My hand flew to my mouth, fear taking on a whole new bodily form. His name was Jonathan Nathaniel Wadsworth the first.
The man both my uncle and brother were named after. Clearly, Father despised his brother, but what did it mean that he’d hung his namesake up in his study, hiding something undoubtedly filled with wretched things?
Was it a secret dig at Uncle? Blaming him for failing Mother? If the secret passage led to Hell, was it Uncle’s fault for showing Father the way?
What sounded like a soft moan drifted from beyond the painting. I blinked. Pressing my ear against the wall, I listened harder. There was only the stillness of silence and too many secrets kept. Perhaps I was going mad. The walls couldn’t possibly be talking.
Or perhaps another helpless victim was trapped wherever that staircase led. My heart thrashed, and my blood roared through my veins. I needed to go down there. I needed to save at least one of Father’s victims. I glanced at the clock above the mantel. It was still early. Father and Nathaniel wouldn’t be back for hours yet. Or what if… what if it was Nathaniel down there now? What if Father had trapped him?
What a fool I’d been! I couldn’t expect Father to play by any rules. Just because he’d said he’d gone out with Nathaniel didn’t mean my brother actually left the house. He could be tied up and bleeding to death this instant.
Without further hesitation, I pushed the painting in, then stepped onto the staircase. A whispered noise greeted me from the seemingly endless depths below.
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 co
uldn’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.