by Guy Morpuss
‘I’ll check the door,’ says Alex. He walks over and tries the handle, pulling hard. ‘It’s locked.’
‘Don’t waste time on breaking it down. It’s too easy. We need to find the key. I’ll search the bed and the drawers. You check the desk.’
I pull the sheets and blankets from the bed, but see nothing useful. I hear Alex rifling through the desk behind me.
‘I know where the key is,’ he says.
He is holding up a small metal box, which rattles when he shakes it.
‘How do we open it?’ I ask.
‘There’s a four digit combination lock on top. We need to find the numbers. Or I could just try smashing it open.’ He raises it above his head, ready to strike it on the corner of the desk.
‘No, don’t do that,’ I say. ‘It won’t open that way and you will probably jam the mechanism. We need to find the numbers. Quickly.’
‘It could be the date,’ says Alex. ‘1904.’
He fiddles with the lock. ‘No, it’s not that. 15 June, so 1506? Or 0615, as we are in New York.’
‘Too obvious, but try them.’
I turn to the chest of drawers. The top drawer is empty. The second contains a man’s shirt and jacket. The third contains a journal. I pull it out as Alex says, ‘No, neither of those works.’
I take the journal over to the desk and open it. It is filled with closely written manuscript notes in black ink.
‘It’s a diary of some sort,’ I say. ‘From 1903. That’s last year. But we don’t have time to read it all. We need to know what day to look at. Unless there’s something loose in it.’ I hold it up by the spine and shake it, but nothing falls out.
‘Try 15 June. It’s the only date we have.’
I flick through until I find the entry for that date. It is short. I read it out.
15 June
Spent the day at home as Gertrude has still not recovered from the lumbago. Doctor Mortimer visited and said that though there is some improvement she needs a further week of bed rest. He provided another vial of tincture of opium. I used the afternoon to continue writing my article on the native Pomacea apple snail.
Well that didn’t help.
‘How long have we got?’ I ask.
‘Eleven minutes. But it’s not just about getting out. We need to beat Sierra to the island.’
I start flicking through the diary at random, but it’s hopeless without knowing where to look. Then I have a thought.
‘Check the shirt and jacket,’ I say, pointing to where I threw them on the floor.
Alex picks them up. He throws me the shirt. The breast pocket is empty. I feel around the collars and cuffs, but there are no signs of anything hidden inside them. There’s a label: Salvini Brothers, Brooklyn. Again, that doesn’t help.
‘I’ve got something,’ says Alex. He’s holding a piece of crumpled paper. ‘This was in one of the pockets.’ He unfolds it. ‘It’s a receipt for some boots from a shop in Queen’s.’
‘Is there a date on it?’
‘It looks like 9 November 1903. I can’t see anything else of interest.’
I read the journal entry for that date.
9 November
Winter is early. There was ice on the lake this morning. Dr Mortimer believes that the night air is exacerbating Gertrude’s hysteria. He has prescribed bed rest and said that on no account must her windows be left open during the night. I have instructed Charlotte to wake at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. to stoke the fire. This afternoon’s post brought the news that the Harvard Journal of Molluscan Studies has declined to publish my article. Went for a bracing walk round the park and stopped for a brandy at the Professor’s to drown my sorrows.
‘That must be a clue,’ I say. ‘There are two numbers in here – one and four. We need two more. Was there anything else in the jacket?’
‘No,’ says Alex. ‘We have seven minutes left. Where else is there to look?’
‘Check behind the chest and the desk,’ I say. ‘Pull out the drawers and look underneath. I’ll check under the bed.’
There’s nothing. Together we drag the mattress off the bed, and turn it over. There is nothing there either, not even a label.
The room lurches to the side, as though we have struck something. I am flung across the room into Alex, who catches me. He holds me for a moment as the room steadies.
For the first time I can hear noise from outside – screams. I can smell smoke. The fire must be close. I look around. Is there a secret panel somewhere in the floor or the walls?
Then I see it. ‘The pictures. It’s got to be them. Look.’
