This Monstrous Thing Page 6

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “I told you, to Ingolstadt. To Geisler.”

  “Did he know the police were coming for my family?” It seemed so strange she had come the same night they were arrested.

  She tugged at her cap, and her blond hair flashed like moonlight through the darkness. “If he did, he didn’t share with me.”

  “Then why does he want me?” That, more than anything, felt like a mistake. We hadn’t heard from Geisler since he’d left Geneva, and before that I’d never had a real conversation with him without my father or Oliver present. For a time, I wasn’t even certain he knew my name.

  She shrugged. “All I was told was to collect you. When I went to your flat, your mother said you’d be home later, but the police came before you did. I was hoping you’d be stupid enough to turn up as well.” Then, after a moment, she added, “You look very familiar to me.”

  “You don’t to me.”

  “Did you work in Geisler’s laboratory?”

  “No, but I had a brother who did.”

  “The tall boy with the dark hair who was always scowling?”

  I almost laughed. “Yes, that was him.”

  “That must be it, then. You look very similar.” The wind rising off the lake struck the cart, and it wobbled. Clémence pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders. “I never saw him again after Geisler went to Ingolstadt. I thought he was meant to join us. Did he leave?”

  “He didn’t leave,” I said shortly. “He died.”

  She blinked. “I didn’t know.”

  “Are you from Paris?” I asked quickly, hoping to avoid the subject of Oliver.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But I work for Geisler now.”

  “Are you his . . . ?” I didn’t have a clue what she was to him. I considered saying mistress, but that would be so dead embarrassing if I was wrong that I let her finish instead.

  “Assistant.”

  “Assistant? You’re his assistant?”

  “That’s right.” She crossed her arms. “Is there a problem with that?”

  “That was . . . ,” I started, without knowing how I was going to finish. I thought of Oliver and it hit me again—I wasn’t just leaving him, I was abandoning him. I tried to swallow the thought, but it pushed back, rising molten inside of me. I’ll come back, I vowed. This wasn’t for forever—just until things calmed down. I’ll come back, I thought again—a silent, steady promise to shoulder some of the guilt. I’ll come back for you.

  “That was what my brother did,” I finished. “That’s all.” Then I buried my mouth in my scarf and pushed a heavy breath into the wool so that it rebounded, warm and damp, against my dry lips.

  “Is it a girl?” she asked.

  “Is what a girl?”

  “Whoever it is that needs you in Geneva. Is it your sweetheart?”

  “No. It’s not a girl.”

  Her mouth twisted into a sly smile. “How disappointing. A pretty girl’s about the only thing that would keep me in a shithole like Geneva.”

  I barely had time to register what she’d said—or be properly shocked over hearing a girl cuss—when Depace’s whistling voice carried back to us on the wind. “Patrol ahead. Could be trouble.”

  Clémence sprang into a crouch, head beneath the driver’s seat, and cracked the lid of one of the coffins. “Get in,” she hissed at me.

  “You mean it?”

  “What—are you afraid of the dark?” She knocked the side of the coffin with her foot. “Get in.”

  “Not the dark,” I said. The last coffin I’d seen was the one we’d buried Oliver in, and the memory was so sharp and sudden that for a moment I couldn’t convince myself to move. Go away, I thought as Oliver prodded at me again. Leave me be.

  But Clémence nudged the side again, and I could hear the horses down the road. They were getting close. I took a steadying breath, then wormed myself through the narrow gap into the coffin. Clémence shut the lid without another word, and I was left drowning in darkness.

  I don’t know how long I lay in the dark, trying not to think about where exactly it was I was lying, or about the day we buried Oliver, or the riders I could hear on the other side of the wooden walls that suddenly felt impossibly thin. The wagon stopped and started a few times, and I heard Depace’s wheezy voice joined by others, though I couldn’t make out individual words. My heart was beating so loudly I was sure it would give me away. After a few long minutes, the wagon started moving at a steady pace, but it was still a while after that before the coffin lid was flung open.

