I was surprised. “I never said you were.”
“I nearly had that scrawny bastard last night,” he went on. I thought vaguely that my patients had long lost any awareness of swearing in my presence, if they had ever had any in the first place. “I learned my choke holds in the army. Another few seconds and I’d have put his lights out, but he fell out of his chair and got away from me.” West looked at me. “I’m just saying I don’t have to be a drain. I can be of use.”
“Very well, Mr. West,” I said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Lieutenant Douglas R. West, First Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, at your service.” He gave me a quick salute, then smiled. “Call me Douglas.”
“There you are,” Jack said, coming into the room. Captain Mabry followed. “Morning, West.”
West looked him up and down. “Out of your pajamas at last, Yates?”
“Something like it.”
“The look suits you. Though you must be disappointed you’re not one of the team.” He motioned to the lettering on his shirt.
Jack shook his head. “I’ve resigned.”
“Well, by God.” West, cheered up, rubbed his hands. “Brave Jack is here. It’s raining, we’re stuck here, we’re dropping like flies, there’s a ghost, and Jack’s going to lead us over No Man’s Land. I’m game. This ought to be good. What’s first?”
Jack pulled up a chair and shrugged. “Mabry’s got news. Go ahead, Captain.”
Captain Mabry nodded politely at me. He looked pale, and gray shadows hung under his eyes. I hoped to God he wasn’t getting sick, but before I could ask him, he began. “The generator’s low on fuel. The fuel is kept in the cellar, apparently, so I went to get some, and I found two problems. The first is that the cellar is completely flooded, and getting worse as we speak.”
I straightened in my chair. “You’re saying we can’t fuel the generator?”
“We can’t. Sorry. I mucked through as best as I could, but the water’s over a foot deep and the fuel container wasn’t airtight. The whole supply has watered to nothing by now.”
“All right,” said Douglas. “Lamps it is.”
“The other issue,” Mabry continued, “is that I saw evidence that someone had been there. On a shelf was a blanket and two opened tins of meat stolen from the kitchen pantry. The remains in the tins weren’t rotten. Someone had been down there recently, camping out. They likely left when the flooding started.”
“Creeton,” I said.
Jack nodded. “We know where he spent the night, then. But we don’t know where he’s gone. Or why.”
I didn’t understand it. Why go into hiding, away from everyone? Creeton hadn’t been the same since the awful day of his suicide attempt; he’d been alternately hostile and silent in turn, his comments, when he bothered to speak, almost frighteningly vicious. But he’d been present and aware of his surroundings. His hiding spoke of delusion. Something had pushed Creeton over the edge.
Nina came into the doorway. “Kitty, am I needed to help move the patients? I’m dead on my feet.”
I stood. “I can take over. Moving them shouldn’t be complicated.”
“You may want to rethink that,” said a voice from behind Nina.
Paulus and Roger came into the room. Paulus was pale, his expression more grim than I’d ever seen it. I wondered whether he’d recovered from the night before.
“What is it?” said Jack.
“I’m not sure those fellows should go to their rooms after all,” Paulus said. “Come take a look.”
• • •
“How did he do this?” Captain Mabry said. “We didn’t hear a thing.”
We were standing in the bedroom of George Naylor, one of the patients who was currently downstairs lying in the hall. Naylor, a quiet twenty-two-year-old with a gap in his front teeth and a fragile constitution from having been gassed, was a neat and orderly patient. But his meager belongings had been pulled from his dresser drawer, his socks and underthings shredded, his pillow reduced to a pile of fabric and feathers on the floor, his mattress sliced. A single picture frame, the only personal item Naylor had been allowed, lay facedown on the ground.
“This room is just one of them,” Roger said. “There are others like this, too.”
I glanced at Jack. Creeton had done this while we were downstairs at breakfast, while I had been giving Jack his clothes back. Creeton must have come up past the back servant stairs—it was the fastest way. He’d been passing the stairwell door as Jack and I had stood in the corridor.
