The Madmans Daughter

by Megan Shepherd

Page 41

  Author: Megan Shepherd

  “I’m going to try to flip it,” he said. He shoved the edge underwater, and the other side popped up with a rush of water that brought me to my senses. I helped him flip the boat until it slammed against the waves right side up.

  Edward heaved himself into the boat, balancing carefully, and helped me in after. The feel of his cold hands made my insides tighten with guilt. All I could think about was another man, yet he was still helping me. Water poured down my face, out of my clothes, but the guilt didn’t drain away.

  We paddled to the dock with our hands. Progress was painstakingly slow and full of worries that at any moment something might grab our exposed fingers. Each second that passed was another second Montgomery might be clawed, slashed, stabbed—assuming he hadn’t drowned. I tore at the water until at last the bow collided with the dock. Edward tied the lead rope to one of the piles, and we climbed out. I spun in a circle on the dock, scanning the water, the beach, the tangled line of trees.

  “There. ” Something dark in the sand caught my eye. I raced down the dock, ignoring the burning in my lungs and the ache in my muscles. My dress clung to my legs, slowing me down. Edward’s footsteps echoed behind me. My feet sank into the deep sand, and I froze when I saw I was treading on fresh footprints.

  Edward wiped the water and blood from his face, breathing hard. “What is it?”

  The sand in front of us was rough and disturbed. Footprints led from the shore into the jungle. About every five feet was a dark spot. Blood.

  I pressed my hand into one of the footprints.

  Still wet.

  Which made it easy to count the unusual number of toes, the abnormally large size of prints that could only belong to beasts. The sun beat down, burning our salty skin.

  “Look, there’s a smaller set of prints,” Edward said.

  I found the ones he was looking at. Smaller boot prints, the size of a man’s. I realized the drips of blood were heavier around these tracks.

  Panic rose again. “He’s bleeding. ”

  “That means he’s alive,” Edward said. “And he’s walking. They weren’t dragging him, at least. ”

  A strange cry came from the ocean behind us—a seal’s guttural bark, only more high-pitched. But the sea looked so calm. I shivered.

  “The footprints end at the jungle,” Edward said. “I don’t think we can track him any farther. ”

  “We can’t,” I said. “But my father can. ”

  WE RAN AND RAN along the rutted wagon road, the jungle a blur, feet aching.

  The front gate was open. They’d been waiting for us.

  We slowed to a walk. My body was spent. My dress clung to my skin—hot, salt-stained, damp with sweat. Edward’s face burned with sun and exhaustion. The road from the beach to the compound had been achingly long. With each pounding step, my panic had transformed to anger.

  The beasts had taken Montgomery. Father owed it to us to help get him back.

  In the garden, we found Balthasar kneeling to replant the few delicate tomato seedlings he’d been able to salvage. My heart twisted coldly at the sight. Life couldn’t just continue. Alice’s ashes still floated on the wind. Montgomery was God knew where, dead maybe. The monster was out there, lurking, waiting.

  “Don’t bother, Balthasar,” I muttered. “There’ll be no one left to eat them once the monster finishes with us all. ”

  “That’s not true,” Edward said.

  “Yes it is!” The chickens scattered at my yell. “You know it is. And it’s Father’s fault. ” I grabbed Balthasar’s shirt. My fingers left streaks of dirt on his collar. “Where is he?”

  His lips fumbled. “The laboratory, miss. ”

  I felt Edward’s hand on my shoulder. I let Balthasar go, and he slunk away like a wounded dog. Good. He was right to fear anyone with Moreau blood—we were all a little mad.

  I stumbled to my feet, wiping the dirt off my palms. I’d thought the island was driving Edward mad, but maybe it wasn’t his mind the island had polluted, but rather my own.

  Edward’s hand tightened. “Juliet, think carefully. He locked Montgomery in a cage. Why would he help us go after someone he hates?”

  “He doesn’t hate him,” I said, stumbling away. “He loves him like a son. ”

  The latch to the laboratory door was just like the others—deceptively simple, a symbol of Father’s arrogance. I slid my fingers into the special holes and squeezed, bristling at his vanity. No locks—he thought himself indestructible.

  He was a fool.

  I wrenched the door open and found him sitting inside at his desk, peering into the monkey’s cage, scribbling notes on a tablet. A set of roughly made children’s blocks—Montgomery’s handiwork, no doubt—were stacked on the table. Father didn’t look up as I approached.

  My footsteps echoed along the wall of cabinets. The broken glass had been swept away. The new batch of my serum sat tidily in its box on a polished worktable. No trace remained of our earlier fight save the one empty windowpane. He kept writing, pausing to watch the monkey fiddle with a toy block, then jotted down a few more notes in his tight, meticulous handwriting. I had expected an argument. I’d even expected to be slapped again. But I hadn’t expected to be quietly ignored.

  “Father,” I said.

  “I’m trying something new,” he muttered, not looking at me. “A new technique. It doesn’t involve surgery, but alteration of a different kind. It changes the constitution on a cellular level, without ever having to use a scalpel. If it works, the ramifications could be tremendous. ”

  I stepped deeper into the room, my shadow casting over the tablet. “After everything that’s happened, you’re still focused on your work. Aren’t you going to tell me what a horrid, disobedient child I am?” I picked up one of the blocks, inspecting the carefully carved letters on all sides. “Or do I have to play with blocks like the monkey for you to pay me attention?”

