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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
  7. •   •   •
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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
  22. •   •   •
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  26. BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
  27. •   •   •
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  29. I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
  30. •   •   •
  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
  57. •   •   •
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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
  69. •   •   •
  70. •   •   •
  71. Nance O’Neil
  72. •   •   •
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  84. Emma L. Borden
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  88. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  89. •   •   •
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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
  103. •   •   •
  104. Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
  105. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  106. •   •   •
  107. Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
  108. •   •   •
  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.
  132. •   •   •
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  137. Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
  138. •   •   •
  139. Emma L. Borden
  140. •   •   •
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  144. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  150. Emma L. Borden
  151. •   •   •
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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
  206. •   •   •

“She’s in the basement. Oh God,” she continued.

“I thought you’d barred it.”

“I did.”

I believed her, but the door was open now—kicked inward, or bashed that way. A great dent sank the middle of it, and the hinges were crooked, barely clutching the frame. “Did she do that?” I asked.

“She must have. But I didn’t see. I only heard.”

“Where’s Emma?”

“I don’t know,” she said offhandedly, and that worried me—or it would have, if I had any further room for worry. If Lizzie wasn’t concerned, I couldn’t afford to be concerned, either. “Here, down here, you see?”

And I did see.

The laboratory was lit up, not quite bright but at least some of the lights were burning, unlike the upstairs. The illumination had a sickly, greenish glow to it—one I’d never seen before, or had never noticed, at any rate. Was it ordinary for gaslights to cast such a shade? Probably not. Probably nothing was ordinary anymore, and this was the veritable nexus for all the extraordinary things for miles and miles around.

The walls were wet; rivulets of water cascaded here and there, pooling on the floor and draining through the boards. The water smelled like brine and death, like low tide after some great mammal has beached itself and expired. Just as Ebenezer Hamilton had told me.

All the tables were overturned, which inexplicably annoyed me; all the floorboards at one side of the room had been lifted up—for Nance had been searching for something again, but not the stones. Not this time.

She stood barefoot and naked, staring down into a hole.

Watery light washed over her, and her skin looked like the hide of a dolphin, slick and neither dark nor pale, but muted. She was the wrong color. Her body was not quite the wrong shape, but there was something wrong about it all the same. She didn’t turn to look at me, and she didn’t respond when Lizzie called her name.

She didn’t move at all except to wiggle her toes at the edge of that precipice, where I realized with a sudden jolt of horror that the cooker was waiting for her.

Its lid was open. Its dials and buttons were alight, and its contents hummed and smelled terrible. Of course they did. The cooker was ready to cook. It’d been primed and warmed, full of lye and whatever else might turn flesh and bone into syrup, and Nance was staring down into it, as if she were prepared to make a swan dive into that shallow contraption.

“Nance,” I tried.

She didn’t answer me, any more than she’d answered her lover.