.
“Elizabeth, you should return to bed now,” I said, trying to keep the panic from my voice.
I put a hand on her shoulder, and at my touch she gave a shudder. Her smile evaporated and was replaced by wide-eyed anxiety. She gasped.
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “It’s me, Victor. You’ve been sleepwalking. It’s all right now.”
She looked all around her in confusion. Her breathing stuttered, and I saw her poor heart drumming its pulse in her throat.
“What were you doing, do you remember?” I asked her.
From outside came a horse’s low whinny. A dog barked twice and then was silent.
Elizabeth frowned. “I had a dream that-”
There was a single sharp knock against the door.
I felt all my breath dragged out of me, as if by hook and line. Elizabeth’s arms clamped about me. Her mouth was against my shoulder, pressed hard to suppress a scream.
“He’s at the door,” she said.
I fought against the weakness in my knees. “It can’t be.”
I felt her take a deep breath. She unlocked her arms and stepped away from me, calmly pushing her hair from her face. “We need to open the door. It’s Konrad.”
“The cottage is locked. And how would-It’s never been here!”
“He’s gotten out somehow,” she said with complete certainty, and reached for the bolt.
I grabbed her hand. “You don’t know what’s out there!”
“Of course I do,” she said. “Who do you think was on the dock?”
Once more I felt a nightmare paralysis grip me as I watched Elizabeth unbolt the door and pull it wide. Cool wind washed over us. No one was there. On the doorstep was a snapped branch from the oak tree in our courtyard.
“There’s the cause of the knock,” I said, pointing.
I moved to close the door, but Elizabeth quickly stepped outside.
“What’re you doing?” I said, following her, but not without first grabbing a stout walking stick. I looked all about the courtyard in the fitful moonlight. Clouds scudded across the sky. Branches swayed. In her bare feet Elizabeth walked across the leaf-strewn cobblestones. From the stables came the reassuring smell of hay and manure. One of the horses nickered.
“There’s no one out here,” I said, eager to get back inside.
“Maybe he’s in the stables,” she said.
“Elizabeth, he’s not-”
“We should’ve opened the door faster.”
I began to wonder if maybe she was still sleepwalking, and pinched her arm.
“I’m awake!” she said with a fiery look.
“We’ll have the dogs up if we don’t get back,” I said. “We’ll wake the household.”
But she insisted on entering the stables. The horses were familiar with the two of us, and softly snorted their greetings. After a night of phantasms I was comforted by their solid, friendly presence.
“No one here,” I said, quickly walking the length of the stable, looking into the stalls and tack room.
Elizabeth frowned and headed back out to the courtyard, squinting into the night.
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