Then, the ground lurched, and the sand-dunes turned into breakers. I crawled through a porthole—it was a tight squeeze—into a ship’s cabin, then fastened the portholes behind me with metal screws. Somehow, I knew they were called “dogs,” something I never knew before, and I knew they had to be fastened tightly or the seawater would come flooding in. In fact, at every wave the porthole was underwater and showed a strange underwater world full of drifting seaweed.
The motion of the ship was violent, pitching first one way and then the other. I wondered if I was going to be seasick.
The strange thing was that at some point I knew I was dreaming, but I was puzzled to know whose dream it was. It did not seem like one of my dreams at all: surely, it was one of Captain Hall’s dreams.
“If it’s only a dream, it can’t hurt me,” I said to myself, and even as I was flung against one of the wooden walls—which were bulkheads, I knew—the impact was muted and muffled, as things are in dreams.
“It’s tedious enough, though,” I said.
The next roll took me to the porthole again, where I looked down towards the bottom of the sea, which was lit in a strange green, although it should have been dark.
A face stared back at me. I recoiled violently. Dream or not, I did not like that face.
The dogs fastening the porthole rotated, and I stared as the thing sprang open and a torrent of green water laced with seaweed gushed through, soaking my feet and ankles.
The shock woke me up. But instead of being back in the hospital, I was still on a ship.
As the ship rolled, I landed on the floor, or rather the deck, and as often happens in these things, the shock of the impact woke me up, and for a second I was glad to be back in the hospital and out of that dream. But the storm was still roaring outside, and as the ship lurched over I was rolled bodily into a piece of furniture.
I could not wake; the dream had dragged me back in like a whirlpool. I did not know what would happen if I drowned in the dream. Would I wake up properly, or would I die, as they say dreamers do at the moment of death in their dreaming if they do not awake in time? I was not bold enough to find out, and at the sound of water surging below me, I clambered to my feet, steadying myself against the wall with the roll of the waves, and staggered towards the pale outline of a doorway.
I rushed up some steep stairs, but found I was trapped. There was no way of getting up through the deck.
There were figures moving about me below, big, slope-shouldered figures with long arms. I had a hunch about them. It was Captain Hall’s nightmare, and those were his sea-demons, smelling of weed and seabed slime.
There was a hatchway above, but no ladder to reach it. The heeling of the ship almost sent me tumbling back down the stairs and into the arms of those creatures down there. I held on and, putting a stool on a table, launched myself upwards to the hatch, even as the table splintered beneath me.
It was even darker up there, in some ‘tween-deck space, with a cramped low ceiling. I had gone wrong somewhere; it was not the way up to the deck. It was a storage room. But it was a wooden ship, and desperation is a powerful motivating force. Bracing myself against the motion of the vessel, which was as violent as ever, I felt around for an instrument. My hand closed around a wooden rod or staff. Taking it in both hands, I thrust upwards. The rod broke after the second blow, but the shortened stick was easier to use in the confined space, and something gave way above.
I bashed upwards again and again, widening the hole, falling over once in the process as I could not keep my balance. Rain splashed my face; it was the way through to the deck. I redoubled my efforts, and the pieces of decking broke away at every blow, until the hole was large enough for me to crawl through.
As I squeezed through the aperture, desperate that I should not get stuck and be dragged back by the things below, I looked around, expecting to see the masts, the rigging, and the storm-wracked seas around me. But the scene was not at all what I had expected.
There is a celebrated woodcut from medieval times of a man who has reached the edge of the flat Earth and succeeded in sticking his head through the dome of stars that surrounds it. He is stopped by wonder, looking at the great mechanical clockwork that moves the sun and the stars on their courses, seeing the deeper reality behind the familiar world. He could not have been more astonished than I was by what I saw.
