My Clockwork Muse (19 page)

I had been sleepwalking, I was certain of
it—and more than just the shooting of the cat came back to me now.
A chill ran through me. But I quickly tamped down my fears. Even
though they were filled with ghastly visions, I had grown
accustomed to my dreams and nightmares. These were my constant
companions and I had learned not to fear them.

Yet, my nightly wanderings took me through
more than horrifying dreamscapes. I walked worlds corporeal enough
to offer evidence of my passing: caked mud and ear-splitting
gunshots, wet socks and dead clockwork cats—and strange little
wooden boxes.

Steeling my resolve, I grasped the box in
both hands and shook it gently. I could feel the rattle of many
small objects inside. My heart leapt into my throat. Already I
suspected what I would find.
Do not let it be.
The rattling
intensified with the trembling of my hands. I pressed my thumbs to
the lid and lifted.

Whether a cry issued from my throat or was
contained inside my brain, I could not say. To me, it was
deafening.

Staring back at me from the velvet lining of
the box was a full set of human teeth, their long pointed roots
smeared with traces of watery blood.

I shuddered with horror and the box slipped
from my fingers, spilling teeth onto the table and floor. With a
sound like pelting hailstones, they scattered to the four corners
of my room. I cried out in dismay and scurried after them, chasing
them down one-by-one on my hands and knees. I counted them as I
replaced them in their ghastly box.
29 ... 30 ... 31 ...
One
missing! Scrambling to find it, I looked under the table, the
bureau, all along the baseboards. Then, pressing my cheek to the
floor, I looked under my bed and there is was. Sighing with relief,
I dropped it in the box with the others.
32.

That was when the true horror of the thing
sank in. I stared at my trembling hands in disbelief. What had I
done? But my hands were as mute as my memory and I could find no
trace of their recent history imprinted on them. Yet inside the
hideous box the evidence of my horrifying crime was all too plain
to see. Next to it, a clockwork cat seemed a trivial commonplace,
belonging to a world of frivolous distractions where men in
somnambulistic trances did not extract the teeth from disinterred
corpses.

My skin crawled and I suddenly felt keenly in
danger. I hurriedly put on my shoes and grabbed my coat from the
back of a chair, thrusting my arms into the sleeves. I drew my
revolver from the pocket and replaced it with the box of teeth. I
had made a mistake coming back here. I was a hunted man and my
pockets were now so bulging with damning evidence that I knew I
would surely hang were I to be found. I felt I must get back to
Coppelius'—and fast.

Even now, I sensed that I was not alone.

I crept to the door, already slightly ajar,
and edged it open, just enough to fit my head through. There,
across the room, I saw a figure sitting in my rocker. It was a
woman in a white dress. Her back was to me. My heart began to beat
wildly. My first thought was of Virginia and I was afraid I was
still in my dream. I gazed at her intently, straining my eyes. Then
I blinked hard. But there was no dispelling the apparition. She was
as real as I ... As real as the teeth in the foul box in my pocket
... As real as the revolver clenched in my fist.

Stealthily, I stole through the door, as
quietly as Pluto himself. I took a couple of soft steps towards the
figure when I realized my mistake. My mind was still reeling from
my nightmare, for this was not Virginia—how could it be? I almost
laughed aloud at my foolishness—but Olimpia. I sighed in relief and
felt myself smile even.

Olimpia!

I started to call out to her, but suddenly
thought better of it. Something was not right.

It wasn't just that she was not rocking, but
she appeared to be almost not breathing as well. Who could not rock
in a rocker? I wondered. Would not even one's sleeping breaths
propel the delicately curved rails to motion? I knew the chair was
exceedingly sensitive to the slightest touch, sometimes rocking in
the breeze through the window. Even Tap perched on its back could
force it into a paroxysm of swaying.

And yet, there Olimpia sat, still as
death.

I was suddenly filled with fear. Events lost
to me had transpired in the night, my trousers were ... were—

Yes, I dared say it now! For who could deny
it?
My trousers were muddy and clotted with gore!

And in my pocket was a velvet-lined box full
of bloody, freshly extracted teeth.

I was the author of this wretched story and I
knew how it ended.

