The Devil's Hand Page 8
“Did she say anything to you?” I ask, gently nudging her shoulder.
I wait, but she doesn't even seem to have heard me.
“Susan,” I continue, “this is important. If Abigail was here, she must have had a reason. Did she say anything to you?”
I wait again, and this time Susan starts mumbling something that I can't make out through her tears.
“What was that?” I ask, trying to sound sympathetic and understanding. “Susan, please... You have to tell us.”
“I'm coming for you,” she says suddenly, lowering her hands and staring at me with wild, tear-filled eyes.
“What?” I reply.
“I'm coming for all of you,” she continues. “She said that to me. She looked so pale and awful, and the way she stared at me, it was as if she hated me. I couldn't see her properly, but I could just about make out her face in the moonlight, and she looked so angry.” She pauses for a moment, as if she's reliving every moment of the experience. “She said this place is wrong, and she said she's going to make it all end. What do you think she meant? What's going to end?”
“Maybe she'd just sad,” Sissy suggests. “I'd be sad if I was dead. I think so, anyway. Then again, would I be able to be sad? Maybe I wouldn't even know. But it'd be sad not to know, so -”
“Susan,” I continue, ignoring Sissy for a moment, “this is important. What happened next? Where did Abigail go?”
“I started to scream,” she replies, “and then everyone woke up and... I didn't see Abigail leave, but when the lights came on she was gone and everyone was running over to me.” She pauses, as her bottom lip trembles with shock. “Please, you have to believe me, I wouldn't make this up. I saw Abigail and she said horrible, horrible things to me.”
“I believe you,” I tell her. “Honestly, I do. I just...” Turning, I look across the room, half expecting to see some hint of Abigail watching us, but of course she's not here. I even take a moment to watch the shadows, just in case I see a faint flicker of movement, but finally I turn back to Susan and see that she's sobbing again.
“So we did it,” Mary says finally. “I mean, most likely it was thanks to our prayers to Oberon, but in the spirit of friendship I'm willing to accept the possibility that something else brought her back.”
Getting to my feet, I look around at the others as they start excitedly talking about what might happen next. Some of them seem to think that Abigail is back for vengeance, some of them think she's just here to haunt the building for no reason reason, and a few are downright dismissive of the whole idea. Still, as Sissy sidles over to me with her usual confused expression, I can't help feeling that I'm missing some crucial part of whatever's going on here.
“What do you think?” she asks cautiously. “Come on, Ivy, you're always right about everything. What do you think Abigail wants?”
“I don't know,” I reply, turning suddenly as I feel – just for a fraction of a second – that Abigail might be right behind me. Seeing no sign of her, I turn back to Sissy. “I'm just worried that she might be really angry that she died and...” I pause, and I swear to God my throat feels dry. “Suddenly,” I admit finally, “I'm not so sure that calling her back was such a good idea.”
Part Four
DOCTOR JAMES RATCLIFFE
I
I watch as she pours another brandy. Damn it, I know I shouldn't accept, but right now I feel as if I need something to fortify my nerves. It's as if, every second, I relive that moment with the hand a hundred times over. I can tell myself until I'm blue in the face that it was all imagined, but there seems to be some other part of my soul that refuses to heed rational advice.
“I know a troubled man when I see one,” Mrs. Kilmartin says as she comes back over to place the glass in front of me. “My late husband was changed by the war. I'm not saying you've been through anything so dramatic, but as soon as I saw you earlier, I could tell something had hit you and hit you hard.” She takes a seat on the other side of the hearth, with the fire burning between us. She's a woman given to neither intimacy or compassion, so I can't help but feel a little surprised as she raises her glass. “To courage.”
“To courage,” I mutter, taking a sip. What a hypocrite I am.
“And to -”
Suddenly she looks toward the door. A moment's pause fills the room, but it's clear that something caught her attention.
“What?” I ask.
I wait.
No reply.
“Mrs. Kilmartin?” I continue. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing,” she replies, “I just...” She pauses, clearly a little shaken. “For a brief moment, I thought I heard a cry coming from the dormitories, but I must have been mistaken. Regardless, those girls can be awfully over-excited from time to time. The best thing is to hold back from feeding their egos. Ego, as I don't have to remind you, leads many a man or woman astray.” She watches me intently for a moment. “Doctor Cartwright, you are usually such a strong, solid man. I hesitate to ask what could have brought such doubt to your eyes.”
I open my mouth to tell her about the knock I heard on my door, and the hand on my shoulder, but I fear she would simply write me off as a fool. Over the past twenty-four hours I have searched my thoughts over and over, trying to find a rational explanation, but I have come up with only two possibilities. Either a ghostly hand really did fall briefly upon my shoulder, or I am finally starting to lose my sanity. Neither explanation fills me with hope.
“It's that girl, isn't it?” she continues. “The Cartwright girl, I mean. Please, don't tell me exactly what happened between her and Mr. Kane, I think it would break my heart to know but...” She takes another big gulp of brandy, emptying half the glass, and then she wipes her lips with a handkerchief. Clearly an experienced drinker. “Then again, maybe it would be better to know than to wonder. When I think of her, I invent all sorts of tortures in my mind. Her final hours, I imagine, were not pleasant. I wasn't listening, I promise, but I do think I heard her cry out once or twice from Mr. Kane's office, as if...”
