The Curse of the Wendigo

TWENTY-FOUR

“He Wanted Me to See”

I was taken to a holding room—not precisely a cell, since there were no bars anywhere, but close enough. There was a cot, a washstand, and a very narrow window of frosted glass that filtered the weakened autumn sun into a kind of mockery of light, light’s emaciated cousin. I threw myself upon the cot and fell almost immediately into a deep sleep—so deep, in fact, that it took Connolly several hard shakes to wake me.

“You have a visitor, Will.”

I must have been staring uncomprehendingly at him, for he said it again, smiling reassuringly all the while, a friendly hand upon my shoulder.

“Take your hands off him!” I heard a familiar voice cry. “He’s had quite enough of your department’s hospitality, my good sir!”

Von Helrung jostled Connolly out of the way and crouched beside me. He cupped my face in his pudgy hands and stared intently into my eyes.

“Will . . . Will,” he murmured. “What have these animals done to you?”

He swept me up into his arms with surprising vigor and swung round, kicking open the door with his foot and marching out, a panicky Connolly trailing behind us like an abandoned puppy.

“Doctor von Helrung, sir, I don’t think you’re allowed to do this,” huffed Connolly.

“Watch, and you will see what I am allowed to do!” von Helrung roared over his shoulder.

“Inspector Byrnes left strict orders—”

“And you may take the orders of Herr Inspector Byrnes and stick them up your wide Irish arse!”

He had reached the front doors. I could see the glare of the bawdy houses glimmering across Mulberry Street. He might have made good his escape then—his bluster had frozen the half dozen or so personnel in their tracks—but he could not resist a final parting shot across the bow.

“Shame on you! Shame on all of you! The most vicious of the predators I study cannot hold a candle to you! To treat a man like this is one thing, but to torture a child! And a child who has already endured more than any of you could possibly imagine. Diese Scheiβpolizisten. So eine Schweinerei! Pah!”

He spat contemptuously, then carried me straight to the curb and heaved me into the back of the calash. He jumped into the seat beside me and shouted for Timmy to take us home.

“The doctor?” I gasped.

“Safe, Will,” answered my rescuer. “Safe. Not well, but safe—and I beg you to forgive me for not extricating you sooner from the clutches of those oafish brutes.”

“I want to see the doctor,” I said.

“And you shall, Will. I am taking you to him now.”

Von Helrung’s personal physician, a young man by the name of Seward, had given the doctor a thorough examination and had found no serious injuries except a painful—and painfully obvious—fracturing of the lower jaw. Seward was concerned about the condition of Warthrop’s kidneys; already ugly bruises had formed along his lower back where the truncheons had been vigorously applied, but there was nothing he could do but wait. The symptoms of renal failure were hard to miss.

I found my master propped up in the bed, dressed in one of von Helrung’s nightshirts, which was much too small for him and, to my allegiant eye, added insult to injury. A bag containing ice had been wrapped in a cloth and the cloth then tied around his head to keep the compress tight against his jaw. He opened his eyes when I stepped inside the room.

“Will Henry,” he said, wincing from the effort. “Is that you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Will Henry.” He sighed. “Where have you been, Will Henry?”

“At the police station, sir.”

“That cannot be,” he said. “My memory is not altogether clear, but I distinctly remember you were not at the police station with me.”

“I was in another room, sir.”

“Ah. Well, you could have been a little more precise.”

I took a hesitant step forward, reached for his hand, and stopped myself.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

I could hold it in no longer. It was too much, to see him like that. And if it was too much for me, what was it like for him? He motioned for me to come closer, and reached for my hand.

“You should not be sorry,” he said. “You should be glad. You were spared. You did not see what I saw upon that hill.” He spoke fiercely through gritted teeth. “What I still see—what I am doomed to see—until I can see no more!” He closed his eyes. “He wanted me to see . . . what he had done to her. . . . More than mutilation—an act of desecration. I think I disappointed him. I think he waited for me last night. I think she was alive when he took her to the summit, and he waited awhile for me before he exacted his deranged vengeance.”

“No,” I cried. “Don’t say that, sir! Please don’t—”

“He left enough clues for me, but I was blind to them. I think that’s why he took her face but left her eyes, as if to say, ‘Even she sees more than you!’ The serving girl butchered on the stairs, the phrase scrawled over the door, the trick of the chamber pot, and the words ‘Good Job!’ on the headboard. Not ‘job’ as in a task or accomplishment, but Job from the Bible, Job crying for justice upon the dung heap. He did everything but draw me a map.”

