Maplecroft

by Cherie Priest

  I do believe that the nearer I draw to the water, the louder Her voice will ring. And if I am wrong, I will only be a little wrong. If I am wrong, I will wear my professor skin and ask polite questions of polite people, who will politely provide the information I require; and if She tells me they should be left, I will leave them. If She tells me they are to return to dust, I will grant that, too. I will grant Her anything in my power, for I have no power except what She sees fit to lend me.

  I owe Her all.

  I will give Her all. I will be Her humble servant on land, a lamp unto the feet and a light unto the path of those whose ways have grown dark. And when She calls me back to the water, back to Her arms, I will sing hallelujah and praise Her name.

  For all the rest of my days.

  Forever and ever. Amen.

  Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston

  MAY 2, 1894

  Hello in return, my long-lost colleague—and though I’m glad to hear from you, of course, I do find myself appalled at the circumstance, and I hope this response is timely enough to be some benefit to you. I’m including what samples I have on hand, and which I can afford to lose without compromising our ongoing experiments, so you will find included in this package, the following:

  Three vials of tetanus immune globulin, which is not strictly a vaccine—but a preparation made from the serum of an infected horse. The antibodies ought to provide immediate short-term treatment and protection to any very recently afflicted (or potentially afflicted) person, but it is not a long-term prophylactic.

  Three vials of tetanus toxoid, which is to say, a volume of the bacteria itself, treated with formaldehyde.

  I’m also sending a sample batch of the live bacteria, carefully enclosed—though it should be noted, it cannot survive or grow for long without a steady supply of air. Handle it with the utmost care—I am trusting you to do so!—and see to it that it does not fall into the hands of any unsavory persons, as it is a dire poison. I would hate to see it transformed by some unsavory whim into a weapon.

  But should you need to manufacture more treatments, you’ll find that having the live bacteria (separated from fecal and soil samples) will make your production faster and easier. Otherwise, the process is a great rigmarole of back-and-forth between infected hosts, and hosts with successful antibodies. (The process is time-consuming and it sounds like you don’t have time to start from scratch.) If you have access to a good laboratory, as you say, then the accompanying notes ought to help you get a fresh supply under way more or less immediately. Or within an afternoon, I should say instead.

  The rest of what follows in this letter is an aside—should you feel like you lack the time to read or appreciate it, then put this note away and return to it later, and you’ll hurt no feelings of mine.

  • • •

  The vaccine for tetanus is only recently derived, in the Koch laboratories—by a German named Behring, and a Japanese colleague named Kitasato. Together, they were seeking a solution to not only tetanus, but diphtheria as well. They developed their antitoxin in much the same way we do here, at our facility—by infecting a small research animal, collecting the blood, and then passing it along to a stronger animal, such as a horse. From the horse’s blood, the antibodies are extracted, processed, and developed into the vaccine.

  For all of that back-and-forth, it’s still brilliant in its simplicity, I would argue, and by all reports it is highly effective. Here at the university, we are building on their research, but cannot take the credit for spawning it; and it comes thirty years too late for men like you and me to really run it through its paces.

  Can you imagine if we’d had access to such a thing during the war? How many lives we could’ve saved?

  Maybe not the worst of them, but there will always be an outlying case or two that can’t be cracked with conventional methods. For example, I do not know if the Behring-Kitasato antitoxin would have much effect if deployed against cephalic tetanus, for the bacteria digs in and holds down tight, when it settles into the inner ear. (And there were so many head wounds, you’ll recall. Or perhaps you’d prefer not to. I know I’d sleep better at night not remembering the lion’s share of what I witnessed on those fields.)

  Ah, well.

  There’s little we can do about the past, but to do it honor, we must turn all our efforts to the present and the future—and save what lives we can, using what knowledge we may glean and assemble between us.

  You’re still doing God’s work, Seabury. I’m proud to call you a friend and colleague, and I wish you the very best with your efforts there in Fall River. If there’s anything else I can do, any assistance I can provide—or advice, or supplies—please do not hesitate to ask.

