Iron and Blood

by Gail Z. Martin

  Adam nodded. “Believe me, they already have. But it’s hard to get more than a few shards at a time. I had to pull some strings to get the bits I have—and I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it to anyone.” He glanced around at the nearly empty lab. “We’ve had enough problems as it is.”

  “Oh?”

  Adam hurried to fill another cup of coffee, drank half of it on the way back, and plunked down in his seat again. “A couple of shipments have gone missing, a few of them government projects. The Department of Supernatural Investigations is severely annoyed, to say the least.”

  “Seriously? The Department?” Rick said, shaking his head. “Those guys just don’t give up. They’ve been trying to bring Brand and Desmet into their fold for years, get us to use our connections to spy for them. I don’t trust them.”

  Adam nodded. “I like some of their people more than others, but I don’t trust the Department itself farther than I can throw it. On the other hand, they’re always asking me to build them strange stuff, and they pay well.” He grinned. “Almost as strange as the stuff I build for you.”

  “Speaking of which,” Rick said, “I’ve got a couple more things on my wish list and I’m hoping you can make them happen.”

  “Try me.”

  “All right. How about something that isn’t much bigger than a shotgun, but that shoots something that doesn’t create a spark? I don’t know, maybe some kind of energy that pushes things away instead of shooting a hole in them. Jake and I have been in a couple of tight spots where we didn’t want to shoot the place up or cause a fire, but we needed to be able to stop thugs at a distance.”

  Adam peered at Rick over his glasses. “You and Jake have an odd way of doing business.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Adam pondered for a few moments, staring into space. “All right,” he said. “I think I can come up with something. What else?”

  “Could you come up with a pair of goggles that would help us see better in the dark? Sometimes, it would be handy not to need a light.”

  Adam looked thoughtful, drumming his fingers on the worktable as he thought. “Maybe. That’s a little harder. On the bright side, I’ve been working on something similar for a while. Let me work on it some more, and see what I can come up with.”

  “Just let me know if you need money for materials,” Rick said. “Beyond the regular budget.”

  “Will do.”

  Rick paused as something Adam had said earlier came back to him. “What you said about the shipment going missing—do you know where in the process the boxes went astray? I’m trying to track down some missing crates of our own. Now I wonder if there isn’t something bigger going on.”

  Adam shrugged. “They left here just fine, on the right wagons. I saw to it myself,” he said. “And our wagon men delivered the crates fine and dandy to the railway station. But DSI never got them. And no one on the train says they saw anything amiss.”

  “Let me know if you find out anything,” Rick said. He patted his jacket pocket. “My father put together a list of shipments of ours that we’re trying to chase down, to see if we can figure out what the people who killed Jake’s dad were after when they broke into the warehouse.”

  “Your father doing all right?” Adam asked.

  Rick sighed. “Yes—and no. Thomas was a lifelong friend as well as a business partner. Father’s taking it pretty hard. Especially since someone keeps trying to kill the rest of us, and right now, we don’t know why.” He stood up. “Actually, I’ve got to go see him next. He’s moved into another house with plenty of Miska’s guards until all this blows over. But I’m helping him go through business records to see if we can figure out what was so important that someone would kill Thomas over it.”

  Adam stood as well. “Good luck. And let me know if you need to borrow some equipment.”

  Rick chuckled. “That’s a dangerous offer—you know I’ll take you up on it.”

  The whirr of the elevator interrupted them. Adam glanced over his shoulder in alarm. “Damn. That’s probably Thwaites. You’d better get out of here. I think it best for you to stay out of his sight.”

  “How?”

  “This way,” Adam said. He led Rick through a pair of doors at the rear of the lab, down a wide corridor and to a service elevator.

  “You don’t need a key to open the door upstairs from this side,” Adam said. “It’s the freight entrance. I’ll lock up after Thwaites leaves. Just use the lever to start and stop, and try not to jam it. It gets temperamental sometimes.”

  “Great,” Rick muttered under his breath.