  I flinched, but it was only Clémence, her round white face floating above me. “You can come out,” she said. “Unless you’re cozy.”

  I heaved myself out and collapsed across from her again, the coffins on either side scraping against my hip bones. The cold was sharper now, and the sweat from our sprint across the city was starting to dry and leave me shivering. I tucked my hands into my sleeves.

  Across from me, Clémence huddled down against one of the coffins and pulled her scarf up over her face. “Get comfortable,” she said. “It’s a long way.”

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  Our journey to Ingolstadt continued in much the same way as in those early hours, with Clémence and me hunched between the coffins until we approached a checkpoint, and then we climbed inside. Rather than risk being caught trying to sneak over the border, we went through Basel, a port city on the Rhine, and crossed from there into Germany. The border took hours to get through, and when the patrol finally reached our wagon, there was enough banging and knocking about to make me stop breathing. “If they open the coffin, just lie very still,” Clémence had advised me. “Most men won’t bother the dead.”

  But we made it through without incident, and passed into the German Confederation. Clockwork regulations weren’t as strict here, but I was still a wanted man without papers, and I kept a sharp eye out for trouble. Every cart or pedestrian we passed had me ducking out of sight and wishing for some better defense than hiding.

  As we trudged along the snowy country roads, Depace sang tuneless Christmas carols that the wind carried back to us. Clémence and I spoke very little. The morning after we left Geneva, I got my first good look at her in the light. She was dead thin and pale, made paler by her brilliant blond hair, which I realized was properly white now that I saw it in the sunshine. Her eyes were blue as Lake Geneva, and her best smile was no more than a smirk, so it felt as though she was always sneering at me. It reminded me a bit of Oliver, and I had to swallow that hot guilt back yet again.

  All the traveling in silence left me little to do but fret over whether I’d done the right thing in leaving him, until I thought I might go mad with it. I hated myself for abandoning him, and hated myself more for that small piece of me that was relieved for having an excuse to go. I hadn’t been away from Oliver for two years. Leaving still had its hooks in, but a part of me—a dark and wretched part—felt free.

  Bavaria was all gray rolling hills and ghostly forests, with black pines that dropped snow on us from above and bare cedars wrapped in thorny mistletoe. We plodded across it for two days beyond the border before Ingolstadt appeared on the road signs. I was shattered from all the travel and the constant worry about being caught, but my exhaustion faded as the houses spotting the hills began to multiply and the white spire of the university approached on the horizon.

  There were no guards at the city limits—something that I once would have given no thought to, but after three years in Geneva it seemed a wonder. Clémence climbed onto the driver’s seat to talk with Depace, leaving me to stare out the back of the wagon at the copper-capped buildings passing by.

  Ingolstadt was a small town, and the mechanization that had shaped Geneva had hardly touched it. There were no clockwork carriages or cogged omnibuses. No looming clock tower or industrial torche
s to illuminate the night. No prowling policemen either, and I spotted a few men with mechanical arms and legs walking unveiled. No one crossed to the other side of the street to avoid them or spit on them as they passed. Perhaps not a paradise, and not full equality—I didn’t think the world would ever reach that point—but Ingolstadt could be close. It felt for the first time since we’d left Geneva like the danger had truly passed, and I could breathe again.

  The university sat in the town’s center—a monument to which every other building seemed to bow. Clémence directed Depace to stop at the gate; then she hopped down and I clambered after her, my spine cracking loudly as I stretched. We stuck out sorely among the students crossing campus, wrapped up in velvet cloaks and amber furs, but if we got curious looks, I didn’t notice. I was too busy staring openmouthed at the stonework, the stained glass, the tapestries that lined the walls of the colonnades. I felt the pull again—the want I’d nursed since childhood, to study here with Geisler—so strong it hurt. I tried to imagine myself as a student, swapping test scores with mates as we crossed the snowy courtyard to the next lecture, but as hard as I squinted, I couldn’t do it. Perhaps because whenever I tried to picture anything ahead of me, it was with the nagging notion that Oliver would always be nearby, holding me back.

