“Returned already have you, you chattering blights? Found one quickly, then,” a quavery voice echoed from the transept. With a squeal of unoiled axles, a wheelchair rolled into view, its thin, wasted occupant wrapped in a dingy blanket against the chill. Valiant holdouts of unkempt white hair lingered on his parchment-like pate, and the speaker wore dark glasses despite to the gloom in the church.
“Dr. Saleon, I presume,” the inspector growled, a righteous loathing filling his voice.
“I… I was called that once,” the wretched man in the wheelchair answered distractedly, rolling to a stop near a long-battered table clotted with gore and other unmentionable fragments. “You… are not… why are you…”
Inspector Vakarian, striding forward to apprehend the criminal, informed him heatedly that he was under arrest, but the doctor held up palsied hands pleading for quiet. As the constable seized one of Dr. Saleon’s stick-like arms, the doctor finally resisted, and in the struggle the blanket slipped from his lap to the floor. Despite himself, the inspector recoiled at the sight of the doctor’s legs, which had been crudely severed mid-thigh and sutured with thick black thread. I pressed a hand to Miss Zorah’s veil to shield her from the sight, feeling the feverish heat of her skin beneath the thin cloth.
“Ah, an agent of the law, then,” the doctor sneered, suddenly seeming to find his voice, if not his composure. He tore away the dark glasses, uncovering blinded, horribly empty sockets. “As if your earthly punishments could constrain me any more than your earthly laws could constrain the advances of science! No, I have been punished quite enough, you fool, though pure science has always demanded such sacrifice. I say damn your petty justice and damn that madman Arterius and his lies for leaving me like this!”
“A man of my stature, confronted with some of the greatest advances to human knowledge within recorded history,” he shouted stridently, his mutilated face undergoing fantastic contortions in his fury, “only to become a prisoner and be reduced to the role of common butcher!” He indicated the scarred table near him, calling our attention to the surgical tools piled there. My stomach twisted terribly at the thought of how the villagers had described the excisions that had marked the bodies found by the seaside and how the desecrated church reeked with the smell of spoiled flesh. To what nightmarish purpose had the doctor lent his perverted expertise?