by Pete Kahle
“But-”
“What is that yellow thing near the man’s stomach?” Harold cut in.
“That is the pancreas, an endocrine gland which produces important enzymes which aid in digestion,” said Mrs. Peals.
Lucy scowled at her brother and crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to participate as he and Mrs. Peals spent the next two hours going over the man’s entire anatomical makeup. By then it was time for lunch, but Lucy felt even less hungry than at breakfast.
The anatomy lessons continued the next day and the day after that, without a single Greek letter nor a note from a minuet making an appearance alongside the Latin names for organs and tissue and the 206 bones in the human body. The charts grew more grotesque as well. On Monday of the following week, Mrs. Peals produced one of a murdered woman. The body was scored with slashes and chops- each wound labeled according to its severity- with two in the throat and one in the abdomen marked FATAL.
And every day at the end of the lessons, Harold became irritable and sometimes violent. In the great hall, he would meticulously set up his thousand-strong army of toy soldiers in epic battle maps, only to kick them over in a fury or crush them in his fist like some merciless god come to claim them. Lucy tried to get him join her in terrorizing the maids, but Harold had little enthusiasm for anything now except their macabre hours spent with Mrs. Peals. Along with Harold’s bad temper grew Lucy’s anxiousness. It wasn’t so much the drawings of human cross-section and dissection that distressed her, but rather the way Mrs. Peals grinned that yellow grin when Harold got the answers right.
One day when they went down to lessons, they found Mrs. Peals standing behind a table on which the small black trunk stood, lid open.
“Thus far I’ve relied on diagrams to illustrate the lecture material. Today we will be examining some actual specimens.”
Lucy’s heart began to gallop as Mrs. Peals reached in and brought out a jar in which something dead floated and set it on the table.
“Do either of you know what this is?”
Harold raised his hand. “It’s a shark!”
Lucy squinted at the thing through the murky fluid. It was indeed a shark. The pewter grey dorsal fin was small but distinct, as were the rows of arrow shaped teeth just visible through the A-shaped mouth on its ivory underside. Its eyes were opaque and gelled with a faint dash of cold blue at the center and its angular tail, designed for pulsing thrusts through the sea, was curled and still in the stagnant water of the jar.
“Correct, Mr. Ashton. It is an infant Great White, caught before it was able to be on its own. A tiny predator, unaware of its lethal capabilities.”
She went back to the trunk and took out another jar- this one much larger- and set it next to the shark. At first glance it appeared to be full of hair; a knotted black clot in the fluid, but then as she turned it they saw a face- eyes half closed, with a mournful expression. It was too hairy, its features too pronounced to be human. Lucy had only seen photographs, but she recognized the oversized lips, large square shaped teeth and the brown wrinkled skin stretched over the prominent cheekbones. Jagged vertebra entwined with a few ugly veins stuck out from its severed neck, propping the head up off the bottom of the jar so that its right cheek rested against the glass.
“It’s an ape,” said Lucy, gravely.
“Very good, Miss Ashton. A chimpanzee, to be specific.”
“Did you kill it, Mrs. Peals?” said Harold.
The old woman laughed, a sound like a saw cutting through wood. “No, Mr. Ashton. I did not.”
“Well, whoever did made crude work of it,” said Harold, half rising out of his chair to get a closer look. Lucy looked at him and frowned.
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Peals. “An early attempt… practice, shall we say.”
She took out a third jar. This one contained a baby’s head. It was completely white and the top of its skull was removed so that the brain was visible. At the sight of it, Lucy’s stomach lurched dangerously. She stumbled away from her desk and ran from the room and into the hall where her breakfast came up all over the glossy marble floor- and her father- who happened to be passing through. He looked down at his vomit spattered shoes and glared at her.
“Father, forgive me,” Lucy sobbed. “It was Mrs. Peals’ fault! She showed us something awful!”
