The Peculiars

by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

  The next morning the storm was a memory. Broken limbs and a litter of golden leaves were the only reminders of the wind’s fury. The air shone fresh-washed, and for the first time in many days Lena’s heart lifted. Jimson was still busy with Mr. Beasley, but she was determined to remain cheerful and finish cataloguing artifacts. As she considered how to categorize Pygmy blow darts, under B for blow darts or under P for Pygmy, Mrs. Pollet erupted into the library, eyes wild and arms flailing like the long blades of a windmill.

  “Where’s himself—Mr. Beasley?” she sputtered.

  “He’s in the study with Jimson. Is something wrong?”

  A wail burst from Mrs. Pollet’s throat as she ran from the room. Lena, tripping over an agitated Mrs. Mumbles, followed. They ran down the hallway to the heavy oak doors, and, without pausing to knock, Mrs. Pollet burst through with Lena at her heels.

  Jimson was standing on a stepladder, balancing a long metal blade as Mr. Beasley carefully weighed it. They looked up in unison as Mrs. Pollet called out, “Arthur’s fallen from the roof. Come quick now!”

  Arthur Pollet lay crumpled on the ground like a branch the wind had discarded. His right leg was bent in a way no leg should be able to bend, and his face was ashen. He did not open his eyes when Mr. Beasley gently called his name and put an ear to his chest.

  “He’s breathing regularly, but it seems the fall has knocked him out. We’ll need to devise a litter to carry him into the house. From where did he fall?”

  Leticia Pollet pointed upward and all eyes followed. “He was trimming a branch that broke in the storm.”

  Sure enough, a broken branch lay across one of the gables of Zephyr House. And the twelve-foot ladder lay toppled nearby.

  “Lena, find something to cover him with to keep him warm. Jimson, come to the workshop with me and we’ll get some poles and canvas.”

  After Arthur had been safely transported into the house and placed on a bed in the first-floor bedroom, Mr. Beasley sent Jimson and Lena out while he inspected the patient. Lena went to the kitchen to make tea for Mrs. Pollet, and Jimson followed.

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?” Lena busied herself heating water so Jimson wouldn’t see her eyes tearing up.

  “Of course he will. Mr. Beasley knows what he’s doing.”

  “But his leg looks so awful and—” Her voice cracked.

  “A break can heal, and he’s strong . . . Lena, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  She looked up at the urgency in his voice just as Mrs. Pollet came into the kitchen muttering, “He’s sent me away as if he thinks I’m in the way.”

  “I’m sure that’s not it. Mr. Beasley is probably just trying to spare your feelings. Here, I’ve made you some tea.” Lena poured a cup and added a generous spoon of sugar. For all her height, Leticia Pollet seemed a shrunken woman. Her shoulders hunched forward, and Lena could see the sharp outline of her shoulder blades poking up through the fabric of her dress. Jimson pulled out a chair for her while Lena buttered a scone she had warmed.

  Mr. Beasley, sleeves rolled to his elbows, appeared at the kitchen door. “Lena, I could use your help.”

  Reluctantly, Lena followed him to the bedroom. Perhaps she was not cut out for medicine after all.

  “The break is bad and needs to be set. It will take two people. Thank goodness the man is unconscious. That way he won’t remember the pain.”

  Lena blanched. “But I don’t—”

  Mr. Beasley cut her off. “Jimson told me you’re interested in medicine. This is a useful technique to learn.”

  Arthur Pollet looked small and pale on the big iron bed, his white muttonchops bristling against colorless weathered cheeks. Mr. Beasley positioned Lena at the top of Arthur’s femur. Lena could hardly bear to look at the twisted leg. “I’m going to pull from the ankle to straighten the leg out so that it heals properly. Your job is to hold the leg as tightly as you can.”

  Tentatively, Lena placed both hands on the old man’s muscled thigh.

  “You’ll have to grip harder than that.” Mr. Beasley put his own hands over Lena’s and squeezed firmly to show how much force was needed.

