Maplecroft (20 page)

I raced back upstairs to the best of my ability. My legs were still wobbly beneath me—but the drugs were wearing off, burned out of my bloodstream by the terror of Nance’s condition. And now we’d see how much terror I could muster anew, because something walked outside, and I needed to be at my sharpest.

I was not at my sharpest. But what could I do?

I grabbed my
axe.

A
PRIL
25, 1894

I now know something of the torment which has afflicted Lizbeth Borden Andrew or whatever she calls herself these days. I kept meaning to ask which name she prefers among friends—but now that I think about it, she told me to call her Lizbeth, but didn’t offer one surname or the other.

I’m not beginning this entry well. It was a terrible night, and I’m not yet recovered. Perhaps I never will be, but I must compose myself and thereby compose this entry. I must organize my thoughts and lay them all out, while I still remember everything so freshly that it hurts.

My ribs ache. They are lined with bruises that look uncannily
like the impressions of human fingers, but that’s not what made them. And these bruises, they are flecked with something sharp and itchy, some residue left behind. It feels almost like spun glass, but what small sample I was able to retrieve dissolved between my tweezers, and was gone.

Whatever these creatures are, they leave no useful trace of themselves behind. Only questions and horror, and bruises shaped like fingers.

I say “these creatures” because the thing I saw this past night was not the only one of its kind. Lizbeth told me so, and she showed me how she’s been managing them.

But I stumble ahead of myself.

Let me try again.

I
received a knock on the door, and opened it to find Jacob Wilson, young neighbor to the sisters at Maplecroft. He’d been sent to bring me around. Something about Emma; he wasn’t too clear on the specifics. So I made my way there with all haste, and upon being granted entrance, I learned that the difficulty was related to Nancy O’Neil, their houseguest. She’d fallen catatonic, having somehow gotten inside a locked cellar and contaminated herself with Lizbeth’s experiments.

But I’ll come back around to how that situation came to be.

Nancy, called “Nance” by her friends, was placed upon a settee—lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling with the same blank, unblinking stare that I’m coming to find familiar, damn it all to hell.

No, I don’t think hell is far enough away. If there’s some farther, more distant shore where these things might be banished, then I pray for that instead.

In the course of my examination, Nance began to chant
“Out . . . out . . . out . . .”
as I’d noted with previous patient Miss Fox. Same rhythm to it, same pace, same message. And this time, something answered her.

It tried to come in.

Lizbeth
ran outside, despite the fact that she must’ve been in great pain from a broken nose and a badly bruised body, courtesy of a slide down the stairs. Besides that, she was not up to her full strength and clarity, due to some draught Nance had slipped her before bed. (It turned out to be Mrs. Winslow’s, so it could’ve been worse. Anything too much stronger than that, and she might not have awakened in time.)

But the younger Borden rallied, and I was impressed with her determination—though I had no intention of following her command, which amounted to, “Stay inside with Emma.”

Something wanted inside Maplecroft. Lizbeth wanted to go handle it alone, but that was madness, and she needed my help. I followed her outside.

I kept her in my sights, though the night was very dark, and there was a fog hanging so heavy that the gas lamps were almost no help at all. What little light there was bounced back and forth between the mist in patches, so the whole world was hidden, and yet it moved.

She rushed ahead of me, a womanly shape wearing little more than a nightdress; I think she’d paused to throw a housecoat over herself, before I arrived. Her form billowed as the fabric spilled behind her, and every so often I caught a glimpse of light sparking off metal. Her axe. I’m not sure I’d noticed her picking it up.

(Where did she keep it? Was it the same one . . . ?)

She wielded it easily, lightly. She carried it swinging like a baseball bat, only with more poetry to it. It was a frightening
thing to watch, this small shadow of billowing gray fabric and sprawling, wild hair splaying out behind her, the axe held at the ready with both hands, poised and prepared.

