The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(15)

“He’s downstairs in his laboratory, sir.”

“Trying to find a cure?”

“I… I don’t know, Mr. Kendall.”

“What do you mean?” he cried. “Is he a doctor or isn’t he?”

“He is but he isn’t.”

“What? What did you say? He is but he isn’t?”

“He is not a medical doctor.”

“Not a medical doctor? What sort of doctor is he, then?”

“He is a monstrumologist, sir.”

“A monster…”

“Mon strum…”

“Monstrum…”

“—ologist.”

“Ologist?”

“Monstrumologist,” I said.

“Monstrumologist! That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard of. What sort of nonsense is that?”

“It’s a scientist,” I said. “A doctor of natural philosophy.”

“Oh, good Christ!” he moaned loudly. “I have been kidnapped by a philosopher!” His chest heaved. “Why am I tied to this bed? Why aren’t you taking me to hospital?”

I made no reply. I did not think it would serve any purpose to tell him the truth. I caressed the barrel of the doctor’s gun nervously. Why was Kendall tied to the bed? Why had the monstrumologist given me the gun?

“Hello?” he called.

“I’m here.”

“I can’t feel my hands or feet. Be a good lad and help me.”

“I—I can’t untie you, Mr. Kendall.”

“Did I ask you to untie me? Just loosen the knots a bit. The rope’s cutting into my skin.”

“I will ask the doctor when he comes back.”

“Comes back? Where did he go?”

“He’s in the laboratory,” I reminded him.

“I am a British citizen!” he cried shrilly. “My uncle is a member of Parliament! I will prosecute your ‘doctor’ for assault and battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and torture of a foreign national! They’ll hang him for certain, and you with him!”

“He is only trying to help, Mr. Kendall.”

“Help? By stripping me bare and tying me up? By refusing to take me to a proper doctor?”

The revolver’s skin was cold beneath my fingers. Where was the dawn? The sun would rise soon; it had to.

“I’m cold,” he whimpered. “Can’t you at least put some covers on me?”

I gnawed on my bottom lip. The man was shivering uncontrollably, teeth literally chattering in his head. What should I do? The doctor hadn’t forbid covering him, but I was sure if he’d wanted him covered he would have done it himself. It would clearly ease his suffering, if only by a little—and wasn’t that my duty, my simple human obligation?

I laid down the gun and pulled the coverlet from the closet. As I bent to spread it over his quivering form, I caught a whiff of a familiar odor, one that I had smelled many times before—the cloyingly sweet smell of putrefying flesh.

I raised my head, bringing my eyes to the level of his right hand, and saw that the skin had gone from a rosy red to a light gray. It seemed almost translucent. I imagined I could see right down to his bones.

The hand that had touched it, the thing that Warthrop had called beautiful, was beginning to decompose.

“I am dying.”

I swallowed hard and said nothing.

“Squeezed, that’s how I feel. Like a giant fist squeezing me, every inch, down to my vry bones.”

“The doctor will do everything he can,” I promised him.

“I don’t want to die. Please. Please don’t let me die.”

His rotting fingers clawed uselessly at the empty air.

Chapter Five: “The Singular Cure”

He slipped into semiconsciousness—not awake, not quite asleep.

Dawn came. The doctor did not come with it. He didn’t appear until an hour later. I jumped in my chair when the door opened; I was exhausted, my nerves shot.

“Why did you cover him?” he demanded.

“I didn’t touch him. He was cold,” I added defensively.

Warthrop peeled off the coverlet and let it drop to the floor.

“It was my mother’s. Now I shall have to burn it.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

He waved my apology away. “As a precaution—the precise toxicity of pwdre ser is unknown. How long has he been out?”

“About an hour and a half.”

“‘About’? Haven’t you been keeping notes?”

“I—I didn’t have anything to write with, sir.”

“Will Henry, I thought I had impressed upon you the urgency of this case, one of the most—if not the most—important discoveries in the history of biology—aberrant or otherwise. We must be meticulous. We must not allow our personal failures or biases to compromise our observations.… When did this grayish discoloration begin to manifest itself?”

“Shortly after you went downstairs,” I answered, my face hot with shame. I had not noted the hour. “It started with his hand—”

“Which hand?”

“His right hand, sir.”

“Hmmm. Stands to reason. It’s spreading rapidly, then.”