The news was difficult to take, yet it could not dampen Victor's confidence.
"I have something truly miraculous," he said to the letter as if it were a conduit to his teacher. "I know I can make this succeed."
After visiting his parents and confessing that he was not in Europe all that time, he regaled them with his adventure in Brazil (which nearly shocked his mother to death). After dinner, he spoke of the store, how it had been left to him, and that it was in bad condition. His father asked him if he needed any money for renovations. Victor was gracious, but declined. Instead, he produced the one item of cargo he could not trust to delivery men, the one thing no white man but he had ever seen before, something so rare, so potent, so tragically beautiful, it could not help but revitalize his business.
He placed the jar on the table and his parents peered at it, unable to see inside with the dimmed gas lighting. His father took the jar and held it up to a candle. He harrumphed, disinterested, and passed it to his wife.
Victor's mother, typically delighted by flowers, recoiled.
"A black flower?" she said. "How morbid." She placed the jar back on the table in front of her son, far away from herself.
Victor took the rejection personally, as if he had shown his newborn and they had called it ugly. He collected his precious jar, wrapped it in protective cloth, swaddled it in his bag, and left. It was the last time he spoke to them.
For weeks, Victor toiled to bring the store new life. No slogan or announcement worked with the cynical passers-by, they were too jaded by all the false claims made by the hucksters with their snake oils. He took care to maintain a professional appearance. His shelves were always stocked. He introduced some of his newest discoveries. Nothing drew the crowd. So he gave in to economic pressures and produced something that everyone was buying.
His mentor had a still out back that he would use to create his preserving ethanol. The technique was well-practiced by Victor, who would often prepare the batches. Soon, word got around that Victor's Herbal-Infused Gin was the best in town and business finally picked up. Extra money allowed him to hire extra help, so that he could finally begin research on his Amazonian specimens.
He worked tirelessly, first proving efficacy of the herbs he knew about and saving his precious black flower for last. That one was a total mystery, tantalizing, tempting, seducing him with possibility. He opened the jar, and was catapulted back to the jungle by the rich fragrance.
In the beginning, he was conservative, drawing only a few drops of liquid from the jar and adding it to water for mice, then for guinea pigs. He observed carefully for indications, for new behaviors, for health effects. The animals' only response was to avoid the water entirely, even to the point of dehydration. Even the smallest amount added to their water prevented them from approaching it.
A potent repellent of vermin, he jotted in his notebook. No other obvious effect.
Next, he made a diluted tonic with the berries, first mashing them with mortar and pestle, then brewing them into a weak tea. The animals were not as averse to the brew as they were with the flower's essence but they became catatonic for hours. Gradually, they would move about again, would take regular food and water, seemingly with no ill effect. So Victor raised the tea to his nose. Hint of lilac and ripe mango, ne noted. He brought it to his lips, sipped, and felt the tingle of sweet and sour across his tongue. The flavor was faint, yet magnificent, a ripe fruit harvested at the peak of perfection with the complexity of fine red wine. He swallowed and could not help himself from draining the cup. Remorse came instantly.
"Am I insane? Why would I do that?"
Victor's self-scolding ended with the screech of a reluctant window sash being opened in the store downstairs. Two men exchanged words, only one side of which he could make out.
"Nah, he isn't in today. When he is, he just stays up in his office, anyway... Books all add up, so we're good... Just give me a few minutes to get on my way... Yeah, all right, see you next week."
The window screeched shut again. Hard soled shoes walked across the wooden floor below. The front doorbells jingled once, then again as the door was closed. The metal shutter rolled down and the store was quiet.
"Hello? Henry? I'm still here, you know!"
Victor rose from his workbench and walked down the flight of stairs. His store was dark, the shelves covered with dust cloths. Victor stood, confused, until he looked at the calendar. An extra day was struck from the month, and with an embarrassed grin, he realized he never went home the night before.
"Must've fallen asleep at my bench, woke up on my day off, and kept working."
He starts back toward his office upstairs when he notices the window to the back alley is unlocked. Victor frowns at it and inspects the latch. To test a hunch, he slides the sash up and it screeches horribly. He looks out through and sees some urchins standing in the alley. They spot him and quickly look down. One tosses his head and the others follow him out of the alley.
"Huh. What was that all about?"
Victor could smell something was amiss. He was meticulous with his inventory and had never missed a bottle. When he reviewed his account books, however, he saw that certain items were consistently discounted, even on days when he was running the register. That is how he figured out that someone was marking down the price while taking full payment, leaving a few loose bottles of gin at the end of every day. The investigation was short, and he sacked Henry first thing the next morning.
That night, there was a break in.
Victor came in to the store and found the back window smashed, the door to the alley wide open. Almost all of his gin was gone, along with his prized specimens recovered from the Amazon, including his precious black flower.
Police mocked him, muttering it was what a gin vendor deserved. He wondered if they were in on it. But the truth was it did not matter. His store was sacked, his distillery was smashed, all the investments of his life had come to naught. He was ruined.
