The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(11)

I looked away; its remaining eye, black and lidless, frozen by death into an unblinking stare, seemed to be gazing directly back at me: I could see my slight frame reflected within that oversized orb.

The doctor stopped pacing upon my arrival and stared at me with open mouth, as if startled by my presence after shouting for me to join him.

“Will Henry!” he said. “Where have you been?”

I started to say, “Eating as you told me, sir,” but he cut me off.

“Will Henry, what is our enemy?”

His eyes were bright, the color in his cheeks high, symptoms of his peculiar mania that I had seen a dozen times before. On its face, the answer to his question-barked in a tone more reminiscent of a command-was obvious. I pointed a quivering finger at the suspended Anthropophagus.

“Nonsense!” he said with a laugh. “Enmity is not a natural phenomenon, Will Henry. Is the antelope the lion’s enemy? Does the moose or elk swear undying animosity for the wolf? We are but one thing to the Anthropophagi: meat. We are prey, not enemies.

“No, Will Henry, our enemy is fear. Blinding, reason-killing fear. Fear consumes the truth and poisons all the evidence, leading us to false assumptions and irrational conclusions. Last night I allowed the enemy to overcome me; it blinded me to the glaring truth that our situation is not as dire as fear had led me to believe.”

“It’s not?” I asked, though I failed to see the wisdom in his judgment. Did not the beast hanging from the ceiling give the lie to his assertion?

“The typical Anthropophagi pod consists of twenty to twenty-five breeding females, a handful of juveniles, and one alpha male!”

He waited for my reaction, grinning foolishly, eyes sparkling. When he saw I did not share in his relief and exultation, the doctor hurried on.

“Don’t you see, Will Henry? There could not be more than two or three others. A breeding population in the vicinity of New Jerusalem is impossible!”

He recommenced his pacing, incessantly running his fingers through his thick hair, and as he spoke, my presence faded from his consciousness as light fades from the autumnal sky.

“This one fact gave birth to my fear, a fear that aborted all other-extremely pertinent-evidence. Yes, it is a fact that a typical pod has up to thirty members. But it is equally true that Anthropophagi are not native to the Americas. There has not been a single sighting of the species on this continent since its discovery; no remains or other evidence of its existence here has ever been found; and there is no corresponding legend or myth about them in the native traditions.”

He ceased his circuit and whirled upon me.

“Do you see it now, Will Henry?”

“I-I think so, sir.”

“Nonsense!” he cried. “Clearly you do not! Do not lie to me, Will Henry. To me or to anyone else-ever. Lying is the worst kind of buffoonery!”

“Yes, sir.”

“We must couple the fact that they are not native to these shores with the fact that they are extremely aggressive. A breeding population could not have gone unnoticed, simply because we are lacking one thing. And what is that one thing, Will Henry?”

He did not wait for my answer, perhaps understanding that I had no answer.

“Victims! They must have food, obviously, to thrive, yet there have been no reports of attacks, no sightings, no evidence, direct or indirect, of their presence here beyond that.” He jabbed a finger at the beast on the hook. “And that,” he said, swinging the finger round to the covered corpse on the bench. “Hence their numbers are not great, could not be great. So you see, Will Henry, how our enemy, fear, makes the impossible possible and the unreasonable perfectly reasonable! No. We have a case of a recent immigration, this male and perhaps one-no more than two, I would fathom-breeding females. The great mystery is not in their numbers, but how they came to be here. They are not amphibious; they did not swim here. They don’t have wings; they did not fly here. So how did they come to be here? We must answer that question, Will Henry, once tonight’s business is transacted. Now, where is the list?”

“The list, sir?”

“Yes, yes, the list, the list, Will Henry. Why do you stare at me like that? Am I a lunatic, Will Henry? Do I speak in tongues?”

“I don’t-I haven’t seen-you’ve given me no list, sir.”

“We can’t lose our focus now, Will Henry. Losing our focus will more than likely cost us our lives. Even one or two females are extremely dangerous. Much like the lion, it is the female to be feared, not the indolent male, who often feeds on the carcass after the females have labored for the kill.”

He snatched a piece of paper from the covered chest of the dead girl. “Ah, here it is. Right here, Will Henry, where someone laid it.” His tone was slightly accusatory, as if he could prove, given enough time and evidence, that it was I who had laid it there. He shoved it in my direction.

“Here, pack it up quickly and put it by the back door. Snap to, Will Henry!”

I took the list from him. His handwriting was atrocious, but I had worked for him long enough to be able to decipher it. I bounded up the stairs and began the scavenger hunt, and a scavenger hunt it was, for the doctor was only a bit more gifted at organization than he was at cooking. It took nearly ten minutes, for example, to find his revolver (it was the first item on the list), which was not in its usual place, the top left-hand drawer of his desk, but on the bookcase behind it. I stuck to it, however, working my way methodically down the list.