Amelia Hobbes pressed her fingertips against the cold glass of the windowpane, as if trying, unconsciously, to touch the world outside. She’d been locked in her room for days, cooped up like a bird, wings clipped and useless. She longed to inhale the fresh spring air, to walk about on her own two feet-anything but being perpetually confined to this uncomfortable wheelchair.
She sighed, pushing herself away from the window. The wheels of the chair creaked and groaned in protest. She was only torturing herself. Soon she would be able to walk outside again, to see other people. That’s what she had to focus on. Soon. At least, that’s what Dr. Fabian had told her.
Amelia turned the wheels of her chair, rolling slowly back into the gloom of her small room. She felt better than she had in months-years, even-and Dr. Fabian finally appeared to have found a means of suppressing her episodic fits, those brief, harrowing spasms in which she was able to see, momentarily, into the future. The last episode had been over two weeks ago, the end of a horrendous period of almost constant seizing, from which she recalled only the briefest moments of lucidity. That was when the doctor was experimenting with the dosage of the new drug he had prescribed for her-an anticonvulsant, he had explained, to put an end to her nightmares.
While his methods were clearly extreme-keeping her locked in her room with no visitors, for a start-Amelia had no real reason to fault the doctor’s regime. She was showing signs of improvement. She felt her strength returning. She’d gained weight. She’d taken a few tentative steps on her own, when she knew she wasn’t being observed. And most important, the seizures had stopped.
All of this, she knew, should have left her feeling revitalised, uplifted. But she couldn’t shake the persistent sense of melancholy that had stolen over her. Melancholy and… fear. Fear of the future, of the things she had borne witness to in her dreams. Fear of the unknown, too: the things she hadn’t seen. And more acutely, more urgently, fear of Mr. Calverton, that deranged, frightful assistant of Dr. Fabian’s, that thing with all the qualities about him of a creature from a nightmare and none of anything right and sane.
From what she had managed to glean from snatches of conversation with the doctor, Mr. Calverton had once been a normal man, but lost his legs “in the course of duty.” Dr. Fabian had personally crafted machine replacements for him, steam-powered pistons that operated in a bizarre parody of their biological counterparts, enabling him to walk with a juddering, almost comical gait. His face was hidden behind a smooth porcelain mask, leaving only his vacant, watery eyes on display. And he always wore a black velvet evening jacket, a cravat, and white gloves. He seemed unable to speak, for in the few months she had been at the Grayling Institute, Amelia never heard him utter a sound. She wondered what terrible fate had befallen him to reduce him to such a state.
Amelia turned her head, glancing toward the door. She was expecting him at any moment: the click-clack of his metal feet on the tiled floor, the scraping of the key in the lock, and then those strange eyes, boring into her from across the room.
She shivered. In other circumstances, she might have been differently disposed towards the man, but she had had glimpsed his future and knew his story was still unfolding. The truth of Mr. Calverton had yet to be uncovered.
Well, it wouldn’t do for him to know of her fear. She should look busy when he arrived. Amelia leaned back in her wheelchair and reached for a book that she had left, upturned, upon a side table. It was a romance of sorts, the tale of a rich landowner who had fallen in love with a girl from the village. She knew it was nonsense, of course, that it was a reflection of desire rather than reality, but nevertheless she’d been enthralled by the tale. It was her one source of contact with the outside world, the means by which she could reach out and touch something other than the drab, day-to-day existence of her life inside the Grayling Institute.
Amelia parked her chair beside the fireplace and turned the pages of her book, drinking in the colourful fictional world, imagining the garden of the manor house in the story to be filled with the same topiary and scampering animals she had seen from her own window that morning. Imagining herself in that place.
A short while later, Amelia became aware of the clanking steps of Mr. Calverton in the passageway outside her room. She stirred, realising she’d been dozing in her chair. Hurriedly, she reclaimed her book from where she’d let it fall on her lap and flicked the pages, trying to find her place. The key scraped in the lock and slowly the mechanism turned with a metallic click.
Amelia didn’t look up as she heard the hinges creak open. Instead, she kept her eyes on the book, scanning the same line over and over, never actually taking it in. Her mind was racing. The sheer presence of the half-mechanical man made her skin crawl. Something about his blank, featureless face, his rasping breath, his perpetual silence. And those eyes: always watching, gazing down at her, drinking her in. She couldn’t help but imagine a lascivious sneer hidden away behind that porcelain mask. She attributed all manner of deplorable thoughts to him, murderous thoughts, deranged, deviant thoughts. But she had no way of knowing the truth. She could only put her faith in Dr. Fabian and the knowledge that he was doing his best to make her better.
It didn’t mean that she had to trust the mechanical porter, however. She’d just have to keep her wits about her in his presence.
Amelia pretended to finish the paragraph she had been reading and looked up, placing her book facedown on the coffee table. “Is it that time already, Mr. Calverton?” She said this brightly, without a waver in her voice, as if the idea of being escorted by the strange man-machine into the bowels of the great house were not at all a terrifying prospect.
Mr. Calverton cocked his head to the left. His eyes remained fixed on her face. No sound was forthcoming other than his wheezing breath and the hissing release of steam from the pistons in his thighs. But she had learned to take this movement of the head as an affirmative.
“Right, then. Time for my treatment.” She folded her hands on her lap and sat back in her chair. “Come along, then, Mr. Calverton. We don’t want to keep Dr. Fabian waiting.”
The man’s head remained cocked for a minute, entirely still. Then sharply, decisively, he changed his position, his head snapping back into place. He entered the room, the pistons in his thighs hissing and venting, and maneuvered himself around to stand behind her, gripping the handles of her wheelchair with his gloved fists. Gently, he moved the chair around so that Amelia was facing the door, and then they began the ponderous decent to the treatment room.
The walk would take them fifteen minutes, weaving through the corridors and passageways of the old house, down through dank, dimly lit tunnels that seemed to descend forever, until finally they arrived at the treatment room. It was a stark, fearsome place, filled with the great machine that was somehow curing her of her seizures. And of course, Dr. Fabian, who would be waiting for them with an expectant grin.
They had made the same short journey once a day for the past few months, and Amelia could have followed the route with her eyes closed. But she did not have the strength to make the journey alone, and suspected that even if she did, Dr. Fabian would not allow her the run of the house. Whilst he assured her that it was only to aid in her recuperation that she was kept locked in her room-and judging by his successes, she had no reason to doubt him-she still could not help wondering if Mr. Calverton was as much a minder as he was a porter, assigned to keep a watchful eye on her and report back to his master. Perhaps she was being too fanciful. Nevertheless, the doubt continued to gnaw at her. She wondered what she might find if she were ever able to explore one of the side passages that branched off from the tunnels she took with Mr. Calverton, see what lay in the darkness beyond. And she wondered when Mr. Calverton’s time would come, and how long it would take before her vision of him became a reality.