There are three. The first is a still life of some fruit in a bowl. The second is a painting of a young sailor with a hat labelled General Slocum. The third is of a lady lying in bed attended by a physician in a long black coat.
‘Check the other two, but I think it’s this one,’ I say. ‘It’s linked to the diary.’ I pull the picture of the bedridden lady off the wall and turn it over. I am disappointed. There are some charcoal markings on the back of the frame, but nothing legible. There are no numbers.
‘Nothing here,’ says Alex.
‘It’s got to be this one.’ I turn it back over, looking for numbers somewhere in the painting.
The sickly lady, whom I think of as Gertrude, is looking up at the doctor with a weary expression. She is holding a small book in her left hand, but I can’t read the title and there are no numbers on it. Her right wrist is gripped by the doctor, who appears to be taking her pulse. He is staring at the pocket watch held in his other hand.
An unusually large pocket watch, on which I can read the time: three minutes past five.
‘I’ve got it,’ I shout. ‘It’s the watch. 5:03. We have the four numbers. 1453. Quick.’
Alex picks up the metal box and fumbles with the combination lock. He is too slow. I watch impatiently as he struggles with it. He pulls at the box and for a moment I think I am wrong. Then it opens, and he tips a key into his hand.
‘Let’s go,’ he says. ‘We’ve got four minutes to get off the ship.’
He puts the key into the lock, turns it, and pulls the door open.
We step out into chaos.
To our right a fire is raging at the forward end of the ship. Men are throwing buckets of water at it, but it looks hopelessly ineffectual. Black smoke is pouring towards us. Everyone is heading for the back of the ship, to our left. There are shouts and screams, mostly in German.
In front of us a giant paddle wheel is still going round. Through the smoke I can make out an island a few hundred metres away. We seem to be turning towards it. That must be where we need to go.
A man runs screaming through the smoke and fire, his clothes burning. He races to the wooden rail next to the paddle wheel and jumps over. For a moment the wheel seems to pause, and I fear he has been dragged into it. I am right. The wheel resumes and a moment later his crumpled body is lifted up on the other side and flung into the water again.
I feel sick.
‘Come on,’ says Alex. ‘We’ve got to get off now. We should head for the island.’
‘Can you see Sierra?’ I shout.
There is no sign of her.
We run towards the back of the ship, as far away from the fire and the paddle wheel as we can get. We elbow our way through passengers – mostly women and children, some carrying young babies. But I know it’s not real. We are not here to save them. These people died a long time ago.
When we reach the rail we look down into a scene of devastation. The water is filled with bodies. Some are already face down and unmoving. Others are frantically paddling, trying to stay afloat. There is one small lifeboat in the water, overloaded, with several people hanging off the side, threatening to capsize it. A sailor is standing up in the boat, trying to beat swimmers away with an oar.
As we watch a woman jumps off the rail next to us and disappears under the water. She does not resurface.
I look down at what I am wearing. A heavy an
kle-length dress that will pull me under the water if I try to follow her.
‘I can’t swim in this,’ I say to Alex. ‘Help me get it off.’
‘In a minute. We can’t jump in here. They’ll grab on to us and drown us. We need to jump as close to the front as we can.’ He grabs my hand and starts pulling me against the flow of people, back to the front of the ship.
I can feel the heat from the fire now. The smoke surrounds us and I start coughing. My eyes are streaming. The paddle wheel is still turning, but there is the scream of wood on metal as it does so. Alex stops. ‘We can’t get any closer. We’ll jump in here. If we jump this side the wheel should push us away, not suck us in. Head around it and towards the island as fast as you can. I think they are trying to beach the ship there, but we can’t wait to see if they make it.’
I turn my back to him. ‘Help me get this off.’ Alex fumbles with the buttons down the back of my dress and I step out of it. I am probably scandalising Edwardian society, but what I am wearing underneath – bloomers, a slip and petticoat – is more than I would usually wear to the gym. Alex looks at me for a moment, then quickly glances away when he sees that I have noticed.