Jack’s face was stony, impossible to read. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked from the room.
He was going to Jack’s own room, of course. We all followed him, clustering in the doorway as he stood looking around the small, dim space where he’d spent six months alone. Creeton hadn’t damaged it, not the way he had George Naylor’s room. He had littered it with pa- pers, all of them lettered in dark, square writing, the lines close and thick. Pages were strewn across the floor, the window seat, the bed.
Jack picked up one of the pages, scanned it. “His dreams,” he said, handing the page to Captain Mabry.
Mabry glanced at the sheet and winced at what he read there, as if it were shocking or painful. “Didn’t he give you these when the rest of us did?”
“No.” Jack’s attention had been drawn to the bed. “He refused.” Go fuck yourself, the exact words had been.
“Well, it looks like he wrote his dreams after all.” Mabry looked around at the dozens of pages littered across the room. “Creeton always denied he had nightmares.”
“You all denied it,” I said.
“Wait.” Jack walked over to the bed, and I could see a single piece of paper placed squarely on the pillow. It was not covered in writing like the others, but had a single message on it that I couldn’t read from where I stood. Jack picked up the paper. “Bloody hell.”
“What does it say?” said Paulus.
Jack held it up. “Eliminate the weak.”
We all digested that for a second. Roger spoke first. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
I thought of Archie telling me, It’s too late. I’m sorry. The ghost of Nils Gersbach. Creeton going over the edge into delusion at the same time. “The sick men,” I said. “Downstairs.”
“Archie Childress,” said Jack.
“You think he means to harm them?” asked Mabry.
“I think we can’t take the risk,” Jack replied. “We know he’s been in the kitchen, and he sliced Naylor’s mattress with a knife. So he’s armed himself. He may have found other weapons by now, too. If he’s got this idea fixed in his head—”
A sound came from the walls. A low groan, deep and vibrating. By reflex I put my hands to my ears; I knew that sound all too well. It was followed by a hollow clang, and then another.
“The lav,” I heard Paulus say.
It came again, and from down the corridor, toward the men’s lav, we heard a wet gurgling sound. I pressed my hands harder to my ears, but I couldn’t block it. I could see the mold in my mind; I could smell it. I could see how it had smeared as I mopped it. And I heard the words in my head, the ones that always presented themselves unbidden. He’s coming. I opened my mouth to shout it, prepared to run. I had no courage to face it anymore.
And then it stopped.
We looked at one another in the silence.
“By God,” said Paulus hoarsely at last. “I hate that bathroom.”
“That’s the loudest I’ve ever heard it,” Jack said as I reluctantly took my hands from my ears. “Something’s happening.”
The air was thick—anticipation, fear. I didn’t know what it was, but my back ached with tension and my jaw felt stiff. Somewhere, a shutter banged in the rain.
Roger cracked his knuckles. “Let’s find this bastard. I don’t care about
ghosts. Just let me lay my hands on Creeton.”
“We need to guard the patients,” Jack replied. “If he’s planning something, he’ll come to them—we won’t have to go anywhere.”
“They’re too exposed in the main hall,” Mabry said. His voice was shaky and he looked even paler. “It’s dark, and he could come from too many directions.”
“I agree,” said Jack. “Where should we move them?”
Mabry thought about it. “The common room. There’s only the one doorway.”
“But it has the French doors to the terrace,” I replied. “He could come through there.”
“Not without someone seeing him,” Mabry replied. “They can be barred. And they let in light. If the generator goes, we want to be in the best-lit room in the house, at least during daylight hours.”
I turned to Jack. “Can we move beds in there? I don’t like having patients on the floor.”
Paulus answered me. “We’ve no folding beds, but we can move mattresses down. How many would we need?”
“Seven,” I replied. “We’ve five sick men, and Archie. And a mattress for the attending nurse to use.”
“Do it,” Jack said to the orderlies.
