The Isle of Blood (10 page)

Sometime later—though it was not much later—his hand fell upon my shoulder. Above me was the window and, above the window, the clouds with their bellies full of snow.

“Will Henry,” the monstrumologist said. His voice was cracked and raw, as if he’d been screaming at the top of his lungs. “Will Henry.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“A quarter past three. I did not wish to wake you…”

“But you woke me anyway.”

“I wanted to show you something.”

I rolled onto my side, away from him.

“I don’t want to look at him again.”

“It isn’t Mr. Kendall. It’s this.” I heard the crinkle and crunch of papers in his hand. “A treatise by a French scientist named Albert Calmette, of the Pasteur Institute. It’s concerned with the theoretical possibility of developing antivenin, based on the vaccine principles of Pasteur. The theory applies to certain poisonous snakes and arachnids, but it could have applications in our case—Mr. Kendall’s case, I mean. It may be worth a try.”

“Then, try it.”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “The chief obstacle is time, in that Mr. Kendall doesn’t have much of it left.”

I rolled onto my back, and the form of the monstrumologist swung into view. He looked exhausted. He swayed like a man trying to keep his balance on the yawing deck of a ship.

“Then, you had better get to work.”

“It means you will have to sit with Mr. Kendall.”

I sat up, swung my feet over the side of the bed, and tugged on my shoes.

“I will sit with him.”

Before he allowed me into the room, the doctor uncapped a small vial filled with a thick, clear liquid and shook several drops of the substance onto his handkerchief.

“Here. Tie this round your face,” he instructed me, and then proceeded to tie the knot himself. My senses were assaulted by a sweet, musky fragrance that reminded me of rubbing alcohol, though without the biting astringency.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Ambra grisea, or ambergris, the aged regurgitation of the sperm whale,” the monstrumologist answered. “A common ingredient in perfume. I often wonder, though, how common it would be if ladies in particular knew where it came from. You see, ambergris is normally expelled through the whale’s anus with fecal matter, but—”

“Fecal matter?” My stomach rolled.

“Shit. But sometimes the mass is too large to pass, and the material is regurgitated through the mouth.”

“Whale vomit?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. The ancient Chinese called it ‘dragon’s spittle.’ In the Middle Ages people carried balls of it around, believing it could ward off the plague. It’s quite pleasant, though, isn’t it?”

I agreed that it was. The doctor smiled with satisfaction, as if he had just imparted an important lesson.

“All right. Quietly now, Will Henry.”

We stepped into the bedroom. Despite the gift of regurgitated whale shit, I could smell Kendall’s decay. It stung my eyes. The taste of it tingled upon my tongue. I had expected it, though that had done little to prepare me for it. All other expectations, to my surprise, were not met.

First, Warthrop had taken his mother’s coverlet and put it back where he had found it. Mr. Kendall was covered from feet to neck.

That was not all. Mr. Kendall himself had changed. I had expected more of the agonized writhing, the grunts and throaty moans of someone in extreme mental and physical distress. Instead he was so still, so quiet, that for the briefest of moments I thought he might have finally succumbed. But no, he lived. The covers rose and fell, and upon closer examination I saw that his eyes roamed beneath their half-closed lids. Most astonishing of all (given the astonishing circumstances) was the smile. Wymond Kendall was smiling! As if lost in a pleasant dream, he smiled.

“Mr. Kendall… is he—”

“Smiling? Yes, I would call that a smile. The stories say that in the final stages the victim experiences moments of intense euphoria, an overwhelming feeling of bliss. It’s an interesting phenomenon; perhaps once in the bloodstream
pwdre ser
releases a compound structurally similar to an opiate.” He stopped, laughed softly—at himself?—and said, “I should get to work on the antivenin. Call me at once should his condition change.”

And with that the monstrumologist left me alone with Kendall. He would not have done so, I have told myself many times over the course of my long life, if he had known what Kendall had become—if he had known that Kendall was not Kendall anymore—that he was no more human, or more sentient, than a dime-store mannequin.

I have told myself that.

The room is cold. The light is gray. The even exhalations of the once-human thing on the bed are the only things the boy can hear—metronomic, the ticking of the human clock, lulling him to sleep.

He is so tired. His head lolls. He tells himself he won’t fall asleep. Just rest his eyes for a moment or two…

In the gray light in the cold room, to the rhythmic breath of the thing becoming—sleep.

Sleep now, Will Henry, sleep.

Do you see her? In the white behind the gray, in the warm beyond the cold, in the silence past the ticking of the clock—she is baking a pie, an apple pie, your favorite. And you at the table with your tall glass of milk, swinging your legs, not long enough yet for your feet to touch the floor.

It must coolfirst, Willy. It must cool
.

A strand of hair loosed from her bun falling down her graceful neck, and her new apron, and a dab of flour upon her cheek, and how long her arms seem reaching into the oven, and the whole world smelling like apples.

Where is Father?

Away again
.

With the doctor?

Of course with the doctor
.

I want to go
.

You do not know what you’re wishing for
.

When will he be home?

Soon, I hope
.

He says one day I shall go with him
.

Does he?

One day I will
.

But if you go, who will keep me company?

You can come too
.

