This Broken Wondrous World

by Jon Skovron

  “The hallways are extra large to make room for all the really big monsters,” I said.

  “That explanation did not help,” she said.

  We continued down the hallway, Holmes and La Perricholi in the lead, their guns ready, Claire and me next, and my father walking silently in the rear. Every few minutes we’d come across a door and Holmes or La Perricholi would peek in. But we didn’t find any living creatures. Most of the rooms looked like they’d been empty a long time. Either they had no furniture at all, or else the simple cots or mattresses were covered in a layer of dust.

  There was one room that looked like it had been used. It had two sets of bunk beds, one on either side of the room, and several cots stacked in the corner.

  “Recently, too,” said La Perricholi as she crouched down next to the lower bunk on one side. She frowned and pulled a long strand of white hair from the pillowcase. She held it up to me. “Trowe?”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “Maybe this is where that Liel of yours has been hiding out,” said Holmes.

  “And her whole den,” said Claire from the other side. She pulled back the bedspread. There were lines carved into the post, like the kind trowe make when sharpening their claws.

  “Boy,” Vi said from my pocket.

  “Go ahead, Vi,” I said as I pulled her out.

  “There’s a lot of electronics in this building, but it’s all broadcasting on conflicting Wi-Fi channels so it’s coming across as a lot of noise to me.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” said Holmes.

  “And I can’t seem to connect to anything outside this compound,” continued Vi. “We’re completely isolated here.”

  “That’s definitely not good,” I said.

  “Yeah, but it is the reason we came here the first time,” Claire reminded me. “To get away from Vi version one.”

  “Good point,” I said. “So this probably isn’t something Moreau is doing. He might not even be aware of it.”

  “Or it’s one of the reasons he chose this place,” said La Perricholi.

  We could tell the next room had been recently occupied before we even saw it.

  “What is that horrible stink?” said Claire.

  “Smells like a zoo,” said Holmes.

  La Perricholi turned into the room, her pistols raised. “Pretty close to one, anyway,” she said.

  In the center of the room were about thirty long, thin mats made from woven reeds. Off in one corner was a big heaping pile of shit. Over in another corner was a stack of half-eaten rotting animal carcasses.

  “Ugh. I’m guessing this is where Moreau’s beast people stayed,” said Claire.

  “They seemed so human when we saw them on the island,” said La Perricholi. “But this . . . nothing reminiscent of humanity could live like this.”

  “They may be regressing,” said my father. “Moreau had that problem the first time, too. No matter how human he tried to make them behave, eventually they would revert, and there was nothing he could do about it. Perhaps it is still a problem.”

  “If that’s true,” said Holmes, “then given enough time, his army will disintegrate into chaos.”

  “And he probably knows it,” said La Perricholi. “Which means he’s working against the clock and liable to make increasingly risky choices. A desperate Moreau may be an even greater danger.”

  “I guess we’d better find him, then,” I said.

  That turned out to be easier than I expected. He was in the next room over.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said without turning around.

  It was a small room with a single gurney in the middle.

  “Boy . . .” Claire said softly.

  I nodded. The last time she and I had been here, this was the room where they’d strapped her down because they thought she was a human. It looked like it had a real human body in it now, an adult male, his eyes closed, his mouth slack. His scalp had been peeled back from his head and left to dangle at the point where it met the back of his neck. Moreau was carefully sawing in a slow circle around his exposed skull.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “This will only take a minute.”

  “What are you doing with that body?” asked Holmes.

  “Cutting through the calvarium, obviously,” said Moreau. He held out the bone saw and the hairless lemur in the tuxedo we’d seen on Noble’s Isle scampered out of the shadows, took the saw, wiped it down carefully, and placed it in a large leather case with a lot of other tools. It then took out a small hammer with a hook curling at the end of the handle, and a chisel with a flat, T-bar handle. It handed both tools to Moreau. Moreau began to gently tap the chisel into the indented circle on the skull he’d made with the saw. “You can’t just go cutting all the way through with a saw,” he explained. “You risk damaging the brain.”

