“It’s beautiful,” Lichtman whispered, and I glanced over my shoulder at the
Cathedral dome ensnared within its scaffolding and gleaming in the
moonlight. Even in this rundown section of town, the Cathedral dominated the
sky.
The four of us—Lichtman, the Burgomeister, Fleischer, and
myself—were clustered on the unswept threshold of the Doctor’s house like a
covey of frightened schoolboys. Moonflower vines ran wild over the tightly
shuttered windows, filling the night with sickly-sweet perfume. A roaring
lion’s head, black with soot and age, stared from the stout oak door.
“Have courage,” the Burgomeister said.
Lichtman reached up to the fearsome mouth; the hollow boom of iron
on iron reverberated through the narrow street. We waited. A rat scurried
across the cobblestones behind us.
“There is no one here,” Fleischer said. He sounded relieved.
“The Doctor is surely home at this hour,” I said. “Knock again.”
Just then came the shuffle of footsteps down the hallway. We heard
something set against the door and a grating sound as the bolts were drawn
back, top, middle, bottom. More shuffling and finally the door gave a groan
and shuddered open.
The house was darker within than the street without. Fleischer
held up his little tallow lantern, sending ghostly flickering shadows down
the hall. We pushed forward again, peering in.
Below us a face popped into view, wizened and horribly simian in
its aspect. Fleischer almost dropped the lantern and Lichtman gave a little
squeal of fright.
The Doctor’s servant was a malformed thing, with a horrible
crooked back and a head too large for his misshapen body. I had seen him
buying food at the market stalls. Boys threw stones when he passed by, and
the women of the market did not haggle with him long. Easier to make his
price and send him on his way than risk his ugliness spoiling the milk.
He stared up at us dumbly. He was dressed in filthy rags, his face
streaked with dirt. I did not know if he could hear; certainly I had never
heard him speak. The Burgomeister bent down until he was eye to eye with the
brute.
“We would visit with your Master,” he said, his words slow and
deliberate. “Is he at home to us?”
This is what it had come to. The four of us, prosperous and
successful men, begging for entry from the Doctor’s pet idiot. But we needed
the Doctor’s help too desperately to turn back now.
The crookback stared at the Burgomeister’s face, lips moving
silently. Then the wretch stretched out his wizened hand and led us into the
house. Lichtman and I followed the Burgomeister, keeping Fleischer and his
light between us, trying not to trip over the detritus cluttering the narrow
hallway. It felt strange to enter the Doctor’s home at last. All through my
childhood I had tried to catch a glimpse of his fabulous inventions. And now
I was here, about to beg this man to save our lives. To deliver us from
evil.
We were ushered into a dark room, cold and stinking of dust and
mold but still recognizable as the parlor. There were no lamps, but the
crookback produced a box of sulfur matches and scuttled about lighting
candle stubs among the clutter. As the room grew lighter, the profound
disorder of the place was revealed. Piles of papers and books crowded every
surface, along with soiled plates strewn with dried crusts of bread and
rinds of cheese. Empty wine bottles were scattered across the threadbare
carpet; ragged curtains of cobwebs thick with dust hung from the beams. We
stood awkwardly, not wishing to soil our coats on the filthy chairs. With a
clumsy half bow, the crookback limped out.
“For God’s sake,” Fleischer said, swatting at a cobweb clinging to
his coat, “this is a fool’s errand. Let us go.”
“We have only just arrived.” The Burgomeister held up a candle
stub, examining a bookshelf crowded with leather volumes.
“It’s madness, I say.” Fleischer left off wiping and looked up.
“Please, gentlemen, let us go.”
“There is no more than a month left,” the Burgomeister said.
“Barely that. The Doctor is our last chance.”
“We could postpone the dedication,” Fleischer said.
“The work is on schedule to finish on the exact day Herr Kobalt
predicted, seven years ago,” I said, trying to keep the weariness from my
voice. “How many signs do you need? Kobalt is what he says he is. He will
not be denied. All our other plans have come to naught. Only the Doctor can
save us from him now.”
“This is madness.” Fleischer’s voice quavered.
“To you it is madness,” Lichtman said, “because you have no sons.
To me it is our last chance.”
I saw the Burgomeister wince.
Lichtman turned to me. “What do you think, Karl?”
