Dark Library.”
“If you don’t read it, I’ll only puzzle it out myself,” I told him with a smile.
“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “The first line says here ‘One drop and one drop only, taken on the tongue.’”
Elizabeth took up the flask. The glass was a dark green, but through it I could see the darker shadow of some liquid near the bottom.
“I’m amazed it hasn’t all dried up,” she murmured. “Could it have been here three hundred years?” With some difficulty she uncorked the flask.
She took a sniff at the neck and recoiled. “It smells like something that should not be drunk under any circumstances.”
“Who said I’m going to drink it?” I asked.
Elizabeth raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Do you think Wilhelm Frankenstein actually drank this?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said. “Go on, Henry.”
“‘In your right hand take firm hold of the spirit clock…’”
“Spirit clock,” I repeated, and from the table grabbed hold of the pocket watch. I stared for some time before understanding what I was looking at. I swallowed.
Beyond the scratched, smoky glass was what looked like the skeletal remains of a fetal bird, perhaps a sparrow. Its collapsed ribs, bent neck, and crushed skull occupied the center of the clock face. A spindly leg protruded straight up from this bundle of bones, its tiny clawed foot pointing at what in a normal timepiece would have been twelve o’clock. Yet there were no numerals anywhere on the face.
“How delightful,” said Henry with a hoarse chuckle. “I’m sure they’ll be all the rage in Paris before long.”
I turned the clock in my hands. There was no keyhole for winding it. I put it to my ear.
“It doesn’t tick.” I looked at Henry and asked, “Does it say how it works?”
Henry looked back down and continued translating, but almost instantly broke off. “Look here,” he said to me firmly, “before I read any more, I want a promise from you that you’re not going to do anything rash. A promise, Victor, or not another word.”
“Henry, I promise.”
He held my eye a little longer and then read on. “‘In your left hand hold the talisman that will bring you back to your body. The item itself is of no significance, so long as it is clenched tightly in the left hand when you make your entry-and your exit.’” Henry looked up, his eyes wide behind his spectacles. “Entry and exit where?”
“It’s obvious enough, isn’t it?” I said, a quickening excitement beating in my ears. “Here’s what I think. Wilhelm discovered those instructions for the spirit board and used them to communicate with the dead. And maybe the dead told him how to enter their realm. Or, who knows, he might have figured out how to get there himself!”
“It’s not possible,” said Elizabeth. “Beyond our world there’s heaven, hell, and purgatory-and the living can’t go there.”
“Keep reading, Henry!” I urged.
He swallowed. “‘The talisman allows your body to recognize your spirit as its rightful owner. You must return to your body when the hand of the spirit clock has made one full revolution.’” Henry paused briefly. “‘Tarry too long and your body will die.’”
“So, it seems,” I said, “that your spirit leaves your body when you enter this other world. And you have a limited time to be parted from it.”
Henry continued reading. “‘Beware, because time is unreliable in the spirit world. Your allotted time might seem an age, or the blink of an eye-though, with practice the spirit clock can be manipulated.’”
I snatched up the dropper and poked it deep into the flask.
“Are you mad?” Elizabeth said, grabbing my arm.
I tried to grin. “You know I am.”
“Victor, you promised!” Henry exclaimed.
“I lied.”
Elizabeth tried to snatch at the dropper. “It could be poison!” But before she could stop me, I squeezed a drop of the fluid onto my tongue.
No one said anything for a moment.
“You fool,” she breathed.
“It’s done,” I said through gritted teeth. “It cannot be undone! If it’s nonsense, we’ll all be the wiser.”
And if it kills me, I will go where Konrad has gone. I’ll be a twin again.
“How do you feel?” Henry asked.
“Completely unchanged,” I said, reaching out for the bottle. “Are you sure I took enough?”
Henry stopped me with his free hand, glancing down at the book. “‘Never take more than a single drop. Its effect is potent, and the elixir cannot be taken more than once a day, lest your body fall into a dangerous torpor.’”
“There’s something now…” I grimaced. A bitter metallic taste suddenly blossomed in my mouth, and an unsettling warmth swept through my veins.
“Make yourself vomit it up!” Henry urged me. “We’ve no idea what it really does!”
The anxiety in his face sent the first jolts of panic through me. What if it truly were poison? I forced myself to focus. Heavily I sat down on the reclining sofa and took up the spirit clock.
“Right hand?” I said, looking at Henry, feeling light-headed.
“Yes, yes, right hand!”
I closed the three fingers of my right hand around the clock’s smooth contours.
“And you must have something in your left!” Elizabeth said. “Your talisman!”
“My ring!” I said, and tried to pull the Frankenstein family ring from my finger, but a strange numbness was overpowering me. I lay down.
“Here, let me,” she said, and tugged it from my finger. She put it in my left hand and folded my fingers tightly around it.
“Henry, is there anything else written?” I asked urgently.
My friend frantically flipped ahead in the notebook. “No, that’s all. That’s everything.”
“Your eyes are drooping,” I heard Henry say as though from a great distance.
“Victor, get up!” cried Elizabeth. “Don’t fall asleep! Henry, help me get him up!”
I blinked again.
— and Henry and Elizabeth are both gone.
I’m still lying on the sofa, in Wilhelm Frankenstein’s secret room in the chapel ceiling. I must’ve dozed off and been deserted, which seems more than a bit inconsiderate. The trapdoor is closed. I frown. Why would they leave me here alone?
I’m suddenly aware of my clenched hands. I open my left and see my ring. And in my right hand is the smooth round shape of the spirit clock, its silver cool against my warm skin, and what I thought was just my body’s pulse echoed in my fingers is actually the ticking of the clock.
I hold it to my ear. The ticking is unmistakable, and the skeletal leg of the bird, which once pointed straight up, has twisted a bit to the right.
And then my gaze shifts from the clock to the hand that holds it. My three-fingered hand now has five fingers. I drop the clock onto my lap and stare in amazement, wiggling the fingers before my eyes.
“They’re healed!” I cry, wanting Elizabeth and Henry to be here so I can show them.
The dull drumming pain is gone, completely gone. I make a fist.
How can this be real? I thump my body. I’m solid and awake. This is no dream.
But I am… elsewhere.
I slip my ring back onto my finger and look once more at the clock. When it has made one full revolution, I must return to my body. Does that mean this sofa here, where I now sit?
I look about myself. Are Elizabeth and Henry still here somewhere, in the real world, unseen and unseeing?
Slowly I stand, expecting to feel light-headed, but I feel absolutely fine. Better than fine. I feel as though I’ve shed the gloom that’s hung upon me like a leaden cloak. Instead an eager vigor courses through me. I’m a spirit, yet I have substance and strength. I’m no bit of ghostly vapor-and most curious of all, I’ve never felt more alive.
