by C. J. Archer
"Is he gone?" Seth asked, glancing around.
McIlroy saluted Seth then his mist slipped through the keyhole.
I blew out a measured breath. "Yes."
We waited for an interminably long time, or so it seemed. Despite the darkness, the night wasn't quiet. The distant rattle of wheels and clip-clop of hooves provided a familiar and comforting backdrop to the unfamiliar and eerie wails coming from inside the asylum. My skin prickled and a shiver rippled down my spine. I sidled closer to Seth.
He put his arm around me. "This place gives me the jitters too."
The sound of thumping had us both bristling. I shushed Seth when he began to speak and listened. There it was again, followed by a low, male voice. Finally the lock clicked and the door opened a crack. The cadaverous face of McIlroy emerged through the dimness.
"This is a jolly lark," he said, chuckling. "Come in, come in."
"Was that you thumping?" I asked as he closed the door behind us and we were swallowed up by the darkness.
"Walked into some furniture. Damned hard to see in here."
As if he just remembered he'd been holding it, Seth opened the shutter on the lantern he'd removed from the coach. Its circle of light didn't reach far but it was enough to help see the furniture before we walked into it.
"Which way?" he asked.
"Follow me."
I hurried along the gallery in the men's ward and tiptoed up the stairs at the end. Light came from one of the rooms ahead. A quick count of the doors told me it was Buchanan's dormitory. Murmurs drifted along the gallery, one male, the other female, but the words were drowned out by a high-pitched cry from the depths of the building.
I froze. Seth crowded close at my back, his presence a comfort until I felt him shiver. "What was that?" he whispered.
"Garvey," McIlroy said. "He's always making a fuss at night. I think he does it on purpose to get the orderly on duty out of bed. Don't know why he hasn't been subdued yet."
"Perhaps because the orderly's in there." I pointed to the door up ahead.
"Mystery solved. You're very clever, Miss Holloway." He chuckled, and I had to place a hand on his shoulder to shush him.
"Wait here." I crept closer to the door until my booted toes touched the light streaming out of the room. I peered around and saw the nurse and two orderlies standing over the bed where I'd seen McIlroy earlier in the day. A man with broad shoulders lay on his side, his black, curly hair splayed over the pillow. It was too long to be fashionable, too dark to be properly English.
I covered my mouth to smother my gasp. Oh, Lincoln.
I signaled for Seth to come closer. "We have to get him out," I whispered as he peered past me.
"Has he been injected with anything?"
I shrugged and looked into the room again.
"What a bloody mess," said one of the orderlies, a bulky man with a narrow face and receding hairline. "Why didn't you do something, Mathews?"
"I tried, but he had the knife," said the younger orderly.
"It's done now," the nurse said. "No use crying over spilled milk."
The narrow faced orderly snorted. "Spilled something, all right, but it ain't milk. How're we going to clean this mess up?"
"Linen'll have to be thrown out," the young orderly said. "Mattress scrubbed, blankets washed. Bloody lot of work."
"Aye." Narrow-face grabbed Lincoln by the arms and hauled him into a sitting position.
That's when I saw all the blood. It was everywhere. It coated the length of his arms, his hands and chest. It covered the blankets and matted his hair.
"No!" I muttered. "Oh, God." Hot tears welled. I felt myself tipping forward, falling onto my knees.
Someone caught me—Seth perhaps. I clutched at his arm and stared at the lifeless body being hefted from the bed. So much blood…
I pulled away from Seth and lurched into the room, stumbling forward on weak, wobbling legs. The orderly dropped the body in surprise and leapt back with a shout. But I only had eyes for—
It wasn't Lincoln. The lifeless man lying on the bed had darker skin and a softer, younger face. I fell to my knees anyway, in relief, and sobbed.
The nurse let out a high scream that was louder and more terrifying than anything I'd heard in this place. She shrank back against the wall, her wide eyes on something behind me. McIlroy, I assumed.
"Seth, it's not him!" I shouted above the noise.
"I can see that." He planted his feet and prepared to fight as Narrow-face ran at us.
