Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(36)

I tried unsuccessfully to keep from gasping, and the sound stuck in my throat. “She . . . your wife tried to pull him down? And he . . . he was held aloft, somehow? By wires, by . . . by the ropes? There were ropes, I recall. Holding him to the bed.”

“There were ropes on the bed, untied and hanging by the posts. He was aloft, sir, yes. But nothing kept him there that I could see,” he vowed, his eyes haunted but deadly earnest. “It was all so unnatural, you know? I reached for my wife and tried to draw her away from him, but she weren’t having none of it. She fought me, and fought for him.” He said the last part with a cough and a grimace.

He continued. “Then Matty, he . . . he put a hand down and grabbed her by the hair, and he pulled her up to meet him—and she was screaming and shouting, and I was screaming and shouting, and Matty was making that noise, that same awful noise. I’ll never forget it. Never forget it. Couldn’t stand to hear it.” He shook his head again, trying to shake the sound out of it, like water from his ear.

My voice shook as hard as Ebenezer’s hands. “He lifted her up?”

“He lifted her up.” He was back to that whisper, rising and falling as the sharing became too much for him. “Picked her right up off her feet, and her hair started swaying, like Matthew’s, like she was underwater. She was gasping, coughing, thrashing about—just like she would if you held her head in a tub, you see? So I ran—into the next room, and I fished around under the bed for my gun. It’s a hunting gun, that’s all. A fowler’s gun,” he clarified. “And I never shot nothing with it but birds for the table—I swear it to you.

“And I didn’t think . . .” He folded and unfolded his fingers, lacing them together, pulling them apart. “I didn’t think I was gonna shoot Matty, or nothing like that. I thought I’d threaten him, maybe, and that’d get through to him.

“But by the time I’d got the gun and come back, Felicity wasn’t moving. She was hanging there limp beside him, his hands tangled up in her hair, holding her up, and her feet dangling above the sheets. So I hollered at him. I told him I’d shoot! I told him, Doctor! And he didn’t do a thing. It was like he hadn’t heard me at all, and I thought he’d hurt Felicity somehow, so I couldn’t just stand there doing nothing. So I shot him. I shot him, and he let go of her hair, and she fell to the floor. And I shot him again, and he fell a little lower. Then I had to either reload or tend to Felicity.”

“So you tended to your wife.”

“I tried! I tried pulling her out of that room, where everything was sopping wet, and I didn’t know where all the water came from, and it all smelled so bad, Doctor, you have to believe me . . .”

“I do,” I assured him, and I was horrified to realize I was telling him the truth. “I do believe you.”

“I dragged her back out of the room, into the hallway, and some of the water came with her, but most of it stayed in there with Matty. I pushed on her chest, you know—seeing if she was breathing, or if I could start her up again. I put my head on her chest and her heart wasn’t beating, so I pushed some more, and I turned her head to the side, and out of her mouth there was . . . there was . . . all this blood. It came streaming right out of her, pouring and pouring, like the water down the walls in Matty’s room.”

He fell silent, and in this new state of quiet I could hear footsteps outside the room, coming toward us. I sensed our time was drawing to a close, so I asked one last question. “What about Matthew? What about the sound you heard?”

“I stood up, once I knew my wife was done. I went back into the room, and Matty was lying half on the bed, half off it. There wasn’t any more sound. There wasn’t any more water, but everything was still wet.”

The sheriff’s knock announced him, and he interrupted us curtly, if politely. “Doctor, I thank you for your time, but the Boston office has sent a telegram asking us to send Mr. Hamilton along to them. There’ll be an investigator here in the morning. Later in the morning,” he corrected himself with a sigh.

“I understand,” I said, and I patted at Ebenezer’s hand. He didn’t react, either to the news or to my awkward ministrations.

Duffy added, “The investigator’s asked for a doctor’s company while he looks at the scene. Can we send him your way, when he arrives?”

“Yes, by all means. Send for me at my home. I’ll . . . do my best, I suppose, to get another few hours of sleep.” Though I knew good and well that I wouldn’t.

I wished Ebenezer Hamilton well, and before I left, I leaned in close—putting a hand on his shoulder. Into his ear, I said, “I believe you, and I will do what I can to defend you, and support you.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said, but he was hardly present anymore. His mind was back in that room with his dead wife, and dead godson. And I’ll never forget the last thing he murmured, as I left the room. Not to me, and maybe not to himself. Maybe it was a prayer, or an observation for the sheriff, I couldn’t say—but it was that last sentiment that kept me from returning to my bed for any further rest.

“That sound . . . that sound, it came from his mouth. It was the song of something dying. Something that never did live.”





Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University