Witchmark

by C. L. Polk

  One of the men who rose to give up his seat was Old Gerald. I blinked at his presence in the lobby. The wireless was a patient favorite, but the men with that peculiar cloud in their heads avoided it and all the modernized parts of the hospital. But here he was, taller than I expected, of broader shoulder, and the lines around his eyes deepened with a smile. He looked vital, despite the uneven gait of a badly healed leg. He’d found brilliantine somewhere, shaved his cheeks and chin, trimmed and waxed his mustache.

  We met with a handshake. “It’s good to see you up and about, Old Gerald—you don’t mind the name, do you?”

  “I’ll answer to it.” He fell into step beside me.

  “You’re looking much better,” I said.

  “It’s a miracle, Doc.”

  I’d done it again, damn me. “I’m glad rest made you feel better.”

  “You lifted a weight off me. It almost doesn’t feel real.”

  “Do you mean Him?”

  Gerald nodded. “It wasn’t real, though. Was it?”

  This was tricky ground, best explored in privacy. “I know it felt real at the time.”

  “But I was mad,” Gerald said. “I went mad, because of what I’d done—”

  He shut up tight, checking to see if anyone could hear him. He glanced back at me, the question clear on his face: He was free of his nightmare. But would it return?

  Not if I could do anything to stop it. Nick’s body waited for me downstairs, and Mr. Hunter probably expected me above. I would find out what Nick knew and what he’d died for, whose secrets he’d been killed to protect. But patients came first, always.

  “Let’s go out to the garden, Old Gerald. Likely the air will do you good.”

  We visited a stone bench by a fish pond, and he sat down to tell me what haunted him. He confessed the days and nights of helpless fear and the battles where he learned what a man would do in the midst of war. I knew what a man would do, if it meant living through it.

  Then he told me when he’d first started thinking a killer lived inside him. “I was coming home, Doc. I had my ticket on account of falling for a pit trap. Wound got infected, but I pulled through. But then He came, and I knew it would never be over.”

  “And you still feel this way.”

  I’d struck the target. He sucked in a breath. “What if it comes back?”

  “If it comes back, you’ll know this time it isn’t real.”

  “If it comes again, you can help me. Right? With mesmerism.” He hunched his shoulders against the breeze and watched the silvery shapes of fish nosing up to catch insects skimming on the pond’s surface. “If it comes back. Maybe it won’t.”

  “I used the mesmerism to help you sleep. It made you feel better.”

  “It’s more than just sleep. But…” He screwed up his courage and asked. “Would I have wound up like the fellow on the news?”

  So it had come out. “We don’t know why James Badger did what he did. It’s a horrible business. Did you hear he’d had no work since he came home?”

  “Hard thing, to serve your country and come back to nothing.” Old Gerald patted his breast pocket and grimaced. “D’you mind if I smoke, Doc?”

  “Even less, if you’ll give me one.”

  He offered a cigarette with some surprise. “You smoke gaspers?”

  “The front,” I said. “Trying to quit.”

  “Can’t see why. It’s relaxing.” He lit his cigarette with a cupped hand, snuffing the match with a practiced speed. He held it between his thumb and forefinger to hide the glow of the burning end behind his palm. He’d seen some of the same land I had.

  The cigarette was acrid, the smoke barbed as I sucked it into my lungs, but the rush, the calm, swept over me. I’d gone three weeks without one, and I was dizzy with it.

  We studied the pond and the speckled silver bodies of fish, endlessly hunting. “I want to go home, Doc. Marie needs me. She got on without me, but it’s shameful to not be there for your family. And here I am—”

  Golden leaves dripped from a white-barked birch tree. One tatter-edged leaf landed in the pond. Fish nosed it, mistaking it for food.

  “I can find work. I’m a gardener.”

  It was too soon. “You’ve been up and about for a few hours.”

  He waved it away, smoke trailing around his fingers. “You know what I heard on the wireless? Our boys are coming home. How many will need my bed? And Young Gerald’s?”

