Maplecroft (12 page)

Quieter now, his voice dropped low, to a horrified whisper. “He was swimming. Not in the water, but the air, above his bed. Treading water in the middle of the room, his eyes rolled back
in his head, nothing showing but the whites, and they weren’t very white anymore. They were blue and brown. Marbled, like a dirty old egg. And his mouth . . .” Ebenezer licked at his lower lip, and swallowed again. “It moved like he was talking, but he wasn’t . . . he was making that noise, that grinding underwater noise. Like a machine with wheels and chains, and soaked-wet wood, pulling against some kind of weight. Dredging something up. Hauling something out of the ocean.”

That last word hung in the air between us.

It was my turn to swallow hard, and to lick my lips, and now to lean back—and wrap my own arms around myself. “So Matthew
did
make the sound you heard?”

“Yes. No. He was . . . it
looked
like he was making it. But it wasn’t a sound a boy could make. No living thing, Doctor. No living thing makes a sound like that.” He might’ve argued further, but then he waved his hand, changing his subject or finding it again, as the case may be. “Then Felicity, she screamed—and she ran to Matty, pulled on his leg, trying to draw him back down to the ground. But whatever held him in the air did a mighty good job of it, and he didn’t budge, not at all. He just hung there, his arms moving around like he was keeping himself afloat, swimming in the air like it was the ocean, his hair all swaying back and forth like seaweed.”

I tried unsuccessfully to keep from gasping, and the sound stuck in my throat. “She . . . your wife tried to pull him down? And he . . . he was held aloft, somehow? By wires, by . . . by the ropes? There were ropes, I recall. Holding him to the bed.”

“There were ropes
on
the bed, untied and hanging by the posts. He was aloft, sir, yes. But nothing kept him there that I could see,” he vowed, his eyes haunted but deadly earnest. “It was all so unnatural, you know? I reached for my wife and tried
to draw her away from him, but she weren’t having none of it. She fought me, and fought for him.” He said the last part with a cough and a grimace.

He continued. “Then Matty, he . . . he put a hand down and grabbed her by the hair, and he pulled her up to meet him—and she was screaming and shouting, and I was screaming and shouting, and Matty was making that noise, that same awful noise. I’ll never forget it. Never forget it. Couldn’t stand to hear it.” He shook his head again, trying to shake the sound out of it, like water from his ear.

My voice shook as hard as Ebenezer’s hands. “He lifted her up?”

“He lifted her up.” He was back to that whisper, rising and falling as the sharing became too much for him. “Picked her right up off her feet, and her hair started swaying, like Matthew’s, like she was underwater. She was gasping, coughing, thrashing about—just like she would if you held her head in a tub, you see? So I ran—into the next room, and I fished around under the bed for my gun. It’s a hunting gun, that’s all. A fowler’s gun,” he clarified. “And I never shot nothing with it but birds for the table—I swear it to you.

“And I didn’t think . . .” He folded and unfolded his fingers, lacing them together, pulling them apart. “I didn’t think I was gonna shoot Matty, or nothing like that. I thought I’d threaten him, maybe, and that’d get through to him.

“But by the time I’d got the gun and come back, Felicity wasn’t moving. She was hanging there limp beside him, his hands tangled up in her hair, holding her up, and her feet dangling above the sheets. So I hollered at him. I told him I’d shoot! I told him, Doctor! And he didn’t do a thing. It was like he hadn’t heard me at all, and I thought he’d hurt Felicity somehow, so I couldn’t just
stand there doing nothing. So I shot him. I shot him, and he let go of her hair, and she fell to the floor. And I shot him again, and he fell a little lower. Then I had to either reload or tend to Felicity.”

“So you tended to your wife.”

“I tried! I tried pulling her out of that room, where everything was sopping wet, and I didn’t know where all the water came from, and it all smelled so bad, Doctor, you have to believe me . . .”

“I do,” I assured him, and I was horrified to realize I was telling him the truth. “I
do
believe you.”

“I dragged her back out of the room, into the hallway, and some of the water came with her, but most of it stayed in there with Matty. I pushed on her chest, you know—seeing if she was breathing, or if I could start her up again. I put my head on her chest and her heart wasn’t beating, so I pushed some more, and I turned her head to the side, and out of her mouth there was . . . there was . . . all this
blood
. It came streaming right out of her, pouring and pouring, like the water down the walls in Matty’s room.”

He fell silent, and in this new state of quiet I could hear footsteps outside the room, coming toward us. I sensed our time was drawing to a close, so I asked one last question. “What about Matthew? What about the sound you heard?”

