Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(90)
Likewise, I do not understand what happened to Abigail and our father. They changed before the sample was sent, and before anyone else began to show signs of the creeping madness and violence. They were the first to go insane, and the first to become deadly and turn on their loved ones.
Father was, anyway. Abigail didn’t care about us one way or another, so it could scarcely be argued that she “turned” on us. But the sentiment stands.
Lizzie believes it has to do with that pendant Father gave her for their anniversary that year, a few months before their deaths. The pendant is under our floorboards now, under our house; I think it first came from a pretty bit of sea glass Abigail found while down at the shore one day.
Or maybe I’m only filling in that part. Maybe I never knew, and I only want to apply some symmetry to the horror. Let us say that it all came from the sea: the glass pendant, the sample, the creatures with the needle-glass teeth that hound Maplecroft when the air is right and the call goes out. My sister holds to her speculations, that the monsters are transformed people, or they rise from the earth. She hasn’t gone so far as to suggest that they fall from the sky, but she’s curiously averse to admitting the obvious: They come from the ocean, too.
The webbed fingers, translucent eyes and skin. The teeth that remind me not of sharks or piranhas, but those you’ll find in the mouths of Lophiiformes. Yes, it’s very much like the anglerfishes and their kind—a jumble of pins and needles, protruding more than they’re concealed.
All of it comes from the water. Everything, at the start. Didn’t Darwin suggest as much? That life itself came from the ocean, in some roundabout way? Well, if not him, then his followers and subsequent researchers have certainly posited it, and with great vigor.
Life and death.
Our mother and grave, and the only thing between us is the shore.
FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
Parkridge Gazette, May 7, 1894
Reporting by Alfred Hanson
In the wee hours of Tuesday, May 2, four family members were gruesomely slain as they slept in their beds, on a farm three miles outside Mayfield. Authorities are withholding details in advance of a formal investigation, and pending the visit of an inspector from Boston, arriving to help manage the difficult case.
At this time, very little is known for certain, and that which is certainly known does not make the very best of sense. The victims are a husband and wife, Bradford and Margaret Moore, and two of their three children, four year old Christian, and two year old Beverly. One child survived the attack, and miraculously uninjured—according to the woman who discovered the scene, Daisy Rogers, a young widow who had joined the family recently in order to help with spring demands.
Miss Rogers was instructed to avoid speaking with the press, but so terribly has she been rattled by the incident that bits and pieces have found their way to our type-writers nonetheless.
According to her report, there were pools of bloody water all across the floors, soaking the furniture, and splattered across the windows—and the bodies were gruesomely mutilated, as if they’d been struck repeatedly by a hatchet or some other heavy blade. Furthermore, they had been propped up around the dinner table, in some weird tableau of horror.
Perhaps worst of all comes from the lone survivor, eight year old Constance. Constance was found lying in a dry bathtub, crying because she could not work the pump or carry the water to fill it. Despite her distress, she was not injured in any way, and in fact spoke wistfully of the handsome man of the sea. This detail is chilling, for the child has been blind since birth—and has no way of knowing whether or not the killer was handsome or horrible. Yet she insists that she saw him, and that he smiled at her, and told her to wait.
At present, the child is in the care of her aunt and uncle, who watch her carefully for clues beyond what she’s stated about the event. If she’s upset by the loss of her family, she does not show it. But then, according to her new guardians, she’s always been peculiar. It has been suggested that she’s an imbecile, or something close to it.
At this time, there is no further, formal word on her condition, or the state of the investigation; but officials are recommending that all citizens in the region should keep watch for strangers, and take reasonable precautions to guard themselves during this unusual time of creative violence, perpetrated against innocents.
Owen Seabury, M.D.
MAY 7, 1894
Nance is gone, but I’ll explain this part first: I found the newspaper article in an envelope, stuck inside my door with a brief telegram—explaining that it’d been sent via express, courtesy of Inspector Wolf. I don’t know how he knew about it so soon, much less how he got it to me with such alacrity (all the way from Boston), but here it is, and here the monster comes. Ready or not, as the children say.
Mayfield. That’s not five miles out. He’s drawn this near, and he’ll draw nearer still. He could walk the distance in a short afternoon. One must assume that he will do so.
Assuming it, and being able to plan against it . . . those are different things.
I’ve been terribly busy as it is, for let’s take off the rosy glasses—Fall River is going to hell, one man at a time. One woman. One child. Mad and sick and dead, with anyone caught in the middle babbling to the authorities and being sent away. People are finally beginning to talk in earnest, sensing a pattern beyond the sensational Hamilton deaths—the most sensational in town since Lizzie Borden took her axe and inspired schoolyard rope-skipping—but there’s too little and too late, and this is a fine show of both.