Maplecroft

by Cherie Priest

  At first, there was some measure of disbelief, as if it simply were not possible that I was friendly with the mysterious scholar. But I stomped free of their proceedings, to their noisy dismay, and traipsed down to my office (still my office, yes) to retrieve the letter that had accompanied the package.

  I produced it with a flourish, gave them adequate time to read it, and watched at least Greer go a bit green when he realized I was telling the truth. I think it surprised him, though I can’t imagine why. When have I ever misled him, or made claims greater than those I could support? He has me confused with someone else, or he’s been listening to the slanderous lies spread by students and faculty.

  And that speaks volumes about his leadership, does it not? What kind of chancellor takes the concerns of his inferiors to heart, or uses them to guide his policy? If his underlings were of his own caliber, they would’ve matched his position by now. Since they are not, they ought to be disregarded until and unless they produce evidence that they are worthy of interest.

  Such as myself.

  But I gave them the letter, and there was a great chorus of hemming and hawing, and then I received permission that I should’ve never required: the permission to continue investigation and exploration into my own private property, with the blessing of the university, which would seek to profit from my discovery.

  Damn the lot of them.

  • • •

  So here I sit, not in my office but in the laboratory where I first uncorked the specimen, the siphonophore, Physalia zollicoffris after all, my pet, my beloved, my savior and specimen. The other labs in this wing have complained about the odor, but I scarcely notice it anymore. If anything, it’s become a welcome scent—a friendly signal that all is right with the world, and that I have come home.

  It’s funny, now that I think of it. I’ve scarcely been at my own home these last few days, or this last week—I’m not sure. What is there at home for me? Nothing, save a small gray cat who cares for me approximately as much as anyone else in the neighborhood who occasionally lets it come inside out of the cold. And I haven’t seen even the cat since the specimen appeared.

  Now that I think about it.

  At home I have food I don’t care to eat, and a bed that is no more comfortable than the cot at my office—where I’ve been more inclined to rest, these recent weeks.

  Not that I rest too much, anymore. How can I rest, when greatness awaits? When my darling specimen calls my name, and upon it I shall build a career of wisdom and greatness?

  I’m not sure how long it’s been since last I slept. I should take better care, when it comes to these things. As I used to tell my students, when I cared enough to improve them: A rested mind is a productive mind.

  • • •

  I don’t know how long I’ll have the indulgence of these old fools who run the university. I don’t know how long I’ll have access to their equipment, their space, and their patience. I don’t know when they’ll decide I’m more trouble than I’m worth, and evict me with my specimen—turning us both out into the street.

  Or sending me back into my house, that small brown hovel I call a home, which . . . now that it occurs to me . . . is on school property. No, they quite literally can turn me out onto the street. I live here at their indulgence, and I will go without a place to live at their whim.

  The world is a cruel and unfair place.

  • • •

  I should sleep.

  Maybe I’ll drag the cot into the lab. There’s more privacy here, and less interruption. Fewer curious stares, fewer impertinent questions about how long my suspension might last, and whether it might become permanent. Fewer whispers of gossip overheard through the walls, tittering about how the smell travels with me, now, how they can detect the siphonophore on my clothes, and in my skin. Wondering who will have my office when I’m gone.

  Is it such a foregone conclusion already?

  These flickers of despair will be the death of me. I really do need some rest.

  THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE

  Owen Seabury, M.D.

  APRIL 13, 1894

  I spoke with Emma Borden, and I can’t quite decide if I’m cheered or frightened by her response. She was eager—very eager—to talk about the death of her parents, to such an extent that I was frankly surprised. I would’ve thought the subject would prove too sensitive, given the circumstances of their demise—regardless of any illness leading up to that event.

  Emma thinks I should speak further on the matter with Lizzie, but I’m not sure that I can bring myself to do so. I’ve spent two years convincing myself of her innocence; and if anything, I’ve been her champion in difficult times, albeit at a distance.

  I hate confessing things to myself, but here it is: I kept my distance then, in case I was mistaken. And I keep my distance still, because there is a balance here—her freedom, her exoneration . . . weighed against the possibility of her guilt.

  I wouldn’t entertain the darker possibility at the time, even when others were all too happy to do so. I’m not sure why. I can’t say why I defended her so; or, if I must choose my reason, then I’d say it was because of Abigail—that awful night before she was killed. Something was wrong. Something was worse than wrong, and at the bottom of my heart I felt that their murder might have been some kind of self-defense, instead.

  Over and over, while I was on the stand, I thought of Abigail Borden and her cold, damp hands pounding upon my door. I remembered my terror, and then my revulsion as I recognized her, and saw how terribly she’d changed.

  Worse than wrong. Yes. I suppose that’s the crux of it.

  I have been afraid all this time that Lizzie performed some act of self-defense that could never be defended in court—an act that I would have pardoned and justified, given how readily I’d wondered where my pistols had gone when I saw that slack, imbecile shape rocking back and forth on my stoop.

