“I don’t care,” Whyborne said unexpectedly.
I put a hand to his arm, felt him trembling with suppressed anger. “Ival?”
“To hell with this town.” His nostrils flared. “The Fideles can have it. They deserve one another.”
I tightened my grip on him. “You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?”
“Marian is corrupted. My mother is in danger.” I shook my head angrily. “And if that isn’t enough, Widdershins is in danger as well.”
He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Then let it out with a sigh. “You’re right,” he said unhappily. “I have a responsibility. But perhaps it would be best if the rest of you left.”
“What nonsense are you blathering now?” Deprived of another outlet, Christine turned her anger on him instead.
“I’ll remain here and deal with the Fideles.” He swallowed. “And if Widdershins is in danger, it would be best none of you return there. I suggest Boston.”
What on earth had gotten into him? Before I could think of any response, Christine said, “Of all the idiotic things I’ve heard you say, Whyborne, this is the topper.”
He drew himself up to his full height. “I’m trying to keep you safe!”
Christine glared up at him, her hands on her hips. “Don’t be absurd. Miss Norton already tried to feed you corrupted pie. Without Griffin, how are you to know what’s safe to eat? Who isn’t—or is—a sorcerer?”
“I’ll eat from cans,” Whyborne said stubbornly. “And I’ll just assume everyone is out to do me in.”
“Oh, yes, that will work splendidly.” Christine rolled her eyes.
I put a hand to his elbow before he could continue the argument. “Ival, please, you’re being irrational. How could you possibly think any of us would leave you to save our own skins? For God’s sake, I ventured into an underground city full of umbrae for you in Alaska.”
“And I’m certainly not giving up my career to move to Boston of all places,” Christine exclaimed. “Good gad, man, the nonsense you spout.”
“I...yes.” He deflated. “You’re right. I just wish...”
“Us to be safe. I know.” I glanced at the house. “Now, if you’re finished being dramatic, we need to determine our next move.”
“The poor farm seems to be the epicenter of the corruption,” Iskander said quickly.
I nodded. “Agreed. I’d like to have the opportunity to look around. Unfortunately, I don’t see any way to accomplish that during the daylight without being spotted by the residents, if not the Fideles.”
“Some of whom might be inclined to attack you, if they’re corrupted,” Iskander agreed.
Whyborne leaned against the wagon, frowning into space. “I still don’t understand why the corrupted seem determined to hurt Griffin. Except for Marian. But whatever motive she might have had, even she spoke the same words to him as the others.”
“If the corruption is a form of mind control, as seems likely, perhaps the cultist who is commanding them has a particular grudge against Griffin?” Iskander suggested.
Christine tapped at her chin thoughtfully with a finger. “Likely either Mr. Tate or Mrs. Creigh is controlling them,” she said. “Assuming Tate isn’t just a pawn, unaware of with whom he’s allied. Does Creigh’s name sound familiar, Griffin?”
“No.” I ran my hand back through my hair, resisting the urge to tug at it in frustration. “But she might use an alias. Possibly I crossed her in my Pinkerton days, and she was delighted to find she had the opportunity for revenge.”
“Mrs. Creigh,” Christine mused. “Is there a Mr. Creigh?”
“Not that Lawrence mentioned.”
“Hmm. Perhaps you widowed her last July in our fight against the cultists, and she wants revenge.”
Iskander frowned. “In the confusion of the battle, I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone would know exactly who killed whom. Unless she was literally standing right there.”
“I suppose,” she agreed.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’ll wait until sundown and visit the poor farm.” I lowered my voice. “Lawrence is under the impression I’m here on detective business, so our sneaking out at night won’t seem suspicious to him.”
“Good thinking,” Whyborne said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it hadn’t been my idea. “Griffin, I’d like you to take a close look at the corn fields. Just to confirm they’re corrupted. I don’t want to take any drastic action like destroying the grain elevators if we don’t know for certain.”
