The Monstrumologist (25 page)

The doctor went to one knee before him. The movement did not distract the stricken lad; his sight remained fixed upon my features, and not so much as an eyelash twitched when Warthrop laid a hand upon his outstretched thigh. In a soft voice the doctor spoke his name, squeezing gently the flaccid muscle beneath his hand, as if calling him back from that faraway, inapproachable place.

“Malachi, can you tell me what happened?”

Again his lips moved and no sound emerged. His otherworldly stare unnerved me, but as one who stumbles upon a terrible accident, I could not tear my eyes away from the awful gravity of his gaze.

“Malachi!” the doctor called quietly, now shaking the limp leg. “I cannot help you unless you tell me—”

“Have you not been there?” cried Malachi. “Did you not see?”

“Yes, Malachi,” answered the doctor. “I saw everything.”

“Then, why do you ask me?”

“Because I would like to know what
you
saw.”

“What I saw.”

His eyes, large and blue and as depthless as the spinning
maw of Charybdis, refused to release me from the riptide of their grip. He addressed the doctor, but he spoke to me:

“I saw the mouth of hell fly open and the spawn of Satan spew forth! That is what I saw!”

“Malachi, the creatures that killed your family are not of supernatural origin. They are predators belonging to this world, as mundane as the wolf or the lion, and we are, unfortunately, their prey.”

If he heard the doctor, he showed no sign. If he understood, he gave no admission. Beneath the blanket he shivered uncontrollably, though the air was still and the sanctuary warm. His mouth came open and he addressed me now: “Did
you
see?”

I hesitated. The doctor whispered sharply in my ear, “
Answer, Will Henry!”

“Yes,” I blurted. “I saw.”

“I am not hurt,” repeated Malachi to me, as if he feared I had not heard him before. “I am unscathed.”

“A remarkable and extremely fortunate outcome of your ordeal,” observed the doctor. Again he was ignored. Snorting with frustration, Warthrop motioned for me to come closer. It appeared Malachi would speak, but only to me.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twelve.”

“That is my sister’s age. Elizabeth. Sarah, Michael, Matthew, and Elizabeth. I am the oldest. Have you any brothers and sisters, Will Henry?”

“No.”

“Will Henry is an orphan,” Dr. Warthrop said.

Malachi asked me, “What happened?”

“There was a fire,” I said.

“You were there?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I ran.”

“I ran too.”

His expression did not change; the impassive visage remained; but a tear trailed down his hollow cheek. “Do you think God will forgive us, Will Henry?”

“I … I don’t know,” I replied honestly. Being only twelve, I was still a neophyte in the nuances of theology.

“That’s what Father always said,” Malachi whispered. “If we repent. If we but ask.”

His gaze wandered to the cross hanging on the wall behind me.

“I have been praying. I have been asking him to forgive me. But I hear nothing. I feel nothing!”

“Self-preservation is your first duty and inalienable right, Malachi,” said the doctor a bit impatiently. “You cannot be held accountable for exercising that right.”

“No, no,” murmured Morgan. “You miss the point, Warthrop.”

He lowered himself into the pew beside Malachi and wrapped his arm around his narrow shoulders.

“Perhaps you were spared for a reason, Malachi,” the constable said. “Have you thought of that? All things do happen for a reason… . Is this not the foundation of our faith? You are here—all of us—because we are but part of a plan prepared before the foundations of the earth. It is our humble duty to discern our role in that plan. I do not pretend to know what mine or anyone’s might be, but it could be you were spared so no more innocent lives might be lost. For if you had remained in that house, you surely would have perished with your family, and then who would have brought us warning? Your saving of your own life will save the lives of countless others.”

“But why me? Why am
I
spared? Why not Father? Or Mother? Or my sisters and brothers? Why
me
?”

“That is something no one can answer,” replied Morgan.

With a snort the doctor abandoned any pretense of compassion and spoke harshly to the tormented boy. “Your self-pity mocks your faith, Malachi Stinnet. And every minute you wallow in it is a minute lost. The greatest minds of medieval Europe argued how many angels could dance upon the head of a pin, while the plague took the lives of twenty million. Now is not the time to indulge in esoteric debate upon the whimsy of the gods! Tell me, did you love your family?”

