Chapter Thirty-Six

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

DIANA NOVEMBER 1918

CASE NOTEBOOK

15 Nov., 1:37 a.m.: Percy Nicholson died. Wrapped and placed the body in an empty dormitory bedroom to await transport to the morgue. Joshua Murray ill: temperature 104, pulse 65. No lung rales.

15 Nov., 5:00 a.m.: Ambulance arrived. Sent George Humphrey and Max Lovell to hospital. Undertaker sent for. Clarissa Somersby continues a high temperature of 104.2.

15 Nov., 3:00 p.m.: Percy Nicholson's body removed to local morgue. Mrs. McCann fainted. Temperature 102.6. Nearly had to tie her down to keep her in bed.

16 Nov., 7:00 a.m.: Spoke by phone with Dr. Bennett. Lawrence Dean died two hours ago. Hospital overloaded, will try to send a relief nurse to me.

What is this flu that kills the young and healthy so suddenly?

* * *

There had been no shortage of long hours in France—nurses routinely worked forty-eight hours at a time with only snatches of coffee or twenty-minute naps. But Diana had never felt so close to drowning as she did on that fifth day of quarantine. Only she, Luther Weston, and Jasper Willis remained influenza-free. Leaving the boy and his broken leg in a private quarantine meant two adults to care for thirteen patients.

Dr. Bennett had promised to find a relief nurse for her by the end of the day; there were hours that Diana didn't think she'd make it. As soon as she finished rounds on the ward—taking everyone's temperature and pulse, checking their breathing and pain levels, treating any bleeding, and administering aspirin and salicin—it was almost time to start over again. Plus ensuring the patients were drinking and taking broth, if able, and changing linens … Diana hadn't cried on a ward since 1915. She almost broke that streak a dozen times that Saturday.

In France, she'd never known her patients before they needed care. And although she grew attached to a few of them, mostly they moved in and through so quickly that it was all she could do to keep up with the necessities of care for young men that, whatever their age, were officially old enough to go to war. Caring for vulnerable schoolboys, away from their families and trying so hard to be brave, was something else entirely.

Not to mention Joshua. From the moment he'd collapsed at her feet, Diana was forced into the difficulty of professional nursing in the face of personal feelings. She could not allow her feelings for him to dictate differences in how she worked—but God, it was hard! When all she wanted to do was sit by his bedside and will him to get better.

At 5 p.m. the promised relief nurse finally arrived. Miss Bartholomew was an upright, steel-haired retired nurse from Newcastle who appeared almost old enough to have served with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea. But she was sharp and capable of taking temperatures and administering aspirin and fluids. Immediately upon her arrival Diana sent Luther Weston off to sleep for several hours and got Miss Bartholomew adequately informed and up to speed.

When Weston returned to the dining hall at 8:30 p.m. looking remarkably refreshed, Diana didn't have to be told twice to go to bed. For the first time since Tuesday, she made her way to her own bedroom. She stripped off her stained, limp blouse and skirt and tried to decide whether to bathe first or simply fall onto the bed.

At that moment, her wardrobe doors began to shake and bang together.

The sound of footsteps, many heavy-booted feet tramping in the corridor, men's voices, the pounding of steel dagger hilts on closed doors and caskets, reverberating through her head and bones and—

"Stop it!" Diana balled up her skirt and threw it at her wardrobe. It hardly satisfied, so she snatched up her bedside clock and threw that as well. "Stop doing this to me! Why me? What do you want?"

She stopped screaming and listened, chest heaving with half-swallowed sobs. She could still hear the ring of steel and boots, but it had faded a little. Diana could almost imagine … something? someone? … pausing to cock their head. As though she'd at last caught their attention.

"Please," Diana whispered. All at once she didn't have the strength to stand any longer and she sank to the floor, leaning against the bed behind her. "Please let me be. I'm tired. I'm scared. I just want to save all these boys."

She knew in the tiny rational part that remained of her mind that she sounded ridiculous. But what did she have to lose?

"Can you help me? I don't know, talk to God maybe?" Although wasn't the point of ghosts that they hadn't moved on to the afterworld? "Or at least give me a break. Just until this is over. Once I've saved everyone, haunt me until the day I die if you like. Just let me rest for now."

