The Demon Curse (10 page)

Harry's boots scrabbled at the polished floor as he skidded down the library aisle, but Dr. Mincing had seen him and was too quick. The bottle smashed into a wall, the cloth fluttered through the air, and Mincing was by the door, fumbling with the key. He opened it, slid through, and slammed it behind him just as Harry reached it. The key rattled in the lock on the other side. Harry threw himself down on the floor, squinted under the gap, and saw the doctor's shoes scampering toward the main staircase. He stood up, his fingers dancing in his pockets, searching for something to use as a pick.
Won't be quick enough.
He turned and ran for the windows at the far end of the reading room.

“Where are you going? What's happening?” Billie stumbled along beside him. Tears still trailed over her cheeks.

“Dr. Mincing! We've got to find him!”

“Why?”

“The purple ink from Artie's pen! All over his hand!”

“But are you sure Artie's pen's got something to do with it? We haven't worked that out for sure, have we?”

“How come Mincing was trying to rub the ink off then? How come he ran off as soon as I saw it?”

“True, but—”

“Must have done something with the pen. Put something inside it perhaps…”

“Come back! Come back, both of you!”

Mr. James's voice boomed after them. Harry glanced back and saw the tall, pale-suited figure striding along the aisle, an arm thrust out. But Harry was already at the window. He pulled the latch, swung the sash open, and stepped out onto the ledge outside. The sky flashed with lightning, and rain hurtled down, but Harry's boots kept their grip on the ledge as he helped Billie out through the window too. About seven feet away from the library, a fire escape ran down the side of another building. Harry fixed his gaze on it as Mr. James's voice boomed through the open window behind him.

“Let others take over from now! You are not ready. Not yet!”

Harry jumped. He flew through the rain, arced between the two buildings, and his outstretched hands caught the fire escape's rail. He swung onto it and threw back an arm just as Billie leaped off the ledge too and plummeted toward him. Her hand reached out, he grabbed it, and she thudded into the fire escape's side. Harry helped her over the rail, and together they spiraled down the iron stairs.

“There he is, Billie!” cried Harry, pointing into the rain.

From the fire escape, Harry saw the crowd gathered outside the library. Dr. Mincing was pushing out through the swarming bodies, his bag clutched under his arm, and he hurried down one of the streets that led away. Harry clattered down the rest of the steps and ran after him, dodging between doorways and avoiding brightly lit windows. Billie gripped his hand, and he heard her struggling for breath. Together, they kept running, their gazes fixed on the stumbling silhouette ahead.

Droplets of rain snaked into Harry's eyes, blurring his vision, but he wiped them away fiercely. The streets were becoming even darker, and the nearby buildings were empty of light.

“What's going on, Harry?” Billie's voice was weak.

“I told you. Dr. Mincing, the pen…”

“Not just that—everything!” She pointed back to the library. “This Mr. James, his organization—what's it all about?”

“I don't know.”

“The demon curse—we still haven't worked that out either! What is it?”

“I don't know!”

“Don't know much about anything, do we?”

“We know Arthur's in trouble, and the Islanders too.” Harry tried to keep his voice steady. “And we know we're going to do whatever it takes to help them. And that's all we need to know for now, isn't it?”

But Harry slipped as he said it. The cobbles were wet, and his eyes were filled with rain. He slammed down onto one knee.
It's the shock of what's happened
, he told himself as he scrambled back up.
The
discovery
of
Arthur
in
that
terrible
state, and everything else besides.
He swayed, recovering his balance. He wondered if he had ever felt his heart pound so hard—it was making his whole body shake, and maybe that was affecting his balance too.
Concentrate…

He kept on running.

Harry and Billie chased Dr. Mincing over a narrow bridge. They followed him down a set of stone steps and started weaving through alleyways, each one narrower than the last. The doctor swerved around a corner. They followed him along a street that seemed to grow muddier with every step, water bubbling around the paving stones.

Reeds grew up through cracks, their leaves dripping with rain. Dark slime trickled out of drains. Harry's balance was back, and he was glad about that, because his boots were heavy, smothered with mud, and difficult to move. He saw that the buildings around him were crumbling and that some of them tilted over, half sinking into the ooze.

“Thought I knew New Orleans pretty well,” Billie panted. “But I've never been here before. Looks like it's turning back to swamp.”

