by David Nickle
The door swung open then, and pushed her backwards, and a figure in white burst into the hall. Mrs. Frost came up against the far wall, and started to say something, but she couldn’t finish. The white-clad figure drove a fist into her face, and with the other hand grabbed her hair.
Then it turned to Andrew, and he recognized it:
“Jason!” he said.
“Dr. Waggoner.” The figure took a step forward, hauling Mrs. Frost as he peered at Waggoner. “You’re alive. And back. Keep your distance.”
His voice was absolutely flat—a tone that did not admit any argument. Waggoner stepped back.
It had been barely a week, but Jason Thistledown seemed like he’d aged a decade. With one hand, he pushed Germaine Frost to her knees. His face was in shadow, but Andrew saw the flat slit of his mouth, the stillness around his eye. It didn’t so much as twitch as Mrs. Frost tried to twist her hair from his fist.
“Jason,” said Waggoner. “I came to get you out of here—”
“Hush, Doctor,” he said. “You should have stayed away. You need to stay clear now. Remember that disease that slew my kin? Good. Well, it’s here—in that room. And this one is the one that brought it. In a little jar from Africa. She lied about being my aunt. She murdered all my kin. My town. With a germ in a jar. You understand that?”
Andrew nodded.
“I let her live once today. That was wrong. But things are makin’ more sense right now. I was fixing to find her—and that Bergstrom, and do the thing I should have done to both of them. Like Deborah said to her generals: ‘Surely the Lord will deliver them this day unto a woman.’ Well, the Lord delivered this woman unto me. And I know what to do.”
Andrew didn’t say anything. Jason did know what to do. The boy—the man—knew very well to do what Andrew hadn’t been able to countenance: to kill, when killing was due. He looked away, and Jason obviously took note.
“Now I only know you a little. I know you’re a good man. I know you might be thinkin’ of getting Sam Green or somebody to stop this. But anyone does that, they’ll die. This germ’s killed one already, Louise Butler, and I think it’s going to . . .”
At this, his cheek finally twitched, and he hesitated an instant before starting up again, quieter:
“ . . . I think it’s going to take Ruth Harper soon. It’s all over the autopsy, and that cellar. It gets out of here, it’s going to kill just about everybody. So when you’re thinking of goin’ to get help from Sam Green and those Pinkertons . . . You think about that. I hope no one will stop me when I go after that Bergstrom, anyhow.”
“There’s no need,” said Andrew. “He was killed this morning. Jason—you’ve got to let me help her. Not her—” he motioned at Germaine “—but Ruth. It may be possible—”
“You help her, you’ll get infected too. Doctor, I’m set on my path. Thank you for tellin’ me about Bergstrom. I’ll keep away from others, then. But in this room—don’t get near.”
And with that, he yanked Germaine Frost up—she screamed, and sobbed, and he threaded an arm under hers, and hauled her, feet dragging, through the door in the autopsy.
“Get away!” he hollered, and the door slammed shut.
§
Andrew got away, but he didn’t go far.
He made for the dispensary, his mind racing. He felt oddly enervated. Finding Jason Thistledown had been the overriding impetus for Andrew for too long, and it was a thing so large and mysterious, so seductive, that he might lose himself in it, falling off the edge of the world into the madness of the Juke’s false Heaven. Jason’s chilling revelation—that Germaine had brought the sickness, that she was using it as an obscene test of fitness, on Jason, on Ruth . . . on Andrew himself—that was something else. It was a cord, tying him to earth. He would grasp it.
There was a sick girl, locked in the autopsy—sick with a disease so terrible it had killed a Montana pig town in three days last winter.
She might well die too—would certainly die without treatment.
Andrew Waggoner would simply not let that happen.
He stumbled to the dispensary, a dark room with a thick wooden door with a lock strong enough to deter a lumber-man with an axe. Less trouble for Andrew, who knew, as did the rest of the hospital’s staff, the hiding place for the brass key that opened it, tucked into a space in the door-frame. He was inside in no time, striking a match in the jar next to the wall lamp and setting the wick.
