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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
  138. •   •   •
  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
  206. •   •   •

I slapped the book shut and swung my legs out from under the bedspread. When I put my feet on the floor, the cold of the boards shocked some of the sleepiness out of my bones—thank God—because I’d never be able to sleep now, not until I’d tried it.

I did not care what time it was.

I cared only a little that Emma was fast asleep when I reached her room with a hammer in one hand and a box of nails in the other. I turned on the lamp to rouse her, and she blinked, yawning herself awake.

“Lizzie?”

“My apologies, sister dear. I’m afraid this can’t wait.”

“What can’t wait?” she asked, her words clogged and close together. “What time is it?”

“Close to two in the morning, I imagine. But if this should work, and if I fail to do it, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Oh dear. You’ve found some new . . . some new trick, that you want to try?”

“I don’t think it’s a trick,” I told her. I got down on my hands and knees. I positioned one nail at the far left, against the doorframe. “I don’t know why, but I think it will keep them out, even if I’m not here.”

I drove the nail hard. The bang of the hammer was louder than thunder in our night-quieted home, and I flinched, but I hit the tiny spike again until it went flush with the floor.

Emma propped herself up on the pillows to watch me. She was resigned to this. It was not as if she could stop me should she want to, and she knew she could not talk me out of it. We’d fought about it often in our first year at Maplecroft, and never once had she won.

When I find a thing that works, I will implement it.

If it is inconvenient, if it is ridiculous, if it is insane . . . I do not care and will not let that stop me. I will try everything, and if even some of it works, some of the time, that’s a measure of protection we would have otherwise lacked. I will never let it be said that my sister died, or was turned, or taken, by those insidious fiends. Not on my watch, and not from my home.

First, I would pound a million nails into the house, and do it gladly. First, I would let the whole town think I’m a madwoman and a murderer, let it scorn and reject me, let its children compose hateful rhymes to be sung whilst jumping rope, let the entire Atlantic bubble and boil and storm against our shores—throwing up with the tides a thousand such inhuman, unholy creatures as the one I’d killed that night.