“Where’s the poet?” croaked Frosticos, still grinning in a frozen rictus.
“Gone,” said William coolly.
“Peach?”
“Gone with him.” William was certain by then that Ashbless was miles down the river, deep into a land closed to Hilario Frosticos, no matter what vile powers he possessed. Frosticos knew it too. He’d lost Reginald Peach. A look of absolute fury twisted his face, followed by a wretching spasm of pain.
“You’ll like your new home. …” Frosticos began, but was doubled up by a wracking cough. When he looked up again he was haggard, twisted. He looked as if he had aged fifty years beneath the fleshy powder. William could have run. Frosticos’ power over him was broken. William knew it. He could have slammed Frosticos over the head, beaten him silly. But he didn’t Something was peculiarly, violently, wrong. And William sensed that for Frosticos it was going from bad to worse. He had a look in his eye — a hunted look — the look of a man who’s just discovered he’s made a frightful error. William would wait him out. He gripped the shaft of the flashlight tightly, ready to spring. But he’d watch for a moment first.
Frosticos’ hand shook as he fumbled with the latch on the black bag. For one grim instant William suspected that his worst fears were coming to pass. He raised the flashlight as if to crash it into the doctor’s forehead. Frosticos fell back a step, waving his hand, digging at the bag, glancing back and forth at William and the bag, sweating in a sudden flood of pasty makeup and rouge.
Something vital was in the bag, and it hadn’t anything to do with William. Heroin? Morphine? Of course. The false aspirin tablets. Frosticos had miscalculated. He’d chased William through the sewers until he’d gotten sick. But it was happening too quickly, taking him utterly by surprise. He must be incredibly dependent on it, thought William, eyeing the bag.
Frosticos tore it open and reached inside. William kicked it out of his hands, sending it end over end into slimy black water. Vials and bottles cascaded out, smashing, rolling, spilling serums and pills.
Frosticos howled — a deep, tortured howl of fear and pain. He turned on William, his teeth gnashing together, his eyes wild.
“Come on then!” William cried, waving his flashlight, a sudden surge of courage washing through him.
Frosticos turned and ran at the vials, grasping, gagging, clutching at an uncorked bottle of green liquid that had emptied half its contents into the water. William was after him in a trice. Frosticos lunged. William clubbed him with the flashlight, slipping in a pool. His legs splayed out. He grabbed Frosticos’ coat, pulling the doctor down with him. Frosticos shrieked, kicked, bit at the air. William rolled away and leaped up. He kicked the bottle down the sewer as if it were a football.
Glass and liquid flew when it glanced off the wall of the pipe. Frosticos screamed down on William, utterly insane, his mouth gibbering nonsense. William danced on the vials, smashing and breaking them, and clubbed Frosticos in the side of the head with the flashlight.
The lens smashed and the cap flew off followed by a shooting stream of batteries. Frosticos vanished in the darkness. William steeled himself for another gibbering onslaught. Frosticos would have the strength of a madman. But it was too late to run. He had run far enough.
Frosticos was silent, breathing heavily. He gasped. Something thudded into the concrete, three times in succession, as if Frosticos were jackknifing in the grip of a seizure, banging his head. William yanked off his torn pack, rummaging blindly for the penlight. He found it, switched it on, and shined the light into Frosticos’ face.
He gasped and fell back, treading on the pack. Frosticos seemed to be a mass of worms. His skin was crawling, metamorphosing. He jerked and breathed in hoarse, shallow, ratcheting coughs like an ancient, tired man dying on a sickbed, Then, with one last back-bending jerk, he flopped and lay still. His face slowly settled, quivering, broadening. Dark hair sprouted impossibly from between the pale sprouts. White eyebrows blackened. His eyes slowly focused on William’s face, puzzled at first, then clutched by a surge of sudden hatred. But they were no longer the eyes of Hilario Frosticos. Lying on the floor of the sewer, his still, dead face wearing a last look of rage and baffled surprise, was Ignacio Narbondo, vivisectionist, amphibian physiologist. William gasped, unbelieving.
The face began to shrink, changing once again. Skin shredded off. Hair grew out amazingly. There was a quick smell of death and dry decay in the air — a sarcophagus smell, mingled with the weird aquarium smell of fish. The hair fell out in clumps onto the floor of the sewer, and for one last moment, just for an instant that hung suspended between flesh and dust, William could swear that Frosticos resembled nothing more than a gigantic, ancient carp. But what was left staring up at him in the feeble glow of the penlight was the ivory-boned skeleton of a man, its head pushed forward onto its chest by the swerve of concrete pipe.
William stared at it, his mouth open in disbelief. Surely this was the least expected of the lot of it. But it fit — it fit like a glove. “Carp don’t die,” that’s what Pince Nez had said to Edward. A madness, Edward had assumed. But it signified in some dark way. They had all known it signified; they just hadn’t known how.
Shining the penlight on the still bones, William backed up, a step at a time, picking up his backpack from the sewer floor. He half expected the skeleton to hoist itself up like a marionette and rush at him as if William were Sinbad the sailor. A scattering of teeth clattered from the skull like dice, bouncing and rolling. William was off like a shot, racing for sunlight. This was no Arabian Nights. This was stark, sober reality. Frosticos was dead. The diving bell sailed at three o’clock. He’d come too far along peculiar paths to miss that voyage.
His knee, he discovered, had been bounced on the concrete when he’d fallen. And his back felt as if someone had been at it with a hammer. He pulled his pocket watch out; it was frozen at half past two. The water ran deeper in the pipe. He was forced to slop through it. He hadn’t run for five minutes before he was heaving and gasping again. He’d had it — more than had it. The thing was impossible. The bell, no doubt, had sailed. He’d stumble out onto an empty beach and be led away as a murderer. They’d find the skeleton in the sewer and accuse him of atrocities.
He dragged along, carrying his backpack in his good hand. There ahead, suddenly, was an arced slip of sunlight that looked for all the world like a crescent moon shining in a starless sky. The crescent grew to a half moon, a gibbous, a full moon, and he was out, jumping three feet down into the weedy sand.
Offshore sat the Gerhardi, riding at anchor. The bell was perched on deck. Latzarel was aboard. And there was Edward, posturing at a heap of canvas. Latzarel had him by the coat, pointing onshore, first at William, then above. He hollered something. Edward stood up. There was Jim at the bulwark, dropping the rowboat. A shout rang out above him on the bluffs. William looked up as he limped across the beach, pulling his backpack onto his shoulders, waving tiredly at Latzarel.
Two policemen were sliding toward him down the sandy trail. They hailed him, called him Mr. Hastings. They’d call him something else when Frosticos’ skeleton washed onto the beach in the next rain.