The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist, Book 2)
Page 30
I could feel the skin parting, the warm trickle of blood, and then a fingertip worming its way into the wound. My heart thundered inches away from its probing digit.
“Indesh-sker-ibal . . . ,” it blubbered hungrily into my ear. “Like sucking on your per-esh-sish muf-ther’s teat—”
It stopped. Its breath huffed in my ear. Its body became stock still. It had heard him calling to me: “Will Henry! Will Henreeeee!”
It was the doctor.
The beast flung me away as if I weighed no more than a ragdoll, and it fled the chamber with inconceivable speed. I slammed into a wall and crumpled to the floor, where I lay for a moment, too stunned from the force of the impact to move. I sobbed aloud, unable to speak above a tiny choking whisper.
“Dr. . . . Dr. Warthrop . . . it’s coming. . . . It’s coming.”
I crawled across the floor, groping blindly in the dark. I found a wall and used it to push myself up. I stumbled forward, but it was as if the tenebrous air pushed back; I moved with all the speed of a bather wading in heavy surf. A feeble glow had appeared before me, enough that I could see the outline of the chamber doorway. I lunged through it. I found myself in a narrow hall. Lining the walls were stacks of boxes and wooden crates embossed with the words “SASM—New York.”
It had carried me to the spiritual home of Warthrop’s mistress. It had brought me to the Monstrumarium.
The glow came from the lamps of my would-be rescuers, beacons that beckoned me out of the darkness, and now I ran, if a lurching stagger could be called that, careening off the slick walls and slamming into the listing towers of boxes, which toppled to the floor behind me. I could raise my voice only to the level of a hoarse whisper. “It’s coming. . . . It’s coming. . . .”
My toe caught on the edge of a crate. I pitched forward, meeting the concrete with my forehead. The ground seemed to open up beneath me and I was falling, falling, crying his name, or perhaps only screaming it in my head.
It’s coming. It’s coming!
I felt someone’s hand upon my shoulder. Brilliant light brighter than a thousand suns rushed up to blind me, and I wasn’t falling anymore. The doctor was pulling me up.
He gathered me into his arms and whispered my name fiercely. I tried to warn him. I tried. I knew the words. I heard them in my head. It’s coming. But the ability to speak was lost.
“Where is he, Will Henry? Where is John?”
When I didn’t answer, he raised his head and called out, “Here! I have found him! Over here!”
He turned back to me. “Is he here, Will Henry? Is John here?”
I looked over his shoulder and saw, through the face of his beloved, the yellow eye looking back down at me. The beast towered behind the doctor; the top of its head brushed the ceiling. Like an angry child flinging a broken toy, it reached down with its enormous claw, seized my master by the nape of the neck, and hurled him down the corridor.
Warthrop landed on his back with a startled grunt. He brought up his revolver, but did not fire. As to why he didn’t, I can only conjecture. Out of the wilderness he had borne his friend; through unimaginable suffering and sacrifice he had carried John Chanler home. How could he now end that life he had given so much to save? Would not pulling that trigger negate everything the doctor believed in? Indeed, would it not prove von Helrung correct in the most fundamental sense—prove that love itself is the beast that devours all mankind?
The blackened wreckage that was John Chanler smacked the gun from the doctor’s hand with such velocity that the act painted an afterimage upon my eyes. It yanked him close so that he might see clearly what both Muriel and John had given him and what he had given them in return. This is the face of love.
Then it pressed their mouths to his.
In the next second I was upon it, the silver-plated knife in my hand. I thrust the blade to the hilt into the thin neck. The beast shrugged me off its back as easily as a man flicks off a bit of lint from his coat. The doctor thrashed beneath it; one ebony claw was clamped over the doctor’s nose and eyes while it pressed its mouth tightly against the doctor’s mouth. The beast was smothering him with its kiss.
I leapt again onto the thing’s back, von Helrung’s words echoing in my ears: Silver—by bullet or knife—to the heart. Only the heart!
I swung my arms around in a ludicrous parody of its earlier embrace of me, and plunged the silver blade again and again into its heaving chest.
Its skeletal form jerked; behind Muriel’s lips the bloody mouth came open in an animal squeal of pain. The beast rose, throwing me free, and then fell away. It rose again, collapsed, and curled into a mewling fetal ball.
Welling with pain and yearning, the yellow eyes sought out mine. I brought the blade high over my head, and beneath the human mask something inside the beast remembered, and John Chanler smiled. His heart rose up to meet the orgasmic thrust.
“God damn it!” The doctor’s voice thundered in my ears. “God damn it, why?”
He shoved me aside and gathered his attacker into his lap, and now the thing appeared pitifully small and frail, nothing like the giant wraith of just a moment before. With one hand the monstrumologist compressed the wound; the blood, as black as tar in the weak light, pulsed between his fingers with each beat of the dying man’s heart. Then Warthrop gently peeled off the overlaid face of the one they both had loved, and stared into the unseeing eyes of the one he thought he had brought out of the desolation. But he hadn’t brought him out. The desolation was within him.
“No, no, no,” Pellinore Warthrop protested, the impotent human cry.
