Library of Souls

by Ransom Riggs

  I looked at Emma. She was staring at the floor, her face unreadable.

  “A failed experiment is nothing to be sorry for,” Bentham said. “It’s how scientific progress is made. But what happened to your grandfather is one of the great regrets of my life.”

  “That’s why he left,” Emma said, her face tilting upward. “It’s why he went to America.” She turned to me. She didn’t look angry, but wore an expression of dawning relief. “He was ashamed. He said so in a letter once and I never understood why. That he felt ashamed, and unpeculiar.”

  “It was taken from him,” I said. Now I had an answer to another question: how a hollowgast could’ve bested my grandfather in his own backyard. He wasn’t senile, or even particularly frail. But his defenses against hollows were mostly gone, and had been for a long time.

  “That’s not what you should be sorry for,” said Sharon, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. “One man wasn’t going to win that war. The real shame is what the wights did with your technology. You created the precursor to ambrosia.”

  “I’ve tried to repay my debt,” Bentham said. “Didn’t I help you? And you?” He looked at Sharon and then Mother Dust. Like Sharon, it seemed she, too, had been an ambro addict. “For years I’ve wanted to apologize,” he said, turning to me. “To make it up to your grandfather. That’s why I’ve been looking for him all this time. I hoped he would come back to see me, and I might figure out a way to restore his talent.”

  Emma laughed bitterly. “After what you did to him, you thought he’d come back for more?”

  “I didn’t consider it likely, but I hoped. Fortunately, redemption comes in many forms. In this case, in the guise of a grandson.”

  “I’m not here to redeem you,” I said.

  “Nevertheless, I am your servant. If I can do anything, it is yours for the asking.”

  “Just help us get our friends back, and your sister.”

  “Gladly,” he said, seeming relieved I hadn’t demanded more or stood up and screamed in his face. I still might’ve—my head was spinning, and I hadn’t quite sorted out how to react. “Now,” he said, “as for how to proceed from here …”

  “Can we have a moment?” Emma said. “Just Jacob and me?”

  We exited into the hall to talk in private—out of sight of the hollow, but only just.

  “Let’s make a list of all the terrible things this man is responsible for,” Emma said.

  “Okay,” I said. “One: he created hollows. Without meaning to, though.”

  “But he did. And he created ambrosia, and he took away Abe’s power, or most of it.”

  Without meaning to, I nearly said again. But Bentham’s intentions were beside the point. I knew what she was getting at: after all these revelations, I wasn’t so confident about putting our fates and those of our friends in Bentham’s hands—or his plans. He may have been well-meaning, but he had a dismal track record.

  “Can we trust him?” Emma said.

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  I thought for a moment. “I think we can,” I said. “I just hope he’s used up all his bad luck.”

  * * *

  “COME QUICKLY! IT’S WAKING UP!”

  Shouts echoed from the kitchen. Emma and I dashed through the doorway to find everyone cowering in a corner, terrified of a groggy hollowgast that was struggling to sit up but had managed only to droop its upper body over the edge of the sink. Only I could see its open mouth, its tongues lolling limply across the floor.

  Close your mouth, I said in Hollow. Making a sound like it was slurping spaghetti, it sucked them back into its jaws.

  Sit up.

  The hollow couldn’t quite do it, so I took it by the shoulders and guided it into a seated position. It was recovering with remarkable speed, though, and after another few minutes it had regained enough motor skill to be coaxed out of the sink and onto its feet. It no longer limped. All that was left of the gash in its neck was a faint white line, not unlike the ones fast disappearing from my own face. As I relayed this, Bentham couldn’t hide his irritation that Mother Dust had healed the hollow so thoroughly.

  “Can I help it if my dust is potent?” Mother Dust said via Reynaldo.

  Exhausted, they went off to find beds. Emma and I were tired, too—it was nearing dawn and we hadn’t slept—but the progress we were making was exciting and hope had given us a second wind.

