Dead of Winter (31 page)

Father Xavier snapped his fingers. “Give me your attention.”

“What?”

“I just asked you a question and you didn’t answer. You seem distracted by something. Did you dream about the twin demons again?”

“No, not since the hotel.”

Father Xavier sighed. “Then what has you so distant?”

“Nothing.” Andre had trouble making eye contact with his mentor. Ever since kissing Willow last night, his mind had been in a fog. They had only kissed briefly and then Andre walked her home.
I was just consoling her,
he tried to convince himself.

His mentor said, “You understand that as my apprentice it is highly important you share everything that you’re going through. Anything that’s distracting you could be the work of the Devil. I need to know you’re still working in the light.”

“I am, sir.” Andre looked up at the sky. It was a gray morning.

I should confess about last night.

But Andre remained silent. He’d come so far in his training. He’d proven his faith and earned his mentor’s trust. With such privileged training with an accomplished priest, Andre was well on his way to becoming ordained himself. Confessing to Father Xavier now would only break his trust, and all that Andre had worked toward would be lost.

The kiss was just a momentary fall from grace. It won’t happen again
.

Even as he thought this, Andre felt the fluttering butterflies sensation in his chest. He stared up at the fourth floor of Noble House. He couldn’t help but wonder what Willow was doing.

116

Willow felt as if eels were writhing beneath her skin. Her lips quivered. Her red nostrils itched. She opened and closed her fists as she walked the clearing behind the cabins.

This bloody fort is going right to hell.

Carrying a mink handbag over her shoulder, she hurried past the barn and stables. She had to get away from Noble House. Away from Avery. Another moment up on the third floor, and she might just go raving mad. Last night she barely slept. Laudanum had been the only remedy to make the voices stop, and her blasted husband had emptied her last bottle.

After Avery left, sleeping over at his whore’s cabin, Willow had remained alone in her boudoir. The dolls kept speaking in soft whispers, their voices relentless drones, like a hive of bees buzzing around their queen. She had snorted the last of her magic dust. Everything after that was a blur.

This morning she had gone into Avery’s study and pulled out one of his pistols. She sat at his desk for a long while, staring down at the gun. She might have ended everything had it not been for Zoé’s voice entering her head.
Don’t kill yourself, Willow,
the child had said.
I have so many secrets to share.

I came so close…
Willow shivered at the thought of dying in this fort during winter. She had imagined her body wrapped in a blanket and stored away on a shelf in the Dead House with the other corpses. The burial of a commoner would be the final mockery to her tragic life. While sitting at Avery’s desk, Willow had laughed hysterically, because it wasn’t a desire to live that saved her from pulling the trigger, but her own snobbish pride.

Wind rustled the branches outside the stockade. Rubbing her nostrils and sniffling, she pretended as if she was going to the well house to fetch water. The ruse was unnecessary, though, for there was not a soul at this corner of the fort. The colonists were either working in the square outside Noble House or inside their homes and workshops. She knew the rotations of the watchtower guards. They were at the northeast corner smoking cigarettes. Still wary that someone might be watching, Willow made a mad dash across the clearing.

Hospital House stood off on its own. It was wider than the other cabins. Its timbers were painted white. Ply boards were still nailed across the doors and windows.

Willow hurried around the house to the back door. Boards blocked the entry. Two were loose, each hanging by a single nail. She slid the boards upward and downward, creating a narrow opening. The smell of decay smacked her senses. Dropping the boards, she turned her head and winced. “Oh, God.” She covered her mouth. “I can’t go in there.”

You must, Willow, you promised you would,
whispered Zoé’s voice.

Willow pulled the Indian doll out of her handbag. “No, Zoé, please don’t make me.”

The doll’s single green eye gazed up at her.
If you want to be a Secret Keeper like me, then you have to find more magic powder.

As the girl giggled in her head, Willow felt the eels swimming beneath her skin. She stared at the boarded door with the atrocious stink emanating from the cracks. She took a deep breath, then crouched and squeezed her small frame inside. The boards clapped as they fell closed behind her. She yelped, putting a hand on her chest. Her shoes crunched over ice that had blown in and frosted the wood floor of the kitchen. Just weeks ago she had been playing cards here with Doc and Myrna. Zoé had been sleeping in the next bedroom. It was gloomy in here now. The only light came from thin slits between the boarded windows. Breathing heavily, Willow gave herself a moment for her eyes to adjust. Pale gray shapes tapered off into the deep, impenetrable blackness of three passageways. The sound of wings fluttered in one of the other rooms, where a flock of birds must have gotten in to roost.

