As the sun rose I spotted the Plymouth coastline. I flew high above the sea, hoping that any fisherman, looking up, might mistake me for a great bird. Heading west, I circled Saint Michael’s Mount, then flew north. I plummeted landward as swiftly as possible, and touched ground just as the morning’s sun was first gracing rooftops. Daisy, nestled in my hair (to which she had retreated halfway through the flight), awoke and stretched. I adjusted my indigo wrap, drew my Wedding Knife, and walked as boldly as possible into the front room of the Wretched Traveler.
A man of forty-plus years stood behind the bar, washing glasses from the night before. The inn was much shabbier than I remembered it. The man turned to greet me and stood dumbfounded. I could hardly blame him. Before him stood a near-naked fourteen-year-old boy wielding a knife and bearing a miniature crocodile atop his head. I leapt across the room to the top of the bar, aided by a combination of Flying Sand and Never-Isle litheness. Daisy hissed at him as I pointed the knife at his throat.
“I’m looking for Scroff. He took something from me and I want it back.”
The barman’s mouth dropped open in fear and astonishment. Like Scroff and his ma, he was missing his lower front teeth. Poor dental hygiene clearly ran in the family.
I explained myself: “You’re the father, I presume. Your son attacked me in the barn several months ago and stole from me a locket that belonged to my late mother. I’ve come to retrieve it.”
The man managed to choke out a word: “Locket.”
“Yes. A locket. He ripped it from my neck.”
“No. No.”
“Yes. He did. If he’s sold it, his life is worthless. Where is he?”
The man swallowed, then began to gasp for breath, as if he were having a fit.
“ONE LAST CHANCE!” I shouted. “WHERE IS YOUR SON?”
“Not possible,” he rasped.
I whipped the knife across his throat, not deep enough to cause serious injury, but enough to draw blood. He clutched his neck and staggered back, knocking over several glasses and a bottle of gin. The fumes of the alcohol made my eyes water.
He thought he was dying. He held a hand, wet with blood, in front of his face to ward off another blow. “Please, sir, please,” he begged, “have mercy.”
“Do you know of this locket?” I demanded.
He nodded.
“And?”
“Course it’s sold. It were gold !”
“To a pawnshop? A local merchant?”
He nodded.
“Retrieve it. I’ll give you an hour.”
“Not possible.”
This was absurd. He was stalling, wavering, lying to protect his son.
“Why? Why is it not possible? WHERE IS YOUR SON?” I roared as Daisy let out a peep that I’m sure she meant as a threat.
He caught his breath, stood a little straighter. He wiped tears from his eyes. He seemed on the verge of hysteria. He was preparing for death.
“It were me,” he mumbled.
“What? What was you?”
“It were me what took it. I’m Scroff.”
The world stood very still. I couldn’t believe my ears or eyes.
“You’re the father. Your son was fifteen, sixteen years old. Is. Is sixteen years old.”
“No more. I’m thirty now.”
Another silence. I felt a sickness fill my stomach. “What’s today’s date?” I asked.
“November fifteenth. Year of our Lord 1888.”
In shock I slowly lowered the knife.
My God.
Fourteen and a half years had passed.
* * *
I tried not to think of my predicament. True, in my visit to the Never-Archipelago I had lost track of the time, and could not tell you, dear reader, exactly how many days and weeks had come and gone. Still, I was absolutely certain that nothing like a year had elapsed, let alone fourteen of them. Yet as I looked around the inn and took in its shabbiness, as Scroff showed me a mug commemorating the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, as I perused a pile of newspapers that he had stacked for kindling, I could not deny that much had changed in the world in my absence.
Time had brought change to the Wretched Traveler too. Scroff may have been thirty, but he looked forty-five. His mother lay abed in a back room, lost in a world of dementia. He had indeed pawned my mother’s locket, but that was too long ago for any hope of reclamation, and the coin he sold it for had been long spent. He had lost his youthful bravura and was clearly terrified of this crocodile-capped madman in his front room.
The moment I let down my guard he would, I was certain, summon the police. So I continued to threaten him until I had obtained some loose clothing lying around the inn. The shirt, shoes, trousers, and jacket were a bit oversize for a fourteen-year-old, but I did what I could to make adjustments. Once I had bound Scroff to the brass footrail by the bar, I stuffed balls of newspaper into the toes of the borrowed shoes and rolled up the trouser cuffs and shirtsleeves, hoping to obtain snugger clothing in good time. I then took what little coin I found in the cash drawer, stuffed my new pockets full of day-old bread, and set off.
I was determined to pick up my journey where fourteen and a half years before it had left off, and I now headed toward Penzance in the hope of finding my father’s family. I had no idea, of course, who in that family might still be alive, but I had obtained in my shipboard conversation with Raleigh a bit of information about them, and so prepared myself for the worst.
During my halcyon days at Eton, I had succeeded in securing the address at which my father’s family resided, they being regular contributors to the college whose letters were kept in the Donors’ File of the Records Office. When I first set off on my pilgrimage fourteen years past, I held that address in mind and—it being only months that had slipped by in my experience—I remembered it still. And so it was that on a lovely day in November of the fifty-first year of Her Majesty’s reign an ill-dressed lad with a crocodile on his head arrived at Number 25 Chapel Street, Penzance, and knocked on the door.
To be honest, I had quite forgotten about Daisy’s presence, nested as she was in my thick tresses, and it was with unfortunate haste that I now plucked her from my crown to stick her in a pocket before the door could be opened. Startled, she bit me in the process of transfer, and so the woman who answered my knock beheld a dirty boy sucking a bloody thumb.
“What do you want?” she queried as she gazed down at me imperiously. She was wearing black, head to toe, a widow’s garb. “We’ve no food. Go away.” She shut the door in my face.
I noticed a brass nameplate to the port side of the door. JAMES COOK, MERCHANT, it read. (So my grandfather was named James also! Was he still living? Why was the woman dressed in mourning?) I knocked again. “Excuse me but—I’m your nephew!” I shouted, guessing that the woman could be the wife of my father’s youngest brother. “I’m James Cook the third!”
After a moment she opened the door again. “We have no nephew,” she declared and slammed the door once more.
“My father was James Cook, Captain James Cook of Her Majesty’s ship the Princess Alice! The ship disappeared southwest of Bermuda in the Year of our Lord 1860!”
There was silence. I had not heard any retreating footsteps, so I knew that she remained on the other side of the door. After a few moments more she opened it again.
“Then you could not be his son,” she announced with a smile of triumph, as if she had caught me miscounting cards and was playing her trump on my ace. “If he died in 1860, which is true, he could not father a boy of sixteen.”
