Monsters Crawling Everywhere, Chapter 37 to 39

This story has been one of my most treasured stories and it is so beautiful and epic how it is all coming to a close. The characters are so special and I believe this is a gorgeously written novel in all its gore, whimsy and darkness. Everything is all coming together and the true monsters of the story are crawling out of their already empty and spiralling souls. The children are beginning to learn who they should be more afraid of and that is the very man who houses them at his Cairndale manor for protection of the talents. Doctor Henry Berghast is intelligent and intimidating and completely absent of any emotion for the children’s wellbeing and feelings. He doesn’t see the heart in them or who they are as a person, he only sees in them their “usefulness” which has been one of his favourite words. They are useful to him only because of what their powers can do for him, to get him what he is aching for and that is ultimate power himself. Jacob Marber found Marlowe and Charlie in the orsine and cryptically hinted to Berghast’s true and wrongful nature. Marlowe learned from Jacob that his real mother is the drughr and that he even saw her holding baby Marlowe by the river when he was born. I have a feeling that perhaps Jacob is the father of Marlowe, for he said that he became “close” with the spirit monster, for he lived in the orsine with her for quite a long while. The man made of smoke has a very genuine softness and attachment to Marlowe that is undeniably coming from love for the child. Protection and safety is all that he wants for Marlowe and Jacob tells him that. Marlowe is partly made from the orsine, with the dead world’s blood working through him and his shining a gift that can be used in both the living and the dead world in different ways. There are such pretty scenes in these chapters that are so cinematic, like of the misty fog of the spirits watching Marlowe from the doorway of the room Jacob tied him up in for his protection until he returned. Or when Berghast scrapes off the silver pigment of Charlie’s ring that was given to him by his mother by the firelight to reveal its otherworldly wooden coat that comes from the orsine. The fight for the world and the talents has already begun and there is the new monster of Doctor Berghast the children must face. Berghast tells Marlowe that “an abomination lives inside you”, for he has the drughr in him and that he is a monster like his mother, but monsters are not always the ones that look scary and have scary powers. Monsters can also be the ones that are human and do monstrous things.