Inhaling, Willow pressed a hand to her chest, trying to calm the rapid thumping of her heart. The room she needed to get to was through the pitch dark hallway to her left. The corridor seemed to disappear into nothingness. There was no light at the end of the hall, which meant all the doors were closed.

“Blast it, why didn’t I bring a candle?”

Oops, we forgot,
Zoé snickered.

Willow pulled the doll against her bosom. “This is bloody crazy, Zoé. Let’s not do this. Please, can’t we just go back?”

What’s there to go back to?

Willow remained facing the dark hallway.

I can take you to where children play forever.

Willow sniffled and scratched her itchy nose. Her eyes teared up, and she wiped them before they could crystallize on her cold cheeks. “Okay,” she whispered.

Touching the wall for guidance, she started down the hallway. The blackness swallowed Willow, embracing her with cadaver-cold arms. She passed the patient room where Zoé once slept. Willow imagined that the Métis girl was still in there, tied to the bedposts. Her little head turning on her pillow, solid white eyes staring from the darkness. At this moment Zoé giggled, a sinister sound that raised the hair on Willow’s arms.

“Don’t do that. You’re spooking me.”

Sorry, hee hee, I couldn’t resist.

Birds squawked, startling Willow. In that dim room, ravens flapped from the dresser to the bed. Feeling a shortness of breath, she quickened her step, reaching blindly out in front of her. Her hand found a closed door at the end of the hall. She turned the cold metal knob and the door creaked open. Shafts of gray light piercing through the boarded windows offered enough luminosity to see the many curio cabinets that made up the apothecary.

We found it!

Willow laughed with tears in her eyes. She set the Indian doll on top of the curio and began rummaging through Doc Riley’s medicine drawers. The day she had watched over Zoé, Willow had snuck into this room and stolen some vials of laudanum and magic dust. The drawer marked COCAINE was empty. “No, no, no.” She pulled out drawer after drawer. Empty, empty, empty. “Where is it?”

“Looking for this?” rasped a man’s voice.

Willow whirled around. A figure stood in the doorway, a shadow against a curtain of blackness. His hand held up a vial of snow-white powder. “Don’t worry, Little Lamb. I have plenty of what you seek.”

117

“Heave ho, heave ho, heave ho…” Private Wickliff chanted as he and Private Fitch carried the bundled corpse through the cemetery.

Fitch frowned. “Quit saying that, you wanker. Have some respect for the dead.”

“Sorry, mate, it keeps me mind off what we’re carrying.” All morning, the two soldiers had moved bodies back and forth between the Dead House and Dr. Coombs’ autopsy room. Their old mate, Private Pembrook, had been dissected and was now being returned to storage. Wickliff hated having the dead soldier’s crumpled head resting against his shoulder. Fitch had been lucky to get the feet. At Wickliff’s end, the sheets were splotched with pus and smelled like spoiled haggis. The body was heavy and stiff as a pine log. With each step, Wickliff felt like his arms were going to pop out from their sockets.

Heave ho, heave ho, heave ho…

“Just a little farther, mate,” Fitch breathed heavily. They weaved between the wood crosses that marked a few dozen graves. They reached the T-shaped shed that had originally been built to store tools, barrels, broken canoes, and dogsleds. A clapboard with painted white lettering hung above the door: THE DEAD HOUSE.

Sgt. Cox was standing just outside the door with his arms crossed. A scarf covered the lower half of his broad, square face. “’Bout time you two nitwits got here,” he grumbled. “Follow me.” He lit a lantern and guided them into the sepulchral darkness. There were no windows in the shed, just solid log walls with gray mortar. Every time Wickliff came in here, he felt like he was stepping into a mineshaft. He held his breath and winced. And then it hit him. The nose-burning stench that made him gag. His eyes watered. He swallowed hot bile and managed to hold down his breakfast. The Dead House had entombed the foulest of odors as decomposing bodies had been stored in here for many winters. Seemed like every year the beast of winter claimed at least one poor soul. This year the village was already up to half a dozen deaths, and they still had three months until the first thaw.

