Monster Page 4

  4

  Edgar’s adoptive father is right about one thing. The walk is indeed brisk, mostly because he has several miles to cover and has to arrive before the clock strikes 8 a.m. A hard knock came on his door just past five, and that was the last that he heard of Alfred Thorne that morning. Annabel greeted him at breakfast, made sure he ate fully from the choice of eggs and devilled kidneys and kippers. Then she made certain he was properly dressed, in his gray suit and tie, pocket watch attached, and sent him off with an apple and pound note in hand.

  He heads south alone, down to Piccadilly, then to Regent Street and through Trafalgar Square, along The Strand where he passes the Royal Lyceum Theatre, barely able to look at it. On he goes, keeping up his pace, past St. Paul’s Cathedral and through the Old City to Aldgate and then into Whitechapel. Even at this hour the streets are jammed, carriages and hansom cabs and omnibuses going pell-mell, the odd motor vehicle sputtering and smoking in and out of the masses, pedestrians running for their lives as they cross the street. The sounds are like a roar in his ears at times—thousands of horses and wooden wheels and the shouts of newsboys and mongers and the buzz of the crowds. It smells of that thick London smell—of human body odor and animals and manure and coal. When he reaches the East End, the people he encounters are mostly poor and some much more dangerous looking than any he has seen so far. Here, where Jack the Ripper had struck down this neighborhood’s narrow alleyways less than a decade ago and might indeed still be at large, there is most definitely a more desperate sort of Londoner. It is a strange place for such a prominently named and important hospital to make its home.

  It appears to his right with just ten minutes to spare, an enormous building, longer than a football pitch and wider too. It stretches along the south side of Whitechapel Road, four stories of brown brick with a dozen steps leading up a stone staircase to five arches, and an enormous clock presiding over everything. He stands for a second staring up at it and then has the feeling that he is being observed from behind. He turns and surveys the crowd. But he can’t spot anyone watching.

  Up the steps he goes with the other rushing employees and patients, through the big doors and into the receiving room. It is a spacious place with a tall ceiling and rows of wooden benches filled with patients, all of them anxious, some of the young ones crying. Edgar approaches a reception counter where a dour-looking nurse dressed in a long pale blue dress with a white pinafore apron and cap stands speaking to a mother and child. The nurse glances at him as if he is a disturbance then returns her concentration to her patients, barking out questions. But he notices another option—young nurses, obviously assistants, working at other desks behind the counter.

  “Excuse me,” he says rather loudly to one of them, the youngest and prettiest of the lot, “I have an appointment with Dr. Vincent Brim at eight. Might you direct me to him?”

  The matron stops speaking when she hears the doctor’s name. She turns to Edgar, seeming almost cowed for a moment, but she recovers quickly.

  “Up these stairs to your right, Ward C on the first floor, room 1818!”

  —

  The steps are wide and wooden and worn in the center. They creak as he ascends, a noise that is barely heard among the thumps of doctors in lab coats over high collars and ties, uniformed nurses, and patients either moving very slowly or nearly running up and down the same broad boards.

  He finds a hall with a painted brown floor and white walls and that medical smell that hospitals have—either chloroform or ether or perhaps simply the smell of disease. It is quieter here—just the sounds of low conversations and the odd cry from an unseen source. He passes many doors. Some are open, allowing him to see that most rooms seem fully occupied, their many beds, usually in two rows against opposing walls, filled with patients. The sick lie there with forlorn, sometimes desperate expressions.

  Edgar has heard many stories about this famous hospital, not all of them pleasant. It was said that the Ripper’s victims were brought here—or at least what was left of them. This was the closest hospital to his horrible crime scenes and the mutilated bodies were examined here and taken apart by surgeons, perhaps with coroners hovering over them. These corpses, all women, had been opened up and disemboweled by the murderous fiend. The famous freak called the Elephant Man had been in this building too, in fact, had lived in the basement and died here just seven years ago. Edgar was a child when that human creature was brought in for examination: a man with a head like an elephant’s, his forehead bulging as if it were a balloon of flesh, lips swollen and one arm the length of a gorilla’s, a limping monster with his face often covered by a linen bag to hide his hideousness, two eye-holes cut in it so he could see out. It was said that he died of a broken neck, having tried to lie down to sleep one night “like a normal human being,” only a few floors below where Edgar now walks. One day long ago, when he and his father had come into London from their home in the country to visit the British Museum Library, Allen had told Edgar that he had seen the Elephant Man on the street, cane in hand, masked and cloaked, a well-dressed surgeon by his side, the famous Dr. Treves. It had given Edgar the shivers when his father described the scene, though he knows now it shouldn’t have. Not all monsters, all aberrations, are evil.

