“This is Nicholas Boden’s cell.”
“Good. Let’s have a look.” Kincaid drew the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door.
As much as Howlett and Collins seemed to believe Boden wasn’t going to return, at least not in one piece, the cell had yet to be repurposed. The bed remained unmade, the thin blanket tossed aside as if up upon its owner’s waking moments earlier. Abigail took a longer exposure with her lumitype before entering the cell.
“Look at these,” Kincaid said.
A series of small stone figurines resembling animals sat on the sill of the reinforced window at the back of the chamber. They looked as though they had been carved by hand, and Abigail wondered if the figures had been given to Boden by a friend or family member or whether the missing patient had carved them himself. It was only when she picked one up and inspected it more closely that she discovered the figures weren’t animals at all but were devious-looking creatures with odd proportions, their faces elongated and their hands tipped with claws. The appearance varied slightly from one to the next, some adorned with pointed ears or elongated limbs. All but one of the figures maintained this monstrous appearance. At the center of the collection, carved in much greater detail, was a figure of a young woman with flowers in her hair. She carried a basket, the kind people often associate with picnics, though instead of a meal the basket contained another of the impish creatures.
“Fascinating,” Abigail said, turning the figure over in her hand. She dropped the woman and one of the imps into her satchel for later examination and left the others in their places on the sill. After checking that the window itself was secure, she made a slow circle about the cell, stopping to absently lift the blanket from the bed and drop it back in place a moment later.
“Still nothing here,” Kincaid said, looking at the compass. “What now?”
“Let’s take measurements of the cell and comparing it to another one. If we’re lucky, we might be dealing with some sort of disruption in spatial continuity.”
“I’m sure that makes sense—to you.”
“I’ve never seen one myself,” she explained, “but I know there are supernatural situations that can make a room smaller or larger on the inside than the outside.”
“Trust me—that can happen if you just spend a couple of years locked in the same room.”
She shook her head with a smile. “I’m not talking about a trick of perception, but a real measurable difference. It’s something I’ve wanted to study,” she said, sidestepping the reference to his time in jail. “Like magic, some supernatural manifestations alter reality or trick our senses. There’s always an explanation, even if we haven’t figured it out yet.”
She removed a length of cloth measuring tape from her satchel. “The adjacent cell on the left should be empty. We’ll measure this room, then measure next door for comparison. We need to be sure to measure the width of each wall at both the floor and the ceiling to rule out variation. Just because something looks right doesn’t mean it is right.”
She put the lumitype on the bed and handed one end of the measuring tape to Kincaid, whom she directed into a corner. Starting near the ceiling, they measured the dimensions of each of the walls. Between each measurement, she jotted down the results in her notebook. It wasn’t until she re-measured each of the walls again near the floor that Abigail discovered the thing tethered to the underside of Boden’s bed.
It was a sort of totem, as far as she could tell. Fashioned from twigs, bluish-green moss, and what might have been human hair, the tiny bundle was shaped to resemble a person with arms and legs outstretched. A dirt-encrusted gold ring was bound within the totem’s center, nestled between the twigs and moss. Abigail tore at the strings of hair that bound the totem to the bedframe and crawled from beneath the bed, holding it up for inspection.
“What in Morrow’s name is that?” Kincaid asked.
She said, “I’m fairly certain Morrow had nothing to do with it.”
• • •
ABIGAIL AND KINCAID SAT in the middle of the ward hallway with patient files and a number of books arrayed around them. The measurements of Boden’s cell and those of the one next to it had proven identical, revealing no hint of spatial disruption. Likewise, images captured on the various spectragraph plates had yielded nothing of interest, no matter which alchemical agents Abigail used to develop them. Disappointingly, as far as their equipment showed, there was nothing at all out of place in Yellow Ward. She tried to look on the positive side—this meant she could reuse her spectragraph plates. She also knew that on a preliminary pass, something didn’t always turn up. The items they had found were promising, at least.
The totem she had discovered beneath his bed was the one she found the most interesting. The moss was of a rare variety not native to the Marck, as far as she knew. She was not a botanist, but she’d read enough during her alchemy studies to believe this plant was exclusive to the Scarsfell Forest of Khador. The twigs had been taken from oak trees, which were nonexistent in the surrounding swampland. These two facts suggested whoever had constructed the totem had brought its components from far away. Abigail wondered why they hadn’t instead used bits of more readily available mangrove or cypress trees.
After sketching its likeness in her notebook as accurately as she could, she carefully disassembled the totem, dividing it by its components. Judging from the color, the strands of hair that bound the totem together were not from one person but several, running the gamut of natural hues. The ring at the totem’s center—her primary motivation for taking the totem apart—was unremarkable save for a simple inscription inside the band with the word always inscribed in Khurzic, the ancient language predating modern Khadoran. This suggested to Abigail the trinket was a wedding band, though according to his file, Nicholas Boden had never been married. The fact that Khurzic only saw continued use by the Old Faith religion in Khador made it even more unlikely the ring had belonged to the patient. Like the rest of the totem, the ring appeared unconnected to the place in which it had been discovered. So, while it was an intriguing clue, she had no idea what to make of it.