“Fourteen,” I corrected her, “and I never said that he died, simply that he disappeared.” (Of course he had died, but affirming this fact would not help my case.) “Are you my aunt? I’m sorry—I don’t know your name. My father never spoke of you, he only talked of his younger brother, Arthur. Reverend Arthur—a minister, yes?” (That, at least, is what Raleigh had told me.) “Perhaps Uncle had not yet married by the time my father . . . vanished.” (This was all guesswork on my part. Nearly twenty-nine years had passed since his disappearance; therefore this woman—who was clearly fifty if she was a day—could certainly be my aunt by marriage, assuming that my uncle Arthur—who remained at home—had wed.)
She studied me from head to foot before exclaiming, “This is absurd. You are absurd. You’re dressed like a beggar. You’re filthy. Why should I believe you?”
“I have his watch,” I said spontaneously, then reached into a non-Daisy pocket and pulled out the instrument.
She took it, studied it, opened it, then read the inscription.
She was right. This was absurd. True, the watch bore his initials, but “J.C.” is not an uncommon monogram and could belong to many a man (including our Lord!). Why would she believe that this watch came from my father?
She clapped her hand to her mouth and began to sob.
She shut the door again, not as soundly as she had before, and I heard her footsteps retreating. I waited, uncertain what to do next. She had the watch, and it appeared to have meant something to her, but what now? I knocked again. When the door remained firmly closed, I retreated across the street and studied the house from that vantage point.
It was stone, narrow, neat, and probably in line with the modest dwelling of a successful merchant who had religious scruples against ostentation. Was this the house in which my father had been raised, and where he had spent his last night on English soil before boarding the Princess Alice?
I recrossed the street and tried to open the door on my own. It was locked.
I pulled out a piece of Scroff’s stale bread and ate. I placed some in my Daisy-pocket, which sustenance she devoured hungrily. My legs and arms began to ache, a pain that was bone-deep, and I feared I was coming down with some illness connected to flying. The street, meanwhile, was becoming busy with daily commerce. A few passersby studied me with concern for their safety, and I worried that a policeman might arrive shortly and place me under arrest for loitering. Sure enough, after I had been on the stoop or in its vicinity for an hour or more, a bobby turned a corner and began striding in my direction. At this point the door to Number 25 reopened, and the woman motioned me inside.
A dark narrow hall led to the back of the house. The hall became even darker once the door was shut.
“I’m your aunt Margaret. That is, if you are my nephew. If you are not, if you are nothing but a lying thief and beggar, which I suspect is true, then may you burn in the Eternal Flames of Hell, and soon.” With these words she turned and headed down the hall toward the back room. I followed.
We entered a tiny bedroom, lit by a fire and as hot, I suspected, as the Eternal Flames to which she had condemned me. In a corner stood a night table with a washbasin and ewer. A bedpan, uncovered and redolent, sat on top of a quilted throw rug, one of several such rugs surrounding a large bed situated in the middle of the room. Propped up against the bedstead was a very old man.
“Grandfather,” I said to him. “You’re alive!”
“What’s that to you, boy?” the old man replied.
Aunt Margaret tossed another log on the fire.
“Come close,” the old man commanded.
I did.
He wore a nightcap, but a wisp of white hair hung like a tassel from underneath, covering one pale gray eye. His skin was mottled, his face splotched with large brown marks that appeared in the firelight to resemble scabrous wounds. His breath smelled of onions, and of dead things.
“You say James is your father?” he asked.
“Yessir. He only disappeared in 1860.” A little lie, nothing more.
He said nothing at first, but his eyes never left mine.
“Do you doubt it?” I asked, fearing he did.
“No,” he finally answered. “You’re much like him, in face and figure, when he was your age. How old are you?”
“Fourteen, sir.”
“Ha! You look old for your years.” This surprised me—I had never been told this before.
I was feeling bold and replied, “So do you.”
He grinned at this. A few of his teeth were black.
“You have your father’s spirit, I’ll say that. What’s your name?”
“James. The Third.”
“Your father had a prior son named James,” he said, “so you may be the fourth.” He was referring, I assumed, to myself, but of course he wouldn’t know that. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to meet you, sir. I wanted to learn some more about my family. My father’s family.”
“Such as what?”
I thought for a moment. How should I begin? “Is it true we’re descended from Captain James Cook?” I blurted.
“Who in heaven’s name told you that?”
“My father left me a book. A history of the captain’s voyages. It was your gift to him, I was given to believe, when he graduated from Eton.”
I saw a spark of memory flash in his eyes. “And why would that make you think your ancestor was that Captain Cook?”
“My mother said so.”
“Ah. And you believe your mother?”
“Why would she lie?”
There followed a beat of silence before he answered. “All mothers lie. Or their sons wouldn’t wish to grow up, knowing what truly lay ahead.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“And who was your mother?” he asked.
What should I say? I felt I couldn’t tell him the truth, not just yet, for that would only convince him and my aunt that I was a madman and a liar.
“Even if you are who you say you are,” my aunt interrupted before I could respond, “why should we trust you? You had a brother, half brother, who was a thief and a scoundrel. We paid for his education at Eton, but he was caught red-handed in a scandalous crime and ran away before he could be properly punished. I daresay he’s dead now, God be praised—we never heard of him again and I can only assume that he is burning in the Eternal Flames. How do we know that you, James the Fourth, do not take after him?”
I swallowed and answered with sincere humility. “You cannot know that, Aunt Margaret, until you come to know my character. I am not here for money, or personal gain. I simply want to know more—about my father.”
“He didn’t go down with his ship?” The old man drew my attention back to him.
“No.” This much, at least, was true.
“Does he live still?”
“No, sir.”
The old man was silent for a moment, absorbing his son’s second death. His expression was unreadable. “Why did he not return?” he finally asked. “Or at least send some message home? Was he shipwrecked, like Selkirk, on some undiscovered island?” This last question was colored by sarcasm, and he showed surprise when I answered in the affirmative.
“He was.” This was nearly true.
“Your mother was a native woman then?” Aunt Margaret remarked in a disapproving tone. “You seem to have her coloring.”
I realized then that the weeks (or months or years) that I had spent on the Never-Isle had tanned my skin a soft brown. I said nothing, which she took as an assent.
“And the island was discovered recently by some wandering ship?” Grandfather asked. “I saw nothing of that in the papers.”
“It’s a very small island,” I answered.
“And the watch,” my aunt queried. “He still kept the watch after all these years?” This was not so much a question as it was a kind of wondering.
“So it is his watch?” I queried.
“Why would you doubt it?” Aunt Margaret asked, skepticism edging her voice.
I had nearly given myself away. I steered the topic in a slightly different direction.
“What I meant to ask is—who is A.D.? The other initials. He never told me.”
She blinked back a tear, and in that instant seemed to become even harder, like a seaman battening the hatches against a storm. Was she A.D. herself?
