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Back Maplecroft
Chapters (206)
  1. Praise for Maplecroft
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. THESE ARE THE THINGS AN EARTHQUAKE BRINGS
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  12. A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
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  20. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
  21. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  26. BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
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  29. I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
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  31. Nance O’Neil
  32. THIS KNOT I KNIT, THIS KNOT I TIE
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  37. AND IF YOU HAVE A HORSE WITH ONE WHITE LEG . . .
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  43. THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE
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  46. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  53. BUT NETTLE SHANT HAVE NOTHING
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  55. CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW
  56. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
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  62. HAPPY IS THE CORPSE THAT THE RAIN SHINES ON
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  67. A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
  68. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  71. Nance O’Neil
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  84. Emma L. Borden
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  88. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  91. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  93. RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?
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  101. Aaron B. Stewart, Fire Chief, Farthington, Mass.
  102. Emma L. Borden
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  104. Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
  105. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  107. Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
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  109. DEPART, ALL ANIMALS WITHOUT BONES
  110. Emma L. Borden
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  115. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  119. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  130. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  131. Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
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  137. Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
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  139. Emma L. Borden
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  144. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  150. Emma L. Borden
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  153. FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
  154. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  165. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  176. Emma L. Borden
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  186. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  197. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  205. Inspector Simon Wolf
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“And I don’t know!” I put my face in my hands, but when I covered my eyes the world still wavered, as if I were drunk. I changed my mind and ran my fingers through my night-tousled, unchecked hair instead. “She’s on the floor in the kitchen, and she . . . she isn’t responding,” I said, trying to force myself to treat this like a scientist, as if this must be new data. But it wasn’t new data. It was my lover, and she wasn’t herself right now. For all I knew, she might never be herself again—she could twist and warp and transform into one of the monsters with the glass-needle teeth, and then I’d have to kill her, and put her body into the cooker, and pretend that the juices and stench that remained were never the soft flesh and warm hair of the woman I’d loved.

“Go get Seabury,” she said, and even through the effort of speaking, and the exhaustion in her voice, I heard impatience and anger. “We need him. You’re bleeding.”

“He won’t know what to do any better than we do,” I argued.

“You don’t have any better ideas, do you?”

I shook my head. “I’ll . . . I’ll send for him.”

“Go get him yourself.”

“And leave her here? Alone in the house with you? When we don’t know what she’ll do . . . or what she’ll be . . . when she comes around again?” I didn’t say the rest of what I feared, that of course, she might never come around again at all—and I didn’t know if that’d be worse. I was too afraid of too many things at once. They all swirled together fighting for dominance. None of them won. Or they all did, however you chose to look at it.

“All right, then. Jacob, next door.”

“Right,” I said, perking up at the scent of a plan. “I’ll go get him, right now. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

The neighbor’s boy was ten years old and constantly offering to do odd jobs for money. It was late, and he’d be in bed—but a light still burned in a window at the big white house next door to ours, and I had no qualms at all about declaring an emergency. I said it was my sister, and we needed the doctor, but I couldn’t leave her. Emma’s condition was well-known, and it was the easiest, nearest lie I could offer and expect to receive any help.

I offered his parents a fistful of coins, probably three or four times what he would’ve asked, even at that hour. The boy hopped on a horse, and was gone.