by Rick Yancey
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.
Warthrop heaved the body away—once he had freed it from my maddened grip—tossed the gun aside, and knelt beside me.
I reached for him.
“No! No, Will Henry, no!”
He lunged out of my reach; my bloody fingertips brushed his coattails.
“Do… not… touch—anything!” He held up his hand as if to demonstrate. “Are you injured?”
I shook my head. I still had not found my voice.
“Do not move. Keep your hands away from your body. I will be right back. Do you understand, Will Henry?”
He scrambled to his feet and raced toward the kitchen. It is human, the compulsion to do the very thing you’ve been cautioned not to do. The handkerchief was still tied around my face. I felt as if I were slowly being suffocated, and all I desired was to yank it down.
A moment later he was back, wearing a fresh pair of gloves, and he tugged the mask down as if he knew without my telling him the immediate cause of my distress. I took a long, shuddering breath.
“Don’t me, don’t move, not yet, not yet,” the monstrumologist whispered. “Careful, careful. Did he hurt you, Will Henry? Did he bite or scratch you?”
I shook my head.
Warthrop studied my face carefully, and then, as abruptly as he returned, he abandoned me again. The hall began to fade into a gray mist. My body was going into shock; suddenly I was terribly cold.
In the distance I hear the plaintive cry of a train’s whistle. The mist parts, and on the platform stands my mother and me, holding hands, and I am very excited.
Is that it, Mother? Is that the train?
I think it is, Willy.
Do you think Father has brought me a present?
If he has not, then he is no longer Father.
I wonder what it could be.
I worry what it could be.
Father has been gone very long this time.
Yes.
How long has it been, Mother?
Very long.
Last time he brought me a hat. A stupid hat.
Now, Willy. It was a very nice hat.
I want him to bring me something special this time.
Special, Willy?
Yes! Something wonderful and special, like the places he goes.
I do not think you would find them so wonderful and special.
I would, and I will! Father says he will take me with him one day, when I’m old enough.
Gripping my hand tightly. And, in the distance, the growl and huff of the locomotive.
You will never be old enough for that, William James Henry.
One day he will take me. He promised he would. One day I will see places other people only dream about.
The train is a living thing; it screeches angrily, complaining of the rails. Black smoke blows grumpily from its stack. The train glares contemptuously at the crowd, the self-important conductor, the porters in their neat white jackets. And it is huge, throbbing with power and restrained rage. It is a huffing, growling, enraged monster, and the boy is thrilled. What boy wouldn’t be?
Look now, Willy. Look for your father. Let’s see who will be the first to spot him.
I see him! I see him! There he is!
No, that isn’t him.
Yes, it—Oh, no, it isn’t.
Keep looking.
There! There he is! Father! Father!
He has lost weight; his dusty clothes, rumpled from travel, hang loosely on his lean frame. He hasn’t shaven in weeks and his eyes are weary, but he is my father. I would know him anywhere.
And here he is! Here is my Will. Come here to me, boy!
I soar a thousand feet into the air; the arms that lift me are thin but strong, and his face turns beneath me, and then my face is pressing into his neck, and it is his smell beneath the grime of the rails.
Father! What did you bring me, Father?
Bring you! Why do you suppose I brought you anything?
Laughing, and his teeth are very bright in his stubbly face. He starts to set me down so he may embrace his wife.
No! Carry me, Father.
Willy, your father is tired.
Carry me, Father!
It’s all right, Mary. I shall carry him.
And the shrill, startling shriek of the monster, the last angry blast of its breath, and I am home at last, in my father’s arms.
Warthrop lifted me from the floor, grimacing from the effort of holding me as far from his body as possible.
“Hold your hands up, Will Henry. And hold them still!”
He carried me into the kitchen. The washtub sat on the floor by the stove, half-filled with steaming hot water. I saw the teakettle on the stove, and I realized, with an odd pang of sadness, that it was the kettle I’d heard whistling, not a train. My mother and father were gone again, swallowed by the gray mist.
Th
e monstrumologist placed me on the floor before the tub and then sat behind me, pressing his body close. He reached around and grasped my arms firmly, just below the elbows.
“This is going to burn, Will Henry.”
He leaned forward, forcing me toward the steaming surface, and then plunged my bloody hands into the solution, a mixture of hot water and carbolic acid.
I found my voice then.