TWENTY-NINE
“The Gift Was Mine to Give”
On the last Friday of the colloquium, my master rose from his chair, the chamber became still, and a hundred of his colleagues leaned forward in their seats, waiting with bated breath to hear his reply to von Helrung, upon which the future of their discipline hung in the balance. If he should fail, monstrumology would be doomed. It would never be accepted as a legitimate line of inquiry; its practitioners would henceforward and forever be perceived as laughingstocks, eccentric pseudoscientists on the fringes of “real” science.
Von Helrung had presented a compelling case, reworking his original paper to incorporate his star witness, the “indispensable proof,” as he called it—one William James Henry, special assistant to the chief spokesman for the opposing side!
I had expected the doctor’s presentation to be as awkward as his practice of it had been, tortured in its logic, inconsistent in its arguments—and I was not disappointed. It was painful to listen to, but everyone listened politely. The real show was to follow, the question and answer period, during which Warthrop would have to yield the floor.
Von Helrung posed the first question immediately upon the conclusion of Warthrop’s reply.
“I thank my dear friend and former pupil, the honorable Dr. Warthrop, for his cogent and entirely earnest response. I am flattered—indeed, I am humbled—to be the recipient of such an impassioned—may I say, even passionate—reply. I have taught him well, have I not?”
He joined in their nervous laughter.
“But I do have one or two questions before I yield the floor, if that suits the honorable doctor? Thank you. I know the hour grows late; we have trains to catch; we long for our homes and families and, of course, our work . . . and we have friends to bury. Alas! Such is our lot. Such is the price we pay for the advancement of human knowledge. Dr. Gravois understood this, and accepted it. We all accept it. Even John . . .” His voice broke. “Even John accepted it.
“But I digress. To my question, then, Dr. Warthrop, mein Freund. If your hypothesis is correct in this most strange and pathetic episode, how do you explain the testimony of your own apprentice regarding the nature of the beast?”
“I have explained it already,” replied the doctor tightly. Though the swelling of his jaw had receded somewhat, it still pained him to speak. “The evidence is as plain as the wound on his neck.”
“I mean precisely that. The effects of the creature’s venom have been well documented, by some of the very people who now sit in this room.”
“But it is my understanding that the good Adolphus Ainsworth administered to him the anti-venom within minutes of the exposure.”
“Equally supported in the literature,” said the doctor through gritted teeth, “is the tendency of the victim to suffer lingering, intermittent aftereffects, even after the administration of the antidote.”
“So your explanation for Herr William Henry’s testimony is that it was all a dream?” He was chuckling warmly.
“A hallucination would be more accurate.”
“He did not hear the Outiko calling him upon the wind?”
“Of course not.”
“And the Outiko did not remove him to the Monstrumarium by riding with him upon that wind?”
“I would ask you, and all members present, to close your eyes and imagine such a scenario.”
There was a smattering of applause. A point scored by Warthrop.
“Then, how do you propose he brought him there from that tenement cellar? Did he hail a taxi?”
Now laughter, much louder than the tepid applause. A point for von Helrung.
“I propose he carried him there.”
“On foot.”
“Yes, of course. Under the cover of darkness.”
“I see.” Von Helrung was nodding with mock gravity. “Now turning your attention to the first incident, Dr. Warthrop. It is your contention that the creature—”
“John. His name was John.”
“Yes, it did used to be John.”
“It was always John.”
“It is your contention that he jumped through a fourth-story hospital window—”
“It is my contention that he escaped through that window. Whether he went up a drainpipe or down it, he escaped. He did not ‘take to the high wind’ as you suggest, unless he sprouted wings, which I suppose you will say he did.”
“And as to the other eyewitness accounts—what do you say to them?” The old Austrian held up the stack of sworn affidavits. “Are they also unfortunate victims of the Death Worm?”
Warthrop grimaced through the attendant laughter, waiting for it to die away before saying, “I can’t say what they suffer from except perhaps a form of mass hysteria exacerbated by an overzealous press eager to sell newspapers.”
“So you would have this august assembly reject the sworn testimony of seventy-three eyewitnesses based upon . . . what? What, Dr. Warthrop? Based upon the fact that since you say it can’t be so, it can’t be so? Is this not the very thing of which you accuse me? Assuming facts not in evidence?”
“I don’t accuse you of assuming facts not in evidence. I accuse you of making them up out of whole cloth.”
“Very well, then!” von Helrung cried, throwing the papers down with a dramatic flourish. “Tell me—enlighten all of us, good doctor—what killed Pierre Larose? What stripped him of his skin and fed upon his heart and impaled him upon a pole? What dragged Sergeant Jonathan Hawk forty feet into the sky and crucified him upon the highest tree? What did our beloved colleague find in the desolation that did this to him?” He flung his hand toward the autopsy table, where the body lay exposed under the harsh glare of the stage lights.
“I don’t think,” said the doctor deliberately, “that he found anything at all.” He rose from his chair. I fought the instinct to rush to his side. He looked on the verge of collapse.
