The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(103)

Whitechapel. I had heard that name, in the parlor of the house on Motley Hill six months before: Dr. John J. J. Schmidt of Whitechapel.

The doctor said nothing as I read the gruesome article, remained silent for a few seconds when I looked up at him, and it was I who at last broke that awful silence.

“Do you think…,” I asked. There was no need to finish the question.

“What do I think?” he said rhetorically. “I think Malachi should have taken him up on his offer.”

After dressing and picking over the profoundly disappointing potato pancakes (he left the sausage untouched), the doctor summoned me to the basement. It was time for my bimonthly checkup.

I sat upon the tall metal stool. He shone a bright light into my eyes, took my blood pressure and temperature, measured my pulse, examined the back of my throat. He drew a vial of blood from my arm. I watched, quite accustomed to the ritual by this point, as he squirted a small amount of iodine solution into the tube and swirled the concoction for a few seconds. You will have to know how to do this, Will Henry, he had told me. We will not be together forever.

“Eyedropper,” he said, and I pressed the implement into his open palm. He squeezed a drop of the bloody mixture onto a slide, placed another slide on top of the first, and then slid the sample under the microscope’s lens. I held my breath as he bent to examine the outcome. He grunted, motioned for me to have a look.

“See those oblong black specks?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, I think so.”

“Yes you do or yes you think you do? Be precise, Will Henry!”

“I see them. Yes, sir.”

“Those are the larvae.”

I swallowed. The shapes resembled tiny obsidian orbs, thousands of dead little black eyes, swimming in a single drop of my blood.

The doctor removed his gloves and said matter-of-factly, “Well, it appears the population has remained more or less stable.” He flipped open the file beside the microscope, marked Subject: W. J. Henry/ Diag: B. arawakus Infestation and scribbled a sloppy note under the date.

“Is that a good thing?” I asked.

“Hmm? Yes, it is a good thing. No one knows why in some cases arawakus maintains perfect symbiosis with its mammalian host, giving the host unnaturally long life, and in other cases overwhelms the body with the sheer volume of its numbers. Singularly curious is your case, Will Henry, for it falls in the former category, whereas clearly your father’s did not. There is a theory much too complex for me to explain adequately in all its elegant detail, from an excellent paper written by one of my colleagues at the Society, which, briefly put, postulates that what happened to your father was a means of propagation, a way for the parasite to find a new host.”

“A new host,” I echoed. “Me.”

He shrugged. “I doubt it happened the night of the fire. You weren’t near him when they made their ill-timed exit. It is only a theory; the method by which they infest a host is not known.”

“But it was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“Well, I doubt your father infected you on purpose!”

“No, that is not what I… I mean, sir, what happened to my father. It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

He frowned. “What are you asking, Will Henry? Are you suggesting your father was intentionally infected?”

I made no reply, since no reply was necessary. The doctor placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “Look at me, Will Henry. You know I do not lie. You know that about me, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am not the midwife to your affliction, if affliction and not boon it turns out to be. I do not know how or when your father picked up this contagion, though undoubtedly it was a by-product of his service to me. In that sense, I suppose, it was no accident what happened to him and what is now happening to you. You are his son, Will Henry, and as his son you bear his burden.” He looked away. “As do all sons.”

Later that same afternoon, the doctor retreated to his study to prepare a paper he intended to present at the annual congress of the Society, cautioning me he was not to be disturbed. The week before he had received by post an early draft of a monograph to be delivered by a fellow monstrumologist-the chief presiding officer of the Society, no less-forwarded to him anonymously by a concerned colleague, who urged Warthrop to compose a public reply.

I vouch it is no hyperbole to aver that the very future of our discipline is at stake, wrote his friend. And I can think of no better man to contest our esteemed president’s alarming and dangerous disquisitions.

After perusing the draft of the venerable Dr. Abram von Helrung, Warthrop found himself in complete agreement with his colleague on both counts: The president’s paper was dangerous and there was no better man to avert the anticipated catastrophe than Warthrop himself. He set about the task with his usual single-mindedness. On that particular afternoon, he was working on the twelfth version of his reply to von Helrung.

While he toiled away in the vineyard of his considerable intellectual acumen, I retreated to my little loft to change for a quick trip to town. My purpose was simple: to pick up some raspberry scones from the baker’s, for I knew he would ask for one when he awoke on the morrow and would not be able, for the life of him, to understand why the sconeless condition persisted despite my having knowledge of the deficiency.

I did not notice it at first in my haste (the baker’s would be closing in less than an hour). I had changed and was reaching for my little hat upon its peg, when I happened to glance down and see it hanging on the bedpost: It was a brand-new hat, noticeably larger than the tattered, mud-stained cousin now in my quivering hand. What was this? I picked it up, turned it over, and saw embroidered on the inner lining, in golden thread, my initials: W.J.H.