He blinked and took her hand. “Sorry, darling. Bit of a shock, that’s all.”
“Your brothers.”
“I should’ve expected a memorial, of course. They’re setting them up all over.”
Anne sank into the seat beside him and together they looked out over the carriage sweep, the lawn, and the dale beyond. The sun was poised on the brink of the horizon, lightening the eastern sky like a spill of bleach. Rannings had been a barracks during the war, she remembered Merritt saying, and now that she looked, she fancied she could see the scars on the lawn where drills had churned the grass. “Did they train here?”
“Briefly—just long enough to learn how to hold a pistol. I was stationed in Scarborough. In 1917, we were sent to the front, to Belgium . . .” He looked at her blearily; he was still drunk. White sputum had collected in the corners of his mouth. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You’ve never known wartime. Christ. When were you born?”
“1916.”
His eyes unfocused, and the little color left in his cheeks drained away. “You’re barely half my age. What must people think of me?”
Anne gave Merritt’s fingers a small, nervous squeeze. “I don’t see how that’s anyone’s business.”
“Then what must you think of me?” Merritt ran a shaking hand through his hair, still slick with yesterday’s oil. “I never got to be a young man, y’know. My youth died with my brothers, in the mud of Passchendaele. I thought I’d put it all behind me, but then I came to Penshawe and met you. You reminded me of everything I’d missed.” He dragged his hand down his face, peering at her through greasy fingers. “And now there’s talk of another bloody war in every newspaper, every morning. I can’t face it—I can’t bear it again!”
Anne’s breath caught. No one had ever been so honest with her, never bared themselves so raw, not even her parents; what did he want her to say?
She opened her mouth, but so did he, to retch. The vase of roses was still on the dresser nearby. She snatched out the flowers, thorns biting into her palm, and thrust the vase under Merritt’s chin in time to catch a dribble of bile.
“You need rest,” said Anne, back on familiar ground, “and plenty of water.” She poured out a tumbler and cupped the back of his head as he gulped it down, the sharp bulge in his neck bobbing grotesquely. With a groan and a lot of morose muttering, he returned to bed. Anne tucked him in.
It felt too awkward to stay there in the semi-dark, serenaded by phlegmatic snores, so she dressed and went downstairs. Other guests nodded to her as they passed, all following the smell of frying bacon. The receptionist greeted each one in the detached, polite way Anne knew well from operating the telephone in her father’s surgery. “Good morning, Missus Keene. Breakfast is through here.”
“Thank you, yes,” Anne said, hovering by the desk. “Um, my husband is sleeping in. Could something plain be sent up to him in an hour? Perhaps some toast?”
“Of course,” the receptionist said smoothly, noting it down. Her fingernails matched her red lipstick, her perfectly pinned hair that elusive shade of auburn no dye could replicate. Anne tucked a loose, wiry curl of her own hair behind her ear.
“How have you found your room, Missus Keene?”
“Oh, fine.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” The receptionist underlined her note and looked up to greet the next guest.
“That sounded rather dismissive, didn’t it?” Anne twisted her hands together, recapturing the receptionist’s attention. “It really is lovely. I’ve—I’ve never stayed anywhere like this before. I don’t know how to behave.”
The receptionist smiled at that—a real, warm smile, rather than the too-wide, toothy show she’d put on for their arrival yesterday. “You’d be surprised how many people say that. There’s nothing to it, honestly. I’d say you’re a natural.”
Anne blushed. “Well, anyway, I’d never guess it was a barracks, and empty before that.”
“Never empty for long,” she replied. “Rannings has had quite the history. It’s even been a hospital. Well, asylum.”
“An asylum?”
The receptionist inclined her head, misinterpreting Anne’s appalled expression. “A private institution. Shut down about a hundred years ago, but we keep that quiet. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t gossip.”
As Anne ate the breakfast she no longer had the appetite for, she wondered: Did Merritt know about that particular piece of Rannings history? Was he the sort of person to think it a talking point, an object of interest, like the lords and ladies who’d once paid to see the inmates of Bedlam?
