My mind searched for an answer among the moonlight splashes on the walls. Whatever experiment he was working on, it had begun in his laboratory on Belgrave Square when I was a child. Over the years he withdrew inside himself more, working later and later hours. Even when he was with us, his eyes would stray to the door, as if half his mind was always tethered to that laboratory. Whatever it was—his new discovery—it had consumed him enough to abandon everything else in his life. It was more important than his reputation, his wife, even his daughter.
It was this idea that drew me out of bed. After years of wondering what science he’d unlocked in that damp basement, a science that he loved even more than he loved me, I had a chance to see it. My feet swung into a pair of house shoes as though they had a mind of their own. The need to know pulled me like a puppet, commanding me to dress quickly, to open the door, to find out what my father was working on that had brought him to the edge of madness.
A single lantern hung in the courtyard, swinging softly in the breeze. It threw the light at odd angles, making shadows lengthen and then disappear. A faint glow came from beneath the laboratory door.
I waited until the lantern light dimmed, then I darted around the portico, past the servants’ bunkhouse and the barn to the laboratory, where I pressed my back to the tin wall. The thrill of finally learning Father’s secrets took little bites out of me, making me feel savage. The screaming had stopped, but my head pounded, clouding my senses. A low, mournful sob began from within, which grew into an earsplitting wail. I dug my palms against my ears.
This was madness. This curiosity inside me was unnatural. It had pushed me further from my mother, further from reason and rules and logic. But there were times I still couldn’t resist it.
I rested my forehead against wall and closed my eyes. It wasn’t just my curiosity, or my fascination with anatomy, or how I could unhesitatingly chop a rabbit’s head off with an ax when a roomful of boys couldn’t. Those things were all symptoms of the same sickness—a kind of madness inherited from my father. It was a dangerous pull in my gut drawing me toward the dark possibilities of science, toward the thin line between life and death, toward the animal impulses hidden behind a corset and a smile.
Turn back, I heard Mother whispering. It’s wrong, what he’s doing. But she was no longer here to scold me. I was free from her and society and the watching eyes of the church. I could do whatever I wanted. But what did I want? To follow that slithering curiosity to Father’s laboratory door, or to listen to Mother’s ghost and go back to bed where I could close my ears to the screaming?
Suddenly the wailing stopped. Air slipped from my lungs. A tuft of snow-white hair blew slowly across the stone portico. I picked it up and rubbed it between my fingers. Next to me the dark entrance to the barn gaped like a chasm. I peered inside cautiously.
Out of the darkness came a white shape, hopping to the edge of the barn, just inches from my toes. One of the rabbits. Somehow, it had escaped its cage.
Father didn’t eat rabbits. They were intended, rather, for the sharpened blade of a scalpel. To pursue science. But the difference was that my father wasn’t accused of practicing science. He’d been accused of butchery. He’d already crossed that forbidden line long ago. And I couldn’t lie down on my feather mattress and just listen to it. To understand my own curiosity, I needed to understand his.
I returned to the laboratory. The tin door had the same latching doorknob as the rest of the buildings. I squeezed it slowly with bated breath. I felt the latch catch and release. It opened in my hand, silent as the night.
The sharp smell of rubbing alcohol and formaldehyde slipped from the cracked doorway. In an instant, I was a little girl again, sneaking into her father’s laboratory. The memory was so strong I almost shut the door and ran back to my room.
But a whisper came from the dark.
I held my breath to keep the smells at bay. My eyes adjusted slowly. At the end of the room, a shadowy figure stood over a wooden operating table surrounded by a lantern and candles on a high shelf. The candlelight reflected in dozens of dark glass jars lining the walls, like the glowing prayer candles in a dark cathedral. Only these jars didn’t hold votives, but things I could only imagine.
Specimens. Experiments. Nightmares.
And the figure at the front, the unholy priest, was my father. His back was to me, but I knew the tight set of his shoulders and shape of his head. Whatever was on the table was half covered by a sheet, and all I could make out was the shape of thin limbs, the scarlet spill of blood on the sheet, a pile of towels at Father’s feet, the silver gleam from the surgical instruments. The sound of fluid slowly dripping reminded me of the ticking clock in the dining room. Father said something in his low voice. I imagined more of his haunting commandments, some kind of terrible prayer, but it was only mental notes to himself. He lowered the blade to the table. The scalpel pressed against firm flesh, which gave, opening into muscle like butter.
The thing on the table jerked to life with a painful squeal. Its cry was a blade to my heart. Thick leather manacles bound its limbs to the corners, but it writhed wildly under the sheet. My sweaty palm slipped on the door latch. I wiped it on my skirt. As terrified as I was, my eyes were riveted to that table.
Father seemed unfazed by the thing’s torment. The manacles strained and rattled, but they held. Father kept cutting, a slice here, another there, as graceful as an orchestra conductor. He hummed a few notes of a melody. The Chopin piece, I realized, with a sickening lurch. I caught only glimpses as his hands flew over the creature. A flap of skin, pale and still dripping with subcutaneous fat, pulled back on its shin. A white bit of bone flashing in the candlelight. Father covered it with a towel to stanch the blood, but the towel soaked quickly. He peeled it off carefully and dropped it into the growing pile at his feet. So much blood. It made me tipsy. For a moment my thoughts slipped out of my control, into a primal hunger. What was he doing? This wasn’t just vivisection. It was much more than that.