“I stood up, once I knew my wife was done. I went back into the room, and Matty was lying half on the bed, half off it. There wasn’t any more sound. There wasn’t any more water, but everything was still wet.”

The sheriff’s knock announced him, and he interrupted us curtly, if politely. “Doctor, I thank you for your time, but the Boston office has sent a telegram asking us to send Mr. Hamilton
along to them. There’ll be an investigator here in the morning. Later in the morning,” he corrected himself with a sigh.

“I understand,” I said, and I patted at Ebenezer’s hand. He didn’t react, either to the news or to my awkward ministrations.

Duffy added, “The investigator’s asked for a doctor’s company while he looks at the scene. Can we send him your way, when he arrives?”

“Yes, by all means. Send for me at my home. I’ll . . . do my best, I suppose, to get another few hours of sleep.” Though I knew good and well that I wouldn’t.

I wished Ebenezer Hamilton well, and before I left, I leaned in close—putting a hand on his shoulder. Into his ear, I said, “I believe you, and I will do what I can to defend you, and support you.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said, but he was hardly present anymore. His mind was back in that room with his dead wife, and dead godson. And I’ll never forget the last thing he murmured, as I left the room. Not to me, and maybe not to himself. Maybe it was a prayer, or an observation for the sheriff, I couldn’t say—but it was that last sentiment that kept me from returning to my bed for any further rest.

“That sound . . . that sound, it came from his mouth. It was the song of something dying. Something that never did
live.”

D
ECEMBER
4, 1893

I’ve taken
Physalia zollicoffris
for myself, and none other.

I may have burned a bridge or two while I was at it.

At present, I am torn between horror and delight, outrageous hope and astonished despair; but this was how it has to be, isn’t it? Everything has been leading up to this eventual outcome, every single step. From the moment I received the sample, sealed up tight in that jar . . . every motion, every gesture, every note, and every word have accumulated into a mighty force, culminating with the match I struck this evening.

What a day. How can I recall it, or reconcile it with my life? My sanity? Am I in danger of losing either one? Both? I fear there are none qualified to render judgment at this point. None but the siphonophore itself, and it tells me plenty.

It? No.

Them
, perhaps—but at the risk of saying something preposterous, I almost feel like the specimen is a
she
. Ridiculous, when addressing a plural entity with no construct of binary gender such as humans ascribe . . . but then again, there’s a three-person God in heaven, or so we are often reminded. And I’ve never heard Him referred to with any pronoun but the masculine.

He is God.

She is Siphonophore.

They both are One, but also Legion.

Which is either blasphemy or the utmost truth, and I’m ill-prepared to offer an opinion either way.

We follow the ones who call us, and She has given me greater direction than any invisible sky-ghost ever bothered or dared. So I know Whom I will obey.

I
am not offloading my actions upon Her, though I do fervently believe that She has endorsed my behavior and gazed favorably upon it. Everything I’ve done these last few weeks has been for Her, in order to please and protect Her. She knows this, and She approves.

But I assume all responsibility for what I’ve done. These were my choices. My decisions. My courses of action. My bridges to render unto ash.

I
stood in the lab, with
Physalia zollicoffris
in a jar on the counter. It was the same jar in which She’d arrived, though it’d since been cleaned and aired, sterilized and polished. She deserves no less.

I was thinking about how She seemed somewhat smaller
than when I’d first laid eyes upon Her, sprawled out and stinking, apparently dead and pickled. At that time, She’d appeared big enough to fill the whole chemistry sink, perhaps to overflowing, except that no, that can’t be true. She arrived in this jar, a mason jar of the oversized variety—perhaps it holds half a gallon, at most. She cannot be any bigger than that.

But . . . whereas before She occupied every square inch of space . . . filling the glass like a liquid, seeping and spilling and filling the area with Her bulk . . . now I can see emptiness between the creases and folds. I’ve replaced the liquid with ordinary salt water, a brine that felt more appropriate somehow than whatever chemical had kept Her secured during transport; but that wouldn’t have caused Her to shrink. No, if anything it should’ve made Her stronger, fed Her, made Her feel more at home.

I hope I haven’t made a terrible mistake.

No, I haven’t done any such thing. She reassures me.

That
must sound strange. Well, it
is
strange.

She tells me things. She warms me.

But
I was looking at the jar, and its precious contents. And outside in the hall I heard Dr. Greer mumbling something or another—I didn’t quite catch it, but it was something about me, and my suspension. Maybe he was saying it ought to become permanent, or maybe he was saying I ought to be reinstated. Really, I have no idea. I heard my name, and a reference to my office, and an idly voiced question that might have been so simple as a casual wondering about where I was, right that moment.

