The Monstrumologist

“Dear God!” cried the constable, patting his pockets desperately for his handkerchief. “What the devil is that?”

“The devil’s manger,” replied Warthrop grimly. “Will Henry, hand me your lamp.”

He knelt on the side of the hole opposite Kearns, and lowered the light the length of his entire arm. The darkness below seemed to resist its glow, but I could see a smooth, cylindrical wall, like the upended bore of an enormous ca

“Clever,” murmured Kearns with frank appreciation. “Drop the victim into the hole, and gravity does the rest.” He dug a flare from his bag and lit it. The gloom was banished by brilliant bluish light. He tossed the device down the hole. Down the shaft it dropped, then tumbled into open space, perhaps fifty feet or more, before landing among the jumble of the macabre debris littering the chamber’s floor. Morbid curiosity overcame our sense of smell, and we crowded around the hole to peer into the pit.

Below was a jagged landscape of shattered bone that spa

Beside me Kearns murmured, “‘Through me the way into the suffering city… Through me the way to the eternal pain…’”

“There must be hundreds of them,” muttered Morgan, who, having found his trusty handkerchief, spoke now through it.

“Six to seven hundred, I would guess,” ventured Kearns dispassionately. “An average of two or three per month for twenty years, if you wanted to keep them fat and happy. It’s an ingenious design: The fall would more than likely break their legs, lowering their odds of escape from extremely doubtful to impossible.”

He hauled himself to his feet, slung his rifle over one shoulder, and the canvas bag over the other. “Well, gentlemen, duty calls, yes? Constable, if you and Mr. Brock here would hold the rope for us, I think we’re ready. Are we ready, Malachi? Pellinore? I’m ready. I’m practically giddy with anticipation: Nothing gets my blood up like a bloody good hunt!” His expression mirrored his words. His eyes shone; his cheeks glowed. “We’ll need our lamps lowered to us once we’re down, Constable-don’t want to waste the flares. So who is going first? Very well!” he cried without waiting for a volunteer. “I will! Hold tight, now, Constable, Mr. Brock; I fancy walking upright like a proper bipedal mammal. Pellinore, Malachi, I shall see you in hell-I mean, at the bottom.”

He dropped the rope into the hole, swung his legs over the edge, and scooted on his backside until he teetered on the opening’s lip. Taking the rope in both hands, he looked up at me, and for some reason gave me a wink before dropping down. The rope went taut in its human anchors’ white-knuckled grips, jerking this way and that as Kearns lowered himself, hand over hand, into the death chamber. I heard the sickening crunch of his landing in the skeletal rubble, and the rope went limp.

“Next!” he called softly. The flare’s blue light sputtered and spat, causing his shadow to flitter and lurch over the confusion of bones.

Before the doctor could move, Malachi grabbed the rope. He looked at me and said “I’ll see you soon, Will” before disappearing from view.

Now it was the doctor’s turn. I confess the words were on my lips, Take me with you, sir, but I spoke them not. He would refuse-or worse, agree. Or would that be worse? Were not our fates inextricably bound together? Had not they been entwined since the night my father and mother, embracing, had died in that fire’s devouring embrace? You are indispensable to me, he had said earlier. Not “your services,” as it had always been since I had come to live with him, but “you.”

As if he could read my mind, he said, “Wait for me here, Will Henry. Don’t leave until I return.”

I nodded, my eyes stinging with tears. “Yes, sir. I’ll wait right here for you, sir.”

He fell out of sight, into the devil’s manger.

Their lamps were lowered next, and our anxious vigil commenced. I remained by the opening in the chamber floor, watching the dance of the flare’s fire until it died, straining at the feeble yellow glow of their lamps until that too was swallowed up by the dark. Brock sat upon the bottom step and stoically cleaned his fingernails with his pocketknife. Morgan puffed noisily on his empty pipe and obsessively took off and put back on his pince-nez, rubbing the lenses nervously with his handkerchief before shoving them back upon his nose and slapping the kerchief back over his mouth.

After several minutes of this a

“The doctor didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.

“Well, I beg to differ, boy. He had knowledge, and did nothing. And his inaction resulted in murder, plain and simple. He may tell you and himself his course was prudent, that he was following the dictates of his so-called science, but this was no scientific inquiry or intellectual exercise. This was a matter of life and death, and we both know which he chose! And we both know the real reason he tried to keep this abomination secret. To protect the good name of Warthrop, out of misguided loyalty to a man gone clearly mad!”

“I don’t think so, sir,” I said as politely as I could. “I don’t think he believed his father was to blame until we found the hidden door.”

“Humph!” snorted the constable. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t exonerate him, William Henry. Your loyalty is admirable, if tragically misplaced. I know you, who have lost so much, must fear losing him, too, but I shall personally see to it that you are found a decent home no matter how this horrid business is resolved. You have my word: I will not rest until you are placed in the proper environment.”

“I don’t want to be placed. I want to stay with him.”

“Assuming he survives, where he is going, you ca

“You’re going to arrest him? For what?” I was appalled.

“And that abhorrent Cory or Kearns or whatever his name is. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a more loathsome human being. He better pray that poor woman survives the unthinkable ordeal he put her through. Why, I believe he actually enjoyed doing it. I think seeing her suffer gave him pleasure. Well, it shall give me the utmost pleasure to see him standing upon the gallows! Let him crack his profane jokes and smirk his damnable blasphemies with the noose around his neck! If it costs my entire allotment of moments, I will gladly spend them to witness the morality of that one.”

“It was a mistake,” I insisted, speaking still of the doctor. I cared little what happened to John Kearns. “You can’t arrest him for making a mistake,” I pleaded.

“Oh, I most certainly can!”

“But the doctor is your friend.”

“My first duty is to the law, Will Henry. And the truth is, though I have known him always, I hardly know him at all. You have spent an entire year under his roof, his sole and constant companion. Can you say with any conviction that you know him or understand the demons that drive him?”