I struggled for something to say, but what might be said in such dolorous circumstances? What balm existed to soothe his torment? I had nothing to offer but my own tears, which he tenderly wiped away—a measure of his distress, perhaps his concern for my anguish.

“She had not been dead long, Will Henry. No more than an hour, I would guess. He gave up on me and then he—he consummated the transaction.”

Von Helrung had arranged a hearty repast for my supper, and though I managed to force down but a few sips of soup and a crust of pumpernickel, I felt renewed. I could not recall the last time I had eaten. I was still dreadfully tired, desiring nothing more than another taste of the dreamless sleep I’d feasted on in the holding room on Mulberry Street. My desire was destined to be thwarted. The kitchen door flew open and Lilly Bates skipped into the room, her cheeks aglow with delight.

“There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you, William James Henry. How is your neck? Can I see it? Your Dr. Warthrop wouldn’t let me see it, even though I assured him I had seen worse things than the bite of a Mongolian Death Worm, much, much worse. Did it liquefy your flesh? That’s what happens, you know. Their spit melts your flesh like butter.”

I confessed I hadn’t examined the wound myself, an admission she found shocking. Why wouldn’t I want to look at it?

“Perhaps you’re ashamed to look at it, because you are a liar and that’s what happens to liars—liquefied flesh. Don’t you think that’s funny, Will? It’s so perfectly metaphorical.”

She was sitting quite close to me, resting her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in her hands, studying me with her disconcertingly wide sapphire-blue eyes.

“Muriel Chanler is dead,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“I know.”

“Did you see her? Uncle said you were there.”

“I did not.”

“Uncle said the police beat and tortured you.”

“They tried to make me confess—or, not confess, but say that the doctor did it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“It wasn’t the truth.”

She would not stop staring at me. I stirred my cold soup.

“They’re going to hunt him down now,” she said.

“Who is?”

“The monstrumologists. Well, not all of them; just the ones Uncle has picked specially for the job. They’re coming over tonight to draw up their battle plans. I told Mother I’m staying. She thinks it’s to keep you company. ‘That lonely little Henry boy,’ she calls you. ‘That poor little orphan stuck with that horrible man.’ ‘That horrible man’ is your doctor.”

For some reason the wound beneath the bandage began to itch terribly. It took everything in me not to dig into it with my nails.

“It’s not altogether a lie,” said Lilly. “For here I am—keeping you company! You’re not angry at me, are you? I didn’t mean for it to happen, you know. I’m not wicked. I honestly didn’t know until Adolphus told me they couldn’t be sexed. He killed it, you know. Not Adolphus—your doctor. Adolphus got it off you and Dr. Warthrop tore it to pieces with his bare hands—as if he were angry at it, as if it had attacked him. I don’t think that’s right, do you? I mean, it wasn’t the Death Worm’s fault. It was just being what it was.”

“What?” I asked. As usual with Lilly Bates, I was having some trouble keeping up.

“A Death Worm! All he had to do was put it back into its crate, but instead he killed it. It’s not like Dr. Chanler. They have to kill him, because if they don’t, he’ll just keep feeding. Uncle says there’s no prison on earth that can hold a Wendigo.”

“He’s not a Wendigo,” I countered, ever Warthrop’s loyal servant. “Wendigos aren’t real.”

“Tell that to Muriel Chanler.”

My cheeks burned. I had a sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to strike her.

“She never stopped loving him,” she went on. “That’s something you don’t understand, Will, because you are a boy. Dr. Chanler knew it and he couldn’t stand it, and so he went off to Canada, and I don’t think he ever really believed he was coming back. His heart was broken. The woman he loved had never stopped loving his best friend. Can you imagine anything more tragic than that? And then his best friend rescues him and brings him back to her, only now he’s not even human anymore—”

“Stop it!” I cried. “Please stop it!”

I pushed away from the table and stumbled toward the door. She followed, saying, “What’s the matter, Will? Where are you going?”

“Leave me alone!”

“Some apprentice monstrumologist you are!” she called after me. “What did you suppose it was all about when he accepted you, William James Henry? What did you suppose it was all about?”

