Maplecroft (4 page)

Much
difficulty followed.

I was called upon to testify, as were many others. I would speak again and again of her dress and the blood, and my neighbors bashed open with the thick, heavy blade.

Lizzie comported herself admirably. She remained ladylike and reasonable, and she answered the prosecutor’s questions so long as he asked them—always presenting a picture of calm cooperation, and only becoming slightly scrambled under the barrage of confusing questions. He worked hard to trip her, to compel her to incriminate herself.

She stuck to her story, and neither the witnesses nor the lawyers were able to rattle her into guilty confessions.

It was just as well. No one really wanted to believe she’d done it.

Was she physically capable of committing the murders?

No doubt. She was only thirty-two, and sturdily built. Her father was in his seventies. Her stepmother, although younger, was taken from behind, presumably by surprise.

But there was no one to satisfactorily accuse Lizzie. Maggie
refused to condemn her, and none of the other witnesses could convince the jury that she had a motive for such horrendous acts. The small things added up to only more small things. The daily, petty gripes of a mixed household and Lizzie’s cold behavior toward her stepmother . . . they seemed to fall within the parameters of reasonableness, if not pleasantness.

Nothing emerged to make Lizzie appear to the court like a monster gone mad, and so she was not convicted. She collected her inheritance, after the much-discussed “will” failed to materialize; and shortly thereafter, she and her sister, Emma, relocated together to the other side of town.

They purchased a large, beautiful home and they named it
Maplecroft.

O
NE
YEAR
PREVIOUS
A
PRIL
15, 1893

It arrived yesterday, though I did not have the opportunity to open and examine it until this afternoon. The package came wrapped in brown paper and twine, directed to myself with a return address of Fall River, Massachusetts.

Immediately I knew it had originated in the office of my distant colleague, Dr. E. A. Jackson—a knowledgeable fellow biologist, though now retired (or so I believed).

We began our correspondence in 1890, after I published a paper on a new strain of nuisance seaweed that was clogging beaches and boat-screws up and down the eastern seaboard. (I argued that it was a previously unknown subspecies of a common aquatic varietal and was experiencing an outrageous bloom.)

Dr. Jackson sent me a letter telling me how much he appreciated my diagnosis of the situation, and how he was additionally impressed by the thoroughness of my research. I was flattered, as any man might be, and I responded with my thanks. He wrote again with a question regarding a particular crustacean he’d found at the ocean’s edge—a creature I later deemed to be a grotesque lobster, dwarfed and otherwise congenitally deformed—and since then, the conversation has scarcely ceased. From time to time, we even send each other samples and articles.

This package was one such sample, I assumed; and when the time finally presented itself, I closed my door and sat at my desk, reaching for a small pair of scissors to snip the string.

Within the brown paper I found a box. Within this box I found a large mason jar sealed with a screw-on lid, which had been furthermore made airtight with a blue wax seal. The glass was large enough to hold a significant sample, something bigger than my own hand. But in the dim light of my stuffy, book-lined office, I could not at first tell what was hidden inside.

I rested the jar atop two of my research volumes, and went in search of a second lamp. Shortly I found one, though it was low on oil, and I brought it over to my seat in order to illuminate my workspace.

Lifting the jar up to the light, I noted first that it was quite heavy. The contents sloshed very slightly, indicating a high water percentage, and through the thick container gleamed a dull ivory color. The sample was too dark to be called off-white, and too light to be called brown—with seams of a sickly blue (or perhaps green) swirling through the whole.

As to its shape, I’d be hard-pressed to say. Crammed as it was inside the container, it had no shape at all except that which it borrowed from the jar. But it was lumpy and gelatinous, that
much I could see. Could it be some odd representative of Cnidaria?

I turned it over in my hand.

Yes, possibly. Some sea-jelly, though nothing I’d seen before.

At the bottom of the box a folded letter lurked. I set the vial aside and retrieved the heavy-stock paper, and flapping it open, I read:

Dear Dr. Zollicoffer,

I trust this missive finds you well. I’m including with this message a strange . . . substance? Creature? Glob of fauna? Honestly, I’m at a loss. I found it along the Atlantic coast not a mile from my home, as I was on the shore with my sister—who was assisting me.

