The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(53)

“So you are studying to be a monstrumologist,” she said.

“I suppose I am.”

“You suppose you are? Don’t you know?”

“I haven’t decided. I—I did not ask to serve the doctor.”

“Your father asked?”

“My father is dead. He served the doctor, and when he died—”

“What about your mother? Is she dead too? Are you an orphan? Oh, you’re Oliver Twist! And that would make Dr. Warthrop Fagi’n!”

“I like to think of him as Mr. Brownlow,” I said.

“I have read everything that Mr. Dickens has written,” Lilly averred. “Have you read Great Expectations? That’s my favorite. I read all the time; it’s practically all I do, except bicycling. Do you like to bicycle, Will? I bicycle practically every Sunday, and do you know I’ve seen Lillian Russell seven times on her gold-plated bicycle riding with her beau, Diamond Jim Brady? Do you know who Diamond Jim Brady is? He’s very famous, you know. He eats everything. Once at breakfast I saw him eat four eggs, six pancakes, three pork chops, five muffins, and a beefsteak, washing it all down with a gallon of orange juice, which he called ‘golden nectar.’

“Uncle Abram knows him. Uncle knows everybody who is anybody. He knows Buffalo Bill Cody. Two summers ago I saw his Wild West show in London when it played before the queen. I know her, too—Victoria. Uncle introduced us. He knows everyone. He knows President Cleveland. I met President Cleveland at the White House. We had tea. He has a love child because he’s married and couldn’t be with his true love; her name is Maria.”

“Whose name?” I asked. I was having some trouble keeping up. “The love child’s?”

“No, his true love’s name. I don’t know his daughter’s name. I think it’s a daughter, anyway. Are you an only child, Will?”

“Yes.”

“So you have no one.”

“I have the doctor.”

“And he has no one. I know that. John Chanler married his true love.”

“I don’t think—He’s never said—I can’t imagine the doctor ever being in love,” I said. I remembered his remark to Sergeant Hawk in the wilderness. “He says women should be classified as a different species.”

“I’m not surprised he said that,” Lilly said, and sniffed. “After what happened.”

“What?”

“Oh, you must know. He must have told you. Aren’t you his apprentice?”

“I know they were engaged, and he somehow fell off a bridge and got sick, and that’s how she met Dr. Chanler—”

She threw back her head and laughed with abandon.

“I’m just repeating what he said,” I protested, ashamed and angry at myself for the indiscretion. It was not a story the doctor was particularly proud of, and I knew he would be mortified if he knew I had shared it.

“I thought you were going to show me your birthday present,” I continued, hoping to change the subject.

“Oh! My present! I forgot.” She hopped from the mattress and scurried halfway under the bed to retrieve it, a weighty tome that she plunked down on the floor between us. Its leather cover was stamped with the title, in ornate script, Compendia ex Horrenda Maleficii.

“You know what this is?” she demanded. It sounded like a challenge.

With a sigh and a sinking heart, I answered, “I think so.”

“Mother would kill Uncle if she knew he gave it to me. She hates monstrumology.”

She flipped rapidly through the book’s flimsy pages. I glimpsed gruesome depictions of human bodies flayed open; dismembered torsos and decapitated heads; the ironic leering grin of a skull whose frontal and parietal bones had been smashed to pieces; a tangle of rotting entrails in which squirmed what appeared to be gigantic larvae or maggots; anterior and posterior views of a woman’s corpse, her flesh ripped free from the underlying muscles and tendons and hanging like strips of peeling paint from the abandoned cathedral of her mortal temple. Page after page of macabre lifelike illustrations of human havoc wreaked, over which Lilly bent low with nostrils wide and cheeks flushed, eyes aflame with voyeuristic delight. Her hair smelled like jasmine, and it was a dizzying juxtaposition, the sweet odor of her hair against the backdrop of those disgusting drawings.

“Here it is,” she breathed. “Here’s my favorite.”

She tapped her finger on the page, where the nude corpse of a young man was displayed in an obscene parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, arms and legs outstretched, head throw back in a silent howl, with what appeared to be a tentacle or perhaps a snake (though it may have been some of his intestines) issuing from his abdomen. Mercifully, Lilly did not elaborate on why she liked this drawing so much. She stared at it for a few seconds in silence, her eyes shining with macabre wonder, before looking up. A sound from downstairs had captured her attention.

“They’re fighting,” she said. “Hear it?”

I could—the doctor’s strident voice, von Helrung’s insistent response.

“Let’s go listen.” She slapped the book closed. Without thinking I grabbed her arm.

“No!” I protested. “We shouldn’t spy.”

“Do you hate him?”