Shadows Rise

by Denise A. Agnew

  When he’d run into the basement to find Annabelle, urgency had threatened. What had surprised him at first was that she hadn’t heard his quick approach down the stairs. He’d seen the darkness lingering, blacker than the shadows around it. Nothing had mattered more than grabbing her and dragging her away from the evil.

  He threw himself back into the game, loving the distraction. For a short while he’d have a reprieve and so would everyone else. Halfway through the game, he turned the ball over to another soldier to play quarterback just so someone else would have a chance to take the lead.

  A short time later, after a play, he saw Ziggy talking with Annabelle, and everything within Cade sent up a warning. Ah, hell. What did Ziggy have planned? Hard to play football and remember the vow he’d made to Nurse Summit to keep Annabelle safe.

  A huge cheer from the crowd of fifty started a new round of clapping. Emboldened, he plunged into the game with fervor. Masks couldn’t show the staff’s approval, but their cheering and fist pumping gratified him. Time raced, and when the game completed, he turned to find that Annabelle still watched.

  After everyone retreated from the field and he was left alone with her, she said, “We need to talk. Things have changed since the other night when we were ... together. I need to understand what I saw in the basement.” Her voice held vulnerability and a hesitancy that reigned in his desire to strike back with harder words.

  “I want to understand, too,” he said. “Meet me at my room tonight. At midnight, We’ll talk.”

  She rushed away before he could change his mind. Alone with her again? Could he pretend the attraction to her didn’t exist? He returned to the ward and noted that several of the soldiers watched him as if he’d captured a quarry, and he wondered if they understood what lay between him and Annabelle.

  As it was, midnight seemed to take forever to arrive. He refused the dose of laudanum when a nurse came by with it before nine. She told him she’d report it to Prever, but he didn’t care. What if the ghosts he’d seen on the battlefield were real? What if taking laudanum at the asylum would keep him from seeing danger? If evil existed here, he didn’t want a drug clouding his ability to see it. He might get the shakes coming down from the drug again, but if he could come off it once, he could stop taking the drug again.

  Cade fell asleep in a chair in his room. When he jerked awake, he fumbled in his pocket for his watch. Five minutes to midnight. He probably looked a damned mess. He went to his small desk and used the comb on his unruly hair. He’d taken a bath after the football game. That alone had taken forever with the number of men crowding into the bathrooms for a shower.

  He shrugged off his jacket as a tentative knock sounded on his door. She was exactly on time. Nerves skittered in his stomach. Might as well have been a schoolboy, she twisted him up so much. He eased open the door, and in the low light she radiated a womanly calmness that eased the disharmony. She still wore her nurse’s attire; he’d never seen her in anything else. He wished she didn’t have to wear the mask. He ached to see her without it again. He stepped back to allow her inside. As he closed the door and propped a chair under the knob, she stood by the foot of the bed.

  He gestured. “Please make yourself comfortable. You must be tired.” She moved to the side of the bed and sat down. Cade kept his distance. The closer he got, the more he would yearn to touch and taste her. He planted his hands on his hips. “I hope these walls are thick if we’re going to keep meeting this way.” Her eyes widened a bit, and he realized how that sounded. “Our conversations should be kept low.”

  “There’s nowhere else we could meet.”

  He nodded in acknowledgement. “Why did you want to speak with me at all? The last time you were here ... you said later we couldn’t do this anymore.

  “That was before the basement.” She sighed, and the sound held weariness. “There is so much to talk about.”

  She drew off her cap and unpinned her hair. The mahogany tresses fell around her shoulders, and his mouth went dry. She laced her fingers through the wavy hair, and he wanted to be the one touching the strands and learning their texture.

  He wanted to groan in frustration. “Don’t do that in front of me.”

  Her eyes looked startled. “What?”

  “Remove your cap and let down your hair. It gives a man ideas.” She stared at him, and he waited in anticipation of what she’d do.

  Annabelle twisted her hair back up and slowly returned the pins to hold the heavy mass. “I think you have ideas no matter what I do.”

  “Damn right.” His throat felt tight and achy with a need to speak. To say whatever he wanted without fear. “You’re a beautiful woman.”

  She made a barely perceptible sound of disbelief. “To a man isolated in war, most women look beautiful.”

  She rubbed her left calf a moment, the gesture slow and methodical. A line formed between her brows and he wondered if she was in pain. He’d noticed her limp—a slight hesitation, but nothing pronounced. He didn’t realize he was walking toward her until he’d already started to move. He stopped before he reached the bed. “I’ve never thought a woman was beautiful because I was deprived of female company. Pretty is plentiful.”

  Again that soft sound as she returned the cap to her head. “Are you sure you didn’t receive a head injury in the war?”

  “A gunshot to the side. I was lucky it was no more than a graze. Very lucky. Men are so good at flattery, but dependability is another matter,” he said. “I’m dependable, and you know that. Flattery, I’m not good at.” Before she could retort, he said, “Does your left leg hurt? I noticed the way you’re rubbing it, and the limp.”