“You are both correct,” I said. “This is our last chance. And it
is madness.”
“Kobalt could not really.... It is not possible that he seriously
means to—” he began.
“The agreement we made was clear enough to you seven years ago.” I
held up my right hand, with the little crescent-shaped scar at the base of
my palm. I closed my eyes and recited the terms: “In return for sufficient
monies to finish renovation of the Cathedral, Herr Kobalt collects the first
man to enter the building on its dedication day, to do with as he pleases.”
Fleischer ran a finger across the path of his scar. “Seven years
is a long time,” he said softly.
“The afterlife, I fear, will be longer,” the Burgomeister said,
closing his own hand into a fist. “We were more naïve then, poorer and less
wise.”
“Do you really think the Doctor can help, Bader?” Lichtman asked
me.
“My sister came here once long ago,” I said. “She and her little
friends wanted to see the Doctor’s doll, the mechanical woman. It would
dance all day, waltzing along the top floor of the house—we could see it
through the windows. So real we could scarcely believe it was a toy. Do you
remember, Burgomeister?” We were friends then, I thought.
“I remember,” he said. He gave a wan smile, and I was struck anew
at how the last few years had aged him. “Your sister was a headstrong girl.”
“She told me all about the workshop,” I said. “She said—”
“She did a great deal of damage.” The voice at the doorway took us
all by surprise.
He was more cadaverously thin than I remembered, frailer and
smaller. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. The white hair, once thick and
full, lay in bare wisps across his peeling, freckled pate. His shirt was
badly mended, the dirty and creased coat a style long out of date. The
Doctor raised one veined and spotted hand and stabbed the air with a bony
finger.
“They broke things, those girls. They had no right to invade my
workshop.” His voice had grown high and querulous; it had lost the booming
quality that had so frightened me as a child.
“She was only curious,” I said, “to see your wondrous dancing
doll.” And father recompensed you handsomely for the damages, I
thought, but held my tongue.
The crookback wrestled a high-backed wooden chair out of the
shadows and placed it near the empty hearth.
“What a rare compliment, to have such gentlemen pay me a visit,”
the Doctor said, making himself comfortable. “Be seated, pray, while my man
finds us some refreshments.”
“We brought a small gift, Herr Doctor.” The Burgomeister gestured
to Fleischer, who proffered the bottle of cognac we had purchased at the
tavern. The tavernkeeper had taken our money with a grudging, sulky air; an
old man drinking in the corner had stabbed the sign of the evil eye towards
us.
“I grow more flattered by the moment.” The Doctor handed the
bottle to the crookback, who went out again. “Sit, gentlemen, I beg you.”
We each moved to find a seat amongst the squalor. Fleischer
unfolded his handkerchief across a grimy brocade couch, then settled himself
quickly when the Burgomeister caught his eye.
“Let us have a fire,” the Doctor said. He made a languid gesture
with his hand. At once a blue spark blazed up in the hearth; a moment later
a fire burned vigorously. The shock and fear on our faces could be clearly
seen by its light.
He knows why we’ve come, I thought. Of course he knows.
Our bargain with Herr Kobalt was common knowledge in the town now.
The crookback returned with the cognac poured out into chipped
clay cups. The crackling of the fire was very loud as he served us the
liquor, making his distorted bow as we each took our measure from his tray.
“Your health, gentlemen,” the Doctor said, with a mock-solemn
salute, “and the health of your families.” Behind me, Fleischer drew in a
sharp breath as the Doctor drained his cup with practiced ease.
The Burgomeister took a sip of the liquor, then set his cup aside.
“We are here to ask your help, good Herr Doctor. Your town has need of you,”
he said.
“My help?” the Doctor said. “But surely—under your august
leadership, Burgomeister—the town lacks for nothing. A flourishing,
prosperous place, ever since the renovation of the Cathedral began. Almost
seven years now, is it not? I believe the work finishes soon.”
“In a month,” the Burgomeister said, his face grim.
“The town is full of life again, now that our spiritual center is
renewed. Father Buchman must be busy indeed, preparing for the dedication
ceremony,” the Doctor said. He held his cup out to the crookback, who stood
ready with the bottle.
