The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(21)

I filled up the barrel quickly, but the first stars were appearing and the temperature was dropping rapidly, and I thought a fire would be nice—I would have to burn the refuse before I left anyway—so I trooped into the old shed and fetched the kerosene.

You’ve put me in a tight spot—once again, I thought. If I leave you with no caretaker, you will succumb to your demons. But your demons prevent anyone from caring for you!

Such is the nature of demons, I suppose.

I doused both barrels with the kerosene. An errant breeze blew out the first match, and suddenly I was thirteen again, up to my ankles in the freezing snow, warming my bloodstained hands beside this same barrel by the immolation of a corpse I had helped dismember.

You must harden yourself. If you are to stay with me, you must become accustomed to such things.

Must I, Warthrop? Must I become accustomed to “such things”? And if I had failed—if you had failed to make me accustomed to them—what then? Would there have been room then for sentimentality, for the absurdities of love and pity and hope and every other human thing? But you didn’t fail; you succeeded beyond your wildest expectations, and I, William James Henry, am your crowning achievement, the most aberrant of aberrant life forms, without love without pity without hope, harsh cold merciless leviathan of the lightless heatless deep.

I lit the second match and dropped it into one barrel. Smoke boiled; fire leapt. Then the third match into the other barrel. And the heat like a barber’s warm rag upon my face, and the smoke a speckled curtain of gray and black, and the stench of organic burning things, rotten food and moldy bread, and underlying it the foul muck of marrow sizzling within bone and the acrid tincture of hair smoldering, and I knew, I knew before I looked, before I kicked the first barrel over, spilling the contents of its gullet onto the damp, hard-packed earth, I knew what I would find, knew to the core of my harsh, cold, merciless self what he had done and to whom he had done it, apple-cheeked, fair-skinned, ready smile, and you bastard, you bastard, what have you done? What have you done?

There was her apron, torn and bloody, and a piece of her calico dress and the remnants of the ribbon that held back her hair.

Long tangled strands of it clung stubbornly to the skull, a light brown giving to gray, and she the Medusa: I am turned to stone.

She grinned up at me, and the empty sockets looked into my face, and both were devoid of expression, her skull, my face, no sorrow, no pity, no horror, no fear, hollow socket and hollow man, hollowed out by his hand.

FOLIO XII

Arcadia

NOT A DRACHM

OF BLOOD REMAINS IN ME, THAT DOES NOT TREMBLE;

I KNOW THE TRACES OF THE ANCIENT FLAME.

—DANTE, PURGATORIO

Canto 1

ONE

I cannot say to you, This is where it began.

A circle has no starting point.

There are the secrets I have kept.

He encircles me. There is no beginning or end, and time is the lie the mirror tells us.

These are the secrets.

The child in the tattered hat and the boy in the labyrinth and the man beside the ash barrel circle without beginning, without end.

It is hard, he told me once, hard to think about those things we do not think about.

TWO

Deep in the bowels of the Beastie Bin, the man stiffened in my arms. His back arched, his head fell back. Bright red arterial blood boiled from his mouth, blended with stringy globs of black, dead tissue—the remnants of his esophagus, I think—and then he died.

I lowered his body to the floor. Dropped the blade into my pocket. Ran a bloody hand through my hair, still gelled, though no longer so stylishly.

Bring me to it!

I already have.

I knew what he meant, knew where the creature lay hidden: I’d transcribed Warthrop’s notes on the creature. Disaster had been averted—all was not lost—but I would need something to put it in. I returned to the Locked Room and grabbed the burlap sack. The monster wasn’t going anywhere soon. There might be more thieves scurrying about the Beastie Bin, well-armed, desperate thieves at that, but I felt no anxiety, no sense of urgency. I didn’t even bother to pick up the revolver before I went to fetch the sack.

I strolled back to the corridor where I’d left him, turned the corner, and pulled up short: A man was kneeling beside the body. A few feet beyond, an indistinct figure hovered in the shadows. Now, what was the reason I hadn’t picked up that damned revolver?

The man rose. The gun I had abandoned came up. I raised my hands and said, “It’s me, Warthrop.”

The figure standing behind him rushed out of the shadows. Lilly. She drew up suddenly, seeing my blood-spattered face. “Will! Are you hurt?”

Warthrop brushed her aside and yanked the empty sack from my hand.

“Where is it?” he growled.

“Right here,” I answered. I pulled the switchblade from my pocket and offered it to him. “I’ll trade you,” I said.

He understood at once. With a curt nod he took the knife, handed me the bag, and returned to the body. I squatted down beside him. Lilly watched us, puzzled, arms folded over her chest.

“Adolphus is dead,” I told the monstrumologist as he ripped open the man’s shirt to expose his torso.

“So I understand,” Warthrop grunted. He flicked open the knife. Pressed the tip just beneath the sternum. Squared his shoulders. “Are you ready?”