Maplecroft

by Cherie Priest

  I patted at my chest for my gun, but it was gone. I’d lost it in the water, or somewhere along the way. “My gun!” I exclaimed, almost tripping at the end of the wooden walkway. I collected myself and arrived at Lizzie’s side as she retrieved her weapon of choice. So one of us was armed, and there was that much on our side.

  “When we get back to Maplecroft,” she wheezed, “you can have my father’s.”

  “Your father’s?”

  “His gun. Liquor cabinet, in the parlor. Top drawer,” she said. She picked up the axe and flipped it expertly, feeling for the familiar move and sway of its weight with more grace and better precision than the most experienced of lumberjacks. It was almost lovely, the way she turned it between her hands—almost divine, how the light sparked off it and bounded back into the sky.

  I was wrong. She wasn’t weakened at all.

  I do not know what fueled her beyond that point of near death, into vigorous rebellion. Pure willpower? Terror? Curiosity? Oh, but I hoped it was that simple.

  She turned to me, and stepped so close that I could feel her breath in the hollow of my throat. Her gaze was dark and deadly, even though her eyes were rheumy and bloodshot, and vomit-water clouded the front of her dress.

  She said, “He’s here.”

  I nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Together, we set off—not at top speed, but at a steady pace. Did I say it was a mile to Maplecroft? A little less than that, I think; but in the dark, after such an evening of exertion, an outright run was more than either of us could manage.

  (It’s more than I could’ve managed. I do not know about her, since I do not know what kept her moving. I did not want to consider that she was tainted somehow, too, granted extra strength, or a touch of madness, like the rest of them. I wonder if she wondered it about me. Fine then. We’re all mad, maybe. No one will escape the Problem. Nothing but consensus will have the final say.)

  • • •

  Anyway we hurried as best we could, and as we retreated to the big house I tried to formulate some plan. “When we get there,” I gasped, timing my words between footfalls, trying to lay them down between the crackling, fracturing heavens and all their requisite chatter. “We should . . .”

  “Yes?” she said, not looking back. She still outpaced me. She was younger, after all. And I was glad she looked steadier now than when I’d first pulled her from the water; I was no longer certain I could catch her if she fell. I wasn’t sure from one step to the next, for the exhaustion and confusion were at war with my excitement, and I was light-headed from the turbulence of it all.

  “The toxins,” I told her. “Use the toxins against the professor.”

  “You still think it will help?”

  “It can’t hurt to try,” I insisted, my chest burning from the running and talking in tandem. This was what old age felt like. Old age and death: remembering how it felt to run without pain and the tightening lungs, but unable to do so anymore.

  “The globulins . . . they worked on Nance.” She nodded, but not to me. Still facing forward, toward the house, toward our fate—whatever it might turn out to be. “She did not go mad. She awoke. She did not kill us all.”

  A rather loose definition of success, but she wasn’t wrong—and given the circumstances, I’d cling to anything, even a margin so slim as that one. Perhaps someone would make it out alive.

  “But the toxins, not the globulins, they are . . .” I struggled to catch my breath. “Deadly. To us, maybe to them.”

  “I know. You told me.”

  I honestly could not recall having done so. I remembered thinking about telling her, and sorting out the facts, and working to assemble the loose pieces of this terrible puzzle. I remembered telling Emma. Or I thought I remembered. I might well have been wrong.

  I am slipping.

  The thought whisked through my mind. My feet were still sound. My footing was sound. The ground was not wet, for it had not actually rained at all—the sky’s noisy protests be damned, it was only the squishing of my wet socks in wet shoes. I was running, and we were nearly upon Maplecroft, and my legs felt weak but I was still upright, still determined. But I was slipping all the same, and cursed to be aware of it. A stupider man might not have noticed. Someone more inclined to self-deception might never have considered it.

  Regardless, there it was. A loosening grasp on sanity. One finger at a time giving up, letting go.

  But I had no time to confront it, not then and there, when the house loomed up out of the darkness before us.

