The Curse of the Wendigo

by Rick Yancey

Page 26

 

  “Oh, no, that will not do!” cried von Helrung. He brushed aside my proffered hand, pulled me into his arms, and proceeded to crush the air from my lungs. “The honor is mine, young Master Henry!”

  He released me; I took a long, shuddering breath; and he looked long and deeply into my eyes, his gaiety giving way to gravity. “I knew your father, a brave and loyal man who died too young, but alas such is the fate of many a brave and loyal man! A grievous loss. A tragic end. I wept when I heard the news, for I knew what he meant to mein Freund Pellinore, unsere Herzen sind eins—his tears, mine; his heartbreak, ours! You have his eyes; I see that. And his spirit; I have heard that. Remain faithful to his memory, mein Junge. Serve your master as your father served him, and your father will smile down at you from paradise!”

  As if “paradise” were a cue, a rumble and a clatter erupted from the hall behind us; it sounded like an entire regiment was thundering down the stairs. Bursting into our midst in a storm of white lace and verdant velvet, her raven ringlets pulled back from her round face and gathered into a crimson bow, was a young girl, perhaps a year or two older than me, with eyes the same remarkable shade of blue as our host.

  She froze when she saw us, an abrupt halt nearly as violent as her charge. She recovered quickly, however, turned upon von Helrung, and, in a ringing, unaccented voice, made clear her indignation.

  “They’re here! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “They’ve only just arrived, mein kleiner Liebling,” replied von Helrung reasonably. “Dr. Warthrop, may I present my niece, Miss—”

  “Bates,” interrupted the girl, thrusting her hand, palm down, toward the monstrumologist, who accepted it graciously, bowed low, and waved his lips in its general vicinity. “Lillian Trumbul Bates, Dr. Pellinore Warthrop. I know who you are. ”

  “Evidently,” returned the doctor. He nodded toward me. “Miss Bates, may I present—”

  “William James Henry,” she finished for him, and turned upon me those eyes saturated in blue. “‘Will’ for short. You are Dr. Warthrop’s apprentice. ”

  “Hello,” I said shyly. Her stare was all too frank. From the first, it unnerved me.

  “Uncle says you are my age, but if you are, you are quite undersized. How old are you? I’m thirteen. In two weeks I shall be fourteen, and Mother says I may go on dates. I like older boys, but Mother says I shan’t be allowed to date them. ”

  She paused, waiting for my response, but I was completely at a loss.

  “Do you go to school, or does Dr. Warthrop instruct you?”

  “Neither,” I replied in a kind of squeak that sounded embarrassingly birdlike to my ears.

  “Really? Why? Are you thickheaded?”

  “Now, Lilly,” remonstrated her uncle. “Will Henry is our guest. ” He patted her shoulder gently and said warmly to my master, “Come, Pellinore, sit with me; there are fresh cigars from Havana in the humidor. We will talk about the old days, and the new and exciting ones to come!” Then, turning back to his niece, he said, “Lilly, mein kleiner Liebling, why don’t you take William to your room and show him your birthday present? We’ll ring up when dinner is served. ”

  Before either the doctor (who did not smoke cigars) or I (who did not wish to see Lillian Trumbul Bates’s bedroom) could protest, I was yanked from the room, hauled up the stairs, and flung into her room. She slammed the door, threw the bolt, and then sailed past me to belly flop upon the canopy bed. Rolling onto her side, she rested her round dollish face upon her palm and studied me frankly from beneath her delicate brows, with an expression not unlike the doctor’s upon ripping out the heart of Pierre Larose.

  “So you are studying to be a monstrumologist,” she said.

  “I suppose I am. ”

  “You suppose you are? Don’t you know?”

  “I haven’t decided. I—I did not ask to serve the doctor. ”

  “Your father asked?”

  “My father is dead. He served the doctor, and when he died—”

  “What about your mother? Is she dead too? Are you an orphan? Oh, you’re Oliver Twist! And that would make Dr. Warthrop Fagi’n!”

  “I like to think of him as Mr. Brownlow,” I said.

  “I have read everything that Mr. Dickens has written,” Lilly averred. “Have you read Great Expectations? That’s my favorite. I read all the time; it’s practically all I do, except bicycling. Do you like to bicycle, Will? I bicycle practically every Sunday, and do you know I’ve seen Lillian Russell seven times on her gold-plated bicycle riding with her beau, Diamond Jim Brady? Do you know who Diamond Jim Brady is? He’s very famous, you know. He eats everything. Once at breakfast I saw him eat four eggs, six pancakes, three pork chops, five muffins, and a beefsteak, washing it all down with a gallon of orange juice, which he called ‘golden nectar. ’

  “Uncle Abram knows him. Uncle knows everybody who is anybody. He knows Buffalo Bill Cody. Two summers ago I saw his Wild West show in London when it played before the queen. I know her, too—Victoria. Uncle introduced us. He knows everyone. He knows President Cleveland. I met President Cleveland at the White House. We had tea. He has a love child because he’s married and couldn’t be with his true love; her name is Maria. ”

  “Whose name?” I asked. I was having some trouble keeping up. “The love child’s?”

