The Curse of the Wendigo (25 page)

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “So you
have
heard of it?”

“Yes, I have. Didn’t I just say so?” I could not meet her gaze, though.

“Would you like to hold it?”

“Hold it?”

“Yes. So we may sex it.”

“Sex it?”

“Why are you repeating everything I say? We have to know if it’s a boy or girl so we can name it. You
do
know how to sex a
khorkhoi
, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” I waved my hand dismissively—again, as I’d observed the doctor do innumerable times—and snorted. “It’s like eating pie.”

“Good!” she cried. “I’ve decided ‘Mildred’ if it’s a girl and ‘Howard’ if it’s a boy. Pick it up, Will, and let’s see.”

There was no escape now. What excuse was available to me? I might have claimed to have a severe allergy to the things, but she would have seen through that instantly. I might have feigned expertise in sexing a
khorkhoi
by the shape of its mouth, and thereby negate the need to touch it, but that, too, could backfire, confirming her original suspicion that I didn’t know a
khorkhoi
from a hole in the ground.

Thus, having chosen the iron chains of deceit—bound, as it were, by my own buffoonery—I reached into the terrarium and gently slid my hand beneath the undulating worm, careful to keep my fingers far from its contracting mouth. It was heavier than I thought it would be, and thicker, about the circumference of my wrist, making it difficult to grasp with one hand. The task was made more problematic by the immediately apparent fact that the
khorkhoi
did not like to be held. It writhed in my palsied hand, twisting and turning the end with the mouth. (I could not call it its “head,” for there was no delineation between its forefront and hindquarters but for the orifice.) Its body was reddish-brown and reminded me in its appearance and texture of cow intestine.

“Use both hands, Will,” she whispered. So intent was I in maintaining my hold upon the creature that I did not notice she had scooted away, putting distance between herself and me and my charge.

It seemed a prudent suggestion. The creature must have been more than six inches long. I had picked it up toward the tail end, and the little puckering mouth bobbed and weaved freely in the air. Carefully I reached with my left hand to grab it. How the thing sensed, without eyes or nostrils, my approach, I do not know, but sense it the
khorkhoi
did.

Faster than I could blink, it struck, more like a rattlesnake than a worm. (Only later would I discover it was indeed a member of the reptile family.) It coiled and then
snapped whiplike directly at my face, the diminutive mouth expanding to twice its original size, revealing row upon row of tiny teeth marching backward into the lightless tunnel of its gullet. Instinctively my head snapped back, which saved my face but exposed my neck. The last thing I saw before it attached itself were the teeth emerging from the recesses of the yawning pit of its mouth.

I did not feel the bite at first. Instead, I felt an enormous pressure as, by means of its rubbery lips, it affixed itself with leechlike determination, and then there was the slap of its body against my chest, for it had pulled free from my hand. It coiled itself partway around my neck and immediately began to squeeze, cutting off my air as simultaneously something fire-hot scorched the spot beneath its anchored mouth. A
khorkhoi,
I would later learn, does not eat the flesh of its victims, nor does it, in the strictest sense, drink their blood. More like the spider, it uses its toxic saliva to liquefy the flesh of its prey; its teeth are vestigial relics from its evolutionary past. The choking behavior is used, like the web of the arachnid, to immobilize. It goes without saying that it is very difficult to defend oneself while unconscious.

Mad with panic, I clawed at the monster. Lilly recoiled in horror. Her little game had spun out of control, and now she seemed paralyzed by its denouement. I stumbled against the table . . . lost my balance . . . fell. Dark flowers blossomed in my field of vision.

She screamed, her cries coming to me as if from a great
distance, and it was through the veil of that spinning, ever growing garden of raven blooms that I watched her run from the chamber, taking the light with her, leaving the darkness and the crazed residents of Unclassified 101 of the Lower Monstrumarium with me.

“Whom Did I Betray?”

I was in that darkness for quite some time.

And when the darkness went away, the monstrumologist was with me.

“Are you awake now?” he asked.

