He knew not how long he had been walking, and the path of his progress was already buried under fresh snow. It was impossible to tell even how far he had come, but he continued on nonetheless. Forward, always forward.
A swirl of snow cut across his vision, blinding him. Through the thickness, at the corner of his quite limited vision, he saw a shape, ever so briefly. Hereford worried it was only an illusion, a mirage of his own imagining. But as the snow drove upon him, harder and harder, he turned toward that new point, and he saw that, yes, something was there. Though indistinct and formless due to distance and his own blurred sight, it was certainly real enough. The shape was a dark smudge on the horizon, darker than the deepening gray of the sky as night fell.
Laughter escaped his aching, split lips.
When night came, even the darkness did little to cut away the shifting white void. The sky merely darkened to a lesser, murkier white, but still, white it remained. The shape, somehow no closer, was merely a form darker than the darkness surrounding it.
Howling wind slammed into him, tossing Hereford’s hunched form off his feet. He crashed through the powdery top layer of snow and hit the ice hard, what little air he had in his lungs gushing out of him. Cold seeped into his bones during the moment it took him to recover. His body refused to move, his limbs frozen stiff, his will sapped entirely. As he found his knees, another ferocious wind blew into him, seizing his beaked mask in its grip and hauling it off his head.
“No,” he gasped, hard chips of snow nipping at his frozen cheeks.
He prayed that his death would come quickly. Then, in a flash of insight, he recalled the scalpel in his pocket and thought of dyeing the snow around him red with his slashed wrists or perhaps his opened throat. If he could maintain a firm enough grip on the blade, he was so numb, he wouldn’t even feel the pain of suicide. Even at that, his mind rebelled, and he hoarsely whispered, “No,” once more. Although he wanted to sob, his eyes were crusted open, the tear ducts sealed by ice. In the unending tornado of white, he caught sight of the black shape, off in the distance, across an impossible void. Still, it was an encouragement, enough to give him some small measure of hope, a sliver to cling to as he forced his way back to his stiffened feet.
Hereford marched on, as unyielding as the harsh clime around him, as unfeeling as his body had become. Even his sweat had frozen, gluing his hair to his scalp in uneven, twisted furrows shaped by the wind, not unlike the arctic ridges and hillocks he stumbled across and through.
He swore he had made no progress, as the black point remained out of reach, a consistent blur off in the distance. He was wrought with such craven despair that he could no longer even scream, his mouth crusted shut by frozen snot and spittle.
“Let me die,” he whispered. God, Elder or otherwise, refused to listen as he trudged onward.
Overcome by weakness and desperation, he collapsed. The snow buried his numb body. The world had become divided, cut in half by pure white and empty pitch, the stars lost among the snow.
Still, some small ember of hope burned within him, despite his plea for death. Or perhaps it was the unquenchable curiosity that had defined so much of his life, the curiosity that had, ultimately, left him stranded in this frozen land. He was weak and exhausted, and yet he sought some answer to the hows and whys of his current predicament. He needed answers, and the more rational part of his mind insisted he would not find those by lying here in the snow waiting to die.
He raised his hand, intending to rise once more—one last time, perhaps—and struck something solid. Beneath a wall of snow, given form by the structure it had buried, was a smooth plane of ice. His hand stuck fast to it, and he had to pull hard to free himself. Skin tore off, leaving his palm an angry, wounded red. He’d barely felt the tug of flesh pulling loose. The combination of adrenaline over his discovery and the freezing numbness encasing his whole form created a deadly brotherhood.
Cradling his bleeding hand against his belly, he followed the line of the black wall, up and up and up, to a point far overhead. The wall was sheer, even as it angled smoothly toward the heavens.
A pyramid! A nervous titter blossomed in his chest, choked down by a far more nervous coughing that painfully twisted the meat of his lungs.
He set out, intending to circle the massive structure, a feeling of awe suddenly making him forget his desire for death and the torment of his body. Hewing close to the wall, he set about the perimeter of the pyramid, seeking an entrance but finding only a smooth, flat surface.
