The Isle of Blood (Monstrumologist)

by Rick Yancey

  “A precise parallel to the stories in the literature, Will Henry,” he whispered. “He is… becoming. And it’s happening faster than I first assumed.”

  “And you don’t think a hospital…”

  “Even if I did think it, the nearest hospital is in Boston. It would be over before we got there.”

  “He’s dying?”

  Warthrop shook his head. What did that mean? Did it mean Kendall was dying? Or did it mean the monstrumolo-gist did not know for certain?

  “Is there a cure for it?” I asked.

  “Not according to my sources, which are not very reliable. There is, of course, the singular cure that ends all ailments.”

  Only a monstrumologist, I thought, would characterize death as a cure for anything. I watched him pick up the syringe loaded with morphine and roll it back and forth in his open palm. It would ease the poor soul’s suffering; it might give him the smallest measure of peace. But the drug also might interfere with the progress of Kendall’s becoming and thus compromise Warthrop’s scientific inquiry.

  It would, in short, desecrate the temple.

  Without comment the monstrumologist laid down the syringe. He seemed to tower ten feet above the writhing form in the bed, and his shadow fell hard upon that pile of bones wrapped loosely in its sack of gossamer skin.

  He told me to rest; he would hold vigil for a while.

  “You look terrible,” he observed dispassionately. “You need to sleep. Probably should find yourself something to eat, too.”

  I glanced toward the bed. “I’m not very hungry, sir.”

  He nodded. It made sense to him. “Where is my revolver? You haven’t lost it, have you? Thank you, Will Henry. Now off to bed, but first I’ll need you to take care of this.”

  He handed me a slip of paper, a note jotted down in his nearly illegible scrawl.

  “A letter for Dr. von Helrung,” he explained. “You may want to recast it in your own hand first, Will Henry. Send it by express mail marked ‘personal’ and ‘confidential.’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I started out. He called after me, “Straight there and back, and be quick if you want any sleep this day.”

  He motioned toward the bed.

  “It appears to be accelerating.”

  The letter to the head of the Society for the Advancement of the Science of Monstrumology was brief and to the point:

  ‘PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL’

  Von Helrung—

  I have, under the most unusual of circumstances, come into possession of an authentic nidus ex magnificum, by way of Dr. Jack Kearns, whom I believe you’ve met. Expect me in New York within the week. In the interim direct our friends in London to make discrete inquiries into Kearns’s whereabouts. He is working—or did work—at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, and resided in the same district, in a flat on Dorset Street owned by a Mr. Wymond Kendall, Esq.

  —Warthrop

  I went straight to the post office, resisting all temptations along the way, Mr. Tanner’s shop in particular, where the fragrance of fresh scones hung warm in the bitter air. The wind was sharp upon my cheek, the day bright and bracingly cold, the snow faultlessly white—dazzlingly white, unblemished, pure. My heart ached for the snow.

  I paused but once and then only for a moment. There, white upon white in the beneficent snow, my former schoolhouse, and children playing in the drifts. A battle raged for the highest ground, the defenders screeching, hurling down their hastily packed cannonade upon the heads of their attackers. A little ways off, a squadron of fallen angels had left its impression, and nearby a passable likeness of the headmaster, complete with cap and cape and walking stick.

  And their cries were thin, their laughter high and hysterical in the biting wind.

  There was a boy I recognized. He was shouting something from the top of the little hill, crouched behind the ramparts of the fort, taunting the assault force below, and I remembered him. The slightly pug nose. The shaggy blond hair. The splash of freckles across cheeks. I remembered everything about him, his high-pitched voice, the gap between his teeth, the color of his eyes, the way he smiled first with those eyes. You could see the smile coming a year before it arrived. I remembered where he lived, what his parents looked like. He had been a friend, but I could not remember his name. What was his name? He had been my friend, my best friend, and I could not remember his name.

  The doctor was standing in the kitchen when I came in, eating an apple.

