Rick Yancey - The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist, Book 2)

He drew a breath deeply, the pause before the start of the next movement in his symphony, then suddenly he became very still, head cocked slightly to one side. I listened, but heard nothing but the rain’s gentle kiss upon the window and the metronomic tick-tick of the mantel clock.

“Someone is here,” he said. He turned and peered through the blinds. I could see nothing but the reflection of his angular face. How hollow his cheeks! How pale his flesh! He had spoken boldly of his ultimate fate—did he know how close he seemed to that vile dust from whence he came?

“Quickly, to the door, Will Henry. Whoever it is, remember I am indisposed and can’t receive visitors. Well, what are you waiting for? Snap to, Will Henry, snap to!”

A moment later the bell rang. He closed the study door behind me. I lit the jets in the front hall to chase away the preternatural shadows lying thick in the entryway, and threw wide the door to behold the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in all the years of my exceedingly long life.

TWO

“There Is Nothing I Can Do for You”

“Why, hello there,” she said with a puzzled smile. “I’m afraid I may be lost. I am looking for the house of Pellinore Warthrop.”

“This is Dr. Warthrop’s house,” I returned, in a voice only moderately steady. More stunning than her extraordinary looks was her very presence upon our doorstep. In all the time I had lived with him, the doctor had never received a lady caller. It simply did not happen. The doorstep of 425 Harrington Lane was not the sort of place upon which a proper lady appeared.

“Oh, good. I thought I might have come to the wrong place.”

She stepped into the vestibule without my asking, removed her gray traveling cloak, and adjusted her hat. A strand of her auburn hair had escaped from its pin and now clung, dripping, to her graceful neck. Her face was radiant in the glow of the lamps, rain-moist and without defect—unless the fine spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks might be called thus—though I will admit it may not have been the lighting that painted her with perfection.

It is exceedingly strange to me that I, who have no difficulty in describing the multifarious manifestations of the doctor’s gruesome craft, the foul denizens of the dark in all their grotesque aspects to the smallest detail, now struggle with the lexicon, reaching for words as ephemeral as the will-o’-the-wisp to do justice to the woman I met that summer afternoon seventy years ago. I might speak of the way the light played along her glittering tresses—but what of that? I might go on about her hazel eyes flecked with flashing bits of brighter green—but still fall short. There are things that are too terrible to remember, and there are things that are almost too wonderful to recall.

“Could you tell him that Mrs. Chanler is here to speak with him?” she asked. She was smiling warmly at me.

I stammered something completely unintelligible, which did nothing to diminish her smile.

“He is here, isn’t he?”

“No, ma’am,” I managed. “I mean, yes, he is, but he is not. . . . The doctor is indisposed.”

“Well, perhaps if you told him I’m here, he might be disposed to make an exception.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and then quickly added, “He is very busy, so—”

“Oh, he is always busy ,” she said with a delighted little laugh. “I’ve never known him not to be. But where are my manners? We haven’t been properly introduced.” She offered her hand. I took it, only later wondering if her intent had been for me to kiss it. I was woefully ignorant in the social graces. I was being raised, after all, by Pellinore Warthrop.

“My name is Muriel,” she said.

“I’m William James Henry,” I responded with awkward formality.

“Henry! So that’s who you are. I should have realized. You’re James Henry’s son.” She placed her cool hand upon my arm. “I am terribly sorry for your loss, Will. And you are here because . . . ?”

“The doctor took me in.”

“Did he? How extraordinarily uncharacteristic of him. Are you certain we’re speaking of the same doctor?”

Behind me the study door came open and I heard the monstrumologist say, “Will Henry, who was—” I turned to discover a look of profound shock upon his face, though that was quickly replaced by a mask of icy indifference.

“Pellinore,” Muriel Chanler said softly.

The doctor spoke to me, though his eyes did not abandon her. “Will Henry, I thought my instructions were unambiguous.”

“You mustn’t blame William,” she said with a note of playfulness. “He took pity upon me, standing on your stoop like a wet cat. Are you ill?” she asked suddenly. “You look as if you might have a fever.”

“I have never been better,” returned the doctor. “I can complain of nothing.”

“That’s more—or less—than I might say. I am soaked to the skin! Do you suppose I might have a cup of hot cider or tea before you toss me out the door? I did come a very long way to see you.”

“New York is not that far,” Warthrop replied. “Unless you came on foot.”

“Is that a no, then?” she asked.

“Saying no would be foolish on my part, wouldn’t it? No one says no to Muriel Barnes.”

“Chanler,” she corrected him.

“Of course. Thank you. I believe I remember who you are. Will Henry, show Mrs. Chanler ”—he spat out the name—“to the parlor and put on a pot of tea. I’m sorry, Mrs. Chanler , but we’ve no cider. It isn’t in season.”

Returning from the kitchen with the serving tray a few minutes later, I paused outside the parlor, for within I could hear a vehement discussion in progress, the doctor’s voice high-pitched and tight, our guest’s quieter but no less urgent.

“Even if I accepted it on its face,” he was saying, “even if I believed such claptrap . . . no, even if it existed regardless of my belief . . . there are a dozen men to whom you could turn for help.”

“That may be,” she allowed. “But there is only one Pellinore Warthrop.”

“Flattery? I am astounded, Muriel.”

“A measure of my desperation, Pellinore. Believe me, if I thought anyone else could help me, I would not ask you.”

“Ever the diplomat.”

“Ever the realist—unlike you.”

“I am a scientist, and therefore an absolute realist.”

“I understand that you’re bitter—”

“To assume I am bitter proves your lack of understanding. It assumes I harbor some residuum of affection, which I assure you I do not.”

“Can you not put aside who asks for help and consider the one who needs it? You loved him once.”

“Whom I have loved is none of your business.”

“True. My business is with whom I love.”

“Then why don’t you find him yourself? Why have you come all this way to bother me with it?”

Straining forward in my eagerness to eavesdrop, I lost my balance and nearly dropped the tray, stumbling into the doorway like a drunkard, while the tea sloshed from the spout and the cups rattled in their saucers. I discovered the doctor standing by the fireplace. Muriel sat stiffly in the chair a few feet from him, a piece of stationery clutched in her hand.

The doctor clucked his disapproval at me, then stepped forward and snatched the letter from her hand. I placed the tray on the table beside her.

“Your tea, Mrs. Chanler,” I said.

“Thank you, Will,” she said.

“Yes, leave us,” the doctor said, his nose stuck in the letter.

“Is there anything else I can get for you, ma’am?” I asked. “We have some fresh scones—”

“Do not ,” growled the doctor from behind the paper, “bring out the scones!”