The Isle of Blood

I gnawed on my bottom lip. The man was shivering uncontrollably, teeth literally chattering in his head. What should I do? The doctor hadn’t forbid covering him, but I was sure if he’d wanted him covered he would have done it himself. It would clearly ease his suffering, if only by a little—and wasn’t that my duty, my simple human obligation?

I laid down the gun and pulled the coverlet from the closet. As I bent to spread it over his quivering form, I caught a whiff of a familiar odor, one that I had smelled many times before—the cloyingly sweet smell of putrefying flesh.

I raised my head, bringing my eyes to the level of his right hand, and saw that the skin had gone from a rosy red to a light gray. It seemed almost translucent. I imagined I could see right down to his bones.

The hand that had touched it, the thing that Warthrop had called beautiful, was beginning to decompose.

“I am dying.”

I swallowed hard and said nothing.

“Squeezed, that’s how I feel. Like a giant fist squeezing me, every inch, down to my vry bones.”

“The doctor will do everything he can,” I promised him.

“I don’t want to die. Please. Please don’t let me die.”

His rotting fingers clawed uselessly at the empty air.

He slipped into semiconsciousness—not awake, not quite asleep.

Dawn came. The doctor did not come with it. He didn’t appear until an hour later. I jumped in my chair when the door opened; I was exhausted, my nerves shot.

“Why did you cover him?” he demanded.

“I didn’t touch him. He was cold,” I added defensively.

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 pwdre ser is unknown. How long has he been out?”

“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 the most—important discoveries in the history of biology—aberrant or otherwise. We must be meticulous. We must not allow our personal failures or biases to compromise our observations.… When did this grayish discoloration begin to manifest itself?”

“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. “M-y-o

, Will Henry, not m-i-o.… Myositis is the inflammation you see here in the skeletal, or voluntary, muscles. At this rate, in a few hours our Mr. Kendall will begin to resemble a circus strong man—a skinless one, I should say.”

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… becoming. And it’s happening faster than I first assumed.”

“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?”