Arsenic for the Soul (15 page)

“
There’s no time!” She
slung Camilla’s arm around her shoulder and carried her weight. The
peals of the slicing blade sounded like horrific laughter as they
raced through the halls. Camilla’s injury was slowing down any
possibility of escape. There were too many layers to the sanitarium
standing between them and the exit. Any attempt to flee would be
cut short by seventeen inches of serrated steel.

To Camilla’s surprise, Vivian scooped
her up and bound up the stairs. They had no choice but to hide from
their pursuer.

Vivian spotted a bathroom and pushed
Camilla inside. The orange lights cast a rusty hue across the
mirrors and crumbling walls. The air itself was heavy with black
dust.

Vivian bolted toward the furthest
stall.

“
Quickly, get
inside!”

They piled into the stall and jammed
the lock. They huddled close to the toilet and pressed up against
the wall. Even the task of breathing seemed hard to follow through
on. Vivian couldn’t imagine anything more oppressive than this
three by five foot prison. The bathroom door swung open and a
mirror shattered. Glass shards spilled under the stall and nipped
at their feet.

“
I’m in too much pain,”
Camilla whispered as the creature lumbered from stall to stall. She
winced and gripped her swollen ankle. “I’m slowing you down, aren’t
I?”

“
Don’t even say that.” She
winced as the blade began to scrape across the stall doors. “We’re
getting out of here alive. Stay put and try not to make a sound.
I’ll find a way out for us.”

Vivian sank to her knees among the
filth. She wriggled into the adjacent stall despite the broken
glass littering the tiles. Tiny bits of glass bit into her skin but
she endured it without the slightest scream. After all, what were a
few cuts compared to decapitation in a bathroom stall? She would
take the former over the latter any day.

Meanwhile, Camilla sat on the toilet
under the amber lights. Sweat poured down her limbs as she listened
to the man huffing outside the stall. She swore she could feel his
breath on her neck already. She peeped over her shoulder and
spotted an air vent.

That sight offered the only plausible
escape from this hell. Her ankle screamed in protest as she climbed
on top of the dirty toilet. She tried not to look down as she stood
on her tip toes. She could barely stomach the pain coating the
nerves in her leg. It took every shred of strength to stand
upright. She gritted her teeth and stretched her fingers toward the
vent.

Metal screamed against metal as a
blade rammed through the stall door.

Vivian recoiled when she heard
Camilla’s scream. She hoped the door would hold against the man
until she found a way to aid her friend.

Vivian slipped soundlessly out from
under a stall. Eyeing the creature beating on the door of Camilla’s
self-imposed prison, she picked up a shard of glass.

Her breath came out in spasms as she
crept through the grime and shadows. Her body wanted to run but she
couldn’t abandon Camilla to her fate—even if it meant both of them
would perish together.

Inside the stall, Camilla scratched
and pulled at the vent, trying to claw it open. Another blade sank
through the door. It extended like a black tooth poised to sink
into her calf.

Vivian seized that moment to
attack.

The assailant seemed to sense her
coming from behind but it was too late. She darted low to evade a
swing of his blade.

Vivian scored a hit and raked the
glass shard across his hamstring. Acidic blood spilled onto the
floor like foul-smelling oil. A tortured scream sliced through the
bathroom.

The behemoth backhanded her with a
blow so overwhelming that it turned Vivian’s world upside. She saw
his black eyes for a brief second and felt the blade dig into her
arm. Vivian cried out and fell hard on her tailbone. The man with
the disfigured mouth practically fell on top of her. He pressed a
blade to her left ear, ready to separate it from her
face.

Vivian tried to twist her head away
but his strength overpowered her. Black steel hovered above her
face. The blade began to dig into her flesh and split the
surface.

The door to the stall burst open
behind him. Camilla screamed and brought something down with all of
her might on the man’s head. A sharp crack resounded and he fell
limp.

Vivian stared at the body for a
moment, in disbelief that she wasn’t dead and that she retained her
ear. Plus, she couldn’t believe that Camilla had saved her life
with a toilet seat as a weapon.

“
What the fuck is that?
Don’t tell me that’s the result of tuberculosis! Is it even
human?!”

“
It doesn’t look like a
woman,” Camilla muttered.

“
You think?
That was pretty obvious from the start. So this
freak can’t be a patient. You said Magdalene asylums only take in
women.”

“
Precisely. I don’t know
how it came to be here.” She bit her lip. “Unless it was waiting
here for us.”

“
This is your mother’s
doing?”

“
What other explanation is
there?”

“
Not too many come to my
mind right now.”

Vivian gave the freak a final kick.
She noticed Camilla was still struggling to stay on her
feet.

“
Remember that time in the
sewers when you asked me to carry you?”

“
I think I requested a
piggyback ride,” she chuckled.

“
Well, you can cash in on
that offer now. I’m not letting you walk on a sprained ankle for
the rest of the way.”

“
That’s really generous of
you but I’ll manage. Just give me a hand standing up.”

Vivian supported Camilla for a few
steps as they maneuvered around the man’s body.

“
Do you suppose he’s
dead?”

“
I’m not staying around to
find out. I doubt that whack to the head would put him down
permanently.”

Once they left the bathroom, Camilla
scanned the fortress of abominations. As far as she could see,
nothing linked St. Ignatius Sanitarium to the tuberculosis
outbreak. Nonetheless, she couldn’t explain the reappearance of the
man from the Black Atrium. Personally she didn’t want to dig into
the matter any deeper.

