by David Nickle
“Good. Anyone else see you come? I should have told you the same about Dr. Bergstrom and other folk too, but by the time I’d thought of it you’d left.”
“I didn’t tell Bergstrom. No one else either.”
“Good.” Sam Green stepped around Jason and set his behind against the lumber. “I thought you might have good instinct. Turns out I was right.”
“I don’t trust Dr. Bergstrom,” said Jason. “He locked me up in the quarantine with some kind of Devil, left me to—”
Sam Green raised his hand. “Hold on,” he said. “You don’t trust Dr. Bergstrom and that’s smart thinking. Why’n hell do you trust me?”
Jason looked at him. “Because—”
“Because I invited you here to meet me by yourself, and not tell anybody?” Sam Green shook his head. “Boy, I wanted to, I could kill you right now and probably get away with it. You just told me nobody knew you came here, then started spilling everything after I buttered you up about your good instincts.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” Sam Green grabbed Jason’s shoulder and leaned close. “You’re in some trouble, Jason Thistledown. You’re right Doc Bergstrom locked you up in the quarantine with something else—maybe a Devil, maybe a freak of nature . . . but for certain something that has no business being there. He did that last night and he put you at grave risk, son. What do you think he’s going to do tonight?”
“I—”
“I nothing. You listen, and I’ll tell you. What’s going to happen tonight, it’s got nothing to do with you. But it has a lot to do with our friend Andrew Waggoner. He’s not going to wake up tomorrow, if he stays in that room in the hospital through the night.”
Jason twisted his shoulder and Sam Green let go.
“All right,” said Jason, stepping back a bit, “I’m listening. You tell me what’s what.”
“Good.” Sam Green sat back, blew out his cheeks. Sawdust was falling on them now, light golden snowflakes, and the whine of the saw was steady. “First thing. I know that you and Dr. Waggoner met outside the quarantine last night. I saw you, because I was watching the quarantine under orders from Doc Bergstrom.”
“I didn’t see you anywhere—”
“You didn’t see me because I didn’t want you to.”
Jason glared at him.”You tell Bergstrom?”
“About last night? As it happens, no. No I did not. You and I are of a mind on Dr. Bergstrom, and that mind’s made up. I didn’t tell, but I did talk to him. Him and your aunt, early this morning.”
“My aunt?”
“Yes, son, your aunt. He did most of the talking but she was there for all of it. And he—” Sam Green looked at his hands, and huffed. “He asked me to do something. Or not to do something.”
“What?”
“He told me to keep clear of Andrew Waggoner tonight.”
“And that is it?”
“Son, you remember how I told you I was in dutch?”
Jason remembered. “On account of shooting those fellows at the hanging tree?”
He nodded. “That is why I’m in dutch with Mr. Harper. Doc Bergstrom is none too happy with me, either.”
“And why’s that?”
“I’m in dutch with the doctor,” he said, “for showing up at all.”
Jason gaped, and Sam Green nodded. “Or at least when I did.”
“You mean—”
“Bergstrom thinks that the Juke was never in any danger of hanging, or at least of dying from it. He said the important thing was for those fellows to try, and then to fail. Teach ’em a lesson, he said.
“He was more than happy to see the Negro doctor die on the end of a noose. It would have solved some problems for him if he did.
“And so he asked me to keep clear of the top floor of the hospital. He made sure to tell me that everyone would be keeping clear of the top floor of the hospital tonight. He told me that Dr. Waggoner needed his rest—and that if someone came by, to make sure they understood—why, he wanted to make sure no one who knew how to use a gun was there to stop whatever’s going to happen.”
Jason sat back and absorbed that. In the mill, the saw had stopped its work a moment—maybe while the men were positioning more logs. So the lumber yard became quieter, but the sawdust still fell.
“Why do you think he’s doing that?”
