The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(5)

“I wonder what Dr. John Kearns would say to that.”

I turned back to her. She recoiled, startled by my angry expression. “I confessed that to you in confidence,” I said.

“And I’ve kept it,” she retorted, defiantly jutting out her chin at me, a gesture echoing her childhood.

“That isn’t the sort of confidence I meant, and you know it. I didn’t kill Kearns to avenge.”

“No.” Her eyes seemed very large in the dim lighting.

“No. Now may we proceed?”

“You’re the one who stopped.”

I took her hand and drew her down the remaining steps. Peered around the corner into the curator’s office. The door was open, the light on. Adolphus was slumped behind his desk, head thrown back, mouth agape. Behind me Lilly whispered, “I won’t go another step until you tell me—”

I turned back. “Very well! I wanted it to be a surprise, but I am your faithful servant, Miss Bates—as I am his—as I am everyone’s, something I’ve proven time and again, even in Kearns’s death. Especially in Kearns’s death . . . It is something unique, an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind something, precious beyond pearls, to a monstrumologist at least, and Warthrop’s greatest prize to date. He’s presenting it at a special assembly of this year’s Congress. After that only God knows what he will do with it.”

“What is it?” Breathless. Scarlet-cheeked. Rising to the balls of her feet. Never more lovely than in that moment.

She knew, like me—and like you—the terrible longing, the hopeless revulsion, the pull of the faceless, nameless thing, the thing I call das Ungeheuer.

The thing we desire and deny. The thing that is you and not-you. The thing that was before you were and will be long after you are gone.

I held out my hand. “Come and see.”

Canto 2

ONE

Come and see.

The boy with the tattered hat two sizes too small and the tall man in the stained white coat and the cold basement floor and the jars filled with amber liquid stacked to the ceiling. The long metal table and the instruments hanging from hooks or lined up like cutlery in shiny trays.

“This is where I conduct the majority of my studies, Will Henry. You must never come down here unless I am present or give you my permission. The most important rule for you to remember is that if it moves, don’t touch it. Ask first. Always ask first. . . .

“Here, I have something for you. It’s your father’s work apron, a bit battle stained, as you can see. . . . Hmm. Careful now or you’ll trip over it. Well. You’ll grow into it.”

On the worktable something squirms inside one of the larger jars. Bulbous-eyed. Gape-mouthed. Sharp-clawed. And the claws scratch against the thick glass.

“What is it that you do here?”

“What do I . . . ?” He is astonished. “What did your father say?”

I have been so many places, Will. I have seen wonders only poets can imagine.

In the glass jar, the nameless thing staring back at me, scratching, scratching against the glass.

And the tall man in the dingy white smock holding forth in a dry, lecturing tone, as one speaking to a vast assemblage of like-minded men in dingy white smocks:

“I am a scientist. A student in a rather peculiar backwater of the natural philosophies called aberrant biology. ‘Monstrumology’ is the common term. I’m surprised your father never told you.”

Dr. Warthrop is a great man engaged in great business. And I shall never turn my back upon him, though the fires of hell itself arise to contend against me.

“You’re a monster hunter,” I said.

“You’re not listening to me. I am a scientist.”

“Who hunts monsters.”

“Who studies certain rare and, yes, dangerous species that are, in general, malevolent toward human beings.”

“Monsters.”

Scratch, scratch, the thing in the jar.

“That is a relative term often misapplied. I am an explorer. I carry a lamp into lightless places. I strive against the dark that others may live in the light.”

And the thing inside the jar, hopelessly clawing against the thick glass.

Scratch, scratch

TWO

There was no light in that tiny alcove into which he shoved me like a box of useless curios inherited from some distant relation. I had begged my father to take me with him on one of his grand adventures with the great Pellinore Warthrop so I might share in the “great business” and see with my own eyes “wonders only poets can imagine.” What I saw in those first few months was neither great nor wonderful. I did, however, get a taste of those fires of hell itself.

It always came just as I was finally falling into a fitful slumber. After hours of my wailing in the utter dark, knowing that when I did fall asleep, exhausted from my inexhaustible grief, I would watch once more my parents dance in the flames—always in that moment, as if he knew somehow, and sometimes I was sure he did, the cry would come, high and shrill and filled with terror: Will Henry! Will Henreeeee!

And down I would climb into the darkened hall and stumble bleary-eyed to his room.

“There you are!” A match sparked; he lit the lamp beside the bed. “What? Why are you staring at me like that? Didn’t your parents teach you it was impolite?”