  Yours,

  Christoff

  Emma L. Borden

  MAY 2, 1894

  I can’t rely on anyone anymore.

  Lizzie may as well have gone deaf to the bell; I suppose if I fired a warning shot or two into the ceiling, she might grow curious enough to come check on me. Maybe a shot in my own temple would be warning enough to bring her around. Maybe it would take her days to notice.

  Doctor Seabury’s a lost cause, too, given that he couldn’t keep the one secret I most needed kept, or wanted kept at any rate. His heart was in the right place, but mine is not—mine is trapped here, and has so little in the way of escape . . . what am I to do? What if the inspector, that pink-faced baby in a suit, makes my alias known? I’d lose even this one little tie to the world beyond Maplecroft, when I need it now more than ever.

  I say that . . . but the truth is, it’s been weeks since I wrote or researched.

  I too have become lost in this Problem, and I don’t know the way out. No one does, unless it’s Doctor Zollicoffer, maddened and lost in his own private way.

  Or that’s what I believe. I do not consider for a moment that he was always a maniac. He was a decent, gentle man. A nervous one, and even a fussy one, after a fashion, but a good one. Not a killer, bent on a spree. Not a murdering bandit, but my friend.

  Anyway, if he’s no longer my friend (and indeed has become everything that everyone accuses him of) . . . there’s precious little I can do about it. I can’t run. I can’t hide. I can only hole up and wait, with Father’s gun by my nightstand and enough bullets to defend myself for ninety seconds, if I’m lucky.

  • • •

  I should not be forced to beg for my sister’s aid.

  I am fully aware that she’s given it freely, and for years now. (Has it been years? Dear God. Years indeed.) But I did not choose my condition, and I have no other recourse. No husband or lover of my own to prop me up and carry me onward toward the grave, like Lizzie will carry Nance any day now.

  Is that too harsh? Well. It must be harsher still to pretend otherwise. No one benefits from such deception.

  Contrary to Lizzie’s denials and insistence, the girl grows worse by the day, by the hour. The other night’s adventure in the washroom was not some climax; it was only the logical progression of whatever afflicts her, as it afflicts this town—and the end result will be one of two things: She’ll die, or she’ll kill us all.

  She’s changing. Turning into something piscine, or you could make the case for it. The gills she’s developed are small and unsatisfactory for oxygen, not for a creature of her stature; but they will grow if given the chance. Before long, she won’t be able to breathe air anymore. That’s my suspicion. And when that happens, what will Lizzie do? Put the damned wretch in an aquarium? Turn her loose at the ocean’s edge? Leave her in the tub, close off the washroom, and keep her as an exotic pet?

  Really, I am at my wits’ end.

  If it were up to me, I’d see her finished already. It’d be a kindness, and I think Seabury would agree with me there. Or perhaps he wouldn’t. He bears no specific love for the girl, but he’s fascinated by her. Quietly, he confessed to me that he does not expect her to survive any more than I do, but in seeing how she dies, we mi
ght learn how to save everyone else.

  He’s a grim fellow, but I suppose he has every right to be. If the war hadn’t made him so already, surely our company would’ve done the trick.

  I wish I still liked and trusted him. I want to like and trust him, but the affection isn’t there anymore—even though he now tries to confide in me, as if he has a secret large enough to trade for the one he broke.

  Even so, he’s virtually all I have.

  Lizzie still sees to it that I’m bathed and dressed and fed, but otherwise ignores me in favor of watching Nance struggle to breathe.

  She’s torturing herself, and I can’t stop her, but I can’t help her, either. Except for my correspondents, she’s been my only companion since Father and Mrs. Borden died—and we are sisters, after all. The age difference notwithstanding, the bond should be greater than this, shouldn’t it? I should not have to grovel, should I?

