The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist, #4)

by Rick Yancey

He must have heard them that night: the howls and shrieks of the boy’s soul tearing in half, the cry of damnation’s desire, the rage against the beast that had refused to consume him. The beast that had left behind the black, smoldering casings of his parents—for what it did not use for fuel, it shat out as dust and ash. He must have heard. Every board and window and shingle and nail must have rattled with the force of his anger and grief. The man must have heard—and he did nothing. In fact, in those early days, the more I cried—always alone in my little attic room—the harsher, colder, and more merciless he became. Perhaps he told himself it was for my own good, and after all this was at a time when children were not coddled. Perhaps his harshness was meant to make me harsh, his coldness to make me cold, his mercilessness to make me merciless. It was the best and only answer to the brutal question as he understood it: What sort of god is this? But now I don’t think he was being harsh or cold or merciless. He was not the harsh, cold, merciless one. Now I think he heard my screams and remembered another boy, a boy from long ago, consigned to that same attic space away from the beating heart of the house, the lonely boy whose mother had died and whose father blamed him for it. The terrified boy who watched his father fade from him while remaining all the while in his sight, a majestic ship disappearing over the endless horizon, the boy alone and sick and sick in his lonelines...