I didn’t see Creeton on the grounds outside the garden. I walked quickly through the weeds and called his name, receiving no answer. But I knew where he was going. It was where the others had gone.
His white patient’s uniform stood out against the shadows on the grass in front of the isolation room. I called his name again, and broke into a not-quite run; I didn’t want to approach him too quickly in case that sent him over the edge. He turned and watched me coming, and when I got close enough to see, he raised one hand and put the jagged point of the large shard of glass he was holding against the soft spot of his throat.
“Go away, Nurse Weekes,” he said. His eyes were strangely calm.
I was entering the shadows of the west wing now, choking on the oppressive air. “Creeton, don’t!” I shouted.
He dug the glass farther into his neck. “Don’t come closer. Do you think I won’t do it?”
I stopped where I was. Even though I’d known what he was planning, the sight was still shocking. This is not a nightmare, I thought. This is real. There may have been shouts or movement far behind us, but I didn’t turn to look. It was just the two of us, the day’s heat a living thing even here in the shadows, where it pulsed over us and intensified the sour smell of this place. “Please,” I managed. “I know that was difficult. But—”
“Where’s my Luger?” he said.
“What?” The word meant nothing to me.
“They took it from me when I came here,” he said. “I know they have it. I’d rather use a gun than this piece of glass, but if I have to I’ll make do.” He laughed.
“I can’t do that,” I said helplessly. “I can’t get you a gun.”
“You mean you won’t.” He laughed again, and his gaze darkened when he saw Paulus, Roger, and two other orderlies fan out around us in a circle.
“Put it down,” Paulus said.
Creeton’s knuckles whitened on the shard of glass. “I can see I’ll have to be quick.”
He would do it, I knew. It would be messy, imprecise, and it might not even kill him; but here in front of everyone he would do his best to shove that piece of glass into his neck, just like the men who had stood here before him. “Please, for God’s sake, stop!” I cried. “It’s this place, Creeton—can’t you feel it? It’s this place that’s wrong.”
He gave no sign that he heard me. His gaze wandered over the orderlies, who were pressing in closer. “My father fought in the Boer War,” he said. “I would have liked to show him my Luger. Maybe then he would be proud of me.” He looked directly at me and screamed, “Give me back my Luger!”
“Put it down!” Paulus shouted again.
“Do you think you can help me?” Creeton said to me, his eyes blazing with a sick, despairing triumph. His knuckles whitened on the shard of glass again. “Nurse Weekes? With your caring? With your concern? Do you actually think you can help me? Do you actually think you can help any of us?”
“What does he say to you?” I asked him, locking my gaze with his. His was so mad I almost felt the madness coming out of him and blooming inside me. “In the nightmares, what does he say? Does he call you a coward?”
His mouth went slack with shock.
“Dead is never better,” I said, the same words I’d said to his father’s retreating back. “Never.”
His pause lasted only a second, but it was long enough for Paulus to come up behind him in three huge, long strides and deliver a powerful kick to the back of Creeton’s knees. Creeton overbalanced and fell forward, the glass falling from his hand. The orderlies were on him before he could move.
“You’ll want to cooperate with us now,” said Paulus calmly as another orderly unfolded a straitjacket. “Off we go.”
Creeton struggled only a moment, and then he went slack, facedown in the weedy grass. The orderlies moved his limbs as if he were a heavy rag doll. I looked around and saw Matron some twenty feet away, watching, flanked by Boney. Matron hurried forward, a needle ready in her hand.
The gardens and terrace had emptied. Martha and Nina were presumably inside keeping the other patients quiet, though I could see faces pressed to the glass of the French doors.
The orderlies rolled Creeton over to put the jacket on him. His eyes were open and staring at me. “Go to hell, Nurse Weekes,” he said, and he closed his eyes as Matron bent over him and they put his arms in the sleeves.
? ? ?
“It’s called a relapse,” Roger told me after they’d put Creeton in his room, sedated. “When they top themselves. That’s what they put in the letter. ‘We regret to inform you your son died after a relapse,’ or some such nonsense. They never just say they did themselves in.”
I remembered this as I sat in a broom closet, where I’d ducked in looking for a bucket, thinking I was going to throw up. I hung over the dingy bucket, my clean sleeves getting dirty, but nothing happened.
I can’t do this, I thought. I can’t, I can’t. I couldn’t stop shaking, and my stomach turned again and again. I prayed that no one would come in here, that no one would see me like this.
This house was a vampire, feeding on the pain, the insecurity, the despair of these men. It was feeding on Creeton, it was feeding on Archie, it was feeding on Mabry and Jack. It knew my weaknesses, my fears, and it was only a matter of time before it fed on me. I let go of the bucket, put my head in my hands, and surrendered to my own madness, the madness of this place.
It was killing them, and it was winning. And soon, there would be no time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
In the end, it was easy to get the keys to the west wing. The orderlies had two sets, but at night only one orderly was on duty. After Paulus had gone off shift, I simply walked into the empty orderlies’ room next to the kitchen, took the second set of keys from the latched cabinet where Paulus had put them, and walked out again with no one the wiser.
It was late. None of the visiting families had elected to stay the night. Nina had already started night duty, and Martha was asleep. After the afternoon’s morbid excitement, Portis House had settled into a dark, quiet night.
I had been debriefed for over an hour by Matron. She had questioned me closely about the exact sequence of events, including the moments I had left Creeton alone. She had written down everything I said for her report. I answered her with numb truth, too tired to consider prevaricating. If I was in trouble, so be it.
But it seemed that I wasn’t to be blamed this time. Creeton’s parents had left before the appointed time—when an orderly was due to arrive and help—and I had been left with no assistance. Creeton had given no outward signs of suicidal distress, though likely he had been planning it even as I asked him whether he was all right. The mad, as Matron had told me, could be duplicitous.
I was worried that Creeton would be put in the isolation room. Haunted or not, it seemed to be the worst place to put a man who had just tried to kill himself. But when I’d asked Matron, she informed me that “standard procedure” in these cases dictated the patient be placed in his own room, under restraint and sedation, until “his mind has cleared.” I remembered that she had dealt with exactly this situation several times already, and I wondered whether she was tired of it. Tired myself, I asked her if she ever thought about why the men kept choosing that particular patch of grass.