  She didn’t say a word at first, but finally she looked up at him. “Do you know what happened to me when the shell hit the hospital?”

  Dread crept up on him. Did he want to hear this? “No. I only heard ... someone said you were hurt during the shelling, too.”

  She took a deep breath, and it came out on a shuddering sound. You know that I was working that day and I started to feel unwell.” Annabelle’s voice had gone so soft he almost couldn’t hear her. “I almost fainted and that’s never happened to me before. A doctor diagnosed fatigue and ordered me to go back to my quarters. You see, we were short-handed that day and I’d worked a double shift. Velia had to ....”

  Now that she’d started her explanation, he didn’t want her to stop. The pain of hearing her story might rip him into little pieces, but he’d stepped off the cliff and was going down. “Go on,” he said.

  She looked at the floor and perhaps the serviceable white shoes on her feet. She’d obviously spent a great deal of time polishing away any marks to acquire a pristine surface. “Velia was with me. She’d done two shifts also. I asked the doctor to let Velia go as well, but Velia insisted on staying. She said she’d taken yet another shift. Three shifts in a row.”

  He swallowed hard around the lump growing in his throat. “Sounds like her. Stubborn as hell.”

  “I begged her not to, and I think everyone thought I was so tired I didn’t know what I was saying. I just ... I felt like something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. It didn’t do me any good to beg. She stayed. I wasn’t fifty yards away before I heard the shell coming in. I was so shocked ... it didn’t make sense that a shell would come our way. We thought we were too far from the front lines. The shell hit and the blast was so hard I landed face down. I woke up two days later in a makeshift hospital away from the one that was destroyed. That’s when I learned what happened to most everyone in the hospital. The shell killed forty people that day, including all the other nurses there and two doctors. A few lucky people made it. I had a fracture to my left ankle and severe burns to my left calf.”

  “God.” He didn’t know what to say. Tears stung his eyes, but he forced them away. “How long were you in the hospital?”

  “Almost a month. Then I told the Red Cross I couldn’t serve anymore in France. I needed to work and still wanted to help soldiers, so
I came here.”

  Silence dropped between them. His thoughts ran around in his head like squirrels, unable to settle on one belief or position. As she’d told her story, he hadn’t felt resentment. The realization staggered him. God, he’d been a bastard. A fucking bastard.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed to ease from his tight throat.

  She turned toward him. “For what?”

  “You aren’t responsible for what happened to Velia.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “I never should’ve thought you were.”

  She sucked in a breath, a shaky, shivering sound. “No, you don’t understand. I do think I’m responsible. I always have. Something bad was going to happen and I knew it. If I’d just said the right thing, I could have convinced her to get out. I could have saved them.”

  He shook his head. “No. No you couldn’t. You aren’t responsible.”

  He felt a momentary easing of the pain that had haunted him since Velia’s death.

  “Why are we here like this?” Annabelle’s voice went taut with question and perhaps fear. She looked up, and the clearness of her eyes left no doubt she burned with questions. “Is this place polluting my mind?”

  “Maybe it pollutes the mind of anyone who stays here long enough,” he said.

  Annabelle’s hands gripped the mattress and tangled in his blanket and sheets.

  He crossed his arms. “Then what do you think happened in the basement?”

  “An illusion. A hallucination.”

  “Brought on by what?”

  “It’s been proven fatigue can cause problems.” She didn’t sound certain.

  “Battle fatigue causes problems.” He offered her nothing else.

  “But you don’t think that’s what it was?”

  “No.”

  “I must sound like a female Scrooge.”

  He smiled. “You think it was a piece of undigested food that made you see the dark shape in the basement?”

  “It could be.”

  “Then we both ate too many potatoes today because I saw it, too.”

  Silence came again, and he allowed it to settle around them.

  “When you went downstairs to find the ball, did you see the black mass then?” she asked

  “No. I could feel the darkness, but couldn’t see it.”

  She shook her head once more. “Feelings aren’t proof.”

  “Why not? Most of the women I’ve known are emotional creatures.”

  “There are women of science, even female doctors. Women are making great strides in this world. We aren’t led around by feelings.”

  “I’m not maligning you or women in general. It’s my experience that most women seem to value their emotions when men don’t.”

  “Do you value emotions?”

  Did he? “I’m not certain anymore. I’ve spent more than a year of my life discovering what I can endure. Sometimes I think I’ve failed. I’m seeing and feeling things that don’t exist according to you and Prever. If that’s true, I don’t want to be this way for the rest of my life.”

  He moved forward and sat on the edge of the bed, making certain to keep a fair distance between them. “You wanted to see me for a reason. Why did you come here? To make me understand that Velia didn’t die because of you?”

  “I did hope you’d tell me that I’m insane.” She lowered her voice, but he thought he heard a tremble within it. “It would solve so many of my feelings.”

  “What feelings?”

  Her lashes lowered and shuttered her expression. “Confusion. Doubt.” She drew in a deep breath and released it. “Fear.”

  God, he wanted to hold her. He restrained his desires, even his wish to comfort. “What do you fear?”

  “So many things. That I’m as broken as any soldier. That we won’t make it out of here alive.”