“He has left the details of the ceremony in our care,” I said,
watching in distaste as he guzzled the liquor. Father Buchman’s taste ran to
beer; he had been continually drunk for almost three months now, ever since
Fleischer had broken down in the confessional. These days the good Father
only stopped drinking long enough to curse the four of us as damned men.
Lichtman started forward. “Please, Herr Doctor,” he said, “you
must help us. Kobalt wants his payment, and we are at wit’s end—”
“And you wish me to sacrifice myself, for the good people of the
town? Such dear people, who have been so kind to me, who have given me so
much respect these many years?” Spittle flew from his mouth; in the
flickering light he looked like a snarling dog. “Is it not for one of you to
offer himself?”
“It is not our bodies we fear for, Doctor,” Fleischer piped up.
“It is a question of a man’s immortal soul.”
“And yet your sons are not afraid,” the Doctor said. “I understand
the young men of the town have set up a lottery to choose who among them
shall meet Herr Kobalt’s price, should their fathers shirk the duty.”
I thought of Franz, my eldest, his face pale and resigned. We
are not afraid, Father, he’d said. One of us will go. It is for the
good of all. My wife had run out of the kitchen, weeping.
I caught the Burgomeister’s eye. He nodded and reached into his
coat pocket.
“We want you to build us a mechanical man,” he said, and set the
bulging leather bag on a low table before the Doctor. The bag, overfull,
tipped over, and gold coins spilled to the floor in a glittering cascade.
“We are prepared to pay any price.”
The Doctor’s laughter was harsh and raucous. He laughed until he
shook, then coughed and gasped for air. The crookback hopped about in
agitation until the old man’s breathing gradually evened out.
Still gasping, the Doctor took up a gold piece and held it between
thumb and forefinger. They were thick coins, heavy and pure, a capering
devil wrought upon one side, blank upon the other. I knew them well.
“Ha, ha, very good gentlemen!” the Doctor said. “You wish to best
a demon with a clockwork man! You commission the work with a purse of the
very gold he gave you! An excellent jest.” He laughed again, then stood up.
“We are desperate men, Herr Doctor—” I began.
“So you are,” he said, laughing again as he stepped to the door.
He looked back at us, his expression equal parts contempt and amusement. “I
accept your commission,” he said. “Come back in a month, on the night before
the dedication, and not before. You shall have your clockwork man. Whether
the demon you have bargained with accepts him, well, that is not my affair.”
The instant he left the room the fire went out, leaving us staring
at each other in the guttering candlelight. The crookback stood by the door,
his arm extended. In a moment we were in the street, the great oak door
slamming shut behind us, listening to the crookback shoot the bolts closed
one by one.
♦ ♦ ♦
We went back to our lives. My eldest son came and went at odd
hours. My wife wept without ceasing. She would not speak to me, or meet my
eye. She slept in the children’s room, clutching our young daughters as if
she would never let them go.
A week passed in this way. Lichtman came to see me, stinking of
unwashed clothes and brandy.
“Fleischer thinks we should go back to the old idea,” he said,
“find a stranger, some vagabond we could pay....”
“And how much would we pay a man for his life?” I asked. “How far
would we have to go to find someone, now, who does not know of our bargain?
Should we capture some poor fool, bind him hand and foot, and throw him
across the threshold to pay our debt? Is that any more honorable then
sacrificing our sons?” Lichtman’s boy was also in the lottery.
“How could we have known....” Lichtman doubled over, hands balled
into fists.
A healthy town needed a healthy heart, and the Cathedral, old and
failing to pieces, had long ago lost its power to draw people in. A
rejuvenated house of worship had been the keystone of our plan to bring the
town back to life, a center of trade and commerce. We had thought Herr
Kobalt merely a glib-tongued investor, eager, as we were, to restore the
Cathedral to its former glory. Only after we accepted his terms had he shown
us what he truly was.
I remembered it all too well; the four of us, helpless as the
blood from our wounded hands gushed out across the tavern table in a
spreading pool around a pile of gold coins. Kobalt leaned forward to lap up
an errant trickle. In that glistening scarlet puddle we saw his reflection,
his real face, laughing at us. That face, a portrait of evil and corruption.
A glimpse of Hell—of our future—leering up as we stared, paralyzed with
fear.
“He tricked us,” I said to Lichtman. “But tricked or not, we did
agree and now the price must be paid. Let us pray that the Doctor’s skill
can save us.”