(My physician, Doctor Seabury, suggests that I should do my best to remain active despite my encroaching infirmity. He thinks that the ocean air will do me well, and I believe he’s right. I always feel invigorated after these strolls. As to my sister’s presence in the tale—she is ten years my junior, and in far better health than I. Thus I enlist her aid for these excursions.)

I must forewarn you, this item has an odious scent which will become apparent the moment you release the seal. The texture also is abhorrent, and I recommend that you handle it only with the sturdiest of gloves—preferably gloves you can afford to discard. I ruined a very fine pair manipulating this awful thing, and I wouldn’t wish that upon you.

At any rate, because it is such a curiosity, I thought I might pass it along. I have not preserved it in any solution, only taking care to seal out the air. I hope it hasn’t
spoiled further during transit, though given how awful it smelled when fresh, I’m not entirely certain how one would know the difference.

To my own casual inspection, it strikes me as possibly some peculiar form of Anthomedusae—or a corrupted polyp-stage example of the same? I understand these medusas sometimes grow in colonies, so perhaps I’ve only passed along some decomposing cluster of ordinary sea-jellies. If this is the case, I do apologize.

But I could not help but feel that this is something different, and stranger. I hope that if nothing else, you find it an interesting puzzle.

(My sister says I’m mad, and that you will no doubt cease all correspondence with me immediately upon receiving this. I believe she’s just unhappy about the odor that lingers in the kitchen.)

E.A.J.

I examined the jar, holding it carefully between my hands. With only the lamplight to judge it by, few details presented themselves.

By my right elbow I kept an oversized magnifying glass in a jointed frame. I seized it and drew it forward, adjusting its screws to aim the lens at the jar’s contents. Here and there, bubbles bobbed back and forth as I turned it about. They moved with a weird, low
squish
that would have disinclined me to unscrew the top had I been any other kind of scientist.

But I located a letter opener—sharp but not dangerous, and perfect for cutting through the seal—and I set upon the container
with great gusto, determined to liberate the contents despite Dr. Jackson’s warnings.

In another five minutes I had a desk covered with pale, curled scrapings of wax, and the lid was ready to be twisted. I braced myself, rising up out of my chair for added leverage. With a bend of my elbow I threw my strength against the jar and the lid shifted a quarter of an inch, breaking the seal that preserved the contents within.

My colleague had not exaggerated the reek.

I was genuinely astonished. The scent oozed and drifted from the jar, crawling up into my eyes. They watered. My nose stung. I could feel the stench in the back of my throat.

But I’d come this far and I was determined to proceed, though at this point it occurred to me that I had no gloves handy and was proceeding with naked fingers.

Alas. Nothing to be done about it now.

I struggled onward, pivoting the lid with my wrist and yanking it away with a flourish that sent foul-smelling slime streaking across my desk and one of my bookshelves, but no matter! The moment was upon me!

Before I could stare too closely, I flailed for the handkerchief in my jacket pocket and thrust it up to my face, for all the good it did. I held the jar at arm’s distance and peered through the glass, doing my best to detect the contents without bringing my nose too close to the source.

As a good biologist, I ought to catalog even that, I suppose—outrageously unpleasant though it proved.

The sample smelled like pickled death. It stank of rot and fire, as of something imperfectly fermented. The fumes were thick in my nostrils, and I bit my tongue fiercely to keep myself
from sneezing. Almost as if the contents emitted some noxious, dizzying gas, my vision became light and my concentration waned.

Shaking my head, I tried to clear it, even as I felt my grip on the jar sliding—very slightly—as it slipped through my fingers, down to the top of my desk.

I came to my senses in time to prevent a crash; I squeezed my hand like a vise and set the item down. Before I could talk myself into some other course of action, I peered into the jar, at the oozing thing within—with the added advantage of the magnifier and the nearby lamp.

Immediately beneath my desk table top, there’s a drawer. I reached inside it and retrieved a set of long steel pincers with the hand which wasn’t holding the handkerchief to my nose, and I used these pincers to prod at the thing within the jar.

It sloshed, and when I made a general attempt to pierce it (in order to judge its consistency) I found the task more difficult than expected. The thing was fleshy and dense, approximately the same as a sea-jelly—a diagnosis which now seemed likely, if imprecise. I needed to see it spread out; I needed to prod at its appendages, if it had any, and take proper measurements.