"Give us what we want and we'll leave," I said, regaining my courage and my strength. "No one will be hurt if you give us Mr. Buchanan."
Narrow-face didn't seem to hear me. He lunged at Seth. Seth dodged the fist and rolled on top of the body on the bed, then fell off the other side with a thud.
Narrow-face, thinking his work done, turned to McIlroy. "You look familiar."
McIlroy giggled, an innocent, childish sound that made me want to pat his back.
I edged toward the bed where Buchanan lay sleeping. He and the other patients in the room must have been medicated because our ruckus didn't wake them. I took stock of his size, and the fact that he was shackled by his wrists to the bedposts, and swore under my breath.
I was about to call for McIlroy when a shadow emerged from the deeper shadows in the corner near the fireplace. "This is not going the way I planned."
"Lincoln! Oh, thank God." I raced around the foot of Buchanan's bed and threw myself at him. He caught me and breathed deeply before setting me aside. "I thought you were dead."
"I'm not," he said, as Seth's grunt had us turning to see that he was all right. He was, but he was fighting both orderlies on his own. McIlroy stood aside and watched, echoing the movements with his own fists punching thin air.
"There appears to have been a mix up," I said. "That'll teach me to ask dead madmen for assistance."
Narrow-face drew a knife from his sleeve, and the young orderly followed suit. Seth backed away before he too removed the knife he'd tucked into the waistband of his trousers.
"Explain later." Lincoln rushed low at Narrow-face. With his back to us, the orderly didn't see Lincoln coming. He toppled to the ground, taking his colleague with him in a loud crash and tangle of limbs.
Seth laughed as he stepped into the fray and grasped the young orderly's wrists. "You make that look so easy." He removed the knife as Lincoln jabbed his fingers into Narrow-face's throat. With a gurgling choke, he too relinquished his blade.
The nurse screamed again, so I went to her and covered her mouth. "You will not be harmed, but you must be quiet." She settled down to a whimper and nodded.
"Now, give me the keys to that man's bonds." I pointed at Buchanan.
She shook her head and I removed my hand. "I don't have the keys. The orderlies do."
By the time I turned, Seth and Lincoln were already searching their pockets.
"You want to free him?" Narrow-face said. "You're as mad as him. Maybe madder. You don't want to free any of 'em, especially those that got to be locked up at night. They're bloody dangerous."
Lincoln smashed his fist across the orderly's cheek. The nurse screamed, and I winced, both at the sound and Lincoln's lack of mercy. Sometimes, my ability to forget what he was like amazed even me.
An answering scream came from somewhere distant in the asylum. I heard pounding footsteps at the same time the others did. More orderlies, perhaps.
"Where's the damned keys?" Seth growled.
"We don't need a key," I said, stepping away from the nurse. "McIlroy, you're very strong now. Break open the shackles."
McIlroy loped over to Buchanan's bed. He lifted one of Buchanan's lifeless arms and shook it. The chain connecting the iron wrist band to the bed rattled.
"Break it apart," I urged him, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. When he continued to hesitate, I added, "Hurry or more orderlies will be here. If they catch me, I cannot release your spirit. If I can't release you, you will b
e stuck here."
He wrenched open the wrist band with no more effort than pulling apart a loaf of bread, then followed suit with the other. Without instruction from me, he pulled back the blankets to reveal Buchanan, dressed in a nightshirt. He hefted the sleeping man onto his shoulder and, with a look of single-minded determination, walked steadily to the door.
"Bloody hell," the young orderly muttered, his wide gaze on McIlroy. "How'd he do that?"
"That fellow…he…" The nurse pointed a shaking finger at McIlroy then at the dead man I'd thought was Lincoln. His wrists were slashed, and a barber's razor lay in a patch of blood on the bed beside him. His spirit was nowhere to be seen. "He used to occupy that bed…until this afternoon."
"Can't be," said Narrow-face. "He's dead." He squinted, but McIlroy now had his back to us.