  “No, his true love’s name. I don’t know his daughter’s name. I think it’s a daughter, anyway. Are you an only child, Will?”

  “Yes. ”

  “So you have no one. ”

  “I have the doctor. ”

  “And he has no one. I know that. John Chanler married his true love. ”

  “I don’t think—He’s never said—I can’t imagine the doctor ever being in love,” I said. I remembered his remark to Sergeant Hawk in the wilderness. “He says women should be classified as a different species. ”

  “I’m not surprised he said that,” Lilly said, and sniffed. “After what happened. ”

  “What?”

  “Oh, you must know. He must have told you. Aren’t you his apprentice?”

  “I know they were engaged, and he somehow fell off a bridge and got sick, and that’s how she met Dr. Chanler—”

  She threw back her head and laughed with abandon.

  “I’m just repeating what he said,” I protested, ashamed and angry at myself for the indiscretion. It was not a story the doctor was particularly proud of, and I knew he would be mortified if he knew I had shared it.

  “I thought you were going to show me your birthday present,” I continued, hoping to change the subject.

  “Oh! My present! I forgot. ” She hopped from the mattress and scurried halfway under the bed to retrieve it, a weighty tome that she plunked down on the floor between us. Its leather cover was stamped with the title, in ornate script, Compendia ex Horrenda Maleficii.

  “You know what this is?” she demanded. It sounded like a challenge.

  With a sigh and a sinking heart, I answered, “I think so. ”

  “Mother would kill Uncle if she knew he gave it to me. She hates monstrumology. ”

  She flipped rapidly through the book’s flimsy pages. I glimpsed gruesome depictions of human bodies flayed open; dismembered torsos and decapitated heads; the ironic leering grin of a skull whose frontal and parietal bones had been smashed to pieces; a tangle of rotting entrails in which squirmed what appeared to be gigantic larvae or maggots; anterior and posterior views of a woman’s corpse, her flesh ripped free from the underlying muscles and tendons and hanging like strips of peeling paint from the abandoned cathedral of her mortal temple. Page after page of macabre lifelike illustrations of human havoc wreaked, over which Lilly bent low with nostrils wide and cheeks flushed, eyes aflame with voyeuristic delight. Her hair smelled like jasmine, and it was a dizzying juxtaposition, the sweet odor of her hair against the backdrop of those disgusting drawings.

  “Here it is,” she breathed. “Here’s my favorite. �
�

  She tapped her finger on the page, where the nude corpse of a young man was displayed in an obscene parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, arms and legs outstretched, head throw back in a silent howl, with what appeared to be a tentacle or perhaps a snake (though it may have been some of his intestines) issuing from his abdomen. Mercifully, Lilly did not elaborate on why she liked this drawing so much. She stared at it for a few seconds in silence, her eyes shining with macabre wonder, before looking up. A sound from downstairs had captured her attention.

  “They’re fighting,” she said. “Hear it?”

  I could—the doctor’s strident voice, von Helrung’s insistent response.

  “Let’s go listen. ” She slapped the book closed. Without thinking I grabbed her arm.

  “No!” I protested. “We shouldn’t spy. ”

  “Do you hate him?”

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Warthrop! Is he your enemy?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Well, then, you can’t spy on him. It’s only spying when they’re your enemies. ”

  “I don’t need to spy on him,” I said, trying to think quickly. “I know what they’re fighting about. ”

  She stared intently at me for a moment with narrowed eyes. “What?”

  I could not meet her gaze. I dropped my eyes and said softly, “The Old One. ”

  There was literally no holding her back after that unfortunate admission. She ignored my frantic protests and crept down the hall, stopping at the top of the stairs to lean over the banister, her curls falling to one side as she cocked an ear to eavesdrop. It was a dramatic gesture. The two monstrumologists were arguing loud enough to be heard in Queens.

  “. . . ashamed of yourself, Meister Abram,” the doctor was saying. “To indulge that . . . that . . . theater person. ”

  “You judge before you know all the facts, mein Freund. ”

  “Facts? Facts, you say! And what facts might those be? Creatures neither alive nor dead who live off the blood of the living, who transform themselves into mist and bats and wolves. Chickens and pigs, too, I suppose—why not? Who sleep in coffins and rise each night with the moon? Are those the ‘facts’ to which you refer, Meister Abram?”

  “Pellinore, tales of the vampire stretch back hundreds of years—”

  “So do tales of leprechauns, and we do not study those—or are they next? Are we to include magical sprites in the canon? We might as well! Henceforth let us devote ourselves to determining how many fairies can dance upon the head of a pin—or perhaps in the vacuum that exists between your ears!”

  “You wound me grievously, mein Freund. ”

  “And you insult me, mein Meister. If I had proposed such a thing when I was your pupil, you would have boxed my ears! What is it? Have you gone daft? Are you drunk? What in the name of God would compel you to pursue this madness?”