Maplecroft (26 page)

I’ve
spent over an hour staring at the list of symptoms, compiled above. I’m seeing something, yet I’m missing something, too. I feel like there’s a thread flowing between them, and I’m not catching it.

I’m either looking too hard, or not looking hard enough.

I’m reminded of something, but reminded so barely, so faintly, that I can’t lure the memory to my mind’s surface. I refuse to believe that it’s mere desperation or false hope bubbling up to taunt me.

There’s something here. And I will find
it.

A
PRIL
30, 1894

It’s been a day of hope, and a day of misery. I’m tempted to say that on the balance, it evens out . . . but with Nance’s life and sanity in some kind of suspension, it’s difficult to lend too much weight to what scant hope did manage to appear.

She’s been thirsty. Gasping, as if for air—but not satisfied unless it’s water. She isn’t passing much of it, I shudder to say, and I do not think it’s my imagination that she’s taking on something of the bloated appearance of my father and stepmother. She’s not so bad yet, but I can see it coming. It’s barreling down on me like a train, and there’s nothing I can do. No action I can take to prevent or stall the matter, and it’s killing me more certainly than it’s killing her. After all, it might be argued that it’s only
changing
her.

But I’ll begin with the hope. It came earlier in the day, after all, so I might as well present things chronologically.

Doctor
Seabury beat on the door sometime right after breakfast. Emma was upstairs, and Nance was upstairs, too—in the extra room, tied down to the bed lest she wander, roam, and prove some danger to anyone. Therefore, I was alone so far as capable adults went, so I was delighted to see our visitor. I was lonely, and I hadn’t even realized it.

He arrived with a wild look in his eyes, but not an unpleasant one—he had achieved some great idea! Or so he told me, as I bid him come inside and offered him coffee or tea. He picked coffee, and we both went into the kitchen while I set the percolator in motion. Without waiting for a cup, he began to speak.

“I’ve been looking at the symptoms, the list we made together, you and I and your sister—and I’ve been considering the other factors, things we may have known to serve a pattern, but not in the same way as the physical changes have presented themselves.”

“I’m not certain I understand,” I confessed.

“Neither do I. Not precisely, but that’s all right for now. Patterns aren’t always precise, and there’s an exception to every rule. But we can learn something, even from the exceptions. The exceptions can show us plenty. That’s what I mean—it’s the exceptions that are revealing a whole picture, even if it’s a picture with holes in it.”

I was frankly concerned. He was talking in circles, and the line between madness and normalcy as I knew it had grown so narrow in this past year.

“Doctor, I do pray you’ll explain yourself. You’re beginning
to worry me.” Might as well be honest. After all, we were veritable partners in madness these days.

He shook his head, accepted a porcelain cup and a pitcher of cream, and offered his apologies. “I’m very sorry, though I know what you mean. There’s been some shift, hasn’t there been? And here, on the other side, it’s difficult to retain perspective. But no, let me assure you, there’s no madness or affliction to be found in me. Not
yet
.”

Until just then, I hadn’t noticed that he’d brought a satchel with him, but now he lifted it onto his lap and extricated a medical textbook, one which was intended as a basic introduction to common diseases and their causes. A freshman’s book, I should think. He flipped it open before I had a chance to note the title or author.

A page was dog-eared, and he turned to it swiftly. “I spent all of yesterday afternoon and evening mulling the question, staring at it from every possible direction, hoping to figure out what the pattern might be. Then this morning, I shot awake with an idea.
This
idea,” he told me, slapping his index finger onto a heading titled “Tetanus: Generalized, Local, and Other Manifestations.”

“Lockjaw?” He couldn’t be serious.

“The overlap is not one hundred percent, but I think you’ll agree there’s enough similarity that it warrants further investigation.”

I wasn’t prepared to agree to anything yet. “Convince me.”

Just the invitation he was looking for. His face was positively alight. “Very well. Here’s our list of symptoms, presented in and around Fall River—in various combinations and severities. Now watch the correlation: difficulty swallowing, resulting
in excess salivation; fever, seizures, and spasms. All of it, right here. Symptomatic of tetanus.

