Silence for the Dead(89)

“We didn’t have time for that,” said Paulus. “Besides, if you want to be the one to get Nathan into one of those ambulances, you can try. I certainly won’t.”

“Nurse Weekes is right,” Jack said. “I didn’t know you were scared of Nathan the cook, Vries.”

Paulus turned to him. “It isn’t my job to wrestle people like him,” he said, his accent sounding exotic in our half-dark dining room. “It’s my job to wrestle people like you.”

“What’s done is done,” Captain Mabry said in his best aristocratic voice. “We can’t get them back now, even if they would come.” He looked at me. “We have more pressing problems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do the arithmetic,” Jack said. “Count the patients.”

I did, shuffling them through my brain. And suddenly I saw it. “Archie Childress,” I said. “He wasn’t evacuated, and he isn’t on the floor in the hall. Where is he?”

“Creeton, too,” said Jack. “He didn’t need to be carried downstairs, but I told him to come. I didn’t want him alone, and I wanted him where we could all keep an eye on him. He said he would come, but he never appeared.”

“Oh, my God.” I looked around the table. I didn’t think that anything could be worse than this. “We’re missing two patients.”

Paulus raised one of his huge hands. “As to that, we can shed a little light. On one of them, at least.”

We all turned to him. His gaze dropped for a second, and I thought I saw uncertainty cross his face. Then he looked back up and spoke. “We found Creeton and Childress in the common room. Creeton was having a go at Childress—you know, teasing him. The stutter and the shaking. He’s always liked to take the piss out of Childress, but this time he seemed angry. He hasn’t been the same since—well, you know. He was taking it out on Childress rather hard. Said Childress’s weakness was what had brought it.”

“Him,” Roger corrected. “He said Childress’s weakness was what had brought him.”

Paulus frowned. “I don’t think so. What the hell does that mean? Brought who?”

There was silence around the table. Jack and I exchanged a glance. I didn’t think Archie had somehow brought the ghost of Mikael Gersbach or his father to Portis House. But if Creeton was not in his right mind . . .

“Anyway, Childress flew at Creeton,” Paulus continued. “Started to hit Creeton something fierce. He’s thin, that one, but when he’s angry he’s damned determined.”

I put a hand to my mouth. Oh, Archie. Creeton likes to have a go at me, but I can handle it, he’d told me. “What happened?”

“We pulled them apart,” Paulus said. “It took two of us to take care of Childress, he was struggling so hard. When we came back to the common room, Creeton was gone. We spent over an hour looking for him and had to give up. That’s when I came into the main hall and saw the ambulances had gone.”

“No trace of him,” Roger agreed.

“Wait.” West leaned forward in his chair. “What exactly do you mean, you took care of Childress?”

Again that flicker of uncertainty crossed Paulus’s features. “He’s a danger,” he said. “He’s proven it, hasn’t he? With this sickness, I don’t have the staff to watch him. I thought it would be just until the evacuation, and then we’d get him out of here.”

“What did you do?” I nearly whispered.

“We put him in isolation,” Roger replied, his chin up. “The old library. He’s there now.”

There was a beat of horrified silence.

“Are you saying,” I said, “that you took Archie to the isolation room in the west wing and you left him there?”

“We had to,” said Roger. “That’s what it’s there for, isn’t it?”

“How long?” Jack’s voice was almost a croak. “How long has he been locked up in that place?”

“I don’t know,” Paulus said. “Three hours, perhaps.”

I swallowed. I would not have put my worst enemy in that haunted place for three minutes. And Archie . . . fragile Archie, who already had nightmares so horribly bad . . .

And suddenly I knew. It was what Creeton had said that revealed it. No, Archie had not brought the ghosts here, but it was Archie who was making it worse. He was a sort of conduit, his mind the easiest one to reach, his emotions the rawest, his fear the most abject. This place fed on the men, but it fed on Archie first, and as it did, it gained strength. It was why Archie endured a special kind of torture while the men tried to kill themselves and the west wing rotted with eerie speed. It was all tied together. The worse Archie grew, the worse Portis House became.

And now he was locked in the isolation room, the center of the nightmares. Three hours.

“We have to get him out,” I said.

“And do what with him?” said Paulus. “Let him strangle someone else?”

I felt him glance at the faded bruises on my neck, and I was angry. “Mr. Childress does not belong in isolation.” I tried to sound authoritative, as if terror weren’t fighting to take hold of me. “Go get him out.”

“I won’t.”