The dark and the rain impeded my vision, but there were electric lights which gave fixed points. The ship no longer rocked, although I felt a residual motion within my body. What had at first looked like waves resolved themselves into trees waving in the storm winds. There were no masts about me, only chimneys. I was looking out across the roofs of the hospital.
It was a gradual awakening rather than an instantaneous one, as the last vestiges of the seascape dissolved into the everyday world. The shift in perspective was baffling, and I was stupefied by the transformation, which had no parallel in my experience. Everything had changed, but it had not changed.
I realised that I must have been sleepwalking in my dream, imagining the surroundings… but my imagination had not actually put nautical fittings in the hospital. It had merely changed the way I saw things and my assumptions about them.
My shirt was soaking wet, and for the first time I noticed the voices below. They must have always been there, but I had not paid them any attention. As in the boxing ring, when your mind was focused on the movement of your opponent’s fists and body, the tilt of his head and the movement of his muscles, the words of the crowd all mingled into background noise that was no different from silence.
I picked up a broken roof slate, still struggling to comprehend what I had done. In my other hand was a broken piece of wood that looked like a billiard cue.
“It’s Stubbs,” someone was explaining.
“What the blazes is he doing up there? What was all that smashing about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stubbs!”
Awkwardly, I withdrew back through the hole I had made, into the loft space. Six feet away was a square of light where I had entered. “I’m up here,” I said.
“What are you doing?” Vanstone demanded.
“I’ll explain later,” I said, surveying the damage. Rain was already soaking the floor below the hole. I needed to try and patch it up at once. Proper repairs would have to wait till the morning and would take a skilled roofer. “I’m coming down.”
I lowered myself gingerly and dropped the last couple of feet. Next to me was a broken table and an overturned stool. Miller and Vanstone were staring up at me, astonished. I smoothed my hair. “I thought I saw one of the patients on the stairs,” I said. “I couldn’t see anything, but then it sounded like they were up there, moving about in the eaves, so I went up after them.”
“And what was all the bashing about?” Vanstone was peering up through the loft hatch, which I had left open.
“I hit my head,” I said. “And I thought I was being attacked, so I hit back.”
“Bloody hell,” said Vanstone.
“Only the noise from the plumbing,” said Miller. “There’s nobody up there. Nobody’s missing from the wards.”
I had heard of people sleepwalking, not knowing where they were. Maybe that was what had happened to me, though I had never sleepwalked in my life. And I had never heard of a sleepwalker who climbed into a loft space, nor one who smashed a hole in a roof.
“Ghosts,” said Vanstone, looking at me strangely.
“We thought you’d gone mad,” said Miller, grinning, as we descended the stairs. “Couldn’t think what had got into you. ‘He’s gone mad,’ I said.”
“This place does affect people,” said Vanstone. “How did you get wet? Is there a broken pipe?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It was dark, and I was panicking.”
“Don’t worry,” said Miller, patting my shoulder. “Accidents happen. We’ll have a proper look, get it fixed in the morning.”
I was more s
haken than I cared to admit. I could not understand what had happened, how the line between sleep and waking had been crossed, and I could not let on to these two. They were friends, but I was still the newcomer who was not tried and tested like they were. A man who might see ghosts, who the place might get to.
“I just woke up,” I said. “Maybe I dreamed seeing someone on the stairs.”
“Most likely,” said Vanstone. “You’ve got something stuck to your face.”
I pulled off a small dark-brown square, no bigger than a postage stamp. Some piece of debris I had picked up while smashing about in the roof space.
It looked like seaweed, but that could not be so. A dream was a dream, and reality was reality, and if the water on my face was salty it must be from sweat. It was all a sort of delusion or hallucination, and I had to be clear what was real and what was not.
Really, though, I’d had a lucky escape. If I had seen Miller and Vanstone in my confused state, and lashed out at them thinking they were those fish-eyed things, maybe I would have caused one of them serious injury… And maybe I would be shut away, under heavy sedation in one of the cells downstairs.
