Silence for the Dead

by Simone St. James

  I swallowed. I would not have put my worst enemy in that haunted place for three minutes. And Archie . . . fragile Archie, who already had nightmares so horribly bad . . .

  And suddenly I knew. It was what Creeton had said that revealed it. No, Archie had not brought the ghosts here, but it was Archie who was making it worse. He was a sort of conduit, his mind the easiest one to reach, his emotions the rawest, his fear the most abject. This place fed on the men, but it fed on Archie first, and as it did, it gained strength. It was why Archie endured a special kind of torture while the men tried to kill themselves and the west wing rotted with eerie speed. It was all tied together. The worse Archie grew, the worse Portis House became.

  And now he was locked in the isolation room, the center of the nightmares. Three hours.

  “We have to get him out,” I said.

  “And do what with him?” said Paulus. “Let him strangle someone else?”

  I felt him glance at the faded bruises on my neck, and I was angry. “Mr. Childress does not belong in isolation.” I tried to sound authoritative, as if terror weren’t fighting to take hold of me. “Go get him out.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You have to,” Jack said. His gaze flicked to me, took in the sickened look on my face, and moved back to Paulus. “With Matron sick, her command falls to Nurse Weekes. She has the authority to order it. In fact, without her say-so, you didn’t have permission to put him there in the first place.”

  “You shut it,” Paulus said. “Orderlies are given the authority to act when they feel there’s danger. It’s in the rules. That’s why we’re given the keys and the nurses aren’t.”

  “You have to get him out,” I said. “You have to.”

  “Kitty,” Jack said.

  I turned to him. “He can’t stay there.” I looked at Mabry and West, trying to tamp down the panic in my voice. “He’s the catalyst,” I said to them. “Think about it. He’s the center of all of it, the one whose energy they take. And he’s getting worse.”

  West took my meaning right away and turned green. “Jesus,” he said. Jack’s gaze searched my face as he put the pieces together himself. Mabry had paled but he stayed silent, as if something terrifying were occurring to him.

  “For God’s sake,” came Paulus’s incredulous voice. “You’re not making any sense. Are you as mad as the rest of them?”

  I turned back to him. “It’s wrong, and you know it,” I said. “Deep down, you know it. Get him out.”

  He didn’t give in. But he looked back at me, the knowledge flickering behind his eyes. I didn’t know what he thought, what he believed, what he might have pieced together, and I didn’t care. I didn’t let him go. And so he was still looking at me, and he was caught by surprise when Jack grabbed one arm and Mabry grabbed the other.

  They twisted his arms up behind his back, bent at the elbows in a painful posture, as Paulus kicked out with his big legs. In the same moment West twisted in his chair and got his arm around Roger’s neck, squeezing with one huge biceps. Roger’s reaction lifted West almost completely off his chair, the halves of his legs swinging, but he held on. Roger was strong, but smaller, and he grabbed for purchase at West’s muscled arm, held in place.

  “Kitty!” said Jack. “Quick!”

  There was no time to go around the table, so I stepped up onto my chair and launched myself straight across it, grabbing for Paulus’s waist. His ring of keys hung there, clipped to his belt; I grabbed for it and fumbled with the clasp, trying to pry it open. Paulus lifted his hips and torso straight off his chair, heaving, and I nearly lost my grip; I got it again and worked at the clasp as he struggled beneath me. As I lay flat on my stomach on the dining room table, my skirts thrown up and my legs kicking as my own chair went flying, I wondered in a flash what Matron would have thought.

  Well, that’s just too bad.

  I unhooked the key ring and snatched it off Paulus’s belt. Then I rolled off the table and ran.

  I pounded down the corridor and into the common room. There was no direct way to get to the west wing indoors, as all the doorways were bolted shut; the only way would be to go up a flight of stairs, through the door Jack and I had used before, and back down another staircase. The quickest way to the library was outdoors, straight through the garden and cutting across the grounds to the other end of the building. I took the low steps in the common room two at a time and I flew to the French doors, unlatching them and running out onto the veranda.

