The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart Page 18

  I should have been disgusted by the foul thing made of death. Yet when I’d read Frankenstein, I’d been more disgusted with the doctor and the mob than with the actions of the monster. Mary Shelley had written Frankenstein when she was about my age. Now fiction found life as the Society turned nightmares into reality, leaving a fine line between a terrible dream and a terrible day…

  I shivered—we all did, as the room became even colder. Though I could not see them, there must have been at least as many spirits here as gathered body parts. It was terribly frightening—not seeing the ghosts, yet knowing they were there. At any moment they could grab us like they’d done Roth. Could they understand that we were here to help?

  How did it work, though? There were trays of strange machinery around the body, with wires that attached to various parts and then threaded up into a grid around the ceiling. What was the source, the engine that woke this being?

  Then I saw the markings. Fine, bloodless but specific markings across the flesh. Runes again. These ancient letters, stolen and repurposed, had to mean something of life and death for this poor thing…

  Rachel startled me by jumping forward and grabbing the creature’s hand.

  And that’s when the creature moved, a hand shoving Rachel aside. I caught her.

  With a horrible sound that I’ll never ever forget, the body lurched and tried to sit up. Wires flew, popping off the body from where they’d been attached around the head and torso, black fluid dribbling out from the wounds. A flash of light rippled over the body, perhaps sparks, perhaps magic…but the scored markings of runes were suddenly red, emblazoning the body with bloody tattoos.

  We all screamed and jumped back.

  Rachel had suddenly, inadvertently, made it come alive. It may also have been that Jonathon was standing over by the panel of wires and meters, a part of that sparking surge. There were crackling threads of light all along the wires, and the needles on the equipment meters were swaying and vibrating just as the wires did.

  “Reverend…” I called. “Something just woke up in here…”

  There was an inhuman wail, and the glass of the morgue door shattered.

  “Just a moment,” Blessing shouted calmly, now visible beyond a jagged glass edge, as if he were making someone wait in a parlor for tea. He said something about banishing to the abyss, something from Jesus’s own battles with demons.

  The creature huffed, gasping. It made noises but formed no words we could recognize. It made me think of my first moments speaking again, those ugly sounds I’d hated so much I’d preferred never to speak at all. I batted tears out of my eyes. It seemed like the creature was in pain.

  Jonathon was trying to read the strange equipment, seeking to understand the levels and the sudden chime like an automated heartbeat.

  “I don’t know how to stabilize you,” he said mournfully. The sparks and wires were dangerous and live with a charge, so he didn’t dare touch anything.

  Rachel’s eyes rolled back in her head. I caught her just before she hit the floor. “Angry,” she signed to me, struggling to rouse. “All the spirits. So angry.”

  The room kept plummeting in temperature. Breath clouding before me, I forced Rachel to focus on me. “Tell us how to help them!”

  “The pieces,” she signed, an anguished sound leaving her lips that broke my heart. “So many ghosts.” I translated from her fumbling, shaking hands. “My fault they’re here.”

  The body convulsed upon the table. Yes, it was in pain. It had to be. Body language was the one language that never told a lie. It was so terrible and all I wanted in the whole world was for this to stop. Just stop. Make it stop.

  “Tell us what to do,” I begged Rachel, tears streaming down both our faces.

  “They want it to die,” she signed.

  “But it needs them to live,” Blessing said.

  I looked up to see him standing tall and calm just inside the door. Smith stood between rooms, white as a sheet, a dark fluid spattered over one cheek, looking as if he’d just glimpsed hell in that morgue. Perhaps he had. Blessing tossed Smith a kerchief from his bag and wiped his own face with another. The white cloth came away begrimed with unctuous green-black fluid similar to that I remembered from when we reversed the curse.

  Rachel nodded vigorously at Blessing. “But they want me to die with it,” she signed to me. “Sacrifice. For the sins of all.”

  “You’re not going to die for this,” I insisted.

  “The spirits must be the spark,” Jonathon said, looking around the room at the wires, at the shaking body. “The electric charge. Together they are a coalescing animus.

