Sinister Sentiments Read online

  The life of a factory owner is not the glorious affair I had imagined it to be. I spend the rest of the afternoon looking out of the window in the huge third-floor space, and not a single person comes to visit or sends any kind of correspondence for me to attend to. Feeling like little more than the glorified babysitter of a sleeping giant, I am glad to board the busy omnibus that will trundle me home. The craft passes various bands of weather; it seems today that every street has its very own climate. The atmosphere on my own little avenue is far more cloudy than I would have expected. With a wry grin; I ponder the possibility of changing that tomorrow as I ascend the porch steps.

  The door opens without my having to ring the doorbell, and as I enter I am greeted by three terrified faces. Our two young maids and the cook’s assistant are gathered at the bottom of the staircase, glancing at me and then back up towards the top floor of the house. Startled by their strange behaviour, we stand in an odd silence as I watch their trembling lips form the right shapes for hesitant speech.

  “Mister Steed, Sir! You have to help us, Sir!”

  “We didn’t know what to do with it, Sir!”

  “We don’t know how it got in here, Sir!”

  The tirade of fretting grows in volume as the three young women crowd around me, their pleading faces fuelled with frenzy. I raise my hand to try and stop them speaking, calling over their woes to make them talk one at a time, but it is only a noise from upstairs that forces them to stop. With sudden haste, all mouths are fastened shut and the women look to the stairs again. The cook’s assistant clutches my arm in a most impertinent manner, fingers digging hard into the muscle. The noise comes again, and this time I hear it clearly. A thunder-like rumble, as though something momentously heavy is walking around on the top floor of my house.

  “Please Mister,” one of the maids pleads. “Butler and Cook went to get help, but they ain’t come back, Sir. We reckon they must have run away, Sir.”

  “Run away?” I ask, almost laughing. “How absurd! Run away from what, girl?”

  None of them will say, they simply keep looking to the stairs.

  “Where is Annette?” I ask.

  Still no reply. I fling the cook’s assistant away from my arm and she clutches at the door frame instead, as though she needs something to steady herself upon. I look into her frightened eyes as my frustration burns.

  “Where is Mrs Steed?” I demand. “Girls, where is your mistress?”

  The cook’s assistant leans forward again, her lips barely moving as the whispered words come tumbling out.

  “We think it nabbed her, Sir.”

  I shake my head immediately, pushing past them all towards the stairs. They begin the tidal wave of woes again, fretting after me like fishwives at a market stall as I take the first few steps. I stop sharply, turning to stare them all down.

  “Now see here,” I chide. “I don’t know what hysteria has enraptured you three, but I mean to put a stop to this foolishness now. I shall go upstairs and explore the situation for myself.”

  “Be careful, Sir,” one of the maids whispers. I’m ashamed to say it unnerves me as I continue upwards.

  The occasional rumble is coming from my bedroom, and I can only surmise that some sort of pest has gained entrance and frightened the staff. At the closed door to the room, I put my ear to the wood and listen hard for noises. There is a faint snuffling, and a panting like that of a wounded dog, but no snarls or howls erupt from within. I consider knocking, but it seems unreasonable to think that whatever’s inside would stand on propriety. Instead, I push the door open, standing in the archway as I let it swing wide to reveal the room.

  My first instinct is to charge the thing I see, and I race forward to grab a chair before my good sense returns. The creature before me is at least my size, and I upend the chair to poke its legs out in front of me for the sake of defence. A curved, hairy back full of auburn fur rises and falls with heavy breathing. The animal has been roused by my entry, but it is reluctant to turn and reveal its head. We stand in a defensive stalemate as I take in its sharp, clawed feet and long, strong limbs.

  No wonder the maids were terrified. I have never seen a beast of this likeness before. But where is my Annette? An overview of the room tells me that no blood has been shed, and the beast is scarcely big enough to have swallowed a grown woman whole. Is she hiding somewhere to escape from the rancid thing? Or did she leave the house with the butler and the cook? Growing braver in view of the creature’s frightened posture, I knock the chair-legs to the ground a few times to get its attention. Its hairy back flinches with every sound.

