by Jeff Provine
Mrs. Kemp crushed the paper in her hand and pressed it to her quivering lips.
Blake watched her for a moment and then turned to Ticks. The marshal’s face twitched into a brief smirk again.
Blake squeezed his hand into a fist and raised to bury it into Tick’s nose so deep he’d never breathe again. As he raised it, he stopped. This was the Kemps’ home. He couldn’t do that here.
“Marshal Ticks, I need to speak to you outside,” Blake said. He was surprised at how icy his voice was.
Ticks turned to him. “You’re outside of your jurisdiction, Sheriff. You should go home.”
“I…” Blake stopped. It was a federal crime to assault a rail agent. Still, he some time in the state penitentiary might be worth putting Ticks in his place. Blake took a step toward the marshal, and then he paused.
There was something bigger happening. The Rail Agency had all morning to deliver the letter to Mrs. Kemp, but Ticks had appeared only a few minutes after Blake.
“Did you know I would be here?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” Ticks said flatly. “It’s quite a coincidence.”
It seemed like an awful coincidence to Blake. He glared at the marshal. Blake had taken the first train through to Lake Providence once the railroad had repaired the bridge. To ensure he’d be there as soon as possible to keep his word to Nate Kemp, he had slept on the eastbound train that waited on the tracks while workers hammered away by lantern-light to fix the rails.
The Rail Agency would have been the first to know the train had arrived, and they could have checked a passenger list. Ticks must have been waiting for him.
Blake looked out the windows in the front of the room, but he couldn’t see the street below. He imagined it full of hunchbacks. If they were willing to make sure Kemp was dead to cover up the crash, what would they do to a sheriff outside of his jurisdiction?
The bell rang again.
Ticks looked up. Mrs. Kemp sat with her eyes closed, tears fell from her cheeks and dotted the letter about her son’s death.
Blake took a step toward the door. It was a narrow staircase, and even if Ticks had a gang of hunchbacks coming up after him, Blake could take them one at a time. With gravity on his side, he might even bowl them over to make an escape.
He glanced at Ticks. The marshal’s dark eyes were narrowed.
“Expecting someone else?” Blake asked.
“No,” Ticks said in a grunt. He cleared his throat. “I mean, I’ll go see who that is.”
The marshal brushed past Blake and went out the living room door. Blake glanced back at Mrs. Kemp, who still hadn’t moved. He gritted his teeth and ran after the marshal.
He caught him on the stairs by the collar of his black silk suit. Blake squeezed the fabric tight in his calloused hand, twisting it up to catch Ticks’s arms around the pits. Ticks was three steps down from him and turned the wrong way, immobilized in the awkward hold. He squirmed with his gloved hands groping at his lapels, unable to find a good grip.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Blake demanded
“You let go of me or I’ll—”
Blake wrenched the coat up higher. Several fibers snapped around the seams. “Who’s out there?”
Ticks growled. “If it’s one of those idiots disturbing me while I—”
“While you’re what? Have a laugh at a woman and girl getting their lives destroyed?”
Ticks struggled again. More strings popped. “I am doing the work of the Rail Agency!”
“You don’t have an ounce of feeling in your whole body, you disgusting rat! If you say one more rotten word to her, I’ll make sure it’s your last.”
Ticks threw his head around. “I will say whatever I please to whomever I please! And if you get in my way, I’ll—”
“Do to me what you did to Nate Kemp?”
Ticks narrowed his eyes. “He fell.”
“Was it you who pushed him, or did you order one of your lackeys, because you don’t have the guts?”
“I…” Ticks clamped his mouth shut.
Blake’s hand ached from the strain of holding Ticks’s coat. He almost had a confession.
The bell rang again, followed by a knock. A voice called, “Telegram for Martha Kemp.”
Ticks turned around. “Telegram?”
Blake blinked. It wasn’t one of Ticks’s men.
The black suit slipped out of his grip. Ticks stumbled down the last few steps to the door. Blake hurried after him.
It was a young freedman messenger in a snappy blue suit. He grinned and said, “Telegram for Mrs. Martha Kemp.”