I thought about opening the door and announcing myself, then changed my mind. I resolved instead to listen at the door,
or I
must
have resolved that, because I found myself standing there, my cheek pressed to the wood, my ear flat against the crack where the panel and the jamb connect.

I felt a slight breeze on my skin, for the building is old and it has settled, here and there. Its angles are not always perpendicular, and its floors are not always straight. Its ceilings sometimes leak. Its windows sometimes crack with age, or the weight of a building becoming comfortable on its foundations.

The floor beneath me vibrated, as if the men on the other side were bouncing up and down like unruly children in bed. But they were not. I listened, and their voices were steady. I still could not understand them.

I pulled my head away and shook it, then repositioned myself and tried again.

But they were speaking another language, nattering on in words that were mere syllables hurled and punched, and it was nonsense, all of it. Once I heard my name. Twice I heard my name, and then a laugh.

I looked back toward my specimen, my Lady.

My laboratory had grown dark. A storm had coagulated overhead, or it must have been the case, because the clouds were shimmering gray out through the window. Or . . . no. I couldn’t see the sky from there. It must have been a sheet of water, cascading where the gutters have rotted through, making the world outside look so much like a filthy aquarium.

The gaslight flickered and went out. Except that I hadn’t turned it on, had I?

It was definitely off. And the office was definitely gloomy, so gloomy that I could hardly see Her, sitting in the jar, cradled there, but deserving better.

She glimmered, and what little light remained in the room winked against the glass, showing off Her sinuous, swimming shape, twisting in the jar, a very slow whirlpool, or a carousel, or the ethereal winding of a cotton candy machine. She pivoted to show me Her whole self. She unfurled, and I was transfixed.

I couldn’t hear the men outside the door anymore.

I don’t know who Greer was talking to. Hanson, maybe, or Applegate. If they were still present, they’d gone silent. If they were standing on the other side of the door, they said nothing. I said nothing. I watched
Physalia zollicoffris
.

I looked away.

I opened the door with my left hand. My right hand was holding something, and I could feel it, hard and cold, but I did not look down to see what it was. I did not care. I knew what to do, and I knew where to go.

Into the hall I stepped. I walked. I proceeded.

Down the hall, which was empty. No one whispered, and no chancellor hung about, spreading lies and gossip. No students walked past, shirking their responsibilities in favor of cigarettes behind the boiler room.

(This hallway was the quickest shortcut. They came and went like the tide, always leaving a trail of tobacco vapors in their wake. Like they accused me. Of leaving. What was it? The odor of the specimen. In my wake.)

Like my office the corridor was darkened, though it was midday, I was relatively confident. Midday, and not an ounce of sun to shine through at the ends of the hall, where a trio of great windows reached from almost-floor to almost-ceiling. They looked like the window in my office—no, in my laboratory, where the students come and go—covered in water, that drained
down the glass in cascades. The whole building was submerged, as it ought to be.

To make Her more comfortable.

She was behind me, on the table, in the jar. I wished for Her but there was nothing to be done, not now, not yet. Work to do first. Then devotion.

There was no one in the hall with me, and I walked it forever.

My hand snatched out, the one holding the blade. It was a blade, not a scalpel, something larger. Smaller than a machete, larger than a pocketknife. Large enough, at any rate. I lashed and struck like a snake, at nothing, at no one. But there was blood on my hand when I looked down, and it wasn’t mine. None of this was mine. But I was alone.

Somehow, this didn’t confuse me. Somehow, She urged me on, and said that the answers would come, and She always speaks the truth, and never lies to me. It isn’t Her way.

I proceeded to Greer’s office because he was there. (I knew he was there. She told me he would be.) I did not knock on the door because I do not knock on doors, not anymore. I certainly do not ask permission of worms like that man with his name upon the brass plate, his letters etched into the metal, scratched there by some printer’s claw.

I opened the door and the knob was chilly in my hand, so chilly that my skin stuck to it—the blood or the water on my skin, it froze, and I pulled myself free with a twist, after the twist of the knob. I did not like the metal. Wasn’t sure what it was. Looked down, and saw it was the old-fashioned iron sort, a lever. Not a knob. I don’t understand, because I thought I twisted it.

But it was cold, very cold. And it was lying on the floor
where I broke it off and dropped it, and the skin on my hand was torn, but it mended itself before my eyes.