Kenneth Oppel - Such Wicked Intent

Henry looked at me in surprise. “You don’t mean-”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll have a much better view. Hoist me up, will you?”

I sat near the middle and gripped the tall central column with one hand, and a wooden brace with my other.

Henry grasped the rope and hoisted me toward the painted sky.

“Is it difficult?” I asked.

“No,” said Henry, “and I don’t quite understand why.”

“It must be the pulley system,” I said, peering up at the mechanism on the ceiling. “And the chandelier itself is made of some light wood.”

For a giddy moment I felt like a child again, and pumped my legs.

“Stop rocking it, Victor!” Elizabeth cautioned.

But I wasn’t ready to surrender the moment just yet, and kicked out my legs, straining for the sky.

I was nearly at the ceiling when I heard the crack and felt the brace beneath me fracture. I was spilled off my perch so quickly that I scarcely had time to get both hands around the central column. Legs kicking, I dangled from the chandelier, which was still swinging crazily, some fourteen feet above the merciless stone floor.

“Hold on!” I heard Henry gasp. “I’ll bring you down!”

In his haste Henry lowered the chandelier so violently that my left hand-the one with all its fingers-was jerked off the column.

“Stop, stop!” I grunted, struggling to hold on as the chandelier lurched and spun. “Do nothing!” I flailed about for another brace to grip, but felt my three-fingered hand begin to slip, and knew my time was running out. I swung my legs with all my might and managed to hook one over a solid brace. Grasping it with my right hand, I swiftly hauled my belly up over the top of the brace, and prayed it would hold.

“Thank God,” I heard Elizabeth murmur below. “Victor, you idiot!”

With both hands I seized the central column and pulled myself into sitting, making sure to move very slowly. The chandelier was swinging only a little now. My pulse slowed.

“I’ll lower you,” Henry called out. “Hold on.”

“No! Raise me. All the way.”

“Are you mad?” said Elizabeth. “The thing’s clearly unsafe!”

I looked at the splintered brace, angling down slightly like a broken branch. I wondered if it would be noticed. No one really ever came into the chapel, after all, but I was grateful it hadn’t snapped off completely.

“I just put too much strain on it,” I said. “It’s fine. Haul away, Henry!”

“You’re sure you-” Henry began, and then laughed abruptly. “Of course you’re sure. Very well. Up! You! Go!”

I turned my attention to the ceiling and the fresco painted there. Closer, I could appreciate how clever its illusion was, for even though the paint was faded and cracked, for a moment I thought there was no ceiling at all, only sky.

“This is as high as it goes,” said Henry.

Directly above me, not two feet away, was the great loop that supported the chandelier, and next to it was another cleat for tying off a rope, which confused me for a moment before I realized what it was for.

“ He did this!” I called down to the others.

“What?” Elizabeth said.

“Wilhelm Frankenstein. He sat on the chandelier and hauled himself up to the ceiling. He could tie off the rope right up here.”

I knew what this meant. I looked at the ceiling, among the shadows of clouds, the flaking paint. It would have to be nearby… and there it was. From the ground I would have missed it altogether, or mistaken it for a blemish on the fresco.

A key-shaped hole in the sky.

“Found it!” I called down to Elizabeth and Henry.

“You’re certain?” Henry asked.

“Well, let’s find out.” From my jacket pocket I took the key.

“Wait, Victor,” said Elizabeth. “Are you sure this is a door you want opened?”

“What else does one do with a door?” I said.

“How do you know it’s not a portal to-” Henry began.

“Hell?” I said, smiling down at him. “In a sky filled with angels?”

I reached up and pushed the star-shaped key into the hole. I turned it. I heard a click, and at once a trapdoor sprang down, a little ladder attached to one side.

Ruined angels watched as I climbed up inside the vault of heaven.

I crouched at the threshold, waiting for my eyes to adjust. It was a tiny room, low-ceilinged and airless. Near my hand I saw a candle in a holder, and I took a match from my pocket and lit it.

A reclining sofa. A small table, and on it a book, a pocket watch, a glass flask, a dropper, and a star-shaped key. I picked it up and saw that it was identical to my own. Wilhelm Frankenstein must have had a second copy made, for safekeeping. Dust carpeted everything.

“Victor?” Elizabeth called from below.

I peered down through the trapdoor. “Come up. You should see this. Henry, you hoist Elizabeth, and then take the rope and haul yourself up.”

“I hardly think that’s safe,” Henry objected.

“It held me; it can hold you,” I replied. “Just keep your head, Henry, and no swinging.”

“Ah, hilarious,” he said, swiftly lowering the chandelier and casting a wary eye over it. “The thing’s clearly rotted through.”

But I smiled when I saw Elizabeth immediately perch upon the braces and hold tight.

“I’m ready,” she said to Henry.

It did not take long before both of them had joined me in the chamber, the chandelier tied off at the cleat. We closed the trapdoor, just in case a servant should enter the chapel, and dust swirled up into a dense mist.

“Do you think your father knows about this room too?” Elizabeth asked when her sneezing abated.

It was possible, of course. Father was full of surprises, as I knew better than anyone else. Over the summer I’d discovered that he’d tried his hand at alchemy as a young man. He’d failed to transmute lead to gold. But it hadn’t stopped him from selling the fake substance in faraway lands to ensure his family fortune.

“I don’t know,” I said, handing my handkerchief to her.

“Strange man, your Wilhelm Frankenstein,” said Henry, dabbing his nose. “Most men are satisfied with one secret room, but he apparently needed two.”

We’d all gathered around the small table and the book atop it. I quickly picked it up and opened it.

“Some kind of workbook,” Henry said at my shoulder, for the early pages were dense with scribbling and crossing-outs, and numerical charts, written any which way across the page. Page after page of ink so dense and dark it appeared like thunderclouds-and then, on a calm page, some orderly lines of handwriting.

“This must be Wilhelm Frankenstein’s hand,” I said. “Written in Latin-of course,” I added with a sigh. “What is everyone’s obsession with Latin? It’s absurd. Henry, will you do the honors?”

My long-suffering friend took the notebook and exhaled. “This feels too similar to our last adventures in the 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?”