  If I were the sort to look on the bright side, I might smile piously and thank God for the time we’ve had together thus far, and the care with which she’s provided me. I’m fortunate for that, and also for the inheritance that would keep me convalescing in relative comfort even if she were to decide she’s done with me, and have me sent away.

  But it bites. It feels like betrayal, every time she walks past my room and I call her name, and she pauses only to reply over her shoulder that she’ll check on me in a minute. I don’t always want to be checked on. Sometimes I’d only like a word, or someone with whom to confer about the matters at hand. The Problem.

  I’m not helpless. Not like she thinks. But I do need help, and I need a friend. I need my sister, and she feels more greatly needed by some tart she pulled off a stage and into her lap. They carried on like fools together, and now Lizzie carries on like a fool alone, while the girl languishes, transforms, and dies.

  I hope she dies quickly.

  Oh, that looks awful on paper! But it’s not the first time I’ve said it, and it’s still true. I hope she goes sooner rather than later, not entirely for selfish reasons—though I have those reasons in plentiful measure. I must also hope she passes in peace, and with speed. While there’s any dignity left.

  That’s another conversation I must have with Lizzie, then. As soon as I can get her attention for five minutes. If the Problem comes for me, I want her to finish me with her axe before it ever comes to this. That’s what I want. I will write it down more formally, on some official-looking paper and present it to her, in case she needs the reminder.

  Should the time come.

  I hope it does not. But if it does, I don’t want to be the burden Nance is . . . not to Lizzie, and not to myself. I’m heavy enough on my sister’s life as it is. As she reminds me, daily, even without words.

  • • •

  And now Doctor Phillip Zollicoffer is coming here, for me.

  That’s its own kind of burden, isn’t it? If I’m the lure that draws him, and he homes in on me like a pigeon, then the responsibility for this Problem is mine. It’s my burden, the only one I’m fit to bear, even if it proves to be the greatest yet . . . all because of that stupid sample. All because of our address, or at least our town—scrawled loosely on a package and sent upstate.

  I wonder if Lizzie’s thought about it like that. I wonder if she blames me, and this neglect is how she penalizes me for bringing this down upon our heads. Who knows? She’s folded so tightly into her own box of sorrow that these things may well not have occurred to her.

  I hope it hasn’t. I hope she’s only preoccupied, and not hateful. I don’t want her to hate me, like I hate her lover—as if I’m some interloper in need of constant care, and unable to contribute anything except chaos, by accident if not design. I want her to love me and comb my hair, and read the newspaper to me at night beside my bed, like she once did.

  I want my sister back. Or maybe I only want Nance gone.

  Either way, I’m a horrible person. I deserve whatever becomes of me.

  • • •

  On second thought, to hell with it. I’ve only been devoted, only been her supporter and companion when she had no one else, either. Let us spiral down together, then, because neither one of us can go it alone. I’ve been her captive audience and her character witness all this time, and if she wants to blame me for things beyond my control, then she deserves whatever becomes of her, too.

  We all do, I guess.

  • • •

  I hear the door downstairs. The doctor’s here, I think. If it isn’t him, then God only knows. Tonight I haven’t the strength to go find out.

  Owen Seabury, M.D.

  MAY 5, 1894

  The Maplecroft laboratory is a strange place, if clean, well stocked, and well lit. Any university or hospital would be proud to have such a variety of tools and equipment, and indeed, I’m inordinately fortunate that she trusts me enough to leave me here, to my own devices. Especially considering what has become of Nance after her foray downstairs.

  I wonder why it changed her so, and yet it leaves my mind more or less intact.

  I wonder if I’m wrong about the latter.

  Well, I’m not completely wrong. That much is obvious, for I have the willpower and acumen and clarity of thought to follow Christoff’s notes and sort the samples he has provided me. I’ve also begun to incubate the live bacteria, for I’ll need more of it down the road. I’m developing my theory, fleshing it out by degrees. It might be a bad one; it might lead nowhere at all, but it’s more than I had a week ago, so I will pursue it all the same.