Lord Ashton said nothing. His eyes narrowed on the lesson room door, and then he started toward it. Lucy followed on his heels like a scolded dog. But as they entered, she found a very different scene. The jars were gone, the trunk lid shut. Now there was only a chart detailing a dissected cat pinned to the board. Harold, scribbling notes, stood when he saw his father. Lord Ashton looked at the picture, then the black trunk, then Mrs. Peals, his stony expression never changing.
“What subject is this, madam?”
“The science of anatomy, my lord.”
“For what purpose?”
“So that they may obtain a clear picture of physiology,” said Mrs. Peals.
Lord Ashton paused, eyeing the pen and ink rendering of the innards.
“Well, perhaps you might utilize examples less visceral? Those which will not render my daughter physically ill?”
“Certainly, my lord. I shall make the adjustments.”
He turned and left the room without another word, summoning Caster for a clean pair of shoes. Lucy watched him go, reluctantly, before turning back in her seat. Harold was staring at her.
“I’m disappointed in you, Lucy,” he said. “I thought you had a stronger stomach.”
Mrs. Peal was staring at her too, as were the empty eyeholes of the skull in her cameo.
The following week, the Lord and Lady were summoned by special request on the occasion of the prince’s engagement gala and Mrs. Peals took sick, leaving the children to amuse themselves. It was overcast and dreary, with periods of intermittent rain so they stayed inside most of the time. Lucy played with her dolls until she couldn’t stand them anymore and decided to go looking for Harold. He’d been cold to her since the incident with their father, but she wanted to talk to him about Mrs. Peals while she had the chance without the old woman lurking about.
She found him on a window seat in the library, staring out at the black clouds rumbling above estate’s bright green lawn. He didn’t acknowledge her when she sat down across from him.
“Harold?”
“What is it, Lucy?”
“What if mother and father find out?”
“About what?”
“Mrs. Peals - about what she’s really teaching us.”
Harold looked up at her and blinked in a slow deliberate way. “Why would they find out?” said Harold. There was a threatening edge in his tone which made her pause, and choose her next words carefully.
“What if Caster’s been listening in?”
“Ha! Caster,” Harold scoffed, leaning back into the nook and threading his fingers behind his head. “The only place he’s been snooping is the wine cellar. You know, I caught him tapping father’s Madeira last week. I’ve got him in my pocket now. One word of it and he’d be banished from this house forever.”
“But doesn’t she frighten you?”
“No,” he said flatly, looking out the window. The clouds grumbled and cracked.
“Well I am frightened. I think I’m going to tell mother what been going…”
Harold shot up and grabbed her braids. Lucy squealed and cried out, but he only pulled harder the more she struggled.
“You won’t, Lucy! You won’t, do you hear me?” Harold hissed.
“Harold! My hair! You’re pulling it -”
He pinned her down with his knee on the dark red window seat cushion. His teeth were bared and there was a touch of madness in his eyes. The rain began, striking the library windows like a volley of arrows.
“You won’t say anything to mother or father, will you Lucy? Will you?”
“No! No! I promise! Just let me go, Harold- please!”
He released her a
nd settled back into the cushions with his hands behind his head as if nothing had happened. Lucy whimpered, ashamedly wiping the tears off her chubby cheeks. He hadn’t bullied her that way in years, and she’d come to think of them as equals, associates in their evil games. But in a flash he had reasserted himself as Big Brother- a figure to be Feared and Obeyed - and Lucy was far more hurt by this sibling demotion than the hair pulling. She composed herself and began fixing her braids as the rain lessened to a steady patter on the leaded glass.
“What do you find so fascinating about her?”
Harold thought a moment. “She doesn’t think me wicked.”
“Neither do I,” said Lucy, her voice thick with hurt.
“Yes,” Harold sighed. “But you’re just a child.”
Lucy felt the tears return. She ran sobbing from the room and into the hall, where she saw Mrs. Peals hunched and limping across the dim corridor toward the staircase. Her gait was odd, disjointed, as if she couldn’t make her legs do what she wanted them to. She had a small glass bottle in one hand, and a candle holder looped around one crooked finger in her other. The dripping stub of taper stuck on the iron spike illuminated her sagging, mottled face and the long dead looking hair that hung on either side like shredded curtains. She looks ill indeed… like death, Lucy thought. Why is she downstairs?