The other orderly began breathing heavily. He licked his lips and his eyes darted between us. "It's him," he whispered. "Oh God, oh God. I hate this place. Why'd I ever come here?"
Seth searched the now shaking man and finally found a set of keys in his inside pocket. "Which one for this room?"
But the orderly was no use. He was too busy praying.
"Tell us," Lincoln growled.
The nurse crawled over and, with a shaking hand, picked out a key.
"Thank you," I said. "We are sorry about all this, but it can't be helped." I hadn't finished talking when Lincoln took my arm and steered me out of the dormitory.
Seth picked up the lantern that he'd left in the corridor, and Lincoln locked the door. McIlroy was already at the top of the staircase with Buchanan by the time we caught up to him.
We raced down the stairs to the front door, then across the wide lawn to the fence. Gus spotted us and swore under his breath when he saw McIlroy. "Another dead man?"
Lincoln climbed the fence first, but did not descend on the other side. He balanced on the cross bar, his feet placed in the narrow spaces between. "Seth, the other side."
Seth handed me the lantern and climbed over. He dropped to the pavement and waited.
Lincoln directed McIlroy to pass Buchanan up to him as gently as possible. While McIlroy wasn't a large man, he was strong in his dead form and managed it easily. Buchanan suffered only one bump to his dangling foot and his nightshirt rode up as Lincoln handed him down to Seth, revealing masculine parts no innocent girl should see. I wasn't shocked.
"Link your fingers for me, please, Mr. McIlroy," I said. He did and lifted me up so that it was easy for Lincoln to assist me over the top. "Thank you, but I managed earlier," I told him.
"I'm sure you did, but allow me this…moment."
I blinked at him in surprise. He sounded far more amused than the situation warranted, but it was too dark to see his expression to know for sure. I dropped silently to the pavement as Seth bundled Buchanan onto one of the bench seats in the coach.
"Mr. McIlroy, this is where we must part," I said through the fence bars. "Thank you for your assistance. I'm going to send you back now."
"What about my body?"
"They'll find it here in the morning and dispatch it for burial as planned."
"Won't they think it odd that I'm not in the basement?"
"Most likely."
He grinned. "That'll scare the stuffing out of them. Go ahead then, Miss Holloway." He settled his feet a little apart and thrust out his chin. "I'm ready."
"Return to your afterlife, Gerald Mason McIlroy. You are released."
A white smoky haze filtered out of the body and formed the man's shape as the body itself crumpled. The spirit looked at it, looked at me, and grinned again. He gave a childish wave then disappeared.
Lincoln and I were about to step into the cabin when a bell clanged in the distance. A square of light emerged at the hospital entrance then another, both bobbing and swinging. Whoever held the lanterns moved fast in our direction.
Lincoln leaped onto the driver's seat. "Charlie, get in! And hold on."
I had hardly closed the door when the coach lurched forward. I braced myself with one hand on the seat and the other on the wall, but had to let go to stop Buchanan from rolling off. He groaned but did not wake.
We traveled at a ferocious speed, taking corners with reckless abandon. I had a devil of a time keeping myself from sliding around, let alone Buchanan. At the first corner, I held him back with a foot against his chest, but his legs slid off the seat. At the next corner, a sharp left, I smashed into the wall and needed both my feet and arms to steady myself. Buchanan fell of the seat altogether and landed in a heap on the floor. He snored loudly.
After that, I gave up trying to keep him in place. There was nowhere for my feet on the floor, so I stretched out along the seat, bracing myself against each side of the cabin. I winced as we turned another corner and Buchanan's head smacked into the door. He would have a headache in the morning. I found I wasn't altogether displeased about that.
We reached Lichfield in half the time it took to get to Bedlam. I was contemplating where to place my feet when the door opened, and Lincoln stood there. He looked like a wild bear with his wind-blown hair sticking out at all angles.
"I hope your journey was comfortable," he said with a gleam in his eyes so bright that even the wan moonlight picked it out.
"Thank you, yes. Although I'm not sure my traveling companion would agree." We both looked to the crumpled form of Buchanan, his body twisted into the narrow space on the cabin floor.
