Hellfire

by Jeff Provine

  “I understand, but these things do take time.”

  Ticks cleared his throat. “Then perhaps there are ways of expediting the truth. Mr. Parvis!”

  The short hunchback waddled in past Jim and the doctor. His stubby gloved hand held up the spiky-edged meat tenderizer. The black orderly gasped.

  “No!” Nate screamed. The visions were coming back. He closed his eyes so tight he saw stars. “Keep him away from me!”

  “What are you planning on doing?” Sims asked.

  “Only what we have to,” Ticks replied.

  Nate opened his eyes and tried to focus on the doctor. He pleaded, “Don’t let him!”

  Sims raised a finger at Ticks and pointed with his other hand toward Parvis. “I cannot condone torture!”

  Ticks leaned over the doctor and shook his head once. “You are wasting precious time for the Rail Agency and the courts of justice in the state of Gloriana. I’d hate to have to include this in my report to the governor and our senators with the recommendation your funding be cut while we try to make up for dollars lost in the judicial system.”

  Sims swallowed visibly. His voice came softer. “But, this isn’t necessary. I’m certain that after only a few sessions—”

  “We have our own methods, thank you, doctor.” Ticks gave a firm nod. “Mr. Parvis is quite skilled in his work in targeting those particular pressure points that will encourage the patient toward the truth. Now, Mr. Parvis?”

  The short hunchback plodded toward Nate.

  He wriggled and pushed up his knees, finally getting enough space between the leather straps to slip his right leg out.

  He threw himself around and kicked from the awkward angle. His bare foot met with Parvis’s side, below his raised arm where he held the hammer, right in the thin strip of aerophane fabric. It felt like he kicked into a bale of cotton.

  Parvis let out a long, high squeal and gurgled like a pig. He dropped his hammer and fell back several steps until he bumped into the far wall. His wide gloves held the side, and he continued to whimper.

  “Worthless,” Ticks muttered. He stepped forward and brushed Parvis out of the way. His black-gloved hand picked up the hammer.

  Nate tried to free his other foot. As he turned, Ticks smacked his shoulder with the hammer, exactly where his new scar rested. Nate grunted.

  Ticks blinked. “That should have sent you into spasms.”

  “It’s feeling better,” Nate told him.

  Ticks cocked his head to the side and reached out with his free hand to pull down the bandages at Nate’s collar. It was clean skin, but for a few smudges of blood. “That’s impossible.”

  Nate pulled away from his grip so much that one of his shoulders rode up the wall next to the bed. It was an awkward enough angle that his left leg freed itself. Pursing his lips, he rolled backward and kicked his legs up as high as he could.

  Both of his bare feet met with Ticks’s ear. The marshal’s hat flew into the air. He let out a shocked hurking sound and stumbled backward.

  When Ticks recovered, he hissed out a string of swears through gritted teeth. He raised the hammer high. Nate tried to scrunch himself down, but his head lay exposed above his knees. All he could do was watch as Ticks approached with the hammer.

  Jim darted in front of him and caught Ticks’s arm.

  “Enough!” Sims called. “I was foolish to think this would lead anywhere useful, and now we have a brawl in my own sanitarium! Marshal, put down that hammer!”

  Nate watched as Ticks slowly turned away and Jim let him go. He tossed the tenderizer toward Parvis, who was still holding his side and didn’t catch it. The hammer clanged against the stone floor. Ticks’s mustache twitched.

  “Very well. I believe we may be done here,” Ticks said.

  Nate relaxed slowly. The doctors may have thought he was crazy, but at least they would protect him from Ticks’s genuine insanity.

  “I’m sorry we could not accommodate you further, Marshal Ticks,” Sims said. “I believe it is time for you to go, before my patients are disturbed further.”

  “We’ll leave,” Ticks muttered. He blinked, and then he straightened up. “But we will be taking this culprit with us.”

  Nate’s heart froze.

  “On what grounds?” Sims demanded.

  “His attack on me shows a clear mind capable of judgment,” Ticks said calmly. “Attacking an agent of the railway is a crime, and he will be put on trial under the jurisdiction of the courts in Lake Providence.”

