I longed to reach out to her. To take her hand and tell her that I did understand. But Francine didn’t seem like the kind of girl who appreciated being touched. Besides, she was unpredictable. She might just decide to grab my hand and spin me around again. Instead, I replied:
“It’s funny, isn’t it? I have strange dreams—one might say they’re a world of madness. But they’re not what scare me so. It’s the hellacious realm that exists just outside.” I raised my hands to indicate the room, the asylum. “It’s full of frantic and cowardly people, more willing to run each other over than contemplate a new idea, much less help a soul in need. I don’t know about you, but more often than not, my imaginary world is peaceful, calm. Idyllic.”
The corners of Francine’s mouth lifted into a smile. “If only these fools could see your world. Then they’d be running towards it, not away, eh? But they never will.” Her smile faded, and she sighed. “In reality, they’re the ones who are trapped, not us. Trapped under a siren-spell of madness, unable to escape the tiny world they’ve bricked themselves up in.” She looked at her dirty hands and nails, turning them over and over. “Stupid people.”
Suddenly, we heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall.
“She’s here!” Francine’s eyes went wide. She grabbed my hands, pulling me up and spinning me towards the door. As she shoved me through it, she said, “You have to get out before she sees you in my company!”
“But what about you?” I pressed.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s more important that you fulfill your mission.”
“What mission?”
“Go!” she hissed, and pushed me so hard it left a bruise on my shoulder that I only found the next day. I closed the door to Francine’s room just in time to see Nurse Bonnie walking towards me, muttering to herself.
“Well, that wasn’t a boatload of giggles, I can tell you.” She came briskly down the hall, wiping her palms together. “Thank heavens they got that there patient sedated. She won’t be causin’ no more trouble till she wakes up, if she wakes up.” She pressed her damp palms against her uniform in a final effort to clean them, then looked up and saw me.
“You! There you are. Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t. You was over there.” She pointed to Rose and Laura’s door. “Now you’s over there.” She pointed to Francine’s door.
I had to think quickly. “You told me to stand over here. Don’t you remember?”
“No, I don’t remember tellin’ you to stand—”
“You said I should look in them—I meant, these—rooms and see what happens to patients who don’t do as they’re told.”
“I . . . I did?” Nurse Bonnie looked confused.
“That’s what I heard. Good thing, too. One peek in those windows . . .” I shuddered. “I won’t be misbehaving if that’s what happens to them that do. I mean, those who do.”
“I did tell you to stand there, didn’t I? Clever of me, wasn’t it?” She straightened her skirt. “Right, then. Time for us to run along. Quick-quick, now!”
Bloody hell, I thought. My one chance to hide and I completely fumbled it. As Nurse Bonnie brusquely escorted me to the garret, I tried to think of how to get another opportunity to be alone with the Book. I needed more undisturbed time to translate page 136. Even with my reduced need for sleep, which let me translate into the midnight hours, it was slow going. Or perhaps I could gain another audience with Francine. She seemed to know more about the Event than she let on. Maybe she knew about the creature and the goddess, too.
But I was never to see Francine again.
Chapter 10
Laura was going downhill fast.
She was getting shocked more and more often, and had started forgetting things. Every time I saw her, her eyes looked a lighter shade of blue than I remembered. She’d also taken to mouthing words to herself when she thought Rose and I weren’t looking. I wondered if she was beginning to see and hear things the way Francine did.
“I can’t give the answers fast enough,” she whispered when we asked after her. “Or I think they’re the right answers, the ones he wants to hear. But it turns out they’re not. I don’t know what to do anymore.” Then she’d wring her hands back and forth so hard I thought they’d fly off.
Rose’s predicament was also rapidly turning sour. Although she managed to get out of additional shock treatments, she said it was because Dr. Catron wanted to try something different with her.
“ ‘Different’?” I asked one day while we were in the solarium. Evening socialization here had dwindled from fifteen minutes to hardly more than five. “Different as in better or worse?”
“I don’t know.” As Rose pushed the hair off her forehead, I could see her hands were shaking. Whether it was from nerves or nicotine cravings, I couldn’t tell. “Better for him, maybe. I don’t know how it could mean better for me. They caught me smoking a few times.”
“Rose!” I gasped.
“I know, I know.” She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled at her curls. “But I couldn’t help it. Now, Catron says I’m one of his ‘difficult cases.’ He says he’ll have to accelerate treatment, whatever that means.”
“Just try not to get into any more trouble,” I begged. “Laura and I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. Right, Laura?” But Laura was gazing out the barred window, shaking her head and mumbling. Rose and I exchanged a glance, then looked away from one another and Laura.
Absorbed in their own troubles, my friends had completely stopped asking about my reanimation abilities. It was just another sign of how bad things were getting at Silver Hill. I desperately wished I had more than a parlor trick to help them. And the other patients were disappearing at a faster rate than ever. Catron wasn’t even bothering to hide the fact that the remaining ones were restrained far more than necessary. We frequently passed girls in the hall strapped to chairs and beds. I didn’t get too close a look, but I could’ve sworn one had been tied down so long the skin of her wrists was growing around the leather straps.