  “All right beast,” I snarl courageously. “What have you done with my wife?”

  The creature’s massive shoulders slump down and I start as it quickly rotates on its paws. Its head is like that of a lion, framed by a shaggy brown mane, which hangs down as it droops its face towards the floor. It looks like an oversized dog, begging its master for forgiveness. I edge closer with the chair raised high, to get a better look at its face. As I do, the strangest scent fills my senses. Citrus and lavender water.

  “No,” I murmur, rage bubbling in my blood. “You’ve eaten her, you wretched thing!”

  I smash forwards with the chair, ready to bring it down upon the head of the beast in my blind rage. When the creature senses my attack, I am treated to the full extent of its massive strength. With a single paw, the beast flings me and the chair clean across the room, and I land with a painful crash at my back. A shattering sound follows and I raise my hands to shield my head as the shards from my beautiful mirror come raining down about my face. Cowering in a ball amid the debris, I don’t hear the beast approaching until I can smell Annette’s scent near me once again. Shaking and fearing the end, I lower my hands to look into the eyes of the thing that is coming to kill me.

  Those eyes. Those almond-shaped eyes with their bright hazel hue. I know those eyes, and I have never seen them look so sad as they do now, framed amongst fur and nestled above the frowning muzzle of the beast. I shake my head. The beast only nods hers, extending a paw to sweep away some of the glass that has collected beside me. I don’t understand what has happened, but the expression in Annette’s eyes is impossible to misinterpret. The beast has not taken her; she has become it.

  Where her paw was a moment ago, there is now a crumpled slip of writing paper. I can hear my heart thumping in my head as I lean forward to pick it up, unfurling the message and smoothing out its creases. A curling, shaky script greets my eyes.

  Lesson the second: know the parameters of nature before you broker a deal.

  The letterhead bears the Metero logo. The beautiful rose in the glass dome flashes through my memory. In order to receive from nature, one must give to it. Mr Metero has given my Annette’s beauty to a mere table decoration. At my request.

  “Annette,” I say. The beast looks bright, her eyes gleaming gratefully at the sound of her name on my lips. “Can you speak, darling girl?”

  When her thick, dark lips open, all that sounds is a mournful wail. The sparkle of her sharp, canine teeth makes me wince with fear, and Annette shuffles back on her haunches away from me, turning her head. I try to reach for her, but I don’t know where to hold her. It would be wrong to soothe her the way one would a horse or a dog, but she has no shape that I recognise in this four-legged, arch-backed form. My hand falls away in mid-air, despair deadening every sense in my body.

  “This cannot be so,” I declare, scrambling to my feet. “This is Metero’s doing, and I’ll fix it, Annette, I swear.”

  The beast lumbers back across the room, hopping up onto the wide bed to curl in a ball. She is hiding her face from me again, one huge paw atop her muzzle, but I can see the wetness of tears in her fur. The weathermaster has turned her into an animal, but left her the human ability to cry about it. When I pull a blanket up over the lower part of her body, Annette retracts her paw and gives me another sad look. It hurts me to remember how beautiful her face was that very same
morning, and it stabs at my heart to know that she is still the woman I love within this hideous casing.

  “I’m going back to the factory at once,” I tell her. “I’m going to find a way to reverse this.”

  The maids and the cook’s assistant refuse to believe what has happened, but they take their orders from me nonetheless. After I’m certain that food and water has been provided for Annette, I leave again for the factory in the first coach I can flag down. The labourers on the bottom-most floor of the factory work around the clock, in shifts to keep the sky engines firing, and I spot a door that must have been left open for ventilation. I cross the lawn, veering from the usual path that I have taken for so many months at this place, slipping into the doorway to access the worker’s floor.

