The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(61)

I have found it, Will Henry. The thing itself.

I brought the heel of my boot against the ancient wood—it was thrice Warthrop’s age—and the door split apart with a satisfying crack, splintering straight down the middle, and behind me the monstrumologist gave an answering cry, as if I were breaking him in half. I ripped the door from its hinges with my bare hands. A putrid, nauseous stench washed over me, like the exhalation of God’s greatest failure locked in Judecca’s ice, the cloying reek of rotting flesh, the thing itself, he called it, the thing itself.

My eyes adjusted to the gloom below, the perpetual dark of the thing itself, and why had he raised the floor? And why had he painted it a shiny, obsidian black? But it was not paint and it was not the floor, for it moved. It flowed like the muddy sludge left over from a devastating flood. It undulated, black with flashes of brilliant iridescent green.

And then the head appeared, five feet across, flat at the top, for its ancient brain knew what the opening of the door meant, the toothless mouth stretching obscenely open, and seeing the glistening red gullet is like looking into the fiery abyss leading straight to hell, and I do not imagine that I can see myself reflected in its lidless amber eye. I fill it as its fifty-foot body fills the basement. The massive head, red mouth yawning open, rests upon the stairs, too old or too large to come any closer, or perhaps it cannot. Perhaps it has grown too large for its container. No. Not that. Trapped in its amber eye, I realize that the thing itself has lost the reason for its being. It is a shell, a hollow sack with no purpose but to continue one more meaningless day.

“You must understand,” its twin said behind me. “Can you understand, Will? I couldn’t just . . . It was unthinkable . . . unendurable. . . . It is the last of its kind. The last of its kind!”

“It died in the Monstrumarium,” I said. I could not free myself from the amber eye.

“No. I found it afterward buried in the rubble. Acosta- Rojas’s body had shielded it from the debris.”

“You didn’t bring it back here, though.”

“No, that was much later—after you moved away.”

“And never told me.”

“For the same reason I lied to you then. It is precious beyond price, and the fewer who knew, the better—for the world, Will, and for it. It is the last of its kind! When Acosta-Rojas told me he’d found it—”

“Yes, yes,” I snapped, held still by the amber eye. “He told me. You forced him to hand it over—you threatened to kill him if he didn’t.”

“No! I saved him—or tried to—just as I tried to save Beatrice—as I tried to save you—”

“Save me from what? Never mind. What does it matter now?” Filled with disgust and loathing, captive in the amber eye. “You cannot lie your way out of this one, Warthrop. I have it from his own lips: You offered him his life for the prize.”

“I offered to save his life. The fool had let it out, what he’d found—the news had already reached certain unsavory quarters. He was afraid. And I was afraid that it would be lost. And it is a thing that can never be lost. What choice did he give me?”

I wrenched myself free of the eye and whirled about. In two strides I was upon him. I yanked him up; the chair clattered to the floor. He was wasted down to nothing, bones no more substantial than a bird’s. I could have hurled him a hundred yards.

“Yes, let us speak of choices! Did she see it? Is that why you murdered her? To protect it from the world?”

“I didn’t kill her!” he screeched. “The ridiculous woman’s curiosity got the better of her—she opened the door and went too far down the stairs. Too far, Will! I pulled her from its mouth, but it was too late. Too late! And then what was I to do? Who could I tell? No, no. Not our fault. Her fault, Will. Her fault!”

I flung him to the floor. He curled into a ball; he did not try to get up. His father had been found this way, curled up like a fetus in its mother’s womb. Ending as he began.

“Too late,” I gasped. The smell of death loitered in the room. The cold held it still. “You said it was too late. Too late for what?”

“There is no way out,” he whimpered. “I cannot kill it—it is the last of its kind. I cannot return it to the wild—how could such a thing be accomplished?”

“You could give it away. There are a hundred universities and—”

“No!” he cried, striking his fist upon the floor. “Never! It is mine! It belongs to me!”

“Does it?” I knelt beside him. His hands were folded up, tucked beneath his chin. His eyes were wide and frightened: the hunted cowering in the brush, the child sleepless in the dark. “There is a captive here, but it isn’t at the bottom of those stairs. It has swallowed you already.”

“The thing itself, Will Henry. The thing itself! The thing to which there is no human answer. The thing I’ve hunted all these many years, the thing I was chasing—until it caught me!”

He seized my wrist. He pulled me close.

“You are the one. You have always been the one. You see where I am afraid to look. You are my eyes in the dark places. Look, then, and tell me what you see.”

I nodded. I thought I understood. I was his eyes. What did I see? Open, expectant mouth. White lamb with skittering black eyes. And the Sibyl, blessed and cursed. What would you?