A gas lamp glimmered ahead, slanted at an angle. Its light picked out the shape of a crumbling wharf. Dr. Mincing was hurrying along it in the rain, toward a line of old rowing boats. He clambered down into one, and an oil lamp flickered to life in the boat's stern. Mincing tugged at the oars, heading out across a dark stretch of water, a lake thick with weeds.

“What is this place?” Billie hissed.

Harry said nothing. He waited until the sound of the doctor's oars vanished into the rain and then made his way out along the wharf. Together, he and Billie stepped down into the nearest boat and set out across the water, Harry pulling the oars, Billie paddling in the prow. Harry saw the flicker of Dr. Mincing's oil lamp some distance away. He concentrated on rowing, struggling to free the oars of weeds. He felt Billie's hand gripping his shoulder.

“What's that up ahead?” Billie hissed again. “Some kind of prison?”

Harry turned. Dr. Mincing's boat could still be seen, and beyond it, a dark hulk of a building loomed on the lake's far side. Harry rowed harder and looked around again once the building was nearer. Bars filled the windows, and plants from the lake had wound their way into the thick, dark walls. The whole back half of the building had fallen away, leaving a crumbling mess of stone. Out from the building's side, a rickety jetty protruded, wooden steps leading down to the lake. Rain spattered off Dr. Mincing's lamp as he moored his boat to the jetty, climbed up the steps, and tottered toward the building's front door. He disappeared inside. As their boat glided up to the jetty, Harry made out a wrought-iron sign, curving in the rain:
Bolson's Hospital for the Insane
.

“Not a prison then,” said Billie.

“Not quite,” said Harry.

They moored the boat and climbed the rickety steps. Up ahead, light flickered through the asylum's door, faint and yellowed.
Mincing's lamp.
Harry crept toward the door, Billie pressed behind him. He felt the vibrations of her heart, and his own heart was pounding again too, making his shirt twitch against his skin.

He went in.

The light hovered in the distance. Its glow picked out thick cell doors, long rows of them, running off in every direction. Some were shut, and others lay partly open with only darkness beyond. Harry kept moving. He went past more cell doors and stepped into a central hallway, iron walkways hanging overhead. He saw Mincing's oil lamp, left on a desk. Harry flinched as the spindly shape of Dr. Mincing himself flitted in front of the light, clutching something in his arms, the light gleaming off its curves.

It was a jar. There were more of them too, lined up on a row of shelves. Something was moving inside them. Tiny movements caught the light, and shadows flickered near the bottom of every glass shape. Harry looked closer and gasped. He tried to stifle the noise with his hand, but it was too late.

“You found me! You fools!” Dr. Mincing had spun around and was staring straight at them. “I prayed you would not! I did what I could to shake you off! You cannot blame me!”

He stumbled away from the shelves, his arms still wrapped around one of the jars. His shaking was even worse than usual, his every muscle convulsing, and his voice was a strangled cry. Tears trickled from his eyes, and Harry noticed that the doctor's hands were still stained with purple ink.

Harry took a step forward and then reached into his jacket. He pulled Arthur's pen from the inside of his pocket, tugged off the lid, and held it up. Then he stared back at the jar.

He could see what was inside.

“Stay back! Not a step closer!” Dr. Mincing stumbled away, clutching the jar.

But Harry kept moving forward. He crouched down so that his eyes were level with the jar. Dr. Mincing's fingers scrabbled over the glass, but behind them, Harry saw other shapes scrabbling too. There were about seven of them. Tiny, no more than half an inch long, they scurried so fast that it was hard to tell one from the other: a tangle of scaled bodies, thrashing pincers, spiny limbs catching the light. Harry saw a tail arched over each one of them, a sting quivering at its end, its tip dripping with fluid.

“Scorpions!” Billie gasped.

“From the jungles of Costa Rica!” Dr. Mincing wailed as he sank into a chair.

Harry looked at the creatures in the jar and at the pen again. Billie was gripping the bars of a cell door, trying to steady herself as she took in the jar's contents. But then she flinched, and Harry was scrambling back too, because Dr. Mincing had swept the jar upward, holding it over his head in his quaking hands.

