The Inventor's Son

Chapter 26: In Which a Dream Comes in Quite Handy

LIGHTNING STRUCK AND THUNDER REVERBERATED across the sky. The shock of actually seeing another human being meeting his end in such an abrupt and vicious manner kept Ethan frozen between the two old graves. Kearney pulled his fist out of Pollman's chest and let the smaller man slip down to the ground. Then, slowly and very smoothly for someone so large and ponderous, Kearney crouched down to Ethan's level and looked straight into his eyes.

"They say you're not supposed to look into a witch's eyes," Kearney commented, again in a very clear and coherent manner. Fat raindrops began to pelt the cemetery and all who stood there.

Ethan began to shake. The only way he could have still been at all upright, he surmised very grimly and quickly, was his fear holding his body up and in place. He gripped one of the tombstones to keep his hand still, though that did not help with the rest of his body.

"It's not your fault." Kearney reached with his left hand, almost as if to touch Ethan. "You're a nice boy. You don't like to see other people hurt. But your father, and his old teacher, they aren't so nice, are they?"

"W-What do you mean?" Ethan asked.

Kearney snorted. "I mean, Doc Colbourne wants revenge."

"S-So I gathered," Ethan replied. "Why are you so hell-bent on killing me?"

Kearney's two mismatched eyes trained on Ethan. "Colbourne wants this," he said, pointing at Ethan's head. "Put in here!" he explained, pointing at his steel-covered head.

"What?" Ethan gasped. "You're making absolutely no sense!"

Kearney's eyes narrowed. "Aren't I? He doesn't want my brain in this body. He wants yours!"

"Sir, that's flatly impossible!" Ethan stammered.

"Heh," Kearney sneered. "Impossible, you say? Maybe you should ask your father about it!"

"No one on Earth can accomplish such a thing!" Ethan yelled at Kearney, not liking the implication of Marcus Stanwood being so very unethical.

"Do you know who I really am?" Kearney asked Ethan.

"Your name is Kearney, is it not?" Ethan asked in confusion.

"Benedict Kearney. I used to be a private tutor. For young people. Mostly little boys. I liked little boys! How old are you?"

"Tw-Thirteen," Ethan responded.

"You're a little old for me. I didn't really like any boys older than ten. I only liked when I could get them alone. Their fathers were so powerful, so rich, and yet, they themselves were so helpless and innocent... That was all when I was in my old body, my original body! Not this body. No boy would have gone near me, no boy would have trusted me, in this body. Besides, now, when I look at you, even, I can't get that feeling I used to get. This body, it's got nothing here." Kearney grabbed at a specific place between his legs.

Ethan felt faint, even more than he had before in La Chouette d'Or. Kearney continued, "One of them, by the name of Ephraim Joseph, seven years old, with hair the color of straw, told his big sister one day about me touching him. She burst into the room, making all kinds of racket and accusations. I grabbed her by her miserable throat and squeezed it until she turned so blue that I thought her face might burst. Ephraim sobbed and trembled in the corner, and I grabbed him too. I smashed his head against the edge of their little schoolroom desk. I can still remember the red blood staining his light hair, so bright and warm in my hands...

"I was sentenced to hang for it. But there was a warden, one who took bribes. Doc Colbourne bribed him into staging my escape from Newgate. That must have been quite a large bribe, but then again, Doc Colbourne doesn't let anything stop him from getting what he wants. He took my brain out of the body that everyone knew as Benedict Kearney, and put it into this one, this machine of a body.