Her father had considered sending her to one or two institutions when she was younger, before deciding to attempt treatment himself. She’d found the brochures in his desk drawer. Modern therapies were nothing like the crude ministrations of the previous century, they reassured their reader, but Anne couldn’t stop imagining the worst: manacled inmates, hair shorn for wigs, rolling in their own filth. Such wretched conditions were common before the reforms of the mid-nineteenth century. A privately run asylum in the 1830s must have been Hell on Earth.
Her fellow diners ate on, oblivious, but Anne couldn’t stomach any more. The sound of cutlery scraped in her ears. So too the wet click of people’s mouths as they chewed. A vulgar flash of mulched sausage when someone laughed, slimy debris coating their tobacco-stained tongue.
Out in the entrance hall, away from the noise, it was better. The porter had left the door ajar while he assisted with a guest’s departure. The cool air lifted her fringe and wicked the sweat away from her neck. Tickled her numb lips. She rubbed them hard.
Help! Help us!
Hand frozen over her mouth, she stared down the long parlor opposite. It was furnished with damask sofas and oak reading desks now, but yesterday afternoon, tables had been arranged for craps and baccarat. Someone had tucked a champagne flute into a bookcase and it had been missed by the staff. Anne only noticed it because the morning light caught the glass exactly right.
At the far end of the room stood the whisper of a girl in early-nineteenth-century dress. Her posture was bold, totally at odds with her finery. She turned away as if called, and then disappeared through a door that didn’t exist.
• • • •
“Miss Wells to see you, Doctor.”
He removes his spectacles and stands as I enter, offering me a shallow bow. I curtsy, studying him from beneath my lashes. The doctor is thin and ropy, a sick tree in winter, with meatless jowls that quiver as he shoots the matron a hard glance. “It’s rather late,” he says. “I was about to retire.”
“You’ll want to stay for this one, Doctor. She has a lot of . . . questions.” The matron smiles. The light from my lamp picks out her eyes.
“Questions about what?”
“Mister Benjamin Walchop,” I say, raising my chin. “He came to you a year ago. I bid you release him from your care so that he can return home immediately.”
The doctor leans in. “And you are a relative?”
“A friend, representing Mister Walchop’s family. I have their authority here.” I pull a sealed letter from my skirt pocket and hand it to him. Benjamin’s mother has scratched her mark within, but the rest is by my hand since she never learned how.
The doctor skims it and casts it aside. “I’m afraid that will not be possible. Mister Walchop’s is an interesting case and his treatment is not yet complete.”
“Treatment for what, exactly? He is not ill.” I glance between them. When it’s clear an answer isn’t forthcoming, I go on, “I saw the contract you sent him. It specified a period of six months in exchange for payment. You’ve broken your own terms. If you intend to keep him here longer, the least you could do is compensate his family properly.”
The doctor chuckles. “How mercenary.”
I grip the back of the chair facing the desk. “It’s as he would wish it. But now that I’ve seen your sanatorium for myself—if you can possibly call it that—such terms simpl
y won’t do. I’ve already contacted the authorities with my concerns. I’m sure the magistrate would like to know where you earned your doctorate. So would I, for that matter.”
“Oh,” the doctor says slowly, baring dull, gray teeth, “I like her. The door, Matron.”
She slams it shut. I glare at her, my fist tightening on the back of the chair. The room’s both too hot and too cold. Beneath my dress, sweat has left a crust of salt on my skin.
He replaces his spectacles and opens a drawer in his desk, fingers through the files within. “You shouldn’t threaten legal action if you cannot take the consequences. I must protect my interests.” He peers over the rim of his spectacles and tuts. “Where does a low creature like you find the gall for such threats, I wonder?”
I prickle at that, but finally hold my tongue. For all the time I’ve spent with Missus Whittock and her set, I can’t scrub away the lilt, the brass. What a lady may get away with, a poor girl cannot. How much I’ve forgotten. How fat I’ve grown on privilege.
