How could she possibly know that? I nodded.
“They think I’m touched but I’m not. I see things.” Her face clouded over. We had reached the door to the laundry. “This is where I work,” she said. Her voice changed, as if someone else was speaking through her. “You must get out of here. They’re going to get you. You’re next.”
The door slammed shut behind her. From the other side, voices, steam, and the smell of soap wafted through the gaps in the doorframe.
I looked wildly around me, with no clue as to where to go. This corridor was unfamiliar. The whitewash looked white, fresh and clean. No one milled around. Everyone had gone back to their designated jobs. All except me. I had no job. I didn’t belong.
Sadness threatened to overwhelm me. Sadness and despair. I longed for almost anything from my own time but most of all Paul. Would he be wondering where I was? I didn’t even know how long I had been away, or more particularly how much time would have elapsed in my own world. A few minutes? An hour?
“You’re next.”
The now-familiar voice of Arabella Marsden startled me. I spun around but there was no one there.
“You’re next.” It was Hester’s voice this time. Behind me. No, nothing there.
A door opened farther along the corridor. Two burly men dressed in navy uniform advanced toward me, their faces serious. Each grabbed one arm and they manhandled me back down the corridor. I squirmed and protested but I couldn’t break free. Their hold was too strong.
In a room, a wooden chair complete with restraints for wrists and ankles. The men sat me down roughly and pain shot up from between my legs. My ankles were thrust into the braces and my wrists roughly secured with leather straps that cut into my skin and threatened to stop the circulation.
The men stood back and the door opened again. This time, Marsden and the doctor entered.
The doctor spoke first. “Now then, Vanessa, it’s time you joined us properly. Carol is waiting for you. She’ll be your friend once you’ve learned your place.”
“Why are you doing this to me? You know I don’t belong here. I was in hospital. I had a serious operation.”
“Yes, you did. And, you see, that really should never have happened. It’s not possible for it to have happened because that type of surgery doesn’t exist here.”
“But I’m not from here. I belong in the twenty-first century.”
Marsden let out a laugh that was close to a snarl. “You belong wherever the One and the Many says you belong.”
I struggled but the bonds cut deeper into my wrists.
The doctor moved out of my field of vision and returned momentarily with a hypodermic syringe in his hand. It was nearly full of a colorless liquid.
“You can’t use that on me. I haven’t given you permission.”
The woman laughed again. “Permission? We don’t need your permission.”
A sharp stab in my left arm. The doctor plunged the contents of the syringe directly into a vein. A rush of heat swam through me. I caught my breath and came to in an unfamiliar room. Everything looked big to me. A solid wooden dining table loomed above me and I realized I had regressed to a child of no more than three years old but, a second later, I had grown so that I was standing next to it, resting my hand. A mirror on the wall behind the table reflected a young woman with dark blonde hair arranged in a bun, and dressed in a cotton gown sprigged with small flowers. It buttoned up to the chin. I felt my own neck, and the hand in the mirror did the same.
“Lydia.” The voice belonged to an older woman with graying hair, smartly dressed in a dark blue tunic and skirt typical of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. “Come along now or you’ll be late. You know Mr. Carmody doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“But I don’t….”
The woman flicked her gloves impatiently. “You don’t what?”
I shook my head. My thoughts were too jumbled to decipher. Part of me hadn’t a clue who this woman was and another part recognized her. My mother. Not Nessa’s mother. Lydia’s. And now Lydia and I were one and the same. In another flash, an image of a young man with black hair and a neat moustache. His lips were set in a line and his eyes held a harshness and contempt that made my flesh shrivel.
Lydia didn’t like this man. In fact, she was scared of him, and so was I.
I followed the woman – Mother – out of the room. I glanced down at my feet, shod in black leather buttoned boots with a small heel. In contrast to the room, which had been over-stuffed with furniture and knick-knacks, the light and spacious hall led to a wide front door with stained glass panels.
Outside, the street consisted of mainly Georgian buildings, painted creamy white. Horses, carts, horse-drawn buses and carriages all jockeyed for position on the dusty roadway. A policeman in his Victorian uniform stopped to admonish a young boy who was playing with a whip and top, dangerously close to the traffic. After delivering a cuff to the lad’s ear, the constable strode on. The boy blushed deep pink and sped off down the street.
“Come along, Lydia. Don’t dawdle.” Her mother ushered me into a waiting carriage pulled by a bored-looking black horse. The driver tipped his hat to me as I managed awkwardly to mount the steps. I sat down inside and closed the door, realizing that the awkward maneuver hadn’t kicked the pain off. I fidgeted a little, much to the older woman’s disdain.
“Oh do stop that, Lydia. It is most unbecoming. Sit still.”
I said nothing.
“And answer me when I speak to you.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes, what?”
I looked at her questioningly.
She sighed. “Say, ‘Yes, Mama’, not just ‘yes’. It’s rude. Honestly, Lydia, I don’t know what’s got into you recently. You never used to be so willful and awkward.”
“Yes…Mama,” I said quietly.
“And sit up straight. You’ll end up hunched over like poor Mrs. Feathers.”