  Her statement frightened him. For if this solid, intelligent woman couldn’t find her way through this time and place, how could he?

  “No,” he said. “If there is one thing I believe, it’s that we can get through whatever this is. Whatever it is in the basement.”

  She turned toward him, and her gaze overwhelmed him like a physical touch. “It’s more than that. I thought the war was bad. And it was. But this disease, this strange thing in the basement that can’t exist—” She coughed behind the mask.

  He touched her shoulder. “All right?”

  She cleared her throat. “Yes. Dry throat.” Though her voice sounded scratchy, she continued. “A war I can understand ... in a sense. I can even imagine an end to it. But what if the disease doesn’t stop? What if the basement monster is real? Those are things I’ve never worried about before. I never imagined them because I didn’t want to. Now they’re here anyway.”

  She touched the mask near her mouth, and he wanted to be the one touching her there.

  “The war and the disease will end.” He pointed at the door. “But the basement monster, as you called it, is more of a threat.”

  “How can that be? It goes against everything logical.”

  “Your medical training and your mind say it can’t be true, but there is no other rational explanation for us both seeing a dark shadow. When you walked into that void, did you feel like you didn’t have a will of your own?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  He swallowed. Better to tell her everything. “We’re not the only ones. Ziggy has seen it, too. When I went down to the basement the first time, the shadow was there, surrounding Ziggy. He cowered in it. When I saw you walking toward it, I was afraid the same thing would happen to you.”

  “Perhaps if we don’t go anywhere near the basement, nothing can happen to us.”

  “We could stay away because we know about it. What about everyone else?” he asked.

  “I don’t think we can. The superintendent and Dr Prever want us to leave it open, remember?”

  He crossed his ankle over his knee and leaned forward slightly. “My theory is that anyone and everyone in the asylum is affected one way or another. The evil is a part of the fabric, the walls, the air we breathe. One way or the other, it tests human limits.”

  “Why? Where did it come from?”

  He couldn’t remove the discomfort in her eyes, so he told her the truth. “I’m not an expert. I only know that evil, disembodied spirits ... whatever you want to call it, are real. Can you imagine thirty years of insanity building up in one place? That could be what’s happened here.”

  “Nebulous possibilities aren’t scientific. You’re asking me to think an entirely different way.” She stood. “I’ve got to think about this.”

  He rose to his feet. “I’m not asking for anything. You wanted to know what I believe, and I told you. And Nurse Summit asked me to protect you, so I will.”

  “Would you ... would you protect me even if she hadn’t asked?”

  His answer came easily, and it shocked him. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

  “If what you say about this place is true, what do we do about the shadow in the basement? How does one get rid of something like that? If it exists?”

  “I’ve never gotten rid of one before. All we can do for now is stay away from the basement. No matter what you see there, don’t go near it.”

  She nodded. “Never again, if I can help it.”

  “If you’re ever afraid, come to me. Don’t hesitate.”

  She reached up and touched his shoulder. “Maybe you are a good man, Captain Hale.”

  “Cade, damn it.”

  “I pride myself on independence, Cade. What would I be if I ran to a man every time I needed assistance?”

  He smiled and returned her touch, only he smoothed one finger over her forehead and down to the mask. “There’s only one man I want you to run to when you need assistance. Me.”

  Annabelle’s eyes widened. His pulse immediately raced, his body hard with desire. Only this woman could extinguish the fire. He reached behind her head and untied the mask. It fell around her neck, held only by the bottom strings.
He saw the apprehension in her eyes when all he wanted to see was excitement and longing. Tired of waiting, he kissed her.

  Their other kisses paled in comparison to this moment. Her lips, so soft and pliant, yielded to the first thrust. He dipped into her soft mouth, a carnal measurement of how far he wanted to be inside her. A soft hitch in her breath said she liked what he did. So he kissed her harder, longer. Heat coiled in his loins at the thought of easing between her thighs and testing the sweet softness with his cock. He groaned, body aching to taste and touch. His arms slipped around Annabelle and brought her close and tight to bone and sinew. Her curves molded to him, reminding Cade how different they were. He eased one thigh between hers, enough to press upward into the hot need between her legs. She gasped once more and writhed a little. He eased his hold to make certain he didn’t restrain her. She smoothed her hands upward over his chest, and he gasped as she palmed his chest. Liquid fire teased his groin as her touch transferred to his shoulders. Before he knew it, her arms linked around his neck. An overwhelming need pulsed in his being to lay her down upon his bed and share everything with Annabelle.

  He dove into the moment, tasting her lips. Gentleness mixed with fiery consumption. She responded, her tongue finding his as if she’d known this type of passion all her life and saved it only for him. He learned her shape as he shaped her breasts and found them round and full. Over her waist to rounded hips and shapely buttocks. Her body was slim, but still curved and womanly. He squeezed and her breath caught in her throat. Along her neck he pressed kisses. He wanted to pull off this damn cap and thread his fingers through her hair. He wanted to strip this matronly dress and white apron and discover secrets he suspected no other man had ever found.