The Monstrumologist

“Well, it must have been, for I have no memory of it. At any rate, the two events being proximate does not mean one is related to the other, Will Henry.”

“But it could have something to do with it,” I insisted. I was determined to impress him with the elegance of my reason. “If they were Confederate spies, he wouldn’t have told anyone or left any record of his contract with Captain Varner. It’s why you can’t find anything, sir! And it could explain why he wanted more than one of the things brought back. You said they couldn’t have been for study, so what were they for? Maybe they weren’t for your father at all, but for them, Slidell and Mason. Maybe they wanted the Anthropophagi, Doctor!”

“And why would they want that?” he wondered, watching me hop from foot to foot in my agitation.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “To breed them, perhaps. To raise an army of them! Can you imagine the Union troops in the face of a hundred of those things, let loose in their ranks in the dead of night?”

“The Anthropophagi produce only one or two offspring a year,” he reminded me. “It would require quite some time to produce a hundred, Will Henry.”

“It took only two of them to wipe out the entire crew of the Feronia.”

“A lucky circumstance-I mean, of course, for the Anthropophagi. They would not have fared as well against a regiment of battle-hardened soldiers. It is an interesting theory, Will Henry, unsupported as it is by any facts. Even if we assume these mysterious callers sought out my father to supply the rebellion with creatures to kill or terrorize the enemy, there are half a dozen he might have procured for them that did not entail the same risk and expense as a breeding pair of Anthropophagi. Do you follow, Will Henry? If that was their goal, given everything I know about him, he would have rejected it. And even if he had accepted, he would not have chosen this particular species.”

“But you can’t know for sure,” I protested, unwilling to drop the matter. I wanted desperately to be right, not so much to prove the doctor wrong, but to be right.

His reaction was immediate. The doctor shot up from the chair, his angular face contorted in fury. I blenched: I had never seen him so angry. I fully expected him to strike me across the cheek for my recalcitrance.

“How dare you speak to me like this!” he cried. “Who are you to question my father’s integrity? Who are you to besmirch my family’s good name? It’s not enough the entire town spreads calumny against me; now my own assistant, the boy to whom I have shown only kindness and pity, with whom I share my house and my work, for whom I have sacrificed my sacred right to privacy, stoops to join in their slanderous conduct! And if that weren’t enough, the boy who owes me everything, even unto his very life, disobeys the one injunction-the only injunction-I gave to him! What was it, Will Henry? Do you remember, or were you so distracted by your lust for scones that you forgot? What did I say to you before you left?”

I stammered and stuttered, overcome by the ferocity of his diatribe. Towering over my cowering frame, he roared, “What did I say?”

“ Sp-sp-speak to no one,” I whimpered.

“What else?”

“And if anyone should speak to me, all is well.”

“And what impression do you think you left them with, Will Henry, with these questions about Confederate spies and government detectives and the house of Warthrop? Explain.”

“I was only trying… I only wanted… I didn’t bring it up, sir, I swear I didn’t! The Flanagans did!”

He spat through his teeth, “You have failed me, Will Henry.” He turned his back on me and strode across the room, kicking aside the piles of debris as he went. “And worse. You have betrayed me.” He turned back to face me, shouting in the gloom, “And for what? To play the amateur detective, to satisfy your own insatiable curiosity, to humiliate me by participating in the same gossip and backstabbing that drove my father into seclusion and ultimately to his grave a broken and bitter man. You have put me in an untenable position, Master Henry, for now I know your loyalty extends only as far as the bounds of your selfishness, and blind, total, unquestioning loyalty is the one indispensable quality I demand of you. No one asked that I take you into my home or share with you my work. Not even fealty to your father demanded that. But I did it, and this is my reward!… What? Did that make you angry? Have I offended you? Speak!”

“I didn’t ask to come here!”

“And I didn’t ask for the opportunity!”

“There wouldn’t have been one if not for you.”

He stepped toward me. In the gloaming I could not see his face. A shadow was between us.

“Your father understood the risk,” he said softly.

“My mother didn’t! I didn’t!”

“What would you have me do, Will Henry? Raise them bodily from the grave?”

“I hate it here,” I shouted at the shadow of the monstrumologist, my mentor-and my tormentor. “I hate it here and I hate you for bringing me here and I hate you.”

I fled down the hall, flew up the stairs, and raced up the ladder to my little alcove, slamming the door down behind me. I threw myself across the bed and buried my face into the pillow, screaming at the top of my lungs, my being over-flowing with rage and grief and shame. Yes, shame, for he was all I had, and I had failed him. The doctor had his work; I had him; and to each what we had was all.

Above me clouds scuddled across the blue vitriol of the April sky, and the sun slumped toward the horizon, painting the clouds’ soft bellies golden. When my tears were spent, I rolled onto my back and watched the light seep from the world. My body ached for food and rest, my soul for a more permanent respite. I might eat and I might sleep, but what might I do to ease this crushing loneliness, this inconsolable sorrow, this incurable dread? Like Erasmus Gray hip-deep in the grave, locked in the monster’s inescapable grip, or Hezekiah Varner dying in the fermenting stew of his own flesh, had I passed the point of salvation, had all hope already died in the fire that had devoured my parents, as the Anthropophagi had devoured Erasmus, as the maggots Hezekiah? Death had brought an end to their misery. Would nothing but a visitation from that same dark angel bring an end to mine?

I waited for sleep, that gentle mockery of death, to take me. I longed for its effacing grace. But its peace eluded me, and I rose from the bed, my head pounding from the salty torrent of my tears and the ache deep in my stomach. I eased open the trapdoor and tiptoed down the ladder. I made straight for the kitchen, where I found the basement door closed. I had no doubt he was down there; it was, like my little alcove, his refuge of choice. Working as quickly and quietly as I could, I set the pot on to boil and prepared a repast worthy of my ravening appetite, featuring two fine lamb chops courtesy of Noonan the butcher. I cleaned my plate with the same rapidity with which I filled it, for a finer meal I had never had, made all the more delectable by virtue of my having cooked it, though the mouthfuls lingered barely long enough upon the tongue for me to taste them.

As I sopped up the juice of the lamb with a chunk of fresh bread, courtesy of Ta

“You cooked something,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered, deliberately omitting the honorific.

“What did you cook?”

“Lamb.”

“Lamb?”

“Yes.”

“Chops?”

I nodded. “And some fresh peas and carrots.”

I carried my plate to the sink. I could feel him watching me as I washed up. I put my cup and plate on the rack to dry and turned around. He had not moved from the basement doorway.

“Do you need me for anything?” I asked.

“I don’t… No, I do not,” he replied.