  No one had told the patients, but they read a shift in the wind, sensed what we tried to hide. “Young Gerald doesn’t have any family to—”

  “He’s got me,” Old Gerald said. “Send him with me. We can make room. We can take care of him. He’s cheerful. His leg doesn’t pain him. He hasn’t had a nightmare in a week.”

  I needed to watch Old Gerald. I needed to monitor the progress of the miasma clouding his brain, to see if it would spread again. I couldn’t discharge him. He was my subject.

  He was a grown man, and I couldn’t keep him here against his will.

  “Parade Day,” I said. “It’s only three more days.”

  “It’s a deal, Doc.”

  We shook hands on it.

  * * *

  I’d done a miracle, all right. Old Gerald wasn’t the silent, closed-off man I’d met two weeks ago. He strode into Ward 12 with a grand wave for everyone and sat next to Young Gerald, intent on sharing his news.

  “Dr. Singer.”

  I turned. “Dr. Crosby.”

  “Did you enjoy your luncheon? You’re back later than the rest of the doctors.”

  “Personal counseling session,” I said. “Mr. Grimes needed to talk to me.”

  “Ah. Your miracle cure.”

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled. “Not really,” I said. “He responded well to mesmerism this morning. Was there something you needed?”

  “I saw a gentleman waiting outside your office. You haven’t yet made it that far.” He said this last with a nod for my coat and hat, the red scarf around my neck. My palms itched. Dr. Crosby wasn’t widely liked—not by his fellows, not by his patients—and I didn’t count among his defenders. But if Crosby had set his sights on me, I would have a miserable month until he decided to pick on someone else.

  “Thank you. I had better see to him. Good afternoon, Doctor.”

  I wasn’t running away. I was in a hurry to meet Mr. Hunter. I took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the stitch in my side around the sixty-fifth step. Mr. Hunter waited for me on a wooden bench across from my office. He read a book with astonishing speed. His hat sat next to him on the bench, and a lock of hair had slipped out of his queue. He put one finger between the pages, then rose to his feet.

  “Dr. Singer.” My blackmailer bowed to me, an elegant dip of his head and shoulders. I almost returned the gesture, all the ceremony and manner of the aristocracy waiting just under my skin, but stopped myself and stuck out my hand.

  “Mr. Hunter. I’ve kept you waiting.” My heart rushed as he took my hand to shake. “My apologies. I was with a patient.”

  “Not to worry.” He held my hand for a heartbeat longer than custom, and his fingertips slid along my palm as he let go. My skin held the sensation, clung to it.

  “Have you been here long?”

  “I’ve been reading this book.” He held it up so I could see the title. “I found it sitting on the bench.”

  I groaned. “That one’s popular on the unit.” All the gloriously morbid stuff was.

  “Have you read it?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Hunter patted the book cover. “It’s about a woman who is in love with a man haunted by the ghost of his first love.”

  “What rot.” I unlocked my office door. “Come in.”

  He let me get my coat off before he shut the door behind him. He slipped the book into its place with the other penny novels before untying his scarf.

  “I would have thought it ridiculous if I’d heard it before coming here.” I took his hat. He
unfastened his coat with nimble fingers, and I hung them on the hook next to mine. “I’d wonder why they didn’t go to a witch to take care of the problem.”

  I winced. “Because it’s just a story.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true.”

  A frightened quiver shot through my chest. “Mr. Hunter, please.”

  “How did it come to this?” He wiped a hand over his forehead as if he could erase his vexation. “Every single spirit speaker I’ve visited is a fraud. Every building reputed as haunted is just drafty and old. Every true witch I’ve seen in a trial has no hope of freedom.”

  “They don’t try you until you fail the examination.”

  “And they’ll arrest someone on the barest suspicion, so long as they’re poor. Did you know that?”

  “I do,” I said. “Which is why I would like you to please stop speaking of it.”

  “But you know it’s real.” He spoke in a low voice.