She pauses again, her eyes lost in though, and then she flinches slightly before taking another sip from her glass.
“I... don't know how much I can say,” I reply cautiously.
“She had angered him greatly. That much I know.”
“Still,” I continue, “that hardly justifies the kind of...” My voice trails off as I realize that I can barely stand to think of the poor girl's injuries. They flash into my mind's eye a hundred times every day, and I feel as if they will do so forevermore until the day I die. As for my dreams, well, I long ago learned to forget those.
“The cat-o-nine-tails?” she asks.
I hesitate to reply, but she nods and takes another gulp of brandy.
“I've seen it in his office,” she continues. “I always assumed...”
With her glass finished, she reaches out for the bottle and pours herself another, before leaning over and, quite unbidden, topping up my own. I can't help noticing that her thin, veined hands are trembling. Sometimes I feel that this woman is made of stone, but right now I see that she is struggling to contain her emotions.
“The girl has only herself to blame,” she continues finally. “Everyone at this school knows better than to speak of irreligious things, but I overheard her gossiping to some of the other students about that awful hand nonsense. I warned her, I told her it was only a matter of time before Mr. Kane found out. Do you know what they were telling one another?”
Swallowing hard, I nod.
“Quite frightful, really,” she adds, shaking her head. “The rubbish that fills the heads of these girls... Sometimes I fear for them, truly I do. While they're here, shuffled out of sight to grow their shame to term, we can try to help them, but once they've given birth... I hate to imagine what will become of such simple minds once they're back in the real world.” She sighs. “Why can't they just direct all that energy and creativity toward more normal things? It's the wasted potential that
bothers me the most. With just a few exceptions, all those girls could be good wives and mothers, but it's as if they yearn for some other meaning in their lives. I fear this is the curse of modern life.”
“They're not all simple,” I tell her. “Ivy Jones, for example, is absolutely one of the brightest young girls I've ever met.”
“For every Ivy,” she replies, taking another sip, “there is a Sissy.”
I can't help but smile. She's right.
“Bright girls don't prosper in this place,” she continues. “Mr. Kane notices them eventually and it's a slippery slope from there. He's already been asking about young Ivy today, in just the same manner as he asked about Abigail some time ago. Abigail was a smart girl too, remember.”
“You don't think...” I pause, horrified by the idea. “I mean, surely he understands that he went too far last time? He can't do what he did to Abigail to another girl.”
She stares at me for a moment, her fearful eyes providing all the answer I need. “The man is driven by belief in the word of God. I've often wondered what he tells those girls during those private Bible classes he organizes. I even thought to eavesdrop once, but the walls around here are so thick, I couldn't hear any of it. As far as he's concerned, however, the girls are harlots, the lowest of the low, and the only thing worse than being a harlot is being a harlot who thinks herself clever. Then, he -”
Hearing a knock at the door, she turns and looks across the room.
“Enter!” she calls out.
I tense myself, in case she is to endure a visitor such as the one that plagued me last night. Is the madness spreading? After a moment, however, the door opens and Sykes steps through, clutching his cap in his hands. Poor, simple Sykes, with his tattered clothes and grease-oiled face.
“Beg your pardon, M'am,” he says cautiously, with a hint of fear in his voice, “but I didn't want to disturb Mr. Kane. It's just... There's something happened that I think you oughta see. Something out by the graves.”
***
“Sacrilege,” I whisper, stepping closer to the hole. “Whatever could possess someone to do such a thing?”
It's dark out here in the field, far from the schoolhouse, but the light of the moon glows an eerie blue on the cracked, snowy soil, allowing us to see the dark spot where Abigail Cartwright's grave has been dug up. It is as if the half-frozen soil has been torn from the ground, scattered all about as evidence of some passing fury that has now moved on. Not only that, but as the three of us gather around the edge and stare into the depths, it's clear that Abigail's body has been removed.
“I happened to come by this way on my way back from town,” Sykes explains, “and I couldn't barely believe it. I mean, I came past this very route about two hours ago, and I didn't see anything wrong. Of course, I might not have noticed, but I think I would! It was just calm and quiet, like you'd expect, and then a little while later...”
“Could it be grave-robbers?” I ask, turning to Mrs. Kilmartin. “I daresay such lowly beggars are still around, peddling their wares to unscrupulous fiends in the city. I heard of a case just a few years ago in Kidderminster.”
“There'd be nothing to rob,” she replies, “and besides, the other graves nearby have been left untouched.”
“Perhaps they intended to sell the poor girl, then,” I point out. “There are people, are there not, who will pay for a fresh corpse? Just last year, I heard of a food manufacturer who stood accused of... Well, it was too horrible to contemplate, but such things do happen. And that's before you consider the maniacs who just want a corpse because, well, because they have heinous designs on the poor things.”
