Rook, page 18
Lydia Lee looked uncomfortable as well, but said nothing. From inside the carriage, Grim’s eyes peered up at the imposing old building.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You can go, Mr. Rick. You’ve been very helpful. Miss Lee, we’re just going to have a look inside. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
She nodded. “I’ll watch the kid. Try not to get eaten by demons or anything.”
“I generally do,” I agreed.
The air all around the grounds was thick with the residue of spirits—human souls no longer of the corporeal world, yet not fully gone—and from the lower windows poured a silvery, keening aura of anger and shame. The closer we drew to the decrepit building, the more confident I was that we were on the right trail. From out of the second-story windows, I could see the turnip-esque energy of Mrs. Finkin’s magic trickling like thick fog.
“This is a hospital?” I said.
“What’s left of it,” said Jackaby. “The campus used to have three or four buildings, I think, but most of them got demolished after they finished St. Pantaloon’s, decades ago. Surprising that this portion of the property hasn’t been repurposed yet.”
I swallowed. “It might be the ghosts,” I whispered. “I imagine they have an adverse effect on prospective developers.”
Jackaby looked at me, then back at the building. “Haunted?”
“Thoroughly,” I said.
“Well.” He clapped his hands together. “That’s lucky for us! I mean, I won’t be able to see them, of course, but you’ve got a property full of potential witnesses.”
“Or potentially angry and confused phantoms, with plenty of rusty medical equipment to throw about if they get out of control.”
Jackaby waved a hand. “Most spirits just ignore passersby,” he said. “And if they’re corporeal enough to hurl scalpels across the room, there’s a good chance they’re also sentient enough to be helpful. You should at least say hello.”
I took a deep breath. The air near the front door was dense with spectral energy. It glistened prettily, like glittering dust motes in a sunbeam. At the sound of the leaves crunching under our feet, the energy seemed to tighten. It pulled itself together, coalescing into the figure of a tall, thin man in a baggy hospital gown.
The apparition did not look as solid as Jenny. The form was like a soap bubble in the shape of a man; only the light catching his contours with hints of silver and gray set him apart from the walls behind him. I was silently grateful for this, as it made positively identifying the color of the stains on his chest more difficult.
The spectral figure seemed to sense my gaze, and turned to face me.
“Hello,” I said, through a dry mouth. “We don’t mean to be a bother. We’re just looking for some people. We think they might be inside. You haven’t seen any activity around here recently, have you?”
The man stared at me, the details of his form wavering like smoke in a gentle wind. Slowly, he opened his mouth, and then he opened it farther, and then he let out a piercing scream. I threw my hands over my ears, but the sound was more inside my head than out of it. I glanced over at Jackaby, who was looking around as if trying to pinpoint the sound of an annoying, noisy cricket.
“Can you hear that?” I called over the din.
Jackaby nodded. “It’s faint, but it sounds like a bloodcurdling scream. Is it a bloodcurdling scream?”
“I don’t know about bloodcurdling,” I managed, “but it’s doing a number on my eardrums.”
The noise tapered off at last, and the image of the ghost blurred for a moment as he swayed unsteadily on a pair of feet that weren’t entirely there. Finally, he blinked and looked at me sheepishly. “C-c-can you s-s-see me?” he asked.
I nodded, slowly lowering my hands from my ears.
“Did you hear me m-m-make a noise, just now?”
“Erm. I did notice that, yes,” I answered.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m no g-g-good around the living. Ingrid! Ingrid, there’s someone who can see us!”
From around the side of the building, the air rippled and condensed into the form of a short woman with a pearl-white apron and a square hat that covered a high bun on her head.
“What are you jabbering on about, Leland—oh!” The ghost looked me up and down. “Well, hello, my dear. You’re a spiritual sensitive, are you? That’s grand. We haven’t had a sensitive in, oh, how long has it been, Leland?”
Leland flickered in and out of translucence uncomfortably.
“Hmph. He’s no good with time anyway. Hello, dears. Don’t mind Leland’s screaming fits. He does that.”
“Often?” I asked.
“Every five or six minutes,” answered the shimmering lady. “You get used to it after the first few decades. Once he made it a whole half an hour! We were very proud. I have my own small eccentricities, of course, but I haven’t had an episode in weeks.”
“How’s it going?” Jackaby asked behind me. “Everything all right?”
“They seem to be friendly spirits,” I reported.
“Oh, aren’t we just.” Ingrid straightened her apron, which did not actually become any straighter for her efforts, it being only the memory of an apron. “Dr. Brunson always said that I had excellent bedside manner. Although, to be honest, you want to watch out for Henriette. And Charles.”
“D-D-Doctor,” Leland stammered.
Ingrid’s silvery skin paled moon-white. “We don’t talk about Dr. Mudgett,” she whispered.
“Why don’t we talk about Dr. M—” I began to ask.
Ingrid’s face contorted, flickering like a wet candlewick, and the air felt suddenly very chilly.
“We do not talk about him,” I said conclusively. “Understood.”
The chill calmed, and Ingrid cleared her throat daintily.
“Ask them if they’ve seen anybody inside the building,” Jackaby prompted. “Any living bodies, that is.”
