Even though you’ll likely never want to speak to me again, he thought.
Delphia began to pace the kitchen with a crinkled brow. She took several turns about the tiny room and then stopped short and squared her shoulders.
“Cap, you and I must go to Dr. Ivins at once,” she said. “And then to the sheriff. They’ll know what to do.”
“No—” Cap blurted. Everyone jumped at the sound of a fist pounding on the door.
“Please,” Cap said, bolting to his feet. “Don’t let anyone know we’re here. I’ll explain after whoever this is leaves.”
For a few, painful heartbeats, Delphia hesitated. Then, she pressed her lips together. “All right, Cap,” she whispered. “I’ll see who’s at the door. Go on upstairs and hide in my bedroom. First one on the right.” She rushed from the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
Cap and Jessamyn fled to a small, sparsely furnished bedroom. Books covered every surface. A diagram of the nervous system was tacked up on one wall, a finely detailed drawing of a skeleton on another. The boy crept to the window that faced the street and peered out. An old black carriage stood out front.
Dr. Ivins! Cap gripped the windowsill until his knuckles turned white. No!
“Wait here,” he whispered to Jessamyn. Her dark eyes were wide in her pale face. She nodded. The boy crept to the head of the stairs.
Muffled voices came from the front room. Cap strained to listen, but could not decipher their words. Dr. Ivins’s voice, a deep baritone, rose and fell in a ragged rhythm. The man spoke faster and faster.
The voices moved closer, so Cap bolted back into Delphia’s room. Jessamyn’s face was ashen. They waited, hardly daring to breathe. A minute passed, then two, then three. A cold sweat crept all over Cap’s body.
Finally, unmistakable sounds told them the carriage was pulling away. He and Jessamyn waited several minutes for Delphia, but she didn’t come. Children shouted as they headed to school and horses clip-clopped on the street outside. A man called out that he had tin ware to sell. Delphia still didn’t come.
Finally, Cap could stand it no longer. He crept down to the kitchen, holding his breath. Delphia was alone, sitting at the table with her back to him.
“Delphia?” Cap asked. “I must talk to you about Dr. Ivins.”
Delphia stood and turned around. She held something in her arms. Her face was streaked with tears.
“No,” Cap breathed out. His limbs grew heavy. He’d forgotten the bundle! His empty coat lay upon the floor, and Delphia held her tiny brother’s body in her arms.
“I didn’t believe him,” Delphia said in a ragged voice. “He said you were helping that gang of ghouls steal bodies for the college. The bodies of my neighbors. My friends.” Her eyes were filled with disbelief. “He even told me he saw you early this morning, leaving a room where they found Dr. Rusch dead.”
Cap shook his head wildly and tried to speak, but couldn’t.
Delphia’s words came out in harsh sobs. “I never told him you were here. I told him you were a good boy, Cap. I swore you were! Then I came back in here and found your coat on the floor, so I picked it up.”
She stood tall, cradling the tiny body in her arms, and glared into Cap’s face, her own shining with tears. “This is my family. I will never forgive you, Captain Cooper. From now on until forever. I promise you that,” she said between clenched teeth.
“Please, Delphia, let me explain,” Cap said. “It’s not what you think.”
“You go on out of here,” Delphia yelled. “The girl can stay, so she’ll be safe from you. You leave. Now.” Cap saw the steel in her eyes. He knew she wouldn’t listen. Not now, perhaps not ever.
“What is it?” Jessamyn asked, hurrying into the kitchen. “Cap, what’s going on?”
“NOW!” Delphia screamed.
“I’m sorry,” Cap said, snatching his coat from the floor. Jessamyn stared at the tiny baby in Delphia’s arms with a look of horror. The older girl’s face was a mask of wounded fury.
Cap fled.
THIRTY-ONE
CAP STUMBLED AS he walked along, trying to stick close to doorways as he kept a lookout for Dr. Ivins. People were a dark blur, the sky a bright smear to his swollen eyes. His shoulders sagged. He was cold, deathly afraid, and had no idea where to go. If he went home, Ivins would surely find him.
