The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(102)

“Awaale is stronger, Dr. Warthrop,” I said gently. “You should let him—”

“And you should keep your mouth shut,” he growled. “I did not come all this way… I did not sacrifice what I have sacrificed… I did not endure that which I’ve endured…”

Awaale leapt from the boat a dozen yards from the beach, wrapped the rope around his powerful forearm, and pulled us the rest of the way, until the hull of the dinghy bumped against the bottom.

There was no rest upon our landing. There was no celebratory moment. Awaale hauled the boat out of the surf, and we quickly unloaded our supplies—the large rucksack containing the provisions and ammunition (Captain Russell had generously loaned Awaale his rifle), a lamp to light our way in the dark, and the doctor’s field case, the latter two entrusted to me. We set off at once toward Gishub, a small collection of stone buildings clustered at the foot of the towering cliffs that marked the edge of the Diksam Plateau.

“Will Henry, walk a little in front and keep the light low,” the doctor instructed. “Awaale, step carefully. If you see something that looks like a jellyfish, it probably isn’t. When we reach the village, touch nothing—nothing—without putting on a pair of gloves first.”

“Gloves, dhaktar?”

“Gishub has either been abandoned or overcome. I see no other possibility.”

Awaale whispered to me, “Gloves, walaalo?”

“To protect you from the pwdre ser,” I said.

“Pwdre ser?”

“The rot of stars,” I answered.

“Death,” the monstrumologist clarified.

The way became steep, the ground hard. Before we’d come within a hundred yards of the first building, I smelled it—Awaale did too. He covered his mouth and nose, shuddering with revulsion: Gishub had not been abandoned; it had been overcome.

“Xumaato!” came his muffled voice from behind his large hand. With the other he quickly crossed himself.

Warthrop suddenly rushed forward, toward a building on the western end of the little village, commanding me to follow closely with the light. Stones had been piled against the doorway, blocking the entrance. The smell of rotting flesh permeated the atmosphere around the barrier; it seeped through the cracks between the hastily stacked rocks. The monstrumologist donned a pair of gloves and tore into the rocks. When the makeshift wall was halfway down, Warthrop seized the lamp from my hand and swung it through the opening. ="0em" width="1em">It had been a curing house for fish. The last catch still hung in rows from the low ceiling; the blank, dead eyes of the fish glowed ghastly yellow in the lamplight. Scattered about the floor were several corpses—I counted fourteen in all—in various stages of decomposition. No more a curing house, now it was a charnel house.

The doctor ordered me to put on gloves and bade me to follow him with the light.

“Stay out here,” he ordered Awaale before we stepped inside. “Shoot anything that moves.”

There was no question what had delivered these corpses to the makeshift tomb. While I held the light, the monstrumologist examined their eyes—those that still had eyes—and they stared sightlessly back at him with irises the size of dimes—Oculus Dei, the eyes of God inanimate. The same sharp-tipped bony growths that had erupted over the entirety of Mr. Kendall’s body protruded through their pale papery skin. The same exposed, swollen muscles and yellowish rock-hard claws for nails. The doctor puzzled over several corpses whose bodies appeared to have blown apart, spraying the walls and ceiling with their pulverized innards. A woman who’d already given up her face to the progeny of the flies that swarmed around our heads, whose skull grinned wetly at the doctor as he bent to examine her—brushing the maggots away with his little finger—gave away her particular causa mortis. Her cheekbones had been shattered, her skull crushed, her chin broken in half. She had not perished from the pwdre ser; she had been beaten to death.

Beside her a man lay on his side holding a child to his chest. It was a touching tableau, until I saw the claws imbedded to their roots in the child’s back and the stringy bits of its dried flesh hanging from the man’s elongated incisors. The child exhibited no signs of exposure; she had been healthy when the man had pulled her into his arms.

“It is wondrous, Will Henry,” breathed the monstrumologist over the maddening hum of the flies. “I feared we might be wrong—that Socotra was not the locus ex magnificum. But we have found it, haven’t we? And is it not wondrous?”

I agreed with him. It was wondrous.

He insisted on inspecting the rest of the village, so house by house we went, with Awaale standing guard at the door of each. Some we found relatively undisturbed, as if the inhabitants had simply stepped out for a few moments and were expecting to return. Other houses displayed evidence of violent struggle—tables overturned, cookware shattered, clothing strewn across the floor, blood splashed upon the walls and splattered in cone-shaped patterns across the ceilings.

We came to one house that appeared abandoned, but as we turned to leave, a pile of rags in the corner quivered and a small hand emerged, clawing impotently in the direction of the lamp.

The doctor drew out his revolver. He motioned for me to stay back and eased toward the squirming pile. The little fingers undulated, fell to the floor, and commenced to scrape across the hard stone with a horrid, dry scratching sound. Standing as far back as possible, Warthrop leaned down and carefully unpacked the makeshift cocoon, until he revealed a child, a boy no more than five, I guessed, in the final stages of exposure, with huge black eyes, more marsupial than human, and a suppurating face split apart by dozens of thornlike growths. He was na**d from the waist up; his trousers hung about him in tatters. Long lacerations ran down his chest, like the mauling marks of a tiger; the wounds wept with fresh blood, and his lips shone with it and his nails dripped with it, and I remembered what the doctor had told me and realized that the boy was the last of the living and he had turned upon himself; he was eating himself alive.