  Bentham turned to us, eyes alight. “Moment of truth, friends. Shall we see if we can get the old girl running again?”

  By that he meant his machine, and there was no need to ask.

  “Let’s not waste another second,” Emma said.

  Bentham summoned his bear and I rallied my hollowgast. PT appeared in the doorway, scooped his master into his arms, and together they led us through the house. What a strange sight we would’ve made, had anyone been watching: a dapper gentleman cradled in the arms of a bear, Sharon in his billowing black cloak, Emma stifling yawns with a hand that kept smoking, and plain old me muttering at my white-daubed hollowgast, who even in perfect health shuffled as he walked, as if his bones didn’t quite fit his body.

  Through the halls and down the stairs we went, into the bowels of the house: rooms crowded with clanking machinery, each smaller than the last, until finally we came to a door that the bear couldn’t fit through. We stopped. PT set his master down.

  “Here it is,” Bentham said, beaming like a proud father. “The heart of my Panloopticon.”

  Bentham opened the door. PT waited outside while the rest of us followed him in.

  The small room was dominated by a fearsome machine made of iron and steel. Its guts stretched from wall to wall, a baffling array of flywheels and pistons and valves glistening with oil. It looked like a machine capable of making unholy noise, but for now it sat cold and silent. A greasy man stood between two giant gears, tightening something with a wrench.

  “This is my assistant, Kim,” said Bentham.

  I recognized him: he was the man who’d chased us out of the Siberia Room.

  “I’m Jacob,” I said. “We surprised you in the snow yesterday.”

  “What were you doing out there?” Emma asked him.

  “Freezing half to death,” the man said bitterly, and he went on wrenching.

  “Kim’s been helping me search for a way into my brother’s Panloopticon,” said Bentham. “If such a door exists in the Siberia Room, it’s likely at the bottom of a deep crevasse. I’m certain Kim will be grateful if your hollowgast succeeds in bringing some of our other rooms online, where there are sure to be doors in more accessible places.”

  Kim grunted, his face skeptical as he looked us up and down. I wondered how many years he’d spent battling frostbite and combing the crevasses.

  Bentham got down to business. He issued clipped orders to his assistant, who twisted a few dials and pulled a long lever. The gears of the machine gave a hiss and sputter, then turned a degree.

  “Bring in the creature,” Bentham said in a low voice.

  The hollow had been waiting outside, and I called him in. He shuffled through the doorway and let out a low gravelly growl, as if he knew something unpleasant was about to happen to him.

  The assistant dropped his wrench but quickly retrieved it.

  “Here is the battery chamber,” Bentham said, drawing our attention to a large box in the corner. “You must guide the creature inside, where he’ll be restrained.”

  The chamber resembled a windowless phone booth made of cast iron. A nest of tubes sprouted from its top and connected to pipes that ran along the ceiling. Bentham grasped the heavy door’s handle and pulled it open with a grating rasp. I peered inside. The walls were smooth gray metal perforated with small holes, like the interior of an oven. Along the back hung a collection of thick leather straps.

  “Will it hurt him?” I asked.

  I surprised myself with the question, and Bentham, too.

  �
�Does that matter?” he replied.

  “I’d rather it didn’t. If we have a choice.”

  “We don’t,” Bentham said, “but it won’t feel any pain. The chamber fills with anesthetic sleeping gas before anything else happens.”

  “And then what?” I said.

  He smiled and patted my arm. “It’s very technical. Suffice to say, your creature will leave the chamber alive, in more or less the condition he entered it. Now, if you would kindly have it step inside.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him, nor why it mattered to me. The hollows had put us through hell and seemed so lacking in feeling that inflicting pain on them should have been a pleasure. But it wasn’t. I didn’t want to kill the hollow any more than I wanted to kill a strange animal. In the course of leading this creature around by the nose, I had gotten close enough to understand that there was more than just void inside it. There was a tiny spark, a little marble of soul at the bottom of a deep pool. It wasn’t hollow—not really.