“Of course I loved them!”

“Then exile your guilt and bury your grief. They are dead, and no amount of sorrow or regret will bring them back to
you. I present you with a choice, Malachi Stinnet, the choice eventually faced by all: You may lie upon the shores of Babylon and weep, or you may take up arms against the foe! Your family was not beset by demons or felled by the wrath of a vengeful god. Your family was attacked and consumed by a species of predators that will attack again, as surely as the sun will set this day, and more will suffer the same fate as your family, unless you tell me, and tell me now, what you have seen.”

As he spoke these words, the doctor leaned closer, then closer still to the cowering Malachi, until, with both hands pushing against the pew on either side of him, Warthrop’s face came within inches of the boy’s, his eyes afire with the passion of his argument. They shared a common burden, though only Warthrop knew it, and so only Warthrop had the power to exorcize it. I knew it too, of course, and now, as an old man looking, as it were, through my twelve-year-old eyes, I can see the bitter irony of it, the strange and terrible symbolism: Upon his own spotless hands, Malachi perceived the blood of his kin, as the man whose hands were literally stained with it berated him to abandon all feelings of responsibility and remorse!

“I did not see everything,” came the choked reply. “I ran.”

“But you were inside the house when it began?”

“Yes. Of course. Where else would I be? I was asleep. We all were. There was a terrible crash. The sound of glass
breaking as they came through the windows. The very walls shook with the violence of their invasion. I heard my mother cry out. A shadow appeared in my doorway, and the room was filled with a horrible stench that closed my throat. I could not breathe. The shadow filled the doorway … huge and headless … huffing and sniffing like a hog. I was paralyzed. Then the shadow in the doorway passed. It left; I know not why.

“The house was filled with screaming. Ours. Theirs. Elizabeth leaped into the bed. I could not move! I should have barricaded the door. I could have broken the window not two feet away and escaped. But I did nothing! I lay in the bed holding Elizabeth, my hand over her mouth lest her cries draw them to us, and through the doorway I could see them pass, headless shadows, with arms so long their knuckles nearly dragged on the ground. Before the door two of them fell into a scuffle, with angry grunts and mad hisses, snarling and snapping as they vied for the body of my brother. I knew it had to be Matthew; it was too large to be Michael.

“They tore him apart before my eyes. Ripped him to pieces and tossed his limbless torso down the hall, where I heard it smack the floor, and then the thudding and snarling grew louder as they swarmed around it. It was then I felt Elizabeth go limp against me. She had fainted.

“By now the screaming had all but ended, though I could still hear the beasts in the hall and at the front of the house, their snarls and hisses, their horrible grunts,
and the crunching and cracking of bones. Still I could not move. What if they should hear me? They moved so quickly, even if I got to the window, I feared they would be upon me before I could open it … and what horror might be lying in wait outside? Were there more patrolling the yard? I strained to rise from the bed, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”

He fell silent. His gaze had turned inward again. The constable had risen from the pew while he spoke, and walked with heavy tread to stand before one of the stained-glass windows, his face turned toward the scene of Christ as the good shepherd attending his flock.

“But of course you did rise,” prompted the doctor.

Malachi nodded slowly.

“You couldn’t get the window open,” urged Warthrop.

“Yes! How did you know?”

“So you broke it open.”

“I had no choice!”

“And the sound alerted them.”

“It must have, yes.”

“Yet still you did not flee, though freedom and safety lay but a few feet away.”

“I couldn’t leave her.”

“Back to the bed for her?”

“They were coming.”

“You heard them.”

“I pulled her into my arms. She was as lifeless as the
dead. I stumbled toward the window, lost my grip, dropped her. I bent to pick her up. Then …”

“You saw it in the doorway.”

Malachi nodded again, rapidly now, his eyes wide in astonishment.

“How did you know?”

“Was it male or female, or could you tell?”

“Oh, for the love of God, Pellinore!” said the constable in consternation.

“Very well.” The doctor sighed. “You abandoned your sister and fled.”

“No! No, I would never!” cried Malachi. “I would not leave her to that …
for
that … I grabbed her arms and dragged her to the window …”

“It was too late,” murmured the doctor. “The thing was upon you.”

