If Coralie had been anyone else, a hired act like any other, she would have already been turned out of her father’s house. She wondered if she might have preferred a life as a housemaid or as a clerk in a nearby shop, but her father drew her close and told her he would never let her go.
“What we do not have, we will create,” he assured her.
He had already fashioned his clever plan. The new creature might be an alligator or a snake, or some strange combination of the two, wrought by thread and nails and ingenuity, a being far superior to Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid. There was a workshop in the cellar, a space Coralie had never been allowed to enter, not even after she’d passed the age of ten. Two locks bolted upon the door, one made of iron, the other of brass. The keys were kept on the Professor’s watch chain.
“Our creature will be whatever people imagine it to be,” he’d confided to Coralie. “For what men believe in, they will pay to see.”
The Professor brought her with him in his search. He often struck a more satisfying deal when he presented himself as a family man. He had a scant few weeks before the season began in which to find a wonder that would satisfy not only his customers but also the press. They went first to the docks in Red Hook, but there were no giant squids or whales as large as leviathans, no albino sea lions or jellyfish of enormous proportions. On the far west side of Manhattan they went to the meat markets, where the cobbled streets ran with blood from the many slaughterhouses nearby. Among the carnage there might be skulls and bones that could be sewn to the pelts of living creatures. While the Professor went through the markets, the liveryman stayed to guard their cart, for a ragtag gang of men scrutinized the rig. They eyed Coralie, calling out rude remarks. She often carried a knife in the pocket of her dress when she was out in public, and was glad to have it in her grasp now. It was the same knife she had used to draw blood when she cut through the webbing on her hands.
The street was desolate, and the gang edged closer. Coralie felt her heart grow heavy, but, as it turned out, the liveryman chased off the mob with a few well-aimed rocks. He was a burly, silent man who had spent hard time in Sing Sing for crimes he wouldn’t disclose. After the mob dispersed, he came to check on Coralie. She said she’d like some air and leapt from the carriage so that she might stand beside him, though she knew her father would have disapproved of her doing so. The soles of her boots were soon dyed red with butchers’ blood, which ran between the paving stones.
“I’d never eat a living creature,” the carriage man said, surprising Coralie with his ease of conversation, for he’d never spoken to her before this day. “They’ve got as much soul as we do. More if the truth be told.” A sparrow perched above them in a leafless plane tree and sang boldly. “See there.” The hired man pointed with his thumb. “That’s heart and soul.”
When the Professor returned empty-handed they continued on to the morgue at Bellevue, a dim and wretched place that the liveryman referred to as the bone house when he was instructed to set off in the hospital’s direction. To gain entrance, Sardie would state that they were looking for his poor daughter’s beloved mother, who had disappeared. They had done so before, much to Coralie’s shame. If they were at first turned away, Coralie would weep and appear distraught; the guards would then pity her and allow them to view the unclaimed dead. This time, however, as they walked up the granite steps, Coralie found she could not cry. She had begun to fear they would be punished for their conniving ways if indeed God saw and knew all of mankind’s deeds. Perhaps there was a hell below this earth, and they would burn in it for all the lies they’d told.
The Professor took Coralie aside when he saw her difficulty. “If you cannot cry, then I can see to it that you’re able,” he said. He caught her arm and squeezed it affectionately. “Not that I would ever have cause to do so.”
Coralie then understood what she must do. She pinched her own arm, hard, bringing bright tears to her eyes.
Once allowed in, they searched the morgue, though the smell was overpowering, and the contents horrifying. The Professor gave Coralie his linen handkerchief to place over her nose and mouth. There were several women laid upon the marble slabs, one so covered with blue-tinged bruises Coralie quickly turned from the sight. Another section was filled with children, unclaimed and unknown, their still, pale forms veined with cold, but, like ice, they appeared to be melting, their features pulled into expressions of sorrow. “None of these will do,” her father muttered. Back in the street, Coralie felt faint. She no longer thought she would have to pinch herself if she were again commanded to cry today.