Maplecroft (36 page)

“The
gun,” she said. We had almost reached the porch. “Better than nothing.”

“The cabinet?” I whispered harshly. It was the only voice I had left.

“Just inside. The near wall of the parlor,” she gasped back. “I’ll take care of these things.”

She swung hard to the right and caught one of the brutes through the neck—fully beheading it, so great was her momentum. She reached the stairs and with one fast sweep she stunned the first sentinel at the door, and grievously wounded the other. Blood that looked like bile splattered across the paneling and across her dress, and the glittering shards of crystalline teeth sparkled across her nightdress. She swung again, and struck the creature again, pushing it aside.

She swept the way clear and faced the yard, where the bad things gathered. She braced herself and readied the axe.

Without looking at me, she said, “The cabinet.
Go
.”

“Yes,” I said. Her plan was simple and clear, but I was thickheaded with fright, too tired to argue.

I jumped sideways past her, through the open door. Inside, it was dark. Or as dark as the night outside anyway—for Maplecroft’s interior flickered and flashed between daylight-sharp and midnight-inscrutable.

I was disoriented.

I looked around and saw mostly black stripes of shadow cast by the windowpanes and curtains. I saw the outlines of fixtures
and furniture, small statues and a pair of matching vases, the lacy shapes of doilies and shawls tossed across the divan, candlesticks they didn’t need (now that the house had gas), and shards of broken glass. I do not know where it came from—if it was windows or picture frames or art glass from the shelves and cabinets.

My feet crunched upon it, announcing my presence as I dithered, unsure of myself.

I’d been in the parlor a hundred times. A thousand times. More than that, I knew . . . Where was the cabinet? I’d seen it. I’d leaned against it. I’d served myself a drink from it, when invited to do so. Suddenly I couldn’t picture it to save my life; I stuttered on the entryway rug, then staggered to the hallway runner and then, yes, the parlor.

There it was.

I ripped the drawer open so hard I pulled it right off its rails and the gun toppled to the floor—along with a box of bullets that burst open, scattering its contents across the carpet. I dropped to my knees, scavenged a handful, and grabbed the gun, a service revolver. Its weight told me it was loaded.

(Funny,
the things you remember, from the old days in service. Old habits, old memories. My hands recalled the feel, the balance. The shape of the handle. It was similar to my own, the one I’d lost in the water. I think I lost it in the water. Might have lost it somewhere else. Likely, I’ll never know.)

By
the time I got to my feet, I could see Lizzie on the move outside.

Her dress billowed and she looked like a vengeful ghost, she moved so swiftly and with such grace—the wind tearing her hair
and her clothes as she parried, struck, and swung with the axe she’d sharpened each night with deadly precision. She seemed bigger, wilder. Positively preternatural, though I saw her efforts only in fits and starts through the narrow frame of the doorway.

I was mesmerized for the moment.

She called my name. Not “Doctor,” but “Owen!”

It was the first time I’d ever heard her say it. The informality worked. It roused me from my stupor, and surprised me into motion. I ran outside, ducking past her and narrowly missing the pendulum swing of the axe, sweeping in a terrible arc. It was a pure coincidence of timing that she missed me. I surely wasn’t paying enough attention to have dodged the blow on purpose.

But I came out shooting.

I took her place on the porch, and I opened fire.

She ducked behind me, and disappeared inside.

I stood my ground, and I guarded the front door.

To my left, two dead creatures—one of them in pieces. To my right, a third dead thing, oozing gore. Its corpse was shifting; it wasn’t moving, exactly. It was decomposing too fast, collapsing in upon itself. I don’t know why. I didn’t have time to investigate, though the question nagged at me. Fourth and fifth corpses were on the foot of the stairs or just beyond them. She’d killed them on the way inside, I dimly recalled.

A shriek rose up, and it was joined by other voices. They came from beside me, in front of me. From farther away—behind the house? Elsewhere in the neighborhood?—they sang out, meeting in a weird pitch that made my ears hum. Somewhere, more glass was breaking. I could barely hear it, but I knew the sound.

And here they came. A rickety wave of arms and legs with too many joints, mouths with too many teeth, eyes without
enough pigment. The light storm showed me five, but I’d heard more than that. I knew there were more. I didn’t have to see them to be confident of their presence, and I didn’t have to count the bullets in my pocket, in my hand, in my gun, to know that there weren’t enough.

I cocked the revolver and shot the first one between the eyes. Its head exploded in a mass of tissue and gristle, and whatever fluid filled those bulbous orbs it used to gaze out at the world. If in fact the things could see at all.

If there was blood, it didn’t look like blood. If there was brain matter, I didn’t see it . . . just the spongy, scrambled-egg leavings speckled with bone. They scattered across the porch and another creature came up behind it, slipped in the mess, and fell down.

I fired twice. It struggled, but did not stop coming so I fired again. It fell backward, off the steps, but I saw it moving.

Lizzie was right. She’d told me long ago that the axe worked better than bullets. But I didn’t have an axe. I had bullets, maybe one or two left in the gun and a pocketful after that. I looked out across the lawn and counted seven, eight, maybe more. All of them coming for me.

