Maplecroft (5 page)

I’d
been right to aim low. The visitor was a full head shorter than I. Almost childlike, if you wished to compare something so malicious and inhuman to the size of something innocent and mortal.

I’d pushed the axe with enough momentum, enough weight, enough of my own not-inconsiderable strength, that it came very close to decapitating the brute in one blow. Broken teeth glittered as they flew through the air; they stuck onto the gore-covered axe-head when I retracted it and went to swing again.

But the creature wriggled and fell, ducking away from my second blow—which slammed into the house instead. Windows above me rattled, not breaking but shuddering. The axe stuck in the siding. I wrenched at it, and retrieved it.

My adversary lurched to its feet once more, and the top of its head flipped open and backward, clinging to the whole of its shape by nothing but gristle and tendons, but this did not stop it. Whether or not it could think, or feel, or see, or bite . . . minus all the obvious faculties to do so . . . I have no idea.

But it could
attack
.

It rushed toward me, but I was ready. I’d seen this trick before, how they could function like the worst vermin, the most disgusting bugs that could eat and fornicate and lay eggs . . . though their brains have been smashed to bits.

This one came at me the same way, its fingers fanning to show the connective webbing between them, and to brandish the curved claws they all boasted. Its head swung down between its shoulder blades, dangling there and spewing the green and brown bile that serves for their fluids.

It ducked and I slashed with the heavy blade—and the creature leaned in for me. It tumbled forward and snared my skirt, which ripped as I pulled away and then, because there was no room for me to rear back for another swipe, I shifted the axe in my grip and brought it up again—from underneath, and to my left. I leaned backward, shifting my center like a pendulum and whipping the weapon forward.

I caught the damnable thing below the throat. The axe shattered its sternum, and hacked up through its neck. Its lower jaw flew away, scattering more sparkling teeth in the garden roses, and in the grass.

It staggered.

I finished it. I kicked out my boot and caught it in the chest, shoving it back to the ground, where it writhed, clutching all its injured parts and gushing those terrible, foul-smelling fluids. I stood over it, and I bashed it again and again with the axe, until the pulp of its chest caved inward and the throbbing organs ceased their gruesome pumping.

When at last it was still, I dropped the axe-head to the ground and leaned on the handle, catching my breath as I gazed down upon my handiwork and listened to the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.

Thank God, I heard nothing else.

No curious neighbors, no late-night passersby wondering what went on at Maplecroft, where the notorious spinsters hid themselves like fugitives, and rarely showed their faces.

But this did not mean I had any time to waste.

Collecting my thoughts and my strength once more, I drove the axe deep into what was left of the thing’s chest and dragged it that way, around to the backyard, into the deeper shadows and well beyond any chance of being spotted from the street. I heaved it along to the cellar’s exterior entrance and fished in my pocket for the rest of my keys. Although I was warm and flushed from exertion, my hands conspired against me, and were cold. My fingers shook. Every small sound startled me, setting me yet further on edge.

But the big locks on the great double doors did eventually click, and I lifted the right one up, tilting it on its hinges, revealing a set of stone stairs.

My axe was still lodged in the brute, buried in the wreckage of its ribs. I took hold of the handle and drew the creature to the edge of the precipice, then swung its body over the stairs. I snapped my wrist, shaking the axe hard and fast. The corpse ragdolled itself to the bottom.

I followed more slowly behind it, drawing the cellar door down behind me and fastening the interior locks. The exterior set would have to wait, for now. I could return to them later, when I was finished cleaning up.

The battered remains smelled disgusting. Whatever these things circulate for blood, it is more foul than anything I could imagine for comparison purposes. The liquid itself congeals quickly when exposed to air, forming a nasty jelly the color of coffee—which meant I’d be scrubbing the steps and wiping
down the floors before bedtime, whether I liked it or not. There’s only so much evidence I can stand to live with overnight.

Using the axe to keep the corpse at arm’s distance, I shoved, nudged, and leveraged the squishy, crunchy sack of skin over to the largest trapdoor—the one next to the slot where I keep the dreaded green stones contained and concealed.

I opened this horizontal cabinet to reveal the most expensive appliance in Maplecroft. Truly, it’s a work of art. It’s almost a shame that no one ever sees it.

Privately I think of it as “the cooker,” a perfectly gruesome description that no doubt says something awful about my mental state, or possibly my sense of humor. But I’ve learned the hard way that simply burying the inhuman little bodies is insufficient. As they decay, their odor becomes increasingly unbearable, even when smothered with several feet of earth. Worse yet, it attracts more of their loathsome kind. And then what? Do I kill every intruder, every strange, murderous invader of dubious origin? After a while, I’d surely run out of places to bury them. Our yard is not so large that I can afford the space for a cemetery of the weird.

