She was trying to remove something from a man’s ear during a violent storm—until she realized the thing moving inside him was alive.

The three floorboards between the peat stove and the trestle table rose three inches with a dry, splintering crack.

A stream of black water—thick, smelling of rotten kelp and wet lime—welled up through the gap, spreading rapidly across the dry pine planks toward Clara's boots.

Clara did not drop her microscope. She lifted the heavy brass instrument with both hands, setting it on the high shelf above the desk, then reached for her surgical bag. She pulled out a nine-inch amputation saw—its double-toothed blade dark with oil—and a pint bottle of concentrated carbolic acid.

"William," she said, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. "Get up."

The boy did not move from the hearth. His feet were still tucked into the gray ash of the stove, but his head had fallen back against the chimney-breast.

His eyes were wide open, looking at the roof-beams.

From his right ear—thin, pale, and glistening in the lantern light—a single, dark thread was already hanging down, four inches long, swinging gently like a pendulum in the cold draft.

"William!"

Clara stepped across the pool of black water, her leather boots splashing dark drops across her skirts. She grabbed William by his coat collar, dragging his head forward with a rough, violent jerk.

The thread hanging from his ear did not snap. It stretched—thinning out until it was no thicker than a spider's silk—pulling a drop of clear, violet fluid from the canal as it lengthened.

"...it's cold, doctor..." William whispered. His tongue was swollen, white at the edges, pushing against his front teeth. "...it's very cold... but the well is dry..."

"Quiet!" Clara spat, uncorking the bottle of carbolic acid with her teeth.

She tipped the glass bottle directly over William's ear, pouring two ounces of the raw, burning acid straight into the canal.

A sharp, furious sizzle filled the room.

A thick white smoke, smelling of scorched flesh and boiling sulfur, erupted from the boy's head.

William screamed—a high, shattering shriek that shook the soot from the stove-pipe—and pitched forward onto his knees, thrashing against the ash-heap.

The dark thread did not dissolve.

It recoiled from the acid like a white-hot iron wire dropped into grease, whipping back into the auditory canal with a wet snap that sounded like a violin string breaking under tension.

On the floor, the three raised floorboards were thrown wide.

A head emerged from the dark gap beneath the house.

It was not one of the three men from the porch.

It was what remained of Arthur Miller—the coast-guard watchman who had been reported drowned off the ledge three weeks ago.

His body was bloated, his oilskins torn to ribbons and covered in small, white barnacles that had attached themselves to his woolen sleeves. His skin was the grey-green color of river scum, and his lower jaw had been completely removed—leaving his dark, swollen tongue hanging down over his collar like a piece of salt-beef.

Where his eyes should have been, there were two smooth, white domes of pale-blue salt, growing directly out of his eye-sockets like mineral formations in a cave.

He did not use his hands to climb onto the floor.

Four long, thick ribbons— dark, segmented, and as thick as a man's thumb—were extending from his open neck-cavity, gripping the edges of the broken floorboards like iron hooks and dragging his four-hundred-pound, waterlogged body up out of the cellar mud.

Clara raised the amputation saw with both hands.

"Back," she hissed through her teeth. "Back into the mud, Arthur."