Maplecroft (13 page)

Dr.
Greer shouted at me. Some querulous complaint.

“Zollicoffer, what’s happened? What have you done?”

Some series of meaningless question marks, cast at me like a spell. I understood his words again, and I understood that he was upset. He damned well ought to be upset. He’d offended Her with his treatment of me. He’d offended us both, Her in the glass throne I would carry with me always. Me in the flesh and blood, covered in flesh and blood, holding a blade, the kind scientists use to saw through bone. It came from the biology lab.

Did it? I couldn’t recall having seen one like it there before. A fine steel thing, gleaming except where the gore had smudged off the shine. Its edges ragged and grasping, its teeth chewing on bits of skin and gristle that had snagged upon them.

I held it by the wooden handle. I held it with the blade point down, the way She told me. I held his neck. He stopped yelling at me, and that was a terrible relief. I couldn’t stand the sound of his voice anymore. I couldn’t bear the volume of it, the weight and the frequency of it, not until it faded into gurgles and bubbles, and his desk was awash with crimson.

The crimson was not as pretty as the water pouring down the windows outside.

She warned me not to watch the water too long. She warned me to move on to the next office, while there was time. Before anyone intervened.

I was unstoppable, but I mustn’t stop.

Greer’s office door banged open, and Dr. Madison stood there, his mouth hanging open like a wound. He began to shout,
and his shouting was even worse than Greer’s, which was truly saying something. His shouting took longer to stop. I had to drag him inside. He kept saying “No,” as if he firmly believed this couldn’t happen, and therefore it must not be happening.

But I was unstoppable, and I did not stop.

I left them lying together, their blood pooling into puddles, into deep enough puddles to drown in. Into ponds. Into lakes. And She told me not to watch it, that I had to keep going. I must not stop.

I was unstoppable.

A
PRIL
19, 1894

The Boston inspector didn’t arrive yesterday morning as I was promised, but he came this morning instead—bright and early, if not so early as the sheriff had the day before. The sun was up, I’d had my coffee and toast, and I was as prepared as one could hope for what we were bound to find in the Hamilton home, where two people had died, and now nobody lived.

The inspector’s name was Simon Wolf, a fine name for a man who hunts wrongdoers—but aside from his peculiarly practical nomenclature, he wasn’t at all what I expected. Rather short, somewhat wide, and thickly bespectacled, Wolf was nonetheless a sharp-witted man with an air of crisp professionalism
about him. I knew immediately that I liked him, and that I could work with him.

Together we approached Hamilton’s Ocean Goods and Supplies, the store which the Hamiltons had kept, and within which they’d lived (in the back rooms, apart from the business front).

The main entryway was closed off with rope, more for show than for restraint. A sign hung from the rope, announcing that the shop was “Closed Indefinitely,” with the subsequent admonition, “Do Not Enter Without Police Approval.”

But as Wolf put it, “My approval is somewhat more official than mere police permission. So I’ll see to the knot.”

“But you’re a policeman, aren’t you?”

“Something like that.”

“I meant no offense, of course,” I said, fearing I might have caused some all the same.

He waved away my concerns. “None taken. Our offices work in close conjunction. Fine men, the Boston police. But no, I’m not one of them. Good heavens, it’s a devil of a knot.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I did not inquire further. Instead I said, “I have a penknife, if you think it’d help . . .”

Before I could finish the offer, he’d released the informal barrier with a determined pinch of manual dexterity. “Thank you, but I’ve finally got it.” He fished about in his pocket for a key, given to him by the sheriff, I assumed. Or maybe it came courtesy of some other authority, as he implied. He found the key, retrieved it, and inserted it into the lock. “You’ve been here before—is that correct?”

“Everyone in town has been here, at one time or another. It’s a local institution. Or it
was
, I’m sorry to say.”

The door unfastened, and he pushed it open. “There’s
always a chance that someone will reopen it. Some family member or another. But the Hamiltons had no children . . .” It wasn’t a question; he was merely recalling the facts as he’d heard them. I wondered who’d filled him in on all the peripheral details. “A brother, or cousin, perhaps.”

