Prologue: September 2010: “Contact”
Everyone has someone.
More than three years had gone by since the director of the nursing home had handed over to me the thirteen leather-bound notebooks belonging to the deceased indigent calling himself William James Henry. The director did not know what to make of the journals, and, frankly, after reading the first three volumes, I didn’t either.
Headless humanoid killing machines running amok in late-nineteenth-century New England. The “philosopher of aberrant biology” who studies and (when necessary) hunts down such creatures. Microscopic parasites that somehow give their hosts unnaturally long lives—if they don’t “choose” to kill them instead. Midnight autopsies, madmen, human sacrifice, monsters in underground lairs, and a monster hunter who may or may not have been the most famous serial killer in history.… There was no question that Will Henry’s strange and disturbing “diary” had to be a work of fiction or the carefully executed, highly organized delusions of a man whose reason had clearly come undone.
Monsters are not real.
But the man who wrote about them certainly was real. I had spoken to the people who had known him. The paramedics who had taken him to the hospital after a jogger discovered him unconscious in a drainage ditch. The social workers and policemen who worked his case. The staff and volunteers at the assisted-living facility who had bathed and fed him, who had read to him and eased his passing at the ripe old age (according to Will Henry) of 131. And, of course, I had in my possession the journals themselves, which someone had written. The question was—has always been—one of identity, not veracity. Who was William James Henry? Where did he come from? And what unfortunate circumstance brought him to that drainage ditch, half-starved, those handwritten notebooks—besides the clothes on his back—his sole possession?
Everyone has someone, the director of the facility had told me. Someone knew the answer to those questions, and I took it upon myself to find that person, publishing the first three volumes of the journal under the title The Monstrumologist in the fall of 2009. The second set, called The Curse of the Wendigo, was published the following year. Though the subject matter was just this side of outlandish, I hoped the author had incorporated at least some of the truth about himself and his past. A reader might recognize something in the tale about a relative, a coworker, a long-lost friend, and contact me. I was convinced someone somewhere knew this poor man calling himself Will Henry.
My motivation went beyond mere curiosity. He had died alone, with nothing and no one, and had been laid to rest in a pauper’s grave with the poorest of the poor, forgotten. My heart went out to him, and I wanted, for reasons I still do not entirely understand, to bring him home.
Soon after The Monstrumologist was published, I began receiving e-mails and letters from readers. The vast majority were cranks claiming to know who Will Henry was. More than one offered to tell me—for a price. A few offered well-meaning suggestions for further research. Some, predictably, accused me of being the author. A year went by, then two, and I was no closer to the truth. My own research had resulted in no significant progress. In fact, at the end of two years, I had even more questions than when I’d begun.
Then, in late summer of last year, I received the following e-mail from a reader in upstate New York:
Dear Mr. Yancey,
I hope you don’t think I’m some kind of nut or con artist or something. My daughter was assigned your book to read for her language arts class, and she came to me last night very excited because we happen to have a relative whose name really was Will Henry. He was the husband of my father’s great-aunt. It’s probably just a crazy coincidence, but I think you might be interested, if you really didn’t just make up the stuff about finding the journals.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Reed1
A few e-mails and a phone call later, I was on a flight to New York to meet Elizabeth in her hometown of Auburn. After some pleasant conversation and several cups of coffee at a local diner, she took me to Fort Hill Cemetery. My guide was a vivacious, outgoing middle-aged woman who had come to share my fascination with the mystery of Will Henry. She agreed with me—as would any reasonable person—that his story had to be more fiction than fact, but her very real family connection to a man by that name was no fabrication. It was that connection that brought me to New York and to that cemetery. She had e-mailed me a picture of the tombstone, but I wanted to see it with my own eyes.
It was a beautiful afternoon, the trees decked out in all their autumnal glory, the sky a cloudless, brilliant blue. And, three years and three months after first reading those haunting opening lines (These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed…), I was standing at the foot of a grave, before a granite marker that read:
LILLIAN BATES HENRY
1874–1950
Beloved Wife
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
“I never knew her,” Elizabeth said. “But my father said she was quite a character.”
I could not take my eyes off the name. Until that moment I had had nothing tangible except the diaries and a few old newspaper clippings and other questionable artifacts tucked within the yellowing pages. But here was a name etched in stone. No. More than that. Here was a person, literally right at my feet, whom Will had written about.
“Did you know him?” I asked hoarsely. “Will Henry?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know either of them. He disappeared a couple years after her death, before I was born. There was a fire.…”
“A fire?”
“Their house. Will and Lilly’s. A total loss. The police suspected arson, and so did the family.”
“They thought Will Henry set it, didn’t they?”
“My family didn’t like him very much.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Dad said he was… kind of odd. But that isn’t the main reason.”
She dug into her purse. “I brought a picture of her.”
My heart quickened. “Is Will in it?”
She pulled out a faded Polaroid photograph and tipped it slightly to reduce the glare from the bright sun overhead.
“It’s the only one I could find in Dad’s things. I’m still looking, though; maybe I’ll find some more. It’s from her seventy-fifth birthday.”