Chapter Sixteen

I rapped on Ben’s door, bracing myself for the expected rejection – after all, we’d agreed I’d send word first so he could dose Flora with laudanum beforehand. I feared he might send me away, if he even bothered to answer the door.

“Henry! Thank God. Where in the seven hells have you been?”

His intense relief unnerved me and I almost told him what had happened, but at the last moment I changed my mind. There’d be no way to tell my story quickly, and no guarantee he’d believe me. I’d forgone a stop at the police station for the same reason. Babbling about demons living beneath the city would only get me tossed in a cell again – or worse – and I couldn’t afford that. Not now.

“I was working on something with the police through the night.” Innocuous enough, I hoped.

“And most of the day as well? We sent a messenger to your house this morning and there was no answer. He put a note in your mail slot. We held out until noontime, and then we couldn’t wait any longer.”

“Noontime?” I pulled out my watch, realizing as I did so that I’d not once checked the hour since I woke from my drug-induced stupor. I’d assumed it to be morning since I’d visited Old Innsmouth during the night.

When I saw it was almost four in the afternoon, I let out a gasp.

I’d lost nearly an entire day to my father’s dastardly venom!

“I…I didn’t check—”

“We need your help.”

“We?” Had Flora changed her mind about me? I stepped past Ben and into the hall, not even bothering to doff my coat and hat. I’d only taken a few steps toward his guest room when a soft voice to my right stopped me in my tracks.

“Hello, Henry.”

Callie stood at the entrance to the parlor with her hands folded, demure as ever in her long dress and smartly proper vest, as if she’d just come from work. But rather than her usual delicate smile, she wore a look of consternation the likes of which I’d never seen on her.

No, not consternation. Fear. I glanced behind me, where Ben still remained by the door, wringing his hands. What I’d taken for enthusiasm at my arrival I now interpreted more correctly as anxiety.

Flora!

“Something’s happened.” I glanced between brother and sister, neither of whom met my eyes. “What is it?”

“That’s why we tried to get hold of you. Her fever grew worse by the hour, and this morning she woke up speaking nonsense.”

“What did the doctor say?” Surely they’d called him. I made for the guest room but Ben’s next words brought me to a halt.

“She’s not there.”

“What?”

“The doctor came by last night. He prescribed more laudanum and cold baths for her fever. I called Callie to help me with, er, bathing. But this morning, when we tried to move her—”

“She cried out so,” Callie said.

“She wasn’t getting better,” Ben continued. “The doctor said there was nothing more we could do.”

Ben’s words turned my blood to ice and I struggled to breathe. No, it couldn’t be. She couldn’t be—

“When you didn’t show, we had to take her ourselves.”

Take her? “Take her where?” I asked through numb lips.

“The hospital. We’ve just now returned, to fetch heavier jackets and see if you—”

“The hospital? How could you?” My father had always said hospitals were the last refuge of the dying, the place you went when you had no hope. What had Flora’s physician been thinking? If only I’d been there to stop him, to care for her myself.

This was all Ben’s fault. If he hadn’t prevented me from seeing her….

“We had no choice. She—”

“You should have come for me.”

“We did, dammit! And you weren’t there.”

Ben’s exclamation jabbed me like a sharp knife and stopped whatever I’d been about to say. Tears ran down his cheeks and his eyes were as red as they’d been at Scott’s funeral.

I couldn’t fault him. They had come for me. They’d even left a message, which in my haste I’d failed to read. What more could they have done? Neither Ben nor Callie had any medical training; likely as not they’d never even been to a hospital, never seen the atrocious conditions….

But I had. More times than I preferred to remember.

I had to get Flora out of there before it was too late.

“We must go there. Now.” I grabbed my hat and hurried for the door. Callie asked a question, something about what I’d been doing with Inspector Flannery, but I ignored it. All I could focus on was getting to Flora and removing her to safety. Ben and his sister could come with us or not. Let the whole damn town rot in hell. I no longer cared about anything.

Except saving the woman I loved.

* * *

The stench of sickness and death struck us before we even reached the steps to the hospital, a miasma of unwholesome smells that trebled as we approached the doors.

Row upon row of metal cots ran down both sides of the long room. Tall arches indicated hallways and staircases that led to the various floors and wings of the aged stone building. From what I could see, beds filled every corridor.

The cries and moans of the sick and dying assaulted my ears as powerfully as their odors attacked the nose. Men, women, children, all calling for help or wailing in pain, their laments echoing from wall to wall until they blended into a cacophony of woe.

I drew my handkerchief and dabbed my eyes, which wept from the pall of human disease and caustic cleaning agents that hung in the air. Ben coughed and gagged so violently I feared he might vomit. Callie had paled but she apparently possessed the stronger constitution so many women have, and didn’t appear in danger of fainting.

