The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(93)

I did not. Only dark panes dimly reflecting the glow from the ash barrels in the courtyard.

“And we have none,” pointed out Gravois. “What good will it do, stumbling about in the dark?”

“It isn’t dark yet,” countered Dobrogeanu. “We have a few hours still.”

“Perhaps our definitions of ‘dark’ differ. I say we let Monsieur Henry break the tie. What is your opinion, Will?”

So rarely was I asked for one, I did not realize I even had an opinion until it came out of my mouth. “We should go in. We have to know.”

Up the rickety back stairs we climbed, Dobrogeanu leading the way, one hand hidden in his cloak, no doubt gripping his revolver. I followed next, fingering the hilt of the knife to steady my nerves. Gravois brought up the rear, muttering in French what sounded like curses. Once or twice I caught the word ‘Pellinore.’

The stairs were alarmingly insubstantial, swaying with each step of our slow ascent, the old boards crying tremulant squeaks and protesting groans. We reached the fourth-story landing, whereupon our leader pulled the revolver from his pocket and pushed open the door, and we followed him.

A narrow, poorly lit hallway ran the length of the building, its walls coated with decades of accumulated grime, the floor speckled with water stains and darker blemishes of unknown origin, perhaps urine or excrement, for the passage reeked of both—and of boiled cabbage, tobacco, wood smoke, and that peculiar funk of human desperation.

It was very cold and deathly quiet. We stood for a moment without moving, hardly breathing, straining our ears for any sound that might give proof of life. There was nothing. Dobrogeanu whispered, “End of the hall, last door on the left.”

“Will Henry should investigate,” urged Gravois. “He is the smallest and the lightest of tread. We’ll stay here and cover his advance.”

Dobrogeanu stared at him from beneath his thick gray eyebrows.

“How did you ever become a monstrumologist, Gravois?”

“A combination of familial pressure and social retardation.”

Dobrogeanu grunted softly. “Come along, Will; Gravois, stay here if you like, but watch those stairs!”

We proceeded carefully down the hall, passing midway down a central staircase on the right. The sole source of light came from the fire escape door, and that light faded as we went.

Dobrogeanu stepped over a bundle of rags, pointing it out lest I trip over it in the gloom. To my surprise I saw the bundle was moving—and then I realized the rags were wrapped around an infant, no more than a few months old, its toothless mouth stretched wide in a pitifully silent cry. Its dark eyes moved restlessly in their sockets; its stick-thin arms flailed the air.

I tugged at the old man’s sleeve and pointed at the child. His eyebrows rose in astonishment.

“Is it alive?” he whispered.

I squatted beside the abandoned child. Its little hand caught my finger and held it tight. The eyes, which appeared very large in the emaciated face, had fixed upon me. It considered me with frank curiosity, squeezing my finger.

“Its parents must be somewhere,” Dobrogeanu surmised. “Come, Will.”

He urged me to my feet. The baby did not cry when I withdrew my finger. Perhaps it was too weak or too sick to cry.

Dobrogeanu started down the hall, but I did not move. I looked down at the baby by my feet. It was too much for me. How many times had I bemoaned my fate, the gross injustice of my parents’ deaths, or my service to an eccentric genius whose dark pursuits demanded that I endure the most alarming of scenarios, unto the risk of my very life? Yet what was my experience compared to that hungry child’s, forlorn in a filthy hall reeking of piss and cabbages? What did I understand of suffering?

“What is it?” asked Dobrogeanu. He had looked behind and discovered me frozen to the spot.

“We can’t just leave it here,” I said.

“If we take it, what will happen when its parents return for it? Leave it alone, Will.”

“We can take it to the priest,” I said. “He’ll know what to do with it.”

I could see its dark eyes in the gathering night, seeking mine.

The line between what we are and what we pursue is razor thin. We will remember our humanity.

My soul writhed. I felt as if I were being ground between two great stones.

Dobrogeanu was now at the end of the hall. “Will!” he called softly. “Leave it!”

Biting my lip, I stepped over the child. What could I do? Its suffering had nothing to do with me. It would have been in that cold, stinking hall whether or not I’d been there. So I stepped over it. I turned my back upon it and left it there.

The baby did not cry after me; in its eyes I had recognized the same dull listlessness I’d seen in the wilderness, the way Sergeant Hawk’s eyes had looked the night he’d disappeared, the vacant stare of hunger, the inexpressible ache of desire.

Dobrogeanu commenced banging on the door. The sound jumped and bounced between the close walls; it seemed very loud, as all sounds do in the near dark. We waited, but no one answered. He tried the knob next, and the door opened with a protesting screech.

“Hello?” the old monstrumologist called. “Je někdo doma?” He drew out his revolver.

The Nováková flat was typical of most dismal tenement roosts: walls of cracked and crumbling plaster; a ceiling pockmarked with water stains; a warped floor that groaned in protest with every step. The room was clean, though, and an effort had been made to brighten the dingy walls with cheap prints of bright sunlit landscapes. It was heartbreaking—almost cruel—those fields of daffodils and lilies mocking the squalor around them.