“You mentioned seeing your stepmother’s body arching backward—there’s a term for that, you see?
Opisthotonos
. It’s every bit as violent as you reported, and often results in broken bones and muscle tears. The difficulty of controlling one’s body, see, it’s right here in black and white. Tetanus. And in the later stages, sufferers have terrible difficulty breathing, resulting in something like the rasping we heard the other night.”

“You think . . . you think the Bordens had somehow contracted tetanus?” My mind was prepared to reel, but it wasn’t spinning yet. He had drawn some interesting parallels, but it wasn’t enough to make me drop my wariness. It was too ordinary an explanation. It couldn’t be that simple. Not when monsters walked the grounds of Maplecroft.

No. It
wasn’t
that simple.

“I’m saying that what we’re dealing with, this Problem we have in Fall River . . .” I almost heard the capital letter he used to start the word “Problem.” “It shares some similarity in its presentation. There’s a
pattern
, Lizbeth. Not a perfect one, but if we stand far enough back . . .”

Yes, imperfect to say the least. “But the eyes, the pallid skin, the bloating . . . and what of the acute and dangerous madness?”

“Well . . . pronounced irritability is a known symptom.”

“That isn’t the same thing, and you know it. You’ve seen it yourself.”

He was losing his steam, and becoming frustrated with me, but he did his best to keep from showing it too harshly. “No, not exactly the same thing. It’s as I said, they share a . . . a general shape, if not a clearly delineated match.”

I granted him that much. “Very well, I see.” It was an
overstatement to say even that much, but I didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm altogether. If there was any link between the two, any link at all, it was worth discussing—all my caution and concerns aside. Or at least tempered. “So explain it to me. Tell me everything there is to know about tetanus.”

“How much do you know already?” he asked, scanning the paragraphs from the book, hunting for highlights.

“Tetanus is . . . often fatal. And caused by wounds, isn’t it? Some kind of infection?”

“Yes and no,” he said. “It’s caused by a bacterium,
Clostridium tetani
—typically found in soil and animal feces, or the one contaminated by the other, as it were.”

And then he said something that sent a spark of recognition crackling between my ears.

“It’s often acquired from dirty wounds, yes, but it may also be carried in rust. At least that’s the going speculation. Injuries caused by old metal seem particularly prone to—”

I cut him off there. “Rust?” I blurted out.

He lifted his eyes from the textbook. “Yes. Rust. Did I say something helpful?”

“Maybe . . . ?” I went around the corner and retrieved my axe. I held it up close, so I could see it in detail—its blocky head and smooth cutting edge, sharp enough to trim paper. I honed it almost daily, but even if it’d seen no use there was always something, always a little grime to be filed away. Always a tiny smattering of rust, there at the corners.

“Lizbeth?”

“Here,” I said, returning with the weapon and placing it upon the table, beside the book. “Rust and iron . . . it’s another piece of your pattern puzzle. The same puzzle, I think—though it might not look that way at a glance. In my own studies, the arcane
books and clandestine tomes that I keep downstairs . . . they routinely describe how iron wards against various kinds of evil.”

“And you’ve told me before that your axe is the only thing that truly fells them!” He was getting excited again, and I hated to admit it, but I was, too.

“It works better than anything else, though I’ve only tried shooting them once, to limited effect. We have Father’s old war weapons, but they’re a measure of last resort.”

“Not half so quiet as an axe,” he observed. “A wise course of action, considering.”

“Well, you know . . . we wouldn’t want to wake the neighbors. So if you ever hear gunshots at Maplecroft, you may assume that the end is nigh indeed. I always leave the guns with Emma,” I added, though I wasn’t sure why I was telling him this. It was true, but felt almost too personal to share. I shared it anyway. “That’s what I mean. If there’s shooting, it means they’re finished with me and they’re coming for her.”

This grim note gave us pause, but only for a moment. “Let’s not borrow trouble,” he gently urged. “Instead, let’s consider the possibilities. I say we should absolutely write down the axe and its attendant properties as part of the tetanus pattern, although . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Although?”