Abigail shifted her focus to the files of those patients housed in Yellow Ward. She and Kincaid had split the files and were soon deep in the process of looking through each one for anything that might relate to Boden’s disappearance. In truth, she had little expectation of finding anything there, but it was important to be thorough as well as patient. An intermittent spirit might only visit the ward on some odd schedule; it could manifest at any time. She had placed the compass on the floor between them, but the needle had yet to move.
Each of the patient files told a story of a broken life and a descent into madness and depression. Some files were thinner than others; in these cases, there was often a single tragedy that had forever altered the patient. A traumatic event, such as the loss of a loved one or an act of violence, was often at the root of the change. The patients with more extensive files suffered longer strings of physical and mental abuses that had shaped them into the unhappy and unwell people they had become. Still, there were several files that gave no cause for the patient’s current state. In these, the patient had seemingly spontaneously gone mad, winding up at the institution shortly thereafter.
“Listen to this,” Kincaid said. He pointed to a nearby cell and then tapped the page he had been reading with his index finger as he read aloud. “‘After having disappeared for nearly a week, the subject emerged from a nearby wood and was spotted by a local farmer. According to the witness, the subject’s clothes were in tatters and a great gout of blood had dried upon his chin and the front of his attire. Upon later examination, it was revealed the subject was missing half of his tongue, presumably having chewed it off during his time wandering alone.’”
“Horrible,” Abigail said. She shuddered at the thought. “Some of them have been here for so long, it’s like people forgot about them.”
“Families don’t like being reminded of embarrassing relatives,” Kincaid
said. She considered there might be a story there but did not pry.
She set aside the file she’d been looking at and started on the next. The contents detailed the history of Cuthbert Albright, who had exhumed the body of his late wife and kept her in his home until his neighbors had reported the smell. Abigail leafed through the rest of the brief file, most of it detailing the patient’s time at the institution.
“Why do you cry, my child?” an unfamiliar voice asked. The interruption gave Abigail a jolt, and she turned around to see a woman with long black hair standing at the door of her cell, a serene smile on her face. Though Yellow Ward was filled with all manner of background noise from its inhabitants, the woman’s voice had seemed to cut through the other sounds without effort.
“Who’s crying?” Abigail asked.
“Just wipe your eyes, say your goodbyes, and follow me ever after.” The woman spoke the words in a singsong fashion and gave a little laugh that sounded more sweet than insane. Her smile became more pronounced.
“Nutter,” Kincaid mumbled, going back to the file in front of him.
“Hush with that talk,” Abigail said to him. “You have no right to judge these people. And as I said, they may be helpful to us.”
He ducked his head at the rebuke and gave a small nod.
She then examined the woman more closely. Unlike the other patients, she did not appear disheveled or neglected. Her face was devoid of dirt, and her hair appeared clean and braided near her temples. Her face had color to it, but there was a spark of life in her eyes Abigail has not seen on any of the other faces crowding the cell doors. Aside from the clothes provided to her by the Institution, the woman looked like she could be someone walking down the streets of Ceryl.
“Follow you where?” Abigail asked.
“There is a place where we will go that only the defiers know. They wait for us far, far below, and we shall call them master.” The woman stared at Abigail, unblinking. Though they were likely nonsense, Abigail took out her notebook and jotted down the woman’s words beneath her notes on Boden’s cell and her sketches of the totem. When she looked back, the woman had retreated into her cell, evidently having said all she wished to say.
Abigail sifted through the patient files until she found the one associated with the woman’s cell and began to read. Her name was Karianna Rose, approximate thirty years of age. According to the file, she had been witness to the deaths of her three young children in a house fire and had become unhinged immediately after. She had been in Yellow Ward ever since.
“Who’s crying?” Abigail said. She sighed and closed the file, thinking about how hard it must have been to endure such a loss.
“Abigail,” Kincaid said.
“Hmm?”
“Look.”
Artis was hunched in front of the open door to cell Y322, her gaze focused intently on something inside. The cat issued a low rumble followed by a hiss; she arched her back. Amid the various files spread over the floor, the needle of the compass jumped to life, swinging one way and then the next in frantic arcs.
“Come on,” Abigail said. She was on her feet, dashing toward Y322 with lumitype in hand. Kincaid followed on her heels.
For a moment, Artis’ hair stood on end. She issued an even louder hiss, then dashed through the open door and out of sight into the cell beyond. Hissing turned to yowling, and beneath that came a strange snarl Abigail could not place. The racket intensified, sounding as though some alley brawl between animals had erupted.
Abigail and Kincaid slid to a stop in front of the cell, and the moment they did the tumult of noise ceased entirely. They found the cell exactly as it had been when they had examined it some hours prior—but with no sign of their cat or its adversary.
“Artis?” Abigail called. She took a step forward and brushed aside Kincaid’s hand when he tried to dissuade her. She turned about on the spot, taking in the entirety of the chamber. Artis was gone.
“I don’t understand,” Kincaid said.