  “Go!” Adam said, and in the distance, Rick could hear a man calling for the inventor. Adam pushed Rick into the elevator, reached in and shoved the lever down, and got his arm back before the cage doors shut. Before Rick could say a word, Adam was sprinting back toward the lab, his white coattails flapping as he ran.

  “YOU SURE YOU want to go out there, bub?” The man gave Drostan Fletcher a sidelong look. “The place is full of nutters, you know.”

  “Going to visit an unfortunate acquaintance,” Drostan lied, with a half-smile he hoped was convincing.

  The wagon driver shook his head. “I’ll take your coin to drive you there, but I don’t want nothing to do with that place myself. Folks say it’s haunted, as if it those poor, damned souls needed any more problems.”

  Drostan climbed up to the passenger side of the buckboard wagon, and watched the countryside go past as they headed out. He had taken the trolley line as far as it would go, then hired a wagon to take him the rest of the way. All the way out to Kilbuck County, to the Department of the Insane. Local folks called the place ‘Dix Mountain’, or just ‘Dixmont’, after the reformer, Dorothea Dix. Some just called it ‘Nutter Hill’.

  It took a lot for Drostan not to nod off, despite the bumpy road. His dreams had been troubled, and he was tired enough that memory and dreams tended to blur. Scotland was heavy on his mind. He’d seen butchered bodies in the alleys of Edinburgh and Glasgow from murderers who fancied themselves the next Ripper. Crimes like that could break men, and it did, sending many of Drostan’s colleagues to drink or the madhouse, or early death. And unlike Drostan, they couldn’t see the ghosts the slayers left behind.

  The wagon driver did not try to keep up a conversation, for which Drostan was grateful, and a generous tip assured that the man would be back to return Drostan to the trolley station in two hours. But despite the pay, the driver would go no closer than the end of the gravel driveway leading to the insane asylum.

  With a sigh, Drostan hefted his rucksack over one shoulder and started up the long carriageway, watching as the huge, brooding complex that was Dix Mountain came into view. Nearly two thousand poor souls were housed in the sprawling brick buildings that spread across the hillside. The main building loomed high, four stories tall with a cupola on top, with granite pillars framing the entrance and long windows, the better to take in the breezes from the valley.

  “Dr. Haverton is expecting you, Mr. Fletcher,” the receptionist said when Drostan gave his name at the front desk. “Just have a seat and he’ll be with you shortly.”

  Drostan was too antsy to sit. The foyer was large and scrubbed clean, smelling of antiseptic and lemon. Uniformed orderlies and nurses in starched dresses with pristine caps bustled through doors and exited into other corridors. Most people felt uncomfortable in hospitals or asylums, and did not know why. Drostan knew, and the knowledge did not make him feel any better. The only place with more ghosts than a hospital or an asylum is a cemetery, Drostan thought. And none of them rest easy.

  “Mr. Fletcher! To what do we owe your call?” Dr. Haverton was a tall, spare man in his middle years, graying at the temples, with a gold pince-nez framing intelligent gray eyes.

  “Good to see you again, Doc,” Drostan replied. “I stopped by to see an old friend. Eli Carmody.”

  Haverton gave Drostan a skeptical look. “Just happened to be in Kilb
uck County and thought you’d drop in for a chat, did you?”

  Drostan gave him the kind of easy smile that he used on suspects in the interrogation room. “Something like that.” He grew serious. “I don’t imagine Eli gets a lot of visitors way out here.”

  Haverton’s expression made it clear that he doubted Drostan was telling the whole truth, but he relented with a sigh. “No, he doesn’t. Most of our residents don’t. Families are just as glad to have these folks out of their hands and beyond the gossip of the neighbors. We’re the antechamber to the Great Beyond. But you knew that.”

  Drostan fell into step beside Haverton as they walked down the long, tiled corridor. A guard walked several steps behind them. As they walked, Drostan looked around him. Walls, windows, and floors were pristine, but in the distance, Drostan could hear the moans and chattering of men whose minds had failed them, and as they walked down the hallway, hollow-eyed ghosts watched them pass with reproach. Dix Mountain was a far cry from the cramped, squalid dungeons where madmen had been kept in years gone by, but it was still drenched in tears and tragedy, its residents written out of the world long before their deaths.