“I’ll take it,” Ticks said, snapping it out of his hand.
“No, you don’t,” Blake told him.
Ticks made a twisted smiling sneer. “Tip the boy for his hard work, will you?”
The marshal pushed his way up the stairs. Blake gritted his teeth again. The messenger looked up with eager eyes.
Blake glanced over the messenger’s shoulder. A newfangled steambuggy sat across the street, empty and tied to a post. The furnace at the back with the boiler on top steamed nervously as if it were raring to go. Behind it, two hunchbacks stood in their long coats and masks. The dark lenses stared back at him.
As far as Blake knew, this apartment only had one way in and out. He dug his wallet out of his pocket and found a few coins. “Do you have a minute, son?”
“What can I do for you, sir?” the messenger asked, still grinning.
“See those men behind you? There’s an extra dime in it for you if you keep an eye on them and holler up at me if they come toward the house.”
The messenger peeked over his shoulder. His grin faltered. “I don’t like to hang around when hunchbacks could be watching. They—”
“A dollar.”
The messenger’s smile reappeared. “Yes, sir!”
Blake slipped him the money, and the messenger nodded. He hurried down the sidewalk.
Blake bit his lip. The hunchbacks didn’t seem to pay the messenger any attention after he slipped away. If they did make a move on the house, he’d at least have a head’s up.
He took a deep breath and charged back upstairs. Ticks wrestled with the envelope. Mrs. Kemp was still in her chair, looking up at him. The girl, Ann, stood in the doorway to the bedroom.
“Ticks,” Blake called.
The marshal didn’t reply.
“Who’s it from?” Ann asked.
The envelope gave with a loud rip of paper. Ticks fumbled with the note inside. He scanned it, his lips moving as he went. Then his eyes widened. “Damnation!”
“Well?” Ann asked.
Ticks looked up at her. His face then turned to Mrs. Kemp and Blake. Without a word, he crushed the paper in his gloved hand. He dropped it to the floor and dashed out the door. His boots made light claps on the steps.
“What’s going on?” Ann asked.
Blake scooped up the paper. The first line read, “Sender: Gloriana State Mental Hospital, Oak Grove.”
“Mental hospital!” Ann shouted.
“To Mrs. Martha Kemp of…,” Blake read aloud, skipping down to the meat of the telegram. “From Nurse Ozera Jacey. Your son, Nathan, has come into our care after being discovered in a dazed state by local farmers. If you wish to collect him or come for visitation, you may meet with Dr. Isaiah Sims between the hours of…”
“He’s alive!” Mrs. Kemp screamed.
She jumped from her chair and ran across the room to hug Blake. The sheriff seized up and didn’t know quite what to do. When she let him go, she ran to hug Ann, who was hopping in place in the doorway.
Blake didn’t know whether they were screaming or laughing. He smiled at them. It wasn’t every day someone came back from the dead.
He turned back to the telegram. The train had driven through Oak Grove on the way to Lake Providence this morning. Colonel Burr had set up the insane asylum there thirty-odd years ago as a way to deal with the host of people babbling in Stoker’s Madnes
s. Blake had to escort a few men there himself after the judge deemed them unfit in the head for a reasonable trial. The doctors there were able enough folks, and if Kemp had ended up there after somehow surviving his fall, he would be taken care of until someone came to get him.
Blake looked up. “Ticks.”
He dashed across the room and threw open the curtains. Yellow-gray sunlight poured into the room. In the street below, Ticks was leaping into the seat in the front of the steambuggy and pulling its several levers to disengage brakes and open valves. The hunchbacks were behind the buggy, pushing to get it going. As it began to move, they hopped onto the footman’s rack at the back.
“They had no idea,” Blake said to himself. The rail agents were claiming deaths without any signs of a body. He wondered about Jones, the engineer.
Blake blinked his eyes to clear his mind. There would be time for that later. If Ticks was in that much of a hurry to find Kemp, he could only imagine what they would do to him. He tore himself away from the window and headed for the stairs.
