The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist, Book 2)

it was just another bit of his gibberish. Your father understood, though, and paid the highest price for his gift. You see, Will Henry, it is not what we give but what we are willing to give. What we can give.

“You abandoned that child in the hall. The gift was within your power, and you withheld your hand. You cannot take that back now, any more than your father can take back his gift to me. But I am not so helpless. I have a choice still—to answer John’s question.”

He drew close to me. “I have lost—everything. John. Muriel. Even my work, the one thing that has given me solace through the lonely years—even that I have lost. You are all that’s left for me, Will Henry, and I fear I will lose you, too.”

“I’ll never leave you, sir,” I said. And I believed it. “Never.”

“You do not understand. Tell me again why you should have saved that child in the hallway.”

“Because I could have.”

He nodded. “And I will save you, Will Henry. Because I can. That is the answer to John’s question.”

I understood then. I backed away on unsteady legs. The room began to spin around me.

“You’re sending me away,” I said.

“You nearly died,” he reminded me. “Three times by my count. If you remain with me, eventually your luck will run out, just like your father’s did. I cannot allow that to happen.”

“No!” I shouted. My voice shook with rage. “That isn’t why you’re doing it. You’re sending me away because I killed him!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, Will Henry,” he cautioned in a level voice.

“You’re angry and you want to punish me for it! For saving your life! I saved your life!” I could hardly contain my fury. “She was right about you—they were both right! You’re a terrible man. You’re nothing but a . . . You’re full of nothing but yourself, and you don’t know anything! You don’t know anything about . . . about anything!”

“I know this,” he roared back at me, no longer able to contain his temper. “She would be alive now if not for me. The gift was mine to give, and I withheld it—I withheld it!” His face was contorted with self-loathing. He struck his breast like a penitent before the sacrificial altar. “I allowed her to go home—when I knew, I knew she was in danger. I turned away just as you turned away, Will Henry, and what happened? Tell me what happens when we turn away!”

He fell backward onto the sofa, the place where he had tasted, for the briefest of moments, the love he had denied himself by that plunge into the Danube years before.

“Oh, Will Henry,” he cried. “Aren’t we the pitiful pair? What did Fiddler say? ‘What he loves does not know him, and what he knows cannot love.’ He was talking about you, but he might as well have been talking about both of us.” He raised his eyes to me. He seemed so lost, so hopelessly bereft that I stepped toward him in spite of myself.

“Don’t send me away, sir. Please.”

He raised his hand. He let it fall. “Life is,” he murmured. “John filled in that blank, didn’t he? John gave his answer—but is it the answer, Will Henry? Meister Abram claims we are more than what’s reflected in the Yellow Eye, but are we? I carried him the entire way—we almost died, you and I, to bring him out of the wilderness—so he might kill the only woman I have ever loved.”

I sat beside him. “That isn’t why you brought him out.”

He gave a little wave of his hand, dismissing my effort to comfort him. “And the baby died. That isn’t the reason you turned aside. My question remains, Will Henry. Is John’s answer the answer?”

I shook my head. I don’t think he expected me to decipher a riddle that had plagued humankind from its infancy. I am not sure to this day what he expected of me.

Or what I expected of him. We were indeed a pitiful pair, the monstrumologist and I, bound to each other in ways inexplicable to both of us. In the Monstrumarium the beast had forced me to turn and behold “the true face” of love. But love has more than one face, and the Yellow Eye is not the only eye. There can be no desolation without abundance. And the voice of the beast is not the only voice that rides upon the high wind. It was there in every weary step the doctor took in the wilderness. It was there the night he gathered me into his arms to keep me from freezing to death. It was there in Muriel’s eyes the night their shadows met and became one. It is always there, like the hunger that can’t be satisfied, though the tiniest sip is more satisfying than the most sumptuous of feasts.

I reached across the space that separated us—no farther than a foot and wider than the universe—and gathered the monstrumologist’s hand into mine.

EPILOGUE

November 2009

None of the famous personages mentioned in the journals (Thomas Edison, Algernon Blackwood, Bram Stoker, Henry Irving, John Pemberton, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, Thomas Byrnes, and Jacob Riis) ever wrote or spoke publicly of anyone named Pellinore Warthrop or anything remotely resembling the science of monstrumology. This fact, of course, doesn’t prove that these real people from the era did not know Warthrop; however, if they did, it is very odd that they never mentioned him or his esoteric “philosophy.” For example, nowhere have I found any indication that Stoker based his Van Helsing character upon a “real” doctor named von Helrung.

It was Blackwood’s story, published in 1910, that put the Wendigo on the map and established Blackwood as a popular writer of the horror genre. I have found no evidence that the story was inspired or in any way derived from Will Henry’s account in the fourth folio, but that interpretation is clearly intended, based on the meeting at the Zeno Club, which I could find no record of having existed either.

A careful search of newspaper archives yielded nothing from the time period beyond the articles reproduced at the beginning of this book. I was unable to find any mention, under Blackwood’s byline or anyone else’s, of the murders described in the sixth folio. No mention of the name Chanler and no stories about an American Ripper running amok on the streets of New York. This part of Will Henry’s story—the scene where he mentions the newspaper clippings in the von Helrung library—is undeniably fictional. A scandal involving a prominent New York family certainly would have been covered by the newspapers of the day. And if that isn’t true, the entire record must be called into question . . . but did I ever really have any doubt the journals were a work of fiction?

Frustrated in my efforts to corroborate their contents, I turned to the journals themselves. I contacted an expert in handwriting analysis based in Gainesville at the University of Florida, who was kind enough to take a look at the material. His report contained the following observations:

Author has received formal schooling, at least through secondary schools, perhaps some college . . .

Author is extremely meticulous, with anal-retentive tendencies. Would probably be extremely neat in appearance, fastidious to a fault, particular about the way he looks and is perceived by others . . .

Author may be suffering from certain personality disorders, but it is highly doubtful, given the coherence of the text, that he is afflicted with schizophrenia or any other serious mental disease. Unlikely he was delusional.

Author loves habit, routine, predictability. Would be extremely uncomfortable in alien surroundings. Shy, introverted, a “feeler and thinker,” not a “doer.”

The report went on to speculate that Will Henry suffered from arthritis, may have been bipolar, and may have been alone or without companionship for long periods of time. The part about his being meticulous in his appearance I found particularly poignant, given his condition when he was discovered in the drainage ditch, covered in filth, dressed in ratty clothes, with a matted beard and long, knotted hair. What had happened to bring a man like him to that point? The other striking thing about the report, to my mind, was the assertion that it was “unlikely he was delusional.”

Wendigos. Mongolian Death Worms. An organism that secretes some kind of enzyme that gives its host