The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(20)

At the last instant before he landed on top of me, I brought up my hands. They broke easily through him; my fingers tangled with his ribs. If I’d had my wits about me, I would have thought to push just a bit more, find his heart and squeeze until it burst. Perhaps, though, it was a matter of timing, not acumen. There was no time to think.

In the time it took for me to realize that this inhuman face would be the last face I would see, the bullet punched through the back of his head, blowing out an apple-size hole as it came out the other side before burying itself in the carpet not quite a quarter inch from my ear. The body jerked in my hands. I felt—or thought I felt—the protest of his heart, an angry push against my fingers wrapped tight around his ribs, the way a desperate prisoner grasps the bars of his cell, before it stopped beating. The light did not go out of his eyes. There hadn’t been any light in them to begin with. I was still trapped in those eyes—sometimes I think I am trapped still—in their unseeing sight.

Warthrop heaved the body away—once he had freed it from my maddened grip—tossed the gun aside, and knelt beside me.

I reached for him.

“No! No, Will Henry, no!”

He lunged out of my reach; my bloody fingertips brushed his coattails.

“Do… not… touch—anything!” He held up his hand as if to demonstrate. “Are you injured?”

I shook my head. I still had not found my voice.

“Do not move. Keep your hands away from your body. I will be right back. Do you understand, Will Henry?”

He scrambled to his feet and raced toward the kitchen. It is human, the compulsion to do the very thing you’ve been cautioned not to do. The handkerchief was still tied around my face. I felt as if I were slowly being suffocated, and all I desired was to yank it down.

A moment later he was back, wearing a fresh pair of gloves, and he tugged the mask down as if he knew without my telling him the immediate cause of my distress. I took a long, shuddering breath.

“Don’t me, don’t move, not yet, not yet,” the monstrumologist whispered. “Careful, careful. Did he hurt you, Will Henry? Did he bite or scratch you?”

I shook my head.

Warthrop studied my face carefully, and then, as abruptly as he returned, he abandoned me again. The hall began to fade into a gray mist. My body was going into shock; suddenly I was terribly cold.

In the distance I hear the plaintive cry of a train’s whistle. The mist parts, and on the platform stands my mother and me, holding hands, and I am very excited.

Is that it, Mother? Is that the train?

I think it is, Willy.

Do you think Father has brought me a present?

If he has not, then he is no longer Father.

I wonder what it could be.

I worry what it could be.

Father has been gone very long this time.

Yes.

How long has it been, Mother?

Very long.

Last time he brought me a hat. A stupid hat.

Now, Willy. It was a very nice hat.

I want him to bring me something special this time.

Special, Willy?

Yes! Something wonderful and special, like the places he goes.

I do not think you would find them so wonderful and special.

I would, and I will! Father says he will take me with him one day, when I’m old enough.

Gripping my hand tightly. And, in the distance, the growl and huff of the locomotive.

You will never be old enough for that, William James Henry.

One day he will take me. He promised he would. One day I will see places other people only dream about.

The train is a living thing; it screeches angrily, complaining of the rails. Black smoke blows grumpily from its stack. The train glares contemptuously at the crowd, the self-important conductor, the porters in their neat white jackets. And it is huge, throbbing with power and restrained rage. It is a huffing, growling, enraged monster, and the boy is thrilled. What boy wouldn’t be?

Look now, Willy. Look for your father. Let’s see who will be the first to spot him.

I see him! I see him! There he is!

No, that isn’t him.

Yes, it—Oh, no, it isn’t.

Keep looking.

There! There he is! Father! Father!

He has lost weight; his dusty clothes, rumpled from travel, hang loosely on his lean frame. He hasn’t shaven in weeks and his eyes are weary, but he is my father. I would know him anywhere.

And here he is! Here is my Will. Come here to me, boy!

I soar a thousand feet into the air; the arms that lift me are thin but strong, and his face turns beneath me, and then my face is pressing into his neck, and it is his smell beneath the grime of the rails.

Father! What did you bring me, Father?

Bring you! Why do you suppose I brought you anything?

Laughing, and his teeth are very bright in his stubbly face. He starts to set me down so he may embrace his wife.

No! Carry me, Father.

Willy, your father is tired.

Carry me, Father!

It’s all right, Mary. I shall carry him.

And the shrill, startling shriek of the monster, the last angry blast of its breath, and I am home at last, in my father’s arms.

Warthrop lifted me from the floor, grimacing from the effort of holding me as far from his body as possible.

“Hold your hands up, Will Henry. And hold them still!”

He carried me into the kitchen. The washtub sat on the floor by the stove, half-filled with steaming hot water. I saw the teakettle on the stove, and I realized, with an odd pang of sadness, that it was the kettle I’d heard whistling, not a train. My mother and father were gone again, swallowed by the gray mist.