Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(86)

For all of that back-and-forth, it’s still brilliant in its simplicity, I would argue, and by all reports it is highly effective. Here at the university, we are building on their research, but cannot take the credit for spawning it; and it comes thirty years too late for men like you and me to really run it through its paces.

Can you imagine if we’d had access to such a thing during the war? How many lives we could’ve saved?

Maybe not the worst of them, but there will always be an outlying case or two that can’t be cracked with conventional methods. For example, I do not know if the Behring-Kitasato antitoxin would have much effect if deployed against cephalic tetanus, for the bacteria digs in and holds down tight, when it settles into the inner ear. (And there were so many head wounds, you’ll recall. Or perhaps you’d prefer not to. I know I’d sleep better at night not remembering the lion’s share of what I witnessed on those fields.)

Ah, well.

There’s little we can do about the past, but to do it honor, we must turn all our efforts to the present and the future—and save what lives we can, using what knowledge we may glean and assemble between us.

You’re still doing God’s work, Seabury. I’m proud to call you a friend and colleague, and I wish you the very best with your efforts there in Fall River. If there’s anything else I can do, any assistance I can provide—or advice, or supplies—please do not hesitate to ask.

Yours,

Christoff





Emma L. Borden


MAY 2, 1894

I can’t rely on anyone anymore.

Lizzie may as well have gone deaf to the bell; I suppose if I fired a warning shot or two into the ceiling, she might grow curious enough to come check on me. Maybe a shot in my own temple would be warning enough to bring her around. Maybe it would take her days to notice.

Doctor Seabury’s a lost cause, too, given that he couldn’t keep the one secret I most needed kept, or wanted kept at any rate. His heart was in the right place, but mine is not—mine is trapped here, and has so little in the way of escape . . . what am I to do? What if the inspector, that pink-faced baby in a suit, makes my alias known? I’d lose even this one little tie to the world beyond Maplecroft, when I need it now more than ever.

I say that . . . but the truth is, it’s been weeks since I wrote or researched.

I too have become lost in this Problem, and I don’t know the way out. No one does, unless it’s Doctor Zollicoffer, maddened and lost in his own private way.

Or that’s what I believe. I do not consider for a moment that he was always a maniac. He was a decent, gentle man. A nervous one, and even a fussy one, after a fashion, but a good one. Not a killer, bent on a spree. Not a murdering bandit, but my friend.

Anyway, if he’s no longer my friend (and indeed has become everything that everyone accuses him of) . . . there’s precious little I can do about it. I can’t run. I can’t hide. I can only hole up and wait, with Father’s gun by my nightstand and enough bullets to defend myself for ninety seconds, if I’m lucky.





? ? ?


I should not be forced to beg for my sister’s aid.

I am fully aware that she’s given it freely, and for years now. (Has it been years? Dear God. Years indeed.) But I did not choose my condition, and I have no other recourse. No husband or lover of my own to prop me up and carry me onward toward the grave, like Lizzie will carry Nance any day now.

Is that too harsh? Well. It must be harsher still to pretend otherwise. No one benefits from such deception.

Contrary to Lizzie’s denials and insistence, the girl grows worse by the day, by the hour. The other night’s adventure in the washroom was not some climax; it was only the logical progression of whatever afflicts her, as it afflicts this town—and the end result will be one of two things: She’ll die, or she’ll kill us all.

She’s changing. Turning into something piscine, or you could make the case for it. The gills she’s developed are small and unsatisfactory for oxygen, not for a creature of her stature; but they will grow if given the chance. Before long, she won’t be able to breathe air anymore. That’s my suspicion. And when that happens, what will Lizzie do? Put the damned wretch in an aquarium? Turn her loose at the ocean’s edge? Leave her in the tub, close off the washroom, and keep her as an exotic pet?

Really, I am at my wits’ end.

If it were up to me, I’d see her finished already. It’d be a kindness, and I think Seabury would agree with me there. Or perhaps he wouldn’t. He bears no specific love for the girl, but he’s fascinated by her. Quietly, he confessed to me that he does not expect her to survive any more than I do, but in seeing how she dies, we might learn how to save everyone else.

He’s a grim fellow, but I suppose he has every right to be. If the war hadn’t made him so already, surely our company would’ve done the trick.

I wish I still liked and trusted him. I want to like and trust him, but the affection isn’t there anymore—even though he now tries to confide in me, as if he has a secret large enough to trade for the one he broke.

Even so, he’s virtually all I have.

Lizzie still sees to it that I’m bathed and dressed and fed, but otherwise ignores me in favor of watching Nance struggle to breathe.

She’s torturing herself, and I can’t stop her, but I can’t help her, either. Except for my correspondents, she’s been my only companion since Father and Mrs. Borden died—and we are sisters, after all. The age difference notwithstanding, the bond should be greater than this, shouldn’t it? I should not have to grovel, should I?