I approached her from behind, not daring to
speak, but stepping with a deliberately heavy tread, hoping the
sound of my footsteps would rouse her from her sleep. But when she
did not stir, my fear intensified. I quickly checked my pistol and
found only two empty chambers—the bullet from one intended for
Pluto but hitting nothing, the bullet from the other intended for
nothing but hitting Pluto. I knew what it meant: my dream might not
have been such a dream after all, but some jumbled madness stitched
from the fabric of reality.

How could I trust what my eyes claimed to
see? For once they had told me that I had seen Virginia, known to
be long dead and cold in her grave, they lost all credibility. Was
I really to suppose that I had not only seen her but was attacked
by her? It was beyond belief.

Was it not more likely that this fantasy
contained some grain of fact, that I had indeed encountered some
woman whom my madness had only transformed into Virginia? Some
woman who was not attacking me at all, but was struggling to escape
from me?

Oh, the thought threw me into despair. My
impulse was to run from the room and never return. I
was
mad. Briggs said so. Burton, Gessler... They all thought me mad.
Perhaps they were right.

Only Olimpia had professed faith in me—and
look where it had gotten her.

I reached out my hand to touch her shoulder.
I braced myself, knowing what I would find when I saw her face, a
hideous death mask grinning a bloody, toothless smile.

I grasped her shoulder and pulled. As her
face came into view, her eyes snapped open and I jumped.

She jerked awake with a start. "Oh, Eddy, it
is you! You have returned."

I stared at her, disbelieving. My eyes darted
all over her face, landing finally on her red lips. Curling into a
warm smile, they parted to expose two rows of perfect white teeth,
lustrous as pearls.

I let out a deep breath. "Never have I been
happier to see someone."

She gave me a bemused smile. "And I you,
Eddy." Her smile vanished as her eyes searched my face. "Are you
all right?"

"I am ... I am fine," I said, running a hand
through my hair. "I ... had a rough night."

"I was worried for you, Eddy. When you didn't
come home, I thought I might find you here, and I—"

"I'm glad you did." I grasped her hands and
pulled her from the chair. "Here. I need to show you something." In
fact, I wanted to show her everything, the teeth, the cat. I wanted
to empty my pockets and spread their contents on the desktop, to
lay bare my soul. Her presence gave me courage. It was her belief
in me that did it. I wanted to hide nothing from her. But when I
reached into my pocket I found that I could not withdraw its
secrets. It was her belief in me that did
that
as well. I
did not want to ruin it.

Instead, I led her into the bedroom where
Pluto waited. I half-expected to find him gone. But there he lay,
just as I had left him.

Olimpia made no reaction upon seeing his
body. Not expecting to find a dead cat laying on a table, she had
no doubt mistaken him for a little heap of discarded clothing or a
pile of soiled socks. When she realized what it was, she recoiled
in disgust.

"A dead cat!" she cried. I saw a look of
uncertainty flash in her eyes as she regarded me. Now, it was her
turn to think me mad.

"But not just any dead cat. Look." I rushed
to the table and showed her the tiny springs and gearwheels; and I
showed her the little bloodless bullet hole from which I had pulled
them.

She squinted in bafflement. "What can it
be?"

"I thought at first that it must be some kind
of mechanical device—"

"Device? You mean a—"

"Yes, some kind of ... apparatus ... a—"

"A clockwork cat?"

"An automaton, yes. But then it occurred to
me. As curious as it seems... I had forgotten until just now. Last
year in Philadelphia, there was this fellow, a Dr. Mutter. I had
the opportunity to examine his strange collection, Dr. Mutter's
Cabinet of Medical Oddities, I believe it was called."

"Medical oddities?"

"A fascinating—and grotesque—exhibition.
Tumors and other solid concretions taken from human organs, a
two-headed fetus..." I saw Olimpia blanch. Realizing that I was
losing myself to the memory of the bizarre collection, I hurriedly
got to the point. "One of the strangest displays was a collection
of objects pulled from a man's stomach."

"A man's stomach?" Olimpia cringed.

"Yes, some lunatic from New Jersey, as I
remember it. Nails, tacks and screws, thimbles, needles..."