He kept talking, but Abigail blocked out his words and focused on the problem. The images she had taken of the room earlier had shown it to be completely normal. So, something in the cell had changed. Something had come from somewhere else and had taken Artis with it. She clamped down on her fear and concern for the animal that was also her friend. She needed reason, not emotion. She didn’t think Artis would attack something she couldn’t handle.
She hefted the lumitype and started the process of imaging the room again. The lumitype clicked and whined in its usual fashion, its light source casting its purple glow over the enclosed space. She worked quickly, swapping the spectragraph plates as fast as her hands would allow until she had taken images of the floor, ceiling, and walls.
“Wait here,” she said to Kincaid and dashed out of the chamber and back down the ward to the equipment.
The development of spectragraph plates was typically time consuming—a series of chemicals were applied to the plates with a moistened swab of cotton in measured amounts. Patience and a steady hand were required to achieve the clearest images; rushing would severely reduce the final image quality. Abigail cast aside all pretense of meticulousness, however, uncorking a vial of translucent red liquid and pouring it over all of the plates at once. Blurred images of the room appeared in black and white, and when none of them presented anything out of the ordinary, she unstopped another vial–the contents of this one a dark green–and repeated the process.
The images darkened slightly under the new agent. She was about to grab a third vial and further add to what was quickly becoming a mess when a change on the plate depicting the floor of Y322 caught her attention. A red stain bloomed at the center of the black-and-white image, further distorting the spectragraph. The color seemed to swirl for a moment under the excess of alchemical agent before fixing in place. Abigail grabbed the spectragraph, gave it a shake to cast off some of the liquid, and put the plate in her pocket. She left the rest of the plates scattered about the floor, their images becoming progressively darker under the mix of red and green liquids.
She frantically looked through the numerous jars and vials stowed with the equipment until she found the one she was looking for. A fine, white powder filled a small jar. The letters scrawled upon the label read Talc + A of UC. She once again dashed down the ward toward Y322. Kincaid was standing in the doorway with a concerned expression on his face.
“Got it,” Abigail said, pushing her way back into the cell and ignoring questions from Kincaid. “Help me with the bed. We need some space.”
On Abigail’s lead, they grabbed hold of the bed and turned it on its side against the wall, clearing the center of the chamber.
“Slow down,” Kincaid said. “What is it we’re doing?”
“There’s something here that wasn’t here before. We aren’t dealing with a haunting. Whatever this is comes and goes as it pleases. In fact, I don’t think we’re dealing with a ghost at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“A spirit could have left by simply passing through the walls. They’re incorporeal. Artis might have still gotten anxious and confronted a ghost, but she couldn’t have hurt it. Not usually. The fight we heard sounded very mutual. If it was a spirit—”
“Artis wouldn’t have been able to lay a paw on it.”
“Precisely. Now the question is, if it isn’t a spirit, what is it?” Abigail asked. “And more important, how did it get in?”
“And whatever’s in that jar is going to tell us?”
“Possibly,” Abigail said. “I developed the spectragraphs, and the one I took of the floor contained traces of an anomaly. Between the images and the totem, I have some theories about what we might be dealing with.”
She unscrewed the lid from the jar in her hands and began to shake out a dusting of the powder onto the floor, moving the jar from left to right to achieve complete coverage. Clouds of the powder drifted lazily in the air and coated her hands with a chalky white dusting.
“It should be here,” she said under her breath. “It has to be here.”
Kincaid stood in the corner, arms crossed, his face unreadable. He had seen some incredible things in his short time working for the Strangelight Workshop, but he had every reason to find the current situation unnerving. In truth, Abigail, too, felt more than a tinge of worry. She prided herself on being knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects and, by extension, being prepared for an equally wide range of scenarios in the field, but she still felt vulnerable without the support of a full team.
If not for the urgency prompted by the concern that Nicholas Boden’s life might be in peril, she never would have proceeded alone. She was technically going against Workshop protocol, one established for good reasons. The supernatural was not to be treated lightly, and preliminary investigators were supposed to err on the side of caution. But additional support would never have arrived in time to give Boden a chance, if what Howlett had told her about the other disappearances was true.
With the jar empty, Abigail stood back and watched as the powder settled over the floor in an even layer. When there was no immediate change, she removed the spectragraph plate from her pocket and looked at the red splotch that dominated the image.
“What is that stuff?” Kincaid asked.
“A mixture of talcum powder and distilled ectoplasm. Standard for investigations.”
“If you say so. Still, no offense, Professor,” Kincaid said, looking at the powder-laden floor, “but your theory doesn’t seemed to have panned out.”
“A minute more,” Abigail said. She held up a hand for Kincaid to be silent. “There!”
Several thin lines of powder seemed to disappear, as though slipping through some unseen crack in the floor. The lines spread, slowly at first and then faster. Lines intersected to form corners, and a moment later Abigail and Kincaid were staring at a perfect square formed by the lines of the disappearing powder.
“I knew it!” Abigail exclaimed. ‘I just knew it.”
“I’m guessing I’ve missed something important here,” Kincaid said.
Wicked Ways: An Iron Kingdoms Chronicles Anthology Page 10
