Page 9
The linen sailed back through the dark, landing neatly into the waiting hands of Reed. “What do you think, Dr. Falsteed? Any hope for her?”
“That one is lost. She not only claims her veins are full of spiders but truly believes it. And once we are convinced of something, no matter how ludicrous, it becomes a fact. If you cut her she’d see eight-legged creatures pour forth rather than a crimson tide, and who is to say that we are only all agreeing on the same perception when we say it is blood, and not arachnids, moving through us?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir.”
“Do you believe in God, Reed?”
“Yes, I do. And our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
“As I said, you are convinced and so it is fact. When in reality, I am your savior, the one who cut the abomination from your side and gave your life back, to live and to love and to make your children, is that not true?”
In the meager light from his lantern, Grace could see Reed’s cheek muscles jumping as his teeth gritted. “You did, sir, saved my life and rightly so. Yet you are not the son of God.”
“Unless I believed myself to be so, and then it would be so. To me, at any rate.”
“I’m not sure what you’re wanting me to say, sir.”
“Say that you’ll bring Grace a stool, and be on your way. I’ve taxed you enough for the day. And when you send for Dr. Thornhollow, ask that he may stop and pass the time with me as he goes about his bloody business.”
“Dr. Thornhollow, sir? The surgeon over at Mayfaire?”
“Yes, Reed. We’ve come to that time again. Grace’s arrival says the Board is coming. We’ve a new patient whose screams smell of delirium and by the scent of Heedson’s blood he’s nigh in a panic. He’ll call for Thornhollow. He’ll call for the one that wields the knife.”
NINE
The girl with spiders for blood came into the cellar like a typhoon, her screams breaking the companionable silence that Falsteed and Grace had established. In her own panic, Grace moved the low milking stool Reed had brought her from the stables next to Falsteed’s cell, her hand groping for his in the darkness. The iron bars pressed cold against her shoulder, and she was about to call for him when she felt his dry, warm hands close over hers.
“Needing some support from the sane, love?” His voice was almost next to her ear, but she didn’t shy away from it.
“Do you call yourself sane?”
He chuckled, a sound of true mirth that flowed low under the high-pitched screams of the spider girl.
“I do. I’d put the same label on yourself, though I sense you’d deny it.”
Her hand pulsed in his, and he squeezed her back. “Do I have a right to claim sanity?” she asked, her voice still hoarse from disuse. “I’m cursed with a perfect recollection of all things and have seen things no one should—even once. To have it shown to me again and again, eyes open or shut, would truly make one mad.”
“Maybe,” Falsteed said. “But I’ve smelled you, smelled the wrongness of all that’s been done to you by hands familiar and those of strangers. You chose to stop acknowledging a world that has treated you foully. What’s saner than that?”
Grace sat still in the darkness, allowing the screams of the spider girl to roll over her from the cell opposite hers. The truth of Falsteed’s words rang deep inside of her. Her voice flowed again, more easily with practice.
“And yourself? You are a good man, yet you are in the darkness here with me.”
“Sane and good are not the same thing. Yes, I’m sane. What of it, if I can smell the sickness of others? The flavors of their feelings rich in my nostrils? It was a boon to my medical practice, for certain, but I’ve got other proclivities you need not know of. No, in the end . . . I am not a good man.
“But that’s neither here nor there in the darkness. This particular darkness, anyway, the one you and I find ourselves denizens of. We are here because we’re the sanest people in this establishment, so they put us down here as the bedrock on which to gain a foothold for the wanderings of their own minds. They call us insane, then feed their own insanities on our flesh, for we are now less than human. Heedson and Croomes are but examples of the greater world, love. They work their discreet types of madness on us, power and pain, and we hold to our truths in the darkness.”
Grace considered his words, her hand small and cold still resting inside Falsteed’s warm one. She could feel his breath on her ear but didn’t mind his closeness or the hint of warmth that emanated from him as their bodies pooled their resources in the cold.
“Who is this Dr. Thornhollow you spoke of?” she asked.
“Him? He’s the sanest of us all.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he knows he’s insane.”
Grace moved to pull her fingers from his grasp, but Falsteed stopped her with his words. “I’m sorry, love. I’m not teasing the words from one who kept them buried so long. I mean what I say. Thornhollow . . . he’s a special bit of a man, and that’s the closest I can come to explaining it.”