Then he set to work. He brought down a tray, and filled it with what things he might require: a glass thermometer, a bowl and clean washcloths, sterile lancets; after some consideration, a phial of morphine and a clean syringe. He found a cotton mask, and put it there too—although he wasn’t confident at all that that would be enough.
What he would have liked to have, was Norma Tavish and her pack of curative herbs with him now; as modern as this hospital was, there wasn’t anything that would by itself cure an infection that’d set in here, as well as Norma’s miraculous herbs had in the Tavish settlement.
Andrew set against a stool, and shut his eyes, and pushed Norma Tavish out of his mind. Letting regret steal up too close was a bad idea at any time; here, where the machinations of the Juke could make a man believe anything, it could be fatal. It might almost make a fellow think she was coming now, opening and closing the door to the stairwell, and walking down the corridor with efficient purpose.
Of course, Norma Tavish’s footwear wouldn’t clack on the floor, the way these did.
Andrew opened his eyes and took a breath. It wasn’t a Juke imagining. Someone was coming.
It was too late to douse the light or shut the door. Andrew was not in any shape to prepare for a fight, if it were one of the Feegers. He pressed himself against the wall of the dispensary, and prayed the footsteps would continue.
They slowed, and stopped. And then Waggoner heard a familiar voice.
“Hello? Who’s there, please?”
He laughed out loud.
“Nurse Rowe!” he exclaimed, and then added: “It’s Waggoner.”
There was a shuffling in the hall, and then Annie Rowe put her familiar face around the door jamb. Her eyes were wide in the lamplight.
“My Heavens,” she breathed as she beheld him. “Look at you. I’d sew you a shroud, I hadn’t heard you speak just now.”
Waggoner grinned. He was preposterously glad to see her—almost tearfully so. The exhaustion, no doubt, was catching up to him.
“It’s been an adventure,” he managed. Then he cleared his throat, and drew himself together. “Annie—we’ve got a medical emergency. Ruth Harper’s in the autopsy. She’s deathly ill. Whatever it is, it’s contagious.”
Annie frowned, and looked at the material he’d gathered. She nodded. “You’ve put together quite a kit, Dr. Waggoner. You were intending to carry it down the hall yourself? I’ve a better idea.”
“Which is?”
“Come with me.”
Andrew stood up. It occurred to a small part of him that Annie Rowe had not given him a good reason to follow her—and that part of him thought that he had decided to follow the mad Germaine Frost with scarcely more resistance, and obeyed Jason Thistledown to fly off, with scarcely less.
“I know what will heal your injuries,” said Annie, smiling and holding his good arm as they strode down the hall, to the door.
As they stepped outside into the rain, Andrew asked: “What is that?”
And Annie Rowe turned, and pointed to the narrow road that led down to the sawmill, scored now with strange tracks, and said:
“Jesus.”
A small part of him tried to bend his arm—send the visions away on a spike of agony—but this time, Annie was there to help.
“Easy, Doctor,” she said. “There’s no need for any more pain.” With great care, she reset the sling. “Jesus Christ will heal all. He told me so, in a dream last night.”
And together, they stepped around the hospital, and looked down the road—and Andrew gas
ped, at the great light that glowed there: warm, and welcoming, and so very melodious. Whether from Jesus Christ or the Dauphin, who rested within—he could not resist it this time. Willingly, he entered into His realm.
§
The autopsy room was not built with windows, but air moved through it all the same, within high vents in one wall that led straight outside. So it wasn’t as bad a place to be as the storeroom, where Ruth still rested. The voice from the shadows approved.
As Jason hauled Germaine Frost into it and slammed the door shut, it was only a little humid. Water was splashed here and there, from two large buckets that were foaming with soap. Not long ago, Jason had spent time with those buckets, washing himself as thoroughly as he could—as thoroughly as Germaine Frost had made him wash outside the homestead at Cracked Wheel. After he’d scrubbed himself clean of the Cave Germ as best he could, he searched some cupboards and found a white smock as might be worn by doctors cutting up the dead. He got to thinking that maybe some power had a good sense of humour; that outfit would do fine to cover him up for the work that lay ahead.