“Margaret,” the old man commanded, “see that he’s better clothed. Get someone from Harvey and Son to measure him for a suit and some shirts. I don’t want my grandson dressed like a filthy highwayman.”
And with those words I was dismissed.
* * *
Within the hour Mr. Harvey the Son came and measured me in the parlor for a suit of clothes. He also saw that I needed socks, undergarments, handkerchiefs, and a better pair of shoes. Within two more hours I had all but the suit, and before evening fell even that was delivered. My grandfather, I could see, was a powerful man.
I was shown to the top floor of the house, where a low-ceilinged room was to serve as my sleeping quarters. There I changed into the new suit, once it arrived, and was surprised to find that, for all the careful measurements taken by Harvey Junior, the suit was rather tight and a bit short in the legs and arms. I carefully removed Daisy from my old pocket, then stowed the clothes acquired from Scroff, along with the Wedding Knife and the pouch of Flying Sand, in an old travel valise I found in a corner of the room. It bore my father’s initials and so, I thought, might have been his equipage during his years at Eton. Why, this very room must be my father’s old bedroom! I had found him, in some sense, at last.
Daisy was famished, and I let her suck on the meat of my palm. Something was different about her, but I wasn’t sure what that something was at first. And then I realized—she was several inches longer. At last she was beginning to grow! The sea air of England was proving to be bracingly beneficial for crocodile maturation.
It was then that I glanced at my pant legs and jacket sleeves, and another thought came at once. I was growing too: longer, taller, and—my God—older.
Fourteen and a half years had passed and I, returning to Greenwich Mean Time, was catching up. I felt my face. The beginnings of a whiskery stubble were sprouting on my jawline. I rolled up my shirtsleeve. The hair on my forearm was decidedly darker and thicker.
How old was I? No longer fourteen. (I now understood why Aunt Margaret and Grandfather had both thought me older.) If this was 1888, then I was twenty-eight years old! Gradually, as the day advanced, I was advancing too.
Quite suddenly all that had taken place in these weeks and years overwhelmed me. For some time I sat in the attic room contemplating everything I had missed. Had I remained in England, I would be well into my career by now, perhaps a vice president of a firm or, if I stayed a sailor, a first mate or master. I would most likely be married, and a father. My oldest son might be as old as eight, thinking himself near-grown and hoping to follow in the old man’s footsteps! Had I been blessed with a daughter, she would be breaking little boys’ hearts! The Beauty of Penzance! Not as beautiful as her mother, of course, but still—
And then I thought of Tiger Lily. Had she been dead for twenty-four hours, or for fourteen years? My sorrow nearly drowned me at this point. It filled my chest, tightened my throat, watered my eyes until, like a heartsick maiden, I flung myself on my father’s boyhood bed and wept.
* * *
A storm was beginning to rage as I descended to the basement kitchen for my evening repast. Aunt Margaret, it seemed, did all the housekeeping herself. Her cleanliness was above godliness, as far as I could tell, but her cooking skills were barely rudimentary. The meal she served me was little more than a thin fishy broth punctuated by a few overcooked carrots.
I sat across from her, sipping the “stew” (as she called it). There was something on her mind, yet she hesitated to begin conversation. So I took it upon myself to do so.
“Is Uncle Arthur—” I left the sentence unfinished.
“He traveled to New Guinea, to bring the Lord to the native population. I was to follow in a year.” A brief silence ensued. Then: “They ate him.”
I couldn’t help but think that Uncle Arthur would have made a better stew than what I had been served.
“I’m sorry, Aunt. I see you’re still in mourning. Was it recent?”
“Twenty-six years this past August.”
“I see.”
“His father was kind enough to take me in. The servant and kitchen help had both recently left and Father Cook needed someone to take their place. I was able to help him economize. Your grandfather is a very frugal man.”
I took a few more sips of broth. I was hesitant to explore further family history, but do or be d—mned, as they say.
“And the—other brother?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Not Arthur, the older one.”
“James?”
“No, no. My father spoke of his older brother, one he was very fond of, but he never said his name.”
“I don’t know to whom you’re referring. There were only two sons. Their mother died giving birth to Arthur.”
I distinctly remembered Raleigh mentioning an older son. “He was—well, from what I remember hearing—he was—disinherited. He overspent, and eventually drank himself into an early grave.”
“It must be your father you’re speaking of. Only he didn’t drink himself to death, he just drank.”
I didn’t understand. “My father was a wastrel?”
“And disinherited for it, yes. Not only did he gamble and drink, he . . .” She stopped, looking away as if remembering something. She did not complete her thought.
“You knew him?”
She stiffened slightly, fighting against some violent emotion.
I decided to dig deeper, in a more roundabout way. “When did you marry Uncle Arthur?”
She seemed relieved at the apparent change of subject. “Shortly before he sailed to New Guinea. I was widowed in less than a year.”
I did some quick calculating. If Arthur was twenty-six years dead, he was eaten in ’62. Consequently he and Margaret were married in ’61. My father vanished in ’60.
“So you couldn’t have known my father. He disappeared at least a year before your marriage.”
“I knew him,” she said, her voice wavering. “Before I knew Arthur. Through my sister.”
I could tell there was more she wanted to say. She reached into her pocket, I assumed to withdraw a handkerchief, and produced my father’s watch instead. Its ticking had stopped; at last it had run down. She opened it and gazed for a long moment at the inscription.
“ ‘To James Cook with love from Angela Darling,’ ” she translated. Then she closed the watch and absentmindedly rewound it. Her mind was leagues away.
“This Angela was your sister?” I prompted.
She glared at me as if I had stabbed her with a knife. “She was trapped in an unhappy marriage when she met James. Of course it was a sin, but her husband was a horrible man and James adored her. I connived in concealing her adultery.” She looked away again. “She loved him so. James was handsome, and dashing. And the worst thing to ever happen to her.”
“Her husband found out?”
“No. No, he believed the child was his. George they named him, after the husband. James had just been given a captaincy. She had this watch inscribed to him as her congratulations. He promised, on his return, to marry her if she could obtain a divorce and to live with her in sin if she could not. He left, he disappeared—drowned, we thought—and shortly after the child was born she—she took her own life.”
Aunt Margaret closed the watch as if this were her final statement. In many ways it was. She reached across the table and handed me the watch. Then she rose and without another word climbed the stairs like a departing ghost. Her task was done, her soul unburdened. Now she would sleep, or not, and dream, or not. I never saw her again.
* * *
I returned to the attic room to think. I sat on the edge of the bed, Daisy (even larger) snoring beside me. The wind and rain beat against the bedroom window. I studied the ticking watch and its terrible inscription, thinking of my father, of the lies Aunt Margaret had told me, fearful of course that they were not lies. Had my father loved two women? His wife my mother and this Angela Darling? And had he fathered two sons, myself and a bastard named George? Indeed he was a wastrel, if this were so. I had to learn the truth.