Christine arched a brow. “Is that your plan? I don’t suppose you have dynamite lying around?”
“I don’t need dynamite,” he snapped irritably. “Really, Christine.”
“Then we’ll sneak in through the unharvested corn,” I decided, heading off another argument. “It will offer some cover to our approach to the poor farm.”
“Agreed,” Whyborne said. “And what shall we do until tonight?”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Chores, of course. How do you feel about mucking out stalls?”
~ * ~
It was well after midnight when we drew the wagon to a halt a quarter mile or so away from the poor farm’s boundary. The farm lay a short distance to the north and east of Ma’s farm. I’d visited the place twice in my youth: once when Pa and some of our hired hands apprehended an escaped lunatic, and once to take donated blankets from the church.
The poor farm housed the folk of the county who could no longer support themselves, or whose family couldn’t provide for them. Orphans, the elderly, those crippled by accident or disease, those suffering from tuberculosis, even the mad whose cases weren’t desperate enough for them to be sent to the state hospital in Topeka: all were taken in by the poor farm. Those who could work the land did so, while the rest were at least ensured a roof over their head and three meals a day.
The mules balked sharply, tossing their heads. “Whoa,” I soothed. “What’s spooked you?”
“Just like yesterday,” Christine said from where she sat on the driver’s seat beside me.
“Yesterday?”
Whyborne sat in the back of the wagon. Now he got to his knees and peered out between Christine and me. “After we left you in front of your mother’s house, the mules balked. We thought perhaps they smelled a predator?”
“Perhaps.” Or perhaps I wasn’t the only one who could sense the presence of the corruption.
I secured the mules to a fence post, and Whyborne took the lantern from the wagon. I would have preferred to have gone without a light, but there was no moon, and the blaze of the stars wouldn’t be enough for our task. Christine took her rifle from the back of the wagon and tossed my sword cane to me. My revolver I already carried in my pocket.
“Ready?” I asked.
Iskander patted his coat, which concealed his knives. “Lead on.”
As we approached the corn, my steps slowed. Every stalk glowed faintly in my shadowsight, but the light was threaded through with veins of darkness. “It’s all corrupted,” I said. “Every plant.”
Iskander winced. “We’d guessed as much, but confirmation is hardly pleasant.”
Whyborne led the way to the irrigation ditch. The water glowed with an unnatural light, just like the corn. I crouched beside the ditch, not daring to touch the water, and inspected it as carefully as I could. It looked muddy, filled with some kind of black sediment, whose tiny particles remained suspended, rather than settling to the bottom.
When I described what I saw, Whyborne shuddered. “Like spores,” he said.
The blood drained from my skin, and I hastily stood up and stepped back a pace. “Exactly like spores.”
“Well, this certainly grows more and more horrifying,” Iskander muttered. “Forgive me, Griffin, but I can’t say your hometown has proven a pleasant locale to visit.”
“I see why it’s dying,” Christine observed. “The town boosters don’t have much to work with. Fallow: come for the viciou
s gossip and slanderous newspapers; stay for the magical water laden with infectious spores.”
“It makes Widdershins seem almost pleasant in comparison,” I replied lightly.
Whyborne flinched, though, as if I’d slapped him. “We should hurry, before anyone sees us,” he said, and started off without waiting.
As we moved deeper into the field, the light of the arcane line grew brighter and brighter in my vision. Though it was nothing compared to the vortex in Widdershins. That was a sight indeed: rivers of glowing fire, all converging on a single point. If it had been visible to the ordinary eye, it would be considered a landmark of great beauty. The sort of place where artists would come to paint, and tourists to gawk.
But I was the only one who could see it. Just as I was the only one who had glimpsed what lived in Ival’s skin, in those moments when it was released from the bonds of the flesh. The thought made me feel strangely warm.
