The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(12)

Bowie knife. Torches. Specimen bags.

Gunpowder. Matches. Stakes.

Kerosene. Rope. Medical bag. Shovel.

Try as I might to follow the doctor’s advice-to focus solely upon the task at hand-the meaning of the list, its import, I found impossible to ignore: We were preparing for an expedition.

And all the while, as I scurried up and down stairs, in and out of rooms, digging through closets and cupboards, cabinets and drawers, the doctor’s voice floated from below, shrill and ethereal, “Will Henry? Will Henry, what is taking you so long? Snap to, Will Henry. Snap to!”

At the stroke of midnight I stood by the back door, using a bit of twine to tie a bundle of wooden stakes, to the accompaniment of the doctor’s perpetual harangue, “It is not as though I place unreasonable demands upon you, Will Henry. Have I ever placed unreasonable demands upon you?” A sharp rapping upon the door interrupted our tasks, my tying, his upbraiding. “Doctor!” I called softly at the precise moment he appeared at the top of the stairs. “Someone is at the door!”

“Then answer it, Will Henry,” he said impatiently. He stripped off his bloody smock and tossed it onto a chair.

Erasmus Gray, the old grave-robber who had called at almost the same hour the previous night, slouched upon the stoop, wearing the same battered wide-brimmed hat. Behind him I spied the same boney nag and rickety cart, half-devoured by the fog. I had the distinctly unpleasant sensation of a dreamer entering for the second time the same nightmare, and for a moment I was sure, absolutely sure, that another grotesque cargo lay in the back of his old cart.

Upon my opening the door he removed his hat and squinted at my upturned face, his rheumy eyes disappearing behind their casing of withered flesh.

“Tell the doctor I’ve come,” he said in a low voice.

There was no need for an announcement. The doctor stepped up behind me, flung wide the door, and pulled Erasmus Gray into the kitchen. And pulling was necessary, for the old man’s tread was reluctant; his feet literally dragged across the ground. And who might judge him? Of the three who stood now in that kitchen, only one was looking forward to the hours ahead, and it was not old Erasmus Gray or the doctor’s young assistant.

“Load the cart, Will Henry,” the doctor directed me, as he, with firm hand upon the old man’s elbow, guided-or forced-Erasmus toward the basement steps.

The spring air was cool and moist, the fog a gentle kiss upon my cheeks. When I approached with the first load, the horse dipped its head in acknowledgment, as one beast of burden to its brother. I paused to pat its neck. It studied me with its large soulful eyes, and I thought of the beast hanging upon the hook in the basement, and its eyes, blank and dark and filled with nothingness as acute as the space between the stars. Was it merely the emptiness of death that was so unnerving about those eyes-or something more profound? I had seen myself reflected in the dead, soulless eyes of the Anthropophagus-how different my reflection seemed in the eyes of this kind and gentle animal before me! Was it merely the difference between the warm look of life and the cold stare of death? Or was my image presented to me as the particular beholder perceived me-to one as companion, to the other as prey?

As I dropped the last bundle of supplies into the cart, the doctor and the grave-robber appeared, bearing the body of the dead girl between them, still wrapped in her makeshift shroud of bed linen. I stepped quickly out of their way and eased toward the warm and comforting light streaming through the open door. A pale hand protruded from the white draping, the index finger extended, as if she were pointing at the ground.

“Lock the door, Will Henry,” the doctor called softly to me, though his order was hardly necessary. I was halfway to the door, the key already in hand.

There was no room for me in the little seat in the front of the old cart, so I clambered into the back with the body. The old man’s head whipped around, and he frowned at the sight of me huddled next to the shrouded girl. He cast a baleful eye upon the doctor.

“The boy is coming with us?”

Dr. Warthrop nodded impatiently. “Of course he is.”

“Begging your pardon, doctor, but this is no business for a child.”

“Will Henry is my assistant,” the doctor replied with a smile. He gave my head a paternal pat. “A child by outward appearance, perhaps, but mature beyond his years and hardier than he might seem to the unfamiliar eye. His services are indispensable to me.”

His tone made clear he would brook no argument from the likes of Erasmus Gray. The old man had returned his gaze to my huddled form as I crouched, shivering, hugging my knees to my chest in the spring chill, and I thought I saw pity in his eyes, a profound empathy for my plight, and not just the immediate plight of being forced to accompany my guardian on this dark errand. Perhaps he intuited the full cost of being “indispensable” to Dr. Pellinore Warthrop.

And as for me, I was remembering my naïve and desperate plea to my father nary a year previously, who, ironically, now shared the same neighborhood as the dead girl lying beside me: I want to go with you. Please, please take me with you!

The old man turned away, but with a disapproving cluck and a shake of his ancient pate. He flicked the reins, the cart jerked forward, and our dark pilgrimage commenced.

Now, reader, many a year has passed since the grisly events of that terrible spring night in 1888.

Yet in all those years hardly a day has gone by without my thinking of it with wonder and ever-blossoming dread, the awful dread of a child when the first seeds of disillusionment are planted. We may delay it. We may strive with all our might to put off the bitter harvest, but threshing day always dawns.