Unholy Fire

by Robert J. Mrazek

  “That pathetic little man went and did it,” she said, her voice barely audible. “He actually did it.”

  I heard a noise behind me, and turned to see two men in white uniforms carrying a wooden stretcher down the backstairs. Underneath a blood-stained sheet, a human figure was strapped to the frame.

  “He waited until she was asleep and cut her throat,” said Mrs. Warden.

  I held the front door open for them as they took her outside and put her body in the back of a covered lorry. Watching her go, Mr. Massey turned to the policeman next to him and smiled.

  “She never should have told me she was leaving me, you see,” he said in the same insufferable tone that he employed while lecturing us at the dinner table. “What else could I do?”

  Captain Spellman was inconsolable when he returned from his staff duties at the War Office to discover what Mr. Massey had done. The following day he resigned his commission and returned home to Boston. It was a sign of the times that within an hour of their departure, a line of people was waiting outside the front door to rent their rooms.

  I do not know why Adele’s death seemed more important to me than all the men whose names I read each morning on the Antietam death list. Perhaps it was because she had been so kind to me on that first night. Whatever the reason, my anger at the waste of it was only dissipated by greater draughts of laudanum.

  It was a saturday night in early November, and I had just returned to the small livery stable behind Mrs. Warden’s house after buying another week’s supply from Spangler, the crooked army quartermaster.

  The faint light of a street lamp leaked through the window above my head as I knelt down on the dirt floor and began concealing the bottles inside the mound of hay bales at the rear of the feed shed.

  “‘What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,’” came a disembodied voice from the shadows. I stared into the darkness but saw nothing. From inside Mrs. Warden’s, I could hear the sound of the piano in the front parlor, accompanied by the lilting tones of a woman singing, “Barbara Allen.”

  “Affliction is enamour’d of thy parts,’” said the familiar baritone, “‘and thou art wedded to calamity.’”

  The titanic form of Val Burdette separated itself from the massive pegged beam that held up the stable roof and came slowly toward me.

  “This will not do, Kit,” he said. “It is time.”

  “Time for what,” I replied, already knowing the import of his words.

  “It is time to deal with it. Opium will rot your brain.”

  “It is none of your affair,” I said hotly.

  “Pour it out,” he said, “all four bottles.… I’ve already taken care of the one in your room.”

  The very thought of destroying the new supply seemed like a sacrilege. At that moment I would have sooner cut off my hand, for I was already feeling the first desperate urges. As usual, he seemed to be reading my thoughts.

  “When did you have your last draught?”

  “Around six,” I said, truthfully.

  “Well, I cannot do this for you,” he said. “You must take the first step. After that, I promise to help.”

  “How can you help?” I asked derisively.

  “I’ve had some experience in these matters,” he said.

  I was still kneeling on the dirt floor with the open rucksack in front of me.

  “Start with the first bottle,” he said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “That will still leave you three.”

  Looking to buy time, I picked up one of the brown bottles from the bag and removed the cork. As its earthy fragrance rose toward me, it was all I could do not to tip it to my mouth.

  “Pour it out,” he demanded harshly, and I did, watching the laudanum soak into the loose hay at my feet.

  “Now the next one,” he said, when the bottle was empty.

  As I glared up at him with undisguised loathing, an idea suddenly struck me, brilliant in its simplicity. I would accede to his demands, but as soon as he was gone, I would head right back to Spangler’s.

  I quickly poured the second and third bottles into the hay, grinning in the darkness at the thought of what would happen when Mrs. Warden’s cow ate the opium-laced fodder. As the remains of the last bottle gurgled out of the stem, I again looked up at him.

  “Satisfied?” I asked.

  There was a look of amusement on his ugly face.

  “I am,” he responded. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” I blurted.

  “You don’t think I’ve done this just so you can go back to Spangler, do you?”

  I was stunned that he knew him by name.

  “Anyway, your conniving quartermaster is no longer in business,” he said, pulling out his watch. “By now he is behind bars at the Capitol Prison.”

  “I’m starting to feel sick,” I said, slowly standing up.

  “You will feel far sicker in another hour,” he responded. “In the meantime we must reach our destination.”

  He led me outside. A coach was waiting in the alley. We were no sooner inside than the driver lashed the horses and we were off.

  A dense fog lay close against the city, and the street lamps were but smudges of pale yellow against the rimy night. The gloomy weather only made me more jaded at the thought of what awaited me when we reached our unknown destination.

  As we turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue, the orange brilliance of the shop windows cut through the murk, and I could see people moving along the sidewalk, their spectral shapes outlined against the light. Then the coach was climbing the steep grade that led up Capitol Hill. I began to hear a series of clanking sounds, as if men were pounding massive bells with a dull gong. Cloaked by the fog, the noise would stop for a moment and then resume with another series of sharp retorts.

  A horse car passed us on its way down the hill. In the hazy gleam of its interior lamps, I saw a full cargo of boisterous young soldiers, their faces wreathed in smiles. I remembered feeling that same innocent excitement when our regiment had arrived at the Capitol Building during the first summer of the war.

