Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(61)

Lizbeth had done so, and I knew—I believed, and from the bottom of my heart—that she was better versed in this awful matter than I was. What smattering of a dilettante’s investigation I’d performed would hardly stand up to the knowledge of a woman who apparently had built and kept a laboratory in her cellar.

My experience could not hold a candle to a woman who’d seen this long before I had, and who’d already been compelled to kill because of it.

She rounded the house’s back corner, and a few seconds later I did the same. And then I could hear it, though I’d not noticed any sounds from inside the house—for all that Lizbeth and Emma had clearly caught it. Yes, there it was . . . the slap, slap, slap of what sounded like hands. The exploratory clap of someone feeling about for entry.

I expected her to draw up to a halt when she reached the potential intruder, but I was wrong—and I didn’t even see the intruder in question before she swung the axe. But I heard the weapon connect with something wet and solid, and then with another swing the arc of her arm went wide and high, and for a brief moment I thought of sword fighters waving much lighter things, but with the same sort of skill and speed.

This time the axe missed its target.

Lizbeth gasped, and I gasped too because by then I’d reached her. My hands were empty and naked, as if I’d expected fisticuffs with whoever I found. I had a gun, my army revolver. I always wore it on a holster except no, not then. I hadn’t put it on when Jacob had demanded an audience at Maplecroft. I’d been almost ready for bed and I wasn’t wearing it. I didn’t think to don it.

So, yes, my hands were empty when I reached her, and reached the thing with which she grappled.

It had her by the wrist, I saw, and she was reaching past it—grabbing for the axe.

She resisted, and she swung again while I stood there, mouth agape. It mustn’t have been agape long. Not for the span of half a dozen heartbeats, surely no longer than that. But surely I can be forgiven, for what I saw was unlike anything I’d ever seen or even heard of. Whatever I’d expected to find, when Lizbeth went bolting from the house . . . whatever trespasser or intruder, whatever masked raccoon or hungry dog seeking scraps . . . none of those possibilities had led me to ponder a creature like that thing with which she did battle.

I must compare it to a person, when I describe it.

That’s the only jumping-off point of reference at my disposal, and there’s always the chance it was once a human being—though that possibility feels remote and unlikely. (Regardless, Lizbeth believes it could be true, and at present, she’s the expert on the matter. The prospect instills me with the deepest loathing and revulsion that a man is capable of carrying. But she’s right. We must consider everything, for we have little idea of what can be ruled out.)

But the thing.

It was the shape of a human being, provided that the human being had been horribly emaciated, his bones stretched, his skin blanched, and his head both swollen and misshapen. I would use the word “encephalitic,” but it doesn’t feel quite right. I’ve never heard of an encephalitic with a forehead sloped and pinched, eyes that were covered with the same membrane I’d seen before on other corpses in Fall River (so there’s one point in Lizbeth’s favor, or in favor of her revolting theory).

The thing’s eyes were also shaped strangely, oversized and elongated, drawn back to a point that aimed at the forehead, almost as if they’d been turned on their sides. No, that’s not what I mean. It was more the shape of a raindrop, landing on the face and sliding downward. It was . . .

. . . I am no good at this.

Already my memory fails me, and my eyesight, too—for if only there’d been some lamp or other light to illuminate the thing before it was shattered to death. If only I’d gotten closer, before Lizbeth smashed its face to bits, and the darkness glittered with the tinkling dust of broken glass.

She caught it in the face, in the mouth, I think, not in the eyes—though we ruined those in time.

The axe crashed down, sharp side first, and then on the next swing she used it as a bludgeon. But her reflexes were slowed. The creature was fast. It grabbed her by the arm again.

And whatever spell of astonishment had held me captive . . . it was broken when I saw the violence returned against her. It was one thing for me to watch a woman assault a monster, but another thing entirely to see her attacked in return.

None of this is making as much sense as I’d like.

But if I stop now, I’ll wish tomorrow that I’d had the courage to persevere while the horror was new in my mind, and still flickered in awful plays of light and shadow inside my eyelids when I closed them.





? ? ?


The creature stood taller than Lizbeth, but not so tall as myself. It moved jerkily, as though it wasn’t wholly comfortable with its joints, and it had too many of them. It moved in sharp, stuttering, staggering lunges. It moved like it was in pain.

(Well, it would’ve been by then, wouldn’t it? Lizbeth had struck it solidly, several times.)

It gushed some weird liquid that I assumed must be blood, or hemolymph—isn’t that what powers the circulatory system of insects? Arthropods, at any rate. Whatever it was, it filled the monster’s skin and performed a similar function. It sprayed from its wounds, and wherever it landed, I felt a stinging on my skin. Later I would realize that the blood-substance was not quite blood-colored; it was darker, more like brown or orange, when exposed to the air and given a bit of time to dry. Something about it made me think of rust.