Warthrop peeled off the coverlet and let it drop to the floor.
“It was my mother’s. Now I shall have to burn it.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
He waved my apology away. “As a precaution—the precise toxicity of
“About an hour and a half.”
“‘About’? Haven’t you been keeping notes?”
“I—I didn’t have anything to write with, sir.”
“Will Henry, I thought I had impressed upon you the urgency of this case, one of the most—if not
“Shortly after you went downstairs,” I answered, my face hot with shame. I had not noted the hour. “It started with his hand—”
“Which hand?”
“His right hand, sir.”
“Hmmm. Stands to reason. It’s spreading rapidly, then.”
It had, I told him. A slaty tide swamping hands, then arms, then torso, groin, legs, feet. Kendall’s face was a paper-thin gray mask stretched drum-skin tight over protruding bone.
“What has he reported?”
“He said he’s going to have you arrested and hanged.”
Warthrop sighed loudly. “About his symptoms, Will Henry. His symptoms.”
He was bending over the bed, listening to Kendall’s heart through his stethoscope.
“He said he was cold and that it felt like a giant fist was squeezing him.”
The doctor told me to bring over the lamp. With great care he slowly removed the cloth covering Kendalleyes and peeled up one eyelid. The orb jittered in its socket as if maddened by the onslaught of light.
“The pupil is grossly dilated. The iris has completely disappeared,” he observed.
He dropped his gloved fingers to Kendall’s cheek and pressed gently. The skin ripped apart at his touch, exposing the dark gray bone beneath. A viscous mixture of pus and blood dribbled from the fissure. The noxious stench of decay wafted around our heads.
“Both dermal and epidermal layers are in active decay, the tissue having begun to liquefy.… Early stages of imperfect osteogenesis noted in the zygomatic bone,” Warthrop breathed. “Forming non-arthric osteophytic structures…”
He ran his hands over the rest of the face, over the arms, the chest and abdomen, down the legs. He had learned his lesson; he did not press hard. His touch was whisper-soft.
“Additional osteophytic growths noted in the elbows, wrists, knuckles, knees, hips.… We’ll need to take some measurements of these, Will Henry.… Acute myositis throughout.…” He glanced down at my notes. “
He peered at Kendall’s right hand, then the left.
“Note the abnormal thickness and dark yellow color of the nails,” he said. He tapped one with his own gloved fingernail. “As hard as steel! The condition is called onychauxis.” Taking pity on me, he spelled it out.
He looked over at me, eyes shining with that unnerving backlit glow.
“A precise parallel to the stories in the literature, Will Henry,” he whispered. “He is…
“And you don’t think a hospital…”
“Even if I did think it, the nearest hospital is in Boston. It would be over before we got there.”
“He’s dying?”
Warthrop shook his head. What did that mean? Did it mean Kendall was dying? Or did it mean the monstrumolo-gist did not know for certain?
“Is there a cure for it?” I asked.
“Not according to my sources, which are not very reliable. There is, of course, the singular cure that ends all ailments.”
Only a monstrumologist, I thought, would characterize death as a cure for anything. I watched him pick up the syringe loaded with morphine and roll it back and forth in his open palm. It would ease the poor soul’s suffering; it might give him the smallest measure of peace. But the drug also might interfere with the progress of Kendall’s
It would, in short, desecrate the temple.
Without comment the monstrumologist laid down the syringe. He seemed to tower ten feet above the writhing form in the bed, and his shadow fell hard upon that pile of bones wrapped loosely in its sack of gossamer skin.