  The rain was pounding down in a solid sheet. I crossed the veranda and leapt down the steps into the garden, water in my eyes. My cap was gone. I heard shouts behind me, the crash of overturned furniture. My boots clapped on the cobblestone path of the garden as I turned left and then right, and then I was through the garden gate and out into the untended grounds.

  I was soaked through already. It was summer rain, chilled but not freezing, driving hard from the sea winds. The ground squelched under my feet and mud flew. I heard the heavy pounding of male steps behind me and harsh male breath. I turned my head for a fraction of a second and saw Roger, head down, arms pumping, chasing me for all he was worth and gaining. But Jack had come out a side door and was heading straight for him, as lithe as an animal. “Run, Kitty!” he shouted, and I turned ahead again and pumped faster, my legs churning under my skirts. The main wing of Portis House flew by and I focused on the barred window and barred door of the godforsaken library, which came into view.

  I wouldn’t have long. If Jack was tackling Roger, it meant Paulus was free. Paulus was big, he was fast, and he was quiet. His legs were longer than mine. He’d give me no warning, just grab me the way an owl swoops down and grabs a mouse. He was double my size and weight, built for wrestling unruly patients. I had to outrun him, but I wouldn’t have much time.

  I kept the door to the library in focus and pushed my whole body, pain blooming in my chest, water and sweat soaking down my back. When I got to the door, I was running so hard I couldn’t slow and I more or less crashed into it, hitting it hard. I fumbled with Paulus’s key ring in my wet hand and put the right key in the lock just as two huge arms came around my waist from behind.

  “Archie!” I screamed. “Archie!” I gripped the door as Paulus lifted me off my feet, as easy as if I were a child’s doll. I turned the knob and pushed the door open as hard as I could, screaming Archie’s name again. Paulus pulled at me as the door swung open with a groan.

  And then we stopped.

  We froze where we were. Perhaps our position was a bit ridiculous—both my feet off the ground, my torso neatly tucked under one of Paulus’s arms like a suitcase—but we didn’t notice. There was only that dark doorway, and silence but for the sound of the blowing rain. I was suddenly cold. This was the bad place, the worst place. The place where whatever it was, whatever horror it had been, had happened.

  Paulus felt it, too. There was no light in the isolation room; the electric fixture was off, and a paraffin lamp would have been deemed too dangerous to leave with the patient. Paulus put me down and stepped forward into the dark doorway, where the rain blew through the open gap.

  There was no sound, no movement from inside.

  “Archie,” I said. I pushed past Paulus and walked into the room. There was an awful, sour smell. It was so dark I could not see my feet, so quiet I could hear only my own rasping breath. “Archie, answer me.”

  Silence. I recalled the layout of the room from the time I’d looked in the window, and stepped hesitantly in the direction of the bed. I thought I could hear breathing. Breathing is good, I told myself. Breathing is good.

  I put my arms in front of me and took another step. My foot hit something; I reached down and touched the brass bedstead. I felt along the bed, patting lightly with my hands. Relief rushed over me as I felt a foot, an ankle, a calf that was both bony and warm. “He’s alive,” I called out.

  I glan
ced back at the doorway, but at that moment Paulus turned away, his attention distracted. Swinging lamplight came up behind him, making his shadow sway on the walls. Jack stepped into the room, soaked with rain, holding a lantern. “Kitty?”

  “Here.”

  “Jesus God,” Paulus shouted, his voice hoarse. “I just saw something.” He clamped a hand on Jack’s shoulder, and Jack turned; the lantern moved, and light played over me and the leg I was holding up, a thin body lying on its side on the bed, knees and arms drawn up. It was Archie, and he didn’t move.

  “Where?” Jack said to Paulus.

  “Stop!” Paulus shouted out into the rain. “Stop!”

  I leaned close to Archie. “Archie. Are you all right?”

  “It’s too late,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “It isn’t,” I coaxed him. “I’ve come to get you out of here. Come with me.”

