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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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“But you should’ve seen it—the look in his eyes: There wasn’t one. Thought it was in my imagination, I did, but no . . . I’m sure of that now. Over time it’s gone from a boyish lack of attention to something . . . something I can hardly bear. Sometimes when he looks at me, he looks right through me. He doesn’t see me! He doesn’t hear me.”

“He isn’t listening?”

“I know. This, too—it sounds like a boy being a boy, but—” She stopped herself, as if she’d meant to tell me one thing, and changed her mind, offering me another thought instead. “He’s listening, but not to me. He’s listening to something else.”

I frowned, and she frowned, too. Then she heaved her torso up from the counter and came to stand beside me. She laid a hand on my elbow and guided me to the window beside the front door. Its glass was scummed by years of salted air, but I rubbed the back of my hand to shine one corner of a pane, and I could see all the way to the coastline beyond the edge of the road, perhaps a hundred yards away.

“Watch him,” she murmured, standing very close beside me. Her breath was low and rushed, as if she’d been running and was pretending otherwise. “Look at him, and you tell me what he’s listening to.”

I watched as she’d commanded. The details were unclear; I was too far away to see much more than a long-limbed fellow picking around on the rocks, his face pointed down and his dark, wild hair billowing in the ocean air that gusted off the inrushing tide. At first I saw nothing remarkable, merely the same lad I knew on sight, in his natural habitat, performing his usual task.

But the longer I looked, the odder it seemed—and it was nothing I could immediately pinpoint. I stared. And I thought I saw an unusual jerkiness to his movements. He lacked his usual grace, the ordinary leaping, climbing, and leaning that typically characterized his hunts. He moved more heavily, and slowly, too. He did not jump from rock to rock, but he slid down one and scaled the next. His hands hung from his arms like dead things, or like whole things without fingers. They were flat and immobile, like fish at a market stand.

“He’s listening,” his godmother breathed. “Look at him. He’s listening.”

Yes, he was. I could tell it from the tilt of his head; every time he turned or pivoted, every time he changed rocks or changed directions—dipping down to the same level and poking through the sand. No matter which way he turned, the crook of his neck aimed his head at the ocean.