I could scarcely take my eyes off her, but then again, I could scarcely see anything except the motion of her running around the side of that magnificent house . . . and as I brought up the rear I felt like a noisy, stumbling brute in her wake. She moved so quietly, you see—so practiced. She so beautifully disturbed the darkness, all flapping shape in gray and white. Like an owl. With that kind of grace and silence.

But she did not outpace me. I could not let her, for without her, what would guide me? The moon offered no assistance, and I knew that behind the house, the cream and yellow fog that shifted and swirled would lose even the lamps that colored it.

I did not call her name. She must’ve known I was on her heels, for she must’ve heard me; and by then I wondered if her stealth wasn’t imperiled by my noisily added presence, but it was too late then. I’d left the other two women in the house, neither one of them able to defend herself worth a damn—and there was always the chance that Nance might rise up and prove a danger to anyone in her vicinity.

I tried to eject the thought from my mind.

Lizbeth had done so, and I knew—I believed, and from the bottom of my heart—that she was better versed in this awful matter than I was. What smattering of a dilettante’s investigation I’d performed would hardly stand up to the knowledge of a woman who apparently had built and kept a laboratory in her cellar.

My experience could not hold a candle to a woman who’d seen this long before I had, and who’d already been compelled to kill because of it.

She rounded the house’s back corner, and a few seconds
later I did the same. And then I could hear it, though I’d not noticed any sounds from inside the house—for all that Lizbeth and Emma had clearly caught it. Yes, there it was . . . the slap, slap, slap of what sounded like hands. The exploratory clap of someone feeling about for entry.

I expected her to draw up to a halt when she reached the potential intruder, but I was wrong—and I didn’t even see the intruder in question before she swung the axe. But I heard the weapon connect with something wet and solid, and then with another swing the arc of her arm went wide and high, and for a brief moment I thought of sword fighters waving much lighter things, but with the same sort of skill and speed.

This time the axe missed its target.

Lizbeth gasped, and I gasped too because by then I’d reached her. My hands were empty and naked, as if I’d expected fisticuffs with whoever I found. I had a gun, my army revolver. I always wore it on a holster except no, not then. I hadn’t put it on when Jacob had demanded an audience at Maplecroft. I’d been almost ready for bed and I wasn’t wearing it. I didn’t think to don it.

So, yes, my hands were empty when I reached her, and reached the
thing
with which she grappled.

It had her by the wrist, I saw, and she was reaching past it—grabbing for the axe.

She resisted, and she swung again while I stood there, mouth agape. It mustn’t have been agape long. Not for the span of half a dozen heartbeats, surely no longer than that. But surely I can be forgiven, for what I saw was unlike anything I’d ever seen or even heard of. Whatever I’d expected to find, when Lizbeth went bolting from the house . . . whatever trespasser or intruder, whatever masked raccoon or hungry dog seeking
scraps . . . none of those possibilities had led me to ponder a creature like that
thing
with which she did battle.

I must compare it to a person, when I describe it.

That’s the only jumping-off point of reference at my disposal, and there’s always the chance it was
once
a human being—though that possibility feels remote and unlikely. (Regardless, Lizbeth believes it could be true, and at present, she’s the expert on the matter. The prospect instills me with the deepest loathing and revulsion that a man is capable of carrying. But she’s right. We must consider everything, for we have little idea of what can be ruled out.)

But the
thing
.

It was the shape of a human being, provided that the human being had been horribly emaciated, his bones stretched, his skin blanched, and his head both swollen and misshapen. I would use the word “encephalitic,” but it doesn’t feel quite right. I’ve never heard of an encephalitic with a forehead sloped and pinched, eyes that were covered with the same membrane I’d seen before on other corpses in Fall River (so there’s one point in Lizbeth’s favor, or in favor of her revolting theory).

The thing’s eyes were also shaped strangely, oversized and elongated, drawn back to a point that aimed at the forehead, almost as if they’d been turned on their sides. No, that’s not what I mean. It was more the shape of a raindrop, landing on the face and sliding downward. It was . . .