I placed the watch on the bed, secretly wishing I had never discovered it, then descended to the ground floor, where I walked to my grandfather’s room. The door was partially open. The fire burned low, its light reflected in the pale gray eyes of the old man.
Outside thunder rumbled.
“Put a log on, James, would you?”
I entered. The heat was stifling. I lifted a small log from the pile beside the hearth and placed it gently on top of the glowing ashes. I stirred the embers with the fireplace poker as sparks chased each other up the chimney.
“Thank you.”
I turned and went to his bedside. He seemed a bit afraid of me; I must have resembled, silhouetted in the firelight, the suntanned ghost of his son. His eyes quite suddenly widened with surprise.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Where’s what?”
“Your shadow. You have no shadow.”
A perceptive old fellow.
“I gave it away. To a boy I know. I don’t really miss it.”
He looked away, trembling, staring at the fire. His brow wrinkled, as if he were trying to solve a particularly nasty puzzle. “You’re the very Devil, aren’t you? Come to bring me home.”
Was he joking? He looked back at me, a smile curling his thin lips. Thunder crashed. Lightning outlined the room’s heavily curtained window. “What do you want to know?” he finally asked.
I took a deep breath and began.
“My mother. Did you know her?”
“Your mother?” His eyes studied me, as if for a moment he was not sure who I was.
I had continued to grow in the hours since he had last laid eyes on me. The sleeves of my new suit barely reached the middle of my forearms. My trouser legs exposed my socks and muscled calves. I no longer resembled a boy, that’s for certain; I looked to be a man of twenty or more. Perhaps now he would believe my story.
“I was born in 1860, Grandfather. I was the boy you sent to Eton. I was falsely accused and expelled for thievery. I was on my way to you when—something happened.”
“Ah” was all he said. Then his face convulsed in pain.
He began to cough, and I sat beside him on the bed and helped him sit up straighter. He motioned for a small dish resting on a bedside table. I handed it to him and he spat a large globule of bloody mucus into it. Then he sat back, as if his troubles were over.
“Your mother.” A statement now, not a question. “Was a common whore.”
My hands were around his neck, pressing him against the bedstead, squeezing the life from him. “Liar,” I rasped. My voice too had changed by now, become deep and gravelly.
He was choking. He made no effort to pull my hands away.
I did so of my own volition.
“My mother was Daisy Cook. She and my father were happily married. I lived with her in a house in Kensington, a house that you donated for our use. Until she died and then you cruelly took it away. I had my mother, and then I had nothing.”
He took a deep breath. And another. “Your mother—and your father—were never married.”
“That’s a lie.”
Another breath. “Did you ever see”—another breath—“a marriage license?”
“She had a wedding ring. This ring.” I held out my fist, displaying the thin gold band. “ ‘To My Eternal Love,’ it says inside. He loved her.”
“Cheaply bought. Any jeweler has them. She wore it for show.”
“He loved her,” I repeated.
Another breath. “He loved”—another breath, shallower this time—“many women.”
I wanted to deny this, but remembering Aunt Margaret’s tale I said nothing.
“Why did you support us then? If they weren’t married, if I was a . . . bastard, why would you house us, and educate me?”
He shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “You were my grandson. Your aunt thought I was foolish, but I hoped to produce the kind of boy that your father most definitely was not.” A slower breath. “Obviously my experiment failed.” He looked at me directly now. Tiny flames flared high in his irises, as if he were stoking a fire inside. “I did not take into account that both of your parents were corrupted by vice. Else I would not have wasted my money.”
“My mother was a saint.”
“Your mother was a drug fiend.” He flung his words at me like darts. “Your father met her in the lowest of gambling dens, where she was selling herself for a cheap pipe and instant oblivion.” He took pleasure from the pain he was giving. “She was lovely, I imagine, and obviously desperate—James was an easy mark for beautiful, needy women. He fell upon her with the kind of missionary zeal your uncle Arthur professed toward the natives who ate him.” The storm outside seemed to energize his cruelty. “He hoped to save her and succeeded to a point, I’ll grant him that. He took her out of the pit and weaned her of her habit. He told me this in a final letter, asking me to care for her and his child if he failed to return from his voyage. How prescient of him.”
“Do you still have that letter?” I challenged. He was lying once again—I knew it.
“Of course not. I have my vices, but sentiment is not one of them.” He waved his hand as if he were dismissing my doubts. “At any rate, by the time you were born his ship was reported missing, and the pain of your birth and his disappearance drove your mother back to her old habits. I heard of this from Doctor Slinque, who was a friend of your father’s, and I hired him to treat her.” He chuckled, and the odor of decay spilled from his mouth. “It wasn’t enough. It never is, with women like her.”
In that moment I hated him more than I have ever hated anyone.
Without a second thought I went to the fire and picked up the poker I had left lying in the embers; turning back to face him, I raised it high to strike. He looked up at me, astonished. I saw him for the bitter, wizened, pathetic worm he truly was; killing him would be a mercy, but I hadn’t the courage. Instead I turned and, flinging the poker into a corner, left the room. I cursed him as I slammed the door behind me.
I had barely set foot on the stairs’ bottom tread when I heard him scream.
His cries were weak at first, and interrupted by another coughing spell. Soon they continued—louder, more desperate—and my conscience told me to return to the room.
Was this some sort of trickery to bring me back? The door that I had slammed was now stuck fast, and it was the sight of smoke curling from beneath the doorsill, not his escalating cries, that galvanized me. I pulled with all my might against the door, and finally succeeded—after kicking it—in wrenching it open. My grandfather was engulfed in flames.
In seizing the poker earlier, I had inadvertently sent some burning coals tumbling across the floor. His bedding, worn and dry with age (much like himself), caught fire, and now the flames enrobed him in a burning shroud. There was little I could do. I flung the contents of the washbasin and ewer, and then of the bedpan, onto the pyre and lifting the heavy quilted throw rugs did my best to smother the flames. By the time the conflagration was extinguished the old man was nothing but a crisp.
Aunt Margaret, inured to his nighttime retching, slept through it all. I had no desire to wake her; I was through here. I had given her a reason to remain in mourning for another twenty-six years. I quickly climbed to the attic, peppered myself with Flying Sand, grabbed my father’s valise in one hand and the two-foot-long Daisy in the other, and opened the top-floor window.
The storm had passed. Rain dripped from the eaves, but the night was warm.
Just as I was about to step out into the darkness, I remembered the watch. I returned to the bed, where I had left it, and looked for it but could not find it. It was somewhere near, that I knew, for I could hear its incessant ticking. I deposited Daisy on the dresser, then pulled off the bedclothes, decased the pillow, turned the mattress onto the floor, but was unable to locate my father’s timepiece. It was maddening. Where could it be? I stopped and stood very still, listening. Tick. Tick. Tick. Where was the noise coming from? I cocked my ear and followed the sound. I was led to the one place I would never have thought to look. The ticking of the watch, like the beating of a heart muffled in cotton, was coming from inside Daisy.