A flash of blue caught his eye. Across the street, a woman was climbing steep stairs that clung to the side of a sagging house. Her face was mostly covered by a black veil, but a tawny curl hung from under her hat. Cap’s heart leapt. It was Tillie!
He followed. Tillie would be bound to help him, wouldn’t she, after he told her Jessamyn was safe? He waited until the woman had gone inside and counted to ten before creeping up the stairs. He tried the knob. It was unlocked. Cap let out the air he’d been holding unconsciously in a long sigh. The door opened onto a dark hallway and muffled voices came from somewhere ahead. A rat pattered across the wood floor, its tiny claws scratching.
The boy crept forward, straining to see in the dark. He passed an open doorway and nearly gasped out loud at the sight of the room’s contents. Round barrels were stacked floor to ceiling. Cap darted inside the room so he could read the labels pasted onto the barrels in the dim light filtering through the grimy windows.
Abraham’s Cucumber Pickles. Crisp and Delicious. Leaning closer, Cap caught a strong whiff of whiskey and wrinkled his nose.
Ivins and Rusch must have been shipping all those extra bodies to other schools, he thought with a start. There were so many! Were these all the people who died from the strange illness? Had they all had that “arrangement,” so nobody had to bother digging them up?
He returned to the dark hallway and his search for Tillie. He came to a door covered with a faded green fabric. The door was cracked open and voices floated out. Cap inched closer, straining to listen.
“Where is my daughter?” Tillie begged in a raw voice. “You were the last to see her. You must know something!”
“I have no idea where she is,” Dr. Ivins. Cap held his breath while his insides turned to ice. “She must be with that Cooper boy, the one we’re looking for. They were seen approaching the train station, but they can’t have gone far, Tillie. I assure you we’ll find her.”
Slowly shaking his head, the boy sucked in his breath. Dr. Ivins was telling folks that he, Cap, kidnapped Jessamyn!
A familiar, throaty voice spoke, and Cap stiffened. “Surely he wouldn’t leave town with Jessamyn so ill. I don’t understand why he would take her, doctor. I know he was sweet on her, but I can’t believe he’d put the girl in harm’s way.”
Cap’s mind whirled. He’d find no help from Tillie. Then, he froze at the sound of Sister Mariah’s voice. Her words chilled Cap to the marrow of his bones.
“Well, now we must find poor Jessamyn and find a way to keep the boy from talking! This business isn’t for children! You should never have let Cooper bring his son—”
“I had no idea the boy was involved,” Dr. Ivins snapped. “I blame that fool brother of yours. He must have had a hand in it.”
Licking dry lips, Cap inched backward. What exactly did she plan to do to keep him from talking? He tried to creep away, on slow, steady feet. That was his mistake. His boots squeaked on the floor.
The green door banged open, and Dr. Ivins plunged into the hallway. As his eyes met Cap’s, he smiled.
Whirling to run, Cap tripped and fell. Yellow stabs of light exploded in his eyes as he struck his head. Rough hands seized him. Cap felt his body rise through the air, and then sink down, down into a soft, inky blackness.
HE WAS COLD. The cold filled his body and seeped into his bones. They weren’t bones at all, but ice. He was a boy made of winter, a skeleton of icicles surrounded by flesh of snow.
Cap tried to speak, but his tongue was sluggish. He opened his eyes, but saw nothing. Thick darkness surrounded him. It was over him, beneath him, and all aroun
d him.
Moaning, Cap turned his head from side to side. With the movement came the pain, dull at first, then growing in intensity, pounding, searing, bringing tears to his eyes. He cried out as a tender lump on one side of his head scraped against a hard surface.
Where am I?
More feeling came back, along with more pain. He wiggled his toes and tried to stretch out. Then, he felt the ropes, wound tight and knotted around his thin frame.
The air was stale and damp, smelling of earth and decay. It brought to mind the time, not so long ago, when Cap had dug into his first grave. Nellie’s grave. Moaning from the pain, Cap tried to sit up. The ropes were too tight. He could barely lift his head. He tried instead to raise his feet. His scuffed boots met with something solid, inches above his body. The dull thud echoed in Cap’s ears.
No. It can’t be!