“Ebenezer had a brother, but he was a mariner and I only met him once. He was older, too. For an old man who’s spent his life upon the sea . . . it might be a good retirement, to operate a shop such as this,” or so I thought aloud. “Then again, perhaps he’s lost his taste for living on solid ground. Some of them do, you know. They take to the ocean, and never find comfort elsewhere.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Hamilton when I speak to him next. That poor man . . .” He might’ve said more, but we both stepped inside, where the store was dark and strangely cool. Both of us went quiet; we milled about in the entryway, beside the overflowing barrel of sea glass. It drew my eye, even when I consciously decided that I
must
look elsewhere.

Nervously, I said, “Bit of a chill in here.”

“Bit of a smell, too. Did Mr. Hamilton mention it?”

“Yes, he did. Compared it to the stomach contents of a beached whale. And he ought to know—for he helped discard one. It was the talk of the shores last summer.”

Wolf nodded. “The bowels of a rotting whale. That sounds about right.” He flinched, like he’d prefer to pinch his nose, but it wouldn’t be manly.

“It
is
terrible,” I agreed, though it wasn’t quite the veritable wall of stench I’d been guaranteed. It was more of an undercurrent in the chilly, damp air. Something riding the humidity, as if the very mist itself was the source of the odor.

It felt like some strange trespass, to visit the store under
these circumstances. Closed for business, perhaps for good. Dark and quiet, with no Felicity Hamilton behind the counter, no Matthew to refill the odds-and-ends barrel. No Ebenezer on the pier just outside, spreading out nets and sails to dry in the sun, later to be repaired. I wondered sadly what would become of the stock, of the store, of the building itself.

“Can you imagine . . .” I murmured, scanning the room.

“I can imagine many things,” he replied. “But what precisely do you have in mind?”

“Can you imagine buying a business or home like this, knowing what took place here? For generations, schoolchildren will accuse it of being haunted. You can rest assured of
that
.”

“Children and adults alike—it’s not as if we ever outgrow our darker fears. Let’s not pretend we’re all so reluctant to entertain the unknown.”

“Do you?” I asked bluntly.

He faced me, and even in the low light I could see how quizzically he regarded me. He was thinking about his answer. He didn’t know me well, and wasn’t sure of what might turn my opinion, or so I gathered.

“Entertain the unknown? I constantly do so. It comes with my job. I entertain it, in order to solve it and make it
known
.”

“That isn’t what I mean.” I went to the big bay windows that overlooked the water and the pier, and I drew back the canvas curtains. Light flooded in, and the place looked dusty and abandoned despite the added illumination.

“Are you asking if I believe in ghosts? Goblins? God?”

“There’s no need to bring sacrilege to the conversation,” I chided him.

“Indeed, no reason to bring religion into it at all. Given my
preference, I’d skip the subject altogether. Now tell me, where are the living quarters?”

I accepted the shift in topic. It hadn’t been polite for me to broach the other one, anyway. “In this direction. Behind the curtain at the end of the counter.”

He brushed it aside, and recoiled, examining his hand. “It’s wet.”

“Everything feels wet in here, doesn’t it?” I ran my fingers over the slimy counter.

I wiped my fingers on my pants, and Wolf wiped his on the hem of his jacket. “When did it rain last?”

“Oh, it’s been a week or more. Last Tuesday, I believe. I can’t imagine why it’s so damp in here . . . but can’t you feel it? Something abominable and atmospheric.”

“Something unknown?” he asked with the lift of an eyebrow, and I wasn’t sure if he was teasing me or not, so I gave him a self-deprecating smile.

“If so, then it falls well within your job description.”

“Yours, too.” He grinned back, revealing his picket-straight, shell-white teeth. I half expected to see canines every time he flashed them, but no, they were ordinary and I was an imaginative old fool. This much was established.

“Mine, too, yes. I agree. Down the hall,” I directed, suddenly feeling odd about our lighthearted exchange. This wasn’t the place for it. Or maybe it was the best place for it, a feeble, mortal attempt to offset the terrible and unfathomable.

Every moment, I turned Ebenezer’s story over in the rear of my mind. Every moment, it played in the background of my everyday thoughts, my everyday actions. The sound he described, the floating boy, the stench . . .

That same stench rose as we slipped single file down the hall, toward Matthew’s bedroom. Much stronger than near the front of the store. “Last door on the right,” I said. I might not have bothered. He could’ve just followed the reek.