  If she hadn’t been holding tight, the leg would have jerked from her hands. Lena heard a tremendous snap but saw nothing because her eyes were squeezed shut at the last moment. When she opened them, Arthur Pollet’s leg was back in normal alignment and a trickle of sweat was making its way down Mr. Beasley’s face. Mr. Pollet thrashed about on the bed and then lay still, breathing regularly.

  “I couldn’t watch,” Lena confessed.

  Mr. Beasley ran a hand over his bald head. “The leg is the least of his worries.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He hit his head, and with a head injury you can never tell what will happen. We’ll just watch and wait. I suspect he’s broken a few ribs as well. I’ll need to talk to Leticia, but there’s no need to alarm her yet.”

  They returned to the kitchen, where Jimson had managed to calm Mrs. Pollet and was buttering himself a scone.

  Mr. Beasley placed a large hand on Leticia’s shoulder. “His leg is aligned now, but he needs plenty of rest. The next day or two will be critical as we see how that head wound develops.”

  “Critical? What do you mean?” Her dark eyes looked fierce, but Lena noticed her lips tremble.

  “Jimson, perhaps you and Lena could finish his work in the garden? Cut off the damaged tree limbs and gather up the debris. There won’t be many days left to get ready for winter.”

  Glad to have something constructive to do, Lena and Jimson retreated to the yard to pick up branches and stake damaged plants. It felt good to be in the sun after so many days cooped up in the library. Mrs. Mumbles accompanied them to the yard, rubbing between Lena’s legs until she shooed her out of the way. Offended, Mrs. Mumbles ignored them altogether and went off in search of rodents in the tall grasses. Lena inhaled deeply. “I helped Mr. Beasley straighten the leg. It was awful.”

  Jimson nodded. “I’ve never much cared for blood and guts, myself. It always makes me hurt just to look at it.”

  Lena went on to describe the process in detail, but Jimson seemed distracted, as if he was only half listening. He grabbed a handsaw and began sawing some of the larger limbs into small pieces.

  “Do you believe in angels?” he asked without looking up.

  “What?” Lena paused, her arms full of twigs. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about earlier?”

  He nodded. “Angels. I don’t believe in ’em. But I’m quite sure I saw one—yesterday, when I was on the roof. Here, hold this.” He gestured to one end of a large twisted branch.

  She dropped the branches into the wheelbarrow and steadied the limb as Jimson began sawing. “Explain what you just said to me.”

  “Yesterday, when I was up on the roof landing where Mr. Beasley’s got the flying machine, I saw someone on the widow’s walk. I took a second look because I couldn’t imagine anyone being out in the storm. It wasn’t raining yet”—he snapped the branch in half—“just winding.” He paused. “You’ll think I’m crazy. There was a lady looking out toward the sea. I could see her profile. And on her back was . . . a wing.” His eyes caught Lena’s. “At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but it was a wing, all right.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t just a shawl caught up in the wind?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sure. It was gray, I think. But you couldn’t mistake the shape of it. And when she turned, I saw another one coming out of her left shoulder blade.” He reached behind Lena and poked her back. “Right here.” After a pause, he continued. “They were big, like an eagle’s wings.”

  Heart hammering, Lena thought of the drawing of the Annuncius syndrome in the sketchbook. But the wings in that picture were small, shrunken things—nothing like an eagle’s wings.

  “Do you think I’m losing my mind?”

  Lena smoothed her skirt under herself and sat on the grass. “No, I don’t
. Here, there’s something I want to show you, too.” She pulled the now-crumpled flyer from her skirt pocket and smoothed it flat on the ground.

  Jimson squatted beside her and read it quickly. He gave a derisive laugh. “The government’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes,” he declared. “Set people up as scapegoats to blame whatever goes wrong in society on them. No one will believe this stuff.”

  “But what if it’s true? What if the woman you saw—and the drawings in the sketchbook—what if they’re all true? What if there are Peculiars and Mr. Beasley is experimenting on them?” A gust of wind blew her hair free from its twist, and strands caught like webs across her face.

  “But there are no such things as Peculiars. There couldn’t be. It’s all superstition and—” He lowered himself the rest of the way to the grass.

  “Just for one minute consider that you might be wrong, Jimson Quiggley. What if it is true? You’re always saying that we have to consider the evidence. And according to this”—she shook the flyer in her hand—“you usually can’t tell by looking at someone.”