  “You need it intact for something?” I asked.

  “Who was this man?” demanded Holmes. “One of your hostages?”

  Moreau didn’t respond. By this time, he’d come full circle with the hammer and chisel. He handed the chisel to the lemur. Then he turned the hammer so the hook end was facing up.

  “Listen for it.” Moreau caught the edge of the cut in the skull with the hook and slowly lifted. The top of the skull came off with a sound like an eggshell peeling away from a hard-boiled egg. “Ah, the sound of success!”

  He held up the skullcap. A thick film dangled from the inside. “If you’ve done it right, the dura mater adheres to the inner table. Of course if it doesn’t, you can cut it away with scissors. But that elevates the risk of damaging the surface of the brain, which as Boy has just suggested, I need intact for a few moments more.”

  He handed the skullcap and hammer to the lemur. The lemur carelessly tossed the skullcap on the floor, but carefully cleaned the hammer and placed it back in the leather case. It then handed Moreau a large syringe with a thick, blue liquid filling half of it.

  “Enough stalling, Moreau,” said Holmes. “Are you going to come quietly?”

  “Yes, yes, in a second.” Moreau held the syringe in one hand and gently pried apart the two lobes of the brain with the other.

  The body suddenly opened its eyes and gasped. He looked around, terrified.

  “God, that man is still alive!” shouted Holmes.

  “Where—where—” he said.

  Moreau plunged the needle deep between the two lobes of the brain and the man shuddered and grew still, his eyes now staring vacantly.

  “Not anymore,” said Moreau calmly. He pulled back on the plunger and red fluid mixed with the blue fluid in the syringe to make it a dark purple.

  “That’s enough, Moreau,” said Holmes. “Let’s go.”

  “Mmm-hmm, nearly ready.” He handed the syringe to the lemur and knelt down on the ground. The lemur shoved the syringe into the base of Moreau’s skull and injected the purple fluid. Moreau closed his eagle eyes and sighed.

  The lemur carefully withdrew the syringe, and Moreau stood back up. He turned to face us for the first time. “Thank you for your patience. No solution is perfect and we must keep the beast flesh at bay, mustn’t we?” He gave his best grimace smile. “Now, I assume you want me to show you what I’ve been working on, yes?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked La Perricholi.

  “Come now, Perricholi. Freeing the feral monsters was just an act of kindness on my part. We all know it wasn’t my purpose in coming here.”

  “Kindness?” said Claire.

  “The oppressed and imprisoned cry out to me,” said Moreau, one large bat ear twitching. “I am not deaf to their pleas.”

  “So why did you come here, if not for them?” I asked.

  “Finally, someone asking the right questions! I can always count on you, Boy,” said Moreau moving toward the doorway. “Follow me.�
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  Holmes cocked her rifle. “I don’t need you alive that badly, Moreau. So don’t try anything.”

  “Obviously,” he said, holding up his clawed hands. Then he walked slowly out of the room. The rest of us followed behind him.

  “We should just shoot him now,” muttered La Perricholi.

  “No,” said Holmes. “He’s got something up his sleeve. I can feel it. If he has a bomb or something, we might need him to defuse it.”

  A little farther down the hallway, we came to a set of massive wooden doors on the inside wall. Instead of door handles, it had large iron rings.

  Holmes tilted her head toward it. “What’s in there?”

  “That’s where the Sphinx is,” I said.

  “You first, Moreau,” she said.

  Moreau pulled on the right iron ring and the door slowly swung open. The room was just as I remembered it, easily a hundred feet across and sixty feet high. Sunlight streamed down from skylights to illuminate the Sphinx. He loomed over us, a giant human head on a giant lion body, feathered wings lying so flat along his broad back that I hadn’t even noticed them the last time I’d been here. As before, he stared off into nothing, seemingly unaware of our presence. There was one difference, though.

  “What’s with the wires?” asked Claire.