  I say “loomed” as if it were a monster, and it wasn’t; but the jagged, pretty, gingerbready shape loomed despite itself. A large, lovely place, broad and welcoming. A beautiful house, shrouded in darkness . . . and then, in flashes of light that wasn’t lightning—illuminated and awful. The brilliant flickers showed the whole thing in stark shadow, black against white, and then the reverse . . . so quickly that the impression was burned on my retinas, making the effect all the stranger, every time I blinked.

  “Doctor!” The word was strong and sharp, fired like a bullet.

  Immediately, I knew why.

  I announced, “I see them!” For I saw them, and it was enough to stop my hammering heart.

  Crawling around the house like spiders, their spindly white hands clutching at the windowsills, the stairs, the bricks, the shrubs. Tramping on the roses, marching through the bushes. I saw half a dozen at a hasty count, but there must have been more around the rear of the house, or the sides we could not see. They were battering the place, but not entering it . . . as if some strange boundary or supernatural order prevented them.

  • • •

  One by one they looked away from the house, and they stared at us with hateful, hungry eyes that were pale and white. Fish eyes. Watery eyes. Eyes with hate, but not intelligence—not the clever, conniving eyes of a cephalopod, or the serious squint of a seal. These eyes were cold and flat like a shark’s, but that is unfair. A shark’s eyes were only black and hungry. They were not shrouded, and full of malice.

  One by one the creatures peeled themselves away from the mansion, their attention drawn to us. Moths, and we were the flame. All but two, who remained at the front door on all fours, padding back and forth, their backs arched and their fingers pointed, they slathered and stalked.

  The front door was open. It took me a few seconds to notice. It was open, but still they paced before it, unable or unwilling to enter.

  I was confident that I had closed and locked the door behind me. It was the last sane, deliberate act I performed before leaving the house, in fierce pursuit of the younger Borden sister—leaving the elder one behind. Therefore, something or someone had opened it. Something or someone had gone inside, for surely Emma lacked the strength or the stupidity to leave it ajar.

  “Lizzie,” I breathed, drawing up to a halt.

  She slowed to a sure-footed walk but did not stop. She adjusted her axe, twisting it back and forth between her hands. She said, “Stay with me.”

  Stay with her? I supposed there wasn’t much choice.

  She was armed and I was not—though I spent a frantic moment wondering if I shouldn’t take the axe away from her and wield it myself. But no, that would not do, if for no other reason than that I probably couldn’t. She might not leave me my hands. Or my life.

  She was as single-minded as the creatures that stalked her porch.

  I stayed close behind her as commanded, but I remained far enough back that she was unlikely to strike me—which was good, because the first creature reached her and she whipped the axe around, catching it in the head. Splitting it like a melon. Not even looking at it, not even checking to see if it was down and would stay that way . . . she moved onward, keeping her eyes on the front door.

  “They’ll follow us inside . . . ?” I meant to suggest, and ended up asking, with a pitiful question mark affixed to the end.

  “They won’t.”

  She knew something that I didn’t. And not for the
first time, either.

  We were drawing nearer and nearer to the house. More and more of the things were crawling into the yard, drawn by us. Having seen the one thing, the one time, all those nights ago when I first came to understand the mystery of this place . . . that was bad enough. This was a nightmare in motion, and God help me, we were all of us awake.

  “Have you ever seen this many?” I asked her.

  “No.”

  “They come from the water, don’t they?” I was jogging again to keep up with her, and my breathing was raspy, not quite in her ear.

  “I think so.”

  “That’s why . . . that’s why the toxin . . . the tetanus . . . your axe,” I tried to tell her, but I could no longer talk and run at the same time. I had not enough strength to do both.

