The 5th Wave (62 page)

I spied the boots just as the doctor and Erasmus began to descend the stairs. They
were beneath the worktable, where I had placed them. Why had I put them there? I set
them by the stool and waited, my heart pounding, my breath coming in short, ragged
gasps. The basement was very cold, at least ten degrees colder than the rest of the
house, and stayed that way year round.

The load, still wrapped tightly in burlap, must have been heavy: The muscles in the
men’s necks bulged with the effort, and their descent was painfully slow. Once the
old man cried for a halt. They paused five steps from the bottom, and I could see
the doctor was annoyed at this delay. He was anxious to unveil his new prize.

They eventually heaved their burden onto the examining table. The doctor guided the
old man to the stool. Erasmus sank down upon it, removed his straw hat, and wiped
his crinkled brow with a filthy rag. He was shaking badly. In the light I could see
that nearly
all
of him was filthy, from his mud-encrusted shoes to his broken fingernails to the
fine lines and crevasses of his ancient face. I could smell the rich, loamy aroma
of damp earth rising from him.

“A crime,” he murmured. “A crime!”

“Yes, grave-robbing is a crime,” said the doctor. “A very
serious crime, Erasmus. A thousand-dollar fine and five years’ hard labor.” He shrugged
into his smock and motioned for his boots. He leaned against the banister to tug them
on. “We are coconspirators now. I must trust you, and you in turn must trust me. Will
Henry, where is my tea?”

I raced up the stairs. Below, the old man was saying, “I have a family to feed. My
wife, she’s very ill; she needs medicine. I can’t find work, and what use is gold
and jewels to the dead?”

They had left the back door ajar. I swung it closed and threw the bolt, but not until
I checked the alley. I saw nothing but the fog, which had grown thicker, and the horse,
its face dominated by its large eyes that seemed to implore me for help.

I could hear the rise and fall of the voices in the basement as I prepared the tea,
Erasmus’s with its high-pitched, semi-hysterical edge, the doctor’s measured and low,
beneath which lurked an impatient curtness no doubt born of his eagerness to unwrap
the old man’s unholy bundle. My unshod feet had grown quite cold, but I tried my best
to ignore the discomfort. I dressed the tray with sugar and cream and two cups. Though
the doctor hadn’t ordered the second, I thought the old man might need a cup to repair
his shattered nerves.

“…halfway to it, the ground just gave beneath me,” the old grave-robber was saying
as I descended with the tray. “As if I struck a hollow or pocket in the earth. I fell
face-first
upon the top of the casket. Don’t know if my fall cracked the lid or if it was cracked
by the…cracked
before
I fell.”

“Before, no doubt,” said the doctor.

They were as I had left them, the doctor leaning against the banister, the old man
shivering upon the stool. I offered him some tea, and he accepted the proffered cup
gladly.

“Oh, I am chilled to my very bones!” he whimpered.

“This has been a cold spring,” the doctor observed. He struck me as at once bored
and agitated.

“I couldn’t just leave it there,” the old man explained. “Cover it up again and leave
it? No, no. I’ve more respect than that. I fear God. I fear the judgment of eternity!
A crime, Doctor. An abomination! So once I gathered my wits, I used the horse and
a bit of rope to haul them from the hole, wrapped them up…brought them here.”

“You did the right thing, Erasmus.”

“‘There’s but one man who’ll know what to do,’ I said to myself. Forgive me, but you
must know what they say about you and the curious goings-on in this house. Only the
deaf would not know about Pellinore Warthrop and the house on Harrington Lane!”

“Then I am fortunate,” said the doctor dryly, “that you are not deaf.”

He went to the old man’s side and placed both hands on his shoulders.

“You have my confidence, Erasmus Gray. As I’m certain I have yours. I will speak to
no one of your involvement in this
‘crime,’ as you call it, as I’m sure you will keep mum regarding mine. Now, for your
trouble…”

He produced a wad of bills from his pocket and stuffed them into the old man’s hands.
“I don’t mean to rush you off, but each moment you stay endangers both you and my
work, both of which matter a great deal to me, though one perhaps a bit more than
the other,” he added with a tight smile. He turned to me. “Will Henry, show our caller
to the door.” Then he turned back to Erasmus Gray. “You have done an invaluable service
to the advancement of science, sir.”