Where your father goes, I have no desire to follow
.

The fire that engulfs her has no heat. Her scream makes no sound. The boy sits in his chair with his short legs swinging and his tall glass of milk, and he watches the flames consume her, and he is laughing while his mother burns, and the world still smells like apples.

And then his father’s voice, calling him:

Will Henry! Will Henreeeeeeee!

I bolted from the chair, stumbled toward the bed, turned, lunged through the doorway into the hall, and started down the stairs. It was not my father’s voice—not the dream voice—but the doctor’s calling me, as he had a hundred times before, in desperate need of my indispensible services.

“Coming, sir!” I called, pounding down the stairs to the main floor. “I’m coming!”

We met in the front hall, for as I raced down, he ran up, and both of us were winded and slightly wild-eyed, regarding each other with identical expressions of comic confusion.

“What is it?” he asked breathlessly.

And I, with him: “What is it?”

“Why are you asking me ‘What is it?’ What is it?”

“What, Dr. Warthrop?”

“I asked you that, Will Henry.”

“Asked me what;

“What is it!” he roared. “What do you want?”

“You—you called for me, sir.”

“I did no such thing. Are you quite all right?”

“Yes, sir. I must have… I think I fell asleep.”

“I would not advise that, Will Henry. Back upstairs, please. We mustn’t leave Mr. Kendall unattended.”

The room was still very cold. And the light gray. And there was the whisper of snow now against the windowpane.

And the bed, empty.

The chair and the Louis Philippe armoire and the dead embers and the little rocking chair and the littler doll in that chair and her littler still black, unblinking china eyes and the boy frozen on the threshold, staring stupidly at the empty bed.

I backed slowly into the hall. The hall was warmer than the room, and I was much warmer than the hall; my cheeks were on fire, though my hands were numb.

“Dr. Warthrop,” I whispered, no louder than the snow against the pane. “Dr. Warthrop!”

He must have fallen
, I thought.
Got loose of the ropes somehow and fell out of bed. He’s lying on the other side, that’s all. The doctor will have to pick him up
. I
am not touching him!

I turned back. My turning took a thousand years. The stairs stretched out below me for a thousand miles.

To the landing, another millennia. There was the beating of my heart and my hot breath puffing my makeshift mask, and the smell of ambergris and, above and behind me, the gentle protest of the top step, creaking.

I stopped, listening. The passing of the third millennia.

I was patting my empty pockets for the gun.

Where is the gun?

He had forgotten to give it back to me, or, as he would undoubtedly say, I had forgotten to ask him for it.

I knew I should keep going. Instinctively I understood where salvation lay. But it is human to tie ourselves to the mainmast, to be Lot’s wife, turning back.

I turned back.

It launched itself from the top step, a reeking sepulcher of jutting bone and flayed skin and crimson muscle dripping purulence, a yawning mouth festooned with a riot of jagged teeth, and the black eyes of the abyss.

The once-Kendall slammed into me, its shoulder driving into my chest, and the black eyes rolled in their sockets, like a shark’s eyes when it attacks, in the ecstasy of the kill. I punched blindly at its face; my knuckles knocked against the sharp, bony growths that had erupted from the rubbish of its flesh, bone meeting bone, and my entire arm sang with pain.

The creature seized my wrist and flung me down the last flight of stairs as easily as a boy tosses a stick. I landed face-first with a loud wallop at the bottom, making no more noise than that, for the fall knocked all the breath out of me. In the space of a heartbeat, I rolled onto my back, and it was upon me, so close I saw my own face reflected in its soulless eyes. Its face was not that of a human being. I have looked at that face a thousand times; I keep the memory of it in a special cabinet of curiosities, and I take it out from time to time, when the day is bright and the sun warm and the evening very far away. I take it out and hold it. The more I hold it, you see, the less I’m afraid of it. Most of the skin is gone, torn or sloughed off, exposing the underlying musculature, the marvelously complex—and marvelously beautiful—underpinning. Pointed horns of calcified tissue protrude from the skull, scores of them, like the thrust-up roots of cypress trees, from the cheekbones, the forehead, the jaws and chin. It has no lips. Its tongue has putrefied and broken apart; just the base remains. I saw the brown stringy mass spasm as the open mouth came down at me. The rest of the tongue he swallowed; the lips, too. The only thing in Mr. Kendall’s stomach was Mr. Kendall.

At the last instant before he landed on top of me, I brought up my hands. They broke easily through him; my fingers tangled with his ribs. If I’d had my wits about me, I would have thought to push just a bit more, find his heart and squeeze until it burst. Perhaps, though, it was a matter of timing, not acumen. There was no time to think.

In the time it took for me to realize that this inhuman face would be the last face I would see, the bullet punched through the back of his head, blowing out an apple-size hole as it came out the other side before burying itself in the carpet not quite a quarter inch from my ear. The body jerked in my hands. I felt—or thought I felt—the protest of his heart, an angry push against my fingers wrapped tight around his ribs, the way a desperate prisoner grasps the bars of his cell, before it stopped beating. The light did not go out of his eyes. There hadn’t been any light in them to begin with. I was still trapped in those eyes—sometimes I think I am trapped still—in their unseeing sight.