  “Spirits.” Jonathon moved to the center of the room and shielded his eyes as if from some great light, even though to me the room remained dim. “Can you see me?” He spread his arms out. “I see light around us. I see your light as you make yourselves known. I’ve come from the other side. I crossed death itself and returned to tell you that you’re free. Haunt these floors no more. Here lie only pieces. Dust and ashes. But you can be so much more than that. Please choose to be angels, not devils. You can choose.”

  It was riveting, his speech. He did have a light about him, that silvery light I’d seen before when I’d thought him an angel.

  “Tell us who you are,” he declared. “Tell us your names. The demons like to use your names against you. But I say names give you power, not them. Tell us who we may honor.”

  “The names are carved…” Rachel signed. I looked closer at the runes and glyphs on the dead skin.

  “Tell us, give us the power of your names,” I encouraged. Rachel began spelling out names in a torrent, as fast as her fingers could fly.

  I said them aloud as she signed: “Teresa, Bartholomew, Benedict, Ursula, Maria, Sarah…”

  All the names of saints. Like those dead in the Five Points. As I spoke each name, there was a resulting sizzle upon the yellowed flesh of the creature, and the runes glowed bright and wept dark, sour blood…The creature moaned, rustling from side to side. It almost sounded female.

  Jonathon stared in pity at the face of it, of her…

  “Jonathon,” I begged, “can you—”

  “Ease the suffering? I’ll try.”

  He darted to the cabinet full of medicinal bottles and began rummaging, for what I didn’t know. Blessing followed him, dabbing holy water into his hand.

  Rachel and I repeated the names again, a few more I don’t actually recall, each of them saints, and she fumbled for my hand. More sizzling flesh and ignited runes, more restlessness of the body.

  Jonathon had seized a towel and was dabbing liquids onto it, murmuring chemical compounds and numbers.

  Blessing moved to the head of the body and gently anointed the yellowing forehead, placing one hand on each side of its matted hair and offering the body named Laura a blessing by name. There was power in a name indeed. The milky eyes opened. And if I wasn’t mistaken, those eyes focused directly on Blessing, and he stared bravely and unflinchingly back, repeating the benediction. The body seized again in a frisson of pain, and Blessing blinked back tears.

  Jonathon, damp cloth in hand, darted to the shaking corpse’s side and spoke gently. “We don’t want you to be in pain,” he said. He placed the towel over the nose and mouth of the creature. It seized in a spasm and then went motionless. Peaceful. Jonathon eased a moment, tension releasing out of his shoulders. And the room was held suspended—an oddly lovely pause when the creature’s pain subsided. The sparks stopped crackling over the wires, and the body lay still. We all held our breaths.

  And then the screaming began. We all heard it. It was a horrible sound I’ll never forget. The body stirred again, roused, arms flung forward, one leg off the table, fighting for life. It was moving, getting up. The spirits may have wanted it dead, but it wanted to live, just like any of us did.

  What was making the sound? The creature’s mouth was open, and it was like the world was screaming. It was all-consuming, the sound. It was t
he sound of madness. I wasn’t sure if I was laughing or crying. I couldn’t hear myself. The sound split our skulls, and one by one, each of us began collapsing onto the floor of Room 01.

  I sank to my knees as Rachel dropped heavily beside me, her arm across my lap. Blessing crumpled against the wall, holding his head. I glanced back to see that Smith had collapsed at the door’s threshold. Jonathon was reaching for me as we fell, and everything faded to black as the creature began to walk out the door.

  Chapter 21

  Jonathon roused me. He placed something pungent and acrid beneath my nose. I sat up with a start, my head pounding. Either my ears were ringing and echoing, or the screaming was farther away. Whatever whispers I’d heard earlier, I couldn’t hear them now over the distant screams that seemed to be shrieking on every pitch of human hearing.

  “How long have we been out?” I asked.

  “By my watch, about nine minutes,” he replied.

  Jonathon moved to rouse Blessing and Smith with the same acrid chemical in a blue bottle, like smelling salts but far more powerful. Once they were upright, he returned to rummage again in the chemicals. “What are you doing?”