The injured creature with the needle-glass teeth came crawling up the steps again. I kicked it back down. I shoved my boot into the center of its face, where a nose ought to go, but didn’t.

It toppled backward again, but there were more. So many more.

Seconds away.

With a flick of my wrist, and that old muscle-memory from the war and from all the days after it, I reloaded on the fly and fired again. I aimed for their heads. If one shot could take them
down, that was the shot that would do it. The dead thing beside me, added to Lizzie’s pile, suggested as much.

But a glance down at the thing told me it twitched still, a jerk of the knee, a shift of the elbow. Its head was exploded, and still it struggled to rise.

I put my boot against this one, too. I stomped as hard as I could, catching its skull between the oak slat boards and my heel, and I crushed it down to pulp. Then I raised my gun. The rest of them were coming.

They were at the steps, fumbling up the bottom, grasping toward my feet.

I fired, and fired, and fired, and reloaded from my pocket until there were no more bullets left—and then I rushed inside the hall and slammed the door shut behind myself. I would have locked it, but the lock had ripped away, or blown away; it was gone, and I had nothing to barricade it with except for a nearby plant stand. I pulled it down and used it to brace the door in its frame—poorly, I’ll grant, but better than nothing. I pulled up the carpet runner behind me, rolled it up, shoved it up against the door; I pulled down curtains and threw them into the pile along with their rods; I dragged a small end table into the mix and then a tall-backed chair from the parlor.

Outside, they cried . . . and they beat their hands against the badly shut door, but they did not push it open. Outside, they hovered and complained, as Lizzie promised they would. She knew something I didn’t. Outside, they stayed.

(I
was inside, where I’d chosen to make my stand—or been forced to make it, if I were being truthful in this record, which I will leave behind somewhere, for someone, in the event that I go fully mad. Let this remind Fall River that I was not always
insane, and that I fought for my home. I fought for my life, my soul, my sanity. And for everyone else’s.

Then again, maybe I’ll destroy everything. This could be my last gift: that the world should never know the lengths we went to, when we stood between Fall River and the ocean . . . armed with little more than an old axe.)

I
was forced to come inside. I could not have taken them all.

I went to the cabinet and found the rest of the bullets, scattered on the floor. I gathered them up carefully, quickly. I pocketed every last one, except for the six I thumbed into the chambers. My fingers shook. I dropped two bullets, and collected them again.

From below, far downstairs—in the cellar laboratory where I knew that Lizzie and Emma were not alone—I heard an inhuman, unearthly howl.

I cradled the gun. I leaned against the wall and fought for courage—any courage I might have left. I gathered it like bullets, and I feared that, like the bullets, it would not be
enough.

M
AY
7, 1894

I left Seabury to hold the front door as long as he could, not because I thought he could defend us all against the peril outside, but because it might thin the ranks out there. We couldn’t have those things running amok in the neighborhood, making Fall River an even greater hell than it’d already become. Killing them while they were gathered in one spot would be easier, in the long run, then hunting them all down later.

And it might buy me time.

I already knew that the nails were working, though why they worked, I still had no idea—and I still did not care. Tetanus poisoning, magic, some other mechanism . . . it did not matter. The barrier held true. The creatures had not come inside, and that was reassuring. It meant there was a pattern after all, and maybe
the pattern was broad enough to include the toxins and the globulins, because why not?

The front door had been opened, burst inward—its lock destroyed.
Something
had come inside. Not the minions, but their master. He was strong enough to ignore my precautions. He might well be strong enough to withstand the toxins, or bullets, or my axe, or any other weapon at my disposal.

Then what would it take to kill him?

Once inside, I dithered but a moment—trying to figure out what had happened to Emma. We’d left her sitting in the parlor; she couldn’t have gone very far. Did the mad professor abscond with her? Did she manage to move herself to safety?

No. There was no such thing.

Seabury was still shooting on the front porch. The repeated percussions battered my ears, they were so very close, as I skittered from room to room, looking for my sister. I slipped on some bullets that had rolled across the foyer; Seabury must’ve spilled them. I saw the opened drawer, dangling from its hole in the cabinet. So we were all uncoordinated and frightened, and not so alone after all. I had my axe. He had my father’s old gun, and that was good. Let it serve some purpose after all, and after all these years. One last hurrah from the thing, and one more hurrah for the old soldier who fired it into the night.

I hoped it was not his last. Or mine.

A wicked flash of illumination revealed a scene of bloody carnage, bloody handprints. My sister’s, I believed—but she might not be injured. She might be coughing; this might be terrible, but not supernatural. Another stroke of lightning. More blood, in smears and spatters. Well, if all that blood came from her lungs and not some grievous wound, it was still bad enough. I’d
never known her to lose so much at once, in so many directions. It was everywhere. The floors, the banisters, the doorjambs.

I gave up on Emma. I had to.

