Kenneth Oppel - Such Wicked Intent

With its other hand the creature gripped my maimed one and squeezed, sending a spasm of pain through it.

“That’s enough!” I shouted, and shoved my full weight against the creature. Without releasing its grip on my hand, the Konrad creature staggered back and fell into the lake, dragging me in too.

The water was surprisingly deep, even right against the bank, and locked together as we were, we both went under. I came up spluttering and splashed toward the bank, mere inches away, but the creature was behind me and grabbed hold, pulling me back and down.

Choking, I thrashed up and about to face the creature. I wasn’t sure if its face was filled with malice or pure terror.

“He can’t swim, Victor!” cried Elizabeth. “Help him!”

I caught a glimpse of her preparing to jump, and just had time to shout, “Stay away!” before the creature was upon me, flailing and seizing hold of me in a cold iron grip. I went under again. A murderer could not have been more single-minded.

I came up briefly, enough to glimpse that all our thrashing had actually moved us much farther from the bank. From the corner of my frenzied eye, I saw that Henry had found a long branch and was stretching it out to us. Elizabeth was shrieking, “Help him grab the branch, Victor!”

But its face was livid with panic, and it clawed its way atop me once more. Down we went again, for too long. A great cold contracted round my heart, tunneling my vision. I kicked and hit sluggishly, and managed to knee the creature in its privates so that its grip loosened. Fighting my way up, I broke the surface, gagging for air.

The creature came up, head barely cresting, a terrible bawling coming from its throat.

“He’s drowning!” I heard Elizabeth scream, and saw she was in the water, swimming for us.

“Stay aw-”

And the creature pulled me close again, its panicked face sputtering against me. It wrapped its legs around me, trying to haul itself up onto my shoulders. I punched it in the face, and then again harder, my numb fist like a hammer. The creature recoiled, and I would never forget its expression-a kind of bleak incomprehension, and then panic once more-before it sank below the surface.

“Konrad!” Elizabeth screamed.

I hurled myself at her, intercepting her, gripping her with my arms and legs and trying to drag her back to the bank.

She cried and clawed and bit.

“Give me the branch!” I hollered at Henry, and he threw it to me. The water was murky, and I could not see the creature beneath the surface. My great fear was that it was under me and would drag me down for good.

“Dive for him, you coward!” Elizabeth screamed at me.

“You can’t drag a drowning man from the depths!” I shouted back at her.

The creature did not reappear. Not in ten seconds, twenty, or thirty. When a full minute had passed, I said, “It’s gone.”

“You killed him!” Elizabeth gasped.

“It would’ve killed us both!”

“He… he wanted you to help him…”

“Victor’s right, Elizabeth,” said Henry quietly. “There was nothing he could’ve done.”

“And where were you, Henry?” she cried.

“I found a branch as quickly as I-”

“Cowards, the both of you!”

We hauled ourselves out, cold and exhausted, and sat hunched on the grassy bank, shivering for some time, staring at the water. The silence was like a dreadful prison, entrapping me in my own bloodstained thoughts. Might I have saved it? But it needed to be killed, surely it did.

Then we stood and started the long walk toward home.

The walk home was interminable, silent apart from the sporadic sounds of Elizabeth’s sobbing. She wouldn’t meet my eye, wouldn’t even let Henry place a consoling hand on her shoulder. We stopped only briefly at the glade to gather our things and dry off with the picnic blankets, working like automatons.

It was like losing Konrad all over again. I had killed him twice.

Only last night I’d dreamed we were to be reunited. The dream had had such substance, such certainty.

When we entered the chateau, Elizabeth immediately started up the stairs toward the library.

“I want to see them,” she said. “These monster bones.”

Henry and I followed. We found no sign of workers in the library, and as we made our way into the caverns, we found them empty too, though a few lanterns still flickered.

“Professor Neumeyer?” I called out, but heard no reply.

We ventured down the steep passageway to the burial chamber and walked to the edge of the pit. The ladder was still in place, but at the bottom all the skeletal fragments I’d seen earlier were gone.

I turned desperately to a tarpaulin where a few small bits of bone were laid out. I hurried over and knelt down, but these pieces were all so nondescript that they might have been from any creature.

“Is this all there is?” Elizabeth exclaimed, snatching up a shard of bone. “This is your monster?”

“They must’ve taken away the other pieces,” I murmured, feeling suddenly light-headed.

“If they were here at all.”

“They were here,” I said. “A bit of the giant skull, a clubbed foot. And the jawbone that bore the exact same teeth as Konrad’s!”

“A tooth!” She was shaking with anger now. “Is that all the proof you can muster? Admit it, Victor. From the moment you saw him growing as a baby, you didn’t want him back!”

My voice was hoarse with grief. “That’s a lie! You think you’re the only one who suffered today? I saw the hope of getting back my brother, my twin, sink! I want him back, Elizabeth, even more than you!”

She shook her head. “You were more interested in your stolen spirits and the power they gave you!”

“How can you say that, after all I’ve done-”

“With you, Victor, it’s never clear why you do things!”

I held up my maimed hand and shook it in her face. “I-gave-my-fingers!”

Dismissively she batted away my hand, and before I could check my rage, I smacked her face.

She flew at me, her fists battering my chest. I pushed her away so hard that she fell down.

“Victor!” Henry said sharply, his hand tightening around my arm.

“Take that hand off me,” I growled.

We held each other’s eyes for a moment before he released his grip.

There was a shuffling sound behind us, and I turned to see Gerard, one of the professor’s colleagues, emerge from the steep passageway.

“What’re you doing down here?” he asked.

“The pit remains, where have they gone?” I demanded.

“The professor’s taken them into Geneva not an hour ago,” he said.

“Why?”

“He was concerned they be preserved properly.”

“The body,” said Elizabeth, “was it truly of giant proportions?”

“Indeed it was, miss.”

“You saw its teeth?”

“They were unusually sharp.” He nodded at the tarpaulin. “I’m just here to gather up the last bits of bone.”

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth, walking out of the chamber. Henry and I followed.

As we made our way back through the vaulted galleries, I said, “You see, I didn’t imagine any of this.”

Elizabeth ignored me.

“Whatever that thing was, or is, it wants a body born, and not for Konrad-for itself. You can’t blame me for what happened at the lake.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Worry about your brother when you tell him tonight.”

When he sees the three of us, Konrad beams. He’s in the library with Analiese, who is carefully reading aloud to him when we enter. Arranged on the tables is an arsenal of weapons from the armory, as if he’s expecting to be attacked at any moment.