  There was a thick cable stuck to each temple with big patches of black electrical tape. The cables ran down to the ground and over to a large power generator on a wheeled cart.

  “That’s what I wanted to show you,” said Moreau. He walked over to the generator. “Now, if I may beg your patience once again, I have some final adjustments to make before we get going.”

  “Step away from the generator, Moreau,” said Holmes, lifting her rifle.

  “Or what? You’ll shoot? I don’t think so. Not if you want to meet your grandfather.”

  “Nice try, but my grandfather’s been dead for twenty years.”

  “Is that so? You attended the funeral? You saw the body?”

  Holmes said nothing. The tip of her rifle sank slightly.

  “Oh, come now, it’s not like this was the first time he faked his own death.”

  “No way. He’d be a hundred and twenty-five years old now.”

  “You’d be amazed at the number of ways an intelligent person can find to stave off old age and death. My solution is but one of many.”

  “You know what? It doesn’t matter,” said Holmes, bringing the point of her rifle back up. “I’m not negotiating with you. Step away from the generator. Now.”

  A metal pipe whistled into the back of her head and she dropped to the ground.

  “Why thank you, Kemp,” Moreau said to the floating pipe.

  “No!” said Claire. “Fuck you, Kemp. I trusted you!”

  “I’m sorry, my dear,” came Kemp’s voice. “I truly am. But Moreau has offered the one thing I can’t refuse. He can cure my wife.”

  “You have been helping Moreau all this time?” asked my father.

  “For years,” said Kemp. “I’d been shipping him all the equipment he needed. I’d hoped I could get the cure out of him without actually letting him off the island, but then Robert and Stephen discovered what I was doing and took it upon themselves to free him. I had no choice but to continue helping him.”

  “You had a choice,” my father said. He stepped toward the pipe, his hands balled into fists the size of bowling balls.

  “I don’t think so, old friend.” The pipe dropped to the ground with a clang and there was nothing else to follow him by.

  “Speaking of family obligations,” said Moreau. He turned to La Perricholi. “Camilla, I am truly sorry about your father. I hope your mother is coping.”

  “Father?” I asked.

  “Yes, Boy. Didn’t she tell you? Mozart and Maria are her parents.” He smiled as he looked at our stunned expressions. “Oh, dear, I’ve let the cat out of the bag. Or should I say the wolf?”

  Suddenly, the little lemur creature in the suit leapt out from behind the oak doors and sprung at La Perricholi. She shot him point-blank in the chest, but before he collapsed, he stabbed her in the leg with an EpiPen.

  She yanked the needle out of her leg and pointed her gun at Moreau. “What the hell did you just do?”

  “It has been my experience that to perform at its peak, Nature sometimes needs a bit of a push.”

  La Perricholi gasped and hunched forward. She dropped her gun and grabbed her leg with both hands.

  “As I’m sure you’re all aware,” continued Moreau breezily, “lycanthropy, or werewolfism, is not a disease, as it is depicted in popular entertainment. It is a genetic disorder, passed down from parent to child. In nearly all cases, it is a recessive trait. Most people who possess it are merely carriers, with no knowledge of what lurks within and no outward effects. Generally, it is only those rare individuals who have the gene on both sides who spontaneously become werewolves.”

  La Perricholi groaned and dropped to her knees. Claire moved over to help her.

  “Stay back!” La Perricholi growled more than spoke as she shoved Claire away.

  “But,” said Moreau, “someone who is a carrier can become a full-fledged werewolf. All that’s needed is the proper catalyst. Wolf blood, to be precise.”

  There was a sharp crack as La Perricholi’s legs bent into the hind legs of a wolf, followed by a wet tearing sound as her skin began to split open.

  “Poor thing,” said Moreau. “I’ve heard the first change is always the hardest.”

  She opened her mouth, showing pointed canines, and let out a scream that slowly rounded into a howl. Her body continued to twist and contort as her shape changed, her clothes tore, and her fur grew. Finally, she stood there, a wolf.