Lichtman went home and did not call again.
Time passed. The dedication ceremony drew inexorably closer. The
town began to ready itself for a celebration, though the four of us were
still shunned men. The stonecutters toiled ceaselessly, putting final
touches on the gargoyles that leered from every corner of the Cathedral. Bit
by bit the scaffolding was pulled away, revealing the gleaming white stone
of the new facing. Carrera marble, all the way from Italy, imported at
exorbitant cost. Nothing but the best, in the wake of an endless flood of
strange gold coins.
♦ ♦ ♦
Those same gold coins had wrought great changes in the Doctor’s
house. We arrived just past midnight on the appointed night and were ushered
back into the transformed parlor—warm, well lit and tidy—by the grinning
crookback, himself scrubbed and resplendent in a suit of aubergine velvet
and a black silk turban. He served us brandy in crystal glasses, gave his
bow, and waddled out again. We waited in silence for over an hour, drinking
and staring at the fire. It had been a long and weary month for all of us.
“Gentlemen.” The Doctor’s new clothes were of a fine and
fashionable cut, and fit his gaunt frame well. He had lost his haggard,
hard-worn appearance. Good food, less cheap wine, and something more: he was
a man with a purpose. He gestured out to the hallway, to the narrow stairs
leading up. The Burgomeister went first, then Fleischer, halting and
grabbing at the rail in trepidation while Lichtman urged him forward. We
filed in to the workshop, myself last in line, my sister’s long-ago voice
prattling in my ear.
It was magic, she’d said. There was a wizard in long
robes and a harlequin and a soldier with a curved sword. There was a long
table with gears and tools and piles of colored silks. And a golden parrot
with ruby eyes in a silver cage – it whistled at us. A mechanical fish
swimming circles in a crystal bowl. Wondrous things.
I had been sick with jealousy of my sister and her friends, that
they had managed a look at the Doctor’s workshop. Now at last I was here
myself. I could see the echoes of that long ago day as we wandered about.
The top floor of the house was one vast room, filled with tables, desks, and
bookshelves. The thick and pleasant smell of wax candles perfumed the air,
but beneath that was another smell, not so agreeable. Arms and legs, torsos
and heads, doll parts of every size hung from the ceiling hooks like hams at
a butcher shop. There was a hat rack festooned with masks, and trunks filled
to overflowing with costumes and bolts of gaudy silk. A huge telescope was
set under a window cut into the eaves. Off in a corner I caught a glimpse of
what might have been the parrot’s cage.
The Doctor stood at the far end of the workshop before a
curtained-off area. As I drew near and took my place next to Fleischer, I
realized the unpleasant smell—like meat left too long in the sun—came from
behind the curtain.
“You asked me, gentleman, for a mechanical man. You have paid me
handsomely for the project.”
“Very handsomely,” Fleischer muttered. Lichtman poked him with an
elbow and he was still.
“Then here he is. All that you asked for and more.” The Doctor
twitched back the curtain.
He was slumped forward in his chair, eyes closed—a clockwork
miracle, metal, glass and springs wrought together in a magnificent
semblance of life. His limbs were covered with a fine skin of hammered brass
polished to a mirrored shine, with elaborate cutout shapes along the thighs
and arms affording coy glimpses of cogs and gears within. All the joints of
his body, knees, ankles, waist, elbows, wrists—even the knuckles of his
fingers—were covered with fine overlapping scales. His chest was an
articulated breastplate of silver engraved with muscles and bones, with a
hinged panel in the center. Below the panel was a short length of chain,
welded to his chest. A mask covered his face, a man’s features done in
papier maché and painted white.
With a flourish, the Doctor produced an enormous silver key, fit
it to a hole in the mechanical man’s neck the size of a penny piece, and
turned. He struggled at the start, but as the spring tightened the work went
quicker. I saw Fleischer’s finger’s twitch—like me, he longed to pull the
key from those old hands and do the job properly. Finally, when he could
wind no further, the Doctor reached behind the mechanical man’s ear and
pressed a hidden button.
There was a humming noise as gears began to turn. Within the
cut-out panels along his arms and legs, his clockwork innards began to
whirl. The dreadful smell of spoiled meat grew stronger. The mechanical man
hitched forward on his chair and opened his eyes.