  Come, I said to it, and the hollow, which had been lurking shyly in the corner, stepped around Bentham to stand before the booth.

  Inside.

  I felt it waver. It was healed now, and strong, and if my hold on it faltered for even a moment, I knew what it might do. But I was stronger, and a battle of wills between us would’ve been no contest. It wavered, I think, because I had.

  I’m sorry, I said to it.

  The hollow didn’t move; sorry was input it didn’t know what to do with. I just needed to say it.

  Inside, I said again, and this time the hollow complied and stepped into the chamber. Since no one else would touch it, from that point Bentham told me what to do. Per his instructions, I pushed the hollow against the back wall and crossed the leather straps over its legs, arms, and chest, buckling them tight. They were clearly designed to restrain a human being, which raised questions to which I didn’t want the answers right now. All that mattered was moving forward with the plan.

  I stepped out, feeling stifled and panicky from the few moments I’d spent inside.

  “Close the door,” Bentham said.

  When I hesitated the assistant moved to do it, but I blocked his way. “It’s my hollow,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  I planted my feet and grabbed the handle and then—though I tried not to—looked into the hollow’s face. Its great black eyes were wide and frightened, all out of proportion with its body, small and shriveled like a cluster of figs. It was still and would always be a disgusting creature, but it looked so pathetic that I felt unaccountably terrible, like I was about to put to sleep a dog who didn’t understand why it was being punished.

  All hollowgast need to die, I told myself. I knew I was right, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

  I pulled on the door and it screamed shut. Bentham’s assistant hooked a giant padlock through its handles, then went back to the machine’s controls and began twiddling dials.

  “You did the right thing,” Emma whispered in my ear.

  Gears began to turn, pistons to pump, the machine itself to thrum with a rhythm that shook the entire room. Bentham clapped his hands and grinned, happy as a schoolkid. Then from inside the chamber came a scream the likes of which I’d never heard.

  “You said it wouldn’t hurt him!” I shouted at Bentham.

  He turned to shout at his assistant. “The gas! You forgot the anesthesia!”

  The assistant scrambled to pull another lever. There was a loud hiss of compressed air. A wisp of white smoke curled from a crack in the chamber door. The hollow’s screams gradually faded.

  “There,” said Bentham. “Now it feels nothing.”

  I wished for a moment that Bentham was in that chamber instead of my hollow.

  Other pieces of the machine came alive. There was the sound of liquid sloshing through the pipes above our heads. Several small valves near the ceiling rang like bells. Black fluid began dripping down through the machine’s guts. It wasn’t oil, but something even darker and more pungent—the fluid that the hollowgast produced almost constantly, that wept from its eyes and dripped from its teeth. Its blood.

  I’d seen enough and walked out of the room feeling sick to my stomach. Emma followed me.

  “Are you okay?”

  I couldn’t expect her to understand my reaction. I hardly understood it myself. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “This is the right thing.”

  “It’s the only thing,” she said. “We’re so close.”

  Bentham hobbled out of the room. “PT, upstairs!” he said, and he tipped himself into the bear’s waiting arms.

  “Is it working now?” Emma said.

  “We’re going to find out,” Bentham replied.

  With my hollow restrained, sedated, and locked inside an iron chamber, there was little danger in leaving him behind—and yet I lingered by the door.

  Sleep, I said. Sleep, and don’t wake up until this is over.

  I followed the others out through the machine rooms and up several flights of stairs. We came to the long, carpeted hallway that was lined with exotically named rooms. The walls hummed with energy; the house seemed alive.

  PT set Bentham on the carpet. “Moment of truth!” he said.

  He marched to the nearest door and flung it open.

  A humid breeze blew into the hall.

