Veritas

by Quinn Coleridge

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Author’s note

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

  QUINN COLERIDGE

  VERITAS

  Veritas

  Copyright © 2017 Brompton Road Literary, LLC

  All rights reserved by author.

  Published by Brompton Road Literary, LLC

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9988873-1-9 Print.

  ISBN: 978-0-9988873-0-2 Ebook.

  Cover Art by: James T. Egan of Bookfly Design

  Brompton Road Literary, LLC Logo by: Green Cloak Design

  Interior book design by: Bob Houston eBook Formatting

  Contact the author for contests, giveaways, and book release news at her website: authorquinncoleridge.com.

  Dedication

  Bear with me readers, it has taken many years to get to this place, and I have a number of people to thank.

  This book is dedicated to…

  My mother Elaine—you have been my rock and my dearest friend from the very beginning. Thanks is not enough, but I give it with a full heart.

  Louis—I love you, Silver Fox. After a quarter century, you still show me the fairytale moments in life and keep me laughing. By the way, it was rain, not mist.

  Jacob, Zachary, Taylor, Liam, Grace, and Owen—my greatest gift to the world is you.

  Everett—welcome to the tribe, little one. And thank you to my son-in-law Cameron. Your smile is one of my favorite things.

  Hester Grayson—for coming into my life at the exact moment I needed an invisible friend.

  Lastly, I dedicate my first novel to those kindred souls who envision different worlds and then create them. Writers and dreamers, this one’s for you.

  Author’s note

  American Sign Language is a glorious, beautiful form of communication. I feel the utmost respect for those who sign and for the language itself. The main character in this book has difficulty speaking and learns ASL after reaching adulthood. It changes her life for the better, allows her to be understood as was previously impossible.

  I have not adhered to the ASL grammar rules for this story, however. Yet I hope to illustrate how lives can be enhanced through sign. Authentic grammar is always desirable. Please pardon this exception to the rules.

  Prologue

  Pulvis et umbra sumus.

  We are but dust and shadow—Horace

  Ironwood Lunatic Asylum

  Ironwood, Colorado January 1892

  Butterflies are my salvation.

  Milkweed monarchs, to be precise. Danaus Plexippus.

  Though I may be trembling with fear, held captive in my subterranean cell, I summon the image of the butterflies with ancient magic, and they appear in my psyche, to bring a little hope, a little comfort within the confines of the Pit.

  The monarchs are just as lovely as the day Tom sent them, via telepathic pictures, to my blind eyes. They came from a memory he had as a child of walking through a summer field of grain and watching the butterflies dance. By sharing the memory, Tom brought color into my world, showing me the brilliant shades and teaching me each name. Orange and black monarch wings, blue-purple evening skies, golden barley. He helped me understand the scene as a sighted person would, back when we loved each other, before all was lost.

  My eyes feel dry and gritty, as though they have no more tears to shed. I lift my face toward the ceiling and the butterfly vision disappears as noise shatters my conjuring. Men curse. Boots scrape against the floor above. Metal grinds against metal and a series of shouted commands ring out as the iron lid of my cell lifts away. Like clockwork, the guards come for me on a madman’s whim.

  My cell, known within the asylum as the Pit, is usually a quiet place, except for the sound of dripping water and the scuttle-dash-whisper of rats and insects. But this noisy production is straight out of a penny dreadful—the ghastly novels once read to me by my friend Cordelia, for amusement’s sake on slow summer afternoons. Only now I find myself cast as the hapless maiden in dire straits, and there is no hero arriving in the nick of time.

  The Pit is stout and circular, and I lean against its rough, limestone squares as I listen to the guards move about. The stones are warmed by the kitchen ovens located on the other side of the thick walls. The heat here must be suffocating in the summer, but it’s most welcome on winter days like this. I run my fingers along the nearest square. Is it odd that I am reluctant to leave this forsaken hole? My excursion into the world beyond can’t possibly end well, after all. It isn’t freedom, but merely a relocation from one chamber of horrors to the next.

  A guard enters my cell through a hole in the ceiling, taking a set of iron stairs to the narrow landing below. He continues down more stairs another twenty feet to the dregs of the Pit. To my home away from home. Damn and blast, it’s Titus. I know him by the squeaking heel of his boot. He kicks something across the hay-strewn floor—corn cobs or old chicken bones, most likely. Titus reaches me and grunts. A sound of disgust if ever I’ve heard one.

  Yet I must look a little frightening, body and hair pale as an albino. Silver, iridescent eyes. At least that’s the description I’ve heard others give of me. But lacking sight, and a mirror, it isn't as though I gaze at my reflection. Sometimes I imagine myself as a striking brunette, or better still, a redhead. Such vivid plumage is all the rage, is it not?

  “On with your bracelets, princess,” Titus says, latching a set of irons around my wrists and ankles.

  So heavy and rough are they against the skin. And Titus doesn’t need to use shackles—he knows I’ll obey. Or I have done, for the most part, since my last failed escape when he nearly broke my jaw. Jackass.

  “Up the stairs,” Titus mutters, boot squeaking again. “We haven’t time to waste.”