  “I don’t remember quite so many guards around, the last time I visited.” Drostan had counted two armed men on the front steps and two more in the lobby; and in the corridor, burly orderlies or uniformed guards were stationed at regular intervals.

  Haverton shrugged. “Blame it on the full moon, or the way the planets align. Our patients have been restless, and we need to keep them from hurting themselves.”

  Or someone else, Drostan thought, eying the muscular guards. “I see you’ve built some new buildings,” he said.

  Haverton brightened. “Ah, yes. Dr. Hutchinson, our administrator, is quite energetic. There have been improvements to the grounds, and we’ve added a women’s wing and expanded the kitchens. It’s regrettable that the area has so many who need to be confined here, but at least they’re entrusting the unfortunate folk to us instead of chaining them up in the attic or letting them wander the streets.”

  Better than those choices, but not something any decent person would wish upon another, Drostan thought. Even after death, these souls seemed to have nowhere else to go, unwanted by Heaven or Hell.

  “Here’s Mr. Carmody’s room,” Haverton said. “He’s been quiet lately, and I don’t think he’ll give you any trouble, but I’ll post a guard at the door in case you need anything.” Haverton took a key from a pocket of his vest and unlocked the door. “Please don’t upset him,” he said with a stern glance. “It’s inconvenient for everyone when patients become unruly.”

  “I’ll do my best not to,” Drostan said with a smile he hoped looked sincere.

  “We’ve had some success with his medication. Sometimes, he’s quite lucid, though lost in the past. He believes he’s still on the force, and we let him believe that, most of the time. Relate to him like that, and you might get somewhere. Try to force him into the here and now and… you’ll get nowhere.”

  Haverton bustled back toward his office while the guard stood to one side with an expression of complete disinterest. Drostan drew a deep breath, steeled himself, and knocked on the door.

  “Eli? It’s Drostan.”

  He heard shuffling on the other side of the door, and then the doorknob turned. The guard looked as if he were on alert should the patient make a break for the hallway, but when the door swung open, it revealed a frail old man in a dressing gown and worn, threadbare slippers.

  “Drostan?” Eli Carmody croaked. “You can’t be Drostan Fletcher. He’s younger than you are.”

  Drostan chuckled. “Time passes for all of us, Eli. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  Carmody scowled. “Well come in, why don’t you? I don’t have all day. No one told me you were coming. Damn that secretary of mine.” He gestured for Drostan to enter, and then shut the door with a bang.

  Carmody’s narrow room had a cot, a window, and a small writing desk with a chair. Papers were strewn about, and it looked as if someone had given Carmody a worn-out satchel, because it sat on one side of his desk stuffed with more papers. Carmody sat down, moved the papers from one side of the desk to the other, and glowered at Drostan.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on your beat?” he growled.

  It was so like the Eli Carmody of old that Drostan’s heart lurched. Captain Eli Carmody, New Pittsburgh Police, had been a force to reckon with in his prime. Drostan had been proud to serve under him, grateful as a new immigrant for the opportunity Carmody gave him despite Drostan’s dismissal from the Scottish police. The mannerisms were pure Carmody, but a look in his eyes told Drostan that his old commander was not completely himself.

  “Came in to make a report, sir,” Drostan replied, falling into the old routine, hoping that wherever Carmody’s mind strayed, he might tap into the memories he needed to learn more about the riverside killer, and maybe, about who killed Thomas Desmet.

  “Well, get to it,” Carmody snapped. “I’ve got things to do.”

  Drostan stood at parade rest in front of Carmody’s desk, and tried not to see the withered old man in the hospital gown. “Got a bad one, sir,” Drostan said, framing his words carefully. “Over in Allegheny.”

  “Allegheny? That’s not your beat.”

  “No, sir. Got called in because they needed all hands. Another knife murder. Real nasty piece of work. The boys and I were wondering—do you think it could be like before?”

