The Isle of Blood

“Oh, no,” he said. “It is an unfortunate habit of mine to say things that probably shouldn’t be said. Little good can come of this, Will Henry; I have known it for quite some time. What I do will kill me one day, and you will be abandoned again. Or worse, what I love will kill—”

His gaze fell to my left hand, and then he continued. “I am a philosopher in the natural sciences. Matters of the heart I leave to the poets, but it has occurred to me, as a failed poet myself, that the cruelest aspect of love is its inviolable integrity. We do not choose to love—or I should say, we cannot choose not to love. Do you understand?”

He leaned very close to me, and my world became the dark fire burning in his eyes. I was overcome with dizziness, as if I teetered on the very edge of a lightless abyss.

“I shall put it this way,” he said. “If we monstrumologists were serious at all about our vocation, we would give up the study of biological aberrations to concentrate on the most terrifying monster of all.”

In my dream I am standing before the Locked Room in the Monstrumarium with Adolphus Ainesworth, and he is fumbling with his keys.

The doctor said you’d want to see this.

But I’m not allowed.

The doctor said.

He unlocks the door, and I follow him inside.

Now, let’s see… Where did I put it? Ah, yes. Here it is!

He’s pulling a container the size of a shoe box from its niche, setting it upon a table.

Go on, open it! He wanted you to see.

My fingers are trembling. The lid doesn’t want to come off. Is the box quivering, or is it my hand?

I can’t open it.

There is something in the box. It is alive. It vibrates against my fingers.

Thickheaded boy! You can’t open it because you’re asleep!You want to know what’s in the box, you have to wake up. Wake up, Will Henry, wake up!

I did as he commanded, breaking the surface between my dream and the dark room with a startled cry, my heart racing in panic; for a moment I could not remember where I was—could not remember who I was… until a voice beside the bed reminded me.

“Will Henry.”

“Dr. Warthrop?”

“You were dreaming, I think.”

“Yes… I was.”

The light in the hall was on; it was the only light. It streamed across the floor and up the wall beside the bed. The monstrumologist stood on the side opposite the light.

“What was your dream?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I—I don’t remember.”

“‘Between the sleeping and the waking, it is there.… Between the rising and resting, it is there.… It is always there.’”

There was the bar of light on the floor and the column of light on the wall, but the bar and the column bled their substance into the room; I could see his face dimly, but I could not read his eyes.

“Is that from a poem?” I asked.

“From a very anemic attempt at one, yes.”

“You wrote it, didn’t you?”

His hand rose, fell. “How is your hand?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Will Henry,” he gently chided.

“Sometimes it throbs a little.”

“You must hold it above your heart.”

I tried it. “Yes, sir. It does help. Thank you.”

“Do you still feel it? As if the finger were still there?”

“Sometimes.”

“I had no choice.”

“I know.”

“The risk was… unacceptable.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. More light upon his face, nothing more illuminated. Why had he been standing in the dark, watching me?

“You do not know this, of course. But afterward I took the rope, and I was going to tie you up—only as a precaution…”

I opened my mouth to say, I know. I saw you. But he held up his finger to stop me.

“I couldn’t do it. It was the wise thing to do, but I couldn’t do it.”

He looked away; he would not look at me.

“But I was very tired. I had not slept in… how long? I didn’t know. I was afraid I would fall asleep and you might… slip away. So I tied the other end of the rope to my arm. I bound you to me, Will Henry. As a precaution; it seemed the prudent thing to do.”

He was flexing his long fingers, curling them into fists, uncurling them. Fist. Open hand. Fist. Open hand.

“But it wasn’t. It was absolutely the worst thing to do. Perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever done. For if you did slip away, you would have dragged me into the abyss with you.”

Fist. Open hand. Fist.

“I may not have the poet’s gift for words, Will Henry, but I do have his love of irony. Until that night our roles had been reversed. Until that night it had not been me who’d been bound and by virtue of those bindings been in danger of being dragged into the abyss.”

He reached down and slowly unwound the wrappings on my wounded hand. My skin tingled; the air seemed very cold against the exposed flesh.

“Make a fist,” he said.

I complied, though my fingers were very stiff; the muscles along the back of my hand seemed to groan in protest.