I looked back at Leland and Ingrid. “Well?” I said. “Have you?”
“Oh, yes, in fact.” Ingrid looked delighted. “It’s been very satisfying to see patients on the grounds again. We used to do so much good here. Didn’t we, Leland?”
Leland’s eyes rolled, his head tilted back, and he let out another chilling scream.
When it was over, with my ears ringing slightly, I assured the very embarrassed-looking specter that it was no bother, and that he had nothing to apologize for. “Happens to the best of us,” I said. “The new, erm, patients?” I asked Ingrid. “What do they look like?”
“There was that woman they brought up first. She was a lovely creature. I suspect hysteria,” said Ingrid. “But they took her up to the second floor.” The ghost said second floor as if the words tasted bitter on her tongue.
“What’s wrong with the second floor?” I asked.
A faint flicker, like a twitch, shot across Ingrid’s face. “Nothing at all,” she answered sweetly. “Good works being done all through the hospital. My ward is on the first floor, though. Dr. Brunson didn’t like for us to disturb the upstairs wards if we didn’t need to.”
“Naturally,” I said. “Who else did you see?”
“Well, there was a gentleman who escorted her upstairs,” Ingrid said.
“And what did he look like?” I asked.
“I didn’t get a good look at his face,” she said. “Had a hood pulled over his head like he had been out in the rain. There have been others, too. I’ve heard them talking and moving about. Nice to have voices in the place again. Mostly crying, but still—it’s nice. I didn’t see when the others were brought in. They must have slipped in between my shifts.”
“Between your shifts?” I said. “Is there a time you aren’t haunting the grounds?”
Ingrid blinked at me. “What a silly question. Of course not, dear. I’m always here. Always.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, Mr. Jackaby, the second floor seems to be our destination.”
“You don’t want to go up there,” said Ingrid. Her smile faltered, fleeing from her eyes entirely. “There are no visitors allowed on the second floor.”
“Ah,” I said. “But we’re not visitors, exactly.”
Ingrid seemed puzzled.
“We’re here to help,” I said. “We’re . . . specialists.”
Ingrid bit her lip. “Is the doctor expecting you?”
“Dr. Brunson?” I said. “Erm. Possibly.”
“Not Dr. Brunson.” She shook her pale head. “Dr. Brunson is in charge of the downstairs ward.”
“Right, yes, of course,” I said. “The . . . other doctor is expecting us.”
Ingrid’s whole body quivered, and for a moment I saw a flash of a very different face, one with dark, hollow eyes and skin stretched tight against its bones. The ivy curling around the railings to the front entrance withered, and a thin layer of frost crept along the ground, spilling out from beneath Ingrid’s feet.
“Problem?” Jackaby whispered. His breath made puffy clouds in front of his face.
“Not that doctor!” I squeaked. “No, not the one that we don’t talk about. Not him. Different doctor entirely. Our doctor was brought in to, erm, consult. A consulting doctor.”
The air crackled with energy like a building thunderstorm, and I felt the hairs on my arm standing on end. Gradually, Ingrid seemed to come back to herself, though, and the hum of unnatural energy slowly faded. The frost crackled on the ground around us, but it stopped expanding.
“Ahem. Pardon me,” she said. “I must have a bit of a cough. Come, come. Let me show you inside.”
chapter twenty-two
The boarded-up front door of the haunted hospital would have taken a great deal of effort and noise to open, but conveniently, the ghostly figure of Nurse Ingrid led us around the side of the building to an entrance almost entirely obscured by ivy. Someone had already gone to the trouble of removing the boards that had sealed it, and it swung open at my gentle tug. I felt a tingle run up the back of my neck as I crossed the threshold, although it might have just been Leland’s spectral form breezing in behind us. Jackaby pulled his coat a little tighter around him.
The interior was only slightly creepier than I had envisioned. Silvery cobwebs caught the beams of light that cut across the lobby at rakish angles, and every surface was coated in a fine layer of dust and depression. The echoes of anxious nerves and ancient pain drifted through the silent hallways. Bed frames and old mattresses had been left behind in most of the rooms we passed, and the stink of mildew and dust was strong. We followed Ingrid down a long hallway. The farther we walked, the darker the corridor grew. I began to notice that many of the rooms farther back were fitted with sturdy-looking chains bolted directly into the walls.
“That’s not unsettling at all,” Jackaby murmured.
“Whoever did this,” I whispered back, “clearly spent some time converting this hospital wing into their own personal dungeon. We should check with the locals nearby. Maybe someone on the street saw them carrying in all these chains or overheard them being installed.”
“The chains?” Ingrid chimed in. “Oh, no, those were always here, dearies. Hospital property.”
I blinked. “Why would a hospital need chains?”
“Necessary,” she said, matter-of-factly. “For some of the more excitable patients.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as Leland began screaming right behind me. I tried to steady my breathing.
The scream tapered off after a few seconds, and Leland apologized again.
“Here we are.” Ingrid paused before a staircase. “The floor nurse on duty should be able to direct you at the top of the stairs.”
“You’re not coming?” I asked.