  But he stayed curled up, his hands over his head as they had been during that first night shift, when I had witnessed his nightmare. “He’s already coming.” He moaned. “You’re too late, too late. You’re too late.”

  Jack didn’t hear it. “Don’t go out there!” he shouted to Paulus, who had turned away. “Vries—come back!” There was no response. Archie moaned louder, and Jack turned back into the room. He raised the lamp high and his gaze froze with alarm.

  “Oh, my God,” he said softly.

  I turned and followed the shaft of light, a single square of yellow on the wall above my head. From my angle I saw the beam play over the wall, illuminating the words there. They were high up, near the ceiling, and they were scratched into the plaster, as if with fingernails or the blade of a knife. And part of me knew, knew what the words would spell out in their awful, painful writing.

  I AM NOT A COWARD

  “He told me,” Archie said from the bed. “Someone’s going to die.”

  I looked back down at him. He had taken his hands away from his face, and he lay defeated, his eyes staring at nothing, his thin arms stark against the damp linens. He was still, too still, and it took me a moment to understand what was wrong. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but now I stared, transfixed by an eerie dread I could not explain.

  My patient’s hands had stopped shaking.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Oh, good,” said Jack. “We’re alone.”

  I looked up from the weak cup of tea I’d been sipping. It was early morning, purplish light filtering through the rain that still poured down the high windows. I was dressed in my uniform and apron, but I’d left off my cap; there hadn’t seemed much point to wearing it. I sat at the small table in the kitchen, a picked-over plate before me.

  Jack had slept for only a few hours, but he looked much better than I imagined I did. He’d shaved, and his sleeves were rolled up in his usual fashion. In the soft light of morning, his presence seemed larger than life, his brows dark wings over eyes that missed nothing about me as they took me in, the line of his jaw as perfect as if etched in ink.

  He pulled up a chair and sat across the corner from me. He leaned back, crossed his arms, and stretched out his legs, which were long enough to reach all the way under my chair. “You cooked,” he said.

  I nodded. The staff may have gone home, but the kitchen was still well supplied; I’d found bacon, kidneys, eggs, tea, and bread. It hadn’t been particularly hard to manage, and I’d prepared large amounts of each. “Are you hungry?”

  “Not now, but the others will appreciate it. Have you checked on Archie?”

  “Yes, briefly.” We’d put him in the main hall with the others; Nina had stayed up with them, and when I finished my breakfast I was to relieve her. “Nina says he may have slept a little, but it’s hard to tell. He isn’t responsive and he hasn’t spoken since last night.”

  “Mabry and I will go back to the library today. I want to see that lettering in daylight.”

  “Because you want to see how he wrote it?” I put my teacup down and stirred it unnecessarily. “Archie had no knife on him. And his fingernails were clean.”

  “No.” Jack’s voice was soft. “Because I don’t think he wrote it.”

  My throat closed. What had happened, exactly? Would we ever know? “Jack, I don’t know how to help him.”

  “You may not be able to. It may be partly a matter of time.”

  “We left him there. For three hours.”

  “Vries left him there.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said. “I should have seen he was gone. He was my responsibility. I’ve mucked it up, Jack. I’m in over my head, and I’ve mucked this up so badly.”

  “Ah, now, Kitty.” He uncrossed his arms and leaned toward me, taking one of my hands in his. He traced the line of the scar on my hand, his thumb warm on my skin. “No one put you in charge, did they? You weren’t trained for command. And yet here you are.”

  I looked at him, the tight bands around my chest easing a little. “I suppose you know the feeling.”

  He smiled a little at that. “And how many men have you lost? None.”

  “I don’t even know if that’s true,” I said bitterly. “They could all have died in the ambulances, and I wouldn’t even know. Tom and Somersham and all the rest of them. They could be dead in a rainy ditch somewhere.”

  “I don’t think so.” He said it with complete sincerity; it was not meant as a platitude or a patronizing pat on the head, but as a declaration of quiet belief. He cupped his hand over mine and held it. “We’ll find Creeton,” he said, “wherever he is. He can’t have gone very far. We’ll keep these men alive for as long as it takes for the ambulances to get back; we’ve plenty of supplies. And we’ll let Archie recover. I saw men like that at the Front sometimes. Sometimes they got well again with rest.”