  Carmody’s eyes flashed. “You mean Tumblety? Good lord, I hope not.” Francis Tumblety, snake-oil salesman, self-proclaimed physician, and suspect in the Ripper killings, had come through New Pittsburgh on Carmody’s watch. There’d been a string of unexplained murders. Carmody had never been able to convict Tumblety, but he had never forgotten, or forgiven.

  “You remember that case much better than I do, sir,” Drostan said, hoping to spark Carmody’s memories. “I was hoping you could help me put the pieces together.”

  For just a moment, Drostan saw the keen intellect in Carmody’s eyes that had made him the most successful detective on the New Pittsburgh squad. “Lay it out for me, Fletcher, and let’s see where the pieces fall.”

  Carmody listened intently as Drostan recounted the details of the killing on the river bank, omitting only the fact that the eyewitness testimony came from ghosts. “Doesn’t sound like the Ripper,” he said when Drostan had finished. “Sounds to me like what the new men are saying. About the shadow-killers.”

  “What new men?”

  Carmody’s eyes had lost the flinty look of a few moments ago. “Miners,” he said. “Miners Forty-Niners. Got a whole batch of them, Poles and Slavs and Hungarians, locked up like loons—the ones who didn’t die.” He started to hum ‘My Darling Clementine’.

  “What about the shadow-killers?” Drostan asked.

  “In a cavern, in a coal mine, digging Vesta Number Nine, died the miners, ninety-niners when the shadows took their minds.”

  “Eli, help me,” Drostan begged, but he could see his old friend struggling against the madness that gripped him.

  “They were bleeding, they were dying, down in Vesta Number Nine, when the gessyan killed the witches and the shadows took their minds.”

  “Eli, what are gessyan? I don’t understand.”

  Reason had faded from Carmody’s eyes, and his voice was a raspy sing-song. “Dug to Hades, found the demons down in Vesta Number Nine, now they’re hungry, red and bloody and the shadows took their minds.”

  For a few seconds, something close to sanity came back to Carmody’s eyes. “Run,” he said. “Before the gessyan get you.”

  Madness closed in again. “What the hell are you doing here!” Carmody raged, standing up so suddenly he overturned the table, sending papers flying. “Get back on your beat! Get back to the street and do your job! People are dying! You’ve got to stop the gessyan. They’ve gotten loose and you’ve got to stop them, stop them, stop them…”

  He launched himsel
f at Drostan, fists flying. Drostan held up both arms in front of his face to defend himself, knowing that he outweighed Carmody and was decades younger. Madness animated Carmody’s frail body far past its normal strength, raining down blow after blow until the guard opened the door and two orderlies hustled in, wrestling Carmody off of Drostan and hauling him back, toward the bed.

  “There’ll be blood! Mark my words, there’ll be blood, rivers of blood!” Carmody shouted, as Drostan got to his feet. And yet, despite the rage that had his old captain red in the face, spittle flecking his lips, there was a disturbing flicker of sanity in Carmody’s eyes that made Drostan shiver with a cold that went to his bones.

  He knows something, and he’s trying to tell me, trying to get past the madness. But what’s sane in what he’s saying, and what’s not?

  The guard hustled Drostan out of the room as the orderlies restrained Carmody. “They’ll make sure he’s taken care of well, won’t they?” Drostan asked as the guard closed the door behind him.

  “He was doing much better before you got him stirred up,” the guard said, hustling Drostan down the corridor.

  “I’d heard a rumor that you’ve had several coal miners come in lately,” Drostan said as they strode back toward the foyer.

  The guard eyed him. “You want to get them all worked up, too?”

  Drostan reached into a pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. Information was more valuable than the groceries he was going to buy, and he figured his friends would not let him starve. He passed the twenty to the guard. “Miners. New patients. What have you heard?”

  The guard slowed his pace, and looked around to make sure no one was nearby. Drostan did the same, seeing no one but the ghosts that lined the hallway. “Got in ten guys from the Vesta mine, bunch of Polacks and Hunkies, you know?” the guard said. “Forgot most of the English they knew, if they ever knew it, raving in whatever-the-hell they speak over there, but one of the nurses caught a few words here and there. Goin’ on about shadows and demons and monsters. Nonsense.”