Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(34)

I nodded back at them, and carried onward to the consultation room at the end of the hall. A heavyset woman with a large bag begged my pardon, and turned sideways to pass me; I leaned against the wall to let her proceed, wondering at all this commotion, and what it meant. Knowing that it could not be good.

Matthew was dead, and Felicity was “very” dead. That was all I knew, and it wasn’t enough to explain the nervousness that permeated the building. The hall was clogged with it, the unhappy vibrations of fear, confusion, and doubt.

The consultation room was on my left. Inside it, I found Ebenezer Hamilton seated between two sturdy men who were either guarding him or comforting him, or performing a bit of both as necessary. Ebenezer was covered in gore, his hands quivering, his eyes red. He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve—which belonged to a thick-knit sweater like the old mariners often wore. In this little gesture, he managed to smear blood across his face. More of it, I should say.

He looked up when I entered.

“Doctor Seabury,” he said, his voice choked with tears and phlegm. “I thank you for coming, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry about . . . about . . . the hour . . .”

“Never mind the clock, Mr. Hamilton. I’m happy to help. But please, wouldn’t you . . . or wouldn’t someone tell me what’s happened?”

He released a wretched, racked sob and once more wiped at his nose. “I don’t know how to tell it,” he said, looking down, then up at me with a pleading, pitiful gaze. It was an entreaty, I knew—a silent petition that I should please, for the love of God, believe whatever he said next.

Gently, I told him, “You must try. And I will listen, and you can tell me the story however you think is best.”

He nodded wildly, and it didn’t mean “yes.” It only meant that he was glad for permission to sound entirely outrageous, if the circumstances called for it. “Doctor, I asked for you to come on out, because you’d seen Matty a time or two. And . . . and you knew, better than anyone but us, how strange the whole thing’d got.”

“I only wish I’d been able to help.”

“No one could’ve helped, no one but the Lord above. No one.” He repeated himself, alternating now between nodding his head and shaking it. “You couldn’t have known. Nobody could. Nobody could explain it, neither. Nobody. I can’t. I don’t. I just . . .”

Again, very gently—as if I were speaking to a child distracted by a broken arm, I tried to direct his focus. “No one is asking you to explain the matter. The world is full of nonsensical events and bizarre occurrences, understood only to God Himself. But you must tell us simply what happened. Start only at the beginning, and share only what you can. Begin with Matthew,” I prompted. “Last I saw him, he was desperately unwell, if you’ll recall.”

I made a point of meeting his eyes.

He and I were now the only two men living who knew exactly how bad Matthew’s condition had become. They’d been right to hide him away. At the time, I’d had doubts . . . but those doubts were withering, the longer I sat in that small, damp, cold room. I wish they’d done more than hide him; I wish they’d sent him away, somewhere far from the ocean—far from Fall River . . . for all the good that wishing did me.

“The poor lad was confined to his bedroom,” he said cautiously. He did not mention that they’d bound him to the bed, or say that they’d covered all the windows with black cloth because of the way he used to scream when the sunlight touched him, as I’d learned in one of my subsequent visits. “And he was in there still, this evening. Late this evening, a bit after midnight, I’d say.”

He stalled. I prodded him further. “Very good. You and your wife were home, alive and well, and Matthew was in his bedroom, having taken to his bed. Then something changed. What was it?”

He swallowed hard and took a deep breath.

“We . . . we heard something, in his room.”

“He cried out?”

“No, it wasn’t a cry. It wasn’t . . . it didn’t sound like him. It wasn’t a sound a boy could make, or I wouldn’t’ve thought so.” He shuddered, and clutched at his own arms, hugging himself and smearing more blood from the spattered, soaked-in pools that marred the sweater. I wondered why no one had brought him something else to wear, but maybe they had. Maybe he’d refused. He was so unbalanced, he might’ve demanded or rejected anything.

“What did it sound like, then—if it wasn’t a cry?”

He released his arms, and his hands settled atop the table, where they shook, leaving short streaks of bloody fingerprints dampening the wood beneath them. “It sounded like . . . a wet machine,” he said at last.

The officer to his right said, “I beg your pardon?” before I had a chance to say it myself.

Ebenezer tossed his hands in the air in a broad shrug, and let them flop back down atop the table once more. “It weren’t a sound like any animal I ever heard! Or any person, that’s for damn sure!” To emphasize his point, he pounded his fist against the wood. “It weren’t a sound like a living thing makes!”

“Ebenezer, please, remain calm. I believe you; I just don’t understand you.”

“It sounded like a grinding thing, all right? Like . . . like . . . a big millstone, underwater—with its wheel clanking right along, muffled and soggy-like. And it came from Matty’s room!” he insisted with all his might. “Neither me or Lissy could figure out what it might be, so we went to go look—you understand?”