The old man seemed more interested in the advancement of his fortunes, for he was
staring openmouthed at the cash in his still-quivering hands. Dr. Warthrop urged him
to his feet and toward the stairs, instructing me not to forget to lock the back door
and find my shoes.

“And don’t lollygag, Will Henry. We’ve work to last us the rest of the night. Snap
to!”

Old Erasmus hesitated at the back door, a dirty paw upon my shoulder, the other clutching
his tattered straw hat, his rheumy eyes straining against the fog, which had now completely
engulfed his horse and cart. Its snorts and stamping against the stones were the only
evidence of the beast’s existence.

“Why are you here, boy?” he asked suddenly, giving my shoulder a hard squeeze. “This
is no business for children.”

“My parents died in a fire, sir,” I answered. “The doctor took me in.”

“The doctor,” Erasmus echoed. “They call him that—but what exactly is he a doctor
of
?”

The grotesque,
I might have answered.
The bizarre. The unspeakable.
Instead I gave the same answer the doctor had given me when I’d asked him not long
after my arrival at the house on Harrington Lane. “Philosophy,” I said with little
conviction.

“Philosophy!” Erasmus cried softly. “Not what I would call it, that be certain!”

He jammed the hat upon his head and plunged into the fog, shuffling forward until
it engulfed him.

A few minutes later I was descending the stairs to the basement laboratory, having
thrown the bolt to the door and having found my shoes, after a moment or two of frantic
searching, exactly where I had left them the night before. The doctor was waiting
for me at the bottom of the stairs, impatiently drumming his fingers upon the rail.
Apparently he did not think there was enough “snap” in my “to.” As for myself, I was
not looking forward to the rest of the evening. This was not the first time someone
had called at our back door in the middle of the night bearing macabre packages, though
this certainly was the largest since I had come to live with the doctor.

“Did you lock the door?” the doctor asked. I noticed again the color high in his cheeks,
the slight shortness of breath, the excited quaver in his voice. I answered that I
had. He nodded. “If what he says is true, Will Henry, if I have not
been taken for a fool—which would not be the first time—then this is an extraordinary
find. Come!”

We took our positions, he by the table where lay the bundle of muddy burlap, I behind
him and to his right, manning the tall rolling tray of instruments, with pencil and
notebook at the ready. My hand was shaking slightly as I wrote the date across the
top of the page,
April 15, 1888.

He donned his gloves with a loud
pop!
against his wrists and stamped his boots on the cold stone floor. He pulled on his
mask, leaving just the top of his nose and his intense dark eyes exposed.

“Are we ready, Will Henry?” he breathed, his voice muffled by the mask. He drummed
his fingers in the empty air.

“Ready, sir,” I replied, though I felt anything but.

“Scissors!”

I slapped the instrument handle-first into his open palm.

“No, the big ones, Will Henry. The shears there.”

He began at the narrow end of the bundle, where the feet must have been, cutting down
the center of the thick material, his shoulders hunched, the muscles of his jaw bunching
with the effort. He paused once to stretch and loosen his cramping fingers, then returned
to the task. The burlap was wet and caked with mud.

“The old man trussed it tighter than a Christmas turkey,” the doctor muttered.

After what seemed like hours, he reached the opposite end. The burlap had parted an
inch or two along the cut, but no more. The contents remained a mystery and would
remain so for a few more seconds. The doctor handed me the shears and leaned against
the table, resting before the final, awful climax. At last he straightened, pressing
his hands upon the small of his back. He took a deep breath.

“Very well, then,” he said softly. “Let’s have it, Will Henry.”

He peeled away the material, working it apart in the same direction as he had cut
it. The burlap fell back on either side, draping over the table like the petals of
a flower opening to welcome the spring sun.