Victor sulked in his closed shop for days. He could not eat, barely slept, teetered on the verge of self-harm. And then, one of the thieves came back.
A scrawny lad of maybe fourteen crawled in through the unrepaired window. His eyes were sunken, like a very old man's, and he cradled an arm wrapped in filthy bandages. The boy saw Victor at once and the glare he gave spoke hatred and rage, barely reined back by desperation.
"My arm," the boy said with a dry rasp. He looked down at it, and when he looked back up, Victor could see the lad's desperation was no longer in charge.
"Gimme the cure!" he shrieked, and in a blink the boy was clutching Victor's woolen lapels. "Gimme it ye geezer or you'll get the shank!"
Victor did not need to look to know there was a knife in the boy's grip. He raised his hands slowly to show docility. He did not need to be angry, for here was a chance to find some or all of his stores.
"I can help you," Victor lied, "but first I need to know what you took. What did it look like?"
"Like a jar o' gin with yer pansies crammed in it!"
"They were flowers, then, not roots?"
"And one with little berries."
"What color?"
"The hell should I know? I oughtta cut ye anyway!"
Victor could feel every nick in the knife at his throat. He had already given up on life without his work, so what did he have to lose?
"You want to get better?" Victor asked.
The boy's eyes answered for him. They narrowed in guarded suspension, his desperation finally roping in his anger. He licked his lips and shoved the dingy blade into his coat pocket.
Victor lowered his arms and straightened his lapel, because he knew that he was in control. He looked the boy over, taking in his ragged dress, watching how he cradled his bandaged arm.
"You broke in here with your friends, thinking you'd struck the booze motherlode, no doubt. Probably fell down drunk, cut yourself, and now you've got a nasty infection to show for it. Now you need me to fix you. You de
pend on me to make you well, or you'll die. How's that for twist of fate?"
The boy scowled beneath the brim of his faded kepi and nodded.
"Say it," Victor insisted. "Say that I'm the only one who can save you."
The boy spoke as if the words were a detested vegetable in his mouth. "Only you can save me."
"Good, now let's—"
"See here," the boy said, pulling his knife and pointing it. "You don't do right and I'll gut ye. Get me?"
Victor focused on the rough blade. It looked like a steak knife that had been sharpened on a flat rock. The tip was twisted and bent, obviously the pry tool for locks and latches, yet it was still pointed.
"Now you say it," the boy said. "Say yer gonna do right."
Victor crossed his arms and stared coolly until the boy put the knife away. "That's better. Now let's see what the trouble is."
The boy winced as Victor unwrapped the top layer of bandages. The cloth stuck as if saturated with syrup, separating from the layer below with fine white threads.
"You finish unwinding this," Victor said, "while I get some better light."
As Victor rummaged a cupboard for candles and matches, the boy unwound his shoddy dressings. The closer he got to flesh below, the more he shuddered and groaned. At the last layer he stopped, unable to continue.
Victor struck the match and held it to the wick. "I have to see what we're dealing with." He turned and looked the boy in the eye. He was crying.
"Do you want me to?" Victor asked.
"I can do it!" the boy shouted. He took hold of a loose edge, hyperventilating.
"On the count of three," Victor said. "One, two, three!"
The boy ripped the bandage away and howled with his head thrown back. Victor leaned in with the candle and frowned. The stench was awful: molded soil and putrescence, like a corpse in too shallow a grave. Deep gouges ran along the forearm, wrist, and back of the hand. The skin was rasped away by manic scratching, leaving raw, oozing muscle beneath. From finger tips to elbow were blots of velvety black mildew. On the islands of remaining skin and in the valleys between them, rot corrupted the flesh.
Victor looked on the wound with a fleeting satisfaction. "Tell me, boy, how badly do you want to live?"
The lad flinched. Bravado was inevitable. "I ain't scared."
"That's not what I asked."
The boy's terrified stare proved he was listening.
"To fix you," Victor explained, "I need back what you stole. Have your friends return it all to me so I can help you."
"NO!" he screamed. "I can't carry all that! But I'll take you to it. Ain't that far."
If Victor had a family of his own, he might have thought of them first. He might not have followed the boy through the culverts and slums, through the alleys of dopers and old prostitutes, to the rat and roach-infested hell-hole that passed for a home. Never in all of his travels had Victor imagined humans could live in such squalor. He buried his face in the thick wool of his coat and stepped inside.
Dank. Dark. Reek of urine and sweat. Skulking eyes and squeaks in the corners. Heaps of rags, soaked with rain and misery. Splintered wood. For the first time, Victor nearly pitied the boy.
Farther inside, sodden garbage and sodden people slumped in the wreckage of furniture. Gray skin with bony hands. Their mouths gaped, and flies buzzed in an out of them. Corpses, all, covered in the velvety black blotches. Victor gagged, nearly vomiting into his coat.
"It's a nasty brew you made, Herbalist," the boy said.
"Are they all...?" Victor asked through the fabric of his lapel.
"Yeah, they are. Just like you'll be if you don't hurry up."
