The Curse of the Wendigo (40 page)

“Why?”
he demanded.

“Because I could have,” I answered.

They were laid to rest side by side, my master’s two loves, in the Chanler family plot, for the father of the most wayward son is a father still. The elder Chanler did not speak to Warthrop, except for a few threatening words upon the conclusion of the graveside service, to the effect that he intended to strip him down to his last piece of silver. Warthrop’s reply: “Seems only just, but I beg you to leave me at least my microscope.”

Von Helrung was in attendance, as well as several other monstrumologists, including the survivors of the hunting party. Dobrogeanu shook my hand gravely and pronounced the doctor fortunate to have found a most resourceful and brave assistant.

Lilly had come along too. I was never sure how she’d managed to arrange it, but she hopped out of the hansom wearing a black dress with a matching black ribbon in her curls, and during the service she sat next to me, at one point pulling my hand into hers. I did not try to pull it away.

“So you are leaving,” she said. “Was it your plan to leave without saying good-bye?”

“I serve the doctor,” I answered. “I have no plans of my own.”

“I think that is the most pitifully tragic thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. Will you miss me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re just saying that. You won’t really miss me.”

“I will miss you.”

“Are you planning to kiss me good-bye? Oh, sorry. Is
your doctor planning for you to kiss me good-bye?”

I smiled. “I shall ask him.”

She wanted to know when she would see me again. Would she have to wait a whole year? “Unless the doctor’s business brings us here sooner,” I answered.

“Well, I can’t promise you anything, Will,” she said. “I may be entirely too busy to fit you in. I will be dating in a year, and I expect my calendar will be quite
full
.” Her eyes danced merrily. “
Are
you coming back for the next congress? Or will your doctor leave the Society now that he’s lost his little vote?”

It was true. The doctor had failed. Von Helrung’s resolution had passed by the narrowest of margins, sounding, to Warthrop’s mind at least, the death knell of monstrumology. He might soldier on in exile, a solitary vessel of reason in a sea of superstition—but what would be his reward? What meager solace could he take in his principles when the one thing he’d lived for had been snatched away in the space of an hour?

He took the news as hard as I’d expected—though his reaction took me completely by surprise.

“I have committed a grievous error, Will Henry,” the doctor confessed on the eve of our departure for home. “But unlike yours in the tenement, mine can be rectified. It is not too late.”

His face glowed beneficently in the eldritch autumn light eking through the window that overlooked the park. He spoke with the firmness of one who had perceived his way with untarnished clarity.

“John asked a question of me before he died, a question to which I had no answer:
What have we given?
I must admit, I am not the kind of man to whom a question like that makes sense. To me, it was just another bit of his gibberish. Your father understood, though, and paid the highest price for his gift. You see, Will Henry, it is not
what
we give but what we are
willing
to give. What we can give.

“You abandoned that child in the hall. The gift was within your power, and you withheld your hand. You cannot take that back now, any more than your father can take back his gift to me. But I am not so helpless. I have a choice still—to answer John’s question.”

He drew close to me. “I have lost—everything. John. Muriel. Even my work, the one thing that has given me solace through the lonely years—even that I have lost. You are all that’s left for me, Will Henry, and I fear I will lose you, too.”

“I’ll never leave you, sir,” I said. And I believed it. “Never.”

“You do not understand. Tell me again why you should have saved that child in the hallway.”

“Because I could have.”

He nodded. “And I will save you, Will Henry. Because I can.
That
is the answer to John’s question.”

I understood then. I backed away on unsteady legs. The room began to spin around me.

“You’re sending me away,” I said.

“You nearly died,” he reminded me. “Three times by my count. If you remain with me, eventually your luck will run out, just like your father’s did. I cannot allow that to happen.”

“No!” I shouted. My voice shook with rage. “That isn’t why you’re doing it. You’re sending me away because I killed him!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, Will Henry,” he cautioned in a level voice.

“You’re angry and you want to punish me for it! For saving your life! I saved your life!” I could hardly contain my fury. “She was right about you—they were both right! You’re a terrible man. You’re nothing but a . . . You’re full of nothing but yourself, and you don’t know anything! You don’t know anything about . . . about
anything
!”

“I know this,” he roared back at me, no longer able to contain his temper. “She would be alive now if not for me. The gift was mine to give, and I withheld it—I withheld it!” His face was contorted with self-loathing. He struck his breast like a penitent before the sacrificial altar. “I allowed her to go home—when I knew, I
knew
she was in danger. I turned away just as
you
turned away, Will Henry, and what happened? Tell me what happens when we turn away!”

He fell backward onto the sofa, the place where he had tasted,
for the briefest of moments, the love he had denied himself by that plunge into the Danube years before.

“Oh, Will Henry,” he cried. “Aren’t we the pitiful pair? What did Fiddler say? ‘What he loves does not know him, and what he knows cannot love.’ He was talking about you, but he might as well have been talking about both of us.” He raised his eyes to me. He seemed so lost, so hopelessly bereft that I stepped toward him in spite of myself.