  Nate gritted his teeth. “I was defending myself from you!”

  “I have witnesses,” Ticks replied. “The matter can be sorted out in the courts. You’ll be in my custody until then. Dr. Sims, I’ll take my leave now.”

  “You’ll do no such—”

  “I believe you will have to recuse yourself as you are treating the patient,” Ticks continued. “Otherwise, the matter will come before the medical licensing board, won’t it? I’d hate to see you lose all of your credentials over one little matter.”

  Sims shrank back. Jim stood with a look of helplessness.

  “No!” Nate screamed. “You can’t let him take me! He tried to kill me!”

  “Perhaps we could sedate him?” a soft voice called from behind them all.

  The room went quiet, and everyone turned. The nurse with the soft brown hair walked in, carrying a little metal tray with a brown bottle on it labeled “Laudanum.”

  Ticks made a rat-faced smile. “That would be much appreciated.”

  “Nurse Jacey?” Dr. Sims said.

  “I heard a scuffle,” the nurse said. “I thought some sedative might be useful, one way or the other.”

  Nate’s heart sank. She had been kind, even if she had misunderstood. Now she doomed him. If he were drugged, there would be no way to fight back.

  Ticks’s voice sounded more chipper. “Finally, someone willing to work for the good of the state! Doctor, with your permission?”

  Sims hung his head. “Very well.”

  The nurse walked toward Nate and set the tray down. She took the bottle and filled up a dropper.

  He turned his head away. “Don’t do this.”

  “Everything will be fine,” the nurse told him. “Jim?”

  The orderly slowly went around her. His fingers expertly wrapped around Nate’s jaw, forcing it open without hurting him.

  He wanted to scream and fight, but that was his temper flaring up. He doused it with a long breath. As gently and truthfully as he could, he looked up at the nurse and said as best his restrained mouth could, “Please. Help me.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said in her silk-smooth tone. “I’m going to give you this, and you’re going to become nice and sleepy. We’ll undo these nasty straps so you can be on your way.”

  She brought the dropper over his mouth. Nate winced and tried to pull, but the orderly’s hands held firm. Bitter liquid fell between his lips, and all he could do was not gag as it went down his throat.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ozzie carefully emptied the dropper into the patient’s mouth. She wondered if she should even call him “patient” anymore since she was determined to get him out of the hospital.

  There had always been stories of patients being committed to asylums without suffering any real ailments. Ozzie had no qualms about folks suffering from nerves and addictions bringing themselves in, but it was always heartbreaking to see someone taken inside the hospital walls against their will. The vast majority of them needed it, to protect themselves and others, but there were most likely a few in the mix who had no more problems than Ozzie herself. Thankfully Dorothea Dix had made her march through Gloriana and encouraged the governor to establish a clean, healthful place where even those who came accidentally would be no worse for the wear.

  At least, that was what she told herself. Nate Kemp had spent a morning sprayed with a hose and strapped to a table in an ether-stupor. She shuddered at the thought.

  Yet he still seemed wil
ling to trust her. Maybe it was out of desperation, or maybe something more. Whatever it was, Ozzie had to make it up to him.

  When the rail marshal burst in with his two henchmen of different size, she was the first to greet them. She must have been a sight to see standing without an apron amid scattered pages of newspaper, the article about Nate still clutched in her hand as she skimmed through the admissions ledger.

  “Good morning, er, day,” she had said, so shaken she wasn’t even certain what time it was.

  “Nate Kemp,” the marshal told her. “He escaped custody last night. Is he here?”

  “Nate Kemp,” she said, pretending to look through the ledger as she tried to think. “Kemp… Hm.”

  “Wasn’t that the fella you were just looking for?” Jack Rodgers the orderly next to her asked.

  She could have kicked him.

  Ozzie had looked up and put on a false smile. “Oh, yes, Nathan Kemp! Yes, he arrived this morning. He belongs to you?”

  Ticks glared at her with dark eyes. “That was what I just said. Where is he?”