“The treatment, since you ask, is more a series of tests.” He withdraws a file and opens it. “I’ve studied many children, Miss Wells. There was a girl, once, who could talk to birds—just called them out of the sky on a whim. Another could detect lies. One boy could hear my very thoughts, fancy that. But none of them hold a candle to your friend. The boy who cannot die, despite my very best attempts.”
My legs tremble beneath my skirts.
When we were ten, Benjamin was mauled by a terrier. I battered it around the head with a brick but the dog held on, shaking Benjamin’s leg viciously. A ratter, obeying its breeding. His mother came out with a glowing poker and burned it till it let go, but not before his cries had called the whole neighborhood down upon us. A hundred pairs of eyes watched as his torn calf knitted itself together right there in the street. It didn't knit neatly enough, though: He was left with a nasty limp, and it’s hard to find a dock-master who’ll give you work when there's fitter pickings to be had.
His mother tried to shrug off the rumors by telling people the bite hadn’t been so bad, that the truth had got twisted in the telling, but by then the story had spread. Who knows how quickly it reached the ear of this doctor, and for how long he watched unemployment slide into desperate poverty, waiting for the right moment to bait his line.
We stare at each other, and I know I’m right. He must see it in my expression, too, because he laughs with delight and throws the open file he’d fished out onto the desk. The notes are minimal. The insert bears my name. Mary Margaret Wells.
“Mister Walchop has a rare gift that could change the world, and they say birds of a feather flock together,” he leers. “So answer me one question, Miss Wells: What is it that you can do?”
I lunge for the door. Terror’s already buckling my knees, but the matron strikes the back of my head with a candlestick for good measure. I fall hard, smashing James’s lamp. Voices rumble thickly above me, then she takes me by the armpits and drags me through the doorway. Lord, she’s strong. We go down a staircase; my heels thud on every step. I’m drooling a bit. I can hear someone crying.
I’m just getting my wind back, just finding the strength to struggle, when she throws me into a dark room and locks the door. I lie on the floor, listening to her receding footsteps and the whimpering from the next room over.
“Hello?” I croak.
The whimpering stops. Rough scratching comes from my left and then the reply, “Who’re you?”
“Mary,” I say.
“I can’t hear nowt. Come closer to the wall. There’s a hole.”
I crawl toward the voice and run my hands over the damp stone. My palms bump against a protruding finger. A chunk of mortar has been chipped away, I realize, leaving a gap between our cells. I link my warm finger into their cold one. “I’m Mary,” I repeat. “Who are you?”
“I’m Martha.”
I squeeze Martha’s finger. It’s missing its nail. “How long have you been here, Martha?”
“I dunno, few weeks.”
Her accent is broad. The same ruse, then: taking chime children from the poor where they won’t be missed. I grind my teeth at the thought.
The darkness thins and I look up: A narrow, barred window above me lets in a little light as the moon slides out from its cover of cloud. I release Martha’s finger and reach up to grasp the bars. It’s been but minutes since James left me; I pray he lingered despite his fear. I suck down the freezing air, each breath as painful as pressing a bruise. “James?” I bellow, fit for a dockhand. “If you’re there, help! Help us!”
“No one ever comes this way,” says Martha.
“I did,” I shoot back.
Ice suddenly blooms on the iron like mold. I pull my hands away before they can stick and look over my shoulder. The ghost from the moor, the one who cried the warning, is in my cell. Her gray eyes are wide with shock. Her hand grasps the doorframe for balance. She must have perished here; tortured, perhaps, by the doctor’s twisted tests. But her clothes are strange. I’ve never seen skirts that fall straight and stop at the shin.
I don’t have time to question it. “Please, help us.”
“Who’re you talking to?” asks Martha.
• • • •
Anne had never hallucinated a person who wasn’t in pain, at the point of death. Sometimes, the morbidity of her own mind was worse than seeing visions altogether. This girl, though, had looked whole and healthy, with a calculating, determined expression that endeared her to Anne immediately.
