All eyes turned to me, none more astonished than those of the doctor. I had completely forgotten about it in the hurly-burly of events since I’d found it. My cheeks tingling with embarrassment, I reached into my pocket and removed the old key.
“Will Henry-,” began the doctor.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I blurted. “I was going to tell you, but you were in a foul mood when I found it, so I decided to tell you later, and then I forgot… I’m sorry, sir.”
Warthrop took the key, staring at it with wonder. “Where did you find it?”
“In the head, sir.”
“The bathroom?”
“The shrunken head, sir.”
“Ah,” said Kearns, snatching the key from Warthrop. “The constable had it. Will Henry has come to our rescue yet again! Let us see now if fortune smiles…”
He knelt beside the rusting lock and slid the key inside. Teeth ground against reluctant tumbler as he forced the ancient gears clockwise. The lock snapped open with a loud pop!
“Stand ready,” breathed Kearns. “She may be lurking on the other side, though I doubt it.”
He grasped the handle of the trapdoor-what bitter irony lay in that name!-and flung it open with a dramatic flourish, like a magician opening a cabinet to reveal its remarkable, heretofore unseen contents. The lid smashed to the floor, a corner nearly catching me in the shin as it came crashing down. From above we heard the constable’s consternated cry, “What was that!” and the rumble and clatter of footsteps racing down the stairs. A nauseating wave of putridity rushed through the hole, invading the enclosed space, a profane stench of such profundity that Malachi recoiled with a strangled gasp, retreating to the farthest corner, where he doubled over, clutching his stomach. Morgan and his man Brock appeared above us on the stairs, gripping their revolvers with shaking hands.
“Dear God!” cried the constable, patting his pockets desperately for his handkerchief. “What the devil is that?”
“The devil’s manger,” replied Warthrop grimly. “Will Henry, hand me your lamp.”
He knelt on the side of the hole opposite Kearns, and lowered the light the length of his entire arm. The darkness below seemed to resist its glow, but I could see a smooth, cylindrical wall, like the upended bore of an enormous cannon. This chute ran ten feet straight down before it abruptly terminated. What lay beneath it, I could not see.
“Clever,” murmured Kearns with frank appreciation. “Drop the victim into the hole, and gravity does the rest.” He dug a flare from his bag and lit it. The gloom was banished by brilliant bluish light. He tossed the device down the hole. Down the shaft it dropped, then tumbled into open space, perhaps fifty feet or more, before landing among the jumble of the macabre debris littering the chamber’s floor. Morbid curiosity overcame our sense of smell, and we crowded around the hole to peer into the pit.
Below was a jagged landscape of shattered bone that spanned the radius of the flare’s illumination, a morass of remains immeasurable in magnitude, thousands of bones, thousands upon thousands, flung willy-nilly in all directions, tiny phalanges and large femurs, ribs and hips, sternums and vertebral columns still intact, rising out of rubble like the ribbed, crooked fingers of a giant. And skulls, some with tufts of hair still attached, skulls small and skulls large, some with mouths frozen open as if the jaw had locked mid-scream. Into this vile vista of human wreckage we stared, this carnage that human folly and carnivorous frenzy had wrought, our hearts filled with wonder and awe at horror’s true face, at once monstrous and all too human.
Beside me Kearns murmured, “‘Through me the way into the suffering city… Through me the way to the eternal pain…’”
“There must be hundreds of them,” muttered Morgan, who, having found his trusty handkerchief, spoke now through it.
“Six to seven hundred, I would guess,” ventured Kearns dispassionately. “An average of two or three per month for twenty years, if you wanted to keep them fat and happy. It’s an ingenious design: The fall would more than likely break their legs, lowering their odds of escape from extremely doubtful to impossible.”
He hauled himself to his feet, slung his rifle over one shoulder, and the canvas bag over the other. “Well, gentlemen, duty calls, yes? Constable, if you and Mr. Brock here would hold the rope for us, I think we’re ready. Are we ready, Malachi? Pellinore? I’m ready. I’m practically giddy with anticipation: Nothing gets my blood up like a bloody good hunt!” His expression mirrored his words. His eyes shone; his cheeks glowed. “We’ll need our lamps lowered to us once we’re down, Constable-don’t want to waste the flares. So who is going first? Very well!” he cried without waiting for a volunteer. “I will! Hold tight, now, Constable, Mr. Brock; I fancy walking upright like a proper bipedal mammal. Pellinore, Malachi, I shall see you in hell-I mean, at the bottom.”
He dropped the rope into the hole, swung his legs over the edge, and scooted on his backside until he teetered on the opening’s lip. Taking the rope in both hands, he looked up at me, and for some reason gave me a wink before dropping down. The rope went taut in its human anchors’ white-knuckled grips, jerking this way and that as Kearns lowered himself, hand over hand, into the death chamber. I heard the sickening crunch of his landing in the skeletal rubble, and the rope went limp.
“Next!” he called softly. The flare’s blue light sputtered and spat, causing his shadow to flitter and lurch over the confusion of bones.
Before the doctor could move, Malachi grabbed the rope. He looked at me and said “I’ll see you soon, Will” before disappearing from view.
Now it was the doctor’s turn. I confess the words were on my lips, Take me with you, sir, but I spoke them not. He would refuse-or worse, agree. Or would that be worse? Were not our fates inextricably bound together? Had not they been entwined since the night my father and mother, embracing, had died in that fire’s devouring embrace? You are indispensable to me, he had said earlier. Not “your services,” as it had always been since I had come to live with him, but “you.”
As if he could read my mind, he said, “Wait for me here, Will Henry. Don’t leave until I return.”
I nodded, my eyes stinging with tears. “Yes, sir. I’ll wait right here for you, sir.”
He fell out of sight, into the devil’s manger.
Their lamps were lowered next, and our anxious vigil commenced. I remained by the opening in the chamber floor, watching the dance of the flare’s fire until it died, straining at the feeble yellow glow of their lamps until that too was swallowed up by the dark. Brock sat upon the bottom step and stoically cleaned his fingernails with his pocketknife. Morgan puffed noisily on his empty pipe and obsessively took off and put back on his pince-nez, rubbing the lenses nervously with his handkerchief before shoving them back upon his nose and slapping the kerchief back over his mouth.
After several minutes of this annoying ritual-puff, puff, rub, rub-his restless eyes fell upon me, and he whispered, “There will be a reckoning, Will Henry, I promise you that. Oh, yes. The guilty will answer for their crimes; I will make sure of it!”
“The doctor didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“Well, I beg to differ, boy. He had knowledge, and did nothing. And his inaction resulted in murder, plain and simple. He may tell you and himself his course was prudent, that he was following the dictates of his so-called science, but this was no scientific inquiry or intellectual exercise. This was a matter of life and death, and we both know which he chose! And we both know the real reason he tried to keep this abomination secret. To protect the good name of Warthrop, out of misguided loyalty to a man gone clearly mad!”
“I don’t think so, sir,” I said as politely as I could. “I don’t think he believed his father was to blame until we found the hidden door.”