There has to be a way inside, he thought, notes of panic creeping into his thoughts. His heart raced, what little calm he had left escaping him entirely.
Wind lashed at him, encircling him in a crazed gust to beat him from all sides. And in that arctic fury, he saw powder wicked away from the looming wall beside him, a minor avalanche tumbling down the surface and falling neatly away. Revealed before him was a small indentation, a hollow of sorts, and he reached toward it. The snow was packed, thick and hard, but he pried at it with blackened fingers, hauling it away a fistful at a time. The hollow grew larger, until he was digging at a hole proper, laughing madly at himself the deeper he tunneled.
He dug a mouth just wide enough to crawl into, then his fingers broke through the wall of snow, touching warm air on the other side. He punched at the edges of snow until his knuckles split and bled, until he had created a gap large enough to shoulder through. He drove himself deeper into the hole, the weight of the snow pressing down against his back and ribs, squeezing him like a tentacle and pressing the air out of him. His boots kicked at the earth, driving him forward, propelling him through the crusty, freezing wall. The crown of his skull broke through, and as he pushed farther in, he saw before him only darkness. The dry air felt only slightly warmer than the inhospitable elements outside. But the discovery alone was enough to invigorate him, and he hurried inside.
The corridor he found himself in was long and dark, and it offered but one direction. He had no choice but to follow it, as it slowly widened and opened into a hollow, massive chamber.
Inexplicably, fire warmed the arena, torches burned brightly in their sconces mounted along the walls. More burst into life, scores of them, hundreds of them. And what the light revealed made Hereford scream.
Chapter Eight
The day’s first movements drew a pained wince from Salem Hawley. His arm promptly went to his wounded belly, cradling it as he propped himself up on one elbow. He didn’t recognize the small, simply decorated room, and it took a moment for his sleep-addled brain to catch up. He pushed himself farther into a sitting position then rested his back against the headboard before taking a long moment to recover from the exertion. His side ached, and a fresh, hot wetness bloomed to darken the already-stained bandages encircling his abdomen. He had given serious thought to standing but quickly reconsidered.
A pitcher of water, along with a filled glass, had been left on the nightstand. Beside it was a leather-bound copy of a book written by James Cook, A Voyage Toward the South Pole. Hawley decided to whittle away the time with a chapter or two while his body reinvigorated itself.
After but a few pages into Cook’s account, a knock sounded on the door, and Scipio poked his head through. Smiling companionably, he pushed the door open farther, a small tray of tea in hand. “I honestly wasn’t sure if you would be awake.”
Hawley took a draught from the water glass. “Oh, I’m awake, but I honestly don’t feel much like moving.”
Scipio laughed, placing the tea set atop the dresser, then moved to the neighboring window and pulled apart the drapes. The sheer brightness of the sunlight blinded Hawley, and he had to raise a forearm before his eyes to see properly.
After a grunt, Scipio pulled the drape back far enough to blot out the sun while still leaving the room bright and cheery. “Suppose we can close that up a bit, eh?”
“How long have I been out?”
“Better part of a day.” Scipio prepared a cup of tea for each o
f them then took a seat opposite the bed, coolly studying Hawley. “City’s still in chaos, riots all up and down Manhattan. Last I heard, there were eight dead.”
“The creatures?”
“The creatures, yes, but men, too. It seems that those… well, those things, have been dealt with. They were concentrated at the hospital, and apparently, fire is a fairly natural deterrent for their kind. Depending on the tongues wagging, pray tell you hear of an ungodly spider or few having been dealt with, but with the hospital up in flames, it appears we can draw that particular chapter to a close. Protests against the experts of the physic continue unabated, however, and quite violently at that.”
“And of the doctors? What of them? The ones who drew all this madness forth?”
Scipio sipped at his tea. “A number of doctors staffed at the hospital have been rounded up and jailed, but largely for their safety more than anything else. To protect them.”
Hawley clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth then shook his head.