Blake stopped when he saw the Kemp women holding one another across the room. He tipped his hat as he put it on. “Ma’am, Miss.”
“He’s alive,” Mrs. Kemp said softly.
“I’m going to find him,” Blake told her.
“And bring him home?” Ann asked.
Blake opened his mouth to agree, but he shut it again. After a moment, he said, “No, I don’t think so. Something strange is going on.”
“Strange?” Mrs. Kemp asked.
“I’m not sure what else to call it,” Blake said. He decided not to mention Kemp’s monsters. The Rail Agency was suspicious enough. “It might not be safe for him here, or you either. Do you have anyone you could stay with for a few days?”
The Kemp women looked at each other.
Blake tapped his boot against the floor. “I wish I had time to explain… I wish I knew what to explain. But, I have a feeling that something very bad is happening. You might want to go somewhere the Rail Agency wouldn’t be able to find you… or Nate.”
“We could go to the Johnsons’,” Ann said.
Mrs. Kemp nodded. “Belle and Jim would understand. They’re on Moore Street.”
“Good, I’ll take Nate there,” Blake said. “When I find him.”
He leaped onto the stairs, thrusting out his feet to catch himself in a perpetual fall more than stepping down them.
“Godspeed!” Mrs. Kemp called after him.
“I sure can use it,” Blake mumbled.
He burst out into the street. It was empty. Traffic moved at either end in a mix of wagons, pedestrians, and men on horseback. There was no sign of the hunchbacks clinging to the buggy. He’d been so worried about them coming after him that he’d never thought...
“They went that way, sir!” a voice called.
Blake jumped.
It was the messenger boy, pointing up the road. Blake blinked at him a moment and then followed his blue-clad arm.
“North,” Blake muttered. “Toward the airfield.”
Ticks must have been very serious to go back to the airship instead of just catching one of the trains heading west. Blake might have been able to catch up with them at the train station, but once they took flight, he’d never catch up to them on foot. Waiting for a train wouldn’t work, either.
Blake turned back to the messenger. “I need a horse. A good, fast one. One that could get me to Oak Grove faster than an airship.”
“My uncle has a livery stable!” the messenger called. “I’ll take you there for another quarter!”
Blake winced. He’d brought it upon himself by bribing the messenger in the first place. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twelve
Nate Kemp awoke to the sound of the lock to his cell turning. It clicked several times, as if the key weren’t quite catching. The orderlies must have been having trouble with it.
He wondered what time it was. A little window covered in bars showed warm light, still soft as if it were morning. It was set high on the wall, so anything below wouldn’t be visible. The tops of green trees swayed beyond it against a cloud-speckled blue sky.
If someone had told him the day before that he was going to end up in an insane asylum, he would have snorted a laugh their way. But it was true. Jones was gone, probably lying dead somewhere in a bayou. Gators or buzzards might have gotten him already. Nate closed his eyes.
He’d never had much time for praying. It had always seemed to Nate that if he wanted something done, sitting around talking to mystical forces about it wasn’t as good as taking matters into his own hands. Nate supposed he had all the time in the world now that he was locked in the cell and strapped to a bed. He muttered a prayer for Jones. “Take care of him.”
The white light he had seen as he fell from the airship filled his eyes again. He opened them, and it was gone. All that surrounded Nate were the blank walls of his cell. His heart raced.
Maybe he was crazy.
“No, you’re not crazy,” Nate told himself. The locomotive had really crashed, and it had accelerated while he saved the rest of the train. Something crazy was happening; he was just inside it.
There was a loud clank, and the heavy door swung open. Someone walked in with his head low. He closed the door behind him.
“Who’s there?” Nate called.
“Sh!” the man in the shadows hissed.
Nate swallowed. He strained against the leather straps again, but they held tight.
“Oh, they done you up pretty good,” the man said.
Nate twisted his neck until he could see the man creeping toward him. He was hunched over, taking soft, almost lazy steps. His face was thin as if he hadn’t had a good meal in a week, and he was completely bald from the top of his head on down. He carried a glass bottle gingerly in his hands as if it were a sleeping baby.
