The table itself was metal, as large as a family dining table. Around it were various apparatuses I did not know the meaning or use of. They looked complicated, all gears and wires and delicate tubing. And every one, like the glass containers, had been smashed beyond repair.

A pole, also metal, wrapped in some sort of copper wiring, extended from the head of the table to the windows in the roof. But it, too, had been warped. It was bent, the wires dislodged and hanging from it like hair ripped from a doll’s head.

The water pooling on the table was thicker and darker along the edges, as if rust had been pushed outward. It smelled sharp and metallic, but with something organic beneath it all. Something like—

I pulled my finger back from where I was about to touch the near-black stains.

It smelled almost like blood. But whether the water dilution or the chemicals in the room had affected it, I did not know. Because I knew the scent of blood. And this was so close, and yet different in a way that repulsed me more than anything else here.

“What were you doing, Victor?” I whispered.

A clattering noise surprised me, and I whipped around. My bare hand brushed the side of the table, giving me another shock like the door handle had. I cried out, stepping away. My arm was numb. Though I could command it to move, I could not feel the movements.

Terrified, I searched for the source of the sound. Again! This time, of sharp things scratching at a surface. A flurry of movement, black darker than the shadowy corners of the room. I lifted my arms to defend myself from—

A bird. Some misshapen carrion thing, scratching and pecking at a massive trunk that took up nearly the length of the wall on the side closest to the riverfront. The bird must have gotten in through the roof opening.

Cross with it for scaring me—and with myself for being so easily frightened—I reached down for the nearest thing on the floor to throw.

My fingers closed around a long knife unlike any I had seen. It was shaped like a surgeon’s scalpel, though no surgeon would need a scalpel this large. Other points of metal among the glass on the floor winked invitations for exploration. A saw, too small for wood. Clamps. The wickedly sharp and absurdly long metal tips of needles, glass vials attached to them broken and jagged.

The bird cawed darkly, a sound like laughter.

What was in the trunk?

—

It was the fall before the first winter I would spend cocooned inside with the Frankensteins. The leaves were so scarlet that even the light had a crimson tinge. Birds circled overhead: those that were leaving and those that were hardy enough to survive the long dark of the mountain winter.