* * *
As we flew I pondered the science of my sudden growth spurt. Neither Daisy nor myself appeared to have increased in size and age since nightfall, so it was daylight, inexplicably, that seemed to affect our aging. We now were heading east, and soon to meet the rising sun. How much more would we grow? When I attained my 1888 age of twenty-eight, would I stop or grow even older? How much would Daisy’s size and weight increase? The Flying Sand made her light as a feather to carry, but as soon as we touched down I would be unable to hold her. How big, in fact, did crocodiles become? The leviathan in the cavern was enormous. How could I possibly explain a crocodile’s presence on the streets of London?
For London, indeed, was our destination. My goal was to reach the metropolis before daylight, but I was uncertain how quickly the Sand would allow me to travel. True, I had flown from a distant location in a matter of hours, but would the humid atmosphere of England slow me down? I needn’t have worried. Before long the clock face of Big Ben guided me like a beacon toward the Thames.
As a boy, whenever my mother was felled with a headache, I had raced more than once to Doctor Uriah Slinque’s home and office in Bayswater. He had taken a liking to me, for reasons I cannot explain, and I remember him extending an invitation to me to visit his laboratory after my mother’s funeral. And so it was that, on the afternoon of the saddest day of my young life, I had arrived on his doorstep. He ushered me up three flights of stairs to his surgery, where I marveled at his display of jarred specimens as he explained to me the invaluable contribution of the vivisectionist to science.
He then led me to a table situated under an enormous skylight and near a staircase leading to the roof. There he showed me a frog lying on its back and pinned to a surface of thick black wax. The creature was anesthetized and would feel no pain, he told me as he carefully sliced open the poor thing throat to belly and splayed wide its skin, revealing among brightly colored organs a tiny beating heart. I was sickened and fascinated at the same time. Slinque rested his hand on the back of my neck, and gently massaged as he pointed out stomach, lungs, liver. I couldn’t help but imagine myself pinned and splayed as he happily poked and prodded the amphibian’s insides. He afterward gave me one of his lemony sweets to suck as I wandered home.
I had never seen Slinque’s office from above, of course, but I quickly spotted the enormous skylight and swooped down, Daisy in arm, to land on the gently sloping roof beside it. Peering through the skylight in the early dawn, I could see the surgery much as I remembered it, so I knew at once that Slinque was still in residence. I found the trapdoor on the roof leading to the surgery staircase below. Daisy was too large now for me to pocket, so I laid her carefully on the angled surface, where she scrambled with her sharp claws to keep from falling. I tugged and kicked with all my might at the wooden door. The lock soon gave way, and I descended, awkwardly carrying an extremely heavy reptile under one arm and my father’s valise under the other, to the abattoir.
I lit the gas lamps around the room and paused to catch my breath. The jarred specimens remained, but no longer fascinated me. The organs and fetal anomalies that they held (all, I supposed wrongly, belonging to the lower forms of animal life) now only disgusted me.
I made no attempt at stealth. Sure enough, I soon heard footsteps arriving from the floor below. As he climbed the stairs and came into view, wearing nightshirt and cap, he raised a pistol and aimed it at my breast.
Slinque remained remarkably unchanged despite the passage of Time; in fact the anesthesia and formaldehyde that he used in his practice had given a sheen of preservation to his face, so that he resembled, in the gaslit dawn, something that might be found suspended in one of his specimen jars. I remembered him as being a tall man, but my height now matched his. He cocked the gun and said to me, “You’re a dead man.”
“Doctor Slinque,” I said as I raised my arms, “you remember me. My mother was Daisy Cook. I’m her son, James. We vivisected a frog together many years ago.”
This, of course, gave him pause. He peered at me for a moment, then with his free hand reached into a breast pocket and removed a pair of glasses, which he proceeded to don. He peered at me again. “James Cook?” he said, reaching back into the past.
“Yes. My grandfather hired you to minister to my mother. He sends you his regards. Forgive my unusual entrance, but I did not wish to be seen on the streets of London with my friend.” I nodded to the bottom of the trapdoor stairs, and Slinque’s gaze followed. He started and nearly dropped the gun.
“My God,” he whispered. Daisy opened her mouth and hissed at him. He backed up a step and almost tumbled down the stairs behind him.
She continued, rather loudly, to tick.
“I mean you no harm,” I continued, “I simply have a few questions I’d like answered.”
“James Cook?” he repeated, as if he had thought me long dead and yet here I was, returned from the grave.
“Please, if you wouldn’t mind,” I said, nodding to the pistol. He looked at it as if he had forgotten that he carried it. He now lowered it so that it pointed at the floor.
“Do you have any tea or coffee?” I asked. “I’d love something to take off the morning chill.”
* * *
We sat in two armchairs in the consulting area of his surgery. I sipped a delectable cup of Black Dragon while Daisy lay curled at my feet like a contented puppy. He too held a cup of tea in his lap, but whenever he raised the cup to his lips, his hand shook so that more tea was spilled than was drunk. His nightshirt was quite wet with Oolong, but he took no notice of it. The Bunsen burner on which he had heated the water still burned behind him, its blue flame adding an eerie shade to the proceedings.
“My mother,” I said, initiating the discussion.
“Daisy, yes. Lovely woman. I remember her fondly.”
“Grandfather said you were a friend of my father’s.”
“We were at Eton together, and later shared brotherhood in a Masonic lodge. Jim told me he had written to your grandfather, asking him to care for you and your mother if for any reason he didn’t return.” He smiled wistfully. “It’s almost as if he knew he wouldn’t.”
I thought of the treasure map, and of my father’s intention to sail to its coordinates. “I think he knew there was a greater than normal possibility that he wouldn’t.”
Slinque said nothing for a moment, absorbing this bit of intrigue. I could tell he wanted to ask questions of me, but restrained himself.
“When things started going . . . wrong,” he continued, “I contacted the old fellow to remind him of his obligation.”
“My mother—”
“—was a beautiful woman.”
“Was she a drug fiend? That’s what Grandfather called her.”
“Fiend is a very harsh word. She was”—here he hesitated, searching for a better word—“drug dependent.”
“Was she a prostitute?”
He smiled sadly. “She was forced to make certain compromises to support her dependency. You mustn’t judge these women harshly. I myself have always been fascinated by them. I’m curious to find what it is inside them that makes them tick.”
His words reminded me of Daisy, whose ticking was—to me, at least—quite audible. I couldn’t believe he didn’t hear it too, though he said nothing.
“Your birth was not an easy one,” he continued. “Your father’s ship had vanished at sea. She was alone in this world. She needed comfort. I provided it.”
