This Monstrous Thing(26)
“Once,” I said, and I could hear Oliver’s voice reciting Coleridge in my head. Because he knows, a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread. “I’m not sure he still is.”
“Well, perhaps we can rekindle that. And if not, we can find him a job, something to keep him occupied. But the main point is that he will not be your burden alone, Alasdair. I can help you care for him. You don’t have to think of him constantly, as I’m sure you do now. You can go to lectures. Meet young people your age. You don’t have to be the only one taking care of your brother any longer.”
It was like I had been sitting at the bottom of a river for two years, weighed down by Oliver, and with every word Geisler removed a stone from my pocket and I felt myself begin to rise, the surface in sight and sunlight rippling off the water. I felt light, lighter than I had in maybe my whole life.
I thought I could rise no higher, but Geisler continued. “You will work alongside me, of course. Not as my assistant, but my partner. You’ll show me the process you used to resurrect Oliver, and we can see that the psychological defects he suffered won’t happen again.”
A stone sank back into my chest. “I’m not sure it should be done again.”
“Nonsense. Do you have any idea what people will pay for it? And think of the notoriety! You are a pioneer of one of the greatest achievements of all time! Alasdair, you will be canonized in the bible of science.”
I could have lived and died in those words, but then I thought of what I had put Oliver through when I brought him back—his waking in agony with no memory, the way he suffered every day at the mercy of his clockwork body, the gears that pinched his skin and tore what was left of him to shreds. I wasn’t sure I was ready to inflict that on anyone else, nor the pain of being an outcast. But perhaps with Geisler behind me we could rid the outcome of the less desirable side effects. And with more people like him, Oliver wouldn’t be so alone.
“Of course, if you are to work with me, our research would have to be kept secret until we were ready to reveal it,” Geisler said as he picked up his teacup. He chuckled as the rim touched his lips. “No more embarrassing little slipups.”
That tugged me from my thoughts. “Sorry, what?”
“Alasdair.” He held my name with a long, lean smile. “Did you think it was so opaque that I wouldn’t see your signature all over it? Surely all this was meant to attract my attention. And you wanted to brag. It’s natural.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about this.” He held up Frankenstein, spine toward me so I could see the title. The gold-leaf letters smoldered in the firelight.
“You think I wrote that?” I laughed out loud before I could stop myself. Oliver told me once I was borderline illiterate, and though he’d said it to be mean, it was barely an exaggeration. The thought of sitting down and writing an entire book, slim as it was, was daft. “Hell’s teeth, what makes you think that?”
Geisler cocked his head like a bird. “Have you truly not read it?”
“I only heard about it for the first time last week. I know it’s about clockwork. That’s all.”
“God’s wounds, Alasdair.” His face went pale, and when he spoke again, his voice wavered. “It’s about bringing back the dead.”
I’d already guessed it, but hearing him say it made everything inside me hush—a quiet so absolute it was several long seconds before I could drag words from it. “Using clockwork?”
“A resurrected mechanical man,” Geisler replied. “The story is fictionalized, of course, but the premise is a damn ringer for what you’ve told me. And it’s quite clear that the two leading characters are you and your brother.”
“You . . . you think that book is about Oliver and me?”
“I have no doubt. How else did you think I guessed what you’d done? As soon as I read it . . .” He leaned forward and seized my shoulder. “Alasdair, you can be honest with me. I have people—friends—who can help us. We can still turn this in our favor.”
“I didn’t write it.”
“If you’re lying—”
“I’m not lying, sir, I swear it!”
“Then someone already knows.” He stood up and took several halting steps across the hearth rug. “Who have you told about this?”
“No one. Not even my parents.”
“You’re certain no one knows? No friends, no one could have overheard you?”
I thought briefly of Mary, but I didn’t want to have to explain her to Geisler. He was finally starting to see me as something other than Oliver’s younger brother, and I wasn’t going to spoil that by looking like a lovesick puppy. “No, sir.”
“Oliver doesn’t have contact with anyone?”
“Oliver could have written it,” I said.
Geisler stared at me for a moment, then waved that away like stray smoke. “No.”
“He used to write,” I said, “before he died. He wanted to write poetry, why not this?”
“Because the portrayal of the resurrected man is less than favorable. Oliver would never paint himself such a way if he wanted any sort of recognition for it.”