  I stepped forward to look inside. What I saw gave me goose-bumps. Like the Siberia Room, it was portal to another time and place. The room’s simple furniture—bed, wardrobe, side table—was caked with sand. The rear wall was missing. Beyond it was a curving palm-fringed beach.

  “I give you Rarotonga, 1752!” Bentham declared proudly. “Hello, Sammy! Long time!”

  Squatting in the near distance was a small man cleaning a fish. He regarded us with mild surprise, then raised the fish and waved to us with it. “Long time,” he agreed.

  “This is good, then?” Emma said to Bentham. “This is what you wanted?”

  “What I wanted, what I’ve been dreaming of …” Bentham laughed as he hurried off to throw open another door. Inside was a yawning, tree-filled canyon, a narrow bridge suspended across it. “British Columbia, 1929!” he crowed.

  He pirouetted down the hall to open a third door—by now we were chasing him—inside which I could see hulking stone pillars, the dusty ruins of an ancient city.

  “Palymra!” he shouted, slapping his hand against the wall. “Huzzah! The damned thing works!”

  * * *

  Bentham could hardly contain himself. “My beloved Panloopticon,” he cried, throwing his arms wide. “How I missed you!”

  “Congratulations,” Sharon said. “I’m glad I could be here to witness this.”

  Bentham’s excitement was infectious. It was an astounding thing, his machine: a universe contained in a single hallway. Looking down it, I could see hints of other worlds peeking out—wind moaning behind one door, grains of sand blowing into the hall from beneath another. At any other time, under any other circumstances, I would’ve run and thrown them open. But right now there was only one door I cared about opening.

  “Which of these leads inside the wights’ fortress?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, to business,” Bentham said, reining himself in. “My apologies if I got a bit carried away. I’ve put my life into this machine, and it’s good to see it up and running again.”

  He leaned against a wall, suddenly sapped of energy. “Getting you into the fortress should be a simple enough proposition. Behind these doors are at least a half dozen crossover points. The question is, what will you do once you get there?”

  “That depends,” Emma said. “What are we going to find when we get there?”

  “It’s been a long time since I was inside,” Bentham said, “so my knowledge is dated. My brother’s Panloopticon doesn’t look like mine—it is arranged vertically, in a high tower. The prisoners are kept elsewhere. They’ll be in separate cells under heavy guard.”

  “The guards will be our biggest problem,” I said
.

  “I may be able help with them,” said Sharon.

  “You’re coming with us?” Emma said.

  “Absolutely not!” Sharon said. “But I’d like to do my bit somehow—with minimal risk to myself, of course. I’ll create a disturbance outside the fortress walls that will draw the guards’ attention. That should make it easier for you to skulk about unnoticed.”

  “What kind of disturbance?” I asked.

  “The wights’ least favorite kind: a civil one. I’ll get those layabouts on Smoking Street to catapult nasty, flaming things at the walls until we’ve got the whole guard force after us.”

  “And why would they help you?” Emma said.

  “Because there’s lots more where this came from.” He reached into his cloak and pulled out the vial of ambro he’d snatched from Emma. “Promise them enough of it and they’ll do just about anything.”

  “Put it away, sir!” Bentham snapped. “You know I don’t allow that in my house.”

  Sharon apologized and stuffed the vial back into his cloak.

  Bentham consulted his pocket watch. “Now, it’s just after four-thirty in the morning. Sharon, I imagine your disturbers of the peace are asleep. Could you have them riled and ready by six?”

  “Absolutely,” Sharon said.

  “Then see to it.”

  “Happy to be of service.” And with a swoosh of his cloak, Sharon turned and hurried away down the hall.

  “That gives you an hour and a half to prepare,” Bentham said—though it wasn’t immediately clear what preparations could be made. “Anything I have is at your disposal.”

  “Think,” Emma said. “What would be useful in a raid?”

  “Do you have any guns?” I asked.

  Bentham shook his head. “PT here is all the protection I need.”

  “Explosives?” Emma said.

  “I’m afraid not.”