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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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“Very good,” I said, filing this away with no small measure of distaste. But you couldn’t fault the man for his lack of precision, or his sense of understatement. “You’ve established the smell—now can you tell me what you saw?”

“I saw . . . ,” he started, and then he tried again, closing his eyes as if trying to remember the scene better—or maybe to block it out. “Water,” he breathed. “On the walls, on the windows. Pouring off the edge of the bed, pouring down the dresser drawers, and along the floor in little streams, little lines. Draining away between the floorboards. And I saw Matty, but he weren’t . . . he wasn’t . . .”

Quieter now, his voice dropped low, to a horrified whisper. “He was swimming. Not in the water, but the air, above his bed. Treading water in the middle of the room, his eyes rolled back in his head, nothing showing but the whites, and they weren’t very white anymore. They were blue and brown. Marbled, like a dirty old egg. And his mouth . . .” Ebenezer licked at his lower lip, and swallowed again. “It moved like he was talking, but he wasn’t . . . he was making that noise, that grinding underwater noise. Like a machine with wheels and chains, and soaked-wet wood, pulling against some kind of weight. Dredging something up. Hauling something out of the ocean.”

That last word hung in the air between us.

It was my turn to swallow hard, and to lick my lips, and now to lean back—and wrap my own arms around myself. “So Matthew did make the sound you heard?”

“Yes. No. He was . . . it looked like he was making it. But it wasn’t a sound a boy could make. No living thing, Doctor. No living thing makes a sound like that.” He might’ve argued further, but then he waved his hand, changing his subject or finding it again, as the case may be. “Then Felicity, she screamed—and she ran to Matty, pulled on his leg, trying to draw him back down to the ground. But whatever held him in the air did a mighty good job of it, and he didn’t budge, not at all. He just hung there, his arms moving around like he was keeping himself afloat, swimming in the air like it was the ocean, his hair all swaying back and forth like seaweed.”

I tried unsuccessfully to keep from gasping, and the sound stuck in my throat. “She . . . your wife tried to pull him down? And he . . . he was held aloft, somehow? By wires, by . . . by the ropes? There were ropes, I recall. Holding him to the bed.”