  • • •

  This is what I meant to tell her: the tetani bacteria cannot survive in the water—it needs open air to thrive. These creatures that she fells with her axe like so many trees . . . they never encounter the infection in their native environment, only on the land, here, where it lives so abundantly in the soil and in the flesh of our land-dwelling creatures, and heaven knows where else (or maybe heaven doesn’t). They are vulnerable here. They are vulnerable to her axe. To us. They are not indomitable. (But neither are we.)

  • • •

  “The gun,” she said. We had almost reached the porch. “Better than nothing.”

  “The cabinet?” I whispered harshly. It was the only voice I had left.

  “Just inside. The near wall of the parlor,” she gasped back. “I’ll take care of these things.”

  She swung hard to the right and caught one of the brutes through the neck—fully beheading it, so great was her momentum. She reached the stairs and with one fast sweep she stunned the first sentinel at the door, and grievously wounded the other. Blood that looked like bile splattered across the paneling and across her dress, and the glittering shards of crystalline teeth sparkled across her nightdress. She swung again, and struck the creature again, pushing it aside.

  She swept the way clear and faced the yard, where the bad things gathered. She braced herself and readied the axe.

  Without looking at me, she said, “The cabinet. Go.”

  “Yes,” I said. Her plan was simple and clear, but I was thickheaded with fright, too tired to argue.

  I jumped sideways past her, through the open door. Inside, it was dark. Or as dark as the night outside anyway—for Maplecroft’s interior flickered and flashed between daylight-sharp and midnight-inscrutable.

  I was disoriented.

  I looked around and saw mostly black stripes of shadow cast by the windowpanes and curtains. I saw the outlines of fixtures and furniture, small statues and a pair of matching vases, the lacy shapes of doilies and shawls tossed across the divan, candlesticks they didn’t need (now that the house had gas), and shards of broken glass. I do not know where it came from—if it was windows or picture frames or art glass from the shelves and cabinets.

  My feet crunched upon it, announcing my presence as I dithered, unsure of myself.

  I’d been in the parlor a hundred times. A thousand times. More than that, I knew . . . Where was the cabinet? I’d seen it. I’d leaned against it. I’d served myself a drink from it, when invited to do so. Suddenly I couldn’t picture it to save my life; I stuttered on the entryway rug, then staggered to the hallway runner and then, yes, the parlor.

  There it was.

  I ripped the drawer open so hard I pulled it right off its rails and the gun toppled to the floor—along with a box of bullets that burst open, scattering its contents across the carpet. I dropped to my knees, scavenged a handful, and grabbed the gun, a service revolver. Its weight told me it was loaded.

  • • •

  (Funny, the things you remember, from the old days in service. Old habits, old memories. My hands recalled the feel, the balance. The shape of the handle. It was similar to my own, the one I’d lost in the water. I think I lost it in the water. Might have lost it somewhere else. Likely, I’ll never know.)

  • • •

  By the time I got to my feet, I could see Lizzie on the move outside.

  Her dress billowed and she looked like a vengeful ghost, she moved so swiftly and with such grace—the wind tearing her hair and her clothes as she parried, struck, and swung with the axe she’d sharpened each night with deadly precision. She seemed bigger, wilder. Positively preternatural, though I saw her efforts only in fits and starts through the narrow frame of the doorway.

  I was mesmerized for the moment.

  She called my name. Not “Doctor,” but “Owen!”

  It was the first time I’d ever heard her say it. The informality worked. It roused me from my stupor, and surprised me into motion. I ran outside, ducking past her and narrowly missing the pendulum swing of the axe, sweeping in a terrible arc. It was a pure coincidence of timing that she missed me. I surely wasn’t paying enough attention to have dodged the blow on purpose.

  But I came out shooting.

  I took her place on the porch, and I opened fire.

  She ducked behind me, and disappeared inside.

  I stood my ground, and I guarded the front door.

  To my left, two dead creatures—one of them in pieces. To my right, a third dead thing, oozing gore. Its corpse was shifting; it wasn’t moving, exactly. It was decomposing too fast, collapsing in upon itself. I don’t know why. I didn’t have time to investigate, though the question nagged at me. Fourth and fifth corpses were on the foot of the stairs or just beyond them. She’d killed them on the way inside, I dimly recalled.