  “You’re late,” he said. He did not sound angry, not his usual self at all. He said it casually, a knee-jerk response to my entering the room. “Did you stop somewhere?”

  “No, sir. Straight to the post office and back.”

  It struck me then, and with a heart in which fear and hope intertwined in an obscene embrace, I asked, “Is he dead?”

  “No, but I had to eat something. Here, you should too.”

  He tossed an apple at me and bade me follow him upstairs. I slipped the apple into my coat pocket; I had no appetite.

  “The sclerosing bone dysplasia has exacerbated,” he called over his shoulder as he took the steps two at a time. “But his heart is as strong as a horse’s, his lungs are clear, his blood super-oxygenated. The edema of the muscular tissue continues unabated, and—” He stopped suddenly and whirled about, causing me to almost smack face-first into his chest. “This is the most remarkable thing, Will Henry. Although his dermis continues to deteriorate and slough off, he hasn’t lost more than a teacup’s worth of blood, mostly around the wrists and ankles, so I took the precaution of loosening the bindings a bit.”

  I followed him into the room. Immediately my hand flew up to cover my nose; the smell was truly overwhelming. It dropped scorching into my lungs. Why hadn’t he opened the window? The monstrumologist seemed oblivious to the reek. He continued to chomp on his apple, even as tears of protest coursed down his cheeks.

  “What?” he demanded. “Why are you staring at me like that? Don’t look at me; look at Mr. Kendall!”

  He didn’t nudge me toward the bed. I took that step myself.

  He did not grab my chin and force me to look.

  I looked because I wanted to look. I looked because of the tight thing unwinding, das Ungeheuer, the me/not-me, Tantalus’s grapes, the thing you cannot name. The thing I knew but did not understand. The thing you may understand but do not know.

  I flung myself from the room and managed a dozen shuffling steps down the hall before I collapsed. Everything inside gave way. I felt empty. I was nothing more than a shadow, a shell, a hollow carapace that had once dreamed it was a boy.

  A shadow fell over me. I did not look up. I knew I would find no comfort from the bearer of that shadow.

  “He’s dying,” I said. “We have to do something.”

  “I am doing all within my power, Will Henry,” he responded gently.

  “You aren’t doing anything! You’re not trying to cure him.”

  “I have told you there is no—”

  “Then, find one!” I screamed at him. “You said it yourself, there is no one else. You’re the one. You’re the one! If you can’t help him, then nobody can, and you won’t. You won’t because you want him to die! You want to see what the poison does to him!”

  “May I remind you that I am not the one who exposed him? He did that to himself,” he said. He squatted beside me and placed his hand upon my shoulder. I heaved myself away from him.

  “What he is, that’s what you are inside,” I told him.

  “There is but one way to end his suffering,” he said, the gentle tone abandoned; his voice, like his shadow upon me, was hard.

  He pulled the revolver from his pocket and thrust it toward me. “Here. Would you like to do it? For I cannot. Simply because there is no hope for him, Will Henry, that doesn’t mean I have to give up all hope for me.”

  “There is no hope—for either of you.”

  He dropped the revolver to the floor. It lay between us. H
is shadow and the gun lay between us.

  “You’re tired,” he said. “Go to bed.”

  “No.”

  “Very well. Sleep on the floor. It makes no difference to me!”

  He scooped up the revolver and left me alone with my misery. I don’t know how long I lay there in that hall. It mattered no more to me than it did to the monstrumologist where I slept. I do not remember climbing the stairs into the loft, but I do remember throwing myself upon the bed fully clothed and watching the snow-laden clouds through the window over my head. The clouds were the color of Mr. Kendall’s rotting skin.

  I closed my eyes. There in the darkness inside my own head, I saw him, gray-skinned, black-eyed, hollow-cheeked, sharp tusks of bone tearing through papery flesh, a corpse whose galloping heart refused to stop.