“Who are you?” Nate whispered.
“They call me Rodney Flipp,” the man said. He chuckled as if it was funny. He was missing several teeth.
“What do you want?”
Flipp slipped close to Nate. “I wanted to see you. See what kind of person brought in the stink.”
Nate’s own face twist up. “What stink? What are you talking about?”
Flipp didn’t answer. Instead, he took the bottle and held up his nostrils. Twitching fingers pulled the stopper, and he took a long sniff so deep he had to close his eyes. When he was done, he slipped the stopper back into place and opened his eyes. The pupils were dilated to the point his brown irises were slivered rings around them. They didn’t seem to focus.
A waft of the sharp ether settled over Nate. He wrinkled his nose. Asking questions probably wasn’t going to get him far with an ether-huffer. He had tried to explain what had happened to the nurse, and she was stone-cold sober as far as he could tell.
“I should have waited until nightfall,” Flipp said, “but I couldn’t stand it any longer. Besides, I was out anyway.” He looked down at the bottle and chuckled again. “I needed my security blanket.”
“Looks like you got it.”
Flipp narrowed his eyes. “You mocking me?”
Nate shook his head. “Not at all.”
“You want some?” he asked. Flipp held out the bottle.
“No, thanks,” Nate said. “You hold onto it.”
Flipp took a quick sniff. “If you had seen what I’ve seen, you would need it.”
“What did you see?”
Flipp’s eyes suddenly cleared up. His lips quivered. After a moment, he squeezed his eyes shut and leaned back over the bottle of ether.
“That bad, huh?”
Flipp didn’t answer.
“I saw something,” Nate confessed. “Yesterday. It was… a monster, I guess.”
“So you did see it!” Flipp said with a gasp. “I knew it! I knew you’d seen the hellion.”
“Hellion? Is that what you’re calling it?”
“The thing from Hell. I don’t know what else you’d call
it. I’ve seen it, but the smell was so much worse. It follows. I smelled it on you, still carrying that stink.”
Nate looked down at his body, wrapped up in the gown the hospital gave the inmates. After his sputtering under the hose and the bristles from the brush when the orderlies washed him, he was surprised he smelled like anything at all.
“I didn’t notice.”
Flipp sneered. “It’s all I can smell. I sucked in a whole cloud of it on the train when the hellion appeared.”
“Train?” Nate asked. He blinked. “You were on a train, too?”
“Yeah,” Flipp said. “It attacked us just outside of Faber’s Bluff.” He stopped, shook his head, and took another long draw from his bottle.
“Faber’s Bluff,” Nate mumbled. He’d heard that name time and again around the rail yard, especially lately. “There was a wreck up that way a while back. That was you?”
Flipp just leaned over his bottle.
“That was a cargo train,” Nate recalled. “No passenger cars. Most of the cars came through okay, even though the boiler blew. Killed everyone.”
“Not everyone,” Flipp said. His voice was low, like a groan.
Nate shuffled under the straps. “Rodney Flipp, right?”
“My name’s not Rodney. It’s Zane.”
“Zane,” Nate repeated. The name was so familiar, but Flipp’s face was so twisted from the drugs that he had to look past them. It took a moment, but then realization flashed when Nate mentally gave him hair. “I know you! Zane Weatherford, right? You work for Gloriana Courier Company!”
Flipp took in a sharp breath. His face suddenly seemed scared. “No.”
“Yeah. We’ve ridden train together. I’m Nate Kemp. I shovel on the mail train out to Shreveport. A few weeks back, I helped you lift a crate onto—”
“No!” Flipp screamed.
Nate pressed himself backward on the bed. The leather straps groaned.
Flipp sat down on the floor. He pressed the neck of the bottle against his nose. After a few deep breaths, he looked up again. “My head hurts.”
Nate watched the man sit. He had seen a handful of cases of Stoker’s Madness himself, men who raved and hurt anyone around them. Some were wild and violent. Others were quiet at first, stealing or fornicating, but ultimately something would make them snap, and then all hell broke loose.