My visits to Rose and Laura in their room were becoming less and less frequent as well. And when we were together, we often heard screams and pleadings coming from down dark corridors. Once, we even heard something like chains being dragged over stone floors.
“Ooo, that gives me the shivers!” said Rose, remarking on the chain noises. She rubbed her arms and huddled close to Laura, who was sitting on one of the beds, knees drawn to her chest. I felt a chill run through me as well, as if I’d been showered with ice.
“It’s just like in a ghost story,” I agreed.
“But not like your ghost story, Seluna,” Laura whispered. She’d stopped mumbling for a few moments, and was almost like her old self. “This is like the bad ones. Where people end up dying.”
“In order for there to be ghosts, Laura, people pretty much have to die,” Rose said.
But that doesn’t mean we have to die, I wanted to say.
We didn’t actually know what was happening to the girls who disappeared. Some came back after a while, but much altered. Several shrieked when anyone tried to touch them. A few were catatonic, or muttered to themselves like Laura. Others were unable to dress or feed themselves, like Thomasina. Clearly, Catron was torturing these girls to find the creature, or the goddess he so desperately wanted.
Could they possibly be the same person? No, Catron said he was looking for the creature in order to find the goddess. They must be two separate things. Whenever I thought about it, I had to rub my temples. All these circling thoughts were giving me migraines.
I wrestled back and forth with whether or not to tell Rose and Laura about my meeting with Francine. In the end, I decided against it. I didn’t want to scare them. It might make them worry they were the next ones headed for the reserved rooms. Besides, explaining Francine would mean trying to explain more about the Event and the goddess’s mission. I wasn’t sure I understood either o
f them myself.
Then there was the part where Francine mentioned my mission. Was it in line with the goddess’s, or opposed? There was also the possibility—and I hated to think it—that these were just Francine’s mad ramblings. But they were too similar to what Catron and Dym had said. There had to be a connection. If only I could figure out what it was!
In a macabre case of silver lining, Catron’s treatment of the other girls gave me additional time alone. Whatever he was doing took more and more staff to accomplish, so there were fewer people to supervise us. After being locked in the garret far too early for several nights, I’d finally finished translating page 136.
As I’d originally surmised, it was a sleep spell. An odd thing for Dym to suggest, unless he had just picked page 136 randomly. I had my doubts about that, but it hardly mattered now. The spell purported to put the desired object to sleep for a good while. But that was where it got vague. It didn’t mention hours, days, or any specific time frame for how long the spell lasted. It just said “as long as necessary.” Maybe the intent of the spell’s caster determined the length, which was fine with me. If it were within my power, I’d put the entire staff of Silver Hill to sleep for the rest of their lives.
But that seemed unlikely: one of the spell’s drawbacks was that it could only be performed on one person at a time. One had to wait till the spell finished with the first person before moving on to a second. Although my main focus was Catron, it would have been nice to knock out his workers, too. But hopefully, with their leader absent, Nurse Cutter and the rest would be far less of a threat. Confusion and chaos were sure to result from his sudden, prolonged unconsciousness. It would be the perfect opportunity to try and get to the telegraph machine again. Then I could contact Laura’s aunt Mae, or whoever else might be willing to get us out of here.
The magic was relatively simple to perform. It didn’t require complicated herbs or tools; just chanting. I could do that when I was alone in my room. But I still needed something personal from the object of the spell.
That was going to be the hard part. Where was I going to get something personal of Catron’s? I certainly wouldn’t be able to get into his office again. His private sleeping quarters were out of the question. I couldn’t imagine being able to steal something off his person; I wasn’t a skilled pickpocket.
The next day, I tried to think of objects I could pinch easily. The girls and I were finishing our daily walk around the main entrance. We’d been exercised more than usual, probably because staff members were increasingly busy with whatever Dr. Catron had them doing. There couldn’t be more than ten girls here now, with no new admissions for over a week. And as surely as the number of patients was dwindling, the staff seemed to be as well.
“I hear it’s because Dr. Catron is sending them away,” Rose whispered while we waited to be taken to afternoon lessons. We stood single file, all of us so tired and perspiring we looked like wilted flowers. “Doesn’t want too many employees around in case they cause that Event. He’s growing more suspicious and paranoid by the day.”
“The only person he seems to trust anymore is Nurse Cutter,” Laura said, looking at Rose and me. Then she abruptly stared off into the distance, and kept staring.
“Speak of the devil,” I muttered. Cutter was coming down the hall, wheeling a cart, when she stopped to talk to the orderly who’d been leading our exercises. She turned her back on the cart and walked a few feet over to the orderly. On the edge of the cart, next to a set of surgical supplies, was a clipboard with a form on it. At the very bottom was Catron’s signature.
His signature.
What could be more personal than someone writing their name? That was it! That was what I could use for the sleep spell. But how was I going to get it?
Cutter and the orderly were still talking. Cutter looked more harrowed than usual. Her uniform was wrinkled, her complexion like a bedsheet that had faded in the sun. And whatever she was telling the orderly, he didn’t appear to like it. I inched myself out of the line, nearer to the cart.
