He bit the juicy stalk as Phillip Holmes groaned and reached out for the bag of food. The Quarries had been left tied to their carrying poles some 20 feet away, their exhausted forms obscured by the ferns.
“He had witnesses who were easily discounted—so terrible and uncanny were the tales they told. It was hysteria,” the scientist said, turning to the bag for strips of meat he handed out. “For such a man to err so profoundly and make a spectacle of it. A respected intellect easily considered to be arrogant by his foresight… And yes, he had made enemies with his wit. For years he dominated several scientific disciplines…and then this stumble and fall.” Van Resen slumped. “His friends looked on helplessly—while his foes sharpened their knives.”
“What of him?” Phillip Holmes snapped with a mouthful of meat. “Like all your stories they offer little help or hope.”
Van Resen regarded the younger man solemnly.
“He was mad, then,” Miss James said sadly.
“The doctor had always been flamboyant, unhinged, some whispered in their sleeves, so how could anyone believe his remarkable claims?” Van Resen’s face had turned a purply color. “But I had to know the truth. Otherwise I could not have participated in the subtle shunning in his public life, or join with my brother scientists to ridicule him and defile his career.” Van Resen gasped in a breath. “Of course, I studied his notes and maps, and now this moringa grove that contained the family crest from the doctor’s story. What I thought was proof of his madness it seems was the very proof he had offered to show himself quite sane.”
“From what you said before—hobgoblins—he was not of sound mind,” Virginia said.
“He was an old rascal fond of black humor. A man who claimed to have a completely open mind.” Van Resen laughed. “When his report surfaced—and it was circulated among his peers—I thought the poor old fellow had slipped a little in his dotage—for old he was. Or I imagined he had accidentally released some work of supernatural fiction, a recounted journey he claimed to have taken into Eastern Europe. There was a castle, and ghosts—and worse.” He looked at his companions with a half smile. “I believe that most who read it thought the same, but now I can see the old boy’s game. He took a foolish risk to honor his open mind allowing each of us to decide upon our own, to gauge if it was madness or a new science unfolding.” Tears suddenly burst from the scientist’s eyes. “But we were not as brave as he...”
He opened his sweat-stained coat to reveal the spine of the book he had unearthed.
“He was batty—and now you’re stark raving!” Holmes said weakly, munching another strip of meat.
Miss James frowned at the Englishman.
“In the fading light at the eave of the moringa grove I flipped through this book,” the scientist said, shifting the garment closed to hide the tome. “Many marks abound within, with notes jotted in various languages, some of which I know—yet, I have not had more than a glimpse at their meaning. Other things are there, emblems and names unrecognizable to any but an expert in Wallachian history, and only through my past association with this discredited doctor had I any hope to know them.” He paused to think.
“What is in the book?” Virginia asked, with bound hands crossed over her throat.
“It is a guide written in the language from the journal we found in the yurt, though this is unfathomably older, and there are notes in the margin in Greek and Latin that given time, I could... But there are illustrations that taught me more. The book reminds me of medical dictionaries used at universities and teaching hospitals—but where those offer health and care, this book showed various methods for handling the dead.”
“The dead?” Phillip Holmes blurted, swatting insects away. “Then it is a medical dictionary you describe.”
“Dead, I said, corpses, I meant,” Van Resen explained. “For no living thing could be in the variously disassembled states depicted.”
He hesitated then, unwilling to describe to Miss James the grotesque extremes to which the illustrator had gone. There were ink drawings of decapitated victims—with detailed instructions for reattaching their heads! Likewise, there were diagrams and instructions for grafting limbs and replacing internal organs.
“What have these things to do with Gazda?” Miss James asked breathlessly, glancing over at their captors.
The scientist could not tell her. Not with death their likely destination.
Why burden her with the links he had found between the ape-man, the discredited doctor’s notes, his nosferatu, the yurt and its former occupant? The truth was indisputable.
And it was terrifying for he had found a well-used page marked by greasy fingerprints that detailed strange procedures centering around a container that was illustrated there and the exact replica of the buried and damaged box in which he’d found the book!
“When I have finished formulating my theory I will say more,” he answered, remembering Gazda’s leave-taking, how he and Miss James had looked like lovers where they stood in the clearing—their eyes locked and spirits connected. How long had they been alone in the jungle?
He had to be cautious about divulging his theories for he remembered his colleague’s claims. The fellow had treated another victim of the insidious illness, and with hypnosis exposed a psychic connection between the woman and its cause.
“We must conserve our energy,” he said, with a careworn smile before falling back in the mud.
Miss James seemed almost pleased with the reprieve. She could not bear to hear any more of the scientist’s incessant theorizing.
CHAPTER 32 – A Mother’s Vigil
Many torturous miles from them, a fuming huntress clung to a tree, furious with her ape-man friend. Harkon was frustrated that Gazda was taking so long at his spying because from her perch she had seen much of the revelry around the great fire that burned at the narrow