  Smoke, steam and the glistening of turning gears fills my senses. The strongest of the labourers turn cranks and push giant wheels in constant circles, whilst others stoke the great central fire with a never-ending stream of coal. It is hard to find someone who isn’t totally occupied by their duties, until I spot a sleeping figure by a gold and glass contraption in the corner. The lift-operator is still here, taking a break from the hand-operated pulleys and cranks.

  “You there,” I say as I reach him, prodding the man in the shoulder.

  His heavy-lidded eyes flicker open, observing me with dark, dilated pupils.

  “Take me to the third floor,” I demand.

  He makes an indignant scoffing sound, folding his thickset arms.

  “Only Mr Met’ro goes to’t third floor,” he counters.

  I stand at my full height, looking down on him with my best sneer of derision.

  “I am Mr Metero’s temporary replacement,” I tell him. He remains unresponsive. “My name is Khazran Steed.”

  At this last utterance, the labourer finally gets to his feet.

  “Khazran Steed,” he mutters as he crosses to the lift controls. “Well, Sir, that’s a differ’nt matter, in’t it?”

  I am pleased, at least, that he knows my name, but it does make me wonder why he’s heard of me. I step into the glass-fronted lift box, holding on to a gilded handle as the labourer gives the mechanism its first hard crank. With a shunt that sends a sick shiver up through my spine, the lift begins to ascend through the empty floors where the clerks and architects work during the day. The aubergine corridor of Metero’s private floor is bathed in shadows as the lift comes to rest beside it. I step out into the darkness, grateful that the glass ceiling ahead offers me a little light from the clouded moon outside.

  The huge expanse of the roof space is eerie as the gathering dark settles in. It seems to me that this street is darker in atmosphere than all the others around it, and I wonder if Mr Metero is able to control the moonlight as well as the clouds. My footsteps echo among the metallic hum of the dormant weather pipes, and I weave amongst them until I reach the weathermaster’s desk. He told me that emergency instructions were somewhere in the bureau. I hadn’t thought to explore them until now, but I’m hoping there’s some way to contact him within those notes.

  Ripping through drawer after drawer, I don’t end my furious search until loose papers, trinkets and stationary are scattered everywhere around me in the darkness. Nowhere in the mess can I find anything marked with words like ‘protocol’ or ‘emergency’, but I scan every paper with the hope of finding a telegram address for Africa. Metero might even have arrived there already if he elected to take his airship this morning. Again, I find nothing that can help me, moving to the very last scrap of paper with fading hope fuelling every nerve. I run my eyes over its message:

  Lesson the third: There is beauty in everything, if only one has vision enough to see it.

  This is meant me for me, I know by Metero’s quaint phrasing and the matching, cursive script to the note Annette had been given.

  “You planned this,” I whisper. “You evil rotter, you heartless cur, you-”

  “That’s quite enough of that, dear boy,” a frail voice interjects.

  Jumping to my feet, I search the shadows for the old man whose voice I know. A pinkish glow greets me to the left, where the outline of the floating rose comes into view. Two liver-spotted hands hold the rose’s glass dome, and Metero’s face is cast into shadow by its crimson light. His glossy eyes sparkle as his thin lips expand into a greedy smile.

  “My employees are very important to me, Khazran,” he explains, “as is the very ethos of my beloved factory.”

  I watch his skeletal face as he approaches.

  “You should be in Africa,” I say weakly.

  The old man chuckles. “There was no appointment in Africa,” he chides. “Don’t you see yet, Khazran? It’s a test. Do you honestly think I’d leave the most destructive technology in the nation in the hands of the likes of you?”

  The last word expounds from his tongue as though it is laced with poison.

  “A test,” I repeat, my brow furrowed. “A test of what, may I ask?”

  “Perspective,” the old man replies. “You find thunder and rain to be hideous things. You wished the sight of a dying bloom to be removed from your vision.”

  I look down at the note in my hands again. There is beauty in everything.

  “So you altered Annette,” I conclude. “You have made her ugly so that I might learn that beauty isn’t everything.”