“Well, if you—” Ingrid drifted forward toward the stairs again, but then paused abruptly, as if tugged back by an invisible string. “No. No, I’d better not.”
Jackaby nudged my shoulder and gestured at the floor. A line of white powder ran from one end of the step to the other. “Salt,” he said. “Classic ethereal ward. Somebody’s been here.”
“Somebody with a body,” I agreed. “And whoever it is, it seems they’ve been making an effort to keep the resident spirits out of their way.”
Jackaby took a careful step over the line, and I followed suit.
There was a wide, circular desk at the top of the stairs, but it did not look as if anyone had used it in the last fifty years. Wind whistled through a broken window behind us. Ahead, there was another hallway, along with heavy clouds of the turnippy transportation aura.
“This way,” I whispered.
Jackaby peeked in open doors as we crept forward. “There’s a water cup in here, and an apple core that hasn’t even rotted yet,” he said quietly.
“They were here,” I agreed. “Mrs. Finkin’s energy runs up and down the hallway. I recognize it from her paintings. I can see traces of a trollish aura in this room. Elven aura there. It doesn’t look like most of them ever left their rooms.”
“Precision transapparation into a locked room.” Jackaby looked impressed.
“And out again, it seems,” I said. “There’s nobody here. Although there is a human aura mixed in with it all. Someone who moved with Mrs. Finkin up and down the hallways. Oh, it’s frustratingly familiar.” I followed the human aura into one of the empty rooms and froze. The space was empty, like all the rest, but I could practically see his face in front of me. “Charlie,” I whispered.
Jackaby slipped past me and turned the room over, checking for clues under the bare mattress and the single tin cup. There was nothing to find; Charlie was not there. There were no windows to the outside, not from these rooms, and the walls were all padded with old, moth-eaten cloth. It had all the charm of a prison cell with an added soupçon of institutional nightmares. Charlie’s aura was so heavy within the tiny room that I could practically breathe him in—but he had left us no further trail to follow.
“Locks on the outside,” said Jackaby. “And there are slots in the doors for passing meals to the captives. This place was clearly a functional prison until very recently. But where are the prisoners now? And where are the wardens?”
I took a deep breath. “Gone.”
From up the hallway came the faint squeak of a floorboard and a muffled bump.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered. About halfway down the length of the building, the prison cell rooms ended and the hallway opened before a pair of broad double doors—the sound must have come from behind them. For several seconds Jackaby and I strained our ears against the silence. There was a soft shuffling and what might have been a pair of footfalls, but then the hospital was still once again.
Just as I was finally about to break the tension, a loud crack issued from outside.
“What now?” Jackaby muttered. We made our way to the dusty window.
The hospital formed a broad L shape, which meant that from our position in the ward, we had a clear view of the front door. Below us, two figures in matching suits had cut a line across the overgrown lawn to the main entry. Agent Kit had one foot braced against the wall as he tugged with both hands on the weathered boards that sealed the front door. Agent Garabrand had his hands on his hips, peering into windows.
“Them again?” I muttered.
“They must have followed us,” Jackaby said. “If they were half as good at tracking missing people as they were at tracking us, this case would be wrapped up already.”
“If they’re going to let us do all the work, they could at least have the decency to allow us to finish before interrupting.”
The plank in Kit’s grip pulled free with another sharp crack that echoed through the still hallways beneath us. The air chilled a few degrees.
“He won’t approve,” Ingrid’s nervous voice echoed up from the stairwell at the end of the hall. “Not at all.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s see what’s behind those doors before they get in our way.”
Together we threw open the doors.
On the other side was a wide, open room with tattered chairs stacked against the walls and various pieces of furniture littering the center. None of them looked like they belonged in a hospital. There were wooden crates, an oil painting of a dignified-looking man sitting in a plush chair, a wide cabinet with a broken glass front, and what appeared to have once been a full set of ornamental armor—although the latter had fallen to pieces, polished sword and ornate shield tossed on top like dirty socks on a laundry basket. What there were not were any signs of life.
“There’s nobody here,” I said. “Just . . . stuff.”
“This looks like it was a common room, once,” said Jackaby. “Before someone dumped all their broken old furniture in it.”
I focused on the clutter and tilted my head. “Not dumped,” I said. “Delivered. Look, there—that fancy handbag lying on the floor is the most recent to be transported. Maeve Finkin’s aura is still pouring off it—in fact, I would wager that was the thump we heard. I do believe all of these things got here through Mrs. Finkin’s spell labels.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m certain. Look! There, in the case! That has to be the necklace Squiffy Rick stole! Lord, that thing does look like it costs more than a house.” I pried open the top of one of the crates. “And this is full of wine bottles. Château Rupin. This is posh stuff.”
“And that enormous chandelier over there appears to be fitted with real crystal.” Jackaby scowled, surveying the boxes and piles cluttering the room. “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to steal all these things just to leave them piled up in a heap.”
“Would you rather the violent criminals be making better use of their magically stolen goods?”
“Frankly, yes, I would,” said Jackaby. “Or at least selling them off to some secret bidder or something practical. It doesn’t look like any of these things have been given a second glance since they landed.”