The breeze grew stronger, the leaves of the corn rattling against each other. We were deep in the corn now, perhaps halfway to our goal. Whyborne came to an abrupt halt, a frown on his face. “Does anyone feel any actual wind?”
We all froze instantly. The corn continued to hiss, as if in a strong gust, but he was right. There was no breath of air against my skin to accompany it.
A low moan sounded off to the right.
“What was that?” Whyborne whispered hoarsely. “It sounded like what I heard the other day, before Vernon found me.”
There came another moan, but this one was from the left.
I drew out my revolver. “Hurry,” I said. “We need to get out of the field.”
Whyborne nodded. “Agreed,” he said, and took a step forward.
A corrupted figure surged up from the ground at his feet.
Chapter 19
Whyborne
An involuntary shout escaped me as a figure rose up right in front of me. Then I got a good look at it in the light of my lantern, and barely bit back a second cry.
It was human, or had been once. But its utterly hairless skin had turned a dark gray, slick and wet as something rotting beneath the ground. Bulging veins crawled over its body and face, distended and throbbing with corruption.
It had been lying there, silent in the corn, until I nearly trod on it.
It was silent no more. Its mouth gaped open in a moan, revealing teeth furred in black mold. A revolting smell burst forth, a mixture of rot and mildew that flooded my mouth with bile. It lifted hands whose nail-less fingers were swollen and slick—and lunged at me.
“Ival! Get down!” Griffin shouted.
I ducked. The crack of his revolver rang out, and the corrupted thing jerked, then collapsed, half its head missing.
I scrambled back, even as the corn began to thrash around us, as if in the midst of a storm. Other moans sounded, closer now—the things must have been lying in wait, their presence concealed even to Griffin’s sight by the glare of the arcane line and the glow of the corn itself.
“Run!” Griffin shouted, and grabbed me by the arm. One of the corrupted lunged from the adjoining row, its slimy hands barely missing my throat as Griffin hauled me back.
Then we were running, the corn rippling and rolling around us in great waves. I cast a glance back, saw more of the corrupted stagger from the rows. What spell could I use against them? Fire was no good; if I burned down the field, we’d likely end up roasted along with it. Possibly half the county as well, if it turned into a prairie fire. Wind? But on the open plains, there was nothing to funnel its force. Perhaps lightning, if we could stop running for a minute—but that, too, risked fire if there was a spark.
The corrupted came faster now, breaking into a slow run from their initial shamble.
A moaning figure stepped out in front of us. Christine didn’t hesitate; the crack of her rifle shattered the air. Her aim was true; half its head burst apart in a spray of gray nastiness.
A moan sounded right behind me. I spun—and hands closed around my throat.
The touch of the corrupted’s rubbery skin filled me with instinctive revulsion. I thrashed, clutching at its soft flesh, which gave sickeningly beneath my nails.
Iskander’s knives flashed down, severing one of the corrupted’s arms. The knife passed through easily, as though there was no bone left inside, nothing but a sort of spongey sameness, like slicing through the cap of a mushroom. A second flash, and the other arm was severed.
Both continued to clutch at my neck.
I cried out in disgust, but was able to rip them away. The corrupted didn’t seem to have noticed their loss, merely staggered toward me again.
I laid frost on its skin. The places my spell touched instantly turned black and flaked off, but it wasn’t enough to do more than slow the creature down.
“Come on, Whyborne!” Griffin exclaimed. “We have to outrun them!”
We tore through the corn, cutting across rows as we struggled to get out of the field. Another corrupted emerged to one side, and Iskander sliced off its head with a single blow, the soft flesh giving way as human ligament and bone never would. Griffin shot another in the chest; it staggered but didn’t stop until he ran his sword cane through its eye.
We burst out of the field and into the open air.
A cluster of buildings stood not far away: a large house where the poor farm’s inmates no doubt lived, a quarantine building for those with tuberculosis or other disease, equipment sheds, barns, and chicken coops. Christine paused, bracing herself to fire again, and the rest of us fell in beside her.
