Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(84)
It’s a peculiar request, I know—and I’m giving you few enough details that you must wonder at my sanity. You could absolutely be forgiven for doing so! I’m exhausted and frightened, and overwhelmed, if you want the truth. I fear that I’m standing on the brink of some tipping point, between this town and wholesale peril . . . and it terrifies me to feel such responsibility.
But I know what I’m looking at. The connections between the affliction are clear—there are very sharp parallels between what I’m seeing, and an advanced strain of tetanus, so I have been shown a direction and a pattern, and I will extrapolate the rest with cunning and science.
(It is not my imagination that leads me to this conclusion; it is research and observation, and consultation with another great scientist who lives quietly here in town.)
I will with all haste reimburse you for any expense you may incur through the university, should you opt to assist me. Likewise, I shall send this missive by expedited courier from the contents of my own pockets—and anyone you send with a speedy response will surely be compensated in kind.
This is an emergency, Dane. But it is also an opportunity to do something great, to resolve a frightful mystery, and contribute to the annals of scientific knowledge. And on a more personal note, it might well save the lives of my neighbors and friends, who fall one by one to this sickness that I can’t thwart with my own limited, conventional devices.
If there is any aid you could lend me, I would be forever grateful. The whole town will be in your debt eternally, and I will see to it that should we succeed in our lifesaving interventions, the papers will give all credit and praise to you and your department. Fall River may serve as your case study, and you may build your department upon its salvation . . . or if not, then you may rest assured that no mention of your involvement will ever become known.
I would not ask you to gamble your reputation on my inconstant hunches. I am prepared to absorb all the risk, and all the guilt should I fail. I am only offering you the chance for public approval and, I should think, a fine endowment for your program—that your research may continue, better funded, with better equipment.
Please, Dane. I am begging you.
Send word with haste?
Sincerely,
Owen Seabury, M.D.
Fall River, Massachusetts
Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
MAY 1, 1894
Doctor E. A. Jackson is a slippery soul, but I’ll find him yet. I feel him, his general presence, his life pulsing somewhere yet to the south—but I knew that much already, so it might only be a psychosomatic sense (in addition to an address on a package) that draws me toward Fall River, origin of his missives.
To the origin of the sample.
? ? ?
For some weeks, the sample has been diminishing.
It was not my imagination, though that’s what I told myself at first. At first, what was there to mention? Precious little. An added space inside the jar where she lived, a greater presence of fluid and a lesser presence of her amorphous bulk. In time, I could see the sun’s rays through the glass if I held it to the light, so little of her remained.
But that was before I moved at night. Before the sun became too much for my eyes, now so sensitive that I can see every line of every blade of grass . . . in the darkest night without a moon. And now I am reminded of the strange, small things that live in caves and go white, for there is no illumination by which they might compare their colors. I recall small crawling things with eyes that look like milk inside a cup, yet still they see—for all they are called blind.
Physalia has left me, even as she has come to me. I knew it when I rose one dusk and dressed myself, counted out the slim contents of my earthly lot, and saw that what remained of her could’ve fit in the palm of my hand. Not dead, not dying. Living stronger than before, and needing less of herself to do so. That which was left, fit easily in my mouth.
And I do not carry her jar anymore.
I buried it beneath the floorboards of a house, one perhaps forty miles from my goal. The house burned behind me, so I do not think it’s likely to be discovered anytime soon. Not unless she decides that it ought to be found.
She might. She is a mystery to me, beloved in all her uncertainty.
I can imagine a day, some months from now when the weather begins to cool, when all the charred beams and all the black cinders and all the white ash that pooled in the corners, dusting the remains like sand dunes or snowdrifts . . . I can see the foundations being cleared. I can see workers prepared to build anew on the old spot, undeterred by anything that happened there.
Brave men. Or ridiculous ones. Doomed ones, I should think, regardless.
But who among us isn’t?
? ? ?
For a while I dithered, considering how I ought to dispose of her carriage, that ridiculous jar with the ghost of an old jam advertisement on the side, and the residual fluids of her body left within. I ought to take it to the ocean, perhaps? I ought to bury it in some holy spot, some aquarium or castle? Some church? Some intersection between two streets where no men ever walk, but the night creatures pass back and forth—knowing one another and saying nothing, exchanging only glances and signs . . . ?
She did not express an opinion.
If I am forced to speculate, I might conclude that she does not care, and it does not matter. Regardless, I cannot shake the feeling that whatever she leaves behind is too holy to discard, and too powerful to remain hidden. I am only an acolyte, but a devout one.