  Edgar keeps striding down the hall and pulls out his pocket watch, seeing it is past the 7:59 mark and inching toward eight o’clock. He is almost certain now that someone is following him, and when he turns he actually sees a man who appears to be in pursuit, tall and thick, heading directly toward him, his gaze set on him. It’s a doctor, wearing a white lab coat and bearing a stethoscope, middle aged and handsome with broad shoulders. But Edgar needs to get to his Uncle Brim without a second’s delay. Room 1810 appears, then 1813, there it is—1818. The door is closed. He knocks. No response. He knocks harder. The doctor who was observing him from behind is now within a dozen strides, though he slows. But before Edgar can confront him, he hears a shout.

  “ENTER!”

  He knows his Uncle Vincent’s voice immediately. It is often loud and always frightens him. But Edgar is still surprised to see his hand shaking as he reaches for the doorknob.

  Dr. Brim is sitting at the far end of a room that seems far too large to be his office. He is behind a big oak desk staring at his nephew. There are numerous skeletons of varying sizes nailed by the head or the limbs, hanging from wooden supports. Two flank Dr. Brim. Diagrams of the human body, the muscular and skeletal systems, the nervous system and systems Edgar didn’t even know existed are glued to the beige walls. Dark, plain books, none of them looking like novels, fill a tall bookcase. On a black-topped table near the desk are test tubes and bottles containing liquids and powders. There are a few long serrated knives and something that appears to be a saw and other ghastly looking instruments on a metal tray. There isn’t a scrap of decoration or color anywhere, not even a solitary flower.

  “You are…almost late,” says Brim, snapping his pocket watch closed. “Sit.” He points at one of two wooden chairs that are facing the desk. The doctor’s own seat is plush leather. It squeaks whenever he moves in it.

  “Yes, Uncle Vincent.”

  “None of that, you will call me Dr. Brim or simply Doctor, and I shall address you as Master Brim. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Uncle…Dr. Brim.”

  “Master Brim.” Vincent Brim pauses for a moment. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I did not ask for you to be apprenticed to me and that is a ridiculous term anyway. There are no apprentices in the medical world, in the world of science. You should be readying yourself to attend medical school like any other young man, but Mr. Thorne asked me for a favor and I was…not able to refuse. Family should count for something, not that it did to your father, who destroyed our family’s legacy.”

  “That isn’t—”

  “You are to LISTEN to me and not QUESTION me, do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It is your privilege to be here!”

/>   “Yes, sir.”

  The doctor gets up and paces behind his desk between the two skeletons, examining his fingernails. Edgar now notices two books that had been near his uncle’s right hand before he rose, both looking well-thumbed: Frankenstein and The Island of Doctor Moreau. Edgar has a good nose. His uncle smells of some sort of perfume. As Vincent Brim strides with his white laboratory coat undone, his spectacular dark suit is evident underneath—a stiff white color with black tie, a black coat and trousers with pin stripes, a gray waistcoat and a gold chain looping across his abdomen. His dyed black hair glistens with some sort of lubricant, as do his perfectly trimmed mustache and goatee.

  “I do not know what I shall have you do for me. I cannot trust an untrained youth with any of my work. I am an operating surgeon, you know, one of the best in London, and I save people’s lives. Most of my work is conducted in the operating theater, where the slightest error can mean death, and some of it is secretive because I employ groundbreaking techniques on desperate cases. I can give or take life from others with the touch of my hands. It is not a place for a child. Perhaps you can sweep the floors in here, tidy up, that sort of thing.” He sits down again.

  “Or he could aid me!”

  The two Brims turn. The tall, good-looking doctor has somehow soundlessly entered the room.

  “Forgive me, Dr. Brim, but I heard some of your conversation. I believe I have the pleasure of meeting your nephew? I noticed him in the hallway making a beeline for your door.”

  Vincent Brim gets to his feet immediately and smoothes down his already perfect hair and mustache and goatee. He almost bows. “I…I didn’t know that I had mentioned his relation to me, Dr. Godwin.”

  “It is my pleasure to meet you, young man,” says the newcomer, extending a hand. Edgar thinks there is something familiar about this man’s name.

  Godwin is remarkable to behold: stunningly handsome, his un-whiskered face broad and clean without a single wrinkle, his nose perfect, his eyes dark and smiling, and the hair on his head as black as midnight. His grip is strong and masculine, his hands large.

  “I have been in search of a young man for some time,” he says. “You are from an excellent family, Edgar Brim, and I am sure you will be a fine assistant.” Edgar finds the doctor’s speech mannered—he takes care with each impeccably pronounced word, as if he were an actor trying to get the words and the emotions that go with them correct.

  “That sounds like an excellent idea,” says Vincent Brim, a wide smile emerging on his lips. “Edgar, I work closely with Dr. Godwin and I can assure you that he is a man of great esteem. Please appreciate the honor that is being bestowed upon you. Well, don’t let me keep you two, take him off to the dungeons.”

  —

  “What, might I ask, sir, did my uncle mean by the dungeons?” says Edgar as he and Dr. Godwin turn out of the room and into the hallway.

  “Well, your uncle is not known for his sense of humor, my good man, to say the least, but even he goes along with the little joke about my office and laboratory. You see, my rooms are in the basement, thus the others say I work in the dungeons. It is a marvelous jest!”