“You gave her drugs?”
“I gave her better drugs. She was fond of opium when your father first met her. He wanted my advice, I advised, and together we ransomed her from the devil-drug. After he was gone, and I saw she was drifting back, I supplied her with cocaine instead. Your grandfather footed the bill.”
I took several deep breaths, readying myself for the Whole Truth.
“How did she die?” I asked.
He said nothing.
“I was told she had a fit and drowned in her bathtub,” I said.
“She slit her throat with your father’s razor.”
I felt myself becoming ill. I took another sip of tea. I changed the subject.
“My father—I was told my father—was a gambler—and a drunkard—and a philanderer.”
“All true. But he was a very poor gambler, and a cheerful drunkard, and nearly all the women he made love to he fell in love with. Your mother especially.”
I hoped this wasn’t a lie, but if it was, it was a very kind one.
“Did he ever mention a woman named Angela Darling?”
The doctor blinked. “Yes. I believe so.”
“He had a child with her?”
“Yes.”
“She too killed herself.”
“Yes.”
I swallowed. “He had quite an effect on women,” I lamely joked.
“He had quite an effect on everyone who knew him,” Slinque answered. Slinque, I realized, must have loved my father too.
* * *
I was becoming quite tired, and needed to rest. Leaving Daisy in the surgery, after feeding her several rabbits he had vivisected the day before, Slinque led me down one floor, where he offered me his own bed, into which I collapsed. By the time I awoke the clock on his bedroom mantel was striking two. Midday! I had slept much longer than I intended. He must have heard me stirring, for in a short time he entered, carrying my valise, and asked me if I was hungry. Indeed I was, I told him, but more than anything I wanted a bath. He showed me to his private bathroom, where he proceeded to fill a tub with hot water from his own tap. (Indoor plumbing, in these last fourteen and a half years, had found its way to Bayswater! Oh wonder!) Once I was alone, I carefully transferred the pouch filled with Flying Sand from the inside pocket of Mr. Harvey’s suit to a secure compartment of the valise, then peeled off my new clothes (which now scarcely fit at all), gazed for a moment into a full-length mirror at my strange new self, and stepped into Slinque’s white-porcelained tub.
Lying in the steaming bath, I examined my new self more closely. My feet were quite large, long, and unattractively bony. The aches I had felt in my arms and legs but a day before had been, I realized, growing pains. These limbs were now (begging your pardon, dear reader, for any discomfort you may feel regarding anatomical matters) furred with soft black hair, as were certain other unmentionable areas of my person. In short, everything was longer and stronger and leaner and a bit rougher than I was used to and, apart from my feet, curiously interesting. I had become, almost literally, a new man.
On a low table beside the tub rested a stack of newspapers. Slinque, I imagine, perused them when having his morning bath, and I picked one up in order to familiarize myself with the current news. The front page was entirely devoted to a sordid murder that had taken place a few days before in Whitechapel—a prostitute had been slaughtered, the fifth of several in the last few months—and the outcry against the killer and the incompetent constabulary was tremendous. Of course this put me in mind of my mother and her sad death, so I cast the paper aside and could not bring myself to look at it again.
After I had been soaking in the tub for about twenty minutes, Slinque entered without knocking and presented for my inspection a complete set of clothes, which he said he hoped would fit me. They were his own, he added, and since we appeared to be of approximately the same size now, I was certain that they would at least fit me better than Mr. Harvey’s suit. I thanked him, and sat back in the water, waiting for him to leave. He pulled up a wooden stool instead, and sat down on it. It seemed it was time for him to ask questions of me.
“Where have you been?” he began.
Since I now looked closer to twenty-four than to fourteen, I didn’t need to explain any aging anomalies. I told him much of the truth—that I had been pressed into a life at sea and that after living for some time on a distant archipelago I had finally found my way back home.
“And how did you get onto my roof?”
This was a bit trickier to answer. “I did a lot of climbing on the islands—coconut trees and volcanoes and such. The facade of your building is easier to scale than one might think. There are marvelous handholds. No trouble at all.”
“Even with a crocodile?”
“She’s not as heavy as you imagine. She held on to my back—with her claws, you know. She’s very intelligent.”
I could see he didn’t believe a word of it.
“And why does she tick?”
So he had heard her incessant timekeeping.
“She swallowed a watch.”
“I see.” Which he obviously didn’t. He was mulling something over now, then stood and headed for the bathroom door. “While you’re getting dressed let me bring you some tea and scones.” He stepped out of the room.
I rose from the now-tepid water and grabbed a towel hanging on a nearby rack. No sooner was I dried and in my new underclothes than he was back, bearing a tray with teapot, cup, and plate of currant scones fresh from the oven. Apparently he had anticipated this meal, and now the aroma of yeasty buttery fruity bread filled the room. Half-naked as I was (I no longer had any body shame since swimming with Josephine), I stepped to his side and popped an entire scone into my mouth. Heaven! I chewed, gulping tea at the same time to wash it down.
“I have a favor to ask of you,” he said.
I continued to chew and drink as I dressed.
“Anything,” I answered, my mouth still full.
“I want your crocodile.”
I stopped dressing midsock. “Daisy? Why?”
“I’ve never opened one before.” He sounded as if he were speaking of a package or a drawer.
“You mean . . . vivisect her?”
“She won’t feel a thing.”
“No. No. Absolutely not. That’s impossible.” I continued with the first sock, then moved on to the other.
“It’s the ticking, to be honest. It fascinates me. How can the watch be impervious to the digestive juices? Not that it would dissolve, of course, but the mechanical workings would surely be affected. And it’s so loud ! I mean, this is a scientific mystery—a miracle perhaps!”
“But cutting her open won’t solve anything. Clearly the watch hasn’t been affected by digestion, and opening her stomach will not get you any satisfying answer, let alone a commendation from the Journal of Science and Medicine!”
“Yes, but it will give me a great deal of pleasure. Solving the puzzle, I mean, not the vivisection itself. My intentions are noble and pure.”
I was beginning to doubt his pure, noble intentions.
“Besides, dear boy, what are you going to do with a crocodile in London? You can’t possibly live with it, there isn’t a landlord in all of England who would allow such a thing. Nor does the London Zoo have any need of another one. They have enough.”
“She’s . . . my pet.” I was becoming emotional, and could not wrap my brain around any logical answer. I pulled on the shirt. It fit me perfectly.
“She has no affection for you. She’s a reptile! Their brains are quite primitive.”
“But I . . . I have affection for her.”
“Yes, of course, but— Look, dear boy, I’ve given you clothes and a bed and a bath. Do you have money? Certainly not English pounds, I imagine. I’ll give you as much as you need. You’re welcome to stay with me for as long as you like. I’ll buy you a new wardrobe. I’ll introduce you to prospective employers. You have nothing but a crocodile to your name and I have everything to offer.”