I then did what I should’ve done in the first place: I relocated to the chemical sink against the far wall. (It’d been installed three years previously, after some disagreements between myself and two other faculty members regarding usage of the facilities down the corridor. I fancied that this new one was “mine,” and I could do with it as I liked . . . even if what I liked stank up the place and stained everything I touched.)

After a bit of hunting, I tracked down the drain plug and affixed it, then in one fell swoop I upturned the jar and dumped its contents into the enamel basin. It dropped and slid in a
slippery roll, rollicking to a halt and sprawling out into a truer approximation of its original shape.

I retrieved my lamp and dragged it over to the sink.

The sink became a veritable theater—brilliantly lit, and with me the sole audience member, gazing upon the single player plopped upon the stage.

How to describe such a thing? Let me attempt it.

I’ve already recorded the texture, dense and fleshy. Its color was akin to old bones, except for the aforementioned greenish blue streaks and blotches. The creature—for it was definitely a creature, and no plant—demonstrated radial symmetry, perhaps pentamerism. Difficult to say. One portion of the thing looked as if it’d been torn, perhaps grabbed by a predator or snagged upon a rock. Overall, it lacked the traditional cuplike shape of Scyphozoa
and more closely resembled something from a “stalked” class of sea-jellies.

The thing is a true puzzle, and I am overjoyed to have made its acquaintance!

But a more formal analysis will have to be postponed until later. I have a classroom full of students awaiting at the other end of campus, and if I’m more than a few minutes late, the whole lot of them will accuse me of abandonment and walk
out.

M
ARCH
17, 1894

Emma was frantic, and can’t be blamed for it. I hadn’t responded in my usual timely fashion, having been mellowed or stunned or mesmerized by the stones, and she could hear something outside, sniffing around, nosing closer.

When I reached the top of the stairs I unlocked and flung open the cellar door. My sister fell against me, but there was no time to catch her properly or comfort her—not while I held the axe, and not while something struggled to breach our stronghold. Her eyes were wild as I lifted her with my free arm. She toppled against my breasts and rapped her cheek against my shoulder. Her strength had been all but spent to bring me ’round, and now she was wasted, exhausted, unable to even stand. A smudge of half-wiped blood streaked from the corner of her mouth, down her jawline, and into her hair.

Had I done this? Had I brought the uncanny intruder to Maplecroft with my reverie, my stupid fascination with the contents of that iron-capped box?

I suspected already that the bizarre sea glass and the strange fiends operated in some unholy conjunction, and I wished to know more about their connection, to better judge how closely they were aligned. But not then. Not at the expense of my sister’s life or sanity.

“Emma, wait here,” I said, and I let her lean on me as she slid to the floor, into a seated position. “I’ll take care of this. I’ll take care of everything.”

“The
creature
 . . . it’s around back. I saw it, at the kitchen window. Its
hands
 . . .”

“Shush, don’t talk now. Stay here.”

She seized my sleeve as I rose away from her. “Don’t leave me alone, with nothing to defend myself!” She did not ask, “What if you fail? What then will I do?” But the questions were implied, and though I did not intend to fail her, I understood her terror.

I squeezed her hand and saw that her knuckles were bruised, flushed, and welling blood. I dropped her battered fingers and hastened around the corner to the parlor, to our father’s old cabinet, which had once been stocked with his favorite spirits and crystal decanters. Now it was also stocked with a pair of pistols, likewise once his own.

I seized them both, knowing that both were loaded.

I ran back to the cellar door, shut it, and dropped the guns into Emma’s lap. They looked so heavy in her hands when she lifted them and checked to see that they were ready. She knew how to shoot because I’d taught her, and I had to trust that she’d defend herself ably should the worst occur.

But I warned her, “Don’t be an eager shot, dear—I’m not going outside yet. Stay quiet.”

She nodded with understanding. She knew the routine. Silence and darkness.

Taking my axe along for the tour, I went from room to room on our first floor and extinguished the gas lamps until nothing but the streetlamps cast illumination into our space. It was feeble light, fractured and prismatic, sent through the leaded-glass trestle and the street-facing windows, but it was enough for me to orient myself, and to feel as if I now had the space to listen.