He was even more sure that that power had taken a hand in this latest moment of providence: delivering his quarry, the murderess Germaine Frost, right into his hands.
“This is fine that you came,” he said. “We can seal this whole matter here, and not put anyone else in harm’s way.”
“Oh Jason,” she said, sobbing, but Jason was having have none of it.
A week ago, he’d have thought when this moment came, when Germaine Frost used tears on him again . . . he would spew anger at her, call her foul names, and laugh when she objected—like a fellow in a book that Ruth Harper might’ve liked to read over and over again. But as he had held Ruth, comforting her over the death of her friend and sitting there in the dark of the cellar room . . . he got to know his anger a little better. It grew into a purer thing.
So when Germaine sobbed and cried here in the autopsy, he saw it for what it was. She was trying to trick him with tears, the same as when just idly, after she let him be locked up in the quarantine, he suggested he might head down south and pick up some work there. That made him feel badly—and feeling badly thinned that anger, like throwing water in a tub of lye.
You let remorse get in your way, you’ll never do the kind of thing you have to do.
“I know, Mama,” said Jason over his shoulder.
You let an old drunk’s begging turn you around—he’ll just get drunk again, and let friends even worse than that Etherton into the house.
“Oh Jason, please—think of your potential! The Harper girl is sick, true, because she’s not fit. We’ll find you one with whom to breed, and then—”
Shut her up!
Jason swatted Germaine across the ear.
“Don’t talk to me,” he said. “You talk to me, I’ll hit you. That’s how it’s going to go. Now—” Jason hefted her up by an arm. “Sit on that.” He motioned to the drawer.
She won’t cooperate. A shadow shook its head beyond Germaine’s shoulder. Sure enough, Germaine wasn’t having any of it. She might have divined what Jason intended; get her feet up, lie her on the table, and roll it in, and lock it with her inside. That was his ma’s wisdom, delivered from the shadows behind the jars: Show her what she showed me. Take her away.
So she twisted away from him and planted her feet firm on the ground. One of the lenses was nearly obliterated, and the other hung oddly from her nose.
She stared at Jason steadily. When she spoke, her tone was low and deliberate.
“All right, Jason,” said Germaine. “You will have to hit me, because I’m not going to go quietly. What do you mean to do? Take the germe de grotte that’s in that room, smear it on me, and watch me die of bleeding from the ears?”
“I’m showing you what you showed my ma,” said Jason. “What you showed all of Cracked Wheel, with that germdeegrot. You murdered Cracked Wheel! The whole damn town!” Behind her, next to the doorway, the shadow nodded its head.
He didn’t cooperate. Not even with all the whiskey in him. My, my—but you’d think he would. He certainly did as he was told when Etherton got him drunk, and made him look off while he did his business.
“Are you paying attention to me, Nephew?”
Jason looked back down at her. Her face was beginning to swell where he’d hit her. Only half an eye managed to magnify in the glass.
“You’re not,” she said. “And you shouldn’t have to, because in the scheme of things, I am what? A childless old woman with index cards. One such as you shouldn’t grant someone like me the hour of the day. In the end, my contribution to greatness is secondhand. You, on the other hand—you should be fixed upon greater things.”
He half-raised his hand, but couldn’t manage it. Behind Germaine, the shadow grew agitated. But Jason couldn’t hear what it said.
“I’m sorry I brought you here, Jason. When I came—when I brought you—it was only because Bergstrom so grossly misrepresented his discovery here. Remember—I explained to you. Had I known . . .”
Jason found the strength. He hit Germaine again, knocking her glasses clear.
“You use devil words on me, you get this.” Then he grabbed her and pulled her up—her back bent on the shelf, so that it creaked on its rails. The shadows in the corners of the room danced, and murmured. A hinge creaked, so Jason could not hear the words. “I should have done this upstairs. First time you started talking. You think I was strong and a hero, but I should have done this.” He put one hand over her mouth, and the other elbow on her throat. “You can’t live, ’cause you’ll just kill more. Like you’d have killed Dr. Waggoner. Just to see.”
“That may be true, son.”
The shadows finally coalesced. Jason looked up.