The rustling amidst the corn died away. I glimpsed dark figures moving between the rows, slowly withdrawing, as if they didn’t wish to pass the boundaries of the field. Because something tied them to the place, or because they’d been set only to guard the corn from trespassers?
“Bloody hell,” Iskander said shakily. “What are they?”
“The final stage of the infection?” I suggested. “They seemed more fungal than animal.”
“God.” Griffin shook his head. “We have to find a cure. If this is what awaits Marian...whatever she might think of me, she’s family.”
“Well, we’ve made it this far,” Christine said, slinging her rifle over her shoulder again. “We ought to have a look around.”
Keeping a wary eye on the main house, we made our way amidst the cluster of buildings. The coops stood open and empty, and there were no signs of cats or dogs, or even tracks of rabbits near the flourishing gardens.
“It’s all corrupted,” Griffin whispered with a nod at the gardens. “The pumpkins, greens—everything. Just like the corn.”
“So where do we look?” I asked. “Do we dare try to sneak into the main house?”
“What’s that?” Iskander asked. The building he pointed to stood well away from the main house, not far from the section of the field that had already been harvested. It was small, its only windows were set too high to look in or out of.
“The jail, I expect,” Griffin murmured.
“Jail?”
“For the inmates who are deranged,” he clarified. “Those who are a danger to others, and can’t be kept in the main house where they might hurt someone else.”
Christine started for the jail. “Let’s see who—or what—Mrs. Creigh might be keeping in there.”
When we reached the building, she tried the door. “Locked,” she confirmed in a low voice. “Griffin, did you think to bring your housebreaking tools?”
He nodded. “Of course. Whyborne, bring the lantern closer.”
I did so. He knelt in front of the door and took out the leather wallet containing his lock picks. In the space of a few minutes, there came a click, and he rose to his feet. “There.” He tucked the wallet back into his vest. “Stand ready.”
The door swung open with a squeal of hinges, and I shone the light inside.
~ * ~
The smell rolled over me like a fetid wave: unwashed bodies, human waste, and above all the earthy stench of mildew, as
if the jail were a root cellar or a cave rather than an aboveground building.
I pulled out my handkerchief and clapped it over my mouth. Christine did the same; Iskander coughed heavily into his sleeve. “Phagh!” he exclaimed. “What a reek.”
Griffin’s face had turned the color of cottage cheese. His lips parted, and I didn’t know if he meant to vomit or cry out.
The interior was divided into four small cells, three of them occupied. The unfortunates within had no bedding, nothing at all to keep their naked skin from the hardness of the concrete floor they lay on. Their flesh had taken on a horrible, grayish hue, their scalps visible where their hair had begun to fall out in clumps. Worst of all, patches of a sort of slick, blackish mold had erupted across their skin, as thought something inside them pushed its way to the surface.
“This is where Creigh is making the...the sort of corrupted we met in the field.” The fine hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Was there some spell, some process, which compelled the infection to alter its host this profoundly? Odell certainly hadn’t looked anything like this—and if he had begun to in time, his usefulness would surely have come to an end very quickly.
As would mine, if I’d eaten the pie.
“This can’t be a final stage,” I whispered. “It’s deliberate.”
The nearest corrupted inmate opened his eyes.
They were no longer human, the capillaries replaced by gray-black hyphae, the corneas dead and lifeless. As one, the trapped souls around us rose to their feet. The foul stench billowed out from them, and bile clawed at the back of my throat. The four of us instinctively crowded together, back to back, and I found myself desperately glad for the bars separating us from the infected.
“Let’s go,” Griffin said tightly, grabbing my hand. “We need to get out of here, before they raise an alarm.”
I let him pull me away from the jail and into the clean night air. “What do we do?” Christine asked. “We can’t just—just leave them!”
“It’s too late for them,” Griffin said. “There was almost nothing human left in my shadowsight.”
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