  “He is, um,” Ozzie stammered. No trick came to mind, so she had to stall. “He’s been confined to his room.”

  “Take me to him.”

  “I, um, certainly,” Ozzie said. She turned to the orderly and barked, “Go find Dr. Sims.”

  Jack stared up at her with puzzled eyes.

  “Hurry, now!” she called. “We wouldn’t want to keep these men waiting, now do we?”

  Jack looked from her to Ticks. Ozzie watched the marshal glare back.

  Without a word, the orderly stood up and hurried toward the doctors’ offices up the stairs that went over the storage room behind the desk. Ozzie turned back to the marshal.

  “It will just be a minute,” she said, still smiling as broadly as she could.

  “Fine,” Ticks replied. He leaned over the desk toward her. His body smelled of leather and expensive cologne. It wasn’t a bad smell, but it was powerful.

  Ozzie took a half-step back.

  “So, know much about the new inmate?” he asked.

  She let her smile falter. “We prefer the term ‘patient.’”

  “Patient, sure, sure. Tell me about this patient. What has he said?”

  “Not much to tell. He was brought in by some farmers who found him trespassing. We cleaned him up and took him to a room.”

  “Right. He say anything much?”

  “Only a wild story about monsters,” Ozzie said, deciding to omit the part about falling from an airship.

  Ticks narrowed his dark eyes. “Monsters?”

  “Monsters,” Ozzie repeated. She should have omitted that, too, but it was too late now. “All kinds of monsters chasing after him and running amok. Can you believe it?”

  She tried to laugh, but it came out stodgy and weak. Nevertheless, she kept going until she erupted with a high-pitched guffaw.

  Ticks added a few beats of his own chuckle, obviously as fake as her own. “I guess you hear some crazy stories around this place from the prisoner—uh, patients.”

  “That we do,” Ozzie replied. She chirped a laugh again.

  “I guess you’re not buying that story about monsters, then.”

  “Certainly not!” Ozzie tried to appear insulted. “What do I look like?”

  Ticks didn’t answer. Instead, he just gazed, running his eyes down and then back up again.

  Ozzie shuddered as if he had laid a hand on her. She shrank backward another step.

  Ticks made a smile like a rat.

  She wanted to slap it off his face.

  “Excuse me,” Dr. Sims called from the stairs. “I’m Doctor Isaiah Sims. You are here to see a patient?”

  Ticks turned away from her and walked toward Sims as he came down the last several steps. Ozzie suddenly realized she had been holding her breath. She let it go and took in fresh air, watching the marshal and the doctor talk as they headed down the hallway toward the end, where Kemp’s room lay.

  She tapped her fingers on the desk. The newspaper article confirmed Kemp’s story about the train wreck and being arrested by the Rail Agency. Then, according to him, they had tried to kill him. Kemp hadn’t been lying, unlike the weasely agent. She had to help somehow.

  After a moment more of tapping, she heard Flipp let out a horrible shriek. Kemp had said Flipp was really someone called Weatherford before the Rail Agency had gotten to him, too. When he had come in to the hospital, Flipp was clearly disturbed, and they had helped him as best as the doctors could.

  “Even if we gave him a new name,” Ozzie muttered.

  There were days when he went along with it easily enough. Thinking back, Ozzie decided those were the days the ether had been missing. He helped himself.

  Ozzie stopped tapping her fingers. Sedation was the answer.

  As more and more yells erupted from the hall, she tore around the desk and into the surgery ward. The chemical cabinet stood calmly in its corner. She grabbed its handle and pulled, but it didn’t budge.

  “Flipp locked up after himself,” she muttered. He certainly knew how to cover his tracks. No wonder he had gone so long without being discovered.

  Ozzie didn’t have that luxury. All of the cutting tools, from the tiny scalpels to the huge bone saw that had been ordered to complete the ward but never used, were locked up in the wide drawer of the cabinet. Not locked up, however, were the wooden depressors used to keep patients’ tongues out of the way while the doctors checked their throats and teeth.