I had expected doll’s eyes, glass and unseeing. These were a
startling blue but unquestionably not glass.
“What—” the Burgomeister began.
Clear liquid began to weep from the seams of the mechanical man’s
neck. The doctor wiped at it with a rag.
“What is this?” Lichtman’s voice was shrill with anger. “What kind
of shabby business is this?”
More fluid trickled from the neck. Clucking his tongue the Doctor
took a small sharp-looking tool from his pocket and pried off the mask. We
all took a step back.
It was not a skull but rather a frame of metal and wood. The eyes
sat in metal cups, with a brass tube just above constantly spraying a fine
mist of fluid across them.
It had no nose. Where a mouth should be was a smooth metal panel.
It looked at us. It looked at me.
“Its eyes,” I said. “How did you make its eyes?”
The Doctor began fussing with the leaking metal plate, using the
tool to crimp the edges tighter. “There is much within him that is not
strictly mechanical, in the sense that you understand it. Surely by now you
have sniffed out the more... natural elements of his construction.” He
finished his adjustment, mopped up the last of the excess fluid, and
replaced the mask.
“They look human,” the Burgomeister said.
“So they were. Their original owner no longer had need of them,”
the Doctor said. He wiped the tool on his sleeve, leaving a long smear of
red. “Nor of this.”
He flipped the panel on the breastplate open, revealing a tank of
glass filled with thick yellow fluid. Within, a knot of muscle and gears
strung on wires ticked steadily.
There was a retching noise to my left. Fleischer was vomiting in
the corner.
“I...I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “It’s just...the
smell...the way he stares...I can’t stand it. Please, I must go out.”
“Let us all go out, for the love of God.” Lichtman looked queasy
as well. “We must go to the Cathedral and make ready for the dedication.
There are only a few hours left. Let there be an end to this, please.”
“One of you must stay and help me keep him wound,” the Doctor
said. “I am not up to the task. Now that he has been started, it will not do
to let him run down.”
Fleischer was across the room and down the stairs before the
Doctor finished speaking, and Lichtman hurried after. The Burgomeister
looked at me.
“I will stay,” I said. I wanted the wretched business done with as
much as they.
“The ceremony begins at eight in the morning,” the Burgomeister
said as he left. As if I might have forgotten.
And so I passed the rest of that long night in the Doctor’s
workshop, winding the mechanical man at regular intervals. The Doctor showed
me how his creation walked, taught me to guide him this way and that with
the chain set into the chest, how he responded to simple commands.
“He is amazing,” I said, as he passed by me the second time.
“But will he suit Herr Kobalt?” the Doctor asked. “Or will the
demon simply wait for the first of you that follows?”
“The first man over the threshold,” I said, “that was our bargain.
If we follow the agreement to the letter, we might yet have a chance.”
“But is he,” and here the Doctor gestured to his creation, now
staring sightlessly at a wall—”a man, in the strict sense of the
word?”
“We shall see,” I said, and felt in my pocket for the small bottle
that rested there, empty for now.
♦ ♦ ♦
It was morning at last. The crookback brought us a simple
breakfast, herring and brown bread and beer. The Doctor ate with gusto while
I picked at the fish. The smell in the workshop was not conducive to a
hearty meal.
The Doctor wiped his mouth of foam. “You spoke of your sister,” he
said. “Where is she now?”
“She’s married,” I said. “She moved away with her husband, to live
with his people.”
“She’s better off,” he said, and grinned at me unpleasantly. “Have
you told her yet what a mess you made of this business?”
“We did what we had to,” I said. “For the good of the town, for
the glory of God.” How many times had I said that in the past year? Did I
even believe it any more?
“For your own good, you mean. To line your pockets. You are all
rich men now, thanks to your bargain.”
I stood up. “My sister said you had a parrot that whistled at
her.”
“Changing the subject, I see. Yes,” he said. He leaned forward and
polished a smudge from his creation’s shoulder. “I had a parrot that did
simple tricks. It was fashioned from gold. I melted it down when times grew
lean.”
“Why didn’t you ever want us children here?” I asked. “Why keep us
out? Our parents would have bought your toys. You could have grown rich.”
“I am not a toymaker,” he said, spitting the words at me.
“Is he a toy?” He strode across the room to a large cupboard in the corner,
threw open the door, and pulled away a cloth, sending up a cloud of dust.