  “Making chloroform. It subdued the creature before. Well, it isn’t quite right, a bit too much chlorine, surely—”

  “You’re amazing,” I said. I looked around. “Where’s Rachel?”

  She was nowhere to be seen. Smith jumped to his feet and tried all the downstairs doors. Nothing. He returned to help Blessing to his feet.

  “Thank you,” Blessing said, glad for the help as he’d gone down hard. He stood rubbing his back and leg.

  “From that godforsaken sound,” Jonathon said as we stumbled into the hall, rubbing our temples. “It’s still in the building. We can’t let it get outside. Look for Preston and for Rachel.” Smith took off ahead of us as we left that dreaded basement behind us.

  Ascending to the first floor, we were stopped in our tracks by a trail of blood. It was coming from Preston’s office and down and around the corner, then down another hallway.

  “Please God, don’t let that be Rachel’s blood,” I cried softly.

  We followed the trail of blood. Jonathon had his pistol in one hand, his chloroform in the other. I took the bottle from him, and he steadied his shaking pistol with both hands. The blood led to another door labeled MENTAL WARD.

  The screaming was behind that door, along with a soft, pleading male voice. Blessing flung the door open, a cross in one hand, an open bottle of holy water in the other. He flung a spray of it forward as we took in the sight before us.

  Dr. Preston lay on a cot, bleeding from the wrists. The creature, tall and yellowed and now a bit peeling from stitches strained by movement, was standing over him, a yellowed hand awkwardly petting his head.

  Beside the cot sat Rachel, her hands bound, tears streaming down her cheeks. Three surgical knives hovered in the air, poised to plunge directly into her heart.

  The creature turned to look at us with vacant, milky eyes.

  The screaming was farther away, and we realized it wasn’t coming from the creature anymore. But from the floor above us. The upper floors of the hospital were still active. And evidently, everyone on the upper floor was losing their minds. Quite a bedside manner, this creature had.

  “Laura, please,” Preston begged, looking up weakly. “Please forgive me.” He looked around him, wildly. “All of you, spirits, forgive me. Take me. Not the girl. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  Blessing stepped into the room quietly. Jonathon, at his side, lowered his pistol. But Preston pinned Jonathon with bloodshot, wide, and desperate eyes.

  “You! Demon!” Preston cried, pointing at Jonathon limply, blood dripping from his wrist. “Leave me be! Tell the Society they can go to hell! Spirits, take out your vengeance on him as you did on Roth. That man is now Society property!” Preston swooned back onto the pillows, pale from loss of blood.

  The surgical knives flew toward Jonathon.

  I stepped in front of him. The knives stopped short a foot from my flesh.

  “Spirits! This is not the man Preston thinks,” I cried, wishing I had somewhere to look other than thin air. “Teresa, Bartholomew, Benedict, Ursula, Maria, Sarah, please,” I begged. “This man is no demon. You saw him below. Spirits, you saw his light. You know he wants what’s best for you, as we all do.” The knives seemed unconvinced. They held their targets. “Please,” I begged, “Don’t kill us. You’ve no longer any enemies here.”

  Blessing had moved to Rachel and untied her as Jonathon stepped in front of me, closer to the blades. The furious movement of Rachel’s hands distracted me from the knife points.

  “The creature and the spirits are enemies,” Rachel signed to me, approaching us.

  It was true, I suppose. While one lived, the others were enslaved. If the spirits were sent to rest, the creature would die. And then Rachel moved to place herself in front of Jonathon, leaning her thin and shaking body against him as if she’d fall over otherwise. I wondered if the screaming was manifest in her mind, too. Was she hearing something the rest of us could not? None of us could make any sudden moves for the knives reacted if we twitched.