Lincoln lowered the step and held out his hand to me. "Seth, bring Buchanan."
Seth appeared behind him, his face as pale as the moon and his hair also disheveled. I suspected he didn't enjoy riding postilion when Lincoln drove like that. Gus opened the coach lamp shutters with a shaking hand.
"Should of done that before we took off," he muttered. "Remind me next time you decide to drive at night, sir. It might help my innards stay put if I can see, instead of leaping up and down."
"Or it might make you toss your dinner if you see how fast we're going," Seth said.
He carried Buchanan through the back door while Gus drove the horses at a more sedate pace to the coach house. Their necks gleamed with sweat and their nostrils flared with each snorting breath.
"Put him in the tower room then help Gus," Lincoln told Seth at the base of the staircase.
Seth gave the stairs a baleful look. "All the way up there!"
"Do it."
"Want me to lock him in?"
"No!" I cried. "He's not a prisoner."
"Don't lock the door," Lincoln said, "but someone will have to keep watch. He'll be confused when he wakes."
With a sigh, Seth trudged up the stairs. Buchanan's loose arms dangled down Seth's back and the hands smacked into his knees with each step.
"Go get some sleep," Lincoln said to me.
"You expect me to relax so soon after our adventure? Hardly."
"Then help yourself to a brandy while I assist with the horses."
I eyed the stairs. "I wonder if Cook will be mad if I wake him to tell him all about it."
"You'll know if he serves you cold soup tomorrow." He strode off and I followed. I wasn't ready to put myself to bed, so I might as well assist in the coach house too.
Lincoln helped Gus unharness the horses from the coach while I insured they had enough food and water. When Seth joined us, we led them to the stables and brushed them down while they munched oats and apples.
My nerves still hadn't settled by the time we finished. I couldn't get the image of the dead man covered in blood out of my mind. When I'd thought it was Lincoln lying there… I shook my head and rubbed my temples. It didn't bear thinking about.
"They must have decided to fill McIlroy's bed after all," I said. The four of us sat in the library with glasses of brandy as the clock struck two. The liquid burned my throat as it went down, but then it warmed me from the inside out.
"It's free again," Seth said, swirling the liquid in his glass. "Poor chap. Killed himself," he told Gus. "Razor bl
ade to the wrists. He must have smuggled it in."
"Blimey," Gus muttered. "Man's got to be desperate to do that."
"Or mad," I muttered.
"We thought it was you lying there," Seth said to Lincoln. "Charlie was beside herself."
I would have kicked Seth if Lincoln's hooded gaze hadn’t slid to me.
"I saw everything," he said.
"Why were you hiding?" I asked.
"I was waiting for the nurse and orderlies to leave. The moment I walked in, the patient began shouting that he was going to kill himself."
"It's not like you to hide, sir," Seth noted. "Usually you'd knock them all out or…worse."
"I'm turning over a new leaf." Lincoln stretched out his legs and crossed the ankles. "I thought it best to wait for them to leave so as not to raise the alarm."
Gus snorted. "That didn't work."
"Clearly."
"It was bedlam in there." Seth chuckled at his lame joke, earning a groan from Gus.
"Your new leaf turning is all well and good," I told Lincoln, "but in this situation, my nerves would have preferred you to knock them out and rejoin us as soon as possible."
"If they'd taken too long, I would have." He sounded frosty, as if the entire debacle could be blamed on my nerves. But I was not a silly female suffering from hysteria, thank you very much.
"You were gone an age!"
"No more than twenty minutes."
"Really? Is that all? Are you sure?"
His gaze narrowed further.
Seth finished his brandy then stood. "Right. I'm off to bed. Gus, you've got first watch on the tower room."
"Why me?"
"Because all you did was drive. I rode postilion and went inside. It was exhausting. Good night." He strode out of the library despite Gus's grumble.
"Finish your brandy," Lincoln said to Gus. "You have work to do."
Gus drained his glass and set it on the table. "Right-o then. Good night, all."
"Fetch me when Buchanan wakes up."
"Yes, sir."
