The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(72)

At that moment Kearns entered from the hall, his countenance as calm as the doctor’s was disturbed, his clothes and hair as neat as the doctor’s disheveled.

“Where is who?” he asked.

“ Kearns! Where the devil have you been?”

“‘From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’ Why?”

“We’ve been loaded up for more than half an hour. They’re waiting for us.”

“What time is?” Kearns made a great show of removing his pocket watch from his vest pocket and opening it.

“Half past ten!”

“Really? As late as that?” He shook the watch beside his ear.

“We won’t be ready if we don’t leave now.”

“But I haven’t eaten anything.” He glanced toward me, and then noticed Malachi at the table, ogling him with mouth half-open.

“Why, hullo there! You must be the poor Stinnet boy. My sincere condolences for your tragic loss. Not the usual way we meet our Maker, but whichever way we go, we always get there! Remember that the next time you fancy putting a bullet into Warthrop’s brain. I try to.”

“There’s no time for breakfast,” insisted Warthrop, his face growing scarlet.

“No time for breakfast! I never hunt on an empty stomach, Pellinore. What are you making over there, Will? Eggs? Two for me, poached, with a bit of toast and coffee, strong mind you-as strong as you can make it!”

He slid into the chair opposite Malachi and granted Warthrop a glimpse of his dazzling orthodontics. “You should eat too, Pellinore. Don’t you ever feed the man, Will Henry?”

“I try, sir.”

“Perhaps he has an intestinal parasite. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I’ll be outside,” said the doctor tightly. “Don’t worry with the washing up, Will Henry. The constable and his men are waiting for us.”

He slammed out the door. Kearns gave me a wink.

“Tense,” he observed. He turned his charcoal eyes upon Malachi. “How close was it?”

“Close?” echoed Malachi. He seemed a bit overwhelmed by the natural force of the hunter’s personality.

“Yes. How close did you come to pulling the trigger and blowing his head off?”

Malachi dropped his eyes to his plate. “I don’t know.”

“No? I’ll put it to you this way, then: At that crystalline moment when you pressed the muzzle into his face, when the bullet was a squeeze of your finger away from blasting his head apart, what did you feel?”

“Afraid,” answered Malachi.

“Really? Hmmm. I suppose, but did you not also feel a certain… oh, how shall I put it? A certain thrill in it too?”

Malachi shook his head, shaken, but also, I think, mystified and strangely compelled.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, you must. That euphoric moment when you hold their life here.” He held up his hand, palm facing us. “And now you are the captain of their destiny, not some ineffable, invisible fairy-tale being. No? Well, I suppose intent has everything to do with it. The will must be there. You didn’t really intend to blow his brains out.”

“I thought I did. And then…” Malachi looked away, unable to finish.

“Nice bit of poetic justice if you had. Though I wouldn’t hold him entirely accountable. And I do wonder, if he had knocked on your door that night and told you, ‘Better get out quick; there’s headless man-eaters on the loose!’ whether your father would have barred the doors or had him carted away to the nearest lunatic asylum.”

“That’s a stupid question,” said Malachi. “Because he didn’t warn him. He didn’t warn anyone.”

“No, it’s a philosophical question,” Kearns corrected him. “Which makes it useless, not stupid.”

The doctor was pacing in the courtyard when we finally stepped outside. O’Brien stood nearby, beside a large wagon already loaded with Kearns ’s crates, the sight of which caused the English dandy to clap his hands and exclaim, “What’s the matter with me? I nearly forgot! Will, Malachi, trot upstairs and fetch my box and bag, the small black bag, that’s the one, and step lively! Be careful with them, particularly the box. It’s quite fragile.”

He had returned the lid and cover, tying down the silken wrap with the same thin rope as before. I set the small black valise on top, and Malachi said, “No, Will; it’ll slide off when we go down the stairs. Here, I’ll slip it over my arm… It’s lighter than I thought it’d be,” he said as we hauled the box down the stairs. “What’s in it?”

I confessed I did not know. I spoke true; I did not know, but I suspected. It was macabre; it was well nigh unthinkable, but this was monstrumology, the science of the unthinkable.

We loaded the box beside the crates, alternately goaded and cautioned by Kearns: “Load it up, load it up, boys!… Not so rough with it; gently! Gently!” Kearns inspected our packing, nodded briskly, and then craned his neck to study the sky. “Let’s hope these clouds clear out, Pellinore. There’s an indispensable full moon tonight.”

The doctor and Kearns rode with O’Brien in the truck; Malachi and I followed on horseback, he astride the doctor’s stallion and I on my little mare. With each inexorable step toward the locus of his family’s slaughter, Malachi grew more withdrawn, his eyes assuming that eerie, faraway stare with which he’d first greeted me in the sanctuary of his father’s church. Did he know it then, in the subterranean recesses of his soul, the fate that awaited him at the fall of night, in that black, lightless chasm beneath the land of the dead? Did he know, deep in his marrow where wordless verity dwells, what the roll of the bones had presaged, and that he now rode upon that dark road to which Kearns had alluded? If so, he did not turn aside. With his head up, his eyes forward, and his back straight, Malachi Stinnet rode on to his doom.