“You should go home,” said Vanstone, a hand on my shoulder. “Get some kip in your own bed.”
“A night’s sleep and you’ll be right as rain,” said Miller.
I protested, but the others insisted. They would manage the rest of the shift without me. I felt I was being condescended to, and there was a little too much in their voices of that tone you fall into when addressing an agitated patient. But it was my welfare they were concerned for, and the least I could do was follow their advice.
It was no longer raining when I tramped home; there was no sign, in fact, that it had rained at all, or that there was any storm. On an impulse, I pulled out the storm glass and held it up to a streetlight. It was clear as water.
Chapter Thirteen: The New Physician
I arrived early the next morning, full of purpose. A good night’s sleep had helped persuade me that I was not cracking up, and that Hooper’s death meant that I needed answers more urgently than ever. Things were coming to a head.
I managed to avoid being collared for any duty and headed straight for the patients’ medical records, which occupied an open area next to the doctors’ common room. I wanted to find out the name of the doctor who had authorised Ross’s confinement. Then, I wanted to talk to Dr Beltov about a number of matters, chief among them being that reel of film.
The first task was easy enough.
“Doctor Nye,” I said, taking it down in my notebook. Why did that name seem familiar? He was not on the staff there, not even as an occasional visitor. As soon as I spoke the name out loud I was troubled by a presentiment of danger. I had a feeling that I was too late. I checked Hooper’s admission record and Gillespy’s and the same name came up both times: Doctor Nye. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
Unusually, there was nobody in the common room; usually the doctors were there, having their coffee and the first pipe of the day before getting to work. I started going through the indexes to bound journals, and found my answer soon enough. Dr Nye was a rising star with many citations to his name in medical literature, having pioneered a whole host of new therapies of unparalleled effectiveness: the magnetic therapy we called the Sarcophagus, the new version of hydrotherapy, and the improved variety of Faradisation therapy had all originated with him. There was even a piece suggesting that the wires from the Sarcophagus might be used to reconstruct a patient’s visions: a trap for the unwary who might inhale the fumes while working too closely with the stuff of madness.
I arrived at Beltov’s office to find Dr Hamilton already at the door.
“You may prefer to come back later,” he told me. “Dr Beltov won’t be available this morning.”
He knocked, a quick double rap.
“What’s happening, Doctor?”
“You hadn’t heard? There’s a notice up in the attendants’ common room. Dr Beltov is no longer in charge.”
The world lurched under my feet. It must be a consequence of Hooper’s death, though what that had to do with Beltov was beyond me. There had been deaths before; they were unavoidable. Dr Easton made occasional efforts to undermine Beltov’s authority, but I could not believe these would have any effect. “But he’s been here for years,” I said.
“We’re all behind Dr Beltov,” said Hamilton. “He’s an outstanding clinician, and there’s no suggestion of negligence or malpractice. Privately, I fear there is politics at work. This new doctor is the coming man, a shooting star. More appealing to the board than a fusspot like Beltov.”
“Isn’t Dr Easton taking over?”
Easton was nominally the second in command, but Hamilton shook his head. “Dr Nye is taking over as senior physician, effective immediately. He’ll be here shortly.”
He knocked on the door again, with three loud raps. I was still working out what it meant, impatient with Beltov’s ignoring his knocking, when Hamilton swung the door open. “Beltov! My God!”
I smelled it before I saw anything. My nostrils were filled with the familiar aroma of fresh blood. I worked as a butcher’s boy in my father’s shop, so I had plenty of opportunity to see animals killed and bled. You can get a bucket of blood out of a pig, and they say a man has a gallon of the red stuff in his veins. Blood looks very different, though, when you spread it about a room, pint by pint; you can hardly believe the quantity. Beltov’s exsanguination was a thorough one, his body squeezed dry like a sponge.
I will not readily forget the scene inside. The floor was covered in glass and blood—extremely fresh blood, forming a pattern of rivulets across the carpet. As though a tide of blood had risen and fallen.
