Page 47 of Malady

“Alice Fletcher was beyond anything I could have done for her. She would have died whether I entered that room or remained twenty miles from Beswick.”

“Yet you still took her soul.”

“I did.”

“What for?”

“Because I require it.”

“Require it for what?”

“Well, I cannot spend every waking hour pouring it into your patients, can I? I have certain needs of my own.”

“What needs?”

I regard her for a moment, wondering whether there is any manner of explaining this that will not result in the pestle being thrown at my head.

“I must eat, Ophelia.”

The colour drains from her face. “You eat them?”

“I consume what remains of them,” I correct. “You consume your pasties, and I consume the essence of souls. We both require sustenance, although I appreciate that my particular diet may be somewhat less appealing to you.”

“Less appealing?” she repeats faintly. “Iscairn, you’re eating people.”

“No, I am eating what people no longer require. There is a considerable difference.”

“There is absolutely no difference!”

“There is, I assure you. I do not wander about with an unfortunate collection of the dead trapped beneath my ribs, pleading to be released. Their memories and identities have already departed by the time I feed. What remains is merely the essence that once sustained them, and it sustains me much as food sustains you.”

She stares at me for several seconds, her jaw twitching. “Alice was smiling,” she says at last. “On the cart. She asked you to make it peaceful, the way it was for David. If all you want is what’s left of them, why bother with any of that?”

“Because fear spoils it. A soul that leaves in terror is thin and bitter, and it sits poorly. So I stay with them first. I ease the pain where I can, and I wait until they are no longer afraid.”

“So the comfort is for you.”

“The comfort is for them. That I benefit from it as well does not make it any less real.”

Her mouth opens, then closes again. “And if you don’t eat it?”

“Then I weaken. Given sufficient time, I imagine I would eventually starve.”

“Starve?” She looks me up and down, her expression changing once more. “Then you must be alive. But if you are alive, then how do you have records in your own hand, dating back three hundred years?”

“I believe that I am dead.”

“You believe so? How does a man not know whether he’s dead?” Her gaze drops towards my chest. “Do you have a pulse?”

“Yes, although I doubt you would find it particularly reassuring. It is weak and keeps rather poor time.”

“And you don’t know why?”

“I do not. There was a man, and then there was this. Whatever lay between the two, I do not remember it.”

She studies me with an expression I have grown accustomed to seeing upon the faces of baffled physicians. Though I suspect most of them would possess the good sense to stop asking questions before discovering quite how unusual their patient truly is.

“But what of the people?” she asks. “You keep saying their souls leave them, but there must be more to a person than whatever it is you’re eating. Their memories, their sins. What happens to all of that?”