  But that can’t have been all of it. Andrew was murdered in his sleep. Abigail was taken by surprise, from behind. Can any such attack ever be construed as self-defense?

  And so I twist myself around and around again, never certain if I made the right decision, but quite certain that I couldn’t have made another one. Not if I wanted to live with myself.

  Now, if I wish to speak of the matter to Lizzie, I may threaten this weird balance between us. Our polite deferral of the topic, and a mutually agreed-upon (yet never openly discussed) pact to avoid it. My knowledge of the night before they died. Her knowledge of everything that came before and after.

  What if she were to make some slip, drop a few stray words by accident—words that incriminated her? What if I am forced to confront the possibility that I was wrong to stand by her side? Would I be compelled to report the matter? Would it mean anything if I did? I don’t believe she could be tried again, but public opinion has long since had its way with her.

  It might well be that I fret for nothing but exposed feelings, and unpleasant truths that reveal nothing and mean even less, given that the time for consequences has passed.

  • • •

  So it seems my only excuse for avoiding Miss Borden the younger . . . is a squeamishness on my part. For all I know, she has no such squeamishness; for all I know, she has no polite agreement with me—a gentleperson’s imaginary agreement, assumed in order to avoid an unseemly topic. This might be entirely one-sided, and it might be entirely in my head.

  I believe I’ll have a word with her after all, at Emma’s next appointment.

  Because I went back to see Matthew Granger today.

  And just look at how many inches of script I’ve dedicated to avoiding that subject! But this is what happened, and I will not be squeamish about it. I’m a doctor, for Christ’s sake. I’ve seen the worst the human body has to offer. This should not bother me, deter me, or disgust me. This should be recorded.

  I will record it.

  • • •

  In only a matter of days, the boy’s condit
ion has deteriorated. His shoulders are sloping more steeply. His face is becoming fuller. He moves his hands as if he’s forgotten he has fingers, slapping at things as if his appendages are only paws or flippers.

  His godparents are beside themselves. They can no longer pretend that his condition is youthful depravity—and now they’ve removed him from his duties gathering the sea glass and knitting the nets. They’ve locked him inside their home, in the back rooms of their shop, under the guise of giving him rest in order to recover. I’m not so stupid as that. They’ve hidden him away so that others won’t see what’s becoming of him.

  Mrs. Granger is a prayerful woman, and she sings her petitions to God, day in and day out. She’s given the boy a Bible, which he ignores. She’s left small crosses and holy baubles about the boy’s room, and he ignores those, too. If he even sees them.

  I don’t know how much of anything he sees. His eyes are filmy, almost that same blurry fog of an older man’s cataracts, but this is something else—something overlaying the exterior structure of the eye, almost like the nictitating membrane of a sickly housecat. When I made some efforts to examine this membrane, Matthew did not object or resist. And finally I noticed that he didn’t merely appear unblinking . . . he had stopped that unconscious behavior altogether. Not in the twenty minutes I kept his company did his upper lid so much as twitch.

  But he covered his eyes with his hands, when I brought the light too close. It was dark in that room. Sickrooms often are, but whatever is sickly about him, the darkness and quiet aren’t helping it.

  They’re incubating it.

  I had thoughts of asking for blood or saliva samples, but twenty minutes was all the time with the boy I could bear. I left his family with suggestions for soup, tea, and continued prayer.

  Who knows? The soup or tea might actually do him some good.

  As for the prayers, I suppose they can’t hurt. I’ve never found much good in them, I’ll confess that here, though I keep such thoughts private when in public company. Who would confide in a physician who claimed no affiliation with God? I still must feed myself, and keep my house. I still need my patients. But too many people believe with too much conviction in what amounts to, at best, a superstition.

  I’ve seen science change a patient’s diagnosis, but I’ve never heard a prayer that changed God’s mind about a damn thing.

  Lizzie Andrew Borden

  APRIL 13, 1894

  Emma bared a bit of her soul to the doctor, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

  I suppose if she must unburden herself to someone other than me, she’s chosen wisely; better Seabury than the postman, or the grocer’s delivery boy.

  She insists she told him nothing that would give him any real insight into our research, and she only said that yes, our family had fallen ill before they fell to the axe. She told him this much, and furthermore suggested that he speak with me. Really, I suspect, her motives are twofold: one, she’d prefer to have him come around more frequently, even if it requires his involvement in our secret activities; and two, she thinks we may have information that could be of great help to one another.

  She swears that the latter is her true desire. If I brought up the former, she’d deny it with such vehemence as to harm herself with the effort. So I restrain myself.

  But she might have a point.

  Apparently one of the boys in town has come down with something like our father and Mrs. Borden, and that’s a troubling development indeed. I’ve seen hints of that sickness, here and there about town, but nothing so fully formed. A paleness in the face of a man on the street. A slowness in the speech of a woman at the store, on the rare occasions I venture out. It worries me deeply, but until the doctor mentioned this new case, I’d seen no progression like the one that so upended our lives two years ago. It was as if whatever poisoned us had stopped with us. Or else it was otherwise spread so thin that nothing truly tragic resulted from any further contact with . . . with whatever it was.