  I walk to meet his stride, looking down at the glowing rose between us. A smile of sheer relief crosses my face as I watch the bright flower hovering there.

  “So what happens now?” I ask, pointing to the flower. “When I learn to appreciate the thunder and the beasts and the ugly things of life, you’ll release her beauty again from this jar?”

  Mr Metero passes me by, setting the rose down on his desk. He settles into his chair, removing his top hat as he reclines to observe me. Not even a hint of a smile passes over his lips.

  “No,” he says plainly.

  Something heavy forms in the pit of my stomach.

  “What do you mean?” I plead.

  “Lesson the fourth,” the old man begins. “A deal once brokered, cannot be undealt.”

  I take his meaning, but I cannot accept it. The vision of Annette’s hazel eyes, surrounded by dark fur, sends a retching shudder through my bones. The old man raises his palms, his narrow shoulders rising in a shrug.

  “This isn’t some fairy-tale, dear boy,” Metero whispers. “I need all my employees to appreciate the darkness and obscurity of this world as much as the pleasantries and the light. Annette will remain as she is for the rest of your natural life.”

  “My life?” I ask.

  The old man nods. “I suggest you learn to love her all over again,” he says, “because if you turn on her now, she might just end you in order to reclaim that which you bartered away. She knows all about the terms of what you did; I visited her shortly after the transaction took place. The fact that she hasn’t killed you already suggests that she loves you very much, Khazran. It is my hope that her devotion is not deeply misplaced in you.”

  I walk home in the semi-darkness with the odd feeling that the moon is lighting my way, but I try to ignore the prospect of the absolute control that the weathermaster now has over my life. My life with the beast. Annette is condemned to her fur-and-claw prison for as long as she loves me, and I am challenged with the prospect of loving her back. For my life, my job and my own sanity, I can do nothing now but try and live by the lessons which Metero has set me.

  When I return to my top-floor bedroom, my wife lies sleeping in a heap, beneath the blankets where I left her. Her arched back heaves with every breath, fur sliding against the sheets to make a peculiar scratching sound. Someone has opened the bedroom window, and a trail-shaped clearing in the broken glass leads towards the empty frame of my prized mirror. I stand before its lack of reflection, glad that I cannot partake of the vanity which has made me a victim in Metero’s game. A final letter is secured to the gilded top-edge of the ruined mirror, and I pull it down and unfold i
t with a snap. Annette gives a sleepy yowl behind me as I read the curling writing by the light of the moon.

  Lesson the fifth: he conquers, who conquers himself.

  Galileo’s Mistake

  “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” – Galileo Galilei

  Hearts have feelings and minds have memories long after they allegedly die. At least that’s what I’ve discovered. If Silas knows it too, then he’s not letting on. He just walks beside me down the foggy pavement, cane at his side. The golden spiral around the polished oak whirrs with the click of cogs and gears, sending out subtle vibrations as it assesses the path before us. The signals return to his palm in calculated waves of volume and size. The cane tells him when to stop, when to go, when to turn and, perhaps most importantly, when to run. A black-skinned man in 1894 knows a lot about running. These murky cobbles, lit by the dim yellow glow of fetid gas lamps, they’re leading us to Oxford Street. It’s not a place to which persons of colour usually go.

  That’s why Silas wants me here: just in case his midnight jaunt goes awry.

  He only emerges to walk at night, taking air when London is at rest and the fumes of the factories that surround us are reduced, their dark chimneys only letting faint wisps escape, echoes of the production that occurs when the sky is bright. There is no sound of moving mechanisms now, save for Silas’s humming cane and my own four legs as they skip in step with his wide strides. Silas breathes contentedly in the summer air, humid in the centre of the city even at this late hour. All I can think is that it’s going to cause me to rust. My master brushes the reddish stains off as wear and tear, shining me and patching me up until I’m silver once more, but the rust causes me pain in the parts of me that are still the old me. I don’t think he knows what being part machine really entails.