I closed my eyes and opened them again, letting the darkness adjust my vision. I stood in the center of the large front room, strange lines and shadows marking me like a nightmare’s checkerboard. I could see the patterns on my dress, slashing dark lines and light grooves across my skirts and down my arms. The tattoos of brightness shifted when I shifted, raising the axe and feeling its heft settle across my shoulder as I waited, squinting at the night outside and wondering where the would-be intruder had gone off to.

Where was it?

Emma said the kitchen; she’d seen it at the window. It wouldn’t be there still. It would’ve tried to follow her, circling, tracking her through sound or scent or whatever it is these things use to perceive the world.

Mostly they seem to be blind, or to see very poorly. But they
feel
 . . . they pat the walls, they lunge at the boards, they trip and scuttle and scramble up our stairs when they stumble across them. They press their weird, webbed hands against the windows and leave prints on the glass in the shape of starfish.

I held as motionless as possible, hearing only the creak of my breath against my clothing, the bones of my undergarments
giving and resisting, the cinch of my tied belt stretching, the small stitches in small seams straining to contain me. And then I heard it, against the south wall. It must’ve been standing in the long, narrow rose garden, as if a thing like that cared a whit about catching thorns or treading on blossoms.

It wheezed and hissed, feeling its way along the exterior. The timbre of its flailing slaps changed when it reached the small side porch, and when it smacked the steps, and then the foundation stones as it relentlessly sought an entrance. It moved widdershins like the devil himself, and it made no sound apart from the exploratory jabs with its hands and the susurrous whistles of its breath coming and going.

Having pinpointed the brute thusly, I steeled myself and crept to the front door. Silently, or nearly so, I slipped outside and shut the door behind me with only the faintest of clicks. I took my key and fastened the lock as well, sealing Emma within to the best of my ability.

(I shuddered to consider it, but there was always the possibility of more than one interloper. Only once have I seen them work in pairs, but once is enough. It introduces the possibility of a second time, and for that, I invest in very good bolts.)

I stepped carefully through the covered porch area, keeping my steps as light as I could manage. My boots had low heels, but even low heels can tap and warn—so I tiptoed to the secondary door and unlatched it. It was a flimsy portal, intended more for show than for protection. I let myself out and shut it anyway, and it slipped into the frame with a muffled scuffing that felt terribly loud in the nighttime quietude.

I crept down the half dozen short steps to the ground, where the grass was more forgiving than the sanded slats of the porch. I moved through it swiftly, the rustle of the tiny green leaves
whispering no more loudly than the sway of my underskirts around my legs as I trotted to the left, to the corner, where I paused and readied myself.

I heard the slithering, damp coughs of the creature very close by. Its exhalations gusted with the smattering strikes of its hands as it sought entry.

If I did not stop this thing, it would find a way inside.

Eventually it would break a window and sense the space within, and come crawling through—just like its uncanny brethren had done when we lived across town. When my father and Mrs. Borden were alive. (Though they were not themselves anymore. Not by then.)

I raised the axe, holding it aloft over my shoulder but slightly to the side—ready to swing in a deadly arc, at the approximate head level of a person-shaped thing. I adjusted the trajectory, opting to aim lower. My trespasser might be smaller than I. Better to risk a strike too low than to swing too high and miss.

On an internal count of three, I stepped swiftly around the corner and charged forward, headlong, bringing the axe wide and throwing all my strength behind it.

The creature turned its face to me.

I cannot say that it looked at me. I cannot say that those film-covered eyes could see anything, though I detected the dark orbs of pupils twitching left to right beneath some silvery membrane.

Its skin did not glow. It would be more accurate to say that it gleamed dully in whatever shreds of cast-off light reached us from the streetlamps at the distant corner. But the dull gleam was very, very white without appearing clean—the wet-looking pallor of boiled eggs, or navy beans left too long in a pot.

The thing’s stretched-tight skin was translucent enough to show the inner workings of organs wrestling for space, jostling together in that narrow torso cavity that scarcely looked large enough to hold a rolled-up newspaper.

I’m saying this wrong. I’m making it sound fragile, or ill.

It was not. They never are.

Their muscles are thin as laundry lines, strong as steel. Their teeth, when they brandish them, are jabbing spikes as fine and terrible as needles.

The swing of my axe caught this creature in those teeth. They shattered like glass.