To spy, she realized, on her and Harold. A sudden rage filled her, and she marched down the hall, calling out with all the haughty, aristocratic authority her nine year old voice could muster.
“Mrs. Peals, what are you doing down here? Were you not instructed to remain in your room when you are not giving us lessons?”
The old woman stowed the bottle in her robes as Lucy approached. There was a cloying floral scent doing battle with something rank beneath, mixing into a nauseating cloud that hung around her like a physical presence. She wasn’t wearing the cameo, her collar was unbuttoned, and there was a black thread sticking up through the gap. Lucy eyed it curiously, then looked back her, doing her best imitation of the stern and disappointed expression she’d seen her mother give the servants countless times.
“What is that you have? Something you’ve stolen?”
There was a long pause where Mrs. Peals only stared back. Then, slowly, she leaned in close, her body creaking and groaning as if lowered by ropes and pulleys, and lifted Lucy’s chin so that she was looking directly at her own frightened face reflected in the glasses. The sensation of those ragged nails on her flesh gave Lucy instant, spidery chills.
“I know what troubles you,” said Mrs. Peals, her words thick and choked as if her throat were a clogged drain. “You think that I’m trying to drive a wedge between you and your brother. That I am the reason for his recent distance towards you. But you see, Lucy, learning is as much intuition as instruction. It is recognizing and then coming to terms with one’s own nature. Harold understands this - he knows the true color of his heart. But not you… you struggle with what you are, like one kicking at the walls of her own house.”
Lucy took a step back. “No, it’s you. You’re corrupting him. Ever since you came, he’s been different.”
“But don’t you see? I am only a catalyst, giving water to the weeds of thought so that they might flourish.”
“You and your lessons are macabre and uncouth, and I am going to tell my mother and father straight away when they return,” said Lucy, moving around her and starting up the stairs.
“And what would big brother think of you then?” Mrs. Peals called up after her. “How will he react when he learns you were the one that tattled?”
Lucy stopped, turned back. The old woman was grinning at her, her teeth the color of infected phlegm in the taper light.
“I’ve said all, Mrs. Peals. The next time you see either of us will be from the window of the carriage after your dismissal.”
Lucy steadily mounted the stairs. The moment she was out of sight, she ran the rest of the way down the hall to her room, and for the first time in her brief life, she locked the door. She’d never been so scared.
The next day Caster went missing.
A servant girl had gone to his room after he’d failed to show up for the breakfast service and, after much knocking and calling to him, found the door unlocked and entered. Everything was immaculate - bed made, his things there, but he was nowhere to be found. The contention was that he’d unexpectedly gone into town on some sudden errand. But as morning turned to afternoon and finally evening, concern became dread. The house was searched- from the servants’ quarters to the cellars- and finally the outbuildings and the grounds and lastly the shallow woods. But neither Caster nor any sign of him turned up.
During all the commotion, Lucy was looking for Harold. He’d been at breakfast, but then had gone off somewhere and she hadn’t seen him for the rest of the day. Their mother and father wouldn’t return until the following evening, and as night fell, moonless and rainy, Lucy began to feel lonely and very frightened. It occurred to her she hadn’t seen Mrs. Peals since their encounter the previous night. Since she was unwell, no one had disturbed her in the search for Caster. With dread enveloping her like a cloak, Lucy climbed the stairs in the semi-darkness.
A door opened and closed above her as she gained the third floor landing. Lucy hid in a gap between the wall and a grandfather clock, holding her breath as a figure slowly came down the stairs. It was Harold. He was walking slowly, trance-like, his face blank and his skin so pale it glowed in the gloom like a ghost. Lucy’s eyes widened when she saw there was dried blood on his clothes. She peeked around the clock, making sure Mrs. Peals wasn’t following, and whispered: “Harold... Harold?”
