The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist)

by Rick Yancey

  “Steady now, Isaacson,” I cautioned. “Watch your footing so you don’t go in with it! On the count of three . . .”

  Up and over . . . and then down, down, and the splash was very long in coming and was very faint, a plaintive whisper, and I leaned toward him and asked, “Are you a praying man, Isaacson?” I returned to the wagon without waiting for an answer.

  We tarried for a moment at the railing after dropping the second crate over. Ice clung to our hair, our wool coats; we shimmered like angels. Now that the work was done, Isaacson relaxed a bit, and some of his former swagger returned.

  “I say, old chum, this business might be pleasant if it weren’t so blasted unpleasant.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I said softly.

  He stiffened. He seemed oddly insulted. “Of course I pray. I won’t bother asking if you do.”

  He whipped around, his good mood vanishing as quickly as it came. It took him two steps to realize Mr. Faulk was no longer hunkered in his seat.

  He stopped and turned slowly around to face me.

  “Where is our driver?” he demanded, his voice rising in distress.

  “Behind you,” I answered.

  He did not have the opportunity to turn round again. The unwinding thing sprang free, uncoiling with enough force to break the world in half. My fist drove into his solar plexus, the very spot where he had punched me earlier. His head dropped; his knees buckled. He was not a small person by any means, but Mr. Faulk was larger: He slung Isaacson over his shoulder with the ease of a coal heaver and carried him to the rail. He wrapped his huge paws around Isaacson’s ankle and lowered him over the side, where he dangled upside down, arms clawing uselessly at the empty air,

  The thing in the jar, scratch, scratch.

  “Isaacson!” I shouted against the wind. “Isaacson, are you a praying man?”

  He yowled. I could not see his face.

  “It was Dr. Walker, wasn’t it?” I shouted. “Dr. Walker who hired Maeterlinck to bring it and Dr. Walker who hired the Irishmen to steal it!”

  “No!”

  “The truth will set you free, Isaacson!”

  “I’m telling you the truth! Please, please!” He could not go on. His sobs tore into the indifferent rain.

  Mr. Faulk turned his head toward me slowly, his prominent brow wrinkled by a question: Let go? I shook my head.

  “All right, he didn’t hire Maeterlinck, but he did the Irishmen—tell me yes, Isaacson, and we’ll pull you up!”

  “He didn’t—I swear upon my mother, he didn’t! Please, please!”

  I looked at Mr. Faulk. “What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “My arms are getting tired.”

  “Isaacson! One more question. Answer truthfully and we’ll pull you up. Did you frig her?”

  “What? What? Oh dear God!”

  “Did you screw Lilly Bates?”

  I waited for his answer. He was obnoxious, but he wasn’t stupid. If he had been with her and confessed to it, I might not keep my promise. If he denied it, he risked my not believing him, regardless of the veracity of his denial, which, in turn, made my dilemma no less perplexing than his.

  He unleashed an unearthly wail, twisting in the wind.

  “No! No, that never happened! I swear to God, Will; I swear!”

  “You swear to what?”

  “To God. To God, to God, to God!”

  “It isn’t God who holds you now, Samuel.” Suddenly, I was furious. “Swear to me and I’ll pull you up.”

  “I swear to you, to you, I swear to you!”

  Beside me Mr. Faulk was laughing softly. “He’s lying, you know.”

  “No, Mr. Faulk. Only God knows that.”

  “ ’Tisn’t God who matters, Mr. Henry.”

  “Quite true, Mr. Faulk.”

  In the basement laboratory, when the chrysalis cracked open, I saw myself reflected in the amber eye. I was the humble conduit to the monster’s birth, the imperfect midwife, deliverer and prey.

  Forgive, forgive, for you are greater than I.

  Canto 4

  ONE

  Full dark had fallen by the time I stepped back inside 425 Harrington Lane. I found the monstrumologist at the table, gorging himself like a man who hadn’t eaten in a week, which very well might have been the case.