  My stomach rumbled loudly. When was the last time I’d eaten? I could not remember. I pulled from my pocket the apple that the monstrumologist had given me. Its skin was the color of Mr. Kendall’s bloody teeth.

  When I see gray now, I think of rotting flesh.

  And red is not the color of apples or roses or the dresses that pretty girls wear in summertime.

  Sometime later—though it was not much later—his hand fell upon my shoulder. Above me was the window and, above the window, the clouds with their bellies full of snow.

  “Will Henry,” the monstrumologist said. His voice was cracked and raw, as if he’d been screaming at the top of his lungs. “Will Henry.”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “A quarter past three. I did not wish to wake you…”

  “But you woke me anyway.”

  “I wanted to show you something.”

  I rolled onto my side, away from him.

  “I don’t want to look at him again.”

  “It isn’t Mr. Kendall. It’s this.” I heard the crinkle and crunch of papers in his hand. “A treatise by a French scientist named Albert Calmette, of the Pasteur Institute. It’s concerned with the theoretical possibility of developing antivenin, based on the vaccine principles of Pasteur. The theory applies to certain poisonous snakes and arachnids, but it could have applications in our case—Mr. Kendall’s case, I mean. It may be worth a try.”

  “Then, try it.”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “The chief obstacle is time, in that Mr. Kendall doesn’t have much of it left.”

  I rolled onto my back, and the form of the monstrumologist swung into view. He looked exhausted. He swayed like a man trying to keep his balance on the yawing deck of a ship.

  “Then, you had better get to work.”

  “It means you will have to sit with Mr. Kendall.”

  I sat up, swung my feet over the side of the bed, and tugged on my shoes.

  “I will sit with him.”

  Before he allowed me into the room, the doctor uncapped a small vial filled with a thick, clear liquid and shook several drops of the substance onto his handkerchief.

  “Here. Tie this round your face,” he instructed me, and then proceeded to tie the knot himself. My senses were assaulted by a sweet, musky fragrance that reminded me of rubbing alcohol, though without the biting astringency.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Ambra grisea, or ambergris, the aged regurgitation of the sperm whale,” the monstrumologist answered. “A common ingredient in perfume. I often wonder, though, how common it would be if ladies in particular knew where it came from. You see, ambergris is normally expelled through the whale’s anus with fecal matter, but—”

  “Fecal matter?” My stomach rolled.

  “Shit. But sometimes the mass is too large to pass, and the material is regurgitated through the mouth.”

  “Whale vomit?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. The ancient Chinese called it ‘dragon’s spittle.’ In the Middle Ages people carried balls of it around, believing it could ward off the plague. It’s quite pleasant, though, isn’t it?”

  I agreed that it was. The doctor smiled with satisfaction, as if he had just imparted an important lesson.

  “All right. Quietly now, Will Henry.”

  We stepped into the bedroom. Despite the gift of regurgitated whale shit, I could smell Kendall’s decay. It stung my eyes. The taste of it tingled upon my tongue. I had expected it, though that had done little to prepare me for it. All other expectations, to my surprise, were not met.

  First, Warthrop had taken his mother’s coverlet and put it back where he had found it. Mr. Kendall was covered from feet to neck.

  That was not all. Mr. Kendall himself had changed. I had expected more of the agonized writhing, the grunts and throaty moans of someone in extreme mental and physical distress. Instead he was so still, so quiet, that for the briefest of moments I thought he might have finally succumbed. But no, he lived. The covers rose and fell, and upon closer examination I saw that his eyes roamed beneath their half-closed lids. Most astonishing of all (given the astonishing circumstances) was the smile. Wymond Kendall was smiling! As if lost in a pleasant dream, he smiled.

  “Mr. Kendall… is he—”

  “Smiling? Yes, I would call that a smile. The stories say that in the final stages the victim experiences moments of intense euphoria, an overwhelming feeling of bliss. It’s an interesting phenomenon; perhaps once in the bloodstream pwdre ser releases a compound structurally similar to an opiate.” He stopped, laughed softly—at himself?—and said, “I should get to work on the antivenin. Call me at once should his condition change.”