“Two reasons. First one: Bergstrom is the kind of man who cannot abide a nigger in a white man’s job, and Harper’s the kind of man who can’t abide denying a smart nigger his due. And second: that smart nigger’s learned more about the Juke than Bergstrom would like.”
“You know about the Juke,” said Jason. “You know what that thing is in there.”
“I know it is a freak of nature,” said Sam. “It doesn’t die from a hanging. It does not speak but makes itself understood better than any man I have met. And it gets . . .”
There was quiet again.
“Yes?”
“It gets bigger.”
“Bigger.” The air cleared now, as the last of the sawdust plume settled on the brim of Sam Green’s bowler hat.
“Yeah,” he said. “It grows. When Bergstrom found it, just in the summer—the thing was only as high as my elbow. Now . . .” Eyes down, his voice trailed off. But he put his hand level a good six inches over the top of his bowler.
“Were you there when he found it?”
Sam Green looked up from the hands he was examining so closely. “Boy,” he said, “here is what you’ve got to do. You get up to Andrew Waggoner’s room. You tell him that if he sleeps tonight, he won’t wake up, because Nils Bergstrom aims to see him dead. You tell him he’s got to get far from here. No one will suspect you—because I am the one supposed to be watching you, and I will say you were someplace else. And if you head up there around—oh, let us say seven—you will find you can make a clean escape.”
“Think I should go with him?”
“I think,” said Sam, “that you ought not trust your aunt to protect you. But you shouldn’t leave, either. That will draw things back to me, and that won’t do anyone any good. I’ll do my best to keep you safe if you stay here. But stay you must.”
And at that, Sam Green got up.
“That is all for today,” he said. “You think I have done you a favour but I haven’t. I’m doing my friend Dr. Waggoner a favour. You are not my friend.”
“How can you trust me to carry it out then?”
“I trust you,” he said, “because you owe that doctor a debt, and you are not the sort of man to leave a debt unpaid. And,” he added, “you won’t leave, or tell of this, or anything else, because you owe me now, for giving you a way to repay it.” And then he turned and stomped off. Jason watched him go, across the avenue and into another passage between the lumber. Jason had no reason to stay, but he waited all the same, until the saw started up again, to make his way out of the lumber yard and back to the hospital.
He was gone before the sawdust stormed again, which was a good thing, because Jason knew he would have to clean the residue off before he got back to the hospital, and went to work settling all those debts.
§
Andrew Waggoner blinked and coughed. The boy—Jason—Jason Thistledown—was in his room again. He had left the room at some point, but Andrew was not clear on exactly when or why, or on the things that had come after. Now he was back and he was talking. Or whispering. His mouth was moving, anyhow.
Andrew worked his lips, which felt numb, and blinked, and as he did, things started falling into place. Jason leaned closer, and Andrew became aware that the boy had his hands on his shoulder and was talking, somehow more clearly now.
“Dr. Waggoner, you have to wake up now. You’re in very bad trouble. You have to walk out of here, because I cannot carry you and the things I’ve got for you.”
Andrew licked his lips. “Wha—”
He tried again. “What are you talking about, Jason? What things?”
Jason looked relieved. �
�Good. I thought they might have already got you. Why’re you like that?”
“Bergstrom gave me a needle of something,” said Andrew. He looked at the window, the purple-orange sky outside it. “What time is it?”
“Quarter past seven,” said Jason.
Andrew let out a slow whistle, counting hours until he got to ten. What had Bergstrom put in that needle? It wasn’t morphine. Veronal, perhaps? Put enough of Emil Fischer’s hypnotic drug into a hypodermic, and it could knock a man out for a day. Put a drop too much, and it’d kill him.
“You were saying something about the trouble I was in. I may have missed the beginning of it,” said Andrew.
Jason took a breath, and started over again. By the time he was finished, Andrew was fully awake, alert—and convinced. He had to get out of that hospital room. There would be no stopping at his house for things. There would be no dallying here waiting until his wits were all returned to him. He had to get away from Eliada. And he had to do it now.