He moved his feet sideways. The result was the same: a solid surface only inches to his right. Moving to the left produced the same results.
He was inside a coffin. And if the surrounding silence told him anything, that coffin was buried, deep.
“Cap Cooper,” he whispered, “you’re in a fine mess now.”
He had no idea how much time passed. No birds sang. No wind sighed as it moved the tree branches. No solid kitchen clock ticked away the seconds, the minutes, the hours. The only sounds were the hissing of Cap’s breath and the beating of his heart.
It was the silence that got to him.
He sang every song Mamma used to sing to him as a baby, the hymns Mrs. Hardy had taught him, and the rough sailor’s tunes Father sang when he thought no one was listening. His thick tongue barely worked, and the words came out wrong, but it helped to hear his voice.
He prayed. At first, he had no words. There was only a longing that filled his heart, so strong he was sure that someone, somewhere, had to feel it. Then, he spoke the names of all the saints Mrs. Hardy had ever taught him. Mary and Joseph. St. John the Baptist. St. Andrew. St. Barbara the Healer. Ethelfleda. Cap couldn’t remember what she did, but Mrs. Hardy had mentioned her once.
Strangely, no fear quickened the blood in his veins. The only thought that filled his head was the desire to see again. To move out of this thick blackness, to have it peeled away until there was a glimmer of light. To hear again; the sounds of the horses’ hooves as they clopped along the cobbled streets, the shouts as other boys ran and scuffled in the schoolyard. Father’s laugh. The soft sigh of his mother’s voice.
You understand, God. Don’t you? It was all for Mamma. We needed the money.
Cap closed his eyes. We were wrong.
He slept but awoke once, coughing. The air was stale. It felt thick, like a chilled soup he struggled to drag into his lungs, while he tried not to think about how long it would be until he could no longer breathe.
He went back to sleep. He dreamt he was in the classroom, called to the board to solve an impossible equation. Tangled numbers covered the board and were even scrawled across the whitewashed walls.
Master Rankin walked to the head of the classroom and began to scrape his fingernails down the length of the blackboard. The screeching noise hurt Cap’s ears. He’d go mad from the sound! He tried to raise his hands to cover his ears, but his arms were stuck to his sides.
Cap opened his eyes. The darkness was no longer so thick. The air was cold. More metallic screeches filled his ears. A muffled voice muttered and laughed. Then, the blackness above his head lifted away. Blinking, Cap saw tiny pinpoints of light, shimmering high above him, and a dark form that towered over him.
“Well, lookie here,” Lum said, crouching down inside the grave until his face was inches from Cap’s own. “This thing ain’t gone bad yet.”
Cap tried to speak but was seized by rough hands and yanked from his broken coffin. Then, the man jammed a wad of cloth into his mouth and covered Cap’s head with a moldering potato sack.
“Time for a ride, boy,” Lum said. “If it was left to me, I’d a just left you there to rot, but the Doc changed his mind. Has other plans for you.”
Lum lifted Cap as though he were no more than a half-filled sack of potatoes and tossed him into the back of a wagon. The boy’s head pounded again as it impacted against the solid wood. The vehicle lurched into movement.
Before long, the wagon stopped. Cap was lifted again and slung over Lum’s broad shoulder. Then, a single sharp knock, followed by three more knocks rang out in the cold air. It was then that Cap understood where he’d been taken.
Oh, no.
THIRTY-TWO
DIZZY AND SICKENED, Cap was tossed down like a sack of refuse. The back of his head thudded hard onto a table.
“Here’s the good doctor’s next…dissection,” Lum said.
Cap forced the cloth from his mouth and tried to speak. He croaked.
“You hear something?” Lum asked.
“I ain’t heard nothing,” someone said with a chuckle. Parsons.
“Fancy a pint at Mooney’s?”
“Thank you kindly.”
Lum dropped his massive hand onto the boy’s chest, pushing so hard Cap could barely breathe. The old man leaned in close.
“A pile of bones,” he whispered. “That’s all that will be left of you.”
With that, he left. Lumbering footsteps faded away to silence.