“One will be arriving here soon, in fact, to survey your wounds. I did the best I could, but a professional’s eye is needed.”
“Is it bad?” Hawley asked.
Scipio shrugged. “I’ve seen worse. I dare say we have both seen much worse, but I’m not a doctor. A professional’s eye shouldn’t hurt.”
Hawley set his cup aside then sank back into the pillow. If he listened carefully, he could hear the calamity of a city ensconced in its own destruction and the occasional faint boom of gunfire.
“Damn it all,” he muttered, his belly throbbing painfully. Listening to the dim clinking of a teacup settling upon a plate and the soft sips of the older man drinking, he slipped softly back into the embrace of exhaustion.
Richard Bayley’s stagecoach drew to the door of the freed man’s home, Scipio as he recalled. It was fitting, he supposed, that he should treat the companion of the man whom John Hicks, Jr. had assaulted on his way to absconding with a body planted in the freed black’s graveyard. So fitting, in fact, that Bayley could not help but smile. Even that simple act, though, aggravated the oversized knot on his skull, but still, he wondered at the cyclical nature of fate and the demands of the Elders.
He climbed the porch steps, his small black medical bag in hand, and delivered three hard raps to the wooden front door. A well-muscled, but clearly aged, Negro answered his summons, and they exchanged a brief introduction.
“He’s through here,” Scipio said, leading Bayley down a short hallway of his small, Spartan house. “May I offer you some tea?”
Bayley nodded, impressed by the man’s politeness. Scipio clearly had some education to temper his savage instincts. Since the war, Bayley had been providing aid to Manhattan’s poor, including the Negro population. This ruse provided him with ample means to carry out his experiments, while also keeping him free of suspicions that occasionally stemmed from his work, on those rare instances that his work was noticed. To the city’s credit, it did not often notice a missing orphan, and whatever claims were sometimes—but rarely—made by the Negroes were easily dismissed. To his own credit, it was not often that he provided the unwitting souls he crossed paths with cause to complain. More often than not, he provided them with relief whenever possible and was very careful to choose an appropriate victim, such as the prostitutes he and his fellow plague doctors had been experimenting upon.
And my, how those experiments bore fruit! His face ached as he worked to keep his smile at bay. If he were forced to admit it, a small part of his mind, the one that had been honed by science and his studies of the natural world, had dismissed the promises stored within the pages of Al Azif. Such doubt was natural, of course, given the extreme and wild nature of the claims made within that tome. But these doubts were heavily overwhelmed by belief, as well as those ethereal creatures he had witnessed on the battlefield little more than a decade prior.
The magic contained in Al Azif was very real, indeed. Perhaps a bit too real, he thought ruefully. He had panicked, and even now, his own cowardice shamed him. He had summoned forth the Elders, and in what should have been a moment of awed worship, he had run, the primal part of his mind seizing control and forcing him to flee in terror.
“This is Salem Hawley,” Scipio said, interrupting Bayley’s thoughts. The freed man put his back to Bayley to pour tea, his shoulders hunched. Freed, yet still deferential.
I could take a blade to your throat and speak the words of offering, Bayley thought. I could recall them here to this plane of existence and end all of you! Instead, he said only, “Thank you,” as he accepted the proffered cup of tea then sipped gingerly at it. “Mmm,” he said, raising his eyebrows, somewhat surprised that the drink was actually quite well steeped.
Whether it was their few words spoken or their mere presence and movements that had woken him, Hawley began to stir. His eyelids fluttered then began to focus, pinning his gaze squarely on the doctor.
“Mr. Hawley, I am Dr. Bayley.”
Bayley set his tea on the nearby table. He then placed his medical bag on the seat of a chair beside the bed. “May I examine your injury?”
Hawley nodded, watching the doctor carefully as his bedsheets were folded away with an uncommon gentleness. The bandages wrapped around his belly were stained the color of rust, and Bayley noticed a fair amount of spotting on the top sheet as it pulled stickily away from him.