The floorboards creaked beneath our shoes, and they were spongy when we stepped on them, like they’d been waterlogged. But they had been, hadn’t they? If I believed Ebenezer at all, there’d been a great tide, flowing from the walls themselves, draining into nowhere. Lifting and drowning and killing.

I’d told him that I
did
believe. At the time, I’d meant it. In retrospect, I wasn’t so sure—but my heart went back and forth about it, seeking excuses and reasons, answers and logical explanations.

I found none. And I saw plenty of evidence to support the veracity of every frightful word he’d whispered in that courthouse room.

I followed Wolf down the dank hall, stinking of oceans and death; here we were, and this was the smell—just as Ebenezer described it—and the whole building was wet and cool, and the ceiling felt improbably low, and I could feel my heart hammering around in my chest because too much of it was true, too much already.

“Dear God Almighty,” gagged Wolf. He surrendered and whipped a handkerchief out of his pocket, and held it up over his nose. “It’s
infinitely
worse back here.”

If I’d had a handkerchief, I would have done the same. Matthew’s room was a wreck of soaked bedding, warped floors, peeling wallpaper, and moldering linens stained a bluish, greenish color.

I reached inside for a switch. There must be gas throughout the building—I was reasonably confident, for I knew there were
lights in the store itself; but the place was too sodden, and the fixtures wouldn’t spark. No comforting illumination came to warm us, and we were left with the dingy murk that showed us almost nothing.

“One moment.” Wolf ducked past me, back into the store; he returned with a long stick. A cane? A tool of some variety? I didn’t notice. He used it to push back the lank, sticky curtains and give us something to see by, not that the daylight could show us much of note. With the morning sun streaming inside, we saw more clearly than at first, but there wasn’t anything new to encourage us.

We saw a room that looked like somehow, it’d been filled with a rancid tide. Oh, and there was blood, yes. A watered-down stain pooled along the bed, and along the floor—matching Ebenezer’s statement that Matthew had fallen half on the bed, half off it. And when I stepped back to the darkened hall I realized there was more diluted blood on the floor. We’d walked right through it.

Now that I knew it was there, I tiptoed around it as much as possible. And while Wolf made his inspection, I made mine.

I knew from Ebenezer’s testimony that the bloody stain left by Mrs. Hamilton was approximately thirty hours old. It was still half wet, like everything else—but unlike everything else, a gummy sputum was mixed with the froth that had surely spilled from her mouth. Quite a lot of it, really. It’s a wonder we hadn’t slipped and harmed ourselves.

I peered around the door’s jamb and saw Wolf cutting buckshot out of the far wall with a pocketknife, like a proper alienist. He dropped it into a glass vial and used a wad of cotton for a stopper. Then he pulled out a tape and measured the room—I offered to hold one end, for accuracy—and when he was finished
recording the dimensions, he retrieved a sketch pad from his inner jacket pocket.

How he could stand to remain in that filthy, stinking room, I had no idea, but somehow the man had acclimated to breathing without his handkerchief. More power to him. I left him to sketch what he found important, and returned to the storefront area, which only felt grim and sad—rather than murderous and unsettling.

I stood in the middle of the room, staring down the two aisles of products and back again at the counter, and the register, and the faint tracks my fingers had left in the slime that coated everything. From a certain angle, I could even see our footprints on the floor, when the light hit them just right. The whole place was tainted with something, and I was seized with the impulse to dash home and run myself a bath.

But I could do that later.

I kept my breathing shallow, lest I suck in any more of the disgusting air than I absolutely had to . . . and I strolled about, trying to be an observant and useful partner to Wolf, but mostly just wanting to take off my clothes and fling myself into the nearest supply of clean water.

I wandered to the door, and to the window beside it. The glass was murky, like everything else, and when I ran the side of my thumb along the nearest edge of the pane, it came away black. Almost as if it were the stain of old soot, or the residue of a place where men too often smoked. But that was a silly thought, wasn’t it? Smoke and fire, in a place all but destroyed with damp. It wasn’t quite right, and I knew it.

I can only talk my way around these things. There is so little that can be precisely said. The room was chilly, perhaps sixty degrees. (I wished for a thermometer, but didn’t have one
handy and didn’t see one in the store.) The bloodstains were approximately three square feet, and four square feet, respectively. Wolf’s measuring tape would tell us more firmly.