Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(28)

Whatever those green stones are. The ones in the leaded box under the house.

Matthew Granger, the sick boy. He collects ocean glass and sea baubles for a barrel inside the shop’s main door. The connection is an obvious one, and easy to make. He’s picked up something more dangerous than glass, and it’s made him into . . . into whatever he’s becoming.

Or however it works.

The stones cause change, but they also lure. Are they luring something in to those who touch them? What a hideous thought. But now that I’ve had it, I’ll see what my library has to offer with regard to possession. And if mine won’t suffice, I’ll pack up a bag and make the trip to Providence.

Perhaps Emma could come; it’s not even twenty miles. We could spend the night away from home, and it might do us good.





? ? ?


But I’ve distracted myself. Here is a note, to bring me back on course.

I will jot this down now, so I do not lose the train of thought and forget to return to it later: Is it possible that the creatures who haunt the grounds of Maplecroft from time to time . . . might actually be the end result of this weird malady? It’s almost too awful to consider. They could have been people, once. I might have killed half a dozen of them now.

If so, then the transformation eradicates any indication of humanity, save for the general shape of two arms, two legs, and a head atop a torso.

I thought that my father’s case, and Mrs. Borden’s case, were the end progression of this infliction. I might have been wrong, but even knowing this, I regret nothing. I would not have seen either one of them . . . no, not even my stepmother . . . reduced to such a state. And besides, they would’ve taken steps to murder me long before they ever reached that point.

The signs had already begun—and as it was, I constantly feared for my life, and for Emma’s as well. That’s why I sent her away, in those last days. I know everyone thinks it was because of William, but he was the least of our problems. William was only a conniving bastard, greedy for an inheritance he hadn’t earned or deserved. He would’ve tried to bring us all down with a scandal, but he wouldn’t have sickened or murdered anyone.

I write this with reasonable certainty but not, upon reflection, the utmost confidence. The truth is I never knew him well—only well enough to know that I didn’t wish to know him better.





? ? ?


The more that I think about it, the more I wonder if Emma’s proposal wouldn’t be a good idea . . . a little sit-down chat with Doctor Seabury. If anyone else in town has been suffering such ailments, he’d be the first to know; and the fact that he mentions Matthew Granger as a case resembling my stepmother’s suggests that it’s the most advanced manifestation he’s seen so far.

(Apart from hers, I mean.)

Now that he’s recognized that something so pernicious is afoot, he might be better primed to see earlier symptoms . . . things which would otherwise go unnoticed, or unrecognized as part of a larger pathology.

There’s much we might learn from each other, but it’s a terrible risk.

If he decides that I’m daft, or engaged in illegal activities, he could hand me over to the authorities. It could mean the end of Maplecroft, the end of my laboratory. The end of what slim progress I’ve made against the creeping threat.

If I am removed from my studies, then truly nothing would stand between Fall River and whatever evil thing insinuates itself into our midst.

Not even me and my axe.

(And certainly not even Emma, with her steady, intelligent force of will. Given her state of health, she might very well be sent away to a sanatorium and left to die in clean white sheets, surrounded by men and women who owe her only professional tending and politeness, without any love or interest. I couldn’t live with myself, if it were to come to that.)





? ? ?


The question, then, is can I trust the good doctor?

I phrase it that way because I do not doubt his integrity, only his suspension of disbelief. A reasonable man might hear my tale and believe I’ve become a violent lunatic, if I wasn’t one before.

But he did see Mrs. Borden. He does see a connection between her malady and the growing problem in town. It isn’t just Matthew Granger, and it isn’t just my father and stepmother. It’s the blind, sticky-handed, many-toothed things that creep the streets when no one’s looking. I’ve caught six. No, seven. Last week’s was number seven.

How many have I missed?

I can only make guesses. I suspect that two still roam, in the evenings, surely. I don’t know if there’s any good reason they can’t come and go during the day, but their instinct leads them to darkness. And it leads them to kill.

Three people have been found dead in the last six months. Two others have gone missing. I suspect two other deaths were related, though the persons in question were elderly, and might have succumbed to causes more natural than these.

This is not a large town. These are too many people, lost in the night, turning up again (if they do so at all) drowned and waterlogged, with strange cuts and punctures. With pieces of flesh removed from their bodies in great chunks.

The papers printed stories that only alluded to these particulars, leaving me with insufficient evidence of anything except a streak of bad luck befalling my hometown. I wish I could’ve studied the bodies firsthand, but can you imagine? Me, of all people? Expressing eager interest in the investigation of a mutilated corpse?