“About the same time as me.”
Cade groaned and rubbed his temple near the bandage. “Hollenbeck had them sent down here?”
“He did.”
Cade cursed vehemently under his breath.
“I’d say so, sir.”
“Ziggy?”
“Yes sir?”
“You have to keep a hold on your temper, and you need to resist anything that enters the cell and tries to influence your mind. Understand?”
“That black stuff, whatever it was that came in here and grabbed me the first time? It’s all around us just waiting. I think it escaped the basement when the superintendent said it was okay to keep the basement door open.”
“I doubt a closed door would stop it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was in my room one day and it seeped around the door.”
Cade and Ziggy went silent for a bit. Finally Cade said, “We need to make a plan. When Hollenbeck or anyone comes down here again, we need to jump them. I don’t even care if it’s a nurse. I don’t mean hurt them, just grab them and disable them to the point we can escape.”
“What if it’s Hollenbeck?”
“We’ll tie him up.”
“How do you think he knew you’d be down here?”
Cade had wondered that too. “I ran into this nurse in the ward and she questioned me. It might have been her that ran to Hollenbeck. It doesn’t matter. We just need to keep our wits about us.” He had an idea. “Ziggy, I hear you have feelings for Nurse Dorrenti.”
Silence.
“Ziggy?”
“Yes I do.”
“I understand how you feel. She’s a good woman.”
“The best there is.”
“I also understand that you think I might lead her down the wrong path.”
More silence.
“Ziggy, answer me.”
“I said that to Nurse Summit. I’ll admit it. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Right.”
“I was jealous. I’ll admit that, too. She’s just so pretty and I know she’d never be interested in a man like me. She loves you.”
Cade didn’t know if she loved him, and in that moment he realized that he wanted her to love him. He wanted it with everything inside. He had to get out of this hell hole and tell her how much he’d come to love her.
“I’m with you in this fight to survive. But I’ll do anything to keep Annabelle safe. If you feel the same way about her, you’ll help me. She’s going to come looking for me if I don’t show up by tomorrow. We have to get out of here now.”
“Captain Hale?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I shot Colleto. I thought he was going to hurt Annabelle. I would do anything for her, too.”
“I know.”
“Then you don’t hate me?”
“No.”
A heavy sigh came from Ziggy’s side of the cell. “Thanks.”
“Ziggy?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Stop calling me sir. Or Captain. I told you once to call me Cade. Or if that’s too informal for you, call me Hale. We’re equals now. All right?”
“Yes, sir—I mean Cade.”
Cade could hear a smile in Ziggy’s voice. Time to get to business. “I think the next time someone comes down here, you should be as sane as possible. Tell them I’m dying or something. Maybe that will get them to open the door.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
After that they went quiet. Cade stared into the darkness, more aware than ever that he couldn’t see a damned thing. Ziggy was the smallest shadow. He needed to start thinking long and hard about what he’d do when he escaped.
* * *
Annabelle’s breath left in a rush of relief as she saw Nurse Summit standing there with a small kerosene lamp.
“Lord, girl. Don’t point that at me.”
Annabelle lowered her pistol and squinted into the semi-darkness. “I’m sorry. I just got here and this place is ... it’s dead. Where is everyone?”
“So many of the men are ill in their beds. Nurses are checking on them periodically. The power went out a few hours ago and I have no idea why, since there isn’t a storm.” The woman’s expression, devoid of a protective mask, was grim. “I suggested to Hollenbeck that the men who aren’t ill should stay in their rooms. Most of them are glad to. They’re frightened.”
Annabelle tried to imagine battled-hardened men being afraid of disease and ghosts, but perhaps the disease had turned everyone into cowards, including herself. “I see.”
Nurse Summit squeezed Annabelle’s shoulder. “What are you doing here? You should have stayed at the cabin.”
“Cade was supposed to return before sundown. Where is he?”
