Rick Yancey - The Monstrumologist

The doctor sighed. “I was startled by the intelligence. I had no idea how far he had fallen.” He closed his eyes briefly. “He was a very dignified man in his prime, Will Henry, quite particular in his appearance, to the point of vanity. The idea that he would end his life in such a demeaning manner was unthinkable. At least, unthinkable to me.”

He fell silent, staring at the ceiling, and I thought of Hezekiah Varner, who had had no choice in the matter. “But he was trapped in the amber of my memory; it had been nearly ten years since I’d last seen him, and that Alistair Warthrop was a different human being, not the bare shell of one found five years ago.”

Warthrop shook himself from his melancholic reverie. He rolled onto his side to face my chair and rested his head on his open palm. His dark eyes glittered in the lamplight.

“Drifted off-course again, didn’t I, Will Henry? You must read Hereditary Genius sometime. After Origin of Species but before The Descent of Man, for that is its place both thematically and chronologically. Its influence can be seen throughout Descent . The idea that both mental and physical features are passed on to an organism’s progeny is revolutionary. Father saw it at once and even wrote to me about it. One of the few letters he ever sent; I still have it somewhere. Galton had shared an early draft with him, and Father believed the theory had applications in his own field of study, an exciting alternative to capture or eradication of the more malevolent species, like our friends the Anthropophagi . If desirable traits could be encouraged and undesirable ones suppressed through selective breeding, it could transform our discipline. Eugenics could be the key to saving our subjects from extinction, for the rise of man had numbered their days, unless, Father believed, a way could be found to ‘domesticate’ them, much as the treacherous wolf was transfigured into the faithful dog.”

He paused, apparently waiting for some response from me. When none was forthcoming, he sat up and cried excitedly, “Don’t you see, Will Henry? It answers the question of Why? That’s why he desired a breeding pair of Anthropophagi -to put Galton’s theory into practice, to breed out its savagery and taste for human blood. A daunting enterprise, enormous in scope and staggering in cost, well beyond his means, which may explain why he met with these mysterious agents in ’62. That is only a guess, impossible to prove, unless we can find these men, if they still live, or some record of their agreement, if one exists-or ever existed. At any rate, it’s the only reason I can think of to explain why he would meet with such men, if he thought their evil cause might advance his just one.”

He stopped, again waiting for my reaction. He slapped his hand upon the mattress and said, “Well, don’t just sit there. Tell me what you think!”

“Well, sir,” I began slowly. The truth was I did not know what to make of it. “You knew him and I didn’t.”

“I hardly knew him at all,” he said matter-of-factly. “Less so than most sons their fathers, I would venture, but the theory fits what I do know about the facts. Only passion for his work could compel him to associate with traitors. It was all he had; he loved nothing else. Nothing.”

He fell onto his back, head cradled in his hands, eyes fixed on the blank and ready canvas above him. The possibilities of what might be painted there were bounded only by the limits of his hyperbolic imagination. Our ignorance of our fellows throws wide the gate to our galloping suppositions, even if that fellow is our own father. Into that existential vacuum rushes our wishes and doubts, our longings and regrets, for the father-that-was and the father-that-might-have-been. Though mine had not been a cold and distant man like his, we were brothers in that one instance: Our fathers had bequeathed us nothing but memories. A fire had stripped me of all tangible tokens, save my little hat; Alistair Warthrop had taken most of what had belonged to Pellinore. What remained of them was simply us , and when we departed, so would they. We were the tablets upon which their lives were writ.

“Nothing else,” the monstrumologist said. “Nothing at all.”

I remained at his bedside throughout the night, in a grueling vigil different only in kind from the one the night previous, while the doctor drifted in and out of a light and restless sleep. Inevitably, as I started to nod off, he would jerk awake and call out in a voice bordering on panic, “Will Henry! Will Henry, are you asleep?”

To which I would answer, “No, sir; I’m awake.”

“Oh,” he would reply. “You should rest, Will Henry. We’ll need all our strength in the coming hours. By now he must have my letter, and if I know John Kearns, he will be on the earliest train.”

“Who is John Kearns?” I asked. “Is he a monstrumologist?”

He laughed dryly. “Not in the strictest definition of the term, no. By profession he is a surgeon-and a brilliant one, I might add. By temperament he is something altogether different. I would have preferred Henry Stanley, if I knew where to find him. Both have hunted Anthropophagi in the wild, and Stanley is a gentleman from the old school, nothing like Kearns.”

“He’s a hunter?”

“I suppose one might call him that, in a manner of speaking. He certainly has more experience than I, for I have none at all in regard to Anthropophagi. I should caution you, Will Henry,” he added, his tone becoming grave, “not to tarry too long in the dominion of John Kearns’s philosophy. Avoid him if you can.”

“Why?” I asked with a child’s natural curiosity, tweaked, as is all childlike curiosity, by sober admonition.

“He reads too much,” was the doctor’s odd reply. “Or not quite enough. I have never been certain. At any rate, steer clear of Dr. John Kearns, Will Henry! He is a dangerous man, but the hour calls for dangerous men, and we must use every tool at our disposal. It’s been two nights since they last fed; they will hunt again, and soon.”

“What if they already have?” I asked, the thought bringing me fully to my senses. The room seemed to shrink and fill with menacing shadows.

“I assure you that they haven’t. The unfortunate Mr. Gray should keep them satisfied, at least for another day or two.”

I did not give voice to the objection that immediately leapt to mind: But what if you’re wrong? I’d tried that tack before, and had paid dearly for it. So I held my tongue. May God forgive me, I said nothing. Perhaps if I had spoken up, he might have questioned his assumption. Perhaps if I had insisted, perhaps if I had been unrelenting in my doubt and negligent in my trust and deference, six innocent people might not have suffered nearly unimaginable deaths. For, even as he was speaking these soothing words, a family was being slaughtered. While we drowsily whiled away the deadest hours of the night, the beasts were busy imbuing them with blood.

Dawn had broken by the time I finally stumbled off to bed. I stripped out of my clothes and crawled beneath the covers, but the hours of sleep I snatched were scant, and teemed with vivid visions of voracious vermin: worms and maggots and the sightless, nameless, colorless creatures that dwell in the dark beneath rocks and wet, rotting logs. I woke feeling more exhausted than when I’d first lain down, with a sour taste upon my tongue and the dead weight of dread in my heart. Above me the midmorning sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue, a joyful spring mockery of my morbid mood. Try as I might, I could not shake the feeling that something terrible lurked just over the horizon. I resolved not to mention my foreboding to the doctor; he would dismiss it with a laugh, followed by a lecture on superstition as echo of our primitive past, when premonitions were efficacious responses to an environment populated by predators only too happy to oblige our apprehensions.