Harried-looking nurses in starched white aprons moved from patient to patient, mopping fevered brows and administering laudanum and other medicines. Here and there, physicians garbed in dark suits and serious miens examined the sick and dying.

“Where did you leave Flora?” I asked, taking Ben by the arm. He winced and I eased my grip.

“I, I think…that way.” He pointed to a corridor on our right.

“Are you sure?” I demanded. If we had to ask the administrator to locate her, it could take hours.

“I—”

“I’m sure.” Callie stepped ahead of us. “I remember exactly where her bed is.”

“Thank God someone has their wits about them.”

Ben frowned but said nothing as we followed Callie down a hall populated by every diseased state one could imagine. I feared for my own health while we strode past the coughing, the bleeding, and, in more than a few instances, the already dead, and tried not to think about the pestilence we might be breathing in. I did my best to keep my gaze straight ahead so as not to linger on those who’d shat themselves or cast the contents of their stomachs onto their sheets, but in some cases it couldn’t be avoided, much like the puddles of effluvia that randomly stained the floor.

Flora’s bed lay near the very end of the hall, just before the doors that led to the next wing. By the time we reached her, Ben had his handkerchief over his face and even my stomach was out of sorts. Even so, I’d thought myself inured to the overall conditions of the place.

I was mistaken.

Flora lay in a tangle of bedsheets that did little to hide her emaciated form. Her complexion, always Irish-pale, now held a decidedly sallow cast. Sweat beaded on her brow and dampened her hair to the point where the normally luxuriant curls hung in limp ropes that called to mind a horse’s tail after a long run. Her lips were bereft of color and dark smudges rested in the hollows below her eyes.

The bandage I’d so carefully wrapped less than two days before now bore a series of yellow and brownish stains.

A spoiled cheese and sour ale smell rose up hot and strong, overpowering everything else. An odor no healthy flesh would ever produce. Red streaks snaked out from under the bandage and down her arm, a map of the disease’s path as it spread through her body.

As alarming as the sight of her was, that suppurating wound on her arm frightened me more than anything.

“Damn it to hell.” Despite the efforts of the doctor and myself, some sort of germ had taken hold in her wound. I wondered if Ben had been lax in caring for it in my absence, but I quickly brushed that thought aside. Knowing Ben, I doubted any lack of vigilance on his part. Between him and Callie, they’d have done everything they could for Flora.

They’d simply not been up to the task.

“How bad is it?” Ben asked.

I shook my head and knelt down. I began to unwrap the bandage. Flora moaned but her eyes remained closed. With each section I unwound, the stench of festering decay intensified.

Ben grabbed my shoulder and forced me to look up at him. “Will she be all right?”

“I don’t know.” Left unsaid was the very real possibility she could die. I think he saw it in my eyes. His lips tightened and he released his hold on me. I returned to my grisly work.

The wound was badly swollen, the edges so puffy and bruised I could hardly make out the stitches holding it closed. Oily yellow fluids leaked out from between the crusted lips, dripping with poison and decay. Bright red lines ran up and down her arm from nearly shoulder to wrist, as if scarlet paint filled her veins.

“Oh, my.”

Callie’s exclamation didn’t come close to capturing how I felt. Flora’s injury was even worse than I’d feared, and definitely not something I was prepared to deal with. Medicine had come far since the black days of the plague, but even modern antiseptics didn’t always prove effective against the myriad of organisms that lurked in the air and soil. Once an infection reached the blood, it became a race against time to prevent the spread of disease throughout the body.

Staring at her injured arm, I feared we might already be losing that race. Still, despite misgivings that I’d not be of much help at this point, I needed to do something. Left untreated, the infection would continue its advance and we faced the very real possibility she could lose her arm.

Or worse.

“We need to clean this. Now. Doctor.” I raised my voice to be heard above the general din. “We need a doctor here.”

“I’ll get someone.”

“Tell him to bring carbolic acid and more laudanum.”

Callie nodded and hurried off, no doubt relieved to get away from the oozing rot taking over Flora’s arm. I tossed the filthy bandage to the floor. The man in the next cot moaned and coughed, adding to the unhealthy vapors surrounding us. Ben cleared his throat but when I glanced at him he had his gaze firmly fixed on his feet, avoiding my eyes. He had questions for me, no doubt. Just as I had things to tell him. Yet there seemed to be a wall between us. The wrong moment, with our minds on Flora? Or had something changed in our friendship?

Perhaps both.

Maybe it really was time to move on, not just physically but in regards to who I kept in my life.

Before I could further contemplate that line of thought, Callie returned with an elderly woman whose once-white smock now resembled a butcher’s apron, painted in blood and body fluids.

I stood up. “Where’s the doctor?”

The nurse shook her head, which only came to my shoulder, and pushed me out of the way with a gnarled hand.