. . . I am no good at this.

Already my memory fails me, and my eyesight, too—for if only there’d been some lamp or other light to illuminate the thing before it was shattered to death. If only I’d gotten closer, before Lizbeth smashed its face to bits, and the darkness glittered with the tinkling dust of broken glass.

She caught it in the face, in the mouth, I think, not in the eyes—though we ruined those in time.

The axe crashed down, sharp side first, and then on the next swing she used it as a bludgeon. But her reflexes were slowed. The creature was fast. It grabbed her by the arm again.

And whatever spell of astonishment had held me captive . . . it was broken when I saw the violence returned against her. It was one thing for me to watch a woman assault a monster, but another thing entirely to see her attacked in return.

None of this is making as much sense as I’d like.

But if I stop now, I’ll wish tomorrow that I’d had the courage to persevere while the horror was new in my mind, and still flickered in awful plays of light and shadow inside my eyelids when I closed them.

The
creature stood taller than Lizbeth, but not so tall as myself. It moved jerkily, as though it wasn’t wholly comfortable with its joints, and it had too many of them. It moved in sharp, stuttering, staggering lunges. It moved like it was in pain.

(Well, it would’ve been by then, wouldn’t it? Lizbeth had struck it solidly, several times.)

It gushed some weird liquid that I assumed must be blood, or hemolymph—isn’t that what powers the circulatory system of insects? Arthropods, at any rate. Whatever it was, it filled the monster’s skin and performed a similar function. It sprayed from its wounds, and wherever it landed, I felt a stinging on my skin. Later I would realize that the blood-substance was not quite blood-colored; it was darker, more like brown or orange, when exposed to the air and given a bit of time to dry. Something about it made me think of rust.

It had Lizbeth by the arm, and I reached for it, seized it by the shoulder and flung it backward—or that’s what I attempted, to only modest success. I was stunned by how little I was able to move it, how it jerked itself out of my grasp and remained, feet planted, a high-pitched howl whistling from its ruined mouth and leaking from what passed for its nostrils.

“No!” she cried, and bless the poor woman, she tried to put herself between us. “You don’t understand . . .”

And that was an understatement, wasn’t it? But I was in the fray already, and there was no time to pause or regroup, not when the monster slathered and grimaced, seizing me and wrestling with me—grappling with its iron-hard fingers, crushing at my ribs and my arms, pushing against my belly in blows that would’ve stunned a seasoned boxer—blows that stole my breath and left me winded.

I am growing older, a fact that I do not contest or bemoan—but I am still a large man, and a strong one, too. No seasoned boxer, but well able to withstand a beating should one be delivered, or so I’ve told myself all these years.

So I stood against the thing, though its hands wandered and hit with such astonishing rapidity that even in the bright light of day, its motions would have seemed a blur. I was shocked, but not incapable of blocking and protecting myself with my arms; all my thoughts of assault having folded back in upon themselves, collapsing into the more immediate task of defense.

“It’s the iron,” Lizbeth wheezed. “Our bodies won’t stop them, but the iron . . .”

I did not see her, because I did not dare raise my head. I now bore the full brunt of the creature’s attention, and I would’ve told my companion to run for safety—if it would’ve mattered in
the slightest. I’d interrupted her, and perhaps complicated her plans; except that no, she’d faltered and missed with her axe. I must have been
some
help, surely?

But not in that moment.

No, it was all her . . . when I heard the slice of the axe splitting the fog as neatly as a razor, and when the weapon came striking down—a vicious blow that took the creature in the shoulder, cutting past the collarbone and down into the lungs, if the thing had lungs at all.

(There
was no time to examine it more fully, but I’ll come around to that. I feel like I’m saying this too much, about too many things at once, but what can I do? There are too many things to say, so I must say them here and now, or remind myself to say them later. This is all I can do, and in this way I hope I’ll come around to everything, in time.)