  The fog thinned a bit as we reached the brow of the hill, and the riddle of the metallic noises was solved. Lit up in the glow of hundreds of firepots, I could see men scrambling like monkeys across the unfinished dome of the Capitol. High above us, workmen were pounding bolts into the iron framework on which the outer skin of the dome was being constructed. The stanchions looked like the ribs of some gigantic beast, as the Capitol Building disappeared into the mist.

  We rode on for another mile or more along an unlit thoroughfare lined with wood-framed row houses. Then we were out of the city and on a deserted country lane. The driver finally reined the horses to a halt in front of a small brick farmhouse. A faint light came from behind the shuttered windows.

  Val stepped down from the coach without a word, waiting for me to follow him before he approached the front door. I turned to see the carriage disappearing in the direction we had come.

  Someone was obviously expecting us. As Val raised his hand to the iron knocker, it swung open. A short, stocky man filled the doorway, an oil lamp in his right hand. His small head was covered by a grotesque red wig.

  “I’m ready for you, Colonel,” he said, stepping back to let us pass.

  I saw that the man’s right foot was missing. In its place was an iron bar connected to a carved block of wood. We headed down a set of stairs that led below ground. At the foot of the stairs, we arrived at a heavy oak door that was anchored with iron straps to the mortared stone foundation wall.

  Val opened it and then waited for me to go through before closing the door behind him. The brick-walled chamber smelled of wood smoke and fermenting apples. It was about twelve feet square, with a floor of loose cobblestones. There were no windows.

  A log fire burned brightly in a grate that was set into the left wall. Two chairs sat in front of the hearth and an iron bed along the right wall. In the center of the room was a round, drop-leaf walnut table,
from which two guttering candles flickered in the dank air.

  “I would advise you to lie down and try to build up your strength for the contest ahead,” said Val, removing a book from his coat pocket and sitting down in one of the chairs next to the fire.

  I walked over to the bed. It was covered with a thin, straw-filled mattress and a single pillow. Two woolen blankets were rolled up at the foot. I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Thus began the longest night I have spent on this earth.

  Less than an hour later, the perspiration was pouring from my body and soaking the bedclothes. Val poured a large glass of water from a pitcher on the table and brought it over to me.

  “You are becoming dehydrated,” he said, with almost clinical indifference. “Drink as much water as you can.”

  The tremors began in my hands a few minutes later.

  “The first twenty-four hours will be the worst,” said Val, as my body began to shudder uncontrollably. A white stabbing pain exploded behind my eyes, followed by a headache so intense that I passed out. Sometime later I awoke to find that the shaking had subsided.

  “You should try to sleep,” he said from the chair as I waited for the next round of tremors.

  They came on slowly, finally taking hold of my body until a racking pain swept back and forth through all my muscles and joints. Then they would ebb away again, leaving me spent on the mattress. Each new wave was more painful than the last. Through it all, Val sat calmly reading his book.

  I realized how much I hated him.

  “Get out … get the hell out!” I cawed, my voice just a hoarse whisper.

  He didn’t look up from his book.

  A spasm of nausea came on with no warning, and my stomach began heaving up an odiferous green fluid. By the time Val had moved to put a pan under my chin, much of it had spewed through my nose and mouth to soak the bedclothes. The uncontrollable retching continued unabated until I passed out again, desperately trying to take air into my tortured lungs.

  I dreamed then that I was lying in the dead house at the hospital at Glen Echo, surrounded by stacks of maimed and bloated corpses. It was terribly cold, but the frigid air did nothing to diminish the stink of effluvium that hung over me. Johnny Harpswell appeared at my side, grinning down at me out of his ruined face. Colonel Baker, his toga-clad body riddled with bullet wounds, was standing next to him, complaining in a querulous voice about the lack of support we had given him during the battle.

  I briefly came back into the world to find something weighing me down with the force of an apple press. It was Val, holding my shaking body in a rough embrace. Although he had covered me with blankets, I was shivering from a cold that I had never experienced before. All the warmth in my body seemed to be escaping through the skin. When the spasms stopped, he helped me to drink a mug of water. It came right back up with more putrid bile. I drifted away again.

  When I next awoke, it was very dark. For a moment I thought I was looking across the sea at a distant ship’s lamp. Then I realized that my eyelashes were crusted over with a gluelike film. I used my filthy knuckles to wipe them clear. In the faint glimmer from the coals in the grate, I could see Val’s massive form, now slumped in the chair.

  Time passed. I have no idea how long I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness. At some point Val covered me with still another blanket. The next time I came back to life, it was to the stillness of an empty room. The fire in the grate had burned down to embers. Val was no longer there. My body was covered with sweat. I threw off the blankets.