“Don’t send me away, sir. Please.”

He raised his hand. He let it fall. “Life is,” he murmured. “John filled in that blank, didn’t he? John gave his answer—but is it
the
answer, Will Henry?
Meister
Abram claims we are more than what’s reflected in the Yellow Eye, but are we? I carried him the entire way—we almost died, you and I, to bring him out of the wilderness—so he might kill the only woman I have ever loved.”

I sat beside him. “That isn’t why you brought him out.”

He gave a little wave of his hand, dismissing my effort to comfort him. “And the baby died. That isn’t the reason you turned aside. My question remains, Will Henry. Is John’s answer
the
answer?”

I shook my head. I don’t think he expected me to decipher a riddle that had plagued humankind from its infancy. I am not sure to this day what he expected of me.

Or what I expected of him. We were indeed a pitiful pair, the monstrumologist and I, bound to each other in ways inexplicable to both of us. In the Monstrumarium the
beast had forced me to turn and behold “the true face” of love. But love has more than one face, and the Yellow Eye is not the only eye. There can be no desolation without abundance. And the voice of the beast is not the only voice that rides upon the high wind. It was there in every weary step the doctor took in the wilderness. It was there the night he gathered me into his arms to keep me from freezing to death. It was there in Muriel’s eyes the night their shadows met and became one. It is always there, like the hunger that can’t be satisfied, though the tiniest sip is more satisfying than the most sumptuous of feasts.

I reached across the space that separated us—no farther than a foot and wider than the universe—and gathered the monstrumologist’s hand into mine.

November 2009

None of the famous personages mentioned in the journals (Thomas Edison, Algernon Blackwood, Bram Stoker, Henry Irving, John Pemberton, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, Thomas Byrnes, and Jacob Riis) ever wrote or spoke publicly of anyone named Pellinore Warthrop or anything remotely resembling the science of monstrumology. This fact, of course, doesn’t prove that these real people from the era did not know Warthrop; however, if they did, it is very odd that they never mentioned him or his esoteric “philosophy.” For example, nowhere have I found any indication that Stoker based his Van Helsing character upon a “real” doctor named von Helrung.

It was Blackwood’s story, published in 1910, that put the Wendigo on the map and established Blackwood as a
popular writer of the horror genre. I have found no evidence that the story was inspired or in any way derived from Will Henry’s account in the fourth folio, but that interpretation is clearly intended, based on the meeting at the Zeno Club, which I could find no record of having existed either.

A careful search of newspaper archives yielded nothing from the time period beyond the articles reproduced at the beginning of this book. I was unable to find any mention, under Blackwood’s byline or anyone else’s, of the murders described in the sixth folio. No mention of the name Chanler and no stories about an American Ripper running amok on the streets of New York. This part of Will Henry’s story—the scene where he mentions the newspaper clippings in the von Helrung library—is undeniably fictional. A scandal involving a prominent New York family certainly would have been covered by the newspapers of the day. And if
that
isn’t true, the entire record must be called into question . . . but did I ever really have any doubt the journals were a work of fiction?

Frustrated in my efforts to corroborate their contents, I turned to the journals themselves. I contacted an expert in handwriting analysis based in Gainesville at the University of Florida, who was kind enough to take a look at the material. His report contained the following observations:

The report went on to speculate that Will Henry suffered from arthritis, may have been bipolar, and may have been alone or without companionship for long periods of time. The part about his being meticulous in his appearance I found particularly poignant, given his condition when he was discovered in the drainage ditch, covered in filth, dressed in ratty clothes, with a matted beard and long, knotted hair. What had happened to bring a man like him to that point? The other striking thing about the report, to my mind, was the assertion that it was “unlikely he was delusional.”

Wendigos. Mongolian Death Worms. An organism that secretes some kind of enzyme that gives its host unnaturally long life.
And it is unlikely this person was delusional? Handwriting analysis is as much art as it is science; still, at first I found that statement confounding, to put it mildly.

On further reflection, though, it makes sense under the theory that Will Henry (or whoever he was) was a writer of fiction. One can write fiction—it is possible, I hear—and not be delusional. Fiction itself could be characterized as highly organized delusional thinking. Simply because the author
wrote
about the life of someone named Will Henry doesn’t make the story
his
life.

My hope is that the publication of these journals, as with the first three, may generate a lead. As the director of the nursing home told me in the beginning, everyone has someone. Someone out there knows who this person was. Perhaps not under the name William James Henry, but someone knows him. One day I hope to open up an e-mail or get a phone call from that person, and at last I’ll have some answers. After I finished reading this latest set of diaries, it occurred to me that Will Henry had found himself at the end of his life’s journey in that desolation he—and his enigmatic master—had found so terrifying. Perhaps my quest, if one could call it that, is more about
bringing
him out than
finding
him out. Perhaps by discovering who he was and to whom he belongs, I can bring Will Henry home.