Dr Beltov was seated at his desk, his head thrown back, his neck opened by a broad gash from which blood still oozed. The gore made a pool on his desk, with the rectangular outline of the blotter forming an island. A crimson waterfall, dripping like a rain gutter into a puddle on the floor, fed the rivulets stretching to the very edges of the room.
He must have been recently dead—a matter of minutes—for the blood still to be flowing so freely. There was no doubt that he was dead, even though Hamilton rushed over to check, his feet crunching the glass shards and leaving bloody footprints as he went.
I was no stranger to blood and death, but some squeamishness held me back. Or perhaps it was something else; a part of me was surveying the room, taking in details. A dial lay on the floor, a clock face. Near it was a big chunk of brass gears and rods, the internal working of the glass clock which had been shattered. Beltov would never get it to work properly now, never find the secret of perfect regulation to keep the clock running in perfect synchrony with reality.
Beltov’s hands were open on the desk in front of him in the blood. A pen lay nearby, as though he had written something in the minutes before he cut his throat with a shard of glass from the broken clock. If he had left a note, his words had been obliterated by the red flow.
Beltov’s wire letter tray, which stood clear of the desk, was untouched and held half a dozen letters that would forever be unread. At the top was a thick cream envelope with nothing on it except Beltov’s name. That would be the letter from the superintendent’s secretary, a letter which he had not opened. Perhaps he had found out about his dismissal through some other means.
“Double incision,” said Hamilton, thinking out loud. “He must have cut once, then cut again deeper. Dear God in heaven!”
Beltov had killed himself. But the double mark made it look as though he had been swiped by sharp claws. The location of the office made it impossible that anyone could have been in and out without being seen, unless they could climb in and out through the window then lock it behind them. Beltov’s professional ruin and his own obduracy made a verdict of suicide inevitable, even without lack of physical evidence for any other possible explanation.
“What should I do, Doctor?” I asked, still standing in the doorway
.
“Get back to your job,” he said promptly. “Make sure that everything keeps running smoothly. The patients have had too much disturbance already.”
He held up a bloodied hand, his sleeve dipping, trying not to show dismay.
“Everything must carry on as normal. Dr Nye will arrange everything when he gets here, I’m sure of that.”
“Very good, Doctor,” I said.
It’s over, said a voice in my head. Dr Nye is coming. You have no answers and no allies. It’s time to face the inevitable.
It could have been Ryan speaking to me with the voice of well-reasoned despair.
Things were moving too fast. The whole world seemed to be closing in on me from all directions. Or rather, the floor was disintegrating under my feet, plank by plank. Things were spiralling out of control, but I had not quite run out of options.
I found Donnelly in the east wing, leading Ross away from his cell.
“Top of the morning to you,” Donnelly said with exaggerated cheerfulness, rolling his eyes to express the craziness of it. “Ain’t this place a madhouse today though?”
“Where are you taking him?”
“We’re off on a little excursion to see Dr Easton in the Ivy Room,” said Donnelly. “Trying him on the F-therapy.” Donnelly did not like the Faradisation treatment any more than I did.
“I’ll take him,” I said, too quickly.
“You will not,” said Donnelly, unfolding his arms. Donnelly has an acute sixth sense when it comes to judging intentions. He had seen what I planned to do almost before I had myself. “What are you up to, anyhow?”
“I have to take him somewhere else,” I said.
Donnelly leaned in close, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“I don’t like it either,” he said. “But you’re not Lord God Almighty, you’re only another bloody attendant, like me. Now will you let me do my job before I get into trouble.”
Donnelly was a solidly built man, considerably shorter than I and somewhat lighter, but with a good amount of meat on his bones. He was well experienced in the art of unarmed combat. If it came to it, he would put up a fight, and a fight was the last thing I wanted.
Master of Chaos (The Harry Stubbs Adventures Book 4) Page 14