  And with that the monstrumologist left me alone with Kendall. He would not have done so, I have told myself many times over the course of my long life, if he had known what Kendall had become—if he had known that Kendall was not Kendall anymore—that he was no more human, or more sentient, than a dime-store mannequin.

  I have told myself that.

  The room is cold. The light is gray. The even exhalations of the once-human thing on the bed are the only things the boy can hear—metronomic, the ticking of the human clock, lulling him to sleep.

  He is so tired. His head lolls. He tells himself he won’t fall asleep. Just rest his eyes for a moment or two…

  In the gray light in the cold room, to the rhythmic breath of the thing becoming—sleep.

  Sleep now, Will Henry, sleep.

  Do you see her? In the white behind the gray, in the warm beyond the cold, in the silence past the ticking of the clock—she is baking a pie, an apple pie, your favorite. And you at the table with your tall glass of milk, swinging your legs, not long enough yet for your feet to touch the floor.

  It must coolfirst, Willy. It must cool.

  A strand of hair loosed from her bun falling down her graceful neck, and her new apron, and a dab of flour upon her cheek, and how long her arms seem reaching into the oven, and the whole world smelling like apples.

  Where is Father?

  Away again.

  With the doctor?

  Of course with the doctor.

  I want to go.

  You do not know what you’re wishing for.

  When will he be home?

  Soon, I hope.

  He says one day I shall go with him.

  Does he?

  One day I will.

  But if you go, who will keep me company?

  You can come too.

  Where your father goes, I have no desire to follow.

  The fire that engulfs her has no heat. Her scream makes no sound. The boy sits in his chair with his short legs swinging and his tall glass of milk, and he watches the flames consume her, and he is laughing while his mother burns, and the world still smells like apples.

  And then his father’s voice, calling him:

  Will Henry! Will Henreeeeeeee!

  I bolted from the chair, stumbled toward the bed, turned, lunged through the doorway into the hall, and started down the stairs. It was not my father’s voice—not the dream voice—but the doctor’s calling me, as he had a hundred times before, in desperate need of
my indispensible services.

  “Coming, sir!” I called, pounding down the stairs to the main floor. “I’m coming!”

  We met in the front hall, for as I raced down, he ran up, and both of us were winded and slightly wild-eyed, regarding each other with identical expressions of comic confusion.

  “What is it?” he asked breathlessly.

  And I, with him: “What is it?”

  “Why are you asking me ‘What is it?’ What is it?”

  “What, Dr. Warthrop?”

  “I asked you that, Will Henry.”

  “Asked me what;

  “What is it!” he roared. “What do you want?”

  “You—you called for me, sir.”

  “I did no such thing. Are you quite all right?”

  “Yes, sir. I must have… I think I fell asleep.”

  “I would not advise that, Will Henry. Back upstairs, please. We mustn’t leave Mr. Kendall unattended.”

  The room was still very cold. And the light gray. And there was the whisper of snow now against the windowpane.

  And the bed, empty.

  The chair and the Louis Philippe armoire and the dead embers and the little rocking chair and the littler doll in that chair and her littler still black, unblinking china eyes and the boy frozen on the threshold, staring stupidly at the empty bed.

  I backed slowly into the hall. The hall was warmer than the room, and I was much warmer than the hall; my cheeks were on fire, though my hands were numb.

  “Dr. Warthrop,” I whispered, no louder than the snow against the pane. “Dr. Warthrop!”

  He must have fallen, I thought. Got loose of the ropes somehow and fell out of bed. He’s lying on the other side, that’s all. The doctor will have to pick him up. I am not touching him!

  I turned back. My turning took a thousand years. The stairs stretched out below me for a thousand miles.

  To the landing, another millennia. There was the beating of my heart and my hot breath puffing my makeshift mask, and the smell of ambergris and, above and behind me, the gentle protest of the top step, creaking.