  How I wish I could tell him to go to blazes, but words don’t come out, even when I try to scream or say no. They’ve stayed locked inside my head since I was a child. Hell if I know why.

  I’m propelled toward the exit, clumsy and clanking. “Move along, your highness. Let’s go.”

  I stumble up the stairs and out of the Pit. The asylum inmates are unusually loud, and their cries bounce from the rafters to the floor, settling painfully within my ears. They sound like a pack of wolves at the forest’s edge. My senses shrink from them, their disease and misery thick in the air. Pray no one dies at Ironwood this evening. I’m sick to death of Death.

  Our journey continues another twenty feet or so, footsteps ringing down the hall. Then Titus pushes me into a sharp right turn, and I enter a room of some kind. The atmosphere is astringent, as though c
arbolic solution has just been used to clean the place.

  Hands big and blunt, he picks me up and lowers my body onto a hard surface. Without pillows or padding, it feels colder than the usual exam table. I run my fingers across the flat metal expanse, up the high sides. Not an actual table then, but a square trough of some kind. Liquid swirls and bubbles above me, and I begin to shake, chilled by the sound. A reservoir in the ceiling? Why does the madman need water?

  As I consider these questions, Titus quickly hooks my shackles to the sides of the tub. Upon realizing my predicament, I kick and flail. Let me go, you fool. Release me.

  Footsteps move along the corridor outside the exam room. Deus misereatur, I pray in Latin— Gods have mercy. He’s here. Fifteen feet from me. Ten. Seven. My heart hammers inside my chest, and mere stubbornness keeps hysteria at bay. But the monster crosses the threshold, his French cologne arriving before him. While verbena does not begin to conceal the asylum director’s rancid pomade and perspiration, it is his olfactory calling card.

  “Why, Miss Grayson, you look unwell,” he says. “Don’t fret, my dear. We’ll fix that. Water ready, Titus?”

  “Yes,” the guard replies.

  I work the shackle on my right arm against the hook, pleading silently in my mind. I beg you, stop! Let’s reconsider the situation. Over tea, like civilized people.

  A loud scraping sound batters my head as a chair is pulled toward me. The doctor sits down and sighs. “You hurt one of my men the other day—clawed the side of his face rather badly. I can’t allow such behavior to go unpunished, pet.”

  He deserved it, the filthy lecher. And I’m not your pet.

  Faust leans in, his moist breath upon my cheek. “Rebellion equals pain and punishment, dear child. Obedience, on the other hand, brings relief.” He waits for a moment—for what? for me to submit to his parent/child delusions?—and then turns back toward Titus. “Put the dowel in place. I’d hate for our patient to bite her tongue.”

  The doctor lies. Obedience won’t lessen punishment. There will be pain no matter what I do.

  Titus squeezes my jaw until I open my mouth. He pushes a slim piece of wood between my teeth, horizontally, and adjusts the connected straps behind my head. Similar to a horse’s bit and harness. The splintery dowel rubs against my tongue, and I vomit.

  “Clean her up,” Faust commands. “Rinse the bile away.”

  Heavy material—like wool—is flipped aside, as though he has taken something from an inner pocket of his coat. I hear the creak of a worn leather spine and then the sound of writing. It’s the Book. Faust always records our therapy sessions in his journal. He’s does it religiously—has done it with every patient, since the beginning of his practice twenty-years-ago, when he started researching pain stimulus on aberrant personalities. The Book is famous throughout Ironwood.

  Faust finishes writing and then begins a clinical description of the treatment ahead. “After the ten-minute mark, if the heart does not give out, the muscles will lose their ability to move. Some last half an hour, but I wouldn’t expect that of you, pet. Not enough fat.”

  He’s insane! Stark raving—

  “Do the honors, Titus.”

  Like the removal of a sluice gate, I hear the channel open, and water rushes over me, rising to my neck in seconds.

  So cold. Breathing too fast. Slow down, slow down.

  Titus dumps a bucket of something—feels like snow—into the trough and icy fire slices through my skin to the joints and sinew, coursing through my veins to alternately scorch and then freeze muscles and organs.

  “How remarkable,” Faust says, documenting each second that I resist cardiac arrest. “But then you’re a survivor, aren’t you?”

  Papers rustle within the Book. Pages turn. “Born blind and premature. Inadequate larynx. A bout of typhus at four—killed your nanny, the family maid, but not Little Hester. What a fascinating study! Water therapy alone may not be adequate. Perhaps you need more.”

  More? He’s nonsensical. Body hurts everywhere. Might be sick again.

  Water rises, covering most of my face, and I hold very still to keep my nose above it. Then Faust stands and pushes me under. Clamping my lips around the dowel, I manage to keep the water out of my mouth. Bubbles roll up my cheek, bounce against my closed eyelids. Veritas. Dea. Heaven help me. Need air. Air.

  The madman brings me up, and I open my mouth wide, gulping oxygen. But the damned dowel’s in the way, sliding to the back of my tongue. I bite against it and suck air in through my teeth, hissing like a snake. Then I go under again. And writhe. Kick. Strike against the sides of the trough.