  He made another notation on his tablet. “Unlike the monkey, you no longer show any promise. So I’m content to throw you out with the rest of my failures. ”

  I slammed the block against the table, toppling the stack. The crash sent my pulse racing, making me hungry for more destruction. I leaned on the table, my hair falling like a fortune-teller’s veil over my face.

  “Your failures are going to find you and kill you. That’s what you get for throwing them out. ”

  He stacked the blocks back into an orderly pile. His refusal to grow angry only made my own rage seethe. “I’ve given them a precious gift. Do you really think they would turn on their creator?”

  “You gave them pain. They’re animals and that’s what they’ve always been, no matter how you’ve twisted their limbs and minds. They’ll get their revenge. ”

  The monkey tapped the block against the bars of his cage. Father turned back to his note-taking.

  “Yet you insist on deluding yourself,” I continued. “You think yourself safe because . . . why? A few door latches?”

  He slammed down his tablet. The monkey screeched and hid in the corner of its cage. But I didn’t flinch. I smiled. This was what I wanted.

  A fight.

  Faster than I could react, Father grabbed my wrist and splayed my hand on the table. My first instinct was to pull away, but I realized he wasn’t planning on striking me.

  “The human hand,” he said in that steady voice he used for lectures, “is what most separates us from the animals, did you know that?”

  His voice was calm, and yet I detected a ripple beneath it, like the water beasts swimming below the ocean’s surface. A chill tiptoed up my spine, one vertebra at a time. He traced his fountain pen, slowly, along the length of each of my fingers, leaving thick black lines. “The four lateral fingers are extensions of an animal’s primary phalanges. We hardly need Mr. Darwin to tell us that—it’s evident when comparing the musculature of any mammal, human or
otherwise. ”

  He tapped my thumb with the sharp tip of his pen. “But the opposable thumb—ah, there’s the secret. The distal phalanx is attached to the wrist by a mobile metacarpus, giving the thumb unique properties. The ability to clutch objects—weapons, tools. To climb. To build. Why, even to hold a fountain pen. ”

  The precise black lines he drew along my skin radiated from the wrist to each knuckle, an anatomical diagram written on my hand. Fingers were so important to a surgeon. It was little wonder that Father was obsessed with the hand, the fingers—even going so far as to base his own safety on cleverly designed latches instead of locks.

  “Without the thumb, animals are simply mindless beasts, unable to advance mentally due to their limited physiology. Which is why they’ll never get into the compound. We are perfectly safe as long as the opposable thumb eludes them. And the next stage of evolution shouldn’t happen for, oh, a hundred thousand years. ”

  His words sounded so logical. It might have been easy to believe him if I didn’t know he was utterly mad. He’d assumed the beasts couldn’t get in over the roof or break through the gate, yet they’d done both. He just didn’t want to hear it. Montgomery had warned me—Father would never admit to his mistakes.

  My splayed hand began to shake. I curled my fingers inward, no longer wanting to be part of his lecture. His arrogance was going to kill him. Maybe all of us.

  “They took Montgomery,” I said like a slap, wanting him to feel as much pain as the rest of us.

  His dark eyes snapped to mine. He let go of my wrist. “What?”

  “They dragged him into the jungle. He was bleeding. ”

  He set down the fountain pen, fingers trembling slightly. He looked around at the blocks, the monkey, as if seeing it all for the first time. A flicker of humanity showed in the look on his face, the way he wiped a hand over his whiskers. He stood. “Which ones?”

  “Creatures in the water. ”

  “Damn!” The force made me jump. I took a step back, sensing his madness roiling like a storm. He grabbed his canvas jacket from a hook on the wall and removed a revolver from a cabinet. “This is your fault,” he snapped, struggling into the jacket. “You bewitched him! Everything was fine before you came. I never wanted a girl. Montgomery was lowborn, but at least he was male; at least he could reason, not like some hysterical female. I’d just as soon you’d died with your consumptive mother and left me in peace!”

  I blinked. My mind was strangely calm, strangely clear, and yet my body was shaking. “How did you know Mother died of consumption? The doctor’s report only said a prolonged illness. ”

  Father’s eyes narrowed. He spun the revolver’s cylinder into place, snapping the bullets into their chambers “I know because Montgomery was there on a supply trip six months before she died. He sent Balthasar back with a letter telling me to come. Those quack doctors couldn’t save her, and he knew I could. ”

  A slow anger uncoiled inside me, weaving between my ribs, plucking my tendons like piano strings. “But you didn’t come. ”

  “Of course not. I had work here. ”

  “But you could have. You could have saved her. ”

  He waved his hand. “Didn’t you hear me, girl? I had work to do. Typical flawed reasoning of a woman, to place mortal needs above timeless research. ” He straightened his jacket. “I’m going to the village. He’s either there or torn into pieces on the jungle floor. ” He left the laboratory, leaving me alone.

  He’s mad, I told myself. He isn’t well. And yet I didn’t feel any pity. He could have saved my mother but he didn’t. My fingers curled into fists. I looked at the monkey clutching the block, and knew I was about to do something terrible.

  Maybe I was a little mad, too.

  Forty