No, the cooker is the only reasonable means of getting rid of them.

It cost a small fortune, and I had to bring in a man from out of state to set it up. I couldn’t risk any of the locals gossiping about it. That’s the last thing Emma and I need, especially now that we seem to be watched by more than just the usual neighbors, who remain convinced that I’ve somehow escaped justice.

(They
wait for me to make a mistake, to reveal some telltale clue or make some offhanded incriminating statement. They think they know the truth, and to a certain extent, they
do
. But they
do not know the whole of it, and I am careful. I must be, for my sake and Emma’s. For the whole of Fall River’s sake, too. I do not know if I can save us all, but I have to
try
.)

I
reached down into the cabinet in my floor and gripped a metal latch. I turned it, and a small handle released with a pop. I cranked it, and the cooker’s heavy lid ratcheted upward.

The cooker is essentially an oversized version of a cast-iron pressure device—thus my revolting shorthand for it. Made of steel rather than iron, it is heated by a complicated system of pipes that siphon gas from the same household system that powers our lights. These pipes work together to heat the cooker well beyond normal boiling temperatures, necessitating the ring of asbestos that lines the cabinet—thirteen inches deep, on all sides—lest I inadvertently set fire to the place. This lining cradles an oversized metal basin. The basin is filled with lye.

Using the axe like a rake, I scraped the corpse to the basin’s edge and then lifted it, exhausting what felt like the last of my strength. I couldn’t just drop the thing into the corrosive bath, not unless I wanted to splash myself with its awful contents, so I lowered the body carefully into the thick, strong-smelling solution.

With a shudder, I released the crank hook and the lid ratcheted quickly shut. I fastened a set of locking bands into position, and then I worked a round dial just beneath the pressure gauge. I turned up the heat as far as it would go, and set the timer to keep it at full temperature for the next three hours—which would certainly be time enough to dissolve the creature down to viscous syrup.

Then, in the morning, I’d make sure. And once I was satisfied that there was nothing left, I would pull a lever and let the
oily residue drain down a refuse pipe which emptied out under the lot behind our house.

As I said, this was not a cheap thing to have designed, produced, and installed in our cellar, though I don’t regret a single penny of the expense. I got the idea from one of Emma’s biology periodicals, wherein various authorities were discussing the best way to dispose of dead farm animals; and every day I half expect to see some sensational news story with my name on it because my bribery of the workers who brought the machine was not enough to keep them from talking.

Any day now, the authorities will knock and the headlines will declare I’ve been murdering again, and this time destroying the evidence.

I
stood up straight and leaned back. I gazed tiredly at the cabinet door and kicked it shut. It fell with a thunderous clank that Emma heard, all the way upstairs on the first floor, where I’d left her.

“Lizzie?” she cried out.

“Everything’s all right. It’s done now,” I said with a sigh. Then I remembered and called, “Emma dear, I’m nearly finished.”

“Thank God,” she murmured. I barely heard it.

“I’m cleaning up, that’s all.”

My axe was on the floor beside the trapdoor. It was covered in the creature’s bile, or mucus, or blood, or whatever fuels it—pumping through those sinewy lines and oily muscles. The slime was foaming very slightly, blossoming into a revolting brown fluff. I picked up the axe and held my breath as I brought it close to my face, so I could see it better.

Yes, just like before. Where the putrescent fluids met the
iron, the weapon sizzled like it was doused with acid. But not an acid eating away at the metal—more the opposite, I should say. It is as if the metal eats away at the blood.

Iron hurts them somehow, doing more damage than if I hit them with a bat or a mallet. Wood won’t do it. Stone won’t do it—as I learned on one occasion, having been cornered by the porch stairs and finding only a loose chunk of paving rock to defend myself. It pushes them away, of course. Any sufficient blow will rebuff them, but only iron will stop them.

I took a damp rag from a bucket full of water and soap, making a murky soup. I scrubbed the axe-head down. If it’d been made of shinier stuff, it would’ve gleamed when I was finished.

I moved along to the splatters on the floor, and to the murk on the stairs. On my hands and knees, I washed the steps one at a time. And when I was finished, I retrieved the now-clean axe and brought it with me as I made my exit, pausing briefly at one of the book stacks and selecting a volume.

The axe-head. The iron.

I was reminded of something, and I wanted to double-check my memory on the matter.

The steps groaned beneath my feet, and I groaned with them. My ribs ached from the exercise, from breathing so hard against the corset stays.

At the top, I unlocked the door and let myself out.

Emma was still seated by the landing. The guns rested on her lap, leaving heavy dents in the folds of her skirt. Her hands lay atop the guns. She looked frail, and old.

She sighed with relief at the sight of me.

I tried to smile. “I told you I’d be right up.”