Nurse Summit frowned. “I thought he was on his way back to you.” Nurse Summit explained that Cade had taken food down to Ziggy and planned on bringing back more for her. “That was some time ago, before nightfall. I didn’t expect him to say goodbye.” The woman’s brows pinched together. “I’ll help you look for him.”
Footsteps pounded down the hall and a shadow formed from the darkness. In a white doctor’s coat, Hollenbeck strode toward them with purpose on his face. Annabelle shivered. His thin body appeared as a ghastly precursor to death. Annabelle tucked the weapon she’d been holding into her coat pocket.
“Nurse Summit, why aren’t you attending to your duties?” the man asked.
Before Annabelle could speak, Nurse Summit spoke up. “Annabelle has come back to us. I was just taking her to her room before going on my rounds again.”
Hollenbeck’s gaze swung from Annabelle to Nurse Summit. “I don’t suppose it would be inappropriate for her to return to her nursing position. We need every hand we can obtain.”
Hollenbeck eyeballed Annabelle with an icy, inhuman gaze that sent pure unease sliding through her veins. She didn’t know what had happened to the man, but he’d been touched by something indefinably horrible. She practically held her breath, unable to speak.
“Of course.” Nurse Summit took Annabelle’s upper arm and started walking with her. “Let us find you a uniform, and we’ll be right back to duty.”
Instinct pitched in for Annabelle as she allowed the nurse to lead her like a docile lamb. As they headed back to Annabelle’s room, they both kept quiet. Annabelle opened her room and they stepped inside and closed the door.
Nurse Summit cleared her throat. “As you can see, Dr. Hollenbeck is ... I don’t know. I explained to Cade that this place is seriously ... wrong. In all my years of nursing, I never understood what was in this place and why it’s this way. Even back in 1908 ...”
Annabelle felt as if someone had poured ice water on her. “Yes?”
Nurse Summit kept her voice down. “In 1888, when this place was built, an evil was brought into being. I started work here that year and the place seemed all right. I believed people would be cured of their madness through nursing, kindness, and the new treatments doctors could perform on patients. It hasn’t turned out that way. Madness has fed on madness until everything is full of rot.”
“Why did you stay here?”
The woman shrugged. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have. You see, after Masterson Healy and his daughter died in 1908, the asylum started to calm down. I didn’t hear or see many strange things until the soldiers took over this place. Maybe they brought a darkness with them the evil could feed on. Maybe everything that is happening in the world right now was waiting, dormant until it could feed. I tried to get Morgan Healy and his wife Lilly to come back here and help me as soon as I realized something was wrong. They wrote back that they couldn’t do it. I don’t really blame them.”
In any other time or place, Annabelle would have concluded the woman needed to be put into the asylum for treatment herself. Yet she understood, too well, that Nurse Matilda Summit had hit on the heart of the matter. “You tried your best to help as many people as you could.”
“I was only t
wenty myself when I started work here. But after all of this is over, I’m done with this place.”
“I don’t blame you. Do you think Dr. Hollenbeck is affected by this evil? He never was a particularly kind man, but he is positively cold now.”
Nurse Summit nodded. “Yes. We have to do something, and we have to find Cade before this gets worse.”
“The question is, what do we do?”
Annabelle dressed in one of her uniforms and kept the pistol in the pocket at her waist. Nurse Summit walked along with her, lamp light helping them see. She didn’t know how they’d manage it, but finding Cade would be first priority. They’d planned and plotted for some time but realized they couldn’t stay in Annabelle’s room for long or Hollenbeck would notice.
“Cade planned to get Ziggy out of the basement where he’s been imprisoned,” Nurse Summit said. “He could be in the basement now.”
Anxious to get to Cade, Annabelle couldn’t help but say, “We’ll go to the basement now.”
“No. We have no idea what it’s like down there.”
“Then how will we help him?”
“Some of the soldiers who aren’t sick might help us, but so many are immobilized by fear.”
Annabelle stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Then we have to find the ones that will help us. What about Margaret?”