  Faust pulls me out a second time. I breathe … breathe … And silently scream for anyone who has shown me the slightest kindness. Cordelia. Willard. Even my dead mother. Mama, why did Father send me here? Does he really hate me so much?

  The world seems to thunder in that little room as I fight Faust, as though the ocean itself crashes against my head. Weary from our battle, I grow somewhat detached and yet the physical sensations are acute. Pain is everywhere, so cold it burns. How am I alive? The blood which rushed through my veins earlier seems sluggish, and I can barely move my limbs, though my body shivers like it’s having convulsions. Not dead or frozen then. The cold wouldn’t hurt if I were ice.

  “That’s enough for the first session,” Faust finally says, releasing me. “Return her to the cell, Titus.”

  O di immortales. Blessed heaven.

  I barely feel the guard’s hands as he carries me back to the Pit. Titus places my body on the wooden platform that I use as a bed, to keep me above the rats, and a nurse strips off my wet shift, replacing it with a dry one. Is she old or young? Someone’s mother? Aunt? Her movements are so soft and gentle that it twists my heart, and I long to weep and weep. She drapes me in blankets, tucking them around my toes, and then follows Titus out of the Pit. The heavy lid drops into place with a thud.

  My nerve endings grow livid as needles of pain shoot through my muscles and move upward, pulsing just under the skin. The shivering begins in earnest now. A blurry section of my mind knows this is not good, but I don’t care. Death would be a welcome release.

  And there He is, Sir Death Himself, drifting toward me. I sense His cool presence, see the tall, dark figure in my psyche and immediately feel the urge to live.

  A swift, dry brush across my brow. It takes me a moment to identify the sensation. The R-Reaper’s k-kiss? I ask telepathically.

  Only a talisman. My brothers will see it and pass you by. Your time is not yet.

  Very generous, Sir. But I can’t help wondering why?

  The insinuation of a laugh. Are you questioning my judgment, Visionary?

  His voice is less substantial in my mind than a whisper. It is neither kind nor cruel, without apology or compassion. I shiver nonetheless. Fearing greatly, I suppose, because Death cannot help being what He is. Just as I can’t avoid having visions of murder, cursed with the Sight by a fickle Roman goddess.

  Death touches my jaw and the pain subsides, a soothing drowsiness taking its place. Daughter of Rome, I think you’ve learned by now. There are worse things than me.

  I’m surprised, and a little dismayed, when I awaken in the piercing stillness. Checking over my body, I find breath in my lungs and a steady heartbeat. That Sir Death lived up to His word and gave me protection surprises me. It’s splendid. Fortunatus mea. Adversely, my dismay stems from the fact that I am now in the Reaper’s debt, confound it. When will He expect repayment, I wonder?

  Unable to answer myself, I climb down from my makeshift bed and stretch. I circle the Pit several times, stiff and aching, and suddenly drop to the floor. My skull feels too tight, the bones of my body turn to fire. I hold the sides of my head and rock back and forth.

  Stop! Not strong enough yet. Have mercy…

  My prayer for relief goes unanswered, and faces flash through my mind. Those I saw in my last vision, the one initiated when the doctor touched my skin. Men, women, old,
young—they appear and blur a moment later, shifting into the next person. All of Faust’s victims are deep-branded inside me. They are angry, thinking I’ve neglected them.

  Do not forget us, they call out from the grave.

  I won’t, I promise them. Upon my life, I won’t.

  The fingers of my right hand move apart, coerced by a supernatural power. They form the shape of a V—for Veritas, goddess of Rome. Burning within, like a human torch, I am now a prisoner of a different kind. Not of the asylum, but of the dead. My brain blossoms with the ideas they plant there, plans to make the guilty doctor pay. Vindicta. Vengeance. The ghosts tell me to find the Book and steal it. Escape the asylum and expose Faust to the world. Let him answer for every crime, they say, condemned by his own words.

  If only these spirits could be a bit more specific. How exactly do I escape to do their bidding? Have they any suggestions? But the dead only wail and cry for justice. Blasted ghosts always leave the finer points of the plan for me to figure out.

  Annoyed by my hesitation, they cause me to burn hotter. All right, I reply through my psyche. As you wish, I do so promise. Truth vibrates through the Pit, and the dead finally set my body free. They have accepted my vow, for the moment, but might be less forgiving tomorrow if I don’t take action. I work for a very impatient crowd.

  Most people belong to another in some capacity, as a daughter or son, a sister, spouse, or neighbor, but the inmates of this place have been forgotten. They have no one to speak for them, or to avenge their wrongs. And so I’m here, dumb and blind, to serve as the mouthpiece of the wretched, whether I like it or not. That brazen hussy Fate does love a paradox.

  Ironically, serving the dead gives me a reason to live, to go on breathing each day. It answers Hamlet’s eternal question of whether to be or not to be with an affirmative.

  That is why I crawl about the Pit on my knees, searching for a palm-sized piece of metal. It has been hidden and used many times by the inmates before me. I find the broken iron strip and turn toward the northern wall. The rough surface is covered with spider webs and dirt, but something else as well.