“You might be right,” she continues, making her way around the edge of the grave, “but then...” She pauses, before pointing at a patch of white fabric at the very bottom of the pit. “That's the cloth bag in which Abigail was buried,” she adds. “It appears torn. What grave-robber would take a body out of a perfectly good bag, just to put her into another?”
“The ground was already frozen over again,” Sykes mutters dourly. “It would've been a hell of a job just to break through and get down to her. I just can't imagine it, M'am, really I can't.”
“There are monsters enough in the world,” Mrs. Kilmartin replies, “that honest folk cannot hope to guess the motives of them all.”
“We'll 'ave to tell Mr. Kane, won't we?” Sykes says after a moment. “I mean, I know he'll be furious, but he'll be more furious if we try to keep it from him. Well he can't blame me, this isn't my fault! I buried her good and proper!”
I glance at Mrs. Kilmartin, and I can tell she's already thinking the same as me.
“It couldn't be one of the girls, could it?” I ask cautiously.
“Of course not,” she spits, but there's concern in her eyes.
“They've been having some very funny ideas lately,” I continue. Stepping closer to the edge, I feel a small patch of soil crumbling beneath my right foot. When I look down, I see some pieces of frozen earth tumbling into the grave, and I take a cautious step back in case the ground should give way completely. “Then again, this atrocity must surely be beyond even them. I cannot imagine a group of pregnant girls digging up a grave in the middle of the night.”
“This is not the work of the girls,” she says darkly. “They're not strong enough to dig through six feet of frozen soil and then haul up a corpse, not even if all of them worked together.” She pauses for a moment. “Two corpses,” she whispers finally. “The child is gone too.”
“Then...” I take a deep breath as I realize we might be able to deal with the matter ourselves. “What are the odds of the body showing up again? Whoever stole it and for whatever reason, they have surely taken it far from here, so...” I turn to Sykes, then back to Mrs. Kilmartin. “If we were to fill this in, Mr. Kane would never have to find out that it had been emptied. Not if we keep our mouths shut and just ignore it, pretend it never happened!”
“We'd be taking an awful risk,” she replies, “but... You might be right. I'm thinking of the girls, you understand. I would not like them to have to know about this, or for them to face Mr. Kane when he's in one of his rages. The grave is not even marked, it's not as if anyone will ever care enough to come this way and look for the poor wretch.” She turns to Sykes. “You, man. Can you keep this from Mr. Kane?”
“Aye,” he replies, “I mean... It's not like he and I have long fireside chats, is it?”
“And you?” she continues, turning to me.
I nod, even though there's a part of me that worries we're making a mistake. Still, if word of this desecration gets out, there will be consequences. If word does not get out, on the other hand, the grave can simply be filled in and forgotten again.
“I've had enough of this miserable situation,” Mrs. Kilmartin says finally, taking a step back from the grave's edge. “Any desecration intended toward Abigail's body has doubtless been committed by now, and I'm sure the Lord would not want her name to be associated with such indignity, not in the newspapers or on the lips of men.” She closes her eyes and whispers to herself for a moment, briefly making the sign of the cross on her chest and then opening her eyes as she turns to me. “It's decided. This grave must be filled back in and we must never speak of it again. So long as the three of us can keep our tongues from wagging, Mr. Kane need never hear a word of what has happened here. Never!”
I turn to Sykes. “You know what you must do.”
Sighing, he places his cap back on the top of his head. “I'll have to go get a shovel,” he mutters, turning and walking away, “but I'll get the job done well before sunrise. That way, no-one'll ever know.”
“Who do you really think did it?” I ask Mrs. Kilmartin, as Sykes' footsteps tramp further into the distance across the frozen ground. “A wild animal, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“A fox, maybe.”
“Perhaps.”
I take a deep breath. “Or wolves? I mean, it's possible that wolves -”
As we walk back toward the schoolhouse, she makes several attempts to change the subject, to get us talking about something more palatable. Her efforts are in vain, of course, especially when we eventually pass Sykes heading the other way with his shovel. When we reach the door, I glance back and see the hunched old man silhouetted against the night sky, with the shovel slung over his shoulder. I wish I could be more like him, I wish I could just labor all day and not have a thought pop into my head. Sometimes I think simplicity is more of a virtue than intelligence or curiosity. Oh, to be a simple man...
Heading inside, I accept Mrs. Kilmartin's offer of one more brandy in her room. Anything to keep from going back to my bed, where I fear I might once again feel a hand upon my shoulder in the dark of night.
II
“You're attracting attention to yourself, young lady,” I tell Ivy as I place the stethoscope's drum against her swollen belly. “If you want my advice, you should try to be a tad more anonymous.”
“Why have -” She gasps and pulls away as she feels the cold metal, but she lets me continue the second time. “Why have I attracted attention?” she asks. “I haven't done anything at all.”
“Apart from organizing seances.”
“I haven't organized a single seance!” she protests.
“Now you're splitting hairs.” I listen for a moment to her baby's heartbeat. “Sounds healthy. Things are progressing nicely.”
“What about Sissy's?” she asks.
I pause for a moment. “I can't discuss another patient with you.”