“It begs the question of whether the creatures are
infected
with the bacterium, or simply susceptible it. They do seem to . . . Hm.”

“Please stop doing that. Think aloud, I beg you. I’m a terrible mind reader.”

“My apologies. I was only considering that if the creatures suffer from some form of tetanus already, it seems unlikely that an added blow with a contaminated weapon would make the
matter worse. Or perhaps it would.” He sighed, and closed the book. “It’s as I said—the pattern is far from perfect.”

“But it might be worth something, after all.” I pushed, a new idea working its insidious way into my mind. “What sort of treatments might one use to combat tetanus? I’m afraid this isn’t my area of expertise.”

“Ah, well. There are some fascinating studies on the subject overseas, with talks of vaccine prophylactics and antibody treatments.”

“Is there any chance we could . . . I don’t know, create these antibodies ourselves? Or import some from elsewhere? A hospital or . . . or a university, perhaps?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Do you think there’s any chance they may have some positive effect on Nance?”

“I have no idea. Speaking of, how is she doing?”

“No better.”

He made encouraging noises that didn’t do anything but annoy me, bless him. “Stick with her, Lizbeth. Keep trying, keep watching. I’ll do my best to procure some of the necessary antibodies, and we’ll try that approach. It can’t hurt, and might help.”

I asked, “Are you sure?”

“Of which point?” he countered. “Nothing’s certain, and I won’t insult you by suggesting otherwise.”

I refused to nurture the hope that threatened to bloom in my breast. I’d come close to solutions before, and watched the mirages turn to sand as I approached. I would not let myself be disappointed so harshly again. I braced myself against further failure by asking the inevitable questions. “But wouldn’t it be too late? Vaccines are preventatives, and whatever’s happened to Nance, we surely have failed to prevent it.”

“Tetanus is
treatable
,” he insisted. “And not by any means a death sentence. All is not lost, and we have . . . it’s hardly a plan, but it’s a starting point.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. We’ll try something else.”

“What?” I asked, and I hated myself for the note of despair that crept into the word.

“I don’t know, but we’ll think of something. You and I, and Emma. And maybe this Inspector Wolf—you never know. He might turn over some rock and discover another useful path to direct us down. All is not lost,” he said again. Maybe he hadn’t heard himself the first time, or maybe he needed convincing as badly as I did.

I did not reply, because the words were stuck in my throat. But Nance is my all, and if she’s lost, then yes. So’s everything.

Emma
wouldn’t like the look of those last lines, but what can I do?

Emma is only dying of normal things, so far as anyone can prove. Emma has all of her faculties, and some autonomy of her own—whether she’d act upon it or not. Some days she maneuvers the stairs just fine, and others she needs waiting upon, hand and foot. I shouldn’t doubt her, but so help me God, on those days I
do
.

Look at the state we’re in.

Maybe it’s all her fault, anyway. Maybe that stupid, stinking, putrid sample she forced me to box up and mail . . . if that’s where this began . . .

If that’s where it all began, and I lose Nance because of it.

If that’s what it comes to. I don’t know that I will ever be
able to forgive her. I am strong, but I am not resilient. When my heart is manhandled it does not bounce; it shatters.

So
the doctor left me with much to think about, and two women upstairs who need me all the time. He didn’t look in on either of them. He offered to, but I told him not to bother. Emma was fine, and napping . . . and Nance was not fine, but there was nothing new for him to address.

I didn’t tell him about the breathing trouble. I had planned to, but when he got to the part about how it’s a symptom of the later stages of tetanus poisoning . . . I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. He could be wrong. We’re all throwing stones in the dark, after all.

Tetanus. So logical. So down-to-earth, quite literally. It
cannot
be that easy. If it were that easy, science would’ve saved us by now. There is some dark agency at work, and we would pretend otherwise at our peril.

I
couldn’t bear the futility of it all. That’s why I told him that all was as before, and she needed no attention from him.

In short, I’m a coward who lies to herself.