“Not coming anytime soon, you can bet your life on that. A few hours, if you’re lucky. And it don’t look to me like you’ve got the money to hurry one. Now, you want my help or not?”

“We have what you asked for.” Callie held up a brown bottle with a faded label. In her other hand she clutched a vial of laudanum and a roll of bandages.

A quick glance down the corridor showed no physicians in sight. With no other recourse, I nodded.

“Smart man.” The nurse wore an assortment of pins on the lapel of her dress, including one similar to the Miskatonic signet Callie wore. I wondered if she’d attended school there, or assisted at the medical college, as some nurses did. She pointed at Flora’s arm. “Lift it up for me.”

I followed her instructions. Flora groaned and one leg twitched.

“Hold it tight. She’s likely to wake up. You, girl, be ready with the laudanum.”

The nurse placed her hands around the wound and squeezed. Flora’s eyes shot open and she let out an agonized scream. Her body shook and she tried to pull her arm away.

“Hold her now!”

Ben threw himself across her legs, pinning her to the bed. I gripped her tighter, by the wrist and biceps. Her muscles went rigid beneath my hands. The nurse palpated the wound further, pressing her fingers hard on either side. Flora screamed again.

Another squeeze, and then a gush of vile effluvia burst out. Foul-smelling pus sprayed our hands and clothes.

“Ah, that’s it. Come now, you must have more for me,” the nurse said through clenched teeth. More yellowish exudate erupted, showering my arms and face. Bitter, salty droplets caught me in mid-gasp. I gagged and spat, scraping my tongue along my teeth to rid my mouth of the poisonous ooze.

Flora’s body arched up off the bed, as if caught in a grand mal seizure, and then went limp. Her eyes closed and her mouth hung open.

I looked at the arm I held. The flow of infected fluids had slowed to a trickle. The nurse pressed the edges of the wound once more. When nothing else oozed out, she let go with a satisfied sigh.

“There. That should help.” She wiped her arm across her face. “Nasty shite, eh?”

Moving with quick, precise motions, she administered a few drops of laudanum to Flora’s tongue and then washed the wound with carbolic acid before wrapping it in reasonably clean bandages.

“Change it every six hours.” She handed me the bottle and the rest of the cloths.

“Can we take her out of here?” I motioned at the sick and dying people around us. If she wasn’t well enough to travel, what would I do?

“Aye, sure you can. If you want her to die.” The nurse glared at me through age-faded eyes that still sparkled with intelligence and more than a little contempt for anyone who might doubt her knowledge of medicine. “She needs to stay in bed and rest. Use the laudanum to keep her asleep. The girlie here can change her bedclothes, can’t you, girlie?” She favored Callie with a narrow-eyed look and received a nod in return, which seemed to placate her.

“How long?” If it was just a day, I’d force myself to remain patient. Use the time to pack my things and Flora’s. Arrange the sale of my house through a solicitor. Even two: that would still give us twelve hours to—

“That depends. Was she a strong girl before this happened?”

“The strongest,” I said. The nurse glanced at Callie, who nodded.

“Then, a week, I’d venture. Maybe a dog’s hair less.”

Ben said something in response but I didn’t hear it. My ears were filled with the echo of her words.

A week? No! Not with hell coming to Innsmouth three nights hence. Hiding provided no answer. My father had already shown he could locate me with ease. Besides, where could one hide if the whole town was under siege? And I had no intention of departing Innsmouth and leaving Flora behind.

Only one course of action remained.

I would have to stop my father.

Fear gripped me in a cold fist and squeezed me until I thought my heart might stop and my innards burst out. Even contemplating another encounter with the demon in that cavern was something I’d never wished to do. Let alone launch an attack against it. A fool’s mission, to be sure. One I might not survive, even if I convinced Flannery of the thing’s existence and led a small army into the beast’s lair.

Unless….

The beginnings of an idea took root. Born of desperation, possible only through a combination of luck and timing. But if it succeeded, I could rid Innsmouth of my father, the demon, and the dead things bearing their sinful offspring.

A spark of hope sprang to life within my terror-frozen heart. Twice I’d made a vow to be the hero Flora needed, only to see bravery crushed by circumstance and the greater power of my foe.

Now, however, my father’s intelligence and supernatural allies might just give me the advantage I needed. He’d like as not be occupied the next forty-eight hours with amassing his troops and finalizing his plan of action. There’d be little time to spare worrying about me. Why should he? He already believed me no consequence. He might have one of his walking corpses watching me, but I could take care not to be seen or followed. To Silas, I – like all humans – was nothing more than a fly, a pest to be swatted if it got in the way.

Perhaps I could turn that arrogance, which he’d always possessed but now seemed magnified a hundredfold, into my best weapon against him. I would do the one thing he’d least expect.

Bring the war to him.