“Archie!” I screamed. “Archie!” I gripped the door as Paulus lifted me off my feet, as easy as if I were a child’s doll. I turned the knob and pushed the door open as hard as I could, screaming Archie’s name again. Paulus pulled at me as the door swung open with a groan.
And then we stopped.
We froze where we were. Perhaps our position was a bit ridiculous—both my feet off the ground, my torso neatly tucked under one of Paulus’s arms like a suitcase—but we didn’t notice. There was only that dark doorway, and silence but for the sound of the blowing rain. I was suddenly cold. This was the bad place, the worst place. The place where whatever it was, whatever horror it had been, had happened.
Paulus felt it, too. There was no light in the isolation room; the electric fixture was off, and a paraffin lamp would have been deemed too dangerous to leave with the patient. Paulus put me down and stepped forward into the dark doorway, where the rain blew through the open gap.
There was no sound, no movement from inside.
“Archie,” I said. I pushed past Paulus and walked into the room. There was an awful, sour smell. It was so dark I could not see my feet, so quiet I could hear only my own rasping breath. “Archie, answer me.”
Silence. I recalled the layout of the room from the time I’d looked in the window, and stepped hesitantly in the direction of the bed. I thought I could hear breathing. Breathing is good, I told myself. Breathing is good.
I put my arms in front of me and took another step. My foot hit something; I reached down and touched the brass bedstead. I felt along the bed, patting lightly with my hands. Relief rushed over me as I felt a foot, an ankle, a calf that was both bony and warm. “He’s alive,” I called out.
I glanced back at the doorway, but at that moment Paulus turned away, his attention distracted. Swinging lamplight came up behind him, making his shadow sway on the walls. Jack stepped into the room, soaked with rain, holding a lantern. “Kitty?”
“Here.”
“Jesus God,” Paulus shouted, his voice hoarse. “I just saw something.” He clamped a hand on Jack’s shoulder, and Jack turned; the lantern moved, and light played over me and the leg I was holding up, a thin body lying on its side on the bed, knees and arms drawn up. It was Archie, and he didn’t move.
“Where?” Jack said to Paulus.
“Stop!” Paulus shouted out into the rain. “Stop!”
I leaned close to Archie. “Archie. Are you all right?”
“It’s too late,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t,” I coaxed him. “I’ve come to get you out of here. Come with me.”
But he stayed curled up, his hands over his head as they had been during that first night shift, when I had witnessed his nightmare. “He’s already coming.” He moaned. “You’re too late, too late. You’re too late.”
Jack didn’t hear it. “Don’t go out there!” he shouted to Paulus, who had turned away. “Vries—come back!” There was no response. Archie moaned louder, and Jack turned back into the room. He raised the lamp high and his gaze froze with alarm.
“Oh, my God,” he said softly.
I turned and followed the shaft of light, a single square of yellow on the wall above my head. From my angle I saw the beam play over the wall, illuminating the words there. They were high up, near the ceiling, and they were scratched into the plaster, as if with fingernails or the blade of a knife. And part of me knew, knew what the words would spell out in their awful, painful writing.
I AM NOT A COWARD
“He told me,” Archie said from the bed. “Someone’s going to die.”
I looked back down at him. He had taken his hands away from his face, and he lay defeated, his eyes staring at nothing, his thin arms stark against the damp linens. He was still, too still, and it took me a moment to understand what was wrong. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but now I stared, transfixed by an eerie dread I could not explain.
My patient’s hands had stopped shaking.