  The craving for laudanum was still as elemental to me as thirst or starvation. We must escape, my brain whispered to me. I forced myself to sit up, dropping my legs to the floor one at a time. Once we are free of this house, the voice murmured inside me, we will find a Samaritan to take us to a hospital. There we will find what we need, the voice assured me.

  Trying to stand up, I swayed back and forth, finally grasping at the corner post of the bed to steady myself. I made it as far as the chair where Val had been sitting and rested a minute. The next leg of the journey took me to the door.

  It was locked from the outside. In a futile rage, I feebly hammered against it. A minute or two later, a key began moving in the lock. The door swung open, revealing the crippled man. He had left his red wig upstairs. The crown of his head bore witness to a horrible scalping wound.

  “Must leave now,” I said.

  “You need to go back to your bed,” he said, taking my arm and propelling me across the room like a helpless invalid. I sagged down on the bed, drained of energy, and began shivering again.

  “Must have laudanum,” I gasped, as he covered me again with the blankets. “I will pay you.”

  Ignoring my plea, he went instead to the pitcher and bowl, wetting a rag and bathing my face with it. He built up the fire and left the room. I finally slept again. The next time I awoke it was to find Val back in his chair, reading. In the firelight his vast hairy head looked like a mass of knotted gray thongs. He glanced up and saw me watching him.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  He removed his watch from his waistcoat.

  “About three,” he said.

  I had lost track of whether it was night or day.

  “In the morning,” he said, sensing my confusion.

  My mouth was very dry, and I had trouble swallowing. Val went to the table and poured me another glass of water from the pitcher. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he raised my head and put the glass to my lips. It was very cold. I had never tasted anything so good. When I finished it, he poured me another. I finished that one, too.

  “Let’s see if it stays down this time,” he said, returning to his chair.

  It did.

  “Well done,” he said a few minutes later, as if I was becoming a prize pupil. “It should become easier now.”

  “How do you know so much about all this?” I asked.

  He paused for a time, as if undecided on whether to tell me.

  “Two reasons,” he said finally. “The first is that I once studied medicine. My father was a doctor, and … very strong willed. He expected me to follow in his path.”

  It was hard for me to imagine someone more strong willed than Val.

  “My father died when I was in my last year of medical college,” he went on. “I saw no reason to pursue it further. The law was always my true passion.”

  “And the second reason?”

  He stared back at me for several seconds again before he spoke.

  “Because I was like you,” he said.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “I’ve never even seen you drink a glass of wine.”

  “How do you think I got this?” he said, pointing to his off-kilter nose. “I had my demons, and they led me to where you are now.”

  “What kind of demons?” I asked, still skeptical.

  He stared into the fire.

  “There was a time when I was known in the Springfield, Illinois, courts as the mastodon,” he said, with a taut smile. “Aside from obvious physical similarities, it was principally because I regularly enjoyed trampling my opponents in the courtroom. I never let up. My favorite targets were the railroads. Very difficult adversaries … several of them were represented by the best lawyer I ever met.”

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Abraham Lincoln.”

  “He represented the railroad interests?”

  “Very ably. It made him one of the wealthiest lawyers in Springfield. And he needed every penny to pay the bills Mary ran up each month.”

  “Who won?”

  “Who won what?”

  “The cases in which you were adversaries,” I said.

  “Who do you think?”

  I was still pondering the question, when he said, “Abe is the one who started calling me ‘the mastodon.’”

  I smiled at the thought of it.

  “And then?”

  “And then I took an important case in the Colo
rado Territory representing several Indian tribes. The federal government had appropriated their land on behalf of the Western Pacific Railroad Company. It was typical of those times. No compensation. I was there for several months before the case was settled.”

  Standing up, he walked over to the fireplace and added another log to the grate. When he turned toward me again, his face was veiled in darkness.

  “It was two weeks before Christmas, and I was preparing to return home,” he said. “A wire arrived from my brother stating that my wife was very ill. Of course, I left immediately.”

  I waited for the words I already sensed were coming.

  “She died the day before I arrived.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing that words could give no comfort.

  He nodded and said, “She had succumbed to scarlet fever.… Highly contagious, as you probably know. We had three children … two girls and a boy. They contracted it as well.”

  The only sound in the room came from the flames licking the new log.

  “I was unable to do anything to ease their suffering. It took them all.”

  The enormity of his loss took my breath away.

  “The rest is predictable, I suppose.… Whiskey was the easiest path to oblivion. I went on a bat that lasted two years. I stayed drunk … mostly fighting drunk.… I tried many times to die.”

  “Will the craving ever go away?”

  He shook his head and said, “If you are like me, you will be cursed to spend part of every day thinking about the next draught … It is not an easy road.”

  “Have you ever lost control of it?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he replied.

  I drifted away again. When I came back, he was standing by the bed with a steaming mug in his hand.

  “Do you think you could keep down some broth?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I tried gripping the mug with both hands, but was wracked by another bout of shaking, and he had to feed me like a child, one spoonful at a time. The broth remained in my stomach less than five minutes before it was gushing into the tin wash pan.