Olimpia let out a little shriek.

"It seems the man had been swallowing them
over the course of some years, according to this Dr. Mutter."

"And you think this cat—?"

"Yes," I said, moving closer to examine
Pluto's bullet wound. I stuck my finger inside. I could feel the
complicated mass of gears and brass tubing. I could tell that it
was not a random jumble of swallowed objects, but a solid
construction, intelligently organized for some purpose. But Olimpia
brought out my rational mind. I felt calm in her presence and not
prone to believe the unbelievable, however much the facts argued
against me. "The bullet must have pierced the poor creature's
stomach, spilling its contents into the—"

I saw the skeptical look on Olimpia's face
and I realized how foolish my words sounded. Lunacy was a human
malady, I knew, and not a feline one; and cats had no use for metal
objects in their stomachs—even if they could find a stash of finely
crafted gears and springs.

I rushed to the cat's eye and parted its lids
with my thumbs. I peered inside the empty socket.

"His eye is missing," Olimpia observed.

Ignoring her remark, I looked around
hopelessly. I had seen something gleaming inside the eye hole.

"I need a tweezers or something," I said.

"If you mean to operate on the creature, we
should take it to Father," Olimpia suggested. "He is a craftsman as
well as a physician."

"Yes," I said, remembering the ghostly pipe
organ playing itself. Mention of Coppelius brought me back to my
senses. I had become too engrossed in the curious cat and had
forgotten my—and now
our—
danger. I heard a noise from
outside. Pushing Olimpia aside, I drew my revolver and pressed
myself close to the wall at the edge of the window.

"You have a gun!" Olimpia gasped.

I drew back the curtains with the barrels of
the pepperbox and peered out. "Gessler," I said. "He will be
looking for me here. We must be away!"

"My carriage is outside on the street."

"Good," I said. I saw no one through the
window. I craned my neck to see along the front edge of the house.
"Go to the kitchen. There you will find some butcher's paper. In
the cabinet under the basin. Bring it to me. Go!"

Something banged against the window, hard. I
gave a start and saw Pluto clawing at the glass. I could hear him
howling madly. He must have spied me through the window from some
hiding place in the yard. He lunged at me with a savagery shocking
even by the standards of violence I had come to expect from the
damned beast. He snapped his fangs with such manic force against
the panes that he left blood smears on the glass as he scrambled
away from the house and vanished as swiftly as he had appeared. I
was glad to have had a window between us.

Olimpia came back with a square of stiff
brown paper, streaked with dark splotches of grease and blood. "My
God, what was that howling?"

"The cat," I said. I grabbed the paper and
began rolling Pluto up in it. "One of them, anyway," I added. "The
evil one." Then I scooped up the loose gears and springs and thrust
them into my pockets.

Now, with my coat pockets loaded down with
gears and springs, an empty laudanum vial with a torn label, a
sheet of hand-written
L
's and a box of teeth, and a
clockwork cat wrapped in paper in one hand and a pistol in the
other, we hurried down to Olimpia's carriage to make our way back
to Coppelius' house and safety.

On the street, Dansby was waiting for us with
the carriage. "To Coppelius'!" I cried and Olimpia and I threw
ourselves inside.

"Did anyone follow you here or see you
arrive?" I asked. I looked out the window and then turned to see
Olimpia frowning at me. I heard Dansby's whip snap, followed by the
clip-clopping of the horses' hooves. I thrust my head through the
open window and yelled up at Dansby. "On the double-quick, man! We
have no time to lose!"

Dansby nodded, snapped his whip again, and
the clopping increased.

"Eddy, what is it?" Olimpia asked with
furrowed brow.

I grasped her shoulders. "Did they?"

"Did they what? Did
who
what?"

"Anyone. Did anyone follow you?"

"No, no one. Eddy—"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. I would have noticed if we had
been followed. What's wrong?"

"Besides a dead mechanical cat in my bedroom,
you mean?" Wrapped in brown paper, the cat lay on the seat between
us like a pork roast. I saw Olimpia look down at my hand and I
realized that I was still clutching the revolver. I slipped it into
my pocket. "I believe I am mad, Olimpia. That's what is wrong."