  “And now I’ve seen a lady with wings.” He pulled up a blade of grass and chewed it thoughtfully. “If Peculiars exist, they’d be a dying race. They’d be genetic variations—part of a group who evolved differently from everyone else. But this piece of propaganda doesn’t prove anything. It will just have people turning in the neighbor they don’t like. It’s dangerous to think that way.”

  “What Peculiars have in common could be on the inside, too. Maybe they’re all compelled to do horrible things.” Lena tucked the flyer away. Clouds scuttled across the sun. She shivered. Overhead a seagull screamed.

  Jimson stood and brushed off his pants. Then he offered Lena a hand and pulled her up. “Lena, what’s frightening you?”

  Jimson’s eyes were kind. She wanted to tell him about her fears, but she shook her head and turned away when her eyes filled with tears. Anytime now she, too, might do something dangerous and unpredictable.

  “You’re right. We have to be objective and consider all possibilities.” Jimson spoke to her back. “We can’t just speculate; we need evidence.”

  Lena ran a gloved hand across her eyes and turned back to face Jimson. “How do we find the evidence?”

  “We start with the winged lady. We won’t ask Mr. Beasley. We’ll just do a little exploring on our own.” He wrinkled his brow. “She was someone I’ve never seen before. I didn’t even know there was anyone else staying here. But then, I’m beginning to suspect there are lots of things we don’t know about Zephyr House.”

  JIMSON WAS AS GOOD AS HIS WORD. THAT NIGHT AS THE CLOCK struck one o’clock, when the house was groaning with sleep, Lena made her way down the hall to the first floor, where Jimson waited. She had dressed in layers to keep out the chill, but still she shivered.

  Jimson had come prepared. A black cap was pulled low over his messy curls, and he wore a long black coat that Lena had never seen before. He held up an ornately cast brass cylinder with a reflector on one side and a clamp on the back. “It’s a bicycle lamp,” he whispered theatrically. “The light shines out here. The clamp holds it onto the bicycle.” He tapped the part Lena thought of as a reflector. “It’s fueled by kerosene, so you can ride at night.”

  “We’re not taking the bicycle, are we?” Lena’s heart beat a little faster.

  “Of course not, but we might need some light, especially when we go outside; there’s no moon. It’s the only thing I could find right away.”

  Lena wrapped her arms around herself. “What exactly are we looking for?”

  “The winged lady . . . and anything else that we might find.”

  “But we can’t just go opening doors.”

  “Of course we can. We’ll be like Stanley, exploring uncharted territory, looking for Dr. Livingstone. See here, I’ve sketched a map.” Jimson unfolded a drawing of Zephyr House. “I’ve never been in this whole wing of the house. If she’s here, I bet that’s where she’ll be. The problem is that to get there, you have to walk right by Mr. Beasley’s door, unless you enter from the outside. We should go out through the back terrace. That way no one will hear us.”

  In the night nothing was the same. Darkness transformed even the most familiar objects into something sinister. Lena was glad that this time she had Jimson with her, and she felt a thrill as they moved silently down the corridor toward the door that opened on to the terrace. From the corner of her eye, Lena caught a glimpse of something moving. She reached out and silently grabbed Jimson’s arm. He stopped without a word. She looked again, and the thing she glimpsed took shape . . . her own form caught in the hall mirror. Her shoulders lowered; she took a deep breath. In moments they would be on the terrace.

  That’s when the screaming began. At first Lena thought it was the whistle she had heard when she had gone after Mr. Beasley’s sketchbook. But it wasn’t. It was a woman’s scream, high-pitched and horrible. Lena crouched, covering her ears. Jimson nudged her into the deeper shadows of a corner. His voice was in her ear. “Stay still. I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”

  A door banged open in the distance. Running footsteps across the stone floors. A light bobbed outside the terrace door. A lantern. For a moment Lena saw a face pressed against the window glass, heard someone rattling the lock. She knew that face! It was the redheaded man from the train, the man who had been with the nun, one of the men who had helped the prisoner escape. The face was gone as quickly as it appeared. Lena’s breath came in gulps. She pressed her mouth against Jimson’s ear. “Did you see him? It was the man from the train!” But Jimson shook his head. He had been looking back down the hallway where they had heard the sound of running footsteps.