I remained in the room beside the doctor’s, restlessly turning this way and that upon the bed, until the clock struck ten and the monstrumologists began to arrive. I heard their voices below, low-pitched and somber like mourners in a death house, and that made me angry, for them to behave as if the doctor were already lost. My distress motivated me to abandon my desperate need for rest. I peeked into his room on the way downstairs and found him fast asleep. I decided not to wake him. I would risk another encounter with Lilly and join their strategy session, if for no other reason than to represent the doctor. He would want to know what was being plotted in his absence.

I found them in the library—von Helrung, the diminutive Frenchman Damien Gravois, Dr. Pelt, and two other monstrumologists whom I had not met, whose names I came to learn were Torrance and Dobrogeanu. The library had been converted to their budding operation’s command center. A large map of the island had been plastered to one wall. Bright red pins dotted its surface, marking the places where Chanler’s victims had fallen; I counted eight in all, three more than I knew of. The beast had been busier than I’d realized. It will not stop hunting, von Helrung had said. It will kill and feed until someone kills it.

Beside the map were newspaper clippings with blaring headlines: MADMAN STALKS CITY. MASSIVE MANHUNT UNDERWAY FOR AMERICAN “RIPPER.” And this poignant one, from an early edition: POLICE DENY RUMORS OF MISSING WOMAN/WHERE IS MRS. JOHN CHANLER?

“Where is Warthrop?” asked Dr. Pelt. “We shouldn’t decide anything without him.”

“He rests from his ordeal at the hands of our esteemed Inspector Byrnes,” answered von Helrung. “May God in his mercy grant Pellinore succor from his woes—and may God in his divine justice send a plague upon the Metropolitan Police!”

“We can always apprise him of our plans later,” said Gravois. “Or Monsieur Henry, who lurks in the shadows over there by the door. Come, come. Veuillez entrer, Monsieur Henry. You may serve as scribe for our proceedings!”

Von Helrung thought it an excellent idea. He seated me at the table and procured some paper and a pen for me to record, in his words, the minutes of the first official inquiry into the species Lepto lurconis in the history of monstrumology.

“It is a seminal moment, mein Freund, Will. We are like the first explorers stepping onto the shores of a new continent. This shall ever be remembered as the hour when our science met the grandest mystery of all—the intersection of ignorance and knowledge, light and dark. Ah, if only Pellinore were well enough to be here!”

“If he were, I think he’d pop you in the nose for what you just said,” opined Pelt dryly.

“He can deny it for only so long,” huffed von Helrung with a wave of his pudgy hand. “For seven thousand years the wise believed the earth was flat, and men were murdered for claiming otherwise. Change is always resisted, even by—or especially by!—men of Pellinore’s caliber. It is the way of things.”

He clapped his hands and said, “So we begin, ja? Herr Doctor Pelt has read my paper, so he knows already much of what I am about to tell you. He will forgive me, I pray, for plowing familiar ground, but it must be broken, else no seed may germinate that will yield the fruit of success in this, our most grave undertaking.

“John Chanler is dead. What has arisen in his place—what animates his lifeless form—is a spirit older than the oldest bedrock. It has many names in many cultures. Wendigo or Outiko are just two of them; there are more—hundreds more. For the sake of clarity I shall refer to it simply as the beast, for that word describes its nature best. There is no humanity in the thing that was John Chanler.”

The monstrumologist Dobrogeanu raised his hand and said, “I would dispute that claim, Herr Doctor. While his actions have been abhorrent, there is a method to them, a diabolical method—to be sure, but certainly some humanity remains, if we include the darker angels of our nature. No beast plays pranks or acts out motives of jealousy and revenge. If so, then we all are beasts.”

“Some vestiges of his personality linger,” acknowledged von Helrung. “That is undeniable. But these we may think of as distant echoes of his evolutionary past. It is no more human than a display in Madame Tussauds museum. It is the hunger that drives it. The rest is like ripples upon the water or the aftershocks of an earthquake. You will note I do not refer to it as ‘John.’ I purposely do not, and I suggest you do not, for if we wish to destroy it, we must first destroy any impressions we have of its humanity. I could not exterminate the man—nor could any of us, I think—but I can—and I will, if God allows—destroy it. I will repeat, gentlemen: John Chanler is dead. It is the beast that remains.”

“I think we’re all agreed upon that goal, Dr. von Helrung,” said Torrance. He was the youngest of von Helrung’s recruits, possessing a powerful physique and a commanding baritone. “I am not altogether convinced that we are dealing with a creature of supernatural origin, but I concur that where the police have failed to capture him, it is our duty as Chanler’s friends and colleagues to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion.”