Ignoring the aching of his head, Cap began to rock his body side to side, trying to roll himself off the table. His head felt as if it would explode with pain each time he moved it. The burlap sack over his head smelled of rotting produce. Bile rose in his throat.
“I suggest you hold still,” someone said.
Cap froze at the sound of Dr. Ivins’s voice.
“You must have quite a headache, young man. You struck your head as you fell yesterday.” Inches away from Cap’s ears was the soft rustle of cloth, then the clink of glass bottles and the ping of metal striking against metal.
Cap tried to speak, but all that came out was a wet-sounding croak. He stopped moving and waited for the pounding in his head to subside.
“My friend was distressed when she saw you. I explained to her that you were responsible for kidnapping her daughter.”
“No!” Cap managed to say.
“I promised to take you to the hospital and call the sheriff. Once you awoke, he would find out where you took that helpless young girl,” Dr. Ivins continued in a smooth voice.
The sack was whisked from Cap’s head. He blinked and stared into red-rimmed eyes, glinting inches from his own.
“Sadly, you escaped the hospital and the town is in an uproar, searching for the poor lost girl and the evil boy who took her. That boy is a member of the gang of body snatchers. Newsboys all over town are calling out your name. Of course, I told the sheriff everything. He saw fit to call on your parents.”
Dr. Ivins leaned even closer. “This was a great blow to your mother. I’m afraid the shock might even cause the pains of childbirth to begin too early. You are a selfish boy, Cap,” the doctor hissed into the boy’s face. “A very selfish boy.”
“Why are you doing this?” Cap whispered.
The man straightened and whirled around. “Dr. Rusch and I have a successful business. We ship bodies to medical schools around the country. It’s easier for them to buy from us than to procure their own. They pay gladly, no questions asked.”
“All those barrels,” Cap said. “There are so many. Where’d they all come from?”
“Rusch and I had agreements with many of our dying patients,” Dr. Ivins said in a soft voice. “Families who were reluctant to let us have the bodies of their loved ones were offered a nice sum. What we pay is nothing short of a king’s ransom for most around here. With what we earned from our business, we felt we could afford to offer it.”
“The arrangement,” Cap said, straining against the tight ropes that held him.
Dr. Ivins nodded.
“But why did you have us dig some people u
p? Didn’t their families want the money, too?”
Dr. Ivins sighed and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment. “We do pay a pretty penny, Cap,” he said. “Rusch always said we should save money when we could. I hate to agree with him, but it’s good business sense. Any time we can procure bodies for free, well…” he let his voice trail away.
So, they have Lum dig up the ones nobody cares about, Cap thought, wincing at the bitterness of the words. Nellie, Mr. Greeves, Mr. Jefferson…Jessamyn. That poor old Mr. Johnson probably didn’t get any money, either.
Dr. Ivins straightened his wig. “Our business flourished, but Abe got greedy. Some of our patients weren’t dying fast enough to keep up with our demand.”
“What do you mean, greedy?” Cap asked. He had to keep the man talking. Surely someone would come to help.
“Oh,” Dr. Ivins said, turning around, “some patients took their sweet time to die, so Abe sped things up. I didn’t mind, but I found it necessary to spread the rumor of a ‘strange illness,’ to explain the deaths,” he said. He winked at Cap like the two shared a joke. “With Abe out of the way I’ll declare that I’ve found a cure. No need to alarm the town indefinitely.”
When Cap did not respond, Dr. Ivins shrugged and began an ambling walk. “As Abe grew older and more soaked in his drink, he grew careless as well. Sometimes,” the doctor added, “the dose of laudanum he administered was only enough to put his patients into a deep sleep, not kill them.”
A pang struck Cap’s heart. He closed his eyes. He’d already discovered that the power he thought was passed on to him did not work on everyone. But still, somewhere in the back of his mind had been the tiniest shred of hope that the power was yet there, lying in wait for the right person, the right situation.
It wasn’t me who brought those people back. It was never me. I have no gift.
A wave of despair, deep as an angry ocean, engulfed him. Cap scowled at the doctor. How could the man have fooled so many people? The entire town respected him. Delphia practically worshipped him.
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