He shrugs off the heavy coat that he’s wearing and drops it on the deck. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’ He takes my hand and we step up to the rail. The paddle wheel is screaming to our right.
We jump together.
The water is icy and black. I lose my grip on Alex as we plunge down. Struggling back to the surface, I break through gasping for air, the paddle wheel looming above me. I swim as hard as I can away from the ship, dreading being sucked back and ground up.
There is a shout to my left.
‘Kate.’ I swim towards Alex, arms and legs tiring, coughing up icy water.
‘Alex?’ I call. Then I see his head through the swells. I grab his arm in relief, then let go as I realise I am pulling him under.
‘Which way?’ I ask.
For a brief moment we tread water and turn around. There is no one else nearby, although we can hear the screams and shouts of the dying. The ship is moving away from us. The island is closer now. I can see trees and a large building.
Where’s Sierra?
Alex points. We strike out for the island. It looks so close now, but I don’t know if I have the strength left to make it. Then something pulls at my leg. For a moment I think that it is one of the drowned passengers, risen up to drag me under. Then my other leg snags on something, and I realise that I am tangled in weeds. As I reach down to free myself I hear a shout from Alex. I look up. We are barely twenty metres from shore now, but I can see Sierra crawling through the shallows ahead, coughing up water. I scream at Alex to come back and help free me.
Then Sierra collapses on to the shore. As she turns back towards us in triumph the scene fades.
•
Stage One complete. Congratulations. You have reached safety on North Brother Island. Stage Two is set on the same island in 1953. It will commence in two minutes. Ms Summers, as the winner of Stage One, will receive a head start of one minute.
•
Alex and I are standing in a small grey-walled room, with barely enough space for the two of us. We are dry and dressed in more modern clothes than before. There is one exit, a door with a countdown reading ‘00:58’.
‘Shit,’ says Alex. ‘We lost. That gives Sierra extra time.’
‘We can still beat her. There’s two of us and one of her. We have to beat her.’ I remember the doctor and his instrument case.
‘You’re right,’ says Alex. ‘In the first game I played in the park I got frozen and lost a minute. But I still won.’
There is nothing more we can say. Alex grabs my hand and holds tight. We stare ahead at the numbers as they count down. It seems like the longest minute ever. Alex’s grip gets tighter and tighter.
‘Zero.’
We both reach for the handle at the same time, and push the door open.
We find ourselves standing in the middle of a dimly lit hospital ward, lined with beds on either side. The door through which we entered has vanished. There is no sign of Sierra.
You are in the Riverside Hospital, North Brother Island, East River, New York. You have twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes to do what? We don’t know what the game is.
I look around. The ward is a good hundred metres long, with about thirty beds, half of which are occupied. Most of the patients appear to be asleep. There is an unmarked door at one end, and another opposite marked EXIT. In front of the exit is a desk with a nurse seated at it. Above her hangs an old-fashioned clock with one hand. It is pointing to the number twenty. Grimy windows looking out over the river run down one side of the ward. In the opposite wall, between two beds, is a third door marked SPECIMENS.
Curiously, the ward is overrun with cats. There are cats sleeping on the patients’ beds, cats curled up in the sunlight on the window ledges, and several cats prowling the floors. One walks towards us, then hisses and runs away. They are thin and mangy.
‘Check the far door,’ I say to Alex as I walk over to the nurse. She seems the obvious person to ask. There is a cat sleeping on her papers.
The nurse looks up at my approach.
I smile. ‘Can you help us?’
She stares at me, then blinks twice and says: ‘Bring me Typhoid Mary.’
‘All right,’ I say, and look round at the patients. ‘Which one is she?’
The nurse blinks again. ‘Bring me Typhoid Mary,’ she repeats.
So no help there then.
I walk back to Alex.
‘Is there anything through the far door?’ I ask.
‘Nothing useful,’ he says. ‘There’s a walled courtyard with a graveyard.’ He glances round at the patients. ‘Not the most tactful place to put it, really, right next to the ward. There are more cats out there too.’
‘The nurse just keeps repeating that we must bring her Typhoid Mary. Whoever she is.’