  Clémence led me into a gray stone building and up three flights of stairs before she stopped in front of a wooden door and knocked.

  “Enter,” called a voice.

  Geisler’s office was neat to the point of manic tidiness, with books on the shelves sorted by color and subject before they were finally alphabetized, and quill pens laid out by size, in descending order. The weak sunlight rippled through the green glass windows, casting a sickly shadow over the whole room that made me feel as though I were standing in the emerald cover of Frankenstein. A single beam fell through a clear pane at the top, illuminating the man himself, bent over a stack of parchment at his desk.

  I had known Geisler since I was a boy, and in all that time I swear he’d never aged. I had watched Father go gray around the temples, then the eyebrows, then start wearing his spectacles permanently, but Geisler was just as I remembered, redheaded, with a thick beard bearing a single swatch of white down its center.

  He looked up as we entered, and his eyes bugged at me through the fickle light. He whipped his spectacles from his face and stood up, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Dr. Geisler,” I said, when Clémence didn’t make a sound.

  As soon as I spoke, his face lost its glow and his eyes returned to their usual size. “Alasdair Finch,” he said, his French edged by German vowels I assumed Ingolstadt had given him. “It’s been some time.”

  “Some time,” I repeated stupidly. With Geisler staring at me, I felt like a boy again.

  “It is . . .” He polished his spectacles on the tail of his jacket, then placed them back on his nose and squinted at me. “Quite extraordinary, I must say, to see you standing here before me.” He inched closer, still examining me with a tight scrutiny, as though making sure I was truly who he thought I was. “You have grown,” he said at last.

  Clémence snorted, quietly enough that only I heard. I swallowed a terse remark in favor of a cordial “Yes, sir.” If I was going to be enjoying Geisler’s hospitality in Ingolstadt, I had to keep a civil tongue, though that had never been the struggle for me that it was for Oliver.

  “You look . . .” He stared at me for a moment longer, then removed his spectacles again and tucked them in his pocket. At last he looked me in the eye in a manner that suggested conversation rather than inspection. “Remarkably like your brother.” His smile lines creased.

  I swallowed hard. “So I’m told.”

  “I thought for a moment you were he. It startled me.” He clapped me on the shoulder, hard enough that my knees buckled. “Alasdair, I’m very pleased you’re here! We have so much to discuss. So much.” He bustled back to his desk and rooted through a drawer for a moment before producing a copper kettle. “Tea, perhaps? Or something stronger?”

  “We should go home,” Clémence interrupted. She was standing soldier straight, hands behind her back. “We’ve had a journey.”

  Geisler frowned at her. “Are you speaking for our guest?”

  “I was thinking of him,” she replied, her chin dipping to her chest. “He must be tired.”

  “Alasdair, what do you think?” Geisler glanced in my direction as though hoping I would disagree, but all I could think about was sleep.

  “I’d like to get some rest,” I replied.

  “Ah. Well, that’s understandable.” He looked a bit disappointed, but he replaced the teapot and slid the drawer closed with his knee. “I’ll take you to my home, then. We can have some supper, and you can rest, and we’ll leave the business for later.”

  I still didn’t have a guess at what that business was, but I nodded. Geisler retrieved his coat from the door and the three of us started back the way Clémence and I had come, across the courtyard, toward the university gates. I had the sense that he wanted to ask me something—many things, perhaps—but he kept his gaze forward, only tossing a few furtive glances in my direction. Beside me, Clémence stared up at the sky with her hands deep in her pockets. I looked up too, and noticed fat clouds, gray and thick with the promise of snow, shuffling in front of the sun. “Bad weather coming,” she murmured.

  “Thank you, mademoiselle,” Geisler replied tersely. “Now we all have a firm grasp of the obvious.”