  I turned to my window. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what the people believe.”

  “And they believe witches are—”

  “Almost wiped out, and those who bloom with the power inevitably go insane,” I finished. “It could be worse. A hundred years ago, they were considered evil and had to be killed. But how do you not know this?”

  He scowled. “I suppose lifetime imprisonment is an improvement. How did you survive, your family of witches?”

  He didn’t know who I was. Nick had called me Sir Christopher, and he had just repeated it. Mr. Hunter didn’t know anything an Aelander witch would know, and he wasn’t a runaway Secondary if he didn’t know that witches and mages were different. But what was he?

  He spoke into my silence. “You’re not the only witch I’ve seen.”

  “What? You said—”

  “You and Nick were the only witches I’ve met,” he clarified. “But I have seen others. Wealthy and powerful, and therefore dangerous. Why do wealthy witches walk free?”

  “I’ve no desire to wind up in a trial.” He asked a dangerous question. I didn’t dare answer it. “And neither should you. Please let’s stop talking about this.”

  He cocked his head, his eyebrows hunching together, then shrugged and leaned against my filing cabinet. “I won’t tell anyone your secret, Doctor. Will you accept my offer?”

  “I will examine Nick Elliot,” I said. “I will share everything I discover. I need to know what he knew about the war. If it can help my patients…”

  Mr. Hunter plucked a book from the shelf I kept full of novels for the patients, flipping pages. “I want to be present while you perform the examination.”

  “It’s a grisly business, Mr. Hunter.”

  He shrugged. “What’s inside a man is much like what’s inside a stag. If I faint, you may mock me.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “If you faint, I promise I will.”

  “So you’ll let me attend?”

  “If I didn’t let you attend, would you pester me for the report?”

  He laughed, and I caught my breath at the sound. I wished I was funny, just to hear him laugh again. “Definitely.”

  “Then I may as well let you stay for it.”

  * * *

  Mr. Hunter followed me down the long flights of stairs to the morgue. I kept our pace swift. Was he here to block the investigation, or did he really want to know the truth? Where had he come from? He was no Aelander, from his ignorance.

  I slowed our pace down the last flight of stairs, ready to ask, but he spoke before me.

  “What can you tell me about asylums?”

  I blinked at the unexpected question. “I suppose they’re much alike,” I said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why do you send the mad to live so far away from their families? They can’t visit easily.”

  “That’s the point, sometimes.” I rounded the banister and tried to keep my steps from echoing. “Sometimes solitude from your family is part of the cure.”

  “Because your family is the illness?”

  “I didn’t say it.” I laid my finger alongside my nose, and he flashed a grin at me.

  “Mr. Hunter,” I said as we came to the bottom of the stairs. “I can’t help but notice you aren’t from here. Not from Kingston. Farther away.”

  “Very far,” he agreed. “This is the morgue, isn’t it?”

  The door was marked so, in black painted letters. His origins were off-limits. What was he hiding?

  I found the correct key, and the door swung open to darkness.

  “Odd,” I said. “There should be an attendant.”

  I snapped a switch, and the morgue filled with cold white aether light. Long stone examination tables lined up two by two in the green tiled room. I set my medical bag down at the nearest table.

  Mr. Hunter followed, hands behind his back. “Which of these drawers holds his body?”

  “I’ll have to look him up.” I found the clipboard on the wall. Nick Elliot’s name was the last on the list. He’d been signed in at eight. But there were entries next to the sign-in boxes. The body had been signed out.

  Signed out?

  “What is it?”

  I shook my head. “There’s been a mistake. It’s probably nothing.”

  He’d been checked into drawer 12. I moved across the room and pulled it open. “What the deuce.”

  He followed me over. “Was Nick Elliot supposed to be in there?”

  “Yes.” The drawer was buffed, and the corners were still wet. This drawer had held a body today.

  Maybe he had been moved. I opened each one, looking for Nick Elliot. The smell of bleach wafted from most of the drawers. We’d been cleaned out of cadavers.

