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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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“Symptoms . . . ,” the doctor mused. “Yes. We may be thinking about this the wrong way, or . . . or I don’t know if there’s a right way, but we ought to think about it another way.”

My sister settled into the settee at the far end from Doctor Seabury. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I’ve tried everything, but all this time I’ve been fighting blind. The creatures and the murders—we can think of them as symptoms, pieces of a bigger whole, but at the moment I’ll be damned if I can figure out what that bigger whole might look like.”

Seabury held out his hands, using them to gesture while he talked—explaining on top of his explanations. He had an idea, and he was getting excited.

“Here at Maplecroft, you’ve been treating all this as if it were supernatural—and reasonably enough, might I add. There’s nothing natural about what’s occurring, but let us approach it as science. Or more particularly, let us call it medicine,” he said with emphasis. “If we were to examine this town as if it had contracted an illness, where would we begin? How would the first symptoms present themselves?”

Lizzie opened her eyes, and at first she stared off into the distance. Then she said, “Changes in behavior. Of ordinary people, I mean.”

“All right,” he said with something perilously akin to cheer. “One moment, let me find my way to some paper and a pencil . . .” And when these things were acquired, he used the coffee table for a writing desk. “Yes. So. Changes. Can you be more precise? I assume you didn’t wake up one morning and find yourself in need of an axe.”

Not his most delicate handling of a subject, but she didn’t seem to take it amiss. She only answered, “Sleeping more.”

“Sensitivity to light,” I added, recalling a day when our father screamed at me to close the curtains, for the sunlight was killing him. His wife had done similar, and by the time the end came ’round, we were all living in the dark.

He echoed me as he composed. Then he said, “Now, not everyone will have all these exact same symptoms. Nance did not, is that correct? She simply fell into the catatonic state?”

“She had . . . some symptoms,” Lizzie qualified. “She became obsessed with the basement, obsessed to distraction. She’d stare at the door so long, so hard, that it was as if she’d become a somnambulist overnight.”

“Father had taken to sleepwalking, too,” I pointed out. “I caught him once, in the middle of the night. I thought he was planning to jump out a window, and crawl for the ocean.” That might have been a strange way to phrase it, but it’s what sprang to mind.

“Somnambulism.” He added that to the list.