"Will Henry! Will Henreeeee!"
I jerked out of bed, as if tugged by some invisible string. The house was quiet; had I just imagined it? It wouldn't have been for the first time . . .
I sat up and listened carefully, eyes still groggy with sleep.
"Will Henreeee!"
Yes, I had been right. The doctor was calling. And it was never wise to keep Doctor Pellinore Warthrop waiting.
Under the dim light of a bedside candle, I scrabbled around for my boots and then began to tug them on. My hat was hanging loosely off the side of a bedpost; I grabbed it and stuffed it down over my head. "I—I'll be right there, sir!"
"Snap to, Will Henry, snap to!"
As I fumbled with the fraying laces of my boots, I wondered what the doctor had come across this time. What monster awaited in the basement below, draped ever so still across a metal operating table in the very depths of the doctor's house? For Pellinore Warthrop was not your average doctor of science or medicine, no . . . he was a doctor of something more peculiar. And darker.
He was a monstrumologist.
I will, of course, go further into what that means, because most likely you have no idea what a monstrumologist is. Few people do. I consider those who don't as fortunate. It came apparent to me, over the years, that to dabble in monstrumology means to lose your soul.
The monstrumologist was already busily working when I arrived, hunched almost possessively over something on the operating table. There was a gleaming scalpel in his hand, and in the other, a cloth, which he used periodically to dab at blood that bubbled to the surface. He set the tools down now, wiped at his forehead, and then turned around to face me. "You took long enough. What on earth were you doing?"
"Sleeping, sir," I replied stoically. "It's three in the morning."
"Don't be cheeky. I hate cheeky children." Warthrop's eyes were burning with a fiery passion that had nothing to do with my so-called cheekiness. It had more to do with his night's work and the work to come that lit a flame in him and brought out a more zealous nature. It was an odd twist to his usual bouts of melancholia and despair, in which I had to make regular trips to his bedroom with pots of tea and scones that he more than often would hurl at my head in a fit of childish temper.
"Come here, Will Henry," Warthrop said now. He turned back around and gestured at me with a finger. "Stand beside me and watch. This is quite a unique specimen; I doubt you will see anything like it ever again." Blood congealed on the edges of his scalpel, slick and maroon-colored. My stomach flip-flopped.
Still lingering in the doorway, I hesitated.
"Will Henry. Look."
My feet were glued to the floor, but my eyes were still fully capable. I turned my gaze obediently onto the object that the doctor was gesturing at. A sharp cry rose in my throat; I clamped my mouth shut and felt like I was going to be sick.
"The bucket is over there in the corner." Warthrop watched me stagger away with his keen eyes, something un-nameable surfacing within them; then he turned back to his work and appeared to forget me entirely.
When I arrived at his side, Warthrop had both hands buried deep into the side of the creature. His face was red with exertion; a bead of sweat tricked down his forehead. "I am currently pulling out the heart of this mantibulis tigra," he informed me. "It's very well protected—a layer of bones surround it like a coat of armor—but if you work away at it with a knife beforehand, the bones should eventually crack and—here we are!" His face came alight with a savage pleasure; his hands slipped out of the bloody gap, cradling a glistening treasure within them.
Now, you see, this is monstrumology. The study of monsters. And the doctor excelled at it.
"See the puncture in the side, here, Will Henry?" he said to me, thrusting the organ before my face. "Nothing could puncture the bones surrounding the heart, but it was those very bones that were this creature's undoing . . . it was in some accident, and the bones on the right side broke; they gradually pushed inward and into the heart, granting the beast a very slow and painful death . . . it's ironic, isn't it, how it was the safeguard that killed it?"
"Please, may I go to bed, sir?"
"What?"
"I said . . . please, may I go to bed, sir."
"Why on earth would you want to go there?" he asked me, pulling a jar over to him and plopping the heart inside. "Don't you find this fascinating?"
A smell of death and decay reached me as Warthrop flipped the creature on his table over; I fought the urge to vomit again, and suddenly my eyes were watering and filled with tears. "I—I'm sorry, sir—"
"Are you going to cry?" He turned to face me again. "All right. Off to bed with you," he said, as if it had been his idea all along.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and swiped quickly at my eyes. "Yes, sir. Good night."
Warthrop didn't answer. He was already bending over his specimen once more, muttering to himself and making neat slices with his scalpel. I waited for a moment longer, clinging to the faint hope that he would acknowledge my words in some manner. Then I climbed the stairs out of the basement and made my way back to bed.
I already knew that I would not be getting any sleep tonight.
Monsters haunted my dreams.