He was tall, and he smelled of fire and heat. His face was half-blackened, the other half swollen in a great sore. His eyes, white and round, stared out at Jason as though from bare sockets. Around him, the lamp-lit walls of the autopsy seemed to melt, and growing from the shadows were the square-cut logs of the cabin in Montana.
“You,” breathed Jason.
“Jason,” he rasped, and coughed.
Hell had not been kind to old John Thistledown.
§
“What did you do with my ma?”
“I did nothing with your ma. Now this one—you said she murdered Cracked Wheel? She murdered your ma too, didn’t she?”
Jason stepped back, as the smells of that cabin—the hint of wood-smoke, the greasy smell of tallow from the candles lighting it, the pervasive scent of his mother—overcame him. His mother’s smell was there, but she wasn’t. Germaine Frost was crouched on her bed, cowering.
John Thistledown stood in the open door, swirls of snow around his burnt cadaver.
“She murdered everyone,” said Jason. He wanted to cower himself, but he put on a brave face. “You back from Hell to see what another murderer looks like?”
The elder Thistledown seemed to think about that, and finally he nodded. “You’re fixin’ to kill her,” he said. “To make her pay for all those other killings?”
“I am.”
“You given any thought to what price you’d pay, doing that? Killing a person?”
Jason looked at his father’s shade, and unbidden, a memory of him, hard and cold, looking down on the pass with his rifle in his lap, came up. “It was a price you were willing to pay.”
“And look what it did to me.”
“He’s right, Jason,” said Germaine. “Killing is not for one such as you—”
She didn’t finish. John Thistledown, as tall as a pine, swooped over her. His filthy, Hell-scorched hands took hold of her head. “Look away, boy,” said John, but Jason didn’t obey, and watched as an instant later, his father’s shade twisted his false aunt’s head hard to the right, and cracked it. Her hands shook, and then went limp.
Jason kept watching, as his father straightened and walked past him. “You’re right, Jason. Sometimes there�
�s got to be a killing. Sometimes it is right. But you’re better leaving it to a man with blood under his fingernails already. Keep your own clean for supper.”
He stepped around Jason, and through a door that Jason had never recalled in the back of the cabin. That, of course, was because there hadn’t been one. He was going into the storeroom, at the back of the autopsy. Where they had been all along.
Jason looked down at Germaine Frost. She had slid to the floor, her neck at an odd angle—her eyes tiny without their glasses.
“Goodbye son,” said his father as he came back from the storeroom. There was something in his hand . . . a jar, sealed in wax. “Best you stay put with that girl of yours. She can use the comfort. And what’s next—is something you don’t need to see, neither of you.”
And then John Thistledown stepped out into the hallway, and vanished.
Jason stared at that door for a long time, putting together what he’d seen—where he’d been. There was Germaine Frost, dead on the floor. Had he done that, possessed by the shade of his pa, come up from Hell to guide his hand in killing? What had he done with his ma?
“Jason?”
Jason looked around. Ruth stood trembling, at the door of the storeroom. Her eyes were dark, and she looked thinner in the lamplight. He went to her, deliberately blocking the view of Germaine Frost’s body, and took her in his arms.
She looked up at him.
“What was Sam Green doing here?” she asked.
29 - The Oracle Frets
The cathedral growled and hummed and came alive, as the Heavens dried up.
Inside its belly, acolytes stoked saw-scrap and wood shavings by the shovelful into the boiler; a plume of white smoke drifted from the high stack and across the town, where others crouched—their faces pressed into the mud of the road, or bent down as they clutched their chickens and pigs and bushels of apples—a proper offering to the God who now dwelt inside.
At the cathedral’s gate, the Oracle waited.
She let Lily lead the song; she was uneasy, as she surveyed the crowd of new worshippers as she sniffed at the bundle in her arms and hung back under the shadow of the roof. There were a lot of folk there—more than she’d seen before, and she wasn’t sure she liked all of them in such a great number. Were it up to her, she’d send the men-folk out to do a cull—whittle these families down to manageable sizes, feed the carcasses to the Son, like they already were with the false priests—that stinking old man, who’d climbed up a mountain and thought he’d be an Oracle because of it.