I tried to speak. My effort was rewarded with searing pain, from my throat to my lungs, which felt as if a great stone had been laid upon them. At first my mind was completely blank; then I remembered where I was, and for that I was glad, because the pillow under my head was very soft—much softer than my pillow at Harrington Lane. The hotel bed was much larger than the one in the little loft—and for that I was glad too. There was even a warm rush of what I hesitate to call—but having no better word to describe it—pleasure, when his lean face swam into focus.

“Hello, sir,” I croaked.

“Tell me,
Will Henry, do you think you are in a little trouble or a great deal of trouble?”

“A great deal, sir.”

“And you’re fortunate that your luck is not commensurate with the amount of trouble. By all accounts, you should be dead.”

“It would not be the first time, sir.”

I touched the thick bandage wrapped around my neck. That small touch, like my first attempt at speech, was rewarded with agonizing pain.

“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I managed to gasp.

“Why is it that every time I leave you to your own devices, you end up seriously injured? I am beginning to think I shall have to cart you around with me like an Indian babe in a papoose.”

“It wasn’t my idea, sir.”

“No? Miss Bates placed the
khorkhoi
around your neck?”

“No, sir, she didn’t touch it. I picked it up.”

“And can you tell me why in the world you would pick up a Mongolian Death Worm?”

“To . . . sex it, sir.”

“Dear Lord, Will Henry. Don’t you know
khorkhoi
are hermaphroditic? They are both male and female.”

“No, sir,” I choked out. “I didn’t know that.”

“By now I’m sure it’s occurred to you that the price of
ignorance in monstrumology can be quite steep.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Ignorance could cost your life. Did you weigh that cost against the exigency of sexing the worm?” He did not wait for my answer. “I think not. Why
did
you do it, Will Henry? Why did you go somewhere you clearly had no business being?”

“Lilly . . .”

“Lilly! What—did she bop you over the head with a chair and carry you down to the Monstrumarium?”

“She said she wanted to show me something.”

“A word of advice, Will Henry. When a person of the female gender says she wants to show you something, run the other way. The odds are it is not something you wish to see.”

“Thank you, sir. I didn’t know that.”

He nodded gravely, but through my tears of pain, did I see his eyes dancing merrily in the lamplight?

“There is still much you do not,” he said. “About science—and more esoteric phenomena.”

“Esoteric phenomena?”

“Females. In this instance the same girl who brought you to the edge of death also yanked you back. If not for her quick thinking, your indispensable services would have been quite dispensed with. She ran straight to Professor Ainsworth and roused him, with no small amount of effort, and to his subsequent annoyance for missing his nap on
account of two silly children playing where no child should ever play. It was Adolphus who saved your life, Will Henry, and to whom you owe all gratitude, which I suggest you express to him at your earliest convenience—at a safe distance, for I believe it is his intention to wrap his cane around your neck if you step foot in his dominion again.”

I nodded, and winced, for the motion caused a hot bolt of pain.

The doctor fished a cloth from the washbasin on the bed stand. He wrung out the excess water and began bathing me, starting with my sweating forehead and working his way down. He bent to the task with his usual level of intense concentration, as if there existed the absolute ideal of giving a recalcitrant apprentice a sponge bath, a precise procedure he was determined to follow to the letter.

“The next few days are critical,” he began in that lecturing tone I’d heard a hundred times before. “Your good fortune includes the fortuitous fact that Adolphus keeps a supply of
khorkhoi
anti-venom on hand in the
heretofore
unlikely event of two children sneaking into the Lower Monstrumarium for the purpose of sexing something that by its nature cannot be sexed.
However
, the extent of that good fortune is mitigated by the nature of the venom. It is extremely slow-acting. In the wild the Death Worm may go for months without eating, so it relies on its venom to keep its prey more or less immobile while it feasts—for days—upon its living flesh.