Harold didn’t respond, or even look up. He kept walking like a catatonic down the stairs and disappeared into the blackness below. A few moments later she heard his bedroom door open and close.
A sound above distracted her - a loud thud. Harnessing her fear, Lucy went up to the last flight of stairs, creeping along the wall in the darkness and stopped outside the governess’ door. She could hear the tinkling of glass and the sandpaper scratch of lids being unscrewed. Lucy swallowed hard, knelt in front of the door and looked through the keyhole.
Centered in her line of vision was a long wooden table. The small black trunk stood atop it with its lid raised. Beside the trunk was a white wash basin full of steaming water, a line of empty glass jars without lids, a spoon with a long handle and a spool of thick black thread stuck with a needle. Mrs. Peals was bent over, getting something out of the large trunk on the floor. She rose, turned around and set it on the table. Somehow, Lucy managed to keep in the sharp little girl scream that wanted out.
She could only see the back of it, but immediately Lucy recognized that flame of red hair, now damp and tousled and sticking up like the feathers of a shot bird. She’d never seen a hair on his head out of place; the sight of it was strangely worse than seeing his head no longer attached to his body. Mrs. Peals had her arms out, searching for something - a short wooden chair which she pulled up to the table and sat. Lucy could see her full on now; her whole face drooped like melted wax, her teeth crooked in her gums like old weathered headstones. The mirrored glasses reflected the orange flames blazing in the fireplace. She brought the head closer, turning it so that it literally faced her and gave it a pat as if it were an animal she wanted to stay put. Then she brought her hands up slowly and took off the glasses.
Lucy gasped- Mrs. Peals was staring back at her through the keyhole. But something was wrong with the eyes. The whites were grayish and the pupils, dark and misshapen, were coated in a thick opaque glaze. When she looked down at the head, only the right eye went in that direction. The other slid left, then rolled toward the ceiling. Mrs. Peals blinked several times, then stuck her fingers into her left socket and pulled out the roaming eye. It made a sick squelching sound as it came away in her hand. She plopped it on the table where it lay like a scoop of half-melted ice cream, then picked up the long handled spoon and, digging her nails into
scalp to steady the head, scooped out the left eye. After severing the stringy muscles that trailed it, she popped it into her empty eyehole, then did the same with the right eye and closed her eye lids. When she opened them again, it was all whites at first, but then slowly Caster’s olive irises rolled into view.
Mrs. Peals tossed the head in the fire and went to the small trunk. The sound of clinking glass jingled in the room like lively piano music as she pulled out several jars, filled with assorted organs, along with one beaker of blood. She set them on the table beside the empty ones and unscrewed the lids. Then she rose, unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it back off her shoulders so that it remained tucked into her skirt but hung like a tattered apron around her waist.
Lucy cringed. The body beneath was emaciated. Her skin was blotchy, the color of boiled chicken, and her breasts hung to the sides like two pieces of dried leather. There was a long black zigzag down the center of her chest where the skin was sewn together, ending in that thread Lucy had glimpsed earlier, jutting like a worm out of her throat. The old woman pinched it with her fingers and pulled. The opening began to gape; then a smell like the breath of Death wafted through the keyhole, forcing Lucy to cover her nose and mouth with her skirts. Mrs. Peals coiled the grimy string on the table, put her fingers inside the slit up to the knuckles, and pulled. The ribcage swung open like a pair of well-oiled doors. It looked like a fire had raged through her insides. The organs were shriveled shadow masses and the lungs flapped and rattled with her breathing like popped balloons. She started with the lungs, then the liver, kidneys, and continued on to other viscera, alternately dropping the used up ones in the clean jars, rinsing her hands in the white basin, then inserting the fresh organs. When the transfers were complete, she picked up the large jar of blood, feebly brought it to her lips and took a few slow sips, grimacing, but then drinking in earnest, hungrily draining the beaker of every drop before setting it back on the table.