Over his bent back I could see them. Not the single corpulent corpse that I had anticipated,
but two bodies, one wrapped about the other in an obscene embrace. I choked back the
bile that rushed from my empty stomach, and willed my knees to be still. Remember,
I was twelve years old. A boy, yes, but a boy who had already seen his fair share
of grotesqueries. The laboratory had shelves along the walls that held large jars
wherein oddities floated in preserving solution, extremities and organs of creatures
that you would not recognize, that you would swear belonged to the world of nightmares,
not our waking world of comfortable familiarity. And, as I’ve said, this was not the
first time I had assisted the doctor at his table.

But nothing had prepared me for what the old man delivered that night. I daresay your
average adult would have
fled the room in horror, run screaming up the stairs and out of the house, for what
lay within that burlap cocoon laid shame to all the platitudes and promises from a
thousand pulpits upon the nature of a just and loving God, of a balanced and kind
universe, and the dignity of man.
A crime
, the old grave-robber had called it. Indeed there seemed no better word for it, though
a crime requires a criminal…and who or
what
was the criminal in this case?

Upon the table lay a young girl, her body partially concealed by the naked form wrapped
around her, one massive leg thrown over her torso, an arm draped across her chest.
Her white burial gown was stained with the distinctive ochre of dried blood, the source
of which was immediately apparent: Half her face was missing, and below it I could
see the exposed bones of her neck. The tears along the remaining skin were jagged
and triangular in shape, as if someone had hacked at her body with a hatchet.

The other corpse was male, at least twice her size, wrapped as I said around her diminutive
frame as a mother nestles with her child, the chest a few inches from her ravaged
neck, the rest of its body pressed tightly against hers. But the most striking thing
was not its size or even the startling fact of its very presence.

No, the most remarkable thing about this most remarkable tableau was that her companion
had no head.

“
Anthropophagi
,” the doctor murmured, eyes wide and glittering above the mask. “It must be…but how
could it?
This is most curious, Will Henry. That he’s dead is curious enough, but more curious
by far is that he’s here in the first place!…Specimen is male, approximately twenty-five
to thirty years of age, no signs of exterior injury or trauma…. Will Henry, are you
writing this down?”

He was staring at me. I in turn stared back at him. The stench of death had already
filled the room, causing my eyes to sting and fill with tears. He pointed at the forgotten
notebook in my hand. “Focus upon the task at hand, Will Henry.”

I nodded and wiped away the tears with the back of my hand. I pressed the lead point
against the paper and began to write beneath the date.

“Specimen appears to be of the genus
Anthropophagi,”
the doctor repeated. “Male, approximately twenty-five to thirty years of age, with
no signs of exterior injury or trauma….”

Focusing on the task of reporter helped to steady me, though I could feel the tug
of morbid curiosity, like an outgoing tide pulling on a swimmer, urging me to look
again. I nibbled on the end of the pencil as I struggled with the spelling of “
Anthropophagi.”

“Victim is female, approximately seventeen years of age, with evidence of denticulated
trauma to the right side of the face and neck. The hyoid bone and lower mandible are
completely exposed, exhibiting some scoring from the specimen’s teeth….”

Teeth?
But the thing had no head! I looked up from the pad. Dr. Warthrop was bent over their
torsos, fortuitously blocking my view. What sort of creature could bite if it lacked
the mouth with which to do it? On the heels of that thought came the awful revelation:
The thing had been
eating
her.

He moved quickly to the other side of the table, allowing me an unobstructed view
of the “specimen” and his pitiful victim. She was a slight girl with dark hair that
curled upon the table in a fall of luxurious ringlets. The doctor leaned over and
squinted at the chest of the beast pressed against her, peering across the body of
the young girl whose eternal rest was broken by this unholy embrace, this death grip
of an invader from the world of shadows and nightmare.

“Yes!” he called softly. “Most definitely
Anthropophagi.
Forceps, Will Henry, and a tray, please—No, the small one there, by the skull chisel.
That’s the one.”

I somehow found the will to move from my spot, though my knees were shaking badly
and I literally could not feel my feet. I kept my eyes on the doctor and tried my
best to ignore the nearly overwhelming urge to vomit. I handed him the forceps and
held the tray toward him, arms shaking, breathing as shallowly as possible, for the
reek of decay burned in my mouth and lay like a scorching ember at the back of my
throat.