“They n-never should have d-done it.” Luther shut his eyes tight. He whispered in his broken voice, “We are the one, four, four. We are the one, four, four. We are…”
“Good evening, Terrence, Joseph,” Dr. Simpson greeted the attendants at the desk, and Conor whipped his attention back to his drawings. Why was Dr. Simpson here so late? “Mind if I have a word with one of your patients?”
“Of course, Dr. Simpson.”
Dr. Simpson made a slow turn of the room. His coat collar was turned up sharply against the threat of rain and wind outside. “Evening, gentlemen.”
From the corner of his eye, Conor could see Dr. Simpson staring at Luther, the doc’s mouth turned down at the corners in disapproval. Dr. Simpson left Luther’s side and stood next to Conor. “And how are you this evening, Conor?”
“Good.” Conor kept his pencil scratching on the paper.
Dr. Simpson sat across from him at the table. He smiled. It was not a warm smile. He wore spectacles that magnified his pupils like an insect’s. Conor began to sweat. He wanted to count. Counting was safety. But he was too frightened to do it in front of Dr. Simpson. What if the doc took him away and he came back like Frances?
“Now, Conor, I’d like to ask you some questions. Would that be all right?”
Conor gave a terse nod.
“It’s about what happened with Mr. Flanagan and Miss Cleary. What Mr. Roland did to them. I understand you saw the whole thing.” Dr. Simpson waited. He was good at that. Waiting. Conor didn’t give him anything, though, so he said, “Is that true?”
“Wadn’t Mr. Roland done that,” Conor mumbled.
“Who was it, then?”
Conor clammed up.
“Now, now, Conor. We all know that Mr. Roland did it. Can you tell me what you saw?” Dr. Simpson barely blinked his big eyes.
Conor wanted to count so badly he thought he could explode from the need. Under the table, he moved his fingers in the same rhythmic rotation, pinkie to thumb. “It was him but not him. Somethin’ got inside ’im.”
“I don’t understand.”
Conor’s voice was soft as dandelion fluff. “Ghosts. They can get inside ya. Make ya do things. That’s why I hafta count. To keep ’em out.”
“Do you see these ghosts often?”
The lady’s voice flitted through Conor’s head, very faint: Don’t tell him anything. He will hurt you if you do. Conor’s eyes widened.
Dr. Simpson’s thin lips turned down again. “Are the ghosts speaking to you now, Conor?”
Keep still, the lady commanded.
Conor’s breathing shallowed. He shook his head slowly. Under the table, his fingers worked quickly through their rotations.
“All right. Just one more question,” Dr. Simpson said, and leaned in so that Conor felt as if the doc’s eyes were everywhere, inescapable, like the voices in his head. “Have you ever seen a man with a tall hat and a feathered coat? Does he ever speak to you, Conor?”
And that was when Conor felt the world fall away.
“I want to help you. You know that, don’t you, Conor?”
Dr. Simpson’s gaze pressed into him like the hot end of a match. Conor tried to swallow. He nearly choked. And then the numbers exploded from his throat: “Onetwot’reefourfivesevenonetwot’reefourfivesevenonetwot’reefourfiveseven!”
“Well,” Dr. Simpson said, as if Conor had disappointed him greatly. He picked up Conor’s drawing and frowned at the broken soldiers flying through the air and a giant sun with an eye in the center. “We’ll speak when I return from my trip. I’m to deliver a speech at a eugenics conference. Do you know what eugenics is, Conor?”
Conor shook his head.
“It’s the future. The promise of a great and unsullied America.” Dr. Simpson rose from the table. “Do let me know if you see the fellow I mentioned, Conor. It’s very important.”
Conor listened to the even click, clack of the doc’s heels receding in the hallway—left, right, left, right, one, two, one, two, steady as a clock, no variation—until there was nothing. He sat at the table for another half hour or so, and then a terrible feeling came over Conor all of a sudden, like an army of ghosts walking across his grave. His skin tingled. The vision was coming down.
“There’s a window open,” Conor said calmly in his other voice, the one he used when he was his other self, the one who saw things. “You hafta shut all the windows so they can’t get in.”
“What’s that?” Terrence asked, walking over.
“They come in wit’ the fog.”
Terrence checked all the windows. “Everything’s locked tight, Conor.” He looked out through the bars. “A little hazy but no fog to speak of. Not tonight.”
“They c-come in w-with the f-fog,” Luther echoed. “He t-tells them t-to c-c-come.”
“Swell.” Terrence sighed. “Now we got two of them. Before we know it, they’ll all be talking about it.” He put on the radio. The parlor filled with the sounds of a tenor’s aria.
“They’re gonna die,” Conor said, and picked up his pencil.
Deep in the bowels of the hospital, two night nurses made their rounds, a lantern in hand just in case the lights cut out again.
“Thank you for going with me, Mrs. Bennett. I don’t want to go down there on my own,” the younger nurse said.
“You mustn’t allow the patients’ talk to rattle you, Miss Headley,” Mrs. Bennett, the head nurse, reprimanded. She was older and had been at the hospital for many years. “You have to remain strong.”
“Yes, Mrs. Bennett.”
After what had happened to Big Mike and poor Mary, the young nurse had been jumpy. It didn’t help that many of the patients kept talking about ghosts on Ward’s Island. In the music room. At breakfast. While exercising in the yard. The same whisperings: The island was haunted. No one was safe. Just that afternoon, as she’d given dear Mrs. Pruett a sponge bath, the poor woman had muttered about seeing figures out on the lawn—Winking in the mist like fearsome diamonds. Oh, Miss. I fear they mean us harm!
The fog. Each night, it seemed to get worse and worse, till it was hard to see anything at all. It was like being stuck inside a dark cloud, cut off from the rest of the world.
It was just fog, Miss Headley told herself. The nights were cold and they were smack-dab in the middle of the river—nothing supernatural about it. Mrs. Bennett was right: She was letting the patients’ fears and that terrible murder get to her. There were no ghosts. She was here to do a job. To be a beacon to others. This thought made her feel better.
As they neared the hydrotherapy room, freezing air greeted them. There was a window open at the back of the room.
“Now, who left that window open?” the head nurse tutted, marching into the hydrotherapy room. Mist curled in the corners, thick as vines, making it look as though they were walking into an active steam room instead of a frigid bathhouse. The fog lent a sinister quality to the shadowy tubs and pipes of the room. Like they’d entered a ghost world.
“The lights, if you please, Miss Headley.”
Miss Headley did as she was told, toggling the buttons on the wall. “It’s no good, I’m afraid, Mrs. Bennett.”