“But I named her for my mother.” Good Lord, I thought, logic has fled me entirely. “My mother’s dead and Daisy, I’m her mother.” I was becoming quite silly from lack of food. “I fed her. She was raised on my blood.” Tears sprang to my eyes. What was happening to me? I pulled on my shoes. “No, no, I can’t give her up, it’s simply not possible. Simply—not. No, no, no no no.” Fully dressed, with shoes unfastened, I grabbed the valise and headed for the bathroom door.
“Do think it over.”
“I have, I have, thank you, Doctor Slinque, for your kindness and generosity, and for answering my questions, but it’s time Daisy and I, Daisy and I, Daisy and I were . . .” The bathroom was spinning around me. “. . . going.”
And then the room stopped spinning as its walls collapsed, burying me in darkness.
* * *
By the time I opened my eyes again the sky above was pinking with twilight.
I lay on a cast-iron bench in Slinque’s backyard. I sat up and my head exploded. My shoes remained undone. My valise was no longer beside me. Slinque had drugged me, as surely as he had drugged my mother, and for all I knew he was at this very moment slicing open my baby to study the contents of her ticking stomach.
I staggered to his rear door and pounded. There was no answer. I walked around the side of the house and climbed the stoop to the front entrance. I pounded again. Again, no answer. I looked up, examining the exterior wall, hoping to find the ready handholds that I had told Slinque made the facade so easy to climb. It was smooth stucco.
“SLINQUE!” I shouted. “YOU BA——RD! GIVE ME BACK MY DAISY!”
The only response this elicited was from a London bobby who happened to be patrolling the street.
“Here, here, that’s enough of that.”
“This man has kidnapped my child!”
He looked at me as if I were on leave from Bedlam.
“Don’t be absurd,” he said, taking me firmly by the arm. “I know Doctor Slinque. He’s a good fellow. Gives me lemon sweets for my little boy. He would no sooner harm a child than—than the Queen herself. Now get along with you, or I’ll call some friends of mine to help you home.”
I had no choice. Hours had passed since Slinque had drugged me. Daisy, no doubt, was already jarred and specimened.
* * *
I wandered the streets, trying to decide to whom I might turn. Reaching into my jacket pocket at some point, I found it stuffed with ten-pound notes and a dozen or so lemon sweets.
I entered a pub and gorged myself on chips and ale. (I could not bear to touch the kidney pie, or even the fish—they reminded me too much of Daisy’s fate. Since that hour I have remained, dear reader, a strict vegetarian.) I then ordered a glass of rum, which went straight to my head, and when the idea struck me—and I made my request to the barman for a London Directory—it was with blurred vision that I strained to find a certain name. But find it I did. His residence was quite close: Number 14, Kensington Park Gardens in Notting Hill.
It was late, far too late to go visiting a stranger, and so I remained at the pub until closing, then wandered the streets waiting for my third day in England to begin.
At some point during the night I studied myself in a men’s washroom mirror. I did not appear to have aged beyond thirty. The clothes that Slinque gave me fit me well, and since he was something of a dapper man, I too seemed respectable enough so that no one would run in the opposite direction if I approached them. As dawn broke I made my way to Number 14 and waited patiently nearby until the man I was looking for left the house and headed off to the nearest bus stop. I knew him at once to be the person I sought: he looked very much like me.
* * *
“Mr. Darling? Mr. George Darling?”
“Yes?” The man turned in my direction as I approached him.
“Might I have a word with you?”
He cocked his head slightly at the sight of me.
“Do I know you? You look familiar.”
“You do know me in a certain way, and then again you don’t. I believe I’m your half brother.”
I might have been gazing again into Slinque’s bathroom mirror. That is why, I explained to myself, I experienced such an odd feeling of déjà vu at the sight of him. He was slightly heavier than I, and his coloring a tad paler, but anyone seeing us side by side would know at once we were brothers. (This is one thing that wretched play got right: by a remarkable coincidence the conceited actor playing the Pirate Moi decided that the leading part of Villain was not enough for him; he demanded he play the children’s father too.)
Whatever I was seeing in him, George Darling was likewise seeing in me.
“My God,” he whispered and turned even paler. It would not do to question my claim; the evidence was standing before him.
* * *
We breakfasted at a club not far from his Fleet Street office. He sent a message to his secretary saying he would be delayed indefinitely due to an unexpected client meeting. Both of us ordered the same meal—tomato omelet, dry toast, fried onions, no potatoes—and both our orders sat untouched before us as we talked.
My existence, though surprising, was not altogether unexpected. He knew the circumstances of his mother Angela’s death, and as an adolescent had found a series of love letters written to her by our mutual father. George knew he looked nothing like his legal father. As a child he had been told over and over how much he resembled his late mother, Angela, with no mention ever being made of George Darling Senior—and when he found the love letters he fell upon the truth. This was more a relief than not—he respected George Senior, but did not care very much for him, as they had little in common. George Junior entertained fantasies of his birth father’s identity, but he never knew the man’s full name—the letters were signed only “Your loving James”—so it was with great excitement that he listened to my story.
I illustrated our relationship on the back of an envelope as I explained it. “It’s quite simple, really. Two sisters, Angela and Margaret, met and fell in love with two brothers, James and Arthur Cook. Margaret married Arthur, but Angela was already married, to George Darling Senior. James too had commitments; namely, my mother and myself. Still, he and Angela loved each other, and you were the happy outcome.”
I admitted that I had learned of his existence only days before. I told him that our father was captain of a ship that had been lost at sea, and that we were quite possibly direct descendants of the explorer James Cook. I said that I too was a sea captain, and my visits to London were rare. He was astonished to learn that we were nearly the same age. We parted with a hearty handshake, and he left me with an invitation to dine with him and his wife that evening. His daughter, he added, would be thrilled to meet her new uncle.
* * *
I arrived at Number 14 with flowers for his wife and a smaller bouquet for his little girl. She was three, and a lovelier child I have never seen. She was so delighted with her nosegay that when I presented it to her, once we were seated in the parlor, she danced around my chair and under it and over me. She called me her “new friend,” but her lisping vocabulary could not yet make sense of the word friend and so I became her new “fwendy.” I in turn called her my Wendy. The name, fortunately, stuck.
They had acquired a Newfoundland puppy the previous Christmas, an intelligent creature whom they named Nana. She was in training, they joked, to become their daughter’s nursemaid, and if successful would act in this capacity to the newest addition to the family once he or she arrived. (Mrs. Darling—who insisted I call her Mary—was expecting another child quite soon.) The dog put me in mind of my own dear pet, and when tears sprang to my eyes Little Wendy asked what had made me so sad. I told her that I had recently lost my own Nana, and she climbed onto my lap and embraced me in consolation.