  “You’re not hungry,” he observed midway through the gorging.

  I pulled a pewter flask from my coat pocket (the kitchen was uncomfortably cold), unscrewed the lid, and forced down a mouthful of whiskey. The monstrumologist frowned and clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

  “No wonder you look terrible,” he opined, shoving a hunk of cheese into his mouth, the old rat.

  “Perhaps I have been drinking too much,” I admitted. “What is your excuse?”

  He ignored the question. “You smell like smoke. And your fingernails are encrusted with dirt.”

  “Ash,” I said. “Your trash barrels were overflowing.”

  His bemused expression did not change. “And the palms of your hands are rubbed raw.”

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  He smiled humorlessly. “There’re several pairs of work gloves in the shed, but you know that.”

  “I do know that.”

  “You must have forgotten, then.”

  “My memory is not what it used to be. Just now I was trying to remember the name of that girl I hired to keep you fed and bathed and halfway human.”

  Warthrop picked up a knife and sliced off a piece of apple. His hand was rock steady. He chewed very deliberately. “Beatrice,” he said. “I’ve already reminded you of that.”

  “And you sacked her?”

  He shrugged. His eyes darted about the table. “Where are the scones?”

  “Or did she quit?”

  “I told you I sacked her, didn’t I? Where are my scones?”

  “Why did you sack her?”

  “I have enough to do without some noisome busybody dogging my every step and stutter.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “How would I know?” His patience was wearing thin. “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”

  “It just strikes me as odd.”

  “Odd?”

  “Leaving without notifying me. I was her official employer, you know. Why didn’t she tell me you sacked her and demand the balance of her pay?”

  “Well, I suppose that’s something you will have to ask her.”

  “That might prove difficult, since neither of us knows where she has gone.”

  “Why are you so concerned about the whereabouts of some dime-a-dozen scullery maid?” he snapped, his self-control giving way.

  I sipped from my flask deliberately. “I am not concerned.”

  “Well. Good. You shouldn’t be. What did you think would happen, anyway? I told you I neither wanted nor needed anyone.”

  “So it is my fault?”

  “What? What is your fault? What do you mean?”

  “The fate of Beatrice. I am to blame for forcing her upon you.”

  “No. You are to blame for making the forcing of her upon me necessary.” He smiled childishly, as if he’d gotten off a cheap joke. “You’ve been holding out on me long enough, Will Henry. Where are the scones? Give them up or I shall become quite angry with you.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” I fetched the bag from its hiding place. He snatched it out of my hand with a giggle that made me cringe. My eyes were drawn to the basement door behind him.

  “Is she the reason you put a lock upon that door?” I asked.

  “Who? Beatrice? Why do you keep harping upon her?” He poured himself another cup of tea.

  “I wasn’t. I was asking—”

  “I live alone now, as you know,” he said pointedly. “And my enemies are many, as you also know. . . .”

  “Who, Warthrop? Name them. Name one ‘enemy.’ ”

  He flung the remnants of his pastry upon the table, “How dare yo
u! I’ve no obligation to explain myself to you or to anyone! What I do or choose not to do is my business and mine alone. I didn’t ask for her company any more than I asked for yours—either today or twenty-four years ago!”

  I slipped the flask into my pocket and folded my hands upon the tabletop. “What is in the basement, Warthrop?”

  His mouth moved soundlessly for a moment. He arched his eyebrows and looked down his patrician nose at my face, as if by his glare he could strip away the years and return me to the eleven-year-old body I once occupied.

  “Nothing,” he finally said.

  “A wise man once told me that lying is the worst kind of buffoonery.”

  “And all men are buffoons. Finish the syllogism.”

  “I will find out in any case. Better to tell me now.”

  “Why should I tell you something that you already know?”

  “I know that it is; I don’t know what it is.”

  “Do you not? You really have not progressed very far in your education, Mr. Henry.”

  “Your life’s work, you called it, but all manner of things have consumed you over the years. You—and countless others.”