The noises stopped. In the end, Diana fell asleep on the floor and, when she woke, had to retrieve her clock from where she'd thrown it. Thank goodness it hadn't broken. She'd been asleep for two hours. She felt stiff and sore but clear-headed. And filthy.

She took a quick bath and was half dressed when someone knocked.

"Miss Neville?" Weston called.

"Come in."

He stopped when he saw she was just starting to button up her blouse.

"For God's sake," she said impatiently, "grow up and tell me what's going on."

She expected a simple recital of current conditions—surely if any patient had dramatically worsened they would have summoned her earlier.

"Miss Bartholomew was fetching fresh water from the kitchen while everyone was sleeping more or less peacefully. I had stepped out briefly to check on Jasper Willis."

It wasn't like Weston to draw things out. "And?" she prompted.

"Jasper's fine. But when I returned to the dining hall Austin Willis was not in his bed. Or in the washroom."

"Shit."

"And," he continued, sounding unnaturally subdued, "Clarissa Somersby is also gone."

"Are you kidding me?" Diana scrubbed at her face with her hand. Beyond caring what anyone thought of her language at this point, she swore like the soldiers she'd nursed. "What the fuck does Clarissa think she's doing?"

"I imagine it's exactly what you expect. She's gone in search of Thomas. And I'm afraid she's taken Austin with her."

"Shit, shit, shit." Diana considered the matter, the hour, the weather, then began to unbutton her skirt. "If you're offended by my female body, you might want to turn around. I'm not trawling the countryside in the middle of the night in a skirt."

She pulled on her motorcycling trousers and threw on her warmest sweater before grabbing a coat and knit hat. "I've got to check in with Miss Bartholomew," she said. "If everything's calm, then I need you to help me search. They couldn't have gone far."

Turned out, a seriously ill woman and a nine-year-old boy could get a lot farther than one would think, even in the rain and wind and dark. Sweeping beams of light around them with their torches, they quickly cleared the courtyard, the old stables, and the gardening shed.

Diana considered the matter quickly, knowing every minute was crucial. She had nothing concrete to go on, only suppositions and rumors, but wasn't that the plane on which Clarissa was operating? Her search for Thomas was powered by imagination, not logic.

Come hide with me in the icehouse.

The words resonated inside like the aftershocks of the explosion that had vibrated through her body in Viliers-Bretoneux. Why did she envision them being spoken in her ear by a young woman with long skirts?

They had to start somewhere. "Mr. Murray found Jasper Willis almost a mile from here at the remains of a medieval icehouse," Diana said. "Clarissa believed Jasper was following the same ghost her brother followed—she'd likely head that way. Taking Austin as a guide, maybe, hoping Thomas will appear to him. What do you think?"

"I've no better ideas. Can we get there in the dark?"

Since they had to do exactly that, Diana didn't bother to answer. The best thing that could be said for the weather was that it wasn't actively raining. The trek through the dark, damp, freezing landscape—with only their two darting torches providing light—was both miserable and too slow. Diana ached to run but knew that would only result in her or Weston stumbling or falling, and she could not afford to injure herself or the last healthy adult at the school.

They found Clarissa well short of the ruined icehouse walls, the white hem of her nightgown nearly glowing beneath a borrowed man's coat. She'd at least had the sense to pull on rubber boots, but the moment Diana saw her face she knew that common sense wasn't currently playing a big role in her decision-making.

"Diana! I'm so glad you've come!" Clarissa gripped her shoulder. She had no gloves, no torch. How the hell had they made it this far without any light?

"You've got to come back with me," Diana said as soothingly as she could manage through her fear and anger. "We'll get you safely back in bed, and warm. Clarissa, where is Austin?"

"He ran ahead. He could see him, the ghost boy, he followed him. I told him to leave me, not to lose sight of the boy."

At that, Diana's temper at last erupted. "Austin is the boy! He is the only boy that matters right now. Good God, Clarissa, how could you drag a nine-year-old out here in the middle of the night?!"

"He sees the same child Thomas used to."