“I pray the police do not try to apprehend him, Dr. Torrance,” replied von Helrung. “For success in that regard would ultimately be a tragic failure. They do not understand that which they hunt. It cannot be captured, and it cannot be killed. Although I have told them how to destroy it, they do not listen.”

“Well, I’m listening,” said Pelt. “How do we destroy it?”

“Silver—by bullet or knife—to the heart. Only the heart! Then it must be cut from its chest and burned. The head we must remove and inter in running water. Though it is not absolutely required, the rest should be dismembered and scattered, a portion entrusted to each one of us, and none may tell the others where he has buried that portion.”

Pelt squinted at him dubiously. “You understand this is quite a mouthful to swallow, Dr. von Helrung.”

“Will Henry was there,” von Helrung replied. “He saw the Yellow Eye. Did you not, Will?”

All eyes turned to me. I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair.

“What did you see?” demanded Gravois.

It was the same question Byrnes had asked. I had an answer, but it was no answer, really. I cleared my throat.

Torrance snorted. “Well, I might still go along with it—sort of like hedging a bet—though we could be prosecuted for desecrating a corpse.”

“Desecration!” cried Gravois. “Gentlemen, we are conspiring tonight to commit murder.”

“No, no!” von Helrung insisted heatedly. “No, not murder, Damien. It is an act of mercy.”

“Only if you’re right, Abram,” said Dobrogeanu. He was von Helrung’s age, but, like the stocky Austrian, in excellent physical condition for a man of advanced years. “If you’re not, may God grant us more mercy than we show John!”

“Assuming we are even given an opportunity,” put in Torrance. “Murder or mercy killing—it’s an interesting philosophical argument but wholly academic if we can’t find him—Sorry, it.”

“Yes,” agreed Dr. Pelt. He nodded to the clippings on the wall. “The entire city has been alerted—I won’t say ‘panicked.’ Every able-bodied man on the force is searching every back alleyway and beating down every door. Four million pairs of eyes are looking for it. Where do you suggest we direct ours?”

“Forgive me, dear Dr. Pelt, but you forget who you are,” returned von Helrung. “We shall succeed where others fail because we are monstrumologists. We have devoted our lives to the study and eradication of aberrant species such as Lepto lurconis. Where do we look? Where do we begin? We begin with what it is to discern where it might be. So the question is not where is it, but what is it. And what is it?”

He paused, and then answered his own question. “It is a predator. More ruthless than any in our catalogue, and far more cunning. It is wounded in a way, in that it perpetually lingers on the edge of starvation, which forces it to keep moving in search of its prey. Thus the hunger that drives it is also its greatest weakness. The hunger governs everything it does. And like any other predator, it will go where its victims are most plentiful and most vulnerable. It will choose to attack those the herd is willing to sacrifice. The weak. The unprotected. The easily discarded.”

He pointed out the locations of the pins on the map.

“Disregard for the moment the hospital and the Chanler residence, which are merely aberrations of the more general pattern. Where do we have verified victims of our quarry?”

His colleagues crowded around the map.

“Five Points,” said Dobrogeanu, squinting through his pince-nez.

“Hell’s Kitchen,” read Torrance. “Blindman’s Alley. Bandit’s Roost.”

“The slums,” Dr. Pelt said. “The tenement neighborhoods.”

Von Helrung was nodding. “I fear so. Thousands upon thousands crammed twelve to a room, the poorest of the poor, most of them recent immigrants who do not speak the language and who are distrustful of the police. And who, in turn, are despised even as they are exploited by the so-called genteel class. What does it matter if one or a hundred go missing or are found mutilated beyond recognition? There are so many, and so many thousands more arrive every day from every corner of the civilized world.”

He had a sickened look on his florid face. “It is the perfect hunting ground.”

“And quite large,” said Dobrogeanu. “Even for five monstrumologists—six, counting Pellinore—two of which are well past their prime, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Abram. If this indeed is its chosen hunting ground, how do you propose we box in our prey?”

“We can’t. But we can enlist the aid of someone who knows those grounds better than anyone else on this island. I have taken the liberty of inviting him to join us in our expedition—”

He was interrupted by the ringing of the front bell. Von Helrung glanced at his pocket watch. “Ah, and speak of the devil—right on time! Will, be a dear and escort Mr. Jacob Riis into our assemblage.”