“I don’t know who killed Pierre Larose. It may have been the natives in an act of superstitious dread. It may have been a disgruntled creditor or someone to whom he owed a gambling debt. Perhaps John himself did it after he had succumbed to whatever demon possessed him. I doubt anyone will ever know. As for Hawk . . . clearly a case of bush fever. I ask what is a better explanation—that something dropped him from above or that he climbed that tree? A boy half his size climbed it. Why couldn’t he?”
He turned his head toward the body of his friend, and then turned away again.
“And John . . . I suppose that is the crux of it, isn’t it? What happened to John Chanler? You would make a monster of him, and I suppose one could call him that. I do not deny his crimes. I do not say he suffered horribly from something I little understand. The key being . . . Well, I suppose I am the sole gardener on earth who is ignorant of the seeds he plants. But I will say”—and here the monstrumologist’s voice became hard—“I will say he did his best to meet all our expectations. You wanted him to be a monster, and he obliged you, didn’t he, Meister Abram? He exceeded your wildest dreams. We do strive to become what others see in us, don’t we?
“I tried to save him. From the beginning I was willing to lay down my life for him, for there is no love greater than this . . .”
He stopped, overwhelmed. I rose to go to him. He waved me back.
“He asked me ‘What have we given?’ I do not pretend to know all that he meant by that, but I know this much: It shall not stand. I will not allow it to stand. You will not desecrate his body as you desecrated his memory. That is what I can give him. That is all I can give him. I will bury my friend, and I swear I will kill the man who tries to stop me.”
He swung his eyes to the crowd, and the crowd could not return his righteous glare.
“Take your vote now. I will answer no more of your questions.”
The doctor and I retired to our private box while the vote was taken. It would be, at von Helrung’s request, by secret ballot. Warthrop lay across the divan, arms folded over his chest, head upon the armrest. He stared up at the ornate ceiling and refused to watch the vote.
The silence between us was not of the comfortable variety. Since the death of Chanler, he’d barely spoken to me. When he looked at me, I detected that he was more confounded than angry. The affair had begun with his firm conviction that his friend had been past all salvation—and had ended with the equally steadfast belief that he would save him. That the doctor’s faith had been shattered by me, the last soul on earth bound to him in any way, seemed beyond his ability to comprehend.
So it was with no small amount of courage that I decided to breach the wall he had erected between us.
“Dr. Warthrop, sir?”
He took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. “Yes, Will Henry, what is it?”
“How did—I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve been wondering—how did you know to look for me in the Monstrumarium?”
“How do you think?”
“Someone must have seen us?”
He shook his head; his eyes remained closed. “Try again.”
“Dr. Dobrogeanu—he followed us there?”
“No. He returned straightaway to von Helrung’s after he discovered you missing.”
“Then you must have guessed,” I concluded. It was the only explanation.
“No, I did not guess. I applied the lesson from the Chanler house massacre. What was that lesson, Will Henry?”
Though I gave it my best effort, I could think of nothing instructional in that horrific scene, except the sickening macabre stab at humor scrawled above the bedroom door: Life is.
“John himself told me where to find you,” the monstrumologist explained. “Just as he tried to tell me where to find Muriel. After Dobrogeanu brought us the news, I realized at once where he had taken you. Don’t you remember what he said? ‘He’ll put you on display in the Beastie Bin, where all you nasty things belong.’” He opened his eyes and, raising his head a bit, peeked over the railing. “Hmm. They’re taking their time. I wonder if that’s good or bad.” He lay down again. “They found the Nováková girl, by the way, at the bottom of the sludge, once they drained the cellar.”
I knew she was not the only victim who’d been found in that cellar. He noted my troubled expression and said, “There was nothing you could have do
ne, Will Henry.”
And I answered, “That is what I did, sir. Nothing.”
“Your guilt serves no purpose. Will it resurrect the child or change the past? You did exactly what I would have done—what anyone would have done in the circumstance. Suppose you had picked up the child and left. How many more victims might have fallen that night because of your misplaced altruism? There are hard choices to be made in life, Will Henry, and monstrumology has more than its fair share of them.”
He waited for me to respond. He knew I would agree; I always agreed with him. If the house were on fire and I told you to throw gasoline upon it to quench the flames, you would cry, ‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir!’ and blow us both to kingdom come!
“I should have saved him,” I said.
“Saved him? Saved him from what? You had no idea at the time if John was in that building.”
“I should have saved him,” I repeated.
“Very well. Assume for a moment you did. And assume you managed to find to whom he belonged. And now you may assume he would not live to see his first birthday regardless, for those are the odds, Will Henry; that is the grim fact of the ghetto. You would have saved him from one monster only to deliver him to another no less murderous.”
I shook my head. “I should have saved him,” I said a third time.
His face grew red; his dark eyes flashed. He was not prepared, perhaps, for my obsequious response to his demand that I become less obsequious!
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because I could have,” I answered.
They were laid to rest side by side, my master’s two loves, in the Chanler family plot, for the father of the most wayward son is a father still. The elder Chanler did not speak to Warthrop, except for a few threatening words upon the conclusion of the graveside service, to the effect that he intended to strip him down to his last piece of silver. Warthrop’s reply: “Seems only just, but I beg you to leave me at least my microscope.”