  “And Mikael Gersbach?” I said. “What about him?”

  He looked up at me, and a shadow crossed his expression.

  “It was him, wasn’t it?” I said. “The man Paulus saw last night.”

  “Paulus claims he doesn’t know what he saw.” Something very dark crossed Jack’s features, a memory of something awful. “But he’s lying. I saw it myself. He’s lying.”

  “What did he see?”

  “It was reflected in the window when I raised the lamp. Just for a second.” The darkness crossed his expression again, as if he were fighting it. “There was a tall man holding a rifle. The rifle was held down by his side, and he was staring at us—and then he was gone. I smelled metal and blood.”

  “That’s the man I saw,” I said, my voice a rasp. “The one who hit me.”

  “I know.” He looked levelly at me. “It’s Nils Gersbach. Mikael’s father.”

  It made sense. The man comes, and he’s so horribly angry, Tom had told me. And the men’s dreams: Get up, you coward. “You’ve read the letters, and Maisey’s notes,” I said.

  “Yes. I haven’t put it all together yet, but I’m close. And I’ll tell you everything. I just want to be sure you’re ready to hear it.”

  His hand over mine was warm and strong, and I didn’t want him to let go. My gaze dropped to the shirt he wore, with its ever-present stencil, and I shook my head.

  “What is it?” said Jack.

  “I’m just thinking that we aren’t much like nurse and patient anymore,” I replied. “If we ever were, really.”

  The look he gave me was wry. “No, we were never much good at that part.”

  “It feels stupid to treat you like a patient when I couldn’t have done much without you,” I said. “Is there . . . anything I can do for you? Anything you want? Except”—I held up a hand as he opened his mouth to speak—“taking my clothes off.”

  He let my hand go and leaned back in his chair. “Well, now I have to rethink.”

  “I mean it,” I said. “Name something. Except for that. I haven’t had a bath in days, and I think yo
u’d regret it.”

  “I doubt that.” His grin had a spark of mischief in it. “Please tell me that Matron keeps current newspapers somewhere.”

  “In her office,” I affirmed. “And no one’s taken black ink to them, either. I’ll get them out. Anything else?”

  “There is one other thing.”

  The idea of doing something to please him made me happy. “What is it?”

  “Are you certain?”

  I bit my lip. “This is going to involve breaking the rules, isn’t it?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “Well, if you’re offering,” he said, “I’d like to find my clothes. My own clothes, that is. The ones I was wearing when I arrived at Portis House.”

  • • •

  I wasn’t sure where the men’s belongings were kept, but it didn’t prove all that difficult to find out. I knew the key to whatever it was—a room, a storage closet—would be Matron’s alone, and that meant it must be in her office.

  “My contact at the War Office confirmed that Mikael Gersbach did go to war,” Jack told me as I went through Matron’s desk drawer by drawer. “He got to Belgium in 1916 and marched to France. But apparently there was trouble.”

  “What trouble?” I lifted papers on Matron’s desk. We’d tried her telephone, a vain attempt to put out another distress call, but the line seemed to be dead—not surprising with the weather outside. Vaguely I became aware that Jack was telling me this while I was half distracted so that the effect would be less upsetting. But I trusted him, and I let him tell it his way.

  “He was bullied,” Jack said. “Rather mercilessly, in fact. He had a Swiss last name and an accent, for all that he was a British national. His fellow soldiers decided he was an undercover Hun. They saluted him as the Kaiser, held him down and painted Kaiser mustaches on him, that sort of thing.”

  I stopped what I was doing. “That’s horrible.”

  “It’s bad,” he admitted. “You have to remember that our soldiers were being trained to kill Germans. They had to be in the mind-set to shoot them, bayonet them, bomb them, mow them down. When you do that to a man, you can’t expect him to switch out of it so easily.”