“Scorpions, yes! But not just any scorpions!” The jar teetered, and tears ran freely down his face. “Flee without delay, or I shall dash this jar at your feet and set these creatures upon you! You shall discover their uniqueness then! Just like your friend before you…”

“His pen!” Harry held it up. “You put one of them inside. You did it with Mayor Monticelso's pen too. I found that as well, in his office, nowhere near its lid.” The scorpions were hurling themselves at the jar's sides, venom from their stings spattering the glass. “Even with the lid snapped shut, there would be enough space for one inside, although it would have got pretty angry in there.”

“It's impossible!” Billie pointed at the jar. “Scorpions—they're dangerous, sure. They can even kill people. But send people mad, so mad that it's like a demon's taken them over? No scorpion's ever done that. And a sting would leave a mark, wouldn't it? There was nothing on Mayor Monticelso, or on Artie either.”

“These are no normal scorpions! Your friend could confirm that, were he not in their venom's grip.” Dr. Mincing lowered the jar but kept it tightly clutched in his arms. “I suspected from the moment you arrived at the mayor's bedside that you were far from being ordinary orphan well-wishers. I know Tobermory Swamp quite well; the accents out there are quite particular and nothing like yours. So I kept an eye on you—I followed your friend when he made his way to the New Orleans Public Library. I watched him plucking out one book after another, making notes. From the books he chose, I saw how cleverly he was following the evidence…”

“But he was in the magic and folklore section.” Harry kept watching the jar. “Nothing to do with scorpions.”

“He started off in that section, certainly!” Dr. Mincing wailed. “But his research skills are clearly formidable, because it wasn't long before he was looking through books much further up the aisle, in the madness and insanity section, consulting books that I myself have studied long and hard. I knew it would be no time at all before he was scribbling in that notebook about how certain creatures have been discovered, scorpions for example, the venom of which can take over the chemistry of the brain, sending whoever is affected into an agonizing madness, a madness that possesses them utterly.” A blink sent his tears flying, and he clutched the jar tighter. “I vowed those would be notes he would never make! He had left his pen next to his notebook, back in magic and folklore, and—”

“You set your trap.” Harry held up the pen. “Just like you did for Mayor Monticelso.”

“An ingenious trap, I think you'll agree! I watched him as he hurried back, opened his notebook, took the lid off his pen…” Dr. Mincing shrugged. “Then I walked up the aisle and reshelved the books he had been consulting in madness and insanity, all in their correct places. Your friend's writhing body technically belonged in that section too, rather than in magic and folklore.” He smiled. “But it was in my interest to allow myself a small cataloging error.”

“Why you—” Billie lunged forward, but Harry held her back.

“Let him talk!” He hissed in her ear. “We've got to find out everything. We'll never help Artie otherwise!”

Harry looked back at Dr. Mincing, who was dropping into a chair, gray tendrils of hair drooping over his face. He placed the jar of scorpions on his desk and started rubbing his left arm just above the wrist, wincing as though in pain.

“What do I care for this business? Mayor Monticelso, your interfering friend—what do I care about either of them? What do I care about what lies
behind
the business either? It is nothing to do with me! Dark and powerful it may be, and I must do its bidding, but I care nothing for it.” He rubbed his wrist harder, pushing the sleeve up to the elbow. “You were told, I think, that I have journeyed the world, researching diseases of the mind. True, although not since that field trip to the jungles of Costa Rica. Since then, these creatures, that is all I know. Their fluids, their venom, that is all I have become…”

His unsleeved arm rested in his lap, its flesh exposed. It was swollen all over with red sores; at the center of each was an infected pinprick. Darkened blood vessels spread away from the sores. The sleeve remained lifted, and Dr. Mincing stared down at his arm as if it were an object that had nothing to do with him, even as the darkened vessels throbbed, their contents pulsing into his body.