  The screaming had stopped, but Lena was sure she could hear a woman sobbing. The sound of voices, men’s voices, muted. She felt as if she had been frozen in the dark corner forever. A gaslight sputtered to life, bathing the hall in light. Mr. Beasley stood wrapped in a peacock-blue dressing gown.

  “Jimson, Lena, I see you were awakened too.” He rubbed his hand across his face. There was something different about him, Lena thought. Then she realized what it was: His painted eyebrows were missing, and their absence gave him a curiously blank look. He didn’t seem to notice that they weren’t dressed in nightclothes. “It’s Mr. Pollet. I’m afraid he’s dead. The blow to his head was as bad as I thought. Leticia is taking it very hard. I’ve given her something to help her rest.”

  Jimson recovered first. “Is there anything we can do, sir?”

  “There’s nothing more to be done until morning.”

  Lena was still trembling from her view of the redheaded man at the door. “Mr. Beasley, there was a man on the terrace. I think it was the same man I saw on the train.”

  At first Mr. Beasley acted as if he hadn’t heard her. He cinched the belt of his dressing gown tighter. “I’m going to the kitchen for some warm milk; milk is a great soporific.” He met Lena’s eyes. “I can’t imagine what a man would be doing out and about on our terrace at this hour. Why don’t you come and have some milk with me? Perhaps Jimson will go out on the terrace to investigate, seeing that he is already equipped with one of my bicycle lanterns.” It was the only mention he made of their dubious appearance in the hallway. He turned and walked past them toward the kitchen wing.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” warned Jimson. “If something strange is going on, we don’t want to put Mr. Beasley on guard. Are you sure it wasn’t just a reflection or something?”

  “That man helped a prisoner escape from the train, a Peculiar. He’s obviously dangerous. And I did see his face at the door.”

  “I’m just saying that things look different at night. I’m going out on the terrace, as Mr. Beasley suggested. But if it was your man from the train, I’m sure he’s gone by now.”

  “I’m going with you. I’m not about to go off to the kitchen for warm milk.” Lena’s face burned. “I know what I saw.”

  Jimson merely tipped hi
s head and walked off. Lena followed.

  The air was chill with damp wind off the sea. The lamp sputtered to life and Jimson held it high as they paced the stone terrace from one end to the other. The dim light cast flickering shadows against the imposing walls of Zephyr House. There was nothing to be seen, only the black night without moon or stars. The darkness was accompanied by the crash of waves far below.

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” Lena said.

  “No, it doesn’t. There’s no more proof than when I saw a woman with wings.” Jimson lowered the light.

  “But we both know what we saw.”

  Jimson looked at her over the lantern. “It would be nice if someone else could observe it too. See the south wing, by the orchard?” He pointed. “I’ve never been in there. It’s where I was hoping we could explore tonight. The widow’s walk is on the south end of the house. The woman I saw could have gotten there if she had access from a door on the third story.” The wind blew the tails of his long coat out behind him. “But with Mr. Beasley up and all, I guess it will have to wait.”

  Lena thought about Leticia Pollet’s cries. “I haven’t even taken a minute to feel sorry about Mr. Pollet; I’ve been so busy worrying about the red-haired man.” She looked in the direction of the sea, but it had been swallowed by the dark.

  “You’re right. It’s terrible. Arthur was a good man. And Mrs. Pollet will be lost without him.”

  “Jimson, what if we’re both right? What if the man from the train and the winged woman are both hidden here somewhere?”

  The light from the lantern ravaged Jimson’s face with shadows. “Then I’m sure Mr. Beasley has a rational explanation for it all.”

  But Lena thought again of the marshal’s words and wasn’t at all sure.

  Jimson was standing next to her, so close that she could hear his breathing. “You forgot your gloves.”

  Lena looked at her hands, ghostly in the lantern light. Somehow under the cover of dark, the gloves hadn’t seemed necessary. Jimson tentatively reached out and gently placed one long spidery hand in his open palm.