“
Let’s find Milo and get
out of here. There’s no telling what else might be waiting in the
asylum.” They plunged down several sets of stairs before they
reached the sublevel of the sanitarium. It was perhaps the only
area left to explore. The walls bore a rotten texture and the same
mouth-like craters were carved into the surface.

Camilla froze in her steps when she
looked down the hall.

The dark figure from Kunatrice Forest
appeared before her. Her back was turned to them and she appeared
to be scribbling on the wall at the end of the corridor. She
flickered with seizure-like speed, distorting her movements into
something inhuman and jarring. The drug-like imagery made Camilla’s
world spin on its axis.

Suddenly, the figure fell still in the
writhing light, as though she sensed Vivian and Camilla’s eyes on
her. Slowly, it turned to meet their gaze. Its eyes focused solely
on Camilla, twin pinpricks of ghastly light in the curtains of
darkness. Camilla stuttered and locked on the blade in its hand.
Darkness engulfed them.

Lights flickered into existence and
the apparition of her stalker was gone. The sight she left behind
still took Camilla’s breath away.

Elaborate markings were traced on the
wall where she once stood. It felt like a day and night passed
before they reached the end of the hallway and stood in front of
the dripping blood.

“
It’s the same mark as
before…”

Camilla reached for it and hesitated.
The Veseley family crest was smeared in blood on the asylum wall.
It was the same symbol presiding over the Black Atrium art gallery,
where they harvested her umbilical cord. Vivian’s brow furrowed in
confusion.

“
Maybe your mother’s
imprisonment in the asylum broke her mind. Twenty years in a
Magdalene laundry would certainly turn me off from religion. Have
you considered that she didn’t leave the word ‘sinner’ as an
accusation for you but rather something she embraces and
welcomes?”

“
I don’t even want to
consider it. I hope you’re wrong.”

Vivian eyed the blood on the wall and
the spatter leading further down the hall.

“
Should we follow the trail
of blood?”

“
Only
you
would suggest that.”

They quietly trekked down the hall
until they saw someone prone on the floor. A man was lying face
down in the grime. His shirt was torn and fresh blood was drying
around his exposed arm. Something about the man’s head of brown
curls struck Vivian as vaguely familiar.

“
Milo!” She rushed to his side and
cradled his head. His skin was pale but she felt a pulse on his
neck. His eyes fluttered open and met Vivian’s.
Through half-closed eyes, Milo weakly held up a wrench and
grinned.

“
Found it.”
 

ELEVEN

The ER team worked fast to replenish
Milo’s lost blood and stitch the incision on his arm. When the
madness was over, Vivian watched over him in the recovery room.
Fortunately the laceration wasn’t anywhere near an artery or he
would have bled to death en route to Prague.

To Vivian’s relief, Milo lied about
the circumstances of his injury. None of them wanted to explain to
the police about their capers in a sanitarium. Instead, Milo weaved
a story about how he accidentally cut himself with a power tool and
fainted at the sight of his blood. For the purpose of his story,
Vivian didn’t discover him until several hours later.

“
What a tragic end to a
date,” Vivian chuckled as she stroked his hair.

He looked peaceful as he slept soundly
in the hospital bed. She was almost tempted to kiss him while he
dreamed. He would be none the wiser if she leaned over his face and
planted her lips on his. The succulent taste of his kiss in the
rain only whetted her appetite, after all.

“
Vivian!”

She nearly jumped out of her skin at
the sound of Bryan’s voice. The nursing program director stood in
the doorway.

“
Yes?”

“
I need to talk to you in
private… about the incident last week.”

Why did the tone of his voice unnerve
her so much? Was he referring to the time she left a suicidal
patient alone in a ward?

“
We can talk in here. He’s
out cold,” she said, nodding toward Milo. “He won’t hear a thing.”
Bryan settled into a chair. The meeting almost felt like a
preliminary hearing before a court arraignment.

“
You aren’t on clinicals
today. Is this a friend of yours?”

“
Maybe more than a friend,”
Vivian smiled. Bryan’s eyes twinkled in his reassuring
way.

“
Anyway, I hope I didn’t
alarm you. That’s not the purpose of our chat. In fact, I dropped
by to thank you. Last week when you confronted me with your theory
about tuberculosis, I thought you were either out of your mind or
this was a foolish attempt to impress me. It took a while for me to
come around but I eventually looked into the two cases you brought
to my attention.”

“
What did you find
out?”

“
After running some tests,
we concluded it
is
tuberculosis. But this isn’t your average strain… We
identified several more cases among the in-patients. We have no
idea how it’s spreading because skin tuberculosis isn’t
contagious.”

“
What makes you think it’s
spreading?”

“
The symptoms are appearing
among patients who have spent extended time in the hospital, either
in surgery or rehabilitation. My theory is the incubation period is
just wearing off and we’re going to see a rapid uptick in cases.
This is bordering on epidemic. You saw what we all failed to
see.”

“
The incubation period is
anywhere from two to three months. Maybe if you look back, you’ll
find the source. In the meantime, what are we going to
do?”

“
I don’t know. It’s not up
to me. If more cases are identified, an epidemic may be declared.
My guess is we’ll see a press conference before the media gets wind
of it and spins it. The only thing we can do now is safeguard the
patients’ wellbeing. You’ve already done a fine job of that by
bringing this to my attention. I’ll make sure the Head of Nursing
finds out about what you did.”

“
That almost sounds like a
threat,” Vivian laughed. “Would he find it in his heart to forgive
me? For last week’s incident during suicide watch?”

“
I can’t promise anything…
but he just might take it into consideration.” With nothing more to
add, Bryan nodded and headed for the door.

“
Thank you for trusting my
intuitions,” Vivian blurted. Bryan paused with his hand on the
door.