She glanced back at the kitchen. Was there anywhere she could hide? She supposed she could try to scramble into the dumbwaiter in the far corner, but other than that…
She’d have to run. Out into the corridor, take a left, and put as much distance between herself and whatever it was that was coming from the other direction. She just had to hope they were still far enough away that they wouldn’t see her.
Veronica closed her eyes, took a big gulp of air, and threw herself out into the passageway. She glanced quickly in both directions. To the right, the path was still clear. But the sound of the mechanical footsteps was growing ever closer, a steady, ominous clanking. To the left, the passage came almost immediately to a T. She ran over to it, hopeful that the coast would be clear. It was. But which direction to take? Where would Amelia’s room be located?
Thud, thud, thud. The footsteps were rounding the bend behind her. She had to commit. Right, then. She guessed that would lead her deeper into the house.
Veronica dashed along the passageway, her feet scuffing against the ancient flagstones. The walls and ceiling here were paneled in dark oak, giving everything an oppressive air. Roughly hewn wooden faces loomed down at her from above, their blank eyes judging her from their little nooks in the walls. She guessed they must have been there since the house had been built. She wondered what they must have witnessed in their time.
Another T-junction. Veronica groaned in frustration. Whichever direction she took now, she was heading farther away from the gardens and the rooms where she expected Amelia to be. But she had little choice. She couldn’t very well double back, not with that thing, whatever it was, blundering around the corridors behind her. She took the passageway on the right again, listening carefully for any signs of movement or voices from up ahead.
Everything seemed to be quiet. It was a far cry from the asylum at Wandsworth, where Amelia had previously been a patient. When she visited there Veronica would regularly hear the wailing of the other inmates, the cries of the insane, the harrowing calls for help issued by people too sick to understand their own conditions. By contrast, the Grayling Institute appeared to retain the trappings of a fine country home, a manor house fit for nobility. It was an odd sort of place, and given Dr. Fabian’s reputation as a master engineer, the idea of him living and working there felt entirely incongruous to Veronica. She had expected more modern surroundings: laboratories, workshops, that sort of thing. Or perhaps something clean and clinical, like a hospital. But not this.
Veronica pressed on. Soon she had lost track of the winding passageways and had given up on trying to remember how to backtrack. Instead she simply followed her instinct, delving deeper into the large house and trying any number of doors, all painted a glossy white and securely locked. It wasn’t long before she had shaken off the sound of the footsteps. The whole building seemed as if it were practically deserted. She hadn’t seen a living soul since her rather impressive entrance through the window: no patients, no nurses, no servants. She cursed herself, assuming that somewhere, in her haste, she had taken a wrong turn and had wandered into a disused part of the building.
She was just about to turn back and start trying to retrace her steps when she heard a noise from up ahead and started. It had sounded like a muffled scream. She felt the hairs on the nape of her neck prickle as they stood on end. The noise had seemed chillingly familiar. Had it been Amelia? Surely not.
Cautiously Veronica picked her way along the corridor. Up ahead, it turned abruptly to the right. Veronica followed it, unsure what she expected to find. Ever since arriving at the institute, she’d been filled with a growing sense of unease, and now, upon hearing that awful scream, she suspected that something was terribly amiss.
The passageway terminated in a door. She crept up to it, straining to hear any sounds from the other side. Silence. She leaned closer, wondering what use anyone could have for a room this far removed from the main part of the building. The scream couldn’t have come from anywhere else. She pressed her ear against the cold wood.
Inside, she heard the muffled sounds of an animal, a low, plaintive keening, as if the creature making the sound had been in pain for some time but had now given up all hope of attention or relief.
Was Dr. Fabian involved in some sort of vivisection experiments? It wouldn’t surprise her if he tested his medical machines on apes or dogs or other mammals, and it would make sense to lock them away here where the patients couldn’t accidentally happen upon them. Nevertheless, Veronica couldn’t suppress the nagging doubt that Dr. Fabian was up to something more nefarious. She didn’t really know the man, and she had put her faith in him to heal her sister, but for some reason she had a horrible, hollow feeling in her gut, a sense of impending dread. Something about the Grayling Institute just didn’t feel right.
Veronica tried to laugh at herself, to remind herself that her sister was the clairvoyant one, that she was probably just being paranoid. But what if Newbury were right? The dreadful thing he had predicted during his occult experiments-what could it be? Was it something to do with Amelia? She supposed there was only one way to find out.
Veronica was just about to reach for the handle when something screeched loudly on the other side of the door. She jumped back in fright with a sharp intake of breath. She felt her heart race in her chest. The sound had set her teeth on edge. What on Earth was going on behind the door? She gave herself a moment to steady her nerves before pressing on.
Tentatively, she grabbed for the brass knob and gave it a sharp twist. The door swung open. It was dark on the other side, so she couldn’t see much of the room beyond, but the smell was horrendous. The air was thick with the cloying scent of faeces and perspiration, and other things she couldn’t-or didn’t want to-identify.
Definitely animals, then, she thought, debating whether to bother searching for her handkerchief to cover her face. Absently, she remembered leaving it at the morgue.
She stepped farther into the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. She could sense motion somewhere nearby. Something was turning in the darkness, something large that disturbed the air currents in the room, a machine of some sort. She could hear it whirring slowly in the darkness along with a low murmur of some sort. She walked forward and immediately got the sense that she was in a large open space, a hall or ballroom at the centre of the old manor house.
Veronica felt the wall behind her and managed to put her hand on a wall-mounted gas lamp. She felt for the knob and turned it up, spilling some light into the otherwise gloomy room. Then, turning around to see what the room contained, she emitted a scream of a sort louder than she had ever issued before.
All thoughts of secrecy or subterfuge went from her mind. She rushed forward, but then skidded to a halt, not knowing which way to look, which way to run. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She thought she was going to vomit. She realised she was whimpering with shock and anger and sheer, unadulterated fear.
The room contained at least twenty Amelias.
Everywhere she looked, there were more of them, each identical to her sister in every way: pale skinned, painfully thin, raven dark hair. They were barely dressed, covered only in thin cotton nightgowns. Each of them was lashed up to a different machine or torture device.