The porter was curling his fingers around the edge of the front door. Instinctively, Anne darted behind the reception desk and through the staff entrance beneath the staircase. There, in the dark, she hiccupped a laugh and held it in with her hand. Why had she hidden from him like a child? A porter wouldn’t question a guest standing in the hall, nor would he challenge her if she’d decided to explore the parlor. But then there’d been that stare of his when they arrived—too long, too intimate.
Through the gap in the door’s hinge, she took her turn to watch him in the hall. Why did he linger? He might have been waiting to serve another guest, but she fancied he was listening for her, could hear her shaking breath.
He looked directly at her hiding place. Began to make for it. Her breath caught. She ran lightly down the staff corridor, past linen cupboards and offices, hoping she was faster. Eventually she reached a door that opened onto the inner courtyard. Three kitchen boys were huddled by the water pump sharing a cigarette. They glimpsed her as she backtracked, one of them calling out in surprise. She panicked and dashed right, the windows flashing past, until she was forced to turn into the east wing.
Clearly, this part of the ground floor was unused. Someone had wallpapered once, and laid down carpet, but the sprucing ended there. One room still boasted its old gas fittings. Another’s plaster was rotting away.
Anne slowed to a stop and leaned against an empty doorframe to catch her breath, the playground fear that had driven her this far melting away, leaving her feeling more than a little silly. She tugged her sleeves down to cover her wrists and wrapped her arms around her middle. The ceiling creaked, its bare lightbulb swinging gently: a guest moving around their room. On the floor above that, her husband lay sprawled in the bed of number thirty-two.
She’d grown up watching her father tear people’s bodies apart and stitch them back together, but the mind was a different beast—she knew that better than most. The loss of his brothers on the very same battlefield he’d survived had left Merritt with particular scars that no amount of ice baths or shock therapy could heal—God knew, they’d done nothing for her—but those were the only tools she understood. And drink, it seemed, was his.
How was she supposed to stitch her husband back together with nothing but words?
Her soles had left footprints in the dusty carpet. Breadcrumbs leading the way she’d come. As her eyes followed them, even as her foot tensed to take a step, a draft from further down the hall swept
them away. A door at the far end, hung badly, wavered, scraping against its frame. From the sliver of darkness beyond, Anne heard the rasp of saw on bone.
Help! Help us!
The cry sounded so close, so real, that she hesitated. It was easy to ignore the intrusions when no one else reacted to them. When she was alone, there was no way to tell if they were genuine or not. She’d left her mother lying on the kitchen floor for hours with a concussion once, unsure whether she’d imagined the shriek and smack of a head hitting the black-and-white tiles. If someone really was stuck and calling for help and she turned away, just as she’d turned away that day, she’d never forgive herself.
She approached the door, pulled it wide, the brass handle so cold it burnt her palm. A belch of stale, sour air came up from the staircase beyond, chased by a drawn-out sob that might have been the wind keening through some broken window. The steps demanded she take them one at a time, hewn as rough as they were and slick with mold.
Merritt’s matchbox still bulged in her cardigan pocket. She got it out and struck one, peering around a forgotten wine cellar. The racks were empty now, though the vinegary tang of wine gone bad lingered. A leak from some unseen pipe had left a film of water on the floor, so that the walls seemed to extend for infinity in the reflection, and her tiny match-light, her own pale face, stared up at her from below.
There was a door leading further into the basement. She pushed it open and advanced into a corridor, similarly flooded. The match was burning low. She shook out the flame and lit another, edging toward the first room on her right. The rasping returned, louder.
“Hello?” she said meekly.
That word, and then her gasp, echoed back.
A boy was laid out on a table within—ashen except where the skin of his chest had been peeled aside in lapels of red, exposing white ribs.
Anne reeled, dropping the match. The light guttered out, but she could still see him branded on the inside of her eyelids. Her breath wouldn’t come. “It’s not real,” she whispered, and the whispers flew back at her. It’s not real, not real, not real.
The Long List Anthology Volume 6 Page 34