  “Laura,” Preston said softly, gazing up at the unblinking, parchment face above him. He clung to something once human that resided there and held the discolored hand, his bleeding wrist drenching the yellowed palm and turning it orange. “All I wanted was one more day with you. One more chance to tell you I loved you, a chance I’d been denied. But now, now we must join together and hope that somewhere I may see you again.” He turned his head. “And by divine provenance there is a reverend here so that I might be forgiven. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Please bless this creature here, she knows not—”

  “I already did, Dr. Preston.” Blessing came close, placed his hands on either side of Preston’s face, and gave him a benediction and his last rites. Everything was still, hesitant. The knives still floated in the air, now directed toward “Laura.” Mr. Smith, a step behind me, tried to pluck a knife from the air, but it moved just out of his reach.

  “Please, spirits, take me instead,” Preston said to the air. “Take no lives other than mine. Stand back, Father.”

  The surgical knives shifted and dove suddenly into Preston’s heart. We all jumped as Preston shuddered, blood pouring from his mouth, and lay still. In that moment all I could think about was Samuel, and I prayed to God that Mrs. Northe had gotten to him in time to prevent something as terrible as this.

  As Preston expired, the creature made a terrible keening sound. There was a pause in the screaming above. Then it began again.

  The creature hung its head and ran a clumsy hand over Preston’s hair once more. Then we watched, breaths held, as it slowly left the room with a heavy tread, its thin hospital shift smeared and spattered with Preston’s blood. We quietly followed, and I silently shut the door behind us, keeping an eye out for any stray knives. Mr. Smith moved to shut Preston’s door.

  It padded down the hall again into its room. We kept a slight distance behind. It turned and looked at Jonathon, and I could have sworn I saw some sort of pleading look there. Without taking his eyes off “Laura,” Jonathon reached his hand out and I placed the bottle in it.

  The creature lay down upon the table, a few stitches popping. It gasped. It fumbled for Jonathon’s hand. Jonathon squeezed it, undeterred by Preston’s blood, and his tear fell onto the cold metal table.

  Blessing joined his side, offering additional benedictions as Jonathon doused a cloth with the chloroform and pressed it to the slack mouth.

  “Stand back,” Rachel signed to me, urging me toward the door.

  “The spirits still need to be put to rest,” Blessing instructed. Rachel ran next to Jonathon, nearly pushing him back, grabbing my hand, and shoving me toward the door. “Back,” she signed, her face panicked, shooing Mr. Smith. Whatever she was hearing from the spirits, it really wanted us out of the room.

  The sparks b
egan again down the wires and the equipment again chimed. The body again shuddered, hands smacking against the table, the torso trying to raise, the head straining, knees twitching. The entire grid began to hum with increasing power, emitting a high-pitched whine. The body shook evenly and quickly. The crackling sound and the threads of lightning began weaving between the wires, lifting them as if they were hair…Yes, its hair lifted too.

  We were captivated by the sight, rooted to the ground…

  Rachel shoved us back further, one by one. A wire near the door came loose from the ceiling and burned the back of her hand where it made contact. At the door I turned to see the body burst into flames.

  Thank God, it did not cry, nor did it scream. It only gasped and then was silent. I’d like to think it gave a sound of relief, but that was perhaps my wishful thinking.

  It was an immediate, all-consuming incineration of the body, as if it were more combustible by its dead weight. Dead wood ignites all the quicker. The fire did not catch beyond the wires that singed and snapped. The metal table bore a body-length heap of glowing cinders in mere minutes.

  In the end, the spirits had their say of what they wanted with it. I wondered if the Master’s Society would ever understand that: the human soul was not something to enslave, not living, not dead.

  I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but we’d all taken hands at the threshold, even Smith, forming a chain. While the room was hazy with smoke, it must have been well ventilated, for the room was not completely overcome. But the smell of chemicals and burned flesh was still overwhelming.

  Jonathon shut the door. No one should ever have to smell such an odor. I’ll add that to the list of things I will never forget. We stood between two sets of remains behind closed doors.

  “Dr. Preston’s life-and-death work,” Jonathon murmured angrily. “All for what? A new age in the new world,” he muttered, words Preston had used when trying to recruit Jonathon as a resurrectionist. “What could drive a man to create such a thing?”