  She grabbed the crock jar that held the depressors in both hands. Digging one out, she bent the balsa wood back and forth until it formed a crack. Then she tore it apart into a long stick thinner than a match with a wide bump at the end. Ozzie took a step back and admired her handiwork.

  Then she kicked herself for wasting time and jumped to the cabinet, aiming the stick inside the skeleton-key lock. It was a simple mechanism, and anything with a proper extension on the end would have served to throw the latch inside. On her first turn, nothing happened. Ozzie wondered if she had made the bump too narrow. She decided to keep going with what she had, changed her grip, and turned the makeshift wooden key again.

  After what seemed like an eternity of twisting, the lock clicked, and the door popped open. Ozzie dropped the stick and dug into the cabinet. A big gap stood where the ether bottle should have been, but there were other bottles. After checking two, she found the one she wanted: brown glass with the wide label reading “Laudanum.”

  Ozzie turned to the botany cabinet on the other side of the room. It wasn’t locked, there was no danger in case a patient was able to get into the room and find a few jars of powerfully smelling herbs. One jar was labeled “Peychaud’s Bitters,” a mixture of herbs the hospital used for smelling salts on the patients who were sensitive to ammonia. Ozzie always suspected a few of the staff used them for Antoine Amédée Peychaud’s original intention as a flavoring for toddies. Whatever the case, it would be enough to evoke the same reaction as tasting the powerfully bitter laudanum.

  She emptied out the laudanum bottle into the basin next to the pitcher kept with clean water in case a patient was brought in with an emergency. After she rinsed the bottle, she stuffed in a few pinches of bitters and topped it off with water. She shook it, grabbed up a tray and a dropper, and hurried down the hall.

  Jim’s mop leaned against the wall; apparently the doctor had taken him along to use his keys. The door to Kemp’s room was open wide, and the taller hunchbacked man wrapped in the brown coat and wide hat stood outside.

  As she passed Flipp’s room, she heard the chains of his manacles rattling. He was mumbling loudly to himself, “Not again, never again…”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She didn’t know what she could have done for him, but her heart ached.

  She had arrived at the open door just as the men inside were yelling at one another. Ticks wanted to drag Kemp off, and Doctor Sims didn’t seem to have any reason to hold him. It had gone just as she
would have planned. Getting Ticks to agree to drug Nate Kemp was as easy as asking.

  Ozzie drew up the bitter fluid just as she would laudanum. Too little of it wouldn’t look right, and too much laudanum, even as residue in the bottle, could kill him by putting him in such a stupor his body would forget to breathe. Jim held him while she administered the dose.

  Kemp gagged, but he swallowed it. He didn’t have much choice, but Ozzie was glad it had made him act just as he should.

  “There, that wasn’t so bad,” Ozzie said. She resisted the urge to pet his red hair and reassure him. She had to play the betrayer.

  “How long will it take?” Ticks asked.

  “Just a few minutes,” Sims said, walking out the door. “I’ll go prepare the release paperwork.”

  Ticks made ratty smile. He turned to Ozzie. “Thank you, my dear. I’ll be sure to get your name for my official report. Unless there’s another way I could thank you...”

  Ozzie sneered and hurried to turn it into a smile. “It’s the least I could do.”

  He turned away and smacked the short hunchback on his head. “Come along, you disgusting weakling.” To the tall hunchback standing outside of the room, he pointed a finger and said, “When all the fighting’s worked out of him, take him to the airship.”

  The tall one let out a dull, affirmative grunt while the short hunchback followed after him, making a high-pitched sniveling sound. They disappeared amid the yells and banging of patients all up and down the hall.

  Ozzie turned back to Kemp. Even with the big one watching, she still had to make sure he was okay.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  He closed his brown eyes. “I don’t know. How should one feel before being dragged off to his death?”

  Ozzie pursed her lips. “It’s not all that bad. You’ll be out of here, at least.”

  He wouldn’t look at her.

  “I guess you’re getting sleepy now,” she said.

  He opened one eye. “Why are you doing this?”

  She tried to wink at him with the eye that was away from the tall hunchback at the door. “Getting sleepy yet?”