  Godwin offers a laugh of a sort but it seems awfully forced, as if he doesn’t quite get the humor to which he is referring. Pretty nurses smile at him as he passes, but he barely seems to notice.

  They descend the stairs at the other end of the hallway and go down two long flights, the second of which is stone and takes them below the ground floor. The medicinal smell gives way to a slightly different odor, one tempered with what can only be described as “basement.” Here the walls too are stone. It is difficult to tell how long the basement hallway is for it is lit only for a hundred feet or so and then is obscured in darkness. They move silently along, passing no one, deep into the bowels of the hospital. There are no windows here either. A growing sense of fear, the old fear, begins to invade Edgar and he tries to keep himself from trembling. He can’t stop from looking behind and thinks he sees an old woman peering out from under the stone staircase.

  “This is a sort of dreary place, Edgar. Might I call you Edgar?”

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  “Dreary, but only in appearance; it is really a place of great opportunity. I am fortunate to be the chief experimental surgeon in the hospital and thus I have funds to do all sorts of scientific research into the healing of heart and brain problems and of grievous wounds, into the origins of diseases, into the origins of life itself. My laboratory,” he says with a smile and a gesturing hand as they stop at a large wooden door, “is a sort of scientific wonderland.”

  He sticks the key into the lock and opens the door as if he were opening the entrance to heaven, with a flourish and another winning smile.

  The room is large and filled with the sorts of bottles and tubes and tables that one would expect in a laboratory, but also with something that surprises Edgar. Animals.

  “Voila!” cries Godwin, turning on the electric lights.

  Monkeys chatter and rats squeal and then there is a sort of growl. Edgar walks into the room and sees the animals in tight cages along the walls. He can smell them too. They seem to smell even stronger than the creatures he has seen at the London Zoo. He remembers reading that animals give off stronger odors when they are frightened. In a large cage on the floor is a big cat, the size of a large dog, black and sleek—it looks like some sort of panther. There are rabbits too, some of which whistle at him.

  “Why the animals, sir?”

  “For experimentation.”

  Edgar can’t stop a frown. They are still walking and are now near the center of the room where a high table just slightly longer than an average man and about twice as wide is positioned. An array of light bulbs hang above it and a stand sits near its head with a broad metal tray on it. In it is an arsenal of instruments larger and more complicated in appearance than the few Edgar had seen in his uncle’s office—big knives, four saws and things that look like pick axes.

  “Have no fear, Edgar, this is all for good. It is science at its best. Yes, I am a vivisectionist. I cut up and work upon these creatures, but I am a doctor too, and my mission is to help humanity and ultimately to aid the animals themselves. I am learning things here that will change the world for the better!”

  “What do you want me to do, sir?”

  “You can keep the animals happy and fed, you can clean up around here, but I also will have you assist during experiments.”

  “On…the animals?”

  “Yes, that and human cadavers. Do you have a strong stomach? Can you bear the sight of blood?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “A great deal of blood?”

  “I—”

  “The cutting of skin, slicing of arteries, the sawing and fracturing of bones?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Godwin smiles and slaps him on the back. “I love a frank man. I am sure you will do just fine. One must do these things to become a surgeon of any sort!”

  Edgar notices a door in the far wall, sealed shut with a particularly large lock.

  “What is that?” he asks without thinking, pointing at it.

  “That?” asks Godwin. For a moment he seems to resent the question. “Oh, that is a marvelous thing. It is the entrance to another room, a sort of holy place around these parts. It is where Joseph Merrick used to live.”

  “Who is he?”

  “The Elephant Man.”

  5

  Edgar comes home feeling exhausted, but not because of the amount of work that Godwin asked him to do—he did very little that was taxing. The great surgeon had, instead, nearly talked his ear off, querying him about his life, his interests, his home and his guardians. They had even eaten together, food provided by Godwin, laid out on the operating table. Then the surgeon had disappeared after telling Edgar to feed the animals and clean up around the lab. Each creature had shrunk back from him as he approached and the panther, or whatever it was, had roared when he dr
opped two dead rats into its cage.

  “Tomorrow will be a big day for you,” Godwin had said when he returned. “We have a fresh corpse to work on and I want you to help.”

  —

  “Hello, dear,” says Annabel as Edgar enters the drawing room, having been brought there by Beasley upon her instructions. “I am just going out. In my role as a new woman of the modern age…” She pauses, smiling to herself. “I love that phrase, since it upsets your father so much—I am attending a meeting tonight populated exclusively by ladies where we shall debate the apparently outrageous idea that we of the so-called weaker sex should be able to cast a vote. Imagine that! Not but an hour ago, I also terrorized Alfred with the news that I am about to become a full member of the Fabian Society, with all those vegetarians who believe in the proper treatment of animals. He was not pleased. What a moment; it made my entire week. How was your day?”

  “It was fine,” he says. “How have things been here today?”