  “Yes.” He was nodding gravely, and now I detected a hint of fear in his eyes. “There are victims in my wake—more than most men’s, but hardly more than yours, I would guess.”

  “We aren’t talking about my victims, Doctor.” I picked up the knife by his hand and proceeded to clean the filth from beneath my nails. He flinched, as if the tiny scraping sound hurt his ears.

  “Beatrice left me,” he whispered.

  “Beatrice? Who said anything about her? We were talking about your victims.”

  “Oh, what do you know about anything?”

  “I know about the lambs,” I said. “And I know what you cut up and stuffed into an ash barrel. I know they both have something to do with the lock upon that door and your deplorable condition—and I know you will show it to me, because you cannot help yourself, because you know with whom your salvation lies. You have always known.”

  He fell forward, burying his head in his folded arms, and the monstrumologist cried. His shoulders shook with the force of his tears. I watched impassively.

  “Warthrop, give me the key or I shall break it down.”

  He raised his head, and I saw the tears were not faked: His face was twisted in agony, as if some dark nameless thing were unwinding in him.

  “Leave,” he whispered. “You were right to leave before. Right to leave, wrong to ever come back. Leave us, leave us. It is too late for us, but not for you.”

  He recoiled at my reply, the last thing he expected me to say, or perhaps the opposite: He knew to the bottom of that secret place hidden in all hearts what I would say. “Oh, Pellinore, I fell off the edge of the plate years ago.”

  TWO

  In Egypt, they called him Mihos, the guardian of the horizon.

  It is a very thin line, Will Henry, he told me when I was a boy. For most, it is like that line where the sea meets the sky. It cannot be crossed; though you chase it for a thousand years, it will forever stay beyond your grasp. Do you realize it took our species more than ten millennia to realize that simple fact? That we live on a ball and not on a plate?

  THREE

  A letter was waiting for me at the front desk of the Plaza when I returned from my evening labors. The envelope was sealed in the old-fashioned way, with a thick glob of red wax. Inside was a crudely printed message on a single sheet of paper that smelled faintly of dead fish:

  Most Gentle Mr. Henry:

  Hoping this finds you well, you will be so good as to send me $10,000.00 if the life of Doctor Pellinor Warthrop is dear to you. So I beg you warmly to leave them here with the clerk by five tonight. If you do, he lives. If you don’t, he dies. With regards, believe me to be your friends.

  The letter was not signed. Instead there was a crude drawing of a human hand colored black and another of a dagger dripping what I took to be blood.

  I left the hotel and made straight for the brownstone on Fifth Avenue.

  The owner of the house received me wearing a purple robe and matching slippers, his cottony white hair amassed in wondrous confusion atop his blocky head. He read the letter with red-rimmed eyes, sighing often and loudly, shooing away the servant who appeared bearing coffee and a plate of Apfelstrudel.

  “What did the clerk say?” he asked finally.

  “A short man who spoke with a thick Italian accent. Dropped off the letter around one this morning, while I was occupied with the Irish cargo on the bridge.”

  He fished a cigar from the humidor. It slipped from his gnarled fingers and rolled across the Persian carpet. I scooped it up and handed it to him.

  “The Black Hand!” he said. “Ah, Pellinore, did not your old master warn you not to go?”

  “What is the Black Hand?”

  “Did you not read the letter?” He stabbed his finger upon the drawing. “Ach, the villains! Not to be trusted. I warned him.”

  “Why would an Italian be delivering a ransom letter for an Irish gang?”

  “It is not the Irish; it is the Sicilians—the Camorra has taken him, that blackguard Francesco Competello. He is a dangerous man and I told him so.”

  “I don’t understand, Meister Abram. Why would Dr. Warthrop . . . ?”

  “Because ours is a dark and dirty business—like its ugly cousin, politics—and so it makes for strange bedfellows! It was his idea to enlist the aid of the Irish’s sworn enemies in discovering the whereabouts of T. cerrejonensis.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  His eyes narrowed above his hooked nose. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that criminals aren’t known for their good deeds, Meister Abram,” I answered the old fellow gently. “Dr. Warthrop must have been prepared to offer the Camorra something for their assistance.”

