Someone or something was definitely down there.
I went to gather my skirts, forgetting I wasn’t wearing a blasted dress, then almost lost my footing as I looked down in surprise. I placed one hand against the cool stone wall, allowing it to act as my guide as I drifted farther into the darkness, my feet flying as fast as they dared over unfamiliar ground.
Grabbing an oil lamp or candle would’ve been wise. I wouldn’t dwell on that lack of foresight now. With each step downward, blackness got lighter instead of more suffocating. A lamp must have been left on for reasons I dare not know.
I shuddered, imagining a million and one horrors about to greet me. My silk shoes raced along the stone, light as a feather as I jumped from one step to the next. I was grateful for the soundlessness they offered. I’d forgotten my boots when I left Uncle’s earlier, which seemed like a blessing now. The silken tread would give me time to secure my bearings without revealing myself.
As I neared the end of the stairs, a warm glow reached toward me. The very idea something so inviting could herald the entrance of this pit of hell made my skin crawl. Beyond a final bend, before the room came fully into view, I paused with my back pressed against the wall, listening.
No human noise sounded. But the soft whirl and churn of steam-driven parts quietly hissed in time to the beat of my heart. It had to be the noise I’d heard.
Whirl-churn. Whirl-churn.
I closed my eyes. Whatever was making that sound could only be wretched.
Whirl-churn. Whirl-churn.
The scent of medical elixirs and burnt flesh wafted over to my hiding place, turning my already queasy stomach. I was not anxious to have my curiosity quelled now, but if my brother was being tortured, I needed to cross that final step.
I sucked a breath through my mouth, seeking to avoid the sickening scent as much as possible, then peeled myself off the wall. It took two tries, but I finally commanded my body to move into the room.
Fear spread its ugly disease throughout my body like rats carrying the Black Death. A laboratory, far more sinister than anything ever dreamed up in novels, was set out before me. As in Uncle’s laboratory, shelves lined the walls, filled with specimen jars two and three deep. Unlike in my uncle’s laboratory, there did not appear to be any order to these specimens, and the wood looked half-rotten.
I staggered back, bumping into something soft and fleshy on a shelf nearest the wall. The world stopped spinning as I flipped around and saw flesh pulled tightly over a mechanical arm, the skin crudely sewn together with large, jagged stitches.
It was as if Father had chopped an arm off at the elbow, and replaced some of the bones in the fingers and forearm with metal before covering it with stolen skin.
Redness surrounded the needle wounds; clearly an infection was leeching into the makeshift limb. My corset felt ten times too tight, and I swayed on my feet, suddenly gasping for breath.
Whirl-churn. Whirl-churn.
This couldn’t be real. I closed my eyes, praying when I opened them the world would right itself again. But that was a fool’s dream. I swallowed the bile rising quickly in my throat, taking in the full gore of the object I’d bumped into.
Black squiggly lines of sepsis twisted up the monstrosity. Gray-tipped fingers twitched, the nail beds dried and receding to both metal and bone.
Whatever Father was attempting, he’d failed with this… thing.
Whirl-churn. Whirl-churn.
Steam erupted from the strange device, forcing dead fingers to flex at regular intervals. I was too shocked to even cover my mouth.
At least my heart hadn’t lost its senses; I felt its beat throughout my body, pumping so quickly I feared it’d knock me over in its mad rush to flee. Should Father or even Blackburn pop out from one of these dark corners, I’d perish on the spot.
I slowly backed away from the mechanical flesh-covered arm, my attention steadily moving about the room, jumping from one horror to the next.
Whirl-churn. Whirl-churn.
Animals in specimen jars were in various states of decay, their flesh and soft tissues breaking apart in liquid hell. Crude abominations were left on tabletops throughout the room. Birds were ripped apart, placed in the mouths of dead cats, scenes of cruelty in nature displayed in sick tribute to the strong. It reminded me of a much darker version of Thomas’s personal laboratory. I stepped closer, unable to stop myself from getting a better look at the horrific creations.
On another shelf I spied a ginger beer bottle filled with a dark crimson liquid. I picked it up, turning it one way, then the other. It had dried and coagulated to a gel. Jack made reference to it in one of his letters. He hadn’t lied.
I exhaled, my breath puffing little white clouds in front of me. It was unbearably cold down here. I rubbed my hands over my arms, walking to a machine near the center of the room making the soft whirl-churn noise, and halted, nearly stumbling over my own feet when I saw the most sinister thing of all.
A human heart sat under a glass case, and soft noises came from a machine lending an electrical charge to it, causing it to continue pumping.
Pressing a hand to my mouth, I forced myself to stay calm and not gag or scream. Liquid-filled tubes ran out of the organ and over the table, toward something I couldn’t quite see without moving closer. I peered at the liquid being pushed through the heart with the transfusion apparatus; it was black as oil and stank of sulfur.
Whirl-churn. Whirl-churn.
I swallowed my revulsion. Father had truly lost his mind. Ghosts of his victims surrounded me, warning me to turn back, run away. Or maybe it was my own innate warning system, commanding me into that fight-or-flight state of being. But I couldn’t stop myself from inching around the table—any more than some of the slain prostitutes could resist their drink—too compelled to leave without seeing what the heart was pumping its strange life force into.
My breath came faster, speeding my pulse along with the added oxygen coursing through my system, making me both faint and jittery at once. I could hear myself screaming, No! Turn back! RUN! But couldn’t stop moving forward.
Whirl-churn. Whirl-churn.
A closed wooden crate, as long and wide as a coffin, lay on the floor, tubes disappearing into it like worms burrowing into the earth. I did not want to know what that box contained. I paused, feeling the sharp tug of self-preservation dragging me back.
But I cut it away, silencing it.
I mustn’t reach for the lid, but knew that was impossible. I was sick with dread, knowing, somehow just knowing, what I was about to uncover and being unable to walk away without seeing the truth. I watched as my hand shakily reached down, of its own volition, and lifted the creaky lid.
Inside the makeshift coffin lay my mother.
Her gray flesh—a patchwork of decayed skin with pieces of new—glistened with a sheen of unnatural sweat. The skin over her jaw had rotted away, giving her a permanent sneer. Beneath the grafted skin, something bubbled with artificial life.
Father wasn’t trying to complete a successful organ transplant. He was trying to bring Mother back from the dead—five years after.
All the fear I’d been containing shattered like glass. I screamed, letting go of the lid and backing away, bumping into the table. The soft whirl-churn of the machines grew louder. Or maybe I was about to pass out. I covered my eyes with my hands, trying to rid myself of the image burned there. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t have done such a thing.
No one, not even the most scientifically mad, would attempt something so ungodly. We’d been so wrong about Jack the Ripper’s motives. Even Thomas couldn’t have predicted such a thing.