“Is this a toy?” he demanded.
She was sitting on a little three-legged stool, glass eyes wide
and staring, arms upraised as if we had surprised her. The pink dancing
costume was faded and tattered at the hem, the blond wig matted with dust,
but her face—her perfect bisque face—was unchanged. The dancing doll, she
who my sister and her friends had tiptoed up the stairs to see.
“Does she still dance?” I whispered.
He pulled her to her feet. “Wind her up and see,” he said,
pointing to the key of tarnished brass jutting from her back.
He held her as I wound the key. With each turn she drew more
straight and tall until she balanced firmly upon her own feet and the Doctor
could let go. Finally he gave a short nod and I stepped back.
She made a clumsy pirouette and the Doctor and I both reached out
to catch her. From nowhere came music, fragile and high-pitched, and she was
off in a stiff-kneed waltz, delicate hands reaching to embrace her invisible
partner. Her hip came up hard against the workbench, scattering papers to
the floor as she careened away towards the attic windows. The music grew
louder as her steps became more graceful. From the street she must have
looked much the same as when I had watched her, years ago.
“Even after all these years,” I said. “How does the music...?”
“A music box, attached to her mainspring. A trifle, really.” He
smiled at his creation, a smile any father would recognize.
“You are not a toymaker,” I said, as the doll swirled past in a
cloud of tinny, lovely music. “You are an artist.”
His bow was stiff and formal, but I could see that he was pleased.
He knelt to retrieve the papers from the floor and I took a step forward to
help. And so neither of us saw the moment the mechanical man began to dance.
I suppose he stepped forward and caught her in his arms as she
swung by. We looked up in time to see him sway in a clumsy parody of her
movements, but after a few turns he found the rhythm. They whirled past the
returning crookback who dropped his tray in astonishment, then clapped with
delight while the Doctor and I laughed.
They danced to the far end of the workshop and then looped back
towards us. The doll stared up blindly at the rafters, the mechanical man
gazed at her face. The morning sun streamed in, sending diamond shaped
reflections from his gleaming skin skittering across the walls and floor.
Finally the music slowed, became thick and distorted. She
stumbled, slumped in his grasp. He stopped dancing and stood staring at us,
holding her upright in his outstretched arms. Across the square, the clock
chimed, seven and one-half hours.
“It is time,” I said, and the Doctor nodded. He pulled the doll
from the mechanical man’s arms and pushed her into a chair. The mechanical
man reached for her again, but I stepped forward and took hold of his chain.
“Come,” I said, and gave a sharp tug. He let me lead him to the
stair. Without another word to me, the Doctor turned back to his work. That
was my last view of him, rearranging papers and sifting through the chaos of
the workbench.
I led the mechanical man through the dim hall, leaving the door
open behind us as we passed into the street. Startled by the morning sun, he
balked against the chain. I gave a hard tug and led him onwards.
It was a perfect day, crisp and bright. I could smell bread
baking. Most of the townfolk were waiting for us at the Cathedral, but I
could sense eyes watching us, peering through curtains and closed shutters.
We stopped at a chuckling fountain and I took a long drink of water, cold
and pure, to wash away the sour taste of fish and fear. The sunlight on the
water threw reflections up against his silver breastplate.
“You dance well,” I said. “But then you had a lovely partner.” I
took out the empty bottle from my pocket and filled it, refitting the cork
with care.
He stared at me with his unblinking eyes. What churchyard coffin
had the Doctor pillaged for those eyes? I tried to recall any recent
executions but my thoughts of late had been only about the Cathedral, the
ceremony.
“Did he send the crookback for your eyes?” I asked him. “Did he
cut them from a body at a crossroad gallows?”
The clock struck a quarter ‘til. I wiped my hands on my vest.
“Wherever they came from, I doubt they have seen anything like what awaits
us.” I said, winding his key again. “What awaits you.”
I tugged the chain again, but to my surprise he pulled from my
grasp and made a turn back towards the Doctor’s house. I lunged for the
swinging end of the chain and pulled, hard enough to spin him around. We
stared at each other, my rebuke dying in my throat. Did I see fear in those
eyes? I remembered my words to Lichtman, about capturing some hapless
wanderer and throwing him across the threshold, what cowardice that would
be. Was this so very different? What had we made? What, who, were we
sacrificing here?