“The venom is a narcotic, Will Henry, known for its hallucinogenic attributes.
Native tribesmen harvest it and ingest it in small doses for its opium-like effects, sometimes by diluting it in distilled liquor or, which is more common, by smoking rabbit weed that has been treated with it. You must tell me immediately if you start to see things that by all reason should not be there, and I will have to keep a close eye on you for indications of paranoia and delusional thinking. The latter poses the greater threat, since one might argue it’s your
normal
mode of operation. You’ll be fine one moment, and the next you may be convinced you can fly or that you’ve sprouted a second head, which in your case would not be a particularly bad thing. Another brain could not hurt.”

He was examining the earlier wound, the spot on my chest where John Chanler’s teeth had bored into me.

“What else?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, you may experience an intense burning sensation when you urinate. In particularly sensitive individuals, circulation is lost to the extremities, gangrene sets in, and the appendage must be amputated. You may lose your hair. Your testicles might swell. There have been cases of spontaneous hemorrhagic bleeding from the orifices, particularly the anus. Your kidneys could shut down, your lungs could fill with fluid, and you could literally drown in your own mucus. Am I leaving anything out?”

“I hope not, sir.”

He wrung out the cloth, pulled down my nightshirt, and arranged the covers around me.

“Now, are you hungry?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you
think you can manage to stay out of trouble while I check on my other patient?”

“Lilly?” For some reason my heart fluttered with dread.

“As is so often the case, the instigator of the misdeed has escaped unscathed. I was speaking of Dr. Chanler.”

“Oh! No, sir, I’ll be fine.”

“If you do get hungry later, ring the front desk and have them send something up. Soft foods, Will Henry, and nothing too spicy.”

The phone in the outer room rang, startling him. He was not expecting a call. He left to answer it and returned a moment later, running his fingers through his hair.

“I’m closing the door, Will Henry. Try to sleep now.”

I promised I would try. I closed my eyes dutifully. Presently I heard voices coming from the sitting room. Were they real? I wondered. Or was this the venom talking? One was low-pitched, a man’s, the other’s register higher—clearly a woman’s.
Muriel,
I thought.
Muriel has come to see the doctor. Why?
Had something happened to Dr. Chanler? Had he finally succumbed? I fancied I heard the sound of her crying.
The end has come,
I thought, my heart going out first to her and then, with a stabbing rush of grief, to my master. I saw him in my mind’s eye trudging for mile after mile in the unforgiving wilderness, cradling her husband in his arms. I heard the desperate existential cry shouted in the sound-
crushing atmosphere:
Why did you come here? What did you think you would find?

Why
had
he gone into the wilderness? In Rat Portage he had seemed to mock von Helrung’s proposal and the man he’d claimed was responsible for it. Why, then, had he gone in search of something he did not believe existed? Had it been, as the doctor had theorized, a sycophantic act or an overly zealous show of filial devotion to a beloved teacher? What had driven Chanler to risk his life for something he himself admitted was a chimera, a fairy tale?

The voices without rose and fell, like the currents of a spring-fed mountain stream. Yes, I decided, it was their voices, the doctor’s and Muriel’s, most definitely. After a while I convinced myself of their verity. They did not exist solely between my ears, but outside them.

I am not proud of what I did next.

A short hall led from our rooms to the living quarters. Thankfully, the jets here were not lit, and I navigated the distance in semidarkness. Slowly—oh, so slowly—lying upon the floor on my belly like an advancing marine, I slid forward until, while comfortably reclining on my stomach, I could observe unseen from the shadows.

She was sitting on the divan, wearing a fashionable riding cloak over a lavender gown of taffeta and velvet. Though from my vantage point her lovely emerald eyes appeared dry, she worried with a handkerchief in her lap. I could not see the doctor, but following her gaze, I determined he must
have been near the fireplace—standing, if I knew Warthrop. In moments of stress the doctor either stood or paced about like a caged lion. And this was definitely a stressful moment.

“. . . confess that I am having some difficulty understanding why you’ve come,” he was saying.

“They’re insisting upon discharging him,” she said.

“That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t they want him there? Do they wish for him to die?”

“It’s Archibald—his father. He’s furious at you for taking him there without his permission. And he’s terrified the papers will get wind of it. That’s why we didn’t commit him in the first place. Archibald would hear none of it.”