My sobs petered out. A few feet above my head was a little window set in the ceiling, and I could see diaphanous clouds sailing like stately ships across the bright sapphire sky. At the schoolhouse my former chums were in the yard playing stickball, squeezing in the last at bat before Mr. Proctor, the headmaster, called them back inside for their afternoon lessons. Then, at the last ringing of the bell, the excited race for the door, the explosion into the soft spring air, the bedlam of a hundred voices shouting in unison, “Freedom! Freedom! The day is ours!” Perhaps the stickball game would be resumed, mid-inning, the minor distraction of afternoon lessons dismissed with. I was small for my age and not a very good batter, but I was fast. When I left the school for the private instruction of Dr. Warthrop, I was the fastest runner on my team and the holder of the most stolen bases. I had stolen home a record thirteen times.
I closed my eyes and saw myself taking the lead on third, scooting along the baseline, eyes darting from pitcher to catcher and back again, heart high in my chest as I waited for the pitch. Scoot, another foot. Scoot, still another. The pitcher hesitates; he sees me out of the corner of his eye. Should he whip the ball to third? He waits for me to run. I wait for him to pitch.
And I am still waiting when a voice speaks sharply in my ear.
“Will Henry! Get up, Will Henry!”
I opened my eyes-how heavy the lids felt!-and spied the doctor standing in the opening to my little alcove, holding a lantern, with cheeks unshaven, with hair disheveled, and dressed in the same clothes from the night before. It took a moment for my mind to register that he was covered head to toe in blood. Alarmed, I sprang up with a cry.
“Doctor, are you all right?”
“Whatever do you mean, Will Henry? Of course I’m all right. You must have had a bad dream. Now come along. The hour grows late and there is much to do before dawn!”
He rapped his knuckles against the wall as if to emphasize his point, and disappeared down the ladder. Quickly I donned a fresh shirt. What time was it? I wondered. Above me the stars seared the obsidian canopy of the sky; there was no moon. I felt along the wall, found my little hat on its hook, and put it on. It was quite snug, as I’ve said, but somehow that brought great comfort to me.
I found him in the kitchen, stirring a pot of noxious liquid, and it took me a moment to realize he was preparing dinner and not boiling flesh off a bone belonging to the Anthropophagus. Perhaps it wasn’t blood after all, I thought. Perhaps he’s covered with my dinner. He may have been a genius, but, like most geniuses, his brilliance illuminated a very narrow spectrum: The doctor was a terrible cook.
He ladled some of the noxious mixture into a bowl and slapped it upon the table.
“Sit,” he said, motioning to the chair. “Eat. We shall not have the opportunity later.”
I gave the gruel an experimental stir with my spoon. A grayish-green object floated upon the surface of the thick brown broth. A bean? It was too large for a pea.
“Is there any bread, sir?” I dared to ask.
“No bread,” he said curtly. Then he bounded down the stairs to the basement without another word. I rose at once from the table and checked the basket by the cupboard. A single roll, perhaps a week old, lay fermenting inside. I looked about and spied no second bowl, and sighed. Of course he had not eaten. Returning to my soup or stew or whatever the concoction might have been called, I chased down a few swallows with a glass of water and a few anxious words of prayer-not in thanksgiving, but in supplication.
“Will Henry!” floated his call through the open basement door. “Will Henry, where are you? Snap to, Will Henry!”
My prayers were answered. I dropped my spoon into the bowl-it gave a little bounce when it hit the spongy liquid-and hurried down the stairs.
I found him pacing to and fro, from the workbench, where the girl’s body rested, to the examining table, now empty and wiped clean. I cast my eye about the room in an irrational bit of panic, as if somehow the thing had risen from the dead and might be lurking in the shadows. I spied it hanging upside down, between the bench and the shelves that housed its organs, the rope suspending it from the ceiling creaking from the enormous weight, and, beneath, a large tub filled with the foul-smelling black sludge of its partially congealed blood. Here was the explanation for the offal on the doctor’s clothing: He had been draining the carcass. Later it would be embalmed, wrapped in linen, and shipped by private carrier to the Society in New York, but for now it hung like a slaughtered hog in a butcher’s shop, its heavily muscled arms dangling on either side of the tub, the tips of its claws scraping upon the floor as the rope slowly twisted and groaned with its weight.
I looked away; its remaining eye, black and lidless, frozen by death into an unblinking stare, seemed to be gazing directly back at me: I could see my slight frame reflected within that oversized orb.
The doctor stopped pacing upon my arrival and stared at me with open mouth, as if startled by my presence after shouting for me to join him.
“Will Henry!” he said. “Where have you been?”
I started to say, “Eating as you told me, sir,” but he cut me off.
“Will Henry, what is our enemy?”
His eyes were bright, the color in his cheeks high, symptoms of his peculiar mania that I had seen a dozen times before. On its face, the answer to his question-barked in a tone more reminiscent of a command-was obvious. I pointed a quivering finger at the suspended Anthropophagus.
“Nonsense!” he said with a laugh. “Enmity is not a natural phenomenon, Will Henry. Is the antelope the lion’s enemy? Does the moose or elk swear undying animosity for the wolf? We are but one thing to the Anthropophagi: meat. We are prey, not enemies.
“No, Will Henry, our enemy is fear. Blinding, reason-killing fear. Fear consumes the truth and poisons all the evidence, leading us to false assumptions and irrational conclusions. Last night I allowed the enemy to overcome me; it blinded me to the glaring truth that our situation is not as dire as fear had led me to believe.”
“It’s not?” I asked, though I failed to see the wisdom in his judgment. Did not the beast hanging from the ceiling give the lie to his assertion?
“The typical Anthropophagi pod consists of twenty to twenty-five breeding females, a handful of juveniles, and one alpha male!”
He waited for my reaction, grinning foolishly, eyes sparkling. When he saw I did not share in his relief and exultation, the doctor hurried on.