“It moved so fast! In one leap it crossed the room, wrapped its claws around her ankle, and yanked her from me as easily as a man might a doll from a baby. It
flung
her upward, and Elizabeth’s head hit the ceiling with a sickening thud; I heard her skull shatter, and then her blood rained down upon my head—my sister’s blood upon my head!”

He lost all composure then, covering his face with his hands, his body wracked with heart-wrenching sobs.

The doctor endured it for a moment, but only for a moment.

“Describe it, Malachi,” he commanded. “What did it look like?”

“Seven feet … perhaps more. Long arms, powerful legs, as pale as a corpse, headless, but with eyes in its shoulders … or one eye, I should say. The other was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Just a … a hole where the eye should have been.”

The doctor glanced at me. There was no need to say it; we both were thinking it:
Chance or destiny … that brought the blade in blindness thrust into the black eye of the accursed beast.

“You were not pursued,” said the doctor, turning back to Malachi.

“No. I threw myself through the broken window, suffering not so much as a scratch—not a scratch!—then I rode as fast as my horse would carry me to the constable’s house.”

Warthrop placed a hand stained with the family’s blood upon Malachi’s shuddering shoulder.

“Very good, Malachi,” he said. “You have done well.”

“In what way?” cried Malachi. “
In what way
?”

The doctor bade me remain in the pew with Malachi while he and Morgan withdrew to debate the best course of action, or so I assumed based on the heated snippets I happened to overhear.

From the constable: “… aggressive and immediate … every able-bodied man in New Jerusalem …”

And the doctor: “… unnecessary and imprudent … certain to cause a panic …”

Malachi regained his composure during their fervent deliberations, his sobs drying to a trickle of tremulous tears, his fear-borne palsy quieting to an occasional quiver, like the small aftershocks of a violent earthquake.

“What a strange man,” said Malachi, meaning the doctor.

“He is not strange,” I responded, a bit defensively. “His … calling is strange, that’s all.”

“What is his calling?”

“He is a monstrumologist.”

“He hunts monsters?”

“He doesn’t like them called that.”

“Then why does he call himself a monstrumologist?”

“He didn’t pick the name.”

“I never knew there were such people.”

“There aren’t many of them,” I said. “His father was one, and I know there is a Monstrumologist Society, but I don’t think it has many members.”

“Not very difficult to imagine why!” he exclaimed.

On the other side of the sanctuary the argument rose and fell like superheated magma bubbling to the surface of a volcanic lake.

Morgan: “… evacuate! Evacuate at once! Evacuate everyone!”

Warthrop: “… stupid, Robert, stupid and reckless! The mayhem borne of that intelligence would far exceed the benefits. This can be contained … controlled… . It is not too late …”

“I never believed in monsters,” Malachi said.

Again his gaze turned inward, and I knew with the genius of a child’s intuition that he had lost his grip on the moment and had fallen as swiftly as Icarus down to the bright, bloody memory of that night, where his family now dwelled, like the tortured souls of Dante’s dream writhing in eternal torment, forever devoured but never consumed, their death throes replayed endlessly while he, Malachi, lay paralyzed with dread, helpless to halt the slaughter, his dear sister fainted by his side, the one who had sought salvation from him, the one and only one he had had any chance of rescuing, but whom even a brother’s love could not save.

The tête-à-tête beneath the fractured light of the stained glass was nearing its crescendo. The doctor punctuated each point with a poke of his finger into the constable’s chest, his strident voice echoing in the cavernous confines of the church: “No evacuations! No hunting parties!
I
am the expert here.
I
am the one—the
only
one—qualified to make the decisions in this case!”

Morgan’s measured response came quietly yet insistently, in the manner of a parent to a recalcitrant child—or the manner of a frightened object of a madman’s attention. “Warthrop, if I had the slightest doubt as to your expertise, I would not have brought you here this morning. You may understand this foul phenomenon better than any man alive; you are, by the nature of your peculiar pursuits, obligated to understand them, even as I am obligated, by virtue of
my
duty, to protect the lives and property of the citizens of this
town. And that duty compels me to act with alacrity and without delay.”