As I dropped the last bundle of supplies into the cart, the doctor and the grave-robber appeared, bearing the body of the dead girl between them, still wrapped in her makeshift shroud of bed linen. I stepped quickly out of their way and eased toward the warm and comforting light streaming through the open door. A pale hand protruded from the white draping, the index finger extended, as if she were pointing at the ground.
“Lock the door, Will Henry,” the doctor called softly to me, though his order was hardly necessary. I was halfway to the door, the key already in hand.
There was no room for me in the little seat in the front of the old cart, so I clambered into the back with the body. The old man’s head whipped around, and he frowned at the sight of me huddled next to the shrouded girl. He cast a baleful eye upon the doctor.
“The boy is coming with us?”
Dr. Warthrop nodded impatiently. “Of course he is.”
“Begging your pardon, doctor, but this is no business for a child.”
“Will Henry is my assistant,” the doctor replied with a smile. He gave my head a paternal pat. “A child by outward appearance, perhaps, but mature beyond his years and hardier than he might seem to the unfamiliar eye. His services are indispensable to me.”
His tone made clear he would brook no argument from the likes of Erasmus Gray. The old man had returned his gaze to my huddled form as I crouched, shivering, hugging my knees to my chest in the spring chill, and I thought I saw pity in his eyes, a profound empathy for my plight, and not just the immediate plight of being forced to accompany my guardian on this dark errand. Perhaps he intuited the full cost of being “indispensable” to Dr. Pellinore Warthrop.
And as for me, I was remembering my naïve and desperate plea to my father nary a year previously, who, ironically, now shared the same neighborhood as the dead girl lying beside me: I want to go with you. Please, please take me with you!
The old man turned away, but with a disapproving cluck and a shake of his ancient pate. He flicked the reins, the cart jerked forward, and our dark pilgrimage commenced.
Now, reader, many a year has passed since the grisly events of that terrible spring night in 1888.
Yet in all those years hardly a day has gone by without my thinking of it with wonder and ever-blossoming dread, the awful dread of a child when the first seeds of disillusionment are planted. We may delay it. We may strive with all our might to put off the bitter harvest, but threshing day always dawns.
The question haunts me still, and will, I suppose, until I join my parents in our final reunion. If the doctor had known what horrors awaited us not only at the cemetery that night, but in the days to come, would he still have insisted upon my company? Would he still have demanded that a mere child dive so deep into the well of human suffering and sacrifice-a literal sea of blood? And if the answer to that question is yes, then there are more terrifying monstrosities in the world than Anthropophagi. Monstrosities who, with a smile and a comforting pat on the head, are willing to sacrifice a child upon the altar of their own overweening ambition and pride.
THREE.“It Seems I Must Reconsider My Original Hypothesis”
Old Hill Cemetery lay upon a rise of ground on the outskirts of New Jerusalem, behind black wrought-iron gates and a stone wall designed to discourage the very act that had brought Erasmus Gray to our door the previous night. Laid to rest there were settlers from the earliest days of the colony who had received death’s dark embrace in the opening decades of the eighteenth century. My own parents had been buried there, as well as the doctor’s clan; in fact, the Warthrop mausoleum was the largest and most impressive edifice on the grounds. It sat at the highest point, at the very top of the hill, visible from every marker and tombstone in the cemetery, a brooding Gothic castle-in-miniature that seemed to lord over the lesser sites like the abode of a medieval prince. And, in a sense, the Warthrops were the princes of New Jerusalem. The doctor’s great-great-grandfather, Thomas Warthrop, had made a fortune in shipping and textiles and was one of the city’s founding fathers. His son, the doctor’s great-grandfather, served six terms as mayor. I have no doubt that if not for the labors and hard-headed, tightfisted New England pragmatism of his forebears, Dr. Warthrop would not have had the luxury of abandoning all mundane pursuits to become a “philosopher of monstrumology.” He simply could not have afforded it otherwise. His peculiar “calling” was an open secret in town, much whispered about, much maligned by one quarter and feared by the rest. But they left him alone, with few exceptions-owing, I believe, more to the respect afforded by the great, nearly inexhaustible wealth accumulated by his ancestors than to any esteem for his philosophical pursuits. This attitude was perfectly reflected by the cold stone monument that dominated Old Hill Cemetery.
Erasmus Gray drew rein at the iron gates, and we sat for a moment while the old nag struggled to regain its breath after the long, winding climb to the entrance.
“My revolver, Will Henry,” the doctor said sotto voce.
The old man watched me pass it to him, and then, with a swipe of his tongue across his lips, he looked quickly away.
“You brought a weapon, I trust,” the doctor said to him.
“My Winchester,” rejoined Erasmus Gray. “Never shot anything bigger than a grouse with it,” he added wistfully.
“Aim for the stomach,” the doctor said calmly. “Just below the mouth.”
“I’ll do that, doctor,” Erasmus answered dryly, “if I can aim true while running in the opposite direction!”
Again, he cast a backward glance at my huddled form.
“What of the boy?”
“I shall manage Will Henry.”
“He should stay here at the gates,” the old man said. “We’ll need a lookout.”
“I cannot think of any place worse for him to be.”
“He can have my rifle.”
“He stays with me,” the doctor said firmly. “Will Henry, open the gate.”
I hopped from the cart. Before me were the gates, and beyond those was the hill with its row upon row of markers marching upward to the summit, which was hidden behind the boughs of mature oak and ash and poplar. Behind me, completely gripped by the fog, lay New Jerusalem, its inhabitants slumbering in sweet oblivion. Little did they know and less could they suspect that upon that elevated lay of land, that island of the dead rising from the sea of gentle spring mist embracing the living, dwelled a waking nightmare against which all sleep-born nightmares paled in comparison.