“Yes, and I’m glad. I was worried—I couldn’t remember if you’d taken your keys.”

“I always have my keys. Here, let’s get you to your feet,” I offered, setting aside both the axe and the book in order to slide my arm beneath and behind her.

“I don’t need so much help,” she chided me.

Sometimes, she did not. Tonight, she did. “Stop fussing, and let me get you upstairs. It’s late. We’re both tired. I’ll get you ready for bed.”

Together we walked with excruciating slowness. If I’d urged her any faster I would’ve had to carry her, and that would’ve been embarrassing and painful for us both. Instead we moved at the steady pace that made my aching arms ache all the more, and the bruising at my ribs protested with every step, all the way to my sister’s room.

I drew out the stool at her vanity and lowered her onto it, and I stretched, cringing at the crackle of joints popping, and the dull warmth of strained muscles.

Emma stared quietly at herself in the mirror, and at me. She said, “We’re quite the pair, you and I. The invalid and the murderess.”

I turned away from the mirror and went to the switch on the wall. I pressed it, and the room came alight with the glow of the wall lamp. Its pretty shade was made of frosted glass, so the light was diffused and softened. It was kind to us, or so I saw when I returned to the vanity seat and began to undo Emma’s hair.

One by one, I pulled the hairpins gently free and laid them on the table. “The scholar and the warrior?” I tried. “Let’s say that instead. I like the sound of it better.”

She laughed. I think it was genuine. It’s hard to tell, with eyes like hers—too wise to find many things funny. “Another set of lies, sister. Nicer ones.”

“But you
are
a scholar. And tonight I’ve slain a dragon. Of sorts.”

“True and misleading. I’m not Professor Jackson, and you’re no Saint George, nor an Amazon, either.”

“Says
you
.”

I tugged at the final hairpin, the veritable lynchpin of her coiffure’s architecture. It slipped free, and her hair came down in a jagged cascade, unfurling and unfolding in a marbled mixture of brown and silver down her back. I took a brush and began to smooth it. I told her, “No one ever needs to know.”

And likely, no one ever would.

Emma Borden, consumptive spinster . . . masquerading as Doctor E. A. Jackson—retired professor of biology and chemistry. The venerable mythical doctor had authored dozens of papers published in journals as far away as France, on everything from seaweed blooms and ocean temperatures to parasitic infections in crustaceans of the northeastern Atlantic.

Who would even believe it, if we announced it? We could put an advertisement in the newspaper, and no one would consider it possible.

She mused, “Someday, someone is bound to learn some secret or another. Yours, or maybe mine. Someone could come here, looking for me.”

“Someone?” I knew her too well. She had someone in mind.

“There’s a fellow upstate, at Miskatonic University.”

“You’ve mentioned him. You think he might come here? Seeking you?” I moved on from her hair to her dress, which I unfastened one rounded glass button at a time, feeding them through the tiny loops that ran from the top of her neck to the small of her back.

“There’s always the chance. I rather like him, and I suspect we’d enjoy one another’s company. Maybe he feels the same way.”

Only a few more buttons to go. I fumbled with one of them, released it, and moved on to the next. I did not ask her anything. I only said, “If he comes, we’ll deal with it then. We can always claim that the good doctor died since last you wrote.”

“I’ll say no such thing. I have two more articles pending for publication.”

Wearily, I told her, “Well, the secret is yours, Emma dear. Do with it what you wish.”

I helped her dress for bed. I fluffed her pillows and gave her the day’s mail—including two of her favorite periodicals. I kissed her on the forehead and wished her good night. I lit the candles on the bedside table and extinguished the lamps as I left.

In the parlor, my father’s old clock gonged the hour. It was one o’clock, and therefore, morning. I was filthy and my dress was ruined. I traded it for a nightgown with slippers, and resolved to burn it, as I’d burned other dresses before it.

I’d wait for dawn, if I could sleep that long. Or sleep at all.

I remembered that I’d left the axe and my book downstairs. I set out to retrieve them.

Come daylight, yes—I’d destroy the dress, and check to bolt the cellar’s exterior doors, so that no one could come or go without my keys (or perhaps a stick of dynamite). When the sun was up, I’d check the cooker and empty its contents; I’d examine Maplecroft’s exterior, and its lawns, to make sure that no trace of the creature had been left behind.

But first, I staggered up to bed, toting my book and my axe.

I left the axe leaning against my nightstand, a childish
gesture which made me feel silly, but more secure than if I’d left it elsewhere. I wanted to keep it within reach.

I lit my candles. I drew up my knees and let the book fall open across them.

The volume was heavy. It left creases on the quilt. Its pages smelled like dust and feathers, leather and wood, mildew and uncertainties
.