  He waved his pudgy hand. The cigar was gripped in the other, unlit.

  “He said Competello owed him for a service performed years ago in Naples, when many of the Camorristi were driven out of Italy. I do not know all the details, but it has always been his practice to nurture relationships with unsavory characters.”

  I nodded, thinking of Mr. Faulk and the others like him who would appear at all hours bearing packages to the doorstep of 425 Harrington Lane. Distrusted and despised outcasts—his spiritual brothers in a sense—who asked no questions and told no tales.

  “Something to do with helping to secure safe passage for him and his fellow padrones,” von Helrung went on. “ ‘It is part of their code to honor a debt,’ he told me. Bah! I hope now he has learned his lesson.”

  He lit a match, but not the cigar. The flame edged dangerously close to his fingers before he dropped the match into the ashtray beside him.

  “Should we pay it?” I asked.

  He looked sharply at me. My question startled him. “What do you mean? Of course we must pay it!”

  “But what guarantee do we have that Competello will keep his end of the bargain?”

  He snorted loudly: Mein Gott, the naivety of youth! “The Black Hand is a time-honored tradition, Will. How effective would it be if the recipient could not trust the sender? No, we must pay. I shall handle everything—including the boxing of my former student’s ears for his lack of judgment! For now he has tipped his hand; the Camorra knows of our special prize and even now must be marshaling every illicit resource at its disposal to find it!”

  He rose, shoving the cigar into the breast pocket of the robe monogrammed with his initials, AVH. “I love him as my own son, but your master is the most maddening of human conundrums, young Will: at once calculating and headstrong, astute beyond measure and obtuse without equal.”

  He rang the bell to summon his butler. I said, “I will handle the delivery of payment, Meister Abram.”

  “No, no. You are too young to—”

  “And you are too old.”

  He stiffened; his bushy white brows crowded against e
ach other; his chest expanded, parting the fold of the robe to reveal a profusion of curly white hair.

  “The letter was addressed to me,” I went on quickly. “And for all we know, the clerk at the hotel is in on the deal.”

  He nodded, clearly impressed with my reasoning. “Return this afternoon; I shall have the funds ready. But tell me—ach, there is so much that crowds the weary mind!—how did it go last night? Smoothly, I pray?”

  “Had to size the refuse to fit the containers, but otherwise no problems.” I gave a little laugh. “Well, Sir Hiram’s assistant nearly took a tumble into the East River—luckily, Mr. Faulk was there to catch him.”

  Von Helrung was nodding slowly, and his eyes were bird bright and watchful. “You know he is related to royalty. Fourth or fifth cousin to the Queen, I believe.”

  “Who? Mr. Faulk or Mr. Isaacson?”

  “You make a jest. Ha! Go now, and come back at three. Tell no one else of this! Particularly Mr. Faulk. I believe that man would sell his own mother for a dollar and a dram.”

  “Oh, no, you’re wrong, Meister Abram. Mr. Faulk is a capital fellow, worth twice his weight in T. cerrejonensis venom.”

  “Do not say such things!” he exclaimed, and then for some reason crossed himself.

  FOUR

  I returned to the hotel intending to catch an hour or two of much-needed sleep, but I was too distracted and anxious about the unexpected kidnapping of my master to snatch more than a few minutes of restless slumber. I gave up finally and telephoned Lilly’s house.

  “Three things are easily cracked and never well mended,” I said when she came on the line. “China, glass, and what is the third?”

  “You are calling me at six in the morning to pose a riddle?”

  “Reputation,” I said, raising my voice to overcome the incessant crackle of the connection. “I had a most interesting discussion with the Queen’s fifth cousin last night.”

  “Who?”

  “Samuel.”

  “Who?”

  “The mediocrity!”

  “Oh!” Then silence.