  Lizzie has been helping some, for she’s intrigued by my speculation and sees at least enough merit to show an interest. She’s such a sharp woman; it’s such a pity what’s become of her life, and her sister. Speaking of the sister, I do wish Emma would join us; but between her health and her general aversion to me these days, she remains upstairs. I do not know if she’s capable of descending the basement steps.

  But I shouldn’t underestimate her.

  In truth, I have no idea what she is or isn’t capable of. I thought I did, at one time. I thought I knew a lot of things, but I’ve been proven wrong about so much . . . now I’d rather steer clear of assumptions. I think Wolf would be pleased to hear me say it. He doesn’t like assumptions, either.

  Though still I assume Emma’s mad at me for sharing her secret. I don’t understand why she was so angry. I only told Wolf about her pen name in order to protect her. To protect everyone here. She knows this. She’s admitted this. So why harbor the grudge?

  Women. I’ll never understand them. It’s a wonder any of them understand one another.

  • • •

  But Lizzie and Nance, they certainly had an understanding. No sense in pretending that the arrangement was sisterly or otherwise; I know how the world works. I also know how to politely pretend the contrary, for although I find it troublesome, when all is said and done it’s (as I’ve said here before, and as I continue to try to convince myself) no business of mine—except for how it complicates things at Maplecroft.

  And really, I don’t think this would be any less complex if Nance were a sister or beloved friend. Regardless of their relationship, Lizzie feels such guilt for what’s happened. She owns it. She feeds it, and it grows.

  (For that is the way of all things richly nourished.)

  • • •

  Nance remains upstairs, tethered to the bed, her body shifting around—her organs and bones wrestling for some new arrangement within her skin. It’s a fright to behold, but Lizzie insists on beholding it. She spends most of her hours seated at that bedside, reading newspapers or books aloud, holding Nance’s hand when she remains still long enough for that kind of contact. This is Lizzie’s penance. I think she sees it that way. It’s a punishment she deserves, not assistance she provides. Nance will recover with or without her. She’ll die with or without her.

  I just wish Lizzie could look away for longer periods of time, for if I could drag her away more frequently from her self-imposed exile on t
he second floor, she might be more use to me as an assistant.

  That might be unfair. She observes the test case of Nance, and that is helpful. She writes everything down, every bead of sweat, every spasm, every murmur. God, if that isn’t self-punishment, I don’t know what is. Maybe she’d call it devotion, or madness.

  Whatever it is, it keeps her from the laboratory, and that means I’m largely left alone down here.

  • • •

  As a precautionary measure (on the off chance there’s any measure that might hold water), we’ve moved every stray scrap of iron on the premises to this place in the basement, and stacked it upon the cupboard beneath the floorboards. It’s not an elegant solution, and it’s created a pile of rusting detritus that I must occasionally navigate around during my activities . . . but I do think it has somewhat muted the call of the weird green stones stashed therein.

  Most of the time, I can work without thinking about them. Most of the time, I am only aware of them as a very dull hum somewhere beneath the pile of buckets, horseshoes, fireplace implements, railroad spikes, part of an old bed frame, several skillets, a pie pan, and whatever else Lizzie was able to scare up. (My only contribution was part of a decorative garden trellis and a shovel head.)

  It’s nice to have this laboratory, even if it’s haunted, and even if it isn’t mine. It’s good to have a clean, quiet place to work, and all the necessary components to see a job through.

  I gave Nance a dose of the globulin sample the day I received it, and noted no change. I gave her another dose yesterday, and will give her a third today—which will exhaust the supply that Christoff sent. It would’ve lasted longer, had I not already taken the step of inoculating myself, Lizzie, and Emma. I didn’t tell them that this was all we had, because I knew Lizzie would fight to keep every drop for Nance. But I wanted to make sure we all had a chance at protection. Frankly, it’s likely to be more use to us than her.