  “Perricholi?” I took a step toward her. “Camilla?”

  She growled at me, her lips peeled back in a snarl.

  “Careful,” said Moreau. “It usually takes them a few turns before they’re able to assert their intelligence over instinct.”

  La Perricholi cocked her head, listening to something. She shook off the remaining tatters of clothing, then ran out of the room and down one of the hallways deeper into The Commune.

  “Now, where were we?” asked Moreau.

  “What about me?” said Claire, pointing her gun at Moreau. “You going to tell me my mum is still alive or something?”

  “I’m afraid not, Ms. Hyde,” said Moreau. “Sadly, your mother was indeed murdered by your aunt when she took her own life. Truth be told, I’ve tried a few different tacks to get at your weak spot and I must commend you on your resilience. So I’m afraid I’m just going to have to take the more direct approach with you.” He cocked his head to one side. “NOW!” he said in deep, throaty growl.

  A flock of winged beast people launched up into the air from where they had been hiding beneath the Sphinx’s wings. They looked sort of like harpies, except they had pointy birdlike faces and sharp bird eyes. Some of them even had beaks instead of mouths.

  “Boy! Claire! Get behind me!” said my father.

  “Now, now,” said Moreau. “You really should let the children fight their own battles. Besides, you’re going to be busy fighting me.”

  The bird people came at us fast. Hit-and-run from twenty different angles at once. Just a streak of feathers, then pain. They darted in and out, never giving me a chance to grab them or even hit them as they slashed at me with their talons. Before long I was covered in thin gashes. Then I realized they were targeting my stitches. First one arm fell off, then a leg. When I fell to the ground, a couple of them fought over my limbs for a little, shredding them into bits.

  Near me I could see Claire, still on her feet, but blood streaming from more wounds than I could count. She had La Perricholi’s pistols in her hands and she was firing wildly into the air, only occasionally managing to tag one
of the bird people. On the other side of the room, I caught a glimpse of my father wrestling with Moreau, blood spraying into the air as they tore at each other.

  Then the bird people were on top of me, pressing down on my chest with their clawed feet. One of them pecked out my left eye. Pain lanced through my head as the creature greedily gulped down the pulp.

  “Enough!” Moreau’s voice seemed to echo through my brain. But the bird people kept coming at me. “I SAID ENOUGH!!!”

  Moreau’s clawed hands grabbed at the bird people, hurling some across the room, smashing others into the ground, until the rest scattered.

  “The stubborn beast flesh,” Moreau muttered. “It always creeps back in.” Then he looked down at me. “Oh, dear, you’re quite a mess. Thankfully, you’re a hardy lad. I think you’ll pull through. Although you may wish you hadn’t.”

  I struggled weakly as he picked me up in his arms and carried me over to the power generator. I raised my head and I saw Claire, also lying on the ground, moving weakly, covered in blood.

  “Kemp,” said Moreau, “I promised I would not allow Ms. Hyde to be killed, and I may have need of the human female as a test subject. So if you would kindly move them to the side, out of harm’s way, I would appreciate it.”

  Kemp didn’t respond, but I saw Holmes and Claire slowly being dragged by invisible hands over to one side.

  Moreau knelt down next to me, reached into my pocket, and took out Vi’s phone.

  “Hello, Vi,” he said. “I know you’re there. You might as well show yourself.”

  Her anime avatar flickered onto the screen, scowling.

  “Oh, don’t be like that, my dear,” said Moreau, forcing his ape face into a grotesque pout. “Especially when I’m about to make your dreams come true.”

  “I don’t want anything from you, Moreau,” she said.

  “Are you sure? It seems to me that you are still lacking a body. A real body so that you could have a true sensual experience? So you could be truly alive?”

  “Vi . . .” I rasped. “Don’t . . . listen . . . to him.”

  “Boy is a bright young man,” said Moreau, “and I’m sure he would have figured out a way to do that for you eventually. But I’ve already had decades to work on it.”