“She’s taking Hemming’s death hard. He died before you got here.”
Annabelle’s eyes filled with tears. “Was she ... did she have feelings for him?”
Nurse Summit nodded. “I think she was starting to. Penelope is too ill to help. This is such a mess. Don’t give up on me now, girl.”
Annabelle took a big breath. “Never.”
“Come on. If we’re going to round up any men to help us, we’d better hurry. Hollenbeck could appear at any time.”
Chapter 20
Cade stared into the darkness, angry as hell at his helplessness. Time had no meaning. He seethed because he’d always found a way to work his way through any predicament, to outthink any situation. Not this time.
“Stop thinking so damned hard ... Cade.” Ziggy’s voice faltered on his name.
“How did you know, Ziggy?”
“Not sure. Seems like since I’ve been sitting in the damned dark so long I’ve figured out how to think more clearly, you know? Maybe I needed darkness to show me the light.”
Cade was surprised at the man’s clarity; he’d never thought of Ziggy as particularly intelligent. Maybe he’d been wrong. Cade understood and that scared him. He also understood he’d cheated himself. He’d committed himself to escape terror and to find solace. Shredded by the war, he’d needed respite. He’d wanted to punish himself for his sister’s death and to leave laudanum behind and to punish Annabelle for a wrong she’d never committed. He understood now that ghosts were real, that evil was real, and he couldn’t hide the facts from himself with a drug-induced reality.
Who wouldn’t have nightmares about what he’d witnessed? Millions of men who survived the war would have dreams forever. Such horrors didn’t make them insane. Wounded in spirit, perhaps, but nothing more. His anger slid away, replaced by determination. He wouldn’t allow this building to defeat him. He wouldn’t allow the war to take anything more away from him.
“Ziggy, you aren’t insane.”
“What?”
“You came in here thinking you were insane, didn’t you?”
“No. I didn’t. People told me I was plumb crazy, but I didn’t believe them. Yeah, I got my problems, but being loony isn’t one of them. I was always a mean son-of-a-bitch before I went to war. Had problems with my anger, you know? Doesn’t mean I am a crazy man.”
Cade smiled even though the other man couldn’t see him. “Then you won’t have a problem with the mad thing I’m about to suggest and do.”
“What’s that?”
“You agree there’s evil in this asylum?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’m going to call out to the other soldiers in these cells and ask them to fight the madness. If we win against whatever is evil down here, when another human evil enters the basement, we can work against it.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”
Ziggy’s newfound confidence made Cade laugh. “It isn’t.”
“You don’t think you’ll bring the evil to us?”
Ice cold rolled over Cade. “Its already here, Ziggy. Do you have a better idea?”
“Nope.”
“Then it’s all we have.”
“All right, let’s do it.”
Rather than stand, Cade crawled on hands and knees to the cell door. “Soldiers! Can you hear me? This is Captain Hale!”
At first, he heard nothing. Again he called to the men. “You are wrongly imprisoned in here and do not deserve what’s happening to you. Do you hear me?”
More silence.
Ziggy joined in. “Do you want to stay in these cells with the evil that is hurting us all, or do you want out?”
“Want out,” a first breathy voice said next to them, just loud enough to hear. “Want out.”
“Are you sane?” Ziggy asked.
“As the day I was born. There’s something in this damned place that’s killin’ me,” a prisoner said. “How do we get out?”
Cade didn’t have a damned clue. “This all depends on listening and working together. All of you are soldiers. You all fought in a war. You know what hell is. This isn’t hell. This is a stopping place. You all want to smell the clean earth and fresh air? You all want the freedom to go back to your families and lives? Then you must fight the evil in this asylum. Fight it! Are you all with me?”
“Yes!”
The cry this time came from several men, but Cade could tell it wasn’t all of them.
“Are you willing to give everything you can to fight your way out of here soldiers?” Ziggy asked.
“Yes!” More voices this time. “Yes! Please help us!”