“Seluna, what are you doing?” Rose hissed. She tried to grab my sleeve, but I pulled away. Keeping my eyes on Cutter, I moved sideways towards my target.
When I reached the cart, I glanced down at the form. It was mundane, but unnerving. An order for scalpels, with an angry note at the bottom from Catron. Something to do with the previous ones wearing out too quickly, or not being sharp enough.
What’s he doing with that many scalpels in the first place?
It was a disconcerting question, but I didn’t have time to speculate. I had to get my hands on that signature. I looked up; the conversation between Cutter and the orderly was more animated than ever. But they were deliberately keeping their voices low, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Finally, Cutter looked at the orderly and pointed towards the front door. The orderly threw up his hands and stomped off towards the staff quarters, presumably to collect his things.
“Did he just get sacked?” I heard Rose whisper to Laura. But Laura was still staring at things unseen, and did not answer. Cutter was coming back for the cart. At the last second, I managed to tear off the part of the form with Catron’s name on it.
What could I do with the signature? I didn’t have any pockets. I folded the paper into the smallest piece I could manage and slipped it between my fingers just before Cutter spotted me.
“Oy! What’re you doin’ there?” she barked. “You’d better not be messin’ around with Dr. Catron’s supplies. Let’s see them ’ands.”
I put both my hands out, palms up.
“Other side now,” Cutter snapped.
I flipped my hands over. A tiny piece of the white form was sticking up between my fingers. I looked Cutter in the eye and let out a loud cough to distract her while I wriggled the paper back down. She wrinkled her nose and pulled her face back, probably thinking my cough was contagious. Then she glared at me for a few seconds.
“Back in line where you belong! If there’s so much as a single thing missin’ from them supplies, I’ll ’ave your ’ead!” Cutter peered over the cart and silently mouthed the number and types of items. Satisfied that everything was accounted for, she pushed me towards the line of girls. “You all come with me, now, you ’ear?” She never even looked at the form and its lack of signature.
“But what about that man who was here before?” asked one girl.
“Yeah, Mr. Mavis, wasn’t it?” called another. “He was leading our exercises.”
“Don’t you worry about Mr. Mavis.” Cutter put her hands on the cart and began wheeling it down the hall again, indicating we should follow. “I told ’im ’is services was no longer necessary. You won’t be seein’ ’im from now on.” The girls started whispering among themselves, but Cutter silenced them with a look.
“Seluna, what were you thinking?” Rose gave me a hard jab with her finger as we trailed after Cutter. “You keep telling me to stay out of trouble. What have you got there in your hand?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to see what was on the cart, that’s all.”
“Liar. I saw you take something off.”
Blast. I really hated to do this. But I couldn’t risk having Rose or anyone else know what I was up to. It might get them hurt.
“Are you sure, Rose?” I asked gently. “You know Laura’s been a bit . . . confused lately as well.” I nodded towards Laura, who was staring at a piece of her hair as if she’d never seen it before. “Maybe you just thought you saw me take something.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Rose huffed. “I know I saw you tear something off that clipboard.” She swallowed hard. “At least, I thought I did . . .”
I gave her shoulder a rub. “It’s okay, Rose. I understand.” Gods, I’m a terrible person. Rose just held her hand to her head and looked alarmed. But my deception worked, because Rose didn’t say anything more about the scrap of paper. Perhaps I could apologize and tell her the truth later, when the spell worked. When it helped all of us get out
of here.
That night, I performed the ritual that would put Catron to sleep. I couldn’t help but smile as I chanted his name and waved my candle over and over the signature. With Catron incapacitated, this whole nightmare might soon be over. For all of us.
I was positively glowing the next morning when Nurse Cutter came to collect me from the garret. I thought she might say something about Dr. Catron sleeping in, or being “taken ill.” But she didn’t.
No doubt she doesn’t want it getting out that something’s amiss, I thought as I nearly skipped down the stairs. But it’s only a matter of time till they realize they can’t rouse him. I couldn’t wait to see what happened then.
What few staff members were left didn’t seem concerned about Catron’s well-being during exercise, lessons, or any other activities we did that day. Or if they were concerned, they didn’t mention it. They did seem worried about who would be fired next, or what they would do once their employment at Silver Hill ended.
“I’m thinkin’ of goin’ to work at that new ’ospital in Ballifor,” I heard one nurse say. “Almost as much pay, and they give you two days off a week!”
It wasn’t till nearly the end of the day that I found out exactly how Catron was doing. We were all being led back to our rooms; at this point, private socialization had been completely canceled. I said good-bye to Rose and Laura at their door. Looking back, I wish I’d lingered a while longer. But instead, I was accompanied by a nurse towards the hall that led to the garret. That was when I nearly walked straight into Dr. Catron.
What? How can Catron still be awake? He was supposed to be unconscious. I couldn’t stop staring, my jaw slack. The spell should have worked right away. I didn’t remember reading anything about a delay in the magic.
His hair was a bit disheveled, as if he hadn’t combed it that morning. Like Cutter’s uniform yesterday, his once impeccable clothing hadn’t seen an iron recently. His eyes had dark shadows under them, as if he hadn’t slept.
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