“We’ll be quick.” Paulus was even paler than before. “I’ve no desire to be up here longer than I have to. Not after that.”
Jack, Mabry, and I descended the stairs to the main floor. “I wish I had a weapon,” Mabry said. “I don’t like how he’s creeping around the house behind our backs. We should be armed.”
“I agree,” said Jack. “A handgun would be best. Too bad they don’t keep them in madhouses.”
I halted on the stairs.
The men stopped and turned. “What is it, Kitty?” said Jack.
I looked at them uncertainly. “Is a Luger a handgun?”
Jack and Mabry exchanged a glance. “Yes,” Mabry said. “It is.”
“Then we have one,” I said. “At least, I think we do. It’s Creeton’s.” I bit my lip. “He told me they took it from him when they checked him in here. There’s a safe in Matron’s office where she locks up the men’s valuables, the things she doesn’t keep in the main cupboard.” I glanced at Jack. “Boney told me about it. If she confiscated Creeton’s gun, she wouldn’t have discarded it. She would have locked it up.”
The men considered this. “And how,” Jack said slowly, “would we get into Matron’s safe?”
I pulled out the key ring I’d taken from her cardigan pocket. It held the key to the cupboard where I’d found Jack’s clothes, but there was a scrap of cloth attached to it as well. I’d noticed it when I’d first grabbed the ring, but I hadn’t paid it much attention. Now I did. Because Matron would have kept the two things together—the key to the men’s belongings and the key to the valuables, two things that were her responsibility alone.
“I think this is it,” I said.
Jack reached for it, but it was Mabry who took it from my hand. He stared at it with what seemed like fascination. Numbers were inked onto the scrap of cloth. Six numbers. A combination.
“The safe,” I said, “will have any valuables the men brought in. Money. Watches. Gold. Passports.” I bit my lip. “All of it.”
Mabry closed his hand around it. He really did look tired, I worried. “Well,” he said quietly. “I believe it’s official. The inmates are now running the asylum.”
“Take it,” I said. “But be aware. Creeton’s going to want the contents of that safe. And he’s going to want his gun.”
“We’ll get it, and we’ll help the orderlies move the sick,” Jack said. “Then we’ll scout the west wing for signs of Creeton. Roger has a key.” He looked at me. “And where are you going?”
“I’m going to find Nina,” I said. “She was exhausted. I think she may have gone to bed.”
“Upstairs in the nursery?”
“Yes. She doesn’t know what Creeton’s been up to. I don’t want her up there alone.”
“Right,” said Jack. “Go get her. We’ll set up her mattress downstairs with the others.” His blue gaze was steady on me. “And for God’s sake, Kitty, be careful.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
He’d been there before me. Of course he had. In the pit of my gut, I was starting to know that so far we had always been a step too slow, waiting to see what he’d left behind. This time it was Nina.
She lay on the floor of the nursery, where she’d been undressing to go to bed. There was blood on her temple, as if she’d been struck, but her face was flushed and I could see the rise and fall of her chest. For good measure, Creeton had taken a stocking from her drawer and tied her wrists to the foot of the brass bedstead.
“Nina.” I fell to my knees, pressed my hand to her forehead and her temple. She didn’t move, didn’t groan. She was out cold. I had no idea what to do, of course, if there was anything to be done. But the stocking I could take care of. I lunged for my own bed and felt under the mattress.
My knife wasn’t there.
Cold steel touched my throat. “Looking for this?”
I froze.
“Interesting,” said Creeton. “One of our own nurses was armed. I guess you were a little bit suspicious of us.”
I glanced over my bed. All of my things had been rifled through, my bedding disturbed. Martha’s and Nina’s things had been searched as well, their undergarments taken from the drawers. Practical Nursing lay facedown on the floor as if someone had shaken and dropped it. I’d noticed none of this when I’d come in; I’d seen only Nina.
“What do you want?” I managed.