I screamed; I kicked; I thrashed; I pushed back hard against him, but the monstrumologist did not yield. Through my tears I saw the crimson fog of Kendall’s blood violate the clear solution, spreading out in serpentine tendrils, until I could no longer see my hands.
The doctor pressed his lips against my ear and whispered fiercely, “Would you live? Then hold! Hold!”
Black stars bloomed in my vision, went supernovae, flickered, and died. When I could bear it no longer, at the precise moment when I teetered upon the edge of unconsciousness, the monstrumologist pulled out my hands. The skin had turned a bright, sunburned red. He held them up, turning them this way and that, and then his body stiffened against mine. He gasped.
“Will Henry, what is this?”
He pointed at a small abrasion on the middle knuckle of my left index finger. Fresh blood welled in its center. When I didn’t answer immediately, he gave me a little shake.
“What is this? Did he bite you? Is it a scratch? Will Henry!”
“I—I don’t know! I fell down the stairs.… I don’t think he did.”
“Think, Will Henry! Think!”
“I don’t know, Dr. Warthrop!”
He stood up, and I fell backward, too weak to rise, too frightened to say any more. I looked into his face and saw a man squeezed tight in the crushing embrace of indecision, caught between two unacceptable courses.
“I don’t know enough. God forgive me, I don’t know enough!”
He seemed so large standing over me, a colossus, one of the Nephilim, the race of giants who bestrode the world when the world was young. His eyes darted about the room, as if he were looking for an answer to his impossible dilemma, as if somewhere in the kitchen would be the sign that would show him the way.
Then the monstrumologist became very still. His restless eyes came to rest upon my upturned face.
“No,” he said softly. “Not God.”
He stepped away quickly, and before I could crane my neck around to see where he had gone, he returned, carrying the butcher knife.
He leaned over, reached out, grabbed my left wrist, yanked me from the floor, dragged me to the kitchen table, slapped my hand upon it, shouted, “Spread your fingers!” pressed his left hand hard over the top of mine, brought high the knife, and slammed it down.
Would you live?
The smell of lilacs. The sound of water dripping in a basin. The touch of a warm, wet cloth.
And a shadow. A presence. A shade beyond my shaded eyes.
Would you live?
I float against the ceiling. Below me is my body. I see it clearly, and sitting next to the bed, the monstrumolost, wringing out the washcloth.
Then he covers me. I cannot see his face. He is looking at my other face, my mortal face, the one belonging to the boy in the bed.
He sits back down. I can see his face now. I want to say something to him. I want to answer his question.
He rubs his eyes. He runs his long fingers through his hair. He bends forward, rests his elbows on his knees, and covers his face with his hands. He remains like this but for a moment, and then he is on his feet, pacing to the end of the bed and back again. The lamp flings his shadow upon the floor, and the shadow crawls up the wall as he approaches and then trails behind him as he turns.
He collapses into the chair, and I watch him reach out and lay his hand upon my forehead. The gesture seems absentminded, as if touching me might help him to think.
Above, I watch him touch me. Below, I feel it.
The light burrows deep into my eyes, brighter than a thousand galaxies. Behind the light his eyes, darker than the deepest pit.
His fingers wrapped around my wrist. The press of the cold stethoscope against my chest. My blood flowing into chambers of glass.
And the light digging into my eyes.
What did you bring me, Father?
I brought you a seed.
A seed?
Yes, a golden seed from the Isle of Bliss, and if you plant it and give it water, it will grow into a golden tree that bears lollipops.
Lollipops!
Yes! Golden lollipops! And peppermints and horehound drops and lemon drops. Why are you laughing? Plant it; you’ll see.
I see him standing in the doorway. He has something in his hand.
Ropes.
He drops the ropes into the chair. Reaches into his pocket.
Revolver.
He sets the gun on the table by the chair. Do I see his hand shaking?
Gently he fishes out my arm from beneath the covers, picks up a length of rope—there are three—and ties a knot around my wrist.
I float above him. I cannot see his face. He is looking down at the face of the boy.
He whirls away from the bed; the free end of the rope tumbles over the edge.
Then he turns back, sweeps the ropes lying in the chair onto the floor, and sits down. For a long moment he does not move.
And then the monstrumologist takes the other end of the rope, ties it to his wrist, leans back in the chair, and closes his eyes to sleep.