  Clémence buried her mouth in the collar of her coat and fell silent.

  “Ingolstadt is lovely in spring,” Geisler said to me as we crossed the snow-spangled courtyard, Clémence a few steps behind. “The winters can be bleak, but when the flowers bloom in April, it’s a sight.”

  “How . . . nice,” I said, unsure what response he was chasing.

  “We should talk about your application while you’re here.” He looked sideways at me. “Your father told me once you wanted to study at the university. Is that still true?”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Medicine or mechanics?”

  “Both, if I could.”

  “Ingolstadt’s one of the only schools in Europe where you can. You’d do well here, I think. I should introduce you to the head of my department. Make sure he knows your name. Lectures are nearly finished for the term or I’d find some for you to sit in on. And when your application comes in, I’ll be sure to put in a good word.”

  “That’s . . .” I had one moment of delirious happiness before I remembered the whole reason I hadn’t applied to begin with. “That’d be brilliant, sir, thank you,” I finished, trying gallantly to infuse my voice with some of the excitement I’d felt before I thought, yet again, of Oliver.

  Geisler nodded at a pair of students passing in the opposite direction. “And what’s the news out of Geneva these days? I heard the clock tower is finished.”

  “Yes, sir. The clock will strike on Christmas Eve.”

  “I’ll bet it’s a sight. I wish I could see it.”

  I glanced sideways at him, trying to work out whether he meant it in earnest. The reason Geisler had gone to Geneva was that the city hired him to oversee constructing the tower clock, then had him arrested when they found out he was using their money and the room behind the clock face as a front for his own research. I couldn’t imagine he harbored much fondness for the clock tower after that, but perhaps we were alike in thinking that all mechanical things—even the ones with jagged memories attached—were magnificent.

  “And how are your parents?” Geisler asked as we left the campus and turned onto the cobbled street.

  Clémence coughed in what I assumed was a too-late attempt to sidestep the topic. My stomach clenched.

  “They were arrested,” I said, “the night your assistant came to collect me.”

  “God’s wounds.” Geisler stopped walking. Clémence smashed into him, and he cuffed her on the ear before turning to face me dead on.
“I didn’t know. Alasdair, I’m so sorry.” He rolled his lips into his mouth for a moment and released a heavy breath through his nose, sending steamy clouds rising above his beard that reminded me of a dragon. “I never thought they’d get your father, he was so sharp about staying hidden. And your mother, did they arrest her as well?”

  I stamped my feet, less to keep warm and more for an excuse to stare at the ground. “I don’t know.”

  “What about your brother?”

  I gave him a moment to realize his mistake, but he didn’t, and when I met his gaze, he looked so unapologetic and earnest that it frightened me.

  “Oliver’s dead,” I said.

  “Yes. Of course. How foolish of me.” He pivoted sharply and started again up the sloping road, Clémence and I following as the clouds sank across the rooftops, draping the street in shadows.

  Geisler’s home was outside the city limits and shielded from the road by a grove of towering black pines. It was larger than most of the slender town houses along the main streets, with a yard behind it outlined by a trim fence. We stopped on the doorstep, and Geisler fumbled through his bag for a while before swearing under his breath. “Must have left my keys in the office,” he mumbled. “Never mind.” He knocked on the door, and I heard the sound echo through the house. I thought it strange he hadn’t asked Clémence for her set, but one look at her tight jaw told me she had yet to be trusted with her own.

  There was a shuffling creak from the other side; then, a moment later, the door was flung open. I gasped aloud before I could stop myself. On the threshold stood a man made entirely of gears and bars and metal plates, but walking, upright and of its own accord. Its eyes were glassy and its mouth a rigid, lipless rectangle that I couldn’t have fit a finger through. It stepped back from the door to let us in, each step stiff-kneed and ticking.

  Geisler walked past it as he stripped off his coat, and Clémence followed. I edged in after them, keeping my eyes on the clockwork thing, not certain exactly what it was or what it was about to do.