Some flicker in my mind told me Mrs. Feathers was the family’s cook/housekeeper at one time.
The horse clopped steadily on, occasionally veering to the left or right in order to avoid a collision. I stared out of the window at a constantly changing scene that was both familiar and unfamiliar. It was as if my brain had been neatly sliced in two. Memories from both the personalities that now inhabited my body vied with each other, but the Nessa that remained in me was losing the battle to Lydia and the darkness within her. Maybe it was because we were in her time. Nessa’s memories simply didn’t fit here. I felt disoriented and confused, being tugged this way and that like an elastic band stretched too taut.
The carriage stopped and we got out. Lydia’s mother – my mother I suppose – handed over the fare and I stared up at a much grander house than the one I had so recently found myself in.
A tall, smart butler let us in, answered the door before the sound of the bell had faded. He led us into a large room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes. A fire crackled in the hearth and the leather Chesterfield looked inviting.
A man my Lydia-self recognized as Roger Carmody stood and came toward us, hand outstretched.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Warren, Miss Warren. A pleasure as always.”
But he didn’t make it sound like a pleasure. His patronizing tone was that of a master to an underling.
All my senses told me he was everything I hated most and, as yet, I hadn’t a clue why.
Chapter Sixteen
“Nessa, Nessa. Come on, wake up.”
Joyce’s voice wafted into my nightmare and broke it. I opened my eyes, the memory of that awful dream still so real to me I could barely take in the comforting sight of the nurse’s smiling face. “Goodness, when you sleep you really sleep, don’t you?”
Right now, I could have thrown my arms around her and kissed her. Never had I been so
relieved to see anyone I barely knew.
I hoisted myself up into a comfortable sitting position. “What time is it?”
“Just after eleven. Maryam’s on the ward. She’ll be coming to see you in a few minutes.”
She poured a glass of water from the jug, which I noticed had been replenished and topped up with ice. I took the beaker from her and drank it down.
“I must have fallen asleep straight after breakfast. At least….” But was it a dream? One thing had to be true though. “Have you heard anything about Carol…or Susan Jackson? The patients who went missing?”
Joyce’s hand shook as she was setting down the jug. She took a breath. “Missing? I don’t know any Susan, and Carol Shaughnessy didn’t go missing. She discharged herself.”
“Really? When did she do that?” I still couldn’t come to grips with the way time was working. The last time I had seen Carol had been in the past, evidently before she had endured being the victim of Dr. Franklyn’s more hideous experiments. In this time Carol was no longer missing but had turned up and discharged herself.
“She went home. Against medical advice, of course. Her ankles were really bad, but….” She made an expansive gesture with her hands.
The door opened and Maryam entered, accompanied by another nurse I didn’t know.
“I’ll leave you all to it,” Joyce said and closed the door behind her.
Maryam pulled out a pair of disposable gloves from the wall dispenser and proceeded to put them on. “Right, now, let’s take a look, shall we?”
Maryam’s touch was gentle and soft, but I still flinched slightly.
“That’s looking better and better. You’re doing really well, Nessa.” She pointed out some finer points of my newly reconstructed anatomy to the nurse, who murmured in appreciation.
“The flaps have taken well. No sign of any problems there. Mr. Shah did a marvelous job.”
“I can go home tomorrow, can’t I?”
Maryam exchanged glances with the nurse. “I need to talk to you about a development. Something has shown up in your most recent blood tests and we need to investigate a little.”
My heart gave an extra beat. “What is it?”
“An anomaly. Something that isn’t possible but we need to rule everything out, so I need to arrange for you to have a scan. This time, on your abdomen.”
“It isn’t—”
“No, no. I’m quite sure it’s not the cancer, but I want to make sure nothing else is going on there.”
“But what showed up in the blood tests?”
“This will sound a little crazy. In fact, a lot crazy, but the results showed the presence of a hormone called HCG. It’s a hormone secreted during pregnancy.”
I thought there must have been something wrong with my hearing. “What?”
“Now you can see why we need to do a scan. Quite obviously you cannot be pregnant, so we just want to check if anything else is causing this.”
“Like what?”
“I wouldn’t like to speculate at this stage. Don’t worry about it. There will be a rational explanation and, whatever it is, we will be able to deal with it.”
* * *
“Pregnant?” Paul’s face blanched ivory.
“Clearly I’m not, so something is giving a false reading.”
“Could they have mixed your blood up with someone else’s?”
“I very much doubt it.”
“I don’t know how you can remain so calm.”
I didn’t either but he didn’t have to know that. “I’ve been through so much worse, I really don’t rate this on a scale of one to ten at all. It’s some daft anomaly, that’s all. Anyway, we’ll find out the results in a day or two.”
“But meanwhile, you can’t come home.”
“Not unless I discharge myself and that would be crazy. Especially now.”
“I’m not happy about you being here. Too much is going on that neither of us can explain.”
And it was that fear of his, which I echoed, that made me decide not to tell Paul about my latest experience.
* * *
At least I didn’t have to wait more than a day for the results of the latest scan.
“I’m pleased to tell you that nothing showed up.” Maryam, accompanied by Joyce, looked uncharacteristically serious for one delivering good news.
