“Postmortem injuries, Will Henry. From the buzzards.”
I took a moment to think—always the best course when talking with Pellinore Warthrop. He made you pay when you didn’t.
“But he wasn’t holding on to anything. He was facing out, and his arms were out, like this, like he had been . . . hung there.”
“What are you suggesting, Will Henry?”
“I’m not, sir. I was asking. . . .”
“Forgive me. It is quite cold, and sound carries differently in the cold, but I did not hear you ask anything.”
“It’s nothing, sir.”
“I suppose you meant to observe that his position does not fit the premise that he climbed the tree, for whatever purpose. I would argue the observation is irrelevant, since the only way he could have gotten up there is to have climbed. I was right all along. He left our camp looking for the way out—and found it. Just in time for us—and too late for him.
“The more important question is what killed him. The damage from the scavengers makes that question a bit difficult to answer, so for now my guess would be exposure. Sergeant Hawk froze to death.”
I bit my lip. No living man would have turned around like that. None but a madman would have hung himself in such a manner forty feet from the ground. And that observation seemed entirely relevant to me.
That was the night it came for us, for we had offended it. We had taken what it had claimed for itself.
It came for us, the one who came before words, the Nameless One given countless names.
The monstrumologist was the first to hear it. He nudged me awake, and pressed a hand over my mouth. “There is something outside,” he whispered, his lips brushing my ear.
He released me and slid toward the opening of the tent. I saw him crouching a foot away, and I saw the shape of the rifle in his hand. I heard nothing at first, only the far-winding lamentation of the wind high in the trees. Then I heard it, the distinct sound of something large crunching through the frosted snowpack.
It could be a bear, I thought. Or even a moose. It sounded much too large to be a man. I leaned forward, trying to locate the sound’s origin. It seemed close at first, perhaps no farther than a few feet in front of us, and then I thought, No, it is way off in the trees behind us.
The monstrumologist motioned for me to come closer. “It appears our yellowed-eyed friend has returned, Will Henry,” he whispered. “Stay here with John.”
“You’re going out there?” I was appalled.
He was gone before the question was done. I scooted into the spot he’d vacated and watched him ease carefully toward the trees, the outline of his form exquisitely distinct against the pristine snowbound backdrop. Now the only sound was the doctor’s boots, breaking through the thin upper crust of the snow. That and the excited respirations of John Chanler behind me, like a man after a long uphill trek. I squinted into the silvery light, scanning the woods for the yellow eyes. So complete was my concentration, so utterly focused was I upon the task that I thought nothing when Chanler began to mutter in his delirium the same nonsense he’d been droning off and on for days. “Gudsnuth nesht! Gebgung grojpech!” My heart quickened, for the doctor had drifted completely out of sight, leaving me with only the sound of Chanler’s gurgling drivel for company. If he would only be quiet, then perhaps I could at least hear the doctor! I glanced behind me.
He was sitting up, the top half of the old blanket pooled in his lap. His gray flesh, slick with sweat, shone in the semidarkness. The eyes were open—grotesquely oversize in his emaciated face, and bright yellow, the pupils as small as pinpricks—from which dribbled ocherous tears the consistency of curd.
My first instinct, rooted in our recent past—the outcome the last time our eyes had met—was to run, to put as much distance between us as possible, certainly a response the doctor would not have approved of, given the circumstances. What I might have been running toward might have been far worse than what I ran from.
He was panting; I could see the tip of his gray tongue. Spittle ran over the enflamed lower lip and dripped into the sparse whiskers on his chin. By a trick of the insubstantial light, his teeth seemed exceptionally large.
Steady, steady, steady, I told myself. He isn’t a monster. He’s a man. He’s the doctor’s friend.
I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
His reaction was instantaneous. With an explosive leap—too fast for the eye to follow—he rocketed into me, his bony shoulder slamming into my chin with the force of a battering ram. I fell back, black stars blooming before my eyes. A hand clamped over my nose and mouth. The other hand ripped my shirtfront, shredding the material with its splintered nails, slicing open the tender skin beneath. The hot breath reeking of decay first, then the scaly, pustulant lips pressing against the flesh directly over my throbbing heart.
Then the teeth.
It is called Atcen . . . Djenu . . . Outiko . . . Vindiko, the monstrumologist had said. It has a dozen names in a dozen lands, and it is older than the hills, Will Henry.
I kicked my legs, and sucked uselessly upon the palm pressed hard against my open mouth. My head lay outside the tent, and my vision was clouded with the numberless stars sparking cold fire, shimmering like the crystalline ice inside the desecrated temple of Jonathan Hawk’s remains. Orion, the hunter. My favorite.
Blood roared in my ears. My chest ached. My heart leapt; it pushed against my ribs, as if anxious for Chanler to ravish it. His mouth worked upon my burning chest; I felt the teeth scouring my corruption, desperate for the pure center.
It feeds, and the more it feeds, the hungrier it becomes. It starves even as it gorges. It is the hunger that cannot be satisfied.
In the ruined sanctuary, the bleating of the sacrificial goat. In the sepulchral silence, the calling of my name.
In its icy grip there is no hope of rescue.
Someone was sobbing; it could not have been me. Chanler wept into the wounds he’ d created. He consumed flesh and tears.
In the deepest of pits, my mother combs out her hair. The light is golden. Her wrists are delicate. I remember the way she smelled.
One by one the stars begin to loose from heaven’s grip; they fall into the golden light where my mother sits.
How could one so frail be so strong? My hands flailed uselessly at my sides. My heels dug feebly in the earth. I could feel myself flowing into him.
I am almost there, Mother. Through him I come to you, borne by the ark of his kiss.