  “They’re all gone,” I said. “Every body. What the deuce.” I unclenched my fists and tried to breathe. The morgue empty, all the bodies gone …

  Mr. Hunter leaned on an examination table. “This is unusual, I take it?”

  I slammed the last drawer and it bounced back, catching me on the elbow. “Yes. I don’t know.” I squeezed my arm, pressing the outraged hurt away.

  “Let’s go through it step by step,” he said. “What are the most common reasons for a body leaving here?”

  “Family, claiming the body for burial. Perhaps the police came for him.”

  “How would you determine that?”

  Would he help me like this, if he were responsible? He was so calm, reasoning the problem out, waiting for the answer. “Paperwork.”

  I opened the clerk’s office and found the outgoing files for Notes of Transit. “Oh no.”

  The police hadn’t come, but Kingston Civic Burial Services had. I found Nick Elliot’s name on the bottom of the pile of transit notes.

  I handed the file to him and stuffed my clenched fists into my pockets. He pressed his lips together in a thin angry line. “This says—”

  “That Nick Elliot’s body was sent out for cremation.”

  SIX

  The Tyranny of Paperwork

  There was a chance Nick hadn’t been cremated yet. I dashed for the phone. “Operator, I need a line to Civic Burial. The crematorium.”

  I waited through clicks and tones as my call connected to the office. The phone rang six times before a voice answered. “Crematorium.”

  “This is Dr. Miles Singer from Beauregard Veterans’. I’m calling about a body transported to burial services this afternoon. There’s been a mistake.”

  “What kind of mistake? They were all dead when they got here.” He congratulated his fine joke with a wheezy chuckle.

  “I meant to do a death examination on one of them. Nick Elliot.”

  “All the bodies from Beauregard came in hours ago. Your patient’s probably ash by now.”

  The wooden receiver grew slick in my grasp. “Are you sure?”

  “I ran the bodies myself. They’re all in there. Bad luck.”

  “Bad luck,” I echoed. My insides felt hollow. “Thank you for your time.”

  Mr. Hunter
came to the doorway of the attendant’s office. “Too late?”

  “Too late.” I pointed at the papers in his hands. “I shouldn’t let you sort through those. They’re confidential.”

  “You do live a life of secrets.” Mr. Hunter went back to his perusal of the day’s files. “How did Elliot’s body wind up at the crematorium?”

  “The hospital runs on paper. Someone writes his drawer on the right form; somebody with no knowledge of Nick gets the form; Nick’s body gets transported.” I moved to the sink and washed my hands, using the ritual of soap and water to calm down.

  “By E.M., whoever that is.” He walked out of the office, still holding the transport file. “Or J.R.”

  “Who’s J.R.?”

  “I’m not sure, but they left an angry message about not being able to wait around when children needed to be taken home and fed.”

  “Hold on.” I dried my hands and went back to the hanging clipboard, the first signpost on the paper path taking Nick Elliot’s body from the morgue to the crematorium. “Six bodies signed out by E.M., here.”

  He riffled the transit slips. “Six bodies taken by the city, the forms initialed J.R.” He read the names to me, and I checked them against the records. Some of them had rested in aether-cooled drawers for longer than two weeks—about how long we kept an unclaimed body before sending it off to civic burial. Most of them would be cremated and interred in the veterans’ wall, their names and dates of service to the country etched over their seals.

  Nick Elliot wasn’t a veteran. But there was a reason why someone would send his body off so quickly. “Is there a ‘D’ in box nineteen on Nick Elliot’s note?”

  “There is,” he said. “Don’t tell me. Diseased?”

  “His symptoms looked like cholera, or some other flux,” I said. “Some people prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to diseased bodies.”

  “Thanks to E.M.” Mr. Hunter flipped through pages of the duty log. “The one who left the angry note is J.R.” Pages shushed against each other as he read back. “No E.M. in the duty log.”