I struggled to get myself more comfortable in bed. “So what caused the presence of that hormone?”
“We simply don’t know. As you know, we took more bloods this morning and the result was the same. In fact the level had increased slightly which would be expected…in a pregnant woman.”
“Well, we know that doesn’t apply to me and there’s nothing untoward going on—”
“Nothing that shows up on the scan. But clearly something is causing it. We simply don’t know what yet and, until we do, I am not happy about discharging you. We need to conduct more tests. I am meeting with my colleagues later today and we are going to put our collective heads together.”
“Maryam, I need to go home. I really do.”
She must have read the fear in my eyes. “What’s the real reason you want to leave so much?”
Joyce was staring up at the ceiling.
“You know, don’t you?” I said to her.
She looked at me. “I’m sorry…I—”
Something snapped inside me and I had to fight for control of my temper. The words came tumbling out in an unstoppable flood. “There’s something not right in this hospital. Something that happened way back in its history before it even was the Royal and Waverley. People who have worked here for any length of time know about it. There have been too many incidents of patients reporting seeing things they couldn’t possibly have seen. Things I’ve seen. That portal out there. The door that’s there sometimes and then disappears. I’ve been through it. Carol and Susan, the patients who disappeared, they went through it. It takes you back in time. To the workhouse. There’s something evil there. A woman. Arabella Marsden and a Dr. Franklyn. And there’s a little girl…Agnes. And it’s all linked to a woman called Lydia Warren Carmody, who wrote a poem I found. I haven’t worked it all out yet….” My voice trailed off as I saw Maryam’s expression change from sympathy to concern to outright disbelief.
Joyce touched my hand. I withdrew it as if I’d been stung, then chastised myself. She was only being kind after all.
The nurse spoke. “You’ve been through a lot, Nessa. And you’ve had some pretty strong pain relief.”
“Is she still on Oramorph?” Maryam asked. Joyce nodded. Maryam looked back at me. “I think we had better stop it altogether now, Nessa. In rare cases, Oramorph can lead to hallucinations and I think this may be happening to you. It would explain why you are having strange visions. At the very least, if we stop the dosage we can see if the symptoms cease, but, I’m afraid, I really can’t send you home yet. It would be irresponsible of me. If you are experiencing hallucinations, we don’t know which direction they might take. You could be at risk of unintentionally harming yourself.”
I said nothing, I wanted to insist they weren’t hallucinations, but could I really be sure? As far as I could remember I had never experienced a hallucination in my life until I came into this hospital. I was still convinced Maryam and Joyce knew more than they would admit to, but what else could I do? I nodded my agreement.
Maryam squeezed my hand. “Good. I’ll pop back and see you tomorrow. By then I hope to have a plan on what we should do next to get to the bottom of the HCG phenomenon.”
* * *
Paul was accompanied by a large bouquet of colorful flowers. Chrysanthemums, dahlias, roses, carnations, a burst of reds, oranges, yellows, pinks and blues. “From your friends at the university. They’re missing you.” He handed me a card.
Margie popped her head around the door.
“Shall I get a vase for those? They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Yes, please. They’re lovely. I never expected anything like this.”
The card was signed by pretty much every person in the department. Tears sprang into my eyes. “People are so kind,” I managed, around the lump that had settled in my throat.
Paul kissed my forehead. “They love you. And so do I as a matter of fact.”
Margie returned with my flowers in a large glass vase, which she now placed on the bedside cabinet. I set the card next to it.
When she had gone, Paul said, “You’re not going home yet I hear.”
“No, they think that what I experienced may be down to the Oramorph but they can’t be sure so they need to monitor me now I’m off it. Then there’s the small matter of the hormone that can’t be there but still is. Maryam’s coming back with a plan of action tomorrow.”
“How do you feel about that? Staying here I mean.” Paul’s tone made it all too clear how he felt about it.
“At first, not happy, but I can see her point. Hallucinations are a rare side effect of Oramorph and what I experienced was so vivid and real….” If there was even an outside chance that all of this was in my head, I had to grab it.
“And what about the woman in the cafeteria?”
“You mean Hester?” Paul gave me a surprised look. “Long story, but I found out that’s her name.”
“Hester. Was she a hallucination? I saw her as well, remember.”
“And you thought she was a nutter. Plus, you didn’t know her name. My mind could easily have stored the real woman we spoke to away and hallucinated about her later. She was a bit weird. Perfect for a ghost. Oh….” A memory flashed through my mind. The last walk I had taken before I had the operation. The storm. And the stranger all bundled up in the parka….
“What’s the matter, Ness? You’ve lost all color in your cheeks.”
“That woman. Hester. She didn’t just make contact with me when I came here. I think I saw her before. When I first saw her down in the cafeteria I thought for a split second that I had seen her somewhere before but I didn’t make the connection. It was the last time I went out for a walk along the promenade. A woman approached me. She was so wrapped up against the weather, I could barely make out that she was even female. She spoke to me. And told me I should go home. Then she walked away, but I got the distinct impression she said something else. I’d forgotten all about it until now.”
In Darkness, Shadows Breathe Page 21