Sophia Adamowicz

I

Soft booms rip holes in the silence, three seconds apart. Pound, pound, pound. Some kid must be knocking on a display cabinet for a laugh. Only, I watched the last visitors leave ten minutes ago.

I sweep back the curtain that separates the bar from the museum proper and call, “Hey, slowpoke! We’re shutting up now.”

There’s no one around – at least, not in the Mysteries of the Ocean Room. If I believed in wonders, I’d be blaming a poltergeist and starting my own paranormal podcast. But ghosts are about as real as the hybrids in this place. Take the Lyme Bay Mermaid: her mouth is a hollow crab shell filled with the sharp ends of knitting needles. Mr Marvell charged me with sawing up a plastic mannikin for her body and sticking on shells while he went out to acquire a piece of the Mary Celeste from a nearby building site.

I follow the booms, past syphilitic wedding tackles pickled in jars and a marriage contract between a seventeenth-century witch and Satan, until I’m around the corner from the Ritual Room. As soon as I turn into it, the noise cuts off. Masks stare down at me from the wall with hollow eyes and frozen gasps. Nothing stirs. What the hell could’ve been making that banging? Some instinct draws my eyes to the drum made of human skin. Its new thighbone sticks lay at rest beside it. I check the lock on the cabinet. All latches are firmly in place.

II

I’m wiping smudges off the bar when I hear it. Not the same sound as last time. This noise rumbles so low, grumbles on for so long, that I mistake it at first for the death-throes of a heating system. But it’s got to be a human voice. The timbre has the plumpness of phlegm-slicked flesh.

Guts twisting, I pick up a fruit knife next to the bowl of oranges, pass through the black curtain and turn left into the Giants and Miniatures Room. Bigfoot – a stuffed ape suit with glass eyes and human hair – has his mouth open in a rabid snarl. The sound isn’t coming from that. 

For once, I wish I could ask Mr Marvell’s opinions. The guy really believed in all that supernatural stuff, or claimed to, at least. How divided your psyche must be, to manufacture monstrosities and think they’re real; to present yourself as a glittering eccentric and, underneath it all, be nothing more than a regular piece of scum.

As I lurch past Bigfoot, the sound dies away to a groan. I’m drawn to the museum’s newest acquisition – a shrunken head. Flesh stripped from a skull, boiled down to size and filled with rocks and sand. It has no larynx. Its lips are tied with string. Yet I’ve got a feeling it was trying to talk only a few minutes ago.

III

I’m expecting something tonight. I just don’t know what. 

It takes me almost an hour to finish my Sazerac after the last customer has left. Then, armed with the fruit knife, I draw back the curtain. Silence is stretched taut across the museum. One sudden movement, one footfall that’s too loud, and the exhibits will spring into life, accompanied by the mad whirl of carousel music. Conjoined twins will pull apart, unzipping their stitches, and pummel the jar with tiny fists. The Lyme Bay Mermaid will sing enchantments, tempting me to kiss the salt of her carapace lips while eight legs lock around the back of my head. 

Stop it, brain.

I tiptoe across the floor of the showrooms. There’s no sound apart from my footfall. No one, nothing, is here with me.

As soon as the thought enters my head, the front door opens, and Mr Marvell’s nasal voice slices through the air. A woman laughs at something he says. I check my phone calendar to see if we’ve got a private viewing tonight, but no. The last thing I want is to bump into them both; if he caught me interrupting Christ-knows-what, Mr Marvell would do his best to make my life a misery. I slip past the pickled penis (rubber, I expect) and the marriage contract between a witch and Satan (it looks suspiciously like Mr Marvell’s handwriting), and hide in the Ritual Room.

From there, I can hear all too well my employer’s commentary on the collection of Victorian porn, the liquid sounds of kissing and choking gasps. They’re making a hell of a racket, banging against the cabinets, feet scuffling. The gasps become muffled screams, and a fist of ice drives into my stomach.

Mr Marvell never did tell me how he makes his human artefacts.

Shaking so hard that the key nearly falls to the floor, I unlock the cabinet of masks.

Mr Marvell lets go of his private guest when he sees me. She staggers away, breathless and sobbing. A sweat-soaked lock of hair has fallen into Mr Marvell’s eyes. He brushes it away with a gloved hand and squints, as if trying to see through the wood that covers my face.

“Who the bloody hell…?”

After witnessing so many wonders here of late, I can almost believe that the cries ringing in my ears belong to the Lyme Bay Mermaid as she punches through the glass and lunges at living flesh. But I’m familiar enough with Mr Marvell’s voice to know it, even when distorted in agony, even when my mind has checked out and my hands are busy driving the fruit knife into a head that could do with being shrunk down to size.

Sophia Adamowicz (she/they) is a writer and tutor based in Suffolk, UK. Her work, both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in several publications including Cunning Folk, Crow & Cross Keys and Haven Speculative. She is particularly drawn to horror as a space in which to explore trauma, anxiety and monstrosity. In her spare time, she sets herself increasingly ambitious running goals and fusses over her beloved cats. Bluesky: @sophia-adamowicz.bsky.social // Insta: @sophia_adamowicz // X: @SophiaA_writes