The Curse of the Wendigo

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!”

He snorted and tossed the letter upon the floor. I snatched up the letter and, forgotten for a moment in the heat of their tête-à-tête, read it through.

Dear Missus John,

You forgive my English, its not goodly done. Got back to RP this morning came straightaway to post this. There is no good way to say this, I am sorry. Mister John—he gone. It called to him and the thing done carried him off. I tell Jack Fiddler and he will keep the lookout for him but its got him and even ol Jack Fiddler cant get him back now. I told him not to go, but it called him night and day, so’s he went. Mister John he rides the high wind now and the Mossmouth not going to let him go. I’m sorry, missus.

P. Larose

“Will Henry,” the doctor snapped. “What are you doing? Give me that!” He snatched the letter from my hand. “Who is Larose?” he asked Mrs. Chanler.

“Pierre Larose—John’s guide.”

“And this Jack Fiddler he mentions?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never heard the name before.”

“‘He rides the high wind now,’” the doctor read, “‘and the Mossmouth not going to let him go.’ I suppose not!” He laughed humorlessly. “I assume you’ve notified the proper authorities.”

“Yes, of course. The search party returned to Rat Portage two days ago. . . .” She shook her head, unable to go on.

“Then I fail to see how I can help,” said Warthrop. “Except to state my opinion that this is no matter for monstrumology. Whatever bore your husband away on the ‘high wind’ was no ‘Mossmouth,’ though I find the imagery oddly compelling. I’d never heard the sobriquet applied to a Lepto lurconis. It must be an invention of the good Monsieur Larose and not, I suspect, the only one. It would not be the first time a death in the wilderness has been attributed to the Wendigo.”

“You think he’s lying?”

“I think he is being false—intentionally or not, I cannot say. Lepto lurconis is a myth, Muriel, no more real than the tooth fairy—which is the strangest aspect of this whole affair. Why was John searching for something that does not exist?”

“He was . . . encouraged to go.”

“Ah.” The monstrumologist was nodding. “It was von Helrung, wasn’t it? Von Helrung told him to go—”

“He suggested it.”

“And being the good little lapdog that he is, John went.”

She stiffened. “I am wasting my time, aren’t I?” she asked.

“That is the issue, Muriel. How long has he been missing?”

“Almost three months.”

“Then, yes, you are wasting your time here. There is nothing I can do for you—or for John. Your husband is dead.”

Though tears shone in her eyes, she did not break. Though every fiber of her being bespoke her desperation, she held firm in the face of his bald assertion. Men might be the stronger sex, but women are made of much sterner stuff!

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Your faith is misplaced.”

“No, Pellinore, not my faith. My hope that the one man I thought I could turn to . . . whom John could turn to—”

Warthrop nodded. He turned his gaze from her lovely upturned face and spoke in that dry, lecturing manner I had often heard. “Once, in the Andes, at base camp on the slopes of Mount Chimborazo, I came face-to-face with a mature male Astomi, a creature with the disconcerting ability to scream at decibel levels loud enough to shatter the eardrum; I have seen men’s brains literally leaking from their ears after an encounter with one. He had stumbled upon our camp in the dead of night and was as surprised as I at our meeting. For a moment we just stared at each other, our faces no more than a foot apart. I had my revolver; he had his mouth; and at any time we both had the opportunity to use them. We held this way for several tense minutes, until finally I said to him, ‘Well, my friend, I will agree to hold my fire if you will agree to hold your tongue!’”

The lesson of this impromptu parable was not lost on her. She nodded slowly, set down her cup, and rose from the chair. Though she made no move toward either of us, the monstrumologist and I drew back. There is beauty that soothes like the warm kiss of the spring sun upon the cheek, and then there is beauty that terrifies, like the cry of Ozymandias, inviting despair.

“I am a fool,” she said. “You will never change.”

“If that was your hope, then, yes, you are quite foolish.”

“I am not the only one. I pity you, Pellinore Warthrop. Do you know that? I pity you. The most intelligent man I have ever met, and also the most vain and vindictive. You have always been a little in love with death. That’s the surprising thing. I should think you’d leap at the chance to see it again face-to-face. It’s the only reason you chose your repulsive ‘profession.’”

She whirled away and hurried from the room, a hand pressed against her mouth as if to stop up what else might come out.

I glanced at the doctor, but he had turned away; his face was half in shadow, half in light. I hurried after Muriel Chanler and helped her with her wrap. A gust of wind blew through the door when I opened it, and rain spattered and popped upon the vestibule floor. At the curb, through the gray curtain of the storm, I could see the shining black hansom, the driver hunched in his seat, the withers of the great dray horse glittering with the watery sheen.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Will,” she said before she stepped out. A hand rested briefly upon my shoulder. “I will pray for you.”

In the parlor the doctor had not moved, nor did he upon my return. I stood for several awful moments in silence, not knowing what to say.

“Yes?” he said softly.

“Mrs. Chanler has left, sir.”

He made no reply. He remained still. I picked up the tray, went back to the kitchen, washed up the china, and placed it in the rack to dry. When I returned, the doctor still had not moved an inch. I’d seen it dozens of times before: Warthrop’s reticence solidified in direct proportion to the intensity of his feelings. The more powerful the emotion, the less he revealed. His face was as tranquil—and blank—as a death mask.

“Yes? What is it now, Will Henry?”

“Would you like something for dinner, sir?”

He made no reply. He remained where he was, and I remained where I was.

“What are you doing now?” he asked.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Forgive me, but isn’t that something you could do practically anywhere?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll . . . I will do that, sir.”

“What? What will you do?”

“Nothing . . . I will do nothing somewhere else.”