Where did you go this time, Father?
I’ve told you, Willy. The Isle of Bliss.
Where is the Isle of Bliss?
Well, first you must find a boat. And not just any boat will do. You must find the fastest boat in the world; that is, a boat with a thousand sails, and when you’ve sailed for a thousand days, you will see something that the world hasn’t seen in a thousand years. You’ll swear the sun has fallen into the sea, for every tree on that island is a golden tree, and every leaf a golden leaf, and the leaves shine with a radiance all their own, so even in the darkest night the island seems to burn like a lighthouse beacon.
“I have been thinking about your father for some reason,” the monstrumologist said to the boy. “He saved my life once. I don’t think I ever told you.”
The room seemed so empty; I had gone to a place he could not go. It didn’t matter really whether I could hear him. His words were not meant entirely for me.
“Arabia, the winter of ’73—or it may have been ’74; I can’t recall now. Late one night our camp was ambushed by a hostile and extremely violent pack of predators—by that I mean Homo sapiens. Bandits. Lost three of our porters—and our guide, a very pleasant bedouin by the name of Hilal. I felt badly about Hilal. He thought the world of me. Even tried to give me one of his daughters—either in marriage or as a slave, I was never quite sure because I was never completely comfortable in the language. At any rate, one moment he was talking to me, smiling, laughing—he was very jolly. Few nomads are glum, Will Henry; if you think about it, you will understand why. And the next moment his head was hacked clean off his shoulders.…
“Afterward I told his widow, ‘Your husband is dead, but at least he died laughing.’ I think she took some comfort in that. It is the second-best way to die, Will Henry.” He did not say what the best way was.
“At any rate, your father pulled me from harm’s way. I would have stood my ground, if only to avenge Hilal’s death, but I’d been badly wounded in the thigh and was losing a great deal of blood. James threw me over the saddle of his pony and rode all night to the nearest village. Rode that horse until it collapsed, and then carried me the rest of the way.”
I want to go, Father. Will you take me there, to the Isle of Bliss?
It’s a very, very long way from here, Will.
I don’t care. We’ll find a ship of a thousand sails to carry us there.
Oh, now, those ships are very difficult to come by.
You found one.
Yes, I did. I did fi
nd that ship.
“I was laid up for two weeks—the wound had become infected—slipping in and out of delirium, and all the while your father was by my side. At one point, though, I saw Hilal sitting besidee, dimly, as if through a veil or mist, and I knew to the marrow of my bones that I had come to the lip of the stage, as it were. I was not surprised to see him sitting there, and I was not in the least afraid. I was actually happy to see him. He asked me what I wanted. ‘What do you want, Sheikh Pellinore Warthrop? Ask and it will be done.’
“And of all the things I might have asked, I asked him to tell me a joke. And he did, and the devil of it is, I can’t recall it now. It still bothers me. It was a very funny joke. My difficulty is that I have no memory for jokes. My mind does not tend in that direction.”
He was playing with the knot around his wrist. His wan smile faded, and suddenly he was angry—intensely angry.
“It is… unacceptable. Intolerable. I will not tolerate it, do you understand? You are forbidden to die. You did not will your parents’ death; you did not ask to come here—it is not your debt; you should not have to pay.”
Here, here, now. Do not cry. You’re still very young. You’ll have years and years to find it. Until then I shall be the ship of a thousand sails. Climb aboard me back, me matey, and I shall bear thee to that fabled isle!
“I will not suffer you to die,” he said fiercely. “Your father died because of me, and I cannot afford your death too. The debt will crush me. If you go down, Will Henry, you will drag me down with you.” Tugging on the rope.
I see it, Father! The Isle of Bliss. It burns like the sun in the black water.
“Enough!” he cried. “I forbid you to leave me. Now snap to, get up, stop this foolishness. I have saved you. So snap to, you stupid, stupid boy.”
He brought back the hand connected to mine and slapped me hard across the cheek.
“Snap to, Will Henry!” Smack!“Snap to, Will Henry!” Smack!“Snap to, Will Henry!” Smack, smack, smack!
“Would you live?” he shouted. “Then, choose to live. Choose to live!”
Gasping, he fell back toward the chair; the rope connecting us yanked on his arm. Roaring his frustration, he pulled his wrist free of the knot and flung the rope onto my body.