Victor absorbed the hollow threat, far more interested in seeing what remained of his life's work. He followed the boy up a ladder beside a collapsed staircase, through a shifted corridor with swollen wood floors, to a room with no windows. The ceiling sagged and the walls were slick like a subterranean cave. Offsetting the gloom was a stack of bright beige crates. They caught the meager light from the corridor and Victor could see the top crates were busted open.
He rushed to them and reached inside, finding his precious specimens in clear glass jars. One by one he lifted them and held them up to the dim light: ferns and flowers, berries and bulbs, roots and rhizomes.
"That one made us all puke," the boy said, pointing at the jar in Victor's hand.
The Herbalist looked at the label, written in his own script, Carapichea ipecacuanha. He grimaces.
"That's because it's an emetic, you dolt! It's supposed to make you vomit."
Victor returned to his search, scarcely aware that the boy was scratching the wound of his arm. His fingernails raked the soft tissue, clotting the tips.
"Best hope what you need is in there," the boy warned.
Victor dug and dug until he found a jar nearly drained. Inside was a wilted dark flower, its trumpet collapsed, the fine wings and threads dangling limply. Beside it was a jar of white berries, almost empty. The boy shrank back from them.
"That's it!" he shrilled. "That's what they were killing each other for!"
"These?" Victor looked at the jars as if seeing them for the first time. Though he was grateful something remained of them, he labored to see past how much was wasted on these bums.
"So now you know what we took. You're gonna fix me now. You're gonna give me the cure, yeah?"
Victor did not look at the boy, he merely stared at the jars.
"We'll have to get all this back to my store so I can mix it up," he lied again. "Get some more of your friends to help, and..."
Victor turned, expecting to see the boy, but instead looked into the gray-black face of someone many days dead, someone he was sure he saw reclined in the furniture downstairs. The roots of eyeballs flicked back and forth in gored eye sockets.
Victor staggered back against the crates, mouth open, trying to speak. The corpse beat him to it.
"You have found what you seek?" the dead thing asked.
Victor slid along the stack of crates, moving around the statuesque corpse until clammy, bony resistance halted him. He whirled to see something once human blocking his retreat.
"Seeking the tree of knowledge, no doubt," the dead thing mocked. "Or eternal life. It's always one or the other."
Victor lurched back against the crates, staring at a thing still wearing the rags it died in.
"Many claim they seek these things," jeers a figure of reanimated rot. "It often comes down to money. It doesn't matter what they rip from the Earth, it's never enough."
"Such a petty pursuit..."
"Yes..."
"But knowledge..."
"A lasting reward. The solution of life's great mystery..."
"But a human brain cannot perceive its creator..."
"...cannot sense or comprehend..."
"...too rooted in the senses..."
"...but once freed..."
"...the foolish preoccupations..."
"...the meaningless attachments..."
"...quite ridiculous..."
"...compared with knowing God..."
"...compared with being God..."
"No limitations..."
"No good..."
"No evil..."
"No appetite or need..."
"But one must die, first..."
"There's the rub..."
"Yes. There's the rub..."
Victor turns a circle, the stench of mildew overwhelming, flies crawling across velvet black skin, maggots dribbling from hanging jaws.
"Get BACK!" Victor screamed, shoving the closest. His hands splatted against fluid-drenched rags, spongy ribs flexing beneath.
"He resists..."
"So often the case..."
"They seek the truth..."
"...but test it on others..."
"They watch and record..."
"...injecting, cutting, maiming for discovery..."
"...never experiencing themselves..."
"It is time..."<
br />
"Yes it is time..."
"Whether he wants it or not..."
"...we will bring him to truth."
Decaying arms reached out for him with deliberate slowness. Victor frenzied, slapping the fetid limbs away. Clammy hands slid down the back of his collar and gripped the fabric.
Victor flailed and kicked, knocking gray meat from black bones. Their grip did not slacken. Seams stretched, buttons popped until he slipped out of his coat. Free!
He dashed for a gap in the circle, shoved himself through it. He stumbled and staggered through the shifted corridor, down the makeshift ladder, over mounds of moldy furniture. His heart pounded, his eyes stretched wide to find an escape. So little light, just peeling wallpaper, doors slouched off their hinges, boarded up windows...
His lungs drew great gasps of stale air, the bitter taste of spores coating his tongue.
"I have to get out! I have to get out!"
There, ahead of him, he spotted the crooked threshold. He leapt for it, was nearly to it when he felt the bite of ragged metal in his back. His muscles clenched in a spasm of pain, dropping him to his knees, and he fell face first across a heap of piss-soaked rags.
The blade yanked free.
Victor gasped, but could not draw breath with his punctured lung. Small hands rolled him over onto his back, and he looked up at the boy standing over him. The lad squatted beside him and smiled with black-spotted teeth.
"Where ya off to, eh, professor? Why dontcha join us for a nip?"
Through his watered eyes, Victor saw them. Gray, lifeless, they crowded around him. One passed a jar of clear liquid forward, the flower inside drooping. Another passed forward a jar of berries.
The boy took them both and held them up to Victor's face.
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