Up ahead, Sgt. Cox began stomping his boot, dancing around and swinging the lantern light, tossing shadows all about. There was a squeal and a sickening crunch. The sergeant peeled a flattened rat off his boot. “Stupid rodents.”

The three soldiers walked single file between two upturned canoes that were stacked on sawhorses for repair. Wickliff felt his end of Pembrook’s body slipping and had to stop to pull it back up his chest. “We almost there?”

“Can’t rightly tell,” Fitch said, his face a faint outline. “I’m the one going backwards.”

Wickliff said, “Can we stop, Sarge? My arms are killing me.”

“Just a few more paces,” Sgt. Cox said.

“This is complete bollocks. I didn’t take this job to work in a morgue.”

“Quit your moaning.”

For some reason the back of the shed was much colder than outside. A chill seeped into Wickliff’s red greatcoat, making him shiver. They finally reached the end where the building expanded left and right into a T. The afternoon light from the front door had tapered off at the middle of the building. Wickliff rapped his knee on a crate. “Bugger, why couldn’t the builders have put in at least one window back here?”

The back half of the Dead House was so pitch dark, it seemed like nothing existed beyond the circle of Sgt. Cox’s lantern. But as they rounded the corner on the right, the sergeant’s light revealed that there were things living in this primordial blackness.

Rats.

Dozens of knobby-tailed critters scurried away from the sergeant’s stomping boots. At the back wall, he revealed the very thing Wickliff had hoped to never see again. The storage shelf stood six levels high. It had been built for storing barrels and crates. Those had been removed, and now five bodies were tucked away on each shelf like mummies in a catacomb. Pembrook’s corpse made number six.

“Fourth shelf,” Sgt. Cox barked.

Privates Wickliff and Fitch hefted Pembrook’s body over their heads and stacked him next to the inspector’s boy. Something wet and furry leaped onto Wickliff’s shoulder. “Uhhhhhhh!” He danced around and swatted.

The rat hit the floor, and Sgt. Cox crunched it with his boot. “Damned vermin! This place is infested.” The sergeant went to the bodies and peeled back a sheet riddled with holes. “Christ almighty.” The corpse was chewed down to the bone.

“That does it,” Cox said. “Wickliff, Fitch, your next task is to exterminate these rats. And I don’t want to see either of you come out until every last rodent is dead.”

“Aye, sir.” Private Wickliff looked at all the hairy creatures scampering across the floor, along the walls, and over barrels, and feared he just might bloody well faint.

118

Willow pressed her backbone against the curio cabinet, her body trembling. She peed down her leg like a little girl.

The man cloaked in darkness shook the vial of cocaine.

“No…p-please…d-don’t hurt me.”

“Just stay calm, Little Lamb. I wouldn’t want to flaw that pretty face.” He stepped into the gray light. His face was covered by a native mask—white with red outlining the hollow eye sockets, nostrils, and mouth. A band of red dots rounded the forehead.

“You…” Willow gasped. “But how?”

“You dreamed me here. Remember?”

She flinched as his cold hand stroked her hair. “Ah, don’t be scared. I’m here to make alllll your dreamssss come trueeeee. Now, just relaxxxxx.” The croon of his voice made Willow’s eyelids go heavy. A memory surfaced. She was a seventeen-year-old girl walking down a marble staircase, cradling a porcelain doll. At the time, she and Avery were newlyweds and living in the Pendleton mansion in Montréal. Music from a string quartet echoed from the ballroom. Avery was hosting another one of his sordid masquerade parties.

At the bottom floor, Willow passed strangers in the foyer, men and women wearing colorful masks. Hand in hand, they stepped into guest bedrooms. A woman with a cat face and heavy cleavage tugged on Willow’s golden ringlets. “Mmm, how precious you are. You must be the Willow I keep hearing about. And what’s your doll’s name?”

Willow stuck up her nose. “I don’t associate with whores.”

“Oh.” The cat woman rolled back her shoulders. “Well, that’s just as bloody well, because I don’t associate with snobby girls.” She stomped off and entered the toilet.