The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist)

Thank you for downloading this eBook.

Find out about free book giveaways, exclusive content, and amazing sweepstakes! Plus get updates on your favorite books, authors, and more when you join the Simon & Schuster Teen mailing list.

C
LICK
H
ERE TO
L
EARN
M
ORE

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com/teen

For the fans, loyal and fierce, without whom this book would not be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Monstrumologist
was conceived as one thing and evolved into something quite different. That is the way of any creative endeavor, I suppose, and I should have known the path would be tortuous at times, fraught with unforeseen dangers and unexpected detours. Man-eating monsters running amok is a simple enough concept, the impenetrable dark in us, not so much. There were times when I wasn’t sure
what
I was writing, but I never doubted that it was worth writing. In the darkest times—and there were some very dark ones—I held on. I may not have always known what I had, yet I always knew I had
something.

I was never alone in that belief. Brian DeFiore, agent extraordinaire, was there from the beginning; as well as the inestimable David Gale, my editor, a very patient man who understands better than most the creative process. I would also like thank the rest of the team at Simon & Schuster, particularly Justin Chanda and Navah Wolfe.

This book—well, all my books—wouldn’t have been written without the support and abiding faith of my wife, Sandy. She is proof, as if any is needed, that it isn’t so much what you know but who you marry.

And finally I must thank the community of readers who rose up when the life of this series was threatened. If not for them, there would be no conclusion to Will and Warthrop’s story. I am humbled and very, very grateful, though I know they didn’t do it for me: They did it for the characters they had come to love. We share that love. And my prayer is I have not disappointed them.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.

—Dante

EDITOR’S NOTE

Of the thirteen leather-bound notebooks discovered in 2007 after the death of the indigent calling himself William James Henry, these final three have been the most difficult to read and, if I’m being completely honest, the hardest to put into cogent form. At certain points, the manuscript is nearly indecipherable, physically as well as contextually. There are passages where I can’t make out the words and other sections where the words make no sense. There are snatches of poetry and page upon page of expletives strung together and notes scrawled in margins and even some doodles laced throughout the narrative, and I use that term loosely. It took months to tease out the coherent from the incoherent here. I have removed the most shocking language and the interminable asides on a dizzyingly array of esoterica, from recipes for the perfect raspberry scone to mind-bogglingly intricate discourses on Greek philosophy and the history of organized crime. I added punctuation where absolutely necessary (the author drops all attempts at it midway through), though in some parts I’ve left the “errors” alone, granting the author some latitude when I thought he might have a reason for breaking the rules. As the careful reader will note, there are shifts in tense layered throughout that I have left intact. Sometimes grammatical imperatives must give way to dramatic necessity. I am also the one responsible for dividing
the text into sections, which I call cantos, in honor of the many references to Dante’s masterpiece.

Wrestling with the demands of the physical text, however, was not my greatest challenge.

I will be honest: When I finished the last folio, the only word that fit my reaction was “loathing.” The second thing I felt was betrayal. Will Henry had betrayed me. He had been playing me for a fool. Or had he? There had been signs and warnings, hints here and there. After living with the first ten folios for so long, how could I not have seen where Will’s journey was taking him—taking
me
? Deep inside, I think I knew early on what lay at the end of his long descent. He had written:
I understand you may wish to turn away. And you can, if you wish. That is your blessing.

After I calmed down, I went back through all thirteen notebooks, and I ran across this passage from the ninth folio:

She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all.

That’s it, I thought. That sums it up nicely.

R. Y.

Gainesville, FL

March 2013

FOLIO XI

Judecca

IF HE WAS ONCE AS BEAUTIFUL AS HE IS UGLY NOW,
AND LIFTED UP HIS BROWS AGAINST HIS MAKER,
WELL MAY ALL AFFLICTION COME FROM HIM.

—DANTE, THE INFERNO

Canto 1

ONE

I reach for the end, though the end will not reach for me.

It has already reached for him.

He is gone

while I, locked in Judecca’s ice,

go on and on.

If I could name the nameless thing

My father burns, and living worms fall from his eyes.

They spew from his sundered flesh.

They pour from his open mouth.

It burns,
my father cries.
It burns!

His contagion, my inheritance.

If I could face the faceless thing

From the fire’s depths, I hear the discordant duet of their screams. I watch them dance in the final, fiery waltz.