A People’s History and Guide to the Myths, Lore, and Habits of the Fey
, by Alfred Hanstible Valant III. Paris, 1797. (Translation provided by Edmund Lowe, PhD International Metaphysical Studies. MUP—1829.)

It’s a silly title.

And to be clear, these creatures which are infesting Fall River . . . I do not believe they are fairies. They are not ghosts, or elves, or gnomes, or demons. They are not brownies or bogies. But when I read about such mythic monsters, I detect a glimmer of some similar sentiment—an undercurrent of truth, a glimmering seam of gold buried in a worthless boulder. I read about peasants, priests, and alchemists in days of old who had codified their superstitions into wards, hexes, potions, prayers, chants, songs, and systematic protective behaviors in order to keep themselves safe from dastardly influences. They were testing the boundaries of unknown things, attempting by trial and error to manage the stuff which goes “bump” in the night.

They were the scientists of their times, these people. They experimented with dark forces and dark creatures by choice or by desperation, combining and recombining the things they knew with the things they suspected—fishing, always fishing, for a reliable inoculation against evil.

I skimmed a few pages, running my finger down the lines until I found what I’d dimly recalled from earlier readings.

One thing and one thing alone is certain with regards to foul specimens of the dark court fey: They fear and loathe contact with any rusted item, be it tool, or lock, or ornament. They eschew the touch of this substance, recoiling as if burned or otherwise contaminated. In some rural counties, where the friendly assistance of nearby neighbors or peace officers is not readily at hand, nails are left in the rain to rust—then gathered, collected, and pounded into doorways and windowsills as a barrier against entry by any unwanted supernatural creatures. A barrier such as this is considered to be one hundred percent effective, and utterly foolproof.

I found the “foolproof” bit unlikely, but this small, overwrought paragraph gave me much to think about. The author proposed that the critical element is
rust
. Rust does not occur without the presence of iron. My axe was not at all rusty; I kept its edge ground fine and its surface well cleaned. Yet still, I noticed a reaction. A difference. A significant improvement in efficiency, as compared to other instruments.

“It’s not the rust,” I argued with the book, and its long-dead author—should his disapproving shade be present. “It’s the iron itself.”

I considered the implications, if there were any. My bedside candle flickered and steadied, along with my thoughts. When first I’d read Dr. Valant’s mention of the nails, I’m sure I thought it was frivolous. A fallacy of the poor and uneducated, a superstition without merit.

Now . . . I was not so certain. The two things, iron and rust. One known to be effective, one claimed to be. Did it matter that I did not understand the mechanism by which it worked to prohibit monsters? Not if it worked regardless.

I slapped the book shut and swung my legs out from under the bedspread. When I put my feet on the floor, the cold of the boards shocked some of the sleepiness out of my bones—thank God—because I’d never be able to sleep now, not until I’d tried it.

I did not care what time it was.

I cared only a little that Emma was fast asleep when I reached her room with a hammer in one hand and a box of nails in the other. I turned on the lamp to rouse her, and she blinked, yawning herself awake.

“Lizzie?”

“My apologies, sister dear. I’m afraid this can’t wait.”

“What can’t wait?” she asked, her words clogged and close together. “What time is it?”

“Close to two in the morning, I imagine. But if this should work, and if I fail to do it, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Oh dear. You’ve found some new . . . some new trick, that you want to try?”

“I don’t think it’s a trick,” I told her. I got down on my hands and knees. I positioned one nail at the far left, against the doorframe. “I don’t know why, but I think it will keep them out, even if I’m not here.”

I drove the nail hard. The bang of the hammer was louder than thunder in our night-quieted home, and I flinched, but I hit the tiny spike again until it went flush with the floor.

Emma propped herself up on the pillows to watch me. She was resigned to this. It was not as if she could stop me should she want to, and she knew she could not talk me out of it. We’d
fought about it often in our first year at Maplecroft, and never once had she won.

When I find a thing that works, I will implement it.

If it is inconvenient, if it is ridiculous, if it is insane . . . I do not care and will not let that stop me. I will try everything, and if even
some
of it works,
some
of the time, that’s a measure of protection we would have otherwise lacked. I will never let it be said that my sister died, or was turned, or taken, by those insidious fiends. Not on my watch, and not from my home.

First, I would pound a million nails into the house, and do it gladly. First, I would let the whole town think I’m a madwoman and a murderer, let it scorn and reject me, let its children compose hateful rhymes to be sung whilst jumping rope, let the entire Atlantic bubble and boil and storm against our shores—throwing up with the tides a thousand such inhuman, unholy creatures as the one I’d killed that night.

One by one I lined up the nails and beat them into place, and when I was finished with Emma’s doorway I moved on to her windowsill. And when I was finished there, my hands were chapped and beginning to bleed, so I stopped.

I could save my own doorway for morning, like everything
else.