Once Wendy (and Nana) were put to bed, George and I had a frank discussion about our father. Mary, I must admit, did not express wholehearted approval of the man, but she did not condemn him either, since his womanizing had resulted in the fellow she loved most in this life, not to mention Wendy’s new half uncle (me). I felt welcomed and appreciated by both of them. I must remark here that George’s character was much warmer than eventually depicted by that gullible Scotsman, but I suppose the fictional George’s infantile blustering was created by the author in order to justify certain preposterous plot developments. Feeding the dog his medicine indeed! The real George Darling was a delightful human being who took his medicine without complaint, and I am proud to think that we resembled each other in so many important ways.
The dinner was exquisite, the company charming, the evening unforgettable. I can’t say if My Plan was born that night, but I’m sure the seeds of it took root, even though it was some time before it blossomed into what would be my revenge on the murderous Peter.
* * *
I left Number 14 around ten o’clock and only then realized I had no place to go. I returned to the Slinque residence, which stood a dark and foreboding silhouette against the night sky. From there I walked to the Kensington town house where I was raised, but I could not remain for long; looking at it brought back so much sadness. Eventually I walked to London Paddington, where I secured a cab to take me—for an enormous sum—to Eton. On my arrival I headed straight to the Eton Wall, which I had found so oddly comforting as a student. I hoisted myself onto it, and remained there for several hours.
I tried to think of happy things, which meant I could not think of Tiger Lily, or of Daisy, or of my mother, or of my grandfather and Aunt Margaret. I could think only of George and his charming wife and his sweet little girl. I marveled again at how familiar George looked, even though I had gazed at my adult self but briefly in Slinque’s bathroom mirror, and then later in the men’s washroom. That’s when the truth of it struck me like a shot. Tears sprang to my eyes, I hugged myself tight, and my new body was racked with sobs.
I now began to understand the lies I had been told, and the secret that lay behind them. I suspected the identity of the Great White Father. I understood why I had found the watch and how it had come to be there. I knew at last that, in order to move forward with my life, I had to return to my past.
What, dear reader, was that realization that struck me so vividly on the Wall? In time, begging your patience, all will be clear. Suffice it to say that, from that moment onward, my mind was made up: I must revisit the Never-Isles. But the only way I could manage that was with the Flying Sand, tucked away in my father’s valise—which valise remained with Slinque—unless, of course, he had tossed it in the rubbish, seeing that it contained only some ragged clothes and a pouch of grainy dirt. Never mind—I had to secure it somehow.
I caught the first train back to London.
* * *
Slinque’s house was dark and silent. I knocked at the front entrance. No one answered. I walked around to the rear and pounded on the back door. Nothing. Useless. I considered moving the cast-iron bench beneath a back window and smashing the glass to gain entrance. The sound, however, might alert neighbors who would call the police. And then I wondered if there might be a way inside via the basement.
I circled the house again, looking for a door or a window leading below, and found nothing. I did discover, however, a garden shed under the backyard stairs. In the rear of the shed was a door—opening, I hoped, into the basement. It was locked, but I already knew that Slinque’s locks were no match for my determination. With a few well-placed kicks the door flew open.
The room was dark, low-ceilinged. There was a stench of decay, and the earthen floor was soft and damp. In one corner rose a mound of loose dirt—humped as one finds on a freshly filled grave—and I began to fear that Slinque’s experiments with vivisection may not have been limited to the lower primates. (I have since come to suspect that he may have been involved in the Whitechapel affair.) As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I noticed several other grave-like mounds scattered around the basement. But I could not dwell on this discovery. I was on a mission.
I felt my way to a set of stairs. I mounted as silently as I could, wincing whenever a creak in a tread announced my presence. At the top of the staircase I pushed open the cellar door and entered the ground floor proper. I found myself in a kitchen, spotlessly clean, too clean. Whoever cooked here needed to be certain that there was no trace left of whatever he had eaten. I walked from here to a hallway, to the stairway leading to the first floor. I mounted the steps slowly, rounded the banister, and continued my careful ascent. I still heard not a sound. On reaching the next level I tiptoed into Slinque’s bedroom, fearful I might find him awake in bed, waiting for me with his pistol. But his bed was empty and had not been slept in. My valise was nowhere to be seen. I walked to the bathroom, expecting to find it there. Again I was disappointed.
The only other place for me to look was the surgery. I braced myself: the last thing I wanted to find was Daisy’s corpse, freshly dissected—or worse, sliced open and splayed, like the frog of my childhood. I paused at the bottom of the dreaded stairs. I heard a sound now: someone was above, moving slowly. Slinque knew of my presence, and was waiting, with gun or scalpel. There was no weapon of defense in sight; all I had to protect myself were words. I would thank him for the clothes and the money. I would express forgiveness (falsely) for what he did to Daisy. I would humbly ask for my father’s valise, and I would leave. Revenge, if it were to come, would arrive on some future date.
I climbed the stairs, making no attempt to conceal my presence. I opened the surgery door. The sight that greeted me was the worst I had ever seen, far outstripping the murder of the Never-Isle leviathan or the carnage of my recent sea battle.
The attack must have been swift. I have imagined it in countless nightmares, envisioned it again and again in fantasies of horror. What really happened I’ll never know; what I see in my mind’s eye is quite sufficient.
As he prepared the chloroform, she seized his ankle and dragged him to the floor. From there the consumption was slow and inevitable. First the foot, or possibly as much as a leg below the knee. Then, while he screamed in horror, she moved on to the other foot, followed by the other leg in its entirety. Once the femoral arteries were severed, blood spurted everywhere, coating walls, floor, even spattering the ceiling. After the legs had been consumed, and the man I knew was but half of his former self, he tried to drag himself away. It was then that she took hold of his middle parts and shook him like a puppy bothering a stuffed toy, after which she opened her maw in an attempt to swallow him whole. He must have died before she bit off his torso at the neck, leaving his head and one arm uneaten. Even a crocodile can devour only so much of a man, wicked as he might be.
She gave me a ROAR of greeting, and—I swear to you, dear reader—actually wagged her tail. I fell to my hands and knees, crying out with joy, and hugged her close, or as close as one can hug a crocodile. She was full size now, and quite as big as her mother had been. When we were done cuddling, I searched the surgery for some kind of rope to tether her to me for our journey. Oddly enough I found several dog leashes—it seemed that Slinque may have been guilty of canine-napping (the least of his many crimes, I later learned)—and I figured out a way to fasten them together into a kind of crocodile collar. Another leash stretched from this collar to my wrist. I peppered us both with Sand—yes, dear reader, my valise was in the surgery and only slightly bloodied, standing next to a jar labeled HALF A HUMAN KIDNEY—and ascended the stairs to the roof. As the sun rose I aimed us both toward the second star to starboard and headed far, far away.