“For twenty years, I have tested these creatures. Originally, their poison was weak, however intriguing its effects. But that soon changed, once my studies began. I believed some great medical secret may lie within the venom's chemistry, and I bred the scorpions in order to strengthen that venom, to concentrate its effects. In order to do so, I allowed the creatures to sting me, a task they performed with relish, particularly once my breeding had concentrated the power of their aggression gene. And those stings allowed me to observe the effects of their poison from the closest possible vantage point.” His eyes snapped into narrow slits. “Clearly, in order not to give way to those effects completely, I had to devise other concoctions from the scorpions' venom, ones that would cleanse my body of its effects, for what use is research if one is never granted a period of calm to write it up? For many years, that process worked, and I studied the venom with ease. But sadly, my body weakened—how could it not, when subjected to poisoning every day? The effects of the venom, no matter how carefully they were swept away, took hold, and now my cleansing potions merely reduce those effects on me, nothing more.” He lifted his arm. “The scorpions' stings leave no trace—one of their many ingenuities. Sadly, the process of injecting an antidote over and over again leaves many signs, a great many…”

His fingers flexed; the dark vessels swelled under his skin. Harry watched his slit eyelids, which were bulging with the movement of the eyes behind them. Anger, despair, a strange glee—they each seemed to be gripping Dr. Mincing in turn as he slumped in his chair.
Utterly
mad
, thought Harry. But in among all the madness, the doctor had muttered a few words that Harry knew were worth remembering.
Other
concoctions…an antidote…

“Look at what remains of me!” Mincing held up his arm. “My body, it is the site of an experiment, no more. A test tube scorched through overuse, a laboratory blackened with fumes—if only my discoveries had been put to noble scientific use, as I once dreamed! Instead of falling victim to the dark power that controls them…”

“You devised other concoctions. That's what you said just now.” Harry cut him off. “Cleansing potions to wipe out the scorpion venom's effects, to cure the madness?”

“Why yes. With skill and time, the venom can be transformed into its opposite.” Dr. Mincing reached into his pocket. A corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. “I have a phial of it right here.”

Billie lunged again. Harry grabbed her, just as quickly as he had done before. He had seen the small corked bottle of green liquid in Mincing's fingers, but he had seen those fingers shift their positions too, until the glass bottle was held between just two of them, ready to be dropped at any time.
Too
far
away
to
catch
, Harry calculated, and the asylum floor was unflinching stone.

“You are right; I have an antidote. Only by injecting a certain dose of the contents of this bottle am I able to reduce the effects.” Holding the bottle, he waved at his desk, on which various syringes and needles could be seen, hanging on a rack. “For me, in my weakened state, such a dose merely keeps me alive—but a body affected by merely one sting, such as Mayor Monticelso and your friend, they would no doubt be rid of the disease completely. I am tracking the course of your thoughts correctly?” He looked with one eye through the phial at Harry. Then the fingers adjusted their position. “Unfortunately, there is not the slightest chance of such a dose being received by anyone, I'm afraid.”

“Don't drop it!” Harry watched the bottle. It was held by the edges of a thumbnail and fingernail, and the floor waited below.
Can't reach it in time.

“Drop it? It doesn't matter if I do or don't.” Mincing's jaw dropped open, and a laugh spilled out, its echoes racing through the darkness. “I tried to bring this matter up before, but you interrupted me. Are you not interested? About what lies behind these scorpions and their venom, every milligram of it? The dark power! The dark power from which there is no escape!”

The fingers around the bottle flexed; the liquid inside swayed.

“Dark power? What are you talking about?” Harry edged forward.

“The power has you in its clutches, whether you know it or not.” Mincing rocked in his chair, the bottle rotating against his thumb. “Think what this power has made of me and my noble scientific inquiry! Evil, nothing but evil—that is what we have been reduced to, my study and I!” He shook his head. “Drink the antidote, or smash it on the floor and watch it trickle away—it makes no difference! The dark power will have you in either case. You can be sure of that!”

“What is it?” Harry couldn't listen any longer. “Tell us! Tell us what it is!”

“
It?
That is your first error.” Mincing kept rocking. “
Her
, that's what you mean—”

A flash of light, the whole asylum thundered, and Harry's hands flew to his ears, trying to seal off the noise. He saw Mincing's rocking had stopped. He was sitting bolt upright, but his head lolled to the side. Then he slumped over, his mouth open, his eyes glazed.

A small red dot grew in the whiteness of his shirt. It darkened and kept growing. He slithered off his chair, the bottle still between his fingers. His hand hit the floor, and the bottle remained intact, cushioned by finger and thumb. Then it rolled onto the floor and rocked to a halt.

A thud. Harry saw Billie, sprawled facedown beside him. He turned and made it about halfway around before something slammed into the back of his neck and he too fell forward. He found himself staring at the cold stones of the asylum floor, growing darker and darker, until they were completely black.