“Right.” I followed him out of the garden, mind still churning with stories of blood and predators that could unbutton a collar. But I wasn’t superstitious, and I certainly didn’t believe in blood thieves. The fact that Sally’s mother still thought they might be about didn’t prove anything. “It’s a shame that there wasn’t a naturalist around to get to the bottom of it,” I murmured.
Jackson shut the gate and turned back to me. “Oh, but there was,” he said. “Wasn’t just Phelps who was in at the death. Dr. Halder was there too.”
CHAPTER 5
The clear weather seemed to be sticking around and I seized the opportunity to work on the balcony. It was a beautiful workspace. Seated at the table, all I could see were tree branches and a sea of leaves, which rustled and sighed and shifted like women rearranging green petticoats. The overhanging roof kept direct sun at bay for most of the day but it was bright and open and airy.
Sadly, the improved light made me stare at my current illustration—Nicrophorus marginatus, the margined burying beetle—and realize that all the colors were much too bright, the shell was more blue than black, and that I was an utter fraud at all forms of artistic endeavor. (This is a normal part of the illustrator’s process, but sadly, knowing that does not always help.) Only great discipline and the knowledge that Halder probably wouldn’t notice kept me from wadding the painting into a ball and flinging it into the woods.
I got out my sketchbook and studied my notes, returned to the library to study the beetle, went back to the balcony, looked at my sketchbook, looked at my paints, and wondered if it was too late to run away to join the circus.
It wasn’t just the paint. I couldn’t stop thinking about Halder and blood thieves in the woods. Or the Devil, if Phelps was to be believed. I told myself fiercely to concentrate on the task at hand.Margined burying beetles. Focus on margined burying beetles.
The beetles didn’t put a stake through whatever they wereburying.A stake! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’d think this was the 1600s. And Halderletthem?
I wanted desperately to ask him about it, but I couldn’t figure out how to bring it up. If I just asked him outright, he’d know that Jackson or Sally had told me. Would he be angry? Could it rebound on them somehow? I had no idea, but Halder hadn’t exactly impressed me as a bastion of good cheer. If it was something he was ashamed of (and how could he not be ashamed? Letting superstition run rampant like that—staking the bodies, for god’s sake) he might take it out on his employees. We were so isolated here, I didn’t dare risk jeopardizing the only friendly faces I saw regularly.
At that moment, as I slumped despairingly against the worktable, an insect landed on my left wrist.
For a moment I thought it was a giant bee. It was at least an inch long, black with rusty yellow patches. I froze, not wanting to prompt it into a sting. But as it turned, I saw the enormous compound eyes and realized that it was, in fact, a fly.
“Now you’re an odd beast,” I murmured. What was it? I was vaguely familiar with giant robber flies, which look similar, but it didn’t seem quite the same.Halder would probably be able to tell me, if I can catch it. But will he be annoyed or happy to be asked?
I suspected that Halder would be only too glad to display his expertise, but of course, I had to catch the creature first. I had been cleaning my brushes in a jar of water on the table. I reached for it very slowly, not wanting to startle the insect, and emptied it as quietly as possible, trying not to move my wrist.
The fly rubbed its front legs together thoughtfully. Its yellow patches were as fuzzy as any bumblebee, shading to a deep red at the back of the head. Its abdomen was glossy black, and I still didn’t know where its metathorax was, or if it even possessed one. As I slowly lifted the jar, it pressed its abdomen against my wrist several times, as if dancing.
I slapped the jar down, mouth over the fly, and crowed with triumph. “Got you!”
The fly jumped up, buzzing against the glass, then dropped back down. It was only a moment’s work to ease my hand out and slide my sketchbook underneath, though I was surprised by how strongly it flailed against the glass.
I might be an utter failure as an illustrator, but by god, I was sneakier than a large fly. I took my captive into the house and made my way to Halder’s study.
“Hmph,” said Dr. Halder, peering through his glasses at my captive. “Oh, aCuterebra. Botfly. Also called ‘wolf worms.’ Parasitic on mammals.”
“Parasitic?” I asked, looking dubiously at the fly through the glass.
“Oh yes.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Nasty fellows, botflies. They lay their eggs in burrows—the ones that don’t lay eggs on their hosts directly—and then the larva hatches out, waits for a host to walk by, latches on, and climbs inside. Mouth, nose, anus, open wound, they don’t discriminate. Once inside, they wander until they find a spot just beneath the skin and begin to feed on the host’s fluids. Proper little monsters, they are.”
I stared down at my wrist in sudden horror. Had it been laying eggs on me? Were tiny maggots even now making their way across my skin?
“Deer botflies, now, they don’t even wait for the animal to pass by—the female ejects her larvae directly into the nasal passages of the victim, where they form clusters at the base of the tongue. This, however, is likelyCuterebra emasculator.” Halder tapped the glass. “Forms enormous warbles on the sides of squirrels that hang there like grapes, each one with a single large maggot inside. Then one day the larva squirms loose andturns into a fly, who goes off looking for a mate, lays eggs, and thenherlarvae find a victim for their appetites.”
“Blood thieves…” I murmured, half to myself.
Halder pushed his glasses up, giving me an odd look. “Not blood,” he said. “They feed primarily on the lymphatic fluids.”
I have a very strong stomach—all scientific illustrators must, I think, as we work so often from study skins and preserved specimens that reek of formaldehyde—but the description of warbles hanging like grapes from a squirrel, and the thought that I might wind up with one actuallyon me… My mouth flooded with bile. “Excuse me,” I said in a strangled voice, and lunged for the basin in the corner, scrubbing frantically at my wrist where the fly had touched me.
Halder laughed. It was the first time I think I’d heard him laugh, high and braying, like a soprano donkey. I hated him for it, but I didn’t stop scrubbing. It was a small comfort when his laugh turned into a coughing fit.I hope it carries you off, you miserable old sod.
No, I don’t, I need this job. Damnation.
“You needn’t worry,” he said, once he’d recovered, and I’d scoured both arms from fingertip to the elbow. “This species don’t usually latch onto humans.”
“It’s theusuallypart that worries me,” I snapped.
Halder snorted. “Now,Cuterebra emasculator, as it happens, is a particularly fine example of human idiocy. Described in the middle of the century by that overrated hack Asa Fitch. ‘The country’s first professional entomologist,’ they call him. They’d have been better served by amateurs!” His fist thumped down on the table, making the papers on it and the jar with the fly both jump. “The fool named it ‘emasculator’ because he said the maggots chewed the squirrel’s testicles off. They do no such thing, as he could easily have seen if he’d taken five minutes to catch a male squirrel with a warble on it! And yet those fools atthe Megatherium Club still hold Fitch up as the greatest man since Thomas Say!” He thumped the table again.
