“Take . . . the flesh back in,” I repeated in a horrified whisper.
“You recoil, sweet girl, but like the tribes of New Guinea, I have sought to ferry Catarina’s soul on to another generation. I am the vessel and I carry her now within me, as I did before she was born into this world.” He looked over my shoulder at the wall with a dreamy expression. That thoughtful smile soon crumbled, and he turned his attention back to me, nostrils flaring, jaw tense. “Was I wrong to take her life? I know not. Was I wrong to consume her? Who can say. . . . I regret raising her poorly. I regret taking early signs of impudence as nothing more than childish whimsy. And now I think on it, I see that I must take another for my daughter. Her soul is tainted. It was not innocent when it left her body.”
Welts were rising underneath his fingernails. My leg throbbed. I felt his mood twist a moment too late and I called out, pushing at the doctor’s shoulders and flinging myself away toward the other bench.
“Chijioke!” I tried to scream, but it died in my throat, a blow to the back of my head making me choke and sputter and fall to the floor. My vision blurred, the white droppings on the boards under my fingers bleeding together until the wood looked pure ivory. Scrambling, I managed to hoist myself up onto the bench and gasp for air.
He grabbed my ankle and pulled, viciously, and I flailed, nails scratching down the bench as I fought for purchase and lost. Kick! I commanded my legs. Kick, damn you! But my body was weak, my muscles responding lazily.
“Chijioke—” I tried again, but it came out as no more than a rasp.
The doctor clobbered me again with his fists, and I coughed, lashing out once more with my feet. My heel slammed into his rib cage and he reeled back, but only for a moment. His hat had fallen off in the commotion, flying out the back of the wagon, sucked into the foggy night. Merriman was upon me again, throwing me around, slamming me against one wall of the wagon and then tossing me wherever I might land.
The corpse of Mrs. Eames broke my fall, but only a little, and I coughed, feeling sick and shivery all over. I could hardly see, the punches to my head making me feel dizzy and distant, as though my thoughts and my will to fight skipped away out of reach, abandoning me to listless rolling and moaning. There had to be something I could do; I simply had to breathe. Breathe and fight. I pulled in a shuddering breath, rallying just as Merriman dropped to his knees next to me and snatched up my kicking legs, pulling off his cravat and using it to bind them together.
“It was exhilarating, I admit,” he whispered, tongue poking out as he tightened the silk around my ankles. My throat was closing up with panic, Chijioke’s name just a thought that I could not possibly turn into a shout. The pockmarked ground would make our struggling indecipherable from the bumpy ride. “To slice the flesh from her, to cook it, to know her taste as nobody would know it . . .”
He grunted as the cravat knot tightened, my toes going numb.
“And I confess,” he said, crawling over me and staring madly and sweating into my eyes, “I crave that unholy sacrament. I crave it, dear, sweet, innocent Louisa, and I will have it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
His horrible face was just a brown-and-black blur above me, and then I could see nothing at all, the next blow hitting my chin, rocking me onto my side.
When did I pray? Only in desperate moments. Only when I needed a miracle. Once I had been devout, as devout as my mother and father and grandparents wished, giving hours of my day to a God that never protected me. Then I grew sick of being tested. I grew sick of the excuses. I cannot say if I ever stopped believing, but I know I stopped trying to believe. But now, half-blinded by the pain in my head, tears spilling down my cheeks as I heard the soft, metallic sound of a knife being unsheathed, I prayed. Then I hoped. I kicked out with my legs, punched blindly with my arms, and I wished for someone to make this all go away.
I called over and over again for Chijioke, but blood was running down my throat and my voice was just a rattle. My teeth must have cut something in my mouth when he knocked my head around. His hot breath oozed across my face, and I fought, scratching at him, shaking when he managed to bat down my fingers and clamp my wrists in one hand. I could do nothing now but wriggle helplessly like a fish on land.
Please. Someone must be listening. Something. Anything. The good and heavenly helpers I was told about, or the dark, dangerous ones I know now to walk among us.
My eyesight was recovering, but that only made it worse. I did not want to see this monster masquerading as a man or discover that he was smiling as he hurt me. A flash of silver passed over my eyes. The knife. A sob mingled with the blood in my throat, a sad, lost gurgle that made me feel utterly undone.
Then I heard the distant thunder. He heard it, too. His head snapped up as he loomed over me, and I listened hard, straining for some glimmer of hope. Horse hooves. They were growing closer, coming upon us at a hard sprint. I threw my head back and watched, upside down, as a rider approached the wagon from behind, galloping into view with a gray cloak whipping around her head, as wind-tossed as her curly brown hair.
Mary.
“Stop the wagon!” I heard her voice cut through the painful buzzing in my ears. It was the strong, sure voice she had used when she held me during the storm. The same voice Maggie used when I was in the cupboards and needed someone to say: it will not stay like this forever.
The crack of a whip. A duo of shrieking mares. The wagon shuddered and screeched to a stop so abruptly that the back lifted completely off the ground and careened to the side. A shower of pebbles and dirt rained down on us a half second before Mary jumped from her horse. The beast stamped and circled, but I could see no more of it as Mary landed inches from my head, recovering with a hop before throwing herself at Merriman.
“Unhand me!” he thundered, the two of them tumbling over me and the widow’s corpse. They struggled for what felt like torturous hours, and though I freed my hands, my limbs shook too much for me to be of use. My head pounded and my mouth filled with the tang of blood, my feet numb from the tightness of the bonds around them.