Alex rubs his face. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard of her. Haven’t you?’ I shake my head. ‘Hang on, I’ll do a search.’
‘We can’t,’ I say. ‘Guskov told us we’d have no remote access.’
‘I’ve definitely heard of her,’ Alex says urgently. He stares at me as though he can somehow will me to remember. ‘She was some sort of plague carrier. A long time ago. Maybe she’s being treated here. The game is set in the past.’
‘There are charts at the end of each of the beds,’ I say. ‘We can check the names on those. This shouldn’t be difficult. We can ignore the men.’
‘All right. You take that side, I’ll take this one.’
It doesn’t take me long to establish that of the five women on my side none is called Mary. Alex has no better luck. We meet in the middle of the ward to exchange the bad news.
‘It was never going to be that easy,’ says Alex. ‘We need to think about this. Someone called Typhoid Mary doesn’t sound healthy. Maybe she’s dead, and we’re meant to check the graveyard.’
‘What, and bring the nurse a decomposing body?’ I shudder.
‘Unless you’ve got any better ideas.’
‘There’s the third door,’ I say. ‘Let’s check that first. And where’s Sierra?’
As we approach the specimens room the door opens and Sierra steps out. She looks around the ward, then says to us: ‘You’ll like it in there. There’s one who looks just like Alex used to. Maybe Emily saw him for what he really was.’
‘Just ignore her,’ I say to Alex. I step round her and into the room.
It’s dark and windowless. The stench of formaldehyde assaults my nostrils. Floor-to-ceiling shelves line the walls. There is flickering overhead light, reflecting off glass. As I step closer I gag.
It’s an anatomical museum. The shelves are filled with glass jars and bottles, ranging from a few centimetres tall to half my height. Floating in them are body parts, foetuses, and what look like bloated babies. In the largest jar, opposite the door, is the swolle
n body of what looks to have been a midget or a small child. I’m guessing that’s what Sierra called Alex.
Dr Bernard would probably like this place. Few others would. But thinking of the doctor reminds me of what’s at stake here.
‘This is disgusting,’ says Alex, behind me. ‘Maybe I’m right, though, and Typhoid Mary is dead and floating in one of these jars. We need to check them.’
Swallowing hard, I step over to the right-hand shelf. I’m trying to breathe as shallowly as possible, but I can taste the acrid air in my throat. The flickering light catches a tall thin jar containing an arm, turning slowly, seemingly beckoning to me.
I need to be methodical about this – and quick. I start in the bottom-right corner and work my way along the shelves. Most of the jars have labels, some curled and fading, peeling off. Surprisingly, several cats have made this revolting room their home. I have to push them out of the way to get to the jars. I straighten the labels, trying to read the faded writing in the flickering light. Most are just descriptions of body parts: Left hallux – three months – inside is a tiny floating toe; Lungs, smoker, fifty-three years – shrivelled blackened sacs within. Others contain entire bodies: Foetus, four months – the exquisite detail of the tiny body brings tears to my eyes.
None have names. For a moment I get excited when I see an entire head staring at me from a high shelf, the letter ‘M’ catching my eye. But when I stretch to read the label it says Male head, twelve years. Skin falls away from the cheek bones as I move the jar.
This is getting us nowhere. I skim the rest of the exhibits and meet Alex in the middle of the centre shelf, next to the bloated child.
He glances at it and shakes his head. ‘Sierra. She’ll never let me forget Emily.’
‘Just let it go,’ I say. ‘This is hopeless. Even if Typhoid Mary is in here we have no way of knowing. Let’s go and try the graveyard instead.’
We step back into the ward. I’m relieved to be out of that ghoulish room. Sierra is walking along the end of the beds, checking the patient’s charts. She looks suspiciously at us as we make our way to the third door. I open it and we step out into a small graveyard, enclosed by high stone walls on three sides and the hospital on the fourth. It is overgrown, the gravestones covered in lichen and at odd angles. Some have fallen over. At a rough guess there are about fifty of them. They are not going to be easy to read. I don’t see that we have any other options.