§
A few moments prior to eight, they were out the back door of the hospital. Andrew wore a pair of workman’s trousers and boots, and an oversized woollen coat—one big enough to admit his splinted arm and still let him move. Jason carried the doctor’s bag and another satchel containing food and a knife, a canteen for water and what other things a man might need on foot in the wilderness.
There was no gun in the kit, an omission for which Jason apologized several times, but as he explained: “Aunt Germaine keeps a close watch on both our guns and would miss them. Then you’d be done for.”
I may be done for anyhow, thought Andrew as he and Jason made a wide circuit around the quarantine, towards the tree-line. Whatever Dr. Bergstrom had put in him that had knocked him out, seemed to have the effect of numbing the pain enough for him to move right now. But he knew enough about anaesthetic to know that would only purchase him so much time, before all that pain came back at him. He would have to pace himself—and then rely on some good luck to get him through the next couple of nights.
For now, though, he kept on moving. The going got tougher the closer they got to the trees, and finally, maybe a dozen yards into the thin woods—out of direct sight of the hospital but still in good view of the quarantine—they stopped. Andrew sat down on a log. Jason handed him the doctor’s bag, and the other bag that could be thrown over a shoulder.
They sat still and quiet for a bit. Then Jason spoke, his voice soft and quavering.
“Why would they lock me in with that thing?”
“I don’t know.” Andrew squinted at him. “You sure you won’t come with me? I’m not sure this is a safe place for you right now.”
Jason shook his head. “Sam Green said: I go, it points straight back to him.”
“Ah,” said Andrew. “I don’t know about that. There’s a game going on here. Has to do with Mister Juke. Harper. Bergstrom. Sam Green now. And I wonder how your aunt’s involved.”
Jason hunched his shoulders. “I wonder that myself.” He looked right at Andrew Waggoner. “Sometimes, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better I just got left alone back in Montana, my aunt never showed up. Or maybe if that germ had took me—”
Andrew stopped him. “That is not something to wonder about.”
“I know.” Jason sighed. “You better get moving. I’m sure sorry I couldn’t get you a gun.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m not much good with a gun right now anyway.”
“Well—” Jason stood up, and cleared his throat. “Well, it would still be a greater help to you than that knife. I hope this goes a little ways towards repaying you for helping me last night.”
“That is no debt,” he said. “Helping a boy who’s hurt in the night is a doctor’s work. I am sorry that we won’t be able to learn more about Maryanne Leonard, and those things inside her.”
“You can,” said Jason. He put his hand on the bag. “I wrapped the specimen jar with those eggs in it in cloth. You get back to someplace with an eyeglass, you can have a look at them and see what’s what.”
Andrew smiled. “Thank you,” he said.
Then Jason’s expression, something in the tilt of his shoulders, shifted. He finally looked Andrew in the eye.
“No,” he said. “You got no reason to thank me, sending you off alone to die.” He took a look back at the hospital. “Hang Sam Green. I’m going with you.”
Andrew put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “You made an agreement—a promise. You go too, attention will come back to Sam Green, who’ll suffer for no reason other than doing a fellow a good turn. I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be,” said Jason.
“You don’t have a say.” Andrew made himself smile, and lied. “I’m feeling much improved, anyhow. That knife and the food will be a help, and I can remember the way back to Bonner’s Ferry fine. You go back to your aunt, and keep your mouth closed, and lie low for awhile. Like Sam Green said to.”
Jason didn’t answer. He turned away and tromped back through the underbrush. Andrew watched him as he headed past the quarantine, paused to look at it for only a second, and returned to the hospital and his aunt. By the time the boy was inside, the smile was not even a memory on Andrew Waggoner’s face.
With a grimace, he pushed himself up off the log, gathered the things that Jason had brought for him, and headed into the dark sanctity of the woods.