The clock chimed the quarter hour.
“Come,” I said, “it is too late to turn back. There is someone you
must meet.”
I heard the crowd before I saw it. We rounded the final corner and
there were hundreds of them, all the town and more besides, strangers and
friends and those who had cursed me, all mixed up together across the
square, well away from the Cathedral steps. I saw my son, my Franz, in his
best suit of clothes, with his friends, the Burgomeister’s sons, Lichtman’s
boy, and the rest. My wife and daughters were there as well, with several of
our neighbors. When the crowd saw us a sighing moan went up, equal parts
fear and relief. I saw many make the sign of the cross and still more fork
the evil eye, but whether towards myself or the mechanical man I could not
tell.
The Cathedral glowed in the morning sun, magnificent and pure. If
the Doctor would only come and look, I thought, he would understand. Surely
God would forgive us the sins we had committed in the name of his glorious
house.
And to line your own pockets, the Doctor whispered in my
ear.
The Burgomeister, Fleischer, and Lichtman stood on the Cathedral
steps along with Father Buchman, who had slumped to his knees. The
mechanical man and I crossed the square to them as the Burgomeister hurried
towards us.
“Kobalt is inside,” he said. “Fleischer went up to the door. He
heard him singing.” He eyed the mechanical man warily. “Is it ready, Karl?”
“I have the water,” I said. “We must be sure.”
The Burgomeister signaled to Fleischer and Lichtman. Together they
hauled the gibbering priest to his feet and pulled him to us.
I took out the bottle of water and handed it to Father Buchman.
“Bless it, Father,” I said.
Buchman flinched back. “This is heresy,” he said.
“Bless the water and baptize him,” the Burgomeister said.
“It is not a man,” the priest said. “It has no soul.”
“That is not for us to say,” I said, “He has a man’s heart. He
does a man’s duty. Baptize him now.” We owe him that at least, I thought.
But does it excuse what we do to him, or does it damn us all?
The priest snarled at me but the others held him fast. Finally
Father Buchman blessed the water and threw it in an arcing spray – up and
down, side to side—against the mechanical man. Then he dropped to his knees
again, moaning. Several men from the crowd rushed to his aid, pulling him
away.
The mechanical man looked at me and I pointed to the West door. My
hand did not tremble as I wound the key. I silently repeated my son’s name
with each turning as the main spring tightened.
“Do not break it, Bader, for Heaven’s sake,” Lichtman said.
I finished winding and looked again into the creature’s vivid,
stolen blue eyes. Liquid was leaking from his neck again. I took out my
handkerchief and wiped it away carefully, then placed my hand upon the panel
in his chest, over the lump of muscle and gears that made his heart.
“Go,” I said, and then, “have courage.”
The Burgomeister started at that.
The mechanical man walked away from us slowly, climbing the steps.
The Western door, decorated with a bas-relief depicting the Creation, swung
open as he drew near. Inside the darkened narthex a figure beckoned. The
mechanical man passed inside and the door swung shut.
We waited. I could hear the priest mumbling prayers to the
cobblestones.
I turned to the Burgomeister, “If Kobalt is not appeased—”
From within the Cathedral came a sound like nothing I had ever
heard—a scream of rage and a roaring laugh together. Fury and mirth
co-mingled, it filled the square like a vast wind, whipping the trees into
mad frenzy, sending hundreds of drowsing pigeons to the air in a fluttering
cloud that blocked out the sun. People screamed and bolted in headlong
panic. Fleischer fled with the rest. Franz shouted to me, and I gestured
frantically towards his mother. To my relief he pulled her and his sisters
away, towards home.
In moments the square was deserted but for Lichtman, the
Burgomeister, and myself, our hands clapped over our ears, and the priest,
still on his knees rocking back and forth.
Finally the screaming wind stopped and Father Buchman’s whispered
prayers were the only sound. Then Lichtman shouted and pointed to the
Cathedral.
The west door was open again. A wellspring of blood poured across
the stones of the narthex. The torrent of red ran across the portico in a
vast, unstoppable tide. We watched horrified as the flow drew closer, then
slowed as it reached our feet. I knelt down and touched the edge of that
dreadful crimson puddle.
