Footsteps came behind me; it was Roger, at last. “I’ll take him,” he said, but I was already tangled with Archie, his bony arms entwined with mine. Archie’s eyes opened and he looked past me unseeing, staring at something that wasn’t there. His arms spasmed again and I dodged them. Then he shut his eyes tight and pressed his face to the pillow; his hands flew up to his ears as if he heard something intolerable; he drew his knees up in a posture of defense. “I won’t go!” he screamed. “I won’t go!”
A wiry hand, scarred and unspeakably strong, gripped my arm. “Move.” Archie had huddled down as if trying to burrow, his hands still clapped over his ears. I stepped back and Roger stepped in.
My knees were weak. I watched Roger shake the writhing Archie and tried to gather my jumbled thoughts. Water? The hypodermics? Surely the other men must have woken. Where had Jack gone?
I stumbled out into the dim hallway. There was no sound, no movement from any of the doorways. Surely this could not be commonplace, those screams a usual occurrence. Jack’s door was shut; I had no time to think of it as I swung my gaze the other way and saw a shirtless man pass the nurse’s desk and disappear into the stairwell.
Jack? I couldn’t tell. Why had he removed his shirt? Or was it another patient, choosing just this moment to try an escape? What if he was sleepwalking? Behind me, Archie screamed again, his voice going hoarse.
You are losing control of the situation, Nurse Weekes. I dashed back into the room and grabbed my lamp, which I’d taken with me from Jack’s room. Leaving Roger to wrestle with Archie, I hurried down the hall as quickly as I could. If it was a sleepwalker, he could hurt himself or get into trouble. And if he woke from his nightmare in another part of the house . . .
I swung past the nurse’s desk and plunged into the stairwell, pausing at the top landing. “Hey!” I whispered loudly into the dark, hoping that whoever it was had woken up. “Who are you? Where are you?”
There was no answer, so I held the lamp before me and lit my way carefully down the first steps of the spiral, the wood creaking beneath my feet. I went slowly, feeling my way, peering into the darkness ahead of me in case he’d stopped in his tracks, not wanting to crash into the back of a sleeping man. “Wake up!” I hissed into the darkness. “Wake up!”
Still no answer. I descended one round of the spiral, then another, the faint light of the men’s corridor receding behind me. I was plunged completely into the blackness; the stairwell was usually lit by daylight coming from its high windows, now blank and starless. I had only the globe of my paraffin lamp to light my way from step to step.
Where could he have gone? One floor down, the door led to a corridor behind the dining and common rooms, but it was heavy and fastened with an old iron latch; if the sleepwalker had pushed it open, I would have heard it. That meant he either was still on the stairs or had descended past the main floor, continuing down to the lower floor where the kitchens and the servants’ rooms were.
Still, I came to the first door and took a moment to run my hands over it. The latch was fastened, the door unmoved, the metal of the latch icy cold. I pulled my fingertips away and rubbed them together to warm them. “Come back!” I tried whispering into the dark again. “Come back!”
Perhaps I shouldn’t try to wake him. Wasn’t that the wrong thing to do with a sleepwalker? I didn’t know. If I found him, I’d try to get him back to his room, and—
There was a faint sound at the bottom of the stairwell, as of a shuffle of feet. Sssh. So he was at the bottom door, then. I did not hear that door open, either. He seemed to be just standing there, still.
I lifted my lamp and plunged downward again, trying to peer ahead, my hand sliding along the banister, my legs disappearing into the gloom. And suddenly I noticed the cold: icy, thickening cold, climbing my ankles and legs as I descended, as if I were walking down a set of steps into icy water. The skin on my legs and thighs rose in goose bumps even under my layers of skirts, and my feet in their boots ached with numbness.
I slowed, bit my lip. There was still no sound from below.
I took another step—the cold rising almost to my waist now—and stopped. I leaned over the banister and swung my lamp in the dark, trying in vain to see something, anything, and failing. The only thing I saw in the dim glow of light was my own breath, puffing in the cold air as if I were outdoors on a winter’s night instead of indoors on a stairwell in June.
I stood still for a long moment, the lamp raised, watching as one breath and then another plumed out into the dark air. There was only the sound of my breathing echoing in the stairwell now, the inhales a high whistle, the exhales gasping with fear. There was silence from the bottom of the stairs, a waiting silence, of something patiently watching me come closer, something with all the time in the world.
Every instinct told me to turn and run; and yet, if I did so, I would turn my back on it to climb the stairs again. And if it followed me . . .
I pushed myself backward and up one step, my boot scuffling on the stair, my hand sliding on the banister and pulling with the slick grip of my palm. My breath rasped. And from below I heard it move in response, heard a footstep and the soft creak of the sole of a foot on the bottom step.
“Nurse Weekes!” Roger’s voice boomed down the stairwell. I glanced up to see him silhouetted in the upper doorway, a place that seemed miles away. “Come quick! Mabry’s nose is bleeding again.”
In a second, purely by instinct, I launched myself up the stairwell toward him, pounding up the spiral as quickly as I could. He gave me a queer look as I reached him, breathless and undoubtedly ghastly. “What were you doing down there?”
I shook my head, unable to form words for an answer, and brushed past him. No sound had followed me up the stairs; the cold was gone. I headed down the hall on legs that wobbled, Roger’s footsteps the only ones behind me.
? ? ?
“It’s nothing,” said Captain Mabry. “I’m quite all right.”
He stood at his washstand wearing the flannel top and trousers that were standard-issue pajamas at Portis House. It was an ensemble that, truthfully, did not look much different from the outfits issued to wear during the day. I thought of the shirtless man I’d seen and gripped the back of the room’s only chair to keep myself upright.
“I can get you something,” I managed. Archie had quieted and I had sent Roger to make sure every patient was accounted for, so we were alone. “Aspirin. Disinfectant.”
“It won’t be necessary.” He was wiping his nose with a flannel, catching the last trickle of blood. This nosebleed was tidier than the last one, as he’d made it to the washstand as soon as it started. Now he glanced at me in the mirror, his tone neutral and not exactly welcoming. “You should sit down.”
I did. There was silence for a long moment. I couldn’t blame him for his demeanor, considering what had happened with the doctors. I took a breath and tried to focus. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I truly am. About earlier. I’m sorry.”
He paused in surprise, the flannel holding steady in midair, but he did not look at me again. Instead he rinsed the flannel in the basin of water, the only sound the gentle splash. Even from where I sat, I could see the dark blood swirling as he rinsed. “It’s all right,” he said at last. “You would have been sacked.”