Chapters (206)
- Praise for Maplecroft
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- THESE ARE THE THINGS AN EARTHQUAKE BRINGS
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- A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
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- Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
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- I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
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- Nance O’Neil
- THIS KNOT I KNIT, THIS KNOT I TIE
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- AND IF YOU HAVE A HORSE WITH ONE WHITE LEG . . .
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- THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- BUT NETTLE SHANT HAVE NOTHING
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- CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW
- Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
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- HAPPY IS THE CORPSE THAT THE RAIN SHINES ON
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- A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Nance O’Neil
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?
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- Aaron B. Stewart, Fire Chief, Farthington, Mass.
- Emma L. Borden
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- Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
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- DEPART, ALL ANIMALS WITHOUT BONES
- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
- Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
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- Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Emma L. Borden
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- FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Emma L. Borden
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- Owen Seabury, M.D.
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- Lizzie Andrew Borden
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- Inspector Simon Wolf
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Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
DECEMBER 4, 1893
I’ve taken Physalia zollicoffris for myself, and none other.
I may have burned a bridge or two while I was at it.
At present, I am torn between horror and delight, outrageous hope and astonished despair; but this was how it has to be, isn’t it? Everything has been leading up to this eventual outcome, every single step. From the moment I received the sample, sealed up tight in that jar . . . every motion, every gesture, every note, and every word have accumulated into a mighty force, culminating with the match I struck this evening.
What a day. How can I recall it, or reconcile it with my life? My sanity? Am I in danger of losing either one? Both? I fear there are none qualified to render judgment at this point. None but the siphonophore itself, and it tells me plenty.
It? No.
Them, perhaps—but at the risk of saying something preposterous, I almost feel like the specimen is a she. Ridiculous, when addressing a plural entity with no construct of binary gender such as humans ascribe . . . but then again, there’s a three-person God in heaven, or so we are often reminded. And I’ve never heard Him referred to with any pronoun but the masculine.
He is God.
She is Siphonophore.
They both are One, but also Legion.
Which is either blasphemy or the utmost truth, and I’m ill-prepared to offer an opinion either way.
We follow the ones who call us, and She has given me greater direction than any invisible sky-ghost ever bothered or dared. So I know Whom I will obey.
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I am not offloading my actions upon Her, though I do fervently believe that She has endorsed my behavior and gazed favorably upon it. Everything I’ve done these last few weeks has been for Her, in order to please and protect Her. She knows this, and She approves.
But I assume all responsibility for what I’ve done. These were my choices. My decisions. My courses of action. My bridges to render unto ash.
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I stood in the lab, with Physalia zollicoffris in a jar on the counter. It was the same jar in which She’d arrived, though it’d since been cleaned and aired, sterilized and polished. She deserves no less.
I was thinking about how She seemed somewhat smaller than when I’d first laid eyes upon Her, sprawled out and stinking, apparently dead and pickled. At that time, She’d appeared big enough to fill the whole chemistry sink, perhaps to overflowing, except that no, that can’t be true. She arrived in this jar, a mason jar of the oversized variety—perhaps it holds half a gallon, at most. She cannot be any bigger than that.