  Whatever those green stones are. The ones in the leaded box under the house.

  Matthew Granger, the sick boy. He collects ocean glass and sea baubles for a barrel inside the shop’s main door. The connection is an obvious one, and easy to make. He’s picked up something more dangerous than glass, and it’s made him into . . . into whatever he’s becoming.

  Or however it works.

  The stones cause change, but they also lure. Are they luring something in to those who touch them? What a hideous thought. But now that I’ve had it, I’ll see what my library has to offer with regard to possession. And if mine won’t suffice, I’ll pack up a bag and make the trip to Providence.

  Perhaps Emma could come; it’s not even twenty miles. We could spend the night away from home, and it might do us good.

  • • •

  But I’ve distracted myself. Here is a note, to bring me back on course.

  I will jot this down now, so I do not lose the train of thought and forget to return to it later: Is it possible that the creatures who haunt the grounds of Maplecroft from time to time . . . might actually be the end result of this weird malady? It’s almost too awful to consider. They could have been people, once. I might have killed half a dozen of them now.

  If so, then the transformation eradicates any indication of humanity, save for the general shape of two arms, two legs, and a head atop a torso.

  I thought that my father’s case, and Mrs. Borden’s case, were the end progression of this infliction. I might have been wrong, but even knowing this, I regret nothing. I would not have seen either one of them . . . no, not even my stepmother . . . reduced to such a state. And besides, they would’ve taken steps to murder me long before they ever reached that point.

  The signs had already begun—and as it was, I constantly feared for my life, and for Emma’s as well. That’s why I sent her away, in those last days. I know everyone thinks it was because of William, but he was the least of our problems. William was only a conniving bastard, greedy for an inheritance he hadn’t earned or deserved. He would’ve tried to bring us all down with a scandal, but he wouldn’t have sickened or murdered anyone.

  I write this with reasonable certainty but not, upon reflection, the utmost confidence. The truth is I never knew him well—only well enough to know that I didn’t wish to know him better.

  • • •

  The more that I think about it, the more I wonder if Emma’s proposal wouldn’t be a good idea . . . a little sit-down chat with Doctor Seabury. If anyone else in town has been suffering such ailments, he’d be the first to know; and the fact that he mentions Matthew Granger as a case resembling my stepmother’s suggests that it’s the most advanced manifestation he’s seen so far.

  (Apart from hers, I mean.)

  Now that he’s recognized that something so pernicious is afoot, he might be better primed to see earlier symptoms . . . things which would otherwise go unnoticed, or unrecognized as part of a larger pathology.

  There’s much we might learn from each other, but it’s a terrible risk.

  If he decides that I’m daft, or engaged in illegal activities, he could hand me over to the authorities. It could mean the end of Maplecroft, the end of my laboratory. The end of what slim progress I’ve made against the creeping threat.

  If I am removed from my studies, then truly nothing would stand between Fall River and whatever evil thing insinuates itself into our midst.

  Not even me and my axe.

  (And certainly not even Emma, with her steady, intelligent force of will. Given her state of health, she might very well be sent away to a sanatorium and left to die in clean white sheets, surrounded by men and women who owe her only professional tending and politeness, without any love or interest. I couldn’t live with myself, if it were to come to that.)

  • • •

  The question, then, is can I trust the good doctor?

  I phrase it that way because I do not doubt his integrity, only his suspension of disbelief. A reasonab
le man might hear my tale and believe I’ve become a violent lunatic, if I wasn’t one before.

  But he did see Mrs. Borden. He does see a connection between her malady and the growing problem in town. It isn’t just Matthew Granger, and it isn’t just my father and stepmother. It’s the blind, sticky-handed, many-toothed things that creep the streets when no one’s looking. I’ve caught six. No, seven. Last week’s was number seven.

  How many have I missed?

  I can only make guesses. I suspect that two still roam, in the evenings, surely. I don’t know if there’s any good reason they can’t come and go during the day, but their instinct leads them to darkness. And it leads them to kill.

  Three people have been found dead in the last six months. Two others have gone missing. I suspect two other deaths were related, though the persons in question were elderly, and might have succumbed to causes more natural than these.

  This is not a large town. These are too many people, lost in the night, turning up again (if they do so at all) drowned and waterlogged, with strange cuts and punctures. With pieces of flesh removed from their bodies in great chunks.

  The papers printed stories that only alluded to these particulars, leaving me with insufficient evidence of anything except a streak of bad luck befalling my hometown. I wish I could’ve studied the bodies firsthand, but can you imagine? Me, of all people? Expressing eager interest in the investigation of a mutilated corpse?

  They’d put me away.

  • • •

  But Doctor Seabury has surely seen the bodies. Some of them, anyway—a pair of sailors were shipped back to their homes up north before he might’ve gotten a look at them, but yes, come to think of it . . . he would’ve certainly seen some of the victims.