I was still crouched beside my bed, my hands on the mattress. Creeton shifted behind me, and I could hear his heavy breath. “You know what I want. I wrote a little note and put it on Yates’s pillow. You’ve all found it by now.”
“‘Eliminate the weak,’” I quoted.
“Do you hear it?” said Creeton. “He’s telling me. I can hear it in my head. Only at night at first, but lately it’s been stronger and stronger. There. I can hear him now. Can you?”
I heard nothing but the pounding of my own heart. “He isn’t real. It’s this place, Creeton. I told you.”
“In my mind, he’s real. But then, I’m mad, aren’t I?” The knife drew tighter against my throat. “I’d like to try killing you. You’ve never liked me and I’ve never liked you. But you aren’t the assignment. You’re a means to an end. So was the other nurse.”
“What end?” I choked out. “For God’s sake, what do you want?”
“The key to the west wing,” said Creeton. “I’ve tried to get in there but all the doors are barred. Just one is locked. I want the key, and I want my Luger. I want the combination to the safe where it’s kept.”
“I don’t know of any safe.”
“That’s a nice lie,” he said. “But I already questioned the other nurse, and she told me that’s where it is. But she didn’t have the combination. I was finished with her.” He leaned closer, exhaling in my ear as he spoke. “I think you have it. I think you have both.”
I thought frantically. There was no point in stalling him; everyone was busy with the patients two floors down, and no one was coming this way. If I screamed, how quickly would they come? And would he kill me before they got here?
Creeton pressed the tip of the knife harder into my throat. “Don’t scream. I can see you thinking about it. If you try, I’ll cut you with this, and then I’ll cut her. I swear it.”
“Jack Yates has the combination to the safe,” I choked. “He has your gun.”
“Another lie.” His face grew red, and then he sneered. “Oh, perfect Jack, your little lover. Snuck into his room at night, did you? I know all about it. Has he had you yet? Does he know what you are?”
I was blinded by white-hot anger. “You can stick it, you disgusting pig.”
He laughed at
that. “You’re not one of the weak. Not you. I’ll get my gun from him; never worry. Now give me the key to the west wing.”
Again, I could have put him off. Only the orderlies had the keys to the west wing, but I still had the ring of keys I’d taken off Paulus’s belt the night before. At least, if I gave Creeton the key, I’d be able to tell Jack where we could find him. “It’s in the pocket of my apron,” I said.
“Don’t reach,” he said. “Keep your hands on the bed where I can see them. I’ll get it myself.”
He took his time about it, putting his beefy hands into my pockets, making sure his fingers grabbed and pinched me through the layers of fabric. He finally found the right key ring and held it out in front of me. “Is this it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good girl.” He laughed low and put his hand down again, this time grabbing my backside the way he had the first day. “Very nice.”
Tears stung my eyes. “You can’t hurt me,” I said to him. “I’ve been hurt by worse than you, and he’s dead now, or dying.”
He dropped his hand. “I would have done it, you know. That day. I could have saved everyone a lot of trouble. I’m one of the weak. My father knows it, and so do I. It would have been best if I’d gone that day, because it’s best if the weak are eliminated. But now I have an assignment to carry out. It’s the only reason he hasn’t had me kill myself already.”
“Then go do it,” I spat, “and leave me alone.”
“Business first. Put your wrists together.”
He pulled out another of Nina’s stockings. I couldn’t do it; it was foolish perhaps, but I’d given in too many times in my life, and all my instincts rose up. I fought him as he grabbed my wrists. I thrashed hard and I screamed. He swore and stuffed the stocking into my mouth, then grabbed another as I choked on it, and he yanked my wrists again.
Still I fought. It was a grim struggle, the two of us on the ground, I trying to kick him or jab him with my knees, Creeton using his big bulk to pin me down. I was bruised and straining by the end of it, the stocking thick and foul in my mouth, sweat running down my forehead and onto my temples, tears flowing down my face. But he won. He finally wound the stocking around both of my wrists and tied me to the leg of my bedstead, just as he had done to Nina.
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