The marble was dry beneath my hand, warmed by the morning sun. The
horrible red stain—as clear and irrefutable as the mark of Cain—lay
within the stones.
Trembling, we three moved up the stairs, peering into the church.
I heard the Doctor in my head. What if he simply waits for the first man
that follows after?
I took a breath and stepped forward. For my son, I thought,
for my family.
But before I could step across the threshold, Father Buchman
pushed past in front of me. He crossed the threshold and stumbled down the
aisle.
The Cathedral was empty.
Of Kobalt and the mechanical man there were no signs. But like the
portico, the stones of the narthex floor were stained crimson all the way
back along the nave, stopping just before the altar.
“We will repair it, Father,” the Burgomeister said. There was
confidence in his voice, strength I had not heard in months. Lichtman heard
it too and smiled. It had worked. We had won.
Back to business, I thought. Back to how it was before.
♦ ♦ ♦
That night I went to bed believing we had reached an end to the
whole wretched mess. I embraced my son and called him a man, kissed my
daughters and my wife, lay my head upon my pillow and—for the first time in
seven years—went to sleep at once, without listening to the wind whistle in
the eaves until exhaustion claimed me.
In my dream I was at the Cathedral, on my knees with a scrub brush
and bucket, frantically cleaning the ruined steps, though I knew I could
never turn the stones white again, not if I scrubbed until the brush wore
away to pieces beneath my bleeding fingers.
The mechanical man appeared. He reached down and took hold of my
shoulder, shaking me....
My wife shook my shoulder again, calling my name. Someone was
knocking at our front door, pounding fit to raise the dead. The
Burgomeister’s servant, summoning me with all haste to the Doctor’s house.
The stout oak door had been torn off its hinges. The little
crookback lay on the floor, wailing piteously, cradling the Doctor’s severed
head in his arms. The torso lay sprawled in the high-backed chair by the
smoldering fire, an arm dangling from an oak beam like the doll parts in his
workshop. The Burgomeister stood before the mutilated corpse, his eyes wide
and unbelieving. Within the wounds, something glistened. As the Burgomeister
gasped, I pulled a length of silver chain from the hole in the Doctor’s
chest. Then I knelt down and after a moment of gentle struggle retrieved the
Doctor’s head from the sobbing crookback. A bright silver key protruded from
the neck, just behind the ear.
“I don’t understand, Karl,” the Burgomeister said.
I thought of those eyes bright with fear, of how he had balked
against the chain.
“Herr Kobalt is not finished making deals,” I said. “It is the
mechanical man’s turn now. I only wonder what Herr Kobalt will ask for in
return for freedom from chains and winding keys.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Lichtman tried to run, packed up his family and fled to his people
in the North. The mechanical man dragged him from the carriage and
eviscerated him on the road, before the eyes of his horrified family. As he
was pulled apart, Lichtman’s wife heard horrible laughter from the darkness
nearby.
Fleischer was next. He turned his home into a fortress, barring
every door and window, sleeping with a pistol beneath his pillow until the
morning his wife woke to find the bedchamber an abattoir awash with the
blood of her husband.
The body of the Burgomeister—what remained of it—was found early
one morning on the ruined steps of the Cathedral. His pistol was also
nearby, a single shot discharged. As with the others, the priest refused to
bury him in the churchyard, so the remains of my childhood friend were
thrown into a barrel like so much rubbish and buried in the potter’s field
outside of town, far from even the shadow of the Cathedral.
And I? I am back in the Doctor’s house, in self-imposed exile from
my family. The people of the town—those good people, as the Doctor himself
once called them—destroyed his workshop soon after his body was removed.
They burned his books and smashed his models, tore his notebooks to pieces
as they cursed his horrible creation. They would have killed the crookback
but I stopped them before they could manage the rope around the creature’s
misshapen neck. He serves me now, waddling amongst the wreckage, bringing me
plates of bread and cheese and pots of beer from the tavern.
The dancing doll was trampled in the soot and muck, her perfect
bisque face smashed on one side, her costume soiled and ruined. I have tried
to fix the damage to her dress as best I can, turned her where she sits so
that her good cheek and eye face the street. Anyone looking up from the
street can see us here together through the windows, a wretched man and a
beautiful girl.
The front door stands open, the full moon shines down. I am ready
for the mechanical man’s homecoming.