“I don’t know that I can pay you,” Hawley said.
Bayley nodded, assessing the younger man before him. The black man’s torso was puckered with scars. Some, he recognized as lash marks from a whip and suspected there were quite a number more along his backside. One hilled bit of scar tissue was quite plainly a bullet wound, and some of the slashes he believed to be knife marks or injuries from a bayonet.
“You fought in the rebellion?”
Hawley studied Bayley’s expressionless face, perhaps considering the doctor’s British lilt, then slowly nodded. “I did. On the colonial side.” The tone of his voice was goading, but Bayley ignored it and set about cutting away the mess of bandages.
“And this wound? You were stabbed, run through?”
Hawley grimaced as Bayley pulled the bandages away from the wound. “Hm,” was all he said, neither a confirmation nor a denial.
“At the hospital? During the riots, perhaps?”
Again, Hawley studied Bayley’s face for a moment, clearly weighing potential responses. After a moment, he nodded. “That’s right.”
Bayley leaned close to the wound. The hole appeared smooth enough, and whatever had lanced the man had gone through cleanly. He applied some force to the man’s hip, encouraging him to turn on his shoulder so he could see the opposite side.
Turning to Scipio, he said, “Bring me some washcloths, water, and a candle, please.” Then, back to Hawley, he said, “I will give you a tincture for the pain, and I will stitch the openings shut. Keep it clean and be careful not to tax yourself, and I believe you will make a full recovery.”
“That’s it, huh?”
Bayley smiled. “What else need there be?”
He took a seat beside Hawley and drew the chair in close. He wiped away the dried blood with a wet rag, carefully exposing the edges of raw, ruined flesh. The wound seeped, but not unexpectedly so. He turned to expose a sewing needle to the candle’s flame then offered Hawley a stick to bite. “This will hurt, I’m afraid.”
Hawley laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve been stitched before. Felt worse before too.”
“A few drops of this then.” Bayley removed a tonic from his bag and gave Hawley an eyedropper filled with golden fluid. “Five drops should suffice.”
Hawley eyed the dropper skeptically, as he would any tonic given to him by a strange white man, regardless of his profession. Bayley, unfortunately, wasn’t intent on administering further treatments until Hawley had taken the drug, so Hawley capitulated. He placed the eyedropper in his mouth and squeezed out five drops.
Satisfied, Bayley drew the
needle and thread through the wound’s edge then said, “What did you see at the hospital?”
The former slave, his face screwed up in pain, gave him a baleful glance. “Viciousness. Evil. And more death than was needed.”
“The rumors…” Bayley let his voice trail off then shrugged as if thinking better of what he had been about to say. He turned a raised eye to Hawley, who nodded for him to continue. “There were, well, that is to say, there are rumors of monsters. Ridiculousness, I should think.”
Hawley continued to watch the doctor’s stitching, and Bayley occasionally looked up toward his patient. As he sewed the gory circle together, taking more time than was truly needed, he saw the black man’s eyes waver as he struggled to focus through the fog of the tincture.
“Not so ridiculous,” Hawley said, at last. “There were monsters indeed, like nothing of this earth.”
“There is a book, you know,” Bayley said softly. “A book of spells, of magic. Otherworldly, powerful magic.” He added hastily, “More rumors, perhaps. You know how rumors are.”
“And what do these rumors suggest?” Hawley asked, a keen note of interest in his slurred voice.
“You’re aware of these grave robberies, I trust? Of course, how could you not be? And the riots all across the city? These things are connected. You were there. You saw what happened, yes?”
“Yes,” Hawley said, his voice weakening.
“There are rumors within the medical community that these rogue scholars were performing a dark séance of sorts, and that was what had caused all of this commotion. If what you say is true, about these monsters, that is, then perhaps there is some credence to these rumors.”
Hawley’s mouth hung open, his slack tongue protruding from his mouth. Bayley hoped that he had not overplayed his hand nor that the man was too drugged out of his mind to seize the opportunity to come.
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