§
Aunt Germaine was waiting for Jason as he came through the door to their rooms at the hospital. A single candle burned in a dish beside her. She held a small envelope between two fingers of her right hand, tapping the edge of the envelope against the palm of her left like the blade of an axe. Those eyeglasses made her expression inscrutable.
“Good evening, Aunt.”
“Nephew,” she said, nodding sternly. “Been busy?”
Jason felt something fall in his gut—something that had stayed put through the whole adventure of stealing medical supplies and clothes and what else he could find, and sneaking Dr. Waggoner out the back. Through it all, he had attributed the ease of it all to improbable luck. Now, all he could think of was how improbable it was that he’d get away with the escape—how vastly improbable. Aunt Germaine knew of his conspiracy, and he felt like a bandit, caught in the act.
He looked away from her. Germaine leaned forward. “Nephew,” she said, her voice low, “I am trying to protect you. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” said Jason. He felt very small then. Were he a couple of months younger, he thought he might’ve started to cry.
“Well,” she said, “then why do you feel the need to go to another?”
“You mean—” Jason felt as though it were all going to spill out. Aunt Germaine—who, if Sam Green were to be believed, was at the very core of this plan to murder Andrew Waggoner . . . she had Jason in a corner. She had him figured out. Her next words would surely be about Sam Green, he thought.
“I mean that dreadful girl,” she said. “Ruth Harper.”
Jason gawked, and Aunt Germaine took his expression as something else. She held the envelope, and pulled a card from it. “Do not play the innocent, Nephew,” she said. “This came for you whilst you were gallivanting—no doubt signed after you had met.” She tossed the card on the floor in front of Jason. Perplexed, he bent down to pick it up.
It was written in a fine script on paper so thick it almost felt like cloth. It was addressed to Jason Thistledown. It requested the Pleasure of Your Company at a Celebration of Spring in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Garrison Harper this Sunday the Thirtieth of April, following Worship. It was signed, Miss Ruth Harper.
He took a long, even breath, then looked up and met Aunt Germaine’s gaze.
“First I heard of this, Aunt,” he said. But all he could think of was his improbably good fortune.
§
Just as Sam Green said they might, men came to the hospital in the evening. They wore ghost-white cloaks over their shoulders, and white hood
s like pillowcases over their heads. There were five of them and they all strode purposefully to the front of the hospital, up the steps and in through the waiting room like Hussars.
One of them hollered: “Where is the nigger rapist?” which brought the duty nurse as far as the door to the clinic (she fled back into the depths of the hospital when she saw who was there) and set the newborn infant sleeping not far in a room with his mama yowling.
They were not perturbed by the sound of a crying baby, not these men. They did not even look to each other as they pushed through into the corridor beyond, up four floors to the very top of the hospital—to the floor with a few private rooms for the important ones, where nurses and doctors had not been for some hours.
Although there were many rooms upstairs, there was only one occupied now, and the men in white went straight to that one. The one with the rifle pushed open the door. He held up the gun, aimed it at the form in the bed, and stood still. One of the sheets with a club nodded at him, went to the foot of the bed and raised his club over his head. The sheet with crossed arms shifted, looked one to the other, like he was trying to suss some secret communication between the two of them. The rifleman motioned with the barrel of his rifle and the club fell, with murderous force.
“Fuck,” said the rifleman. He raised his rifle and strode over to the bed. “Fuck,” he said again, as he pulled the covers aside and saw naught but a stack of pillows artfully arranged.
“He was warned,” said another sheet. “Nigger got warned, now he’s off.”
“Treachery,” said a third.
And: “Blasphemy,” said the one with his arms hid.
“Don’t overstate matters,” the rifleman said. But his hands shook. He gripped the stock of the rifle harder, until the shaking stopped.
14 - The Faerie King’s Bride
“I’m not going to fight you,” Andrew Waggoner said. He raised his hands palm out to display the splintered arm to full effect. The hill man holding the rifle nodded. He was a tall, black-haired fellow with a patchy beard over a thick chin, gangly but for disproportionately wide shoulders.