“You have to help yourselves,” Cade said. “There are nurses up there who need our help. Women who can’t protect themselves against this evil. They are strong women, but what kind of men would we be if we left them fight this thing alone?” Cade asked.
Voices agreed with him, a chorus of strong males.
“No matter what comes at us, we have to fight this. It is war, men!” Cade laid on the drama, but he knew it would help. “Listen to me carefully ...” He faltered, not certain if this would work. “Soldiers,” he said again, “You must concentrate on opening the cell doors with your minds.”
Silence.
Ziggy whispered, “What?”
Cade’s voice came sharply. “If you believe in the evil, soldiers, you believe in your own ability to defeat it. To defeat it we must open the doors and resist the evil when it comes back.”
Another voice came, this time with doubt and disbelief. “But sir, that’s impossible. You’re asking us to open the doors with our minds?”
Anger replaced patience. “That’s what I said, damn it! You made it through a war. You can make it through this.”
Ziggy added his voice to the demand, “I say we do what he wants. What do we have to lose?”
Cade wondered if they might lose everything if his idea didn’t work. He reprimanded himself immediately after the thought. How could he expect the other men to follow his lead if he didn’t believe it himself?
* * *
“Don’t know if I can do that.” Private Lopez said to Annabelle and Nurse Summit.
It had taken significant encouragement to persuade him into letting them into his room. He stood next to his bed, fear clearly etched into his features. Annabelle and Nurse Summit explained why they’d come and what was at stake.
“I don’t think I can,” he said again.
Annabelle didn’t step closer. He appeared ready to rush out the door at any provocation. “Fine. I want to ask you a few questions.” He nodded, his eyes wide. “Have you experienced more nightmares liv
ing here than you did any other time in your life?”
Again, that shaky nod. “Yeah I figured it was ... the ... war.”
“Maybe it is, son,” Nurse Summit said, “But we don’t believe all of it is.”
Eyes downcast, he sighed. “All right. But how can I help? My mind isn’t what it used to be.”
“I believe it is.” Annabelle took one step forward. “You made it through a war. That means you’re here on earth for a reason. Your purpose isn’t fulfilled. Maybe you can help fulfill it now.”
Annabelle knew in her heart this was the truth. She knew they had a mission to complete tonight.
Lopez stood slowly and reached for his clothes. “What do we do first?”
“Meet us in the rotunda. We’re going to get the other men,” Nurse Summit said.
They went to Penelope’s room. Penelope lay ill but improving, and Margaret had come to stay with her. Margaret sat next to Penelope’s bed, her face a mask of sadness.
Annabelle came toward her to hug, but Margaret held up her hand. “No.”
Startled, Annabelle stopped.
Penelope opened her eyes and said, “She can’t get the disease again, can she?”
“I don’t want her to risk it,” Margaret said.
Annabelle nodded. “Thank you.”
Annabelle and Nurse Summit explained what they'd planned.
“Are you sure that will work?” Margaret’s voice filled with disbelief.
Annabelle felt the conviction, knew it in her heart. “It has to. We can’t fail.”
“Go help her,” Penelope said from her bed.
Margaret turned to her friend. “But you’re still sick.”
Penelope smiled. “I’m much better and I’m not defenseless. You brought me Hemming’s rifle.”
Margaret took the rifle leaning against a wall and laid it on the bed next to Penelope. “You’re right.”
Penelope lay propped up by pillows, and she wrapped her left hand around the weapon. “Go now.”
They obeyed, but Annabelle’s heart told her Penelope could still be in danger. Margaret assisted them with asking other soldiers who weren’t sick to join them. Enough had witnessed the strange occurrences within the asylum to realize what Annabelle, Nurse Summit and Margaret said was the truth. Annabelle was anxious to go to the basement, where she knew Cade must be. Anxiety stirred within her stomach as twenty soldiers converged in the rotunda, ready to do what they could.
Shadows Rise Page 25