Either she’d found a hiding spot, or she was gone—and either way, something had come inside.
Something
was here, even if she was not. If she was dead, there was nothing I could (or should) do for her. If she was alive, somewhere else, then I would do my best to keep her that way.

Wherever she was. Whatever had come inside.

I cut through the parlor, skidded into the kitchen, and saw the cellar door open. A damp, yellowish light spilled up into the first-floor space, gleaming on the linoleum—but everything was otherwise dark. I spent a moment confused . . . but how did it take me so long to notice the gas was off, or none of the lights were on? I don’t know, but everything was dark except for the flickering sky, and maybe that was it. It flickered with such great constancy that it almost felt like midmorning, between the hard cuts of night.

And down below in the cellar, something else gave off its own peculiar light.

Whatever the light was, it hummed. It buzzed. It shifted from a sickly lemon color to a putrid soft green, and back again.

I heard the low tones of Emma’s voice, too far away to pick out any of the words.

She was down
there
? In the laboratory? Having traversed all those steps? But
how
? The monster must have carried her there, or dragged her.

(An
ungenerous thought streaked through my head: Perhaps he only invited her, and helped her along. She’s always wanted to
see the laboratory. I don’t think it would require much persuasion on his part, or anyone else’s.)

Another
voice answered her.

Yes, there it was. A man’s voice. Deep and very smooth—an educated voice, persuasive and almost warm. It carried a New England accent, highborn enough to sound like Old England, almost. It hummed, like the light downstairs. He must have brought the light with him. It must have been part of him, part of the unnatural madness he courted and spread like a disease.

The stairs were sharp and steep, and the light glowing from below made them disappear.

I stepped forward down into a black pit. My foot found the second step by memory, and the rest by force. I shuffled down them, my skirts snagging on the splinters, my free hand running along the rail for guidance.

My feet tripped over themselves; I only remained upright by virtue of momentum and the counterbalance of the axe.

I gripped it for my life.

I reached the bottom with a sharp gasp. It was hard beneath my feet, which wore only the tatters of my house slippers; I don’t know how they’d even stayed on this long. Through the water and the running, it was nothing short of a miracle; but they were as wet and thin as old socks. They left damp footprints trailing behind me as I stepped forward into the grim yellow light . . . into my laboratory, where I was not alone.

Emma was there, and she was a terrible sight: covered in gore of her own making, spilled down her chin and matting her hair, staining her clothes. Her eyes were wild, and her body shook. She saw me. She tried to speak, but only coughed.

The man turned around, to see what she was looking at.

Oh, but he wasn’t a man at all. I could see that in an instant. A dark, awful instant that I’d prefer to forget.

The not-a-man was slender and dressed well enough, in clothes that didn’t quite fit him—he must have taken them from his victims, but he’d arranged them nicely. His shoulders were narrow, his hands long and delicate, like a pianist’s. I met his eyes because I could not refuse them . . . they were the color of a storm clashing with a setting sun. Gray and blue marbles, with amber threads—but that makes them sound alive, doesn’t it? And they weren’t. They were utterly lifeless, though his face lit up at the sight of me . . . like he was pleased to see an old friend, long lost and thought forgotten. It turned my stomach.

“Elizabeth,” he said.

“That’s not my name.”

“And your sister’s name is not Edward, nor Edwin. Not Edgar, Ethan, Ellis, or Emerson.
Emma
,” he said without looking at her. “You’re Emma and Elizabeth.”

“That has
never
been my name. Contrary to popular belief.”

He ignored me, as if I had no idea what I was talking about. He would hear only what he wished to hear. It might be to my advantage—or that’s what I told myself, even as the delirious slip and sweetness of his voice was confusing my brain. It was a spell of some kind, or if not a spell then something more scientific. But who cares about that? He was enchanting me, and I wanted to kill him for it.

“What do you want?” I asked him, knowing how little the answer meant. He would take what he wanted. He’d fight for it, or he’d charm it free. He stood and spoke and moved like a man (or something else) that knew he’d have his way eventually.

“I came here to visit my friend and colleague, the inestimable Doctor Jackson. Much to my sincere pleasure, I have found
her . . . though I admit, I’m a bit stung. She could have told me the truth, and I would not have cared. Things might have gone differently, but by no means badly.” He returned his attention to her. He wasn’t really speaking to me when he continued.

“Once, I was a lonely man, and I looked forward to your letters. I might have appreciated them all the more, had I known they came from someone as beautiful . . .” He reached out and touched her tousled, bloodied hair, streaked with the wisps of silver. He caressed it almost lovingly. “And only a few years my senior . . . not more than a handful, I shouldn’t think. Not scandalous in the slightest.

“But now you see, things are different. Not
perfectly
different, but different all the same. I believed that you and I shared the same goals. I thought we understood one another. Mother implied as much.” He added that last part beneath his breath. He had doubts, and I was glad. Not everything was set in stone or water.

Not yet.

I pressed at his doubts, feeling for their edges. “I don’t know who your mother is, and neither does Emma.”

“You’re not as wrong as you think. Not so incorrect as you fear.”