  A shriek rose up, and it was joined by other voices. They came from beside me, in front of me. From farther away—behind the house? Elsewhere in the neighborhood?—they sang out, meeting in a weird pitch that made my ears hum. Somewhere, more glass was breaking. I could barely hear it, but I knew the sound.

  And here they came. A rickety wave of arms and legs with too many joints, mouths with too many teeth, eyes without enough pigment. The light storm showed me five, but I’d heard more than that. I knew there were more. I didn’t have to see them to be confident of their presence, and I didn’t have to count the bullets in my pocket, in my hand, in my gun, to know that there weren’t enough.

  I cocked the revolver and shot the first one between the eyes. Its head exploded in a mass of tissue and gristle, and whatever fluid filled those bulbous orbs it used to gaze out at the world. If in fact the things could see at all.

  If there was blood, it didn’t look like blood. If there was brain matter, I didn’t see it . . . just the spongy, scrambled-egg leavings speckled with bone. They scattered across the porch and another creature came up behind it, slipped in the mess, and fell down.

  I fired twice. It struggled, but did not stop coming so I fired again. It fell backward, off the steps, but I saw it moving.

  Lizzie was right. She’d told me long ago that the axe worked better than bullets. But I didn’t have an axe. I had bullets, maybe one or two left in the gun and a pocketful after that. I looked out across the lawn and counted seven, eight, maybe more. All of them coming for me.

  The injured creature with the needle-glass teeth came crawling up the steps again. I kicked it back down. I shoved my boot into the center of its face, where a nose ought to go, but didn’t.

  It toppled backward again, but there were more. So many more.

  Seconds away.

  With a flick of my wrist, and that old muscle-memory from the war and from all the days after it, I reloaded on the fly and fired again. I aimed for their heads. If one shot could take them down, that was the shot that would do it. The dead thing beside me, added to Lizzie’s pile, suggested as much.

  But a glance down at the thing told me it twitched still, a jerk of the knee, a shift of the elbow. Its head was exploded, and still it struggled to rise.

  I put my boot against this one, too. I stomped as hard as I could, catching its skull between the oak slat
boards and my heel, and I crushed it down to pulp. Then I raised my gun. The rest of them were coming.

  They were at the steps, fumbling up the bottom, grasping toward my feet.

  I fired, and fired, and fired, and reloaded from my pocket until there were no more bullets left—and then I rushed inside the hall and slammed the door shut behind myself. I would have locked it, but the lock had ripped away, or blown away; it was gone, and I had nothing to barricade it with except for a nearby plant stand. I pulled it down and used it to brace the door in its frame—poorly, I’ll grant, but better than nothing. I pulled up the carpet runner behind me, rolled it up, shoved it up against the door; I pulled down curtains and threw them into the pile along with their rods; I dragged a small end table into the mix and then a tall-backed chair from the parlor.

  Outside, they cried . . . and they beat their hands against the badly shut door, but they did not push it open. Outside, they hovered and complained, as Lizzie promised they would. She knew something I didn’t. Outside, they stayed.

  • • •

  (I was inside, where I’d chosen to make my stand—or been forced to make it, if I were being truthful in this record, which I will leave behind somewhere, for someone, in the event that I go fully mad. Let this remind Fall River that I was not always insane, and that I fought for my home. I fought for my life, my soul, my sanity. And for everyone else’s.

  Then again, maybe I’ll destroy everything. This could be my last gift: that the world should never know the lengths we went to, when we stood between Fall River and the ocean . . . armed with little more than an old axe.)

  • • •

  I was forced to come inside. I could not have taken them all.

  I went to the cabinet and found the rest of the bullets, scattered on the floor. I gathered them up carefully, quickly. I pocketed every last one, except for the six I thumbed into the chambers. My fingers shook. I dropped two bullets, and collected them again.