"The same dead child. That's what a ghost is, Clarissa. And you seem determined to just keep adding to the account of dead boys at Havencross. If Austin is hurt or ill or, God forbid, dies because of what you've done tonight, I will never forgive you."

Clarissa looked like a little girl beginning to realize she'd done something wrong. Her eyes filled with tears. "I just wanted Thomas."

"Thomas is dead, Clarissa. And if you can't put the needs of living children before your dead brother, than you have no business running a school. Weston!"

He looked nearly as bemused as Clarissa by Diana's outburst and eyed her warily. "Yes?"

"Take her back to the house. I'm going after Austin."

"I can do that."

But Diana's expert eye had assessed the woman's physical state. "Clarissa's not going to stay on her feet all the way back," she said. "And I can't carry her. Besides, I'm the one who knows where to find Austin. Just hurry back."

If the small opening she and Joshua had made at the icehouse hadn't been widened, Diana might have missed it in the dark night. But Austin had clearly moved enough stones to get himself inside.

Diana lay with her stomach down on the ground and called into the opening: "Austin? Austin, are you there?"

For a long, terrifying moment there was silence. Then a rush of relief as she heard the boy call back faintly. "I'm here. Miss Somersby?"

"No, it's Miss Neville. Austin, I need you to come out now. I've got to get you back to bed before your mother gets angry with me."

"Ummm … I think I'm stuck. The tunnel kind of got thin and uneven, like maybe part of it fell in sometime?"

She batted a burst of panic away. "Stuck like there's no room for you to turn around? Can you just back your way out? I know it's uncomfortable."

"I tried. But I think something's snagged my shirt and I can't quite reach it, whatever it is. Can you help, Miss Neville?"

Diana drew in a deep breath and blew out. And then another. When she was sure she could speak without her voice shaking, she said, "Of course I can help. Just be still and I'll come to you."

Don't think of France , she commanded herself. This is nothing like Viliers-Bretoneux. This time I'm deliberately entering a tunnel that narrows so much a nine-year-old boy can't free himself. It will be fine.

Crawling through damp, cold earth with a torch in one hand was excruciating for both her body and mind. Panic lurked at the edges of her awareness, and she kept it back by keeping up a steady stream of words for Austin.

"It really doesn't seem fair of a ghost to want you to come in here," she said. "I don't suppose a spirit has so much trouble getting through narrow spaces. When we're out of here, Austin, we're going to have a serious conversation about logic and responsibility."

Finally her light glanced off the soles of his slippers. Unlike Clarissa, he hadn't managed to put on boots. "All right, Austin, I see you. I'm setting down the light, and I'll come up as carefully as I can and stretch my arm along your side. Which side are you caught on?"

"The right, miss."

Diana wedged the torch against the wall. Although she couldn't so much as crouch in the space, it wasn't as closed-in as she'd feared. It was a mess, though—as Austin had said, it looked as though there'd been some kind of collapse in earlier years. It was that mess of fallen-in debris that had snagged the hem of his shirt—the fabric had caught firmly around a rock and Austin's efforts to free himself had only tangled it tighter.

Diana teased the fabric free. "Okay, Austin, you can back up now. I'm going to crawl back a short way and then you should be able to get past me."

"I can just follow you out."

"Absolutely not. Look what happened when we took our eyes off you for five minutes. You're going out ahead of me so I can be sure you don't take any sudden detours."

"Yes, miss."

She heard the relief in his voice, ample payment for her efforts at speaking calmly. As promised, after they'd both backed up for maybe fifty feet, the tunnel widened enough for Austin to wiggle past her and turn around. Very carefully, Diana managed to get herself turned the right direction as well.

"All right, lead the way," she told him, and set herself to follow his slippers. At least they weren't belly-crawling any longer; they both had enough room to be on their hands and knees.

Diana bumped the torch against the tunnel wall, and in the wavering light, she thought she saw the outline of a boy—one most definitely not Austin. For one thing, he was standing up, with his lower legs sunk into the earth as though rising from a grave.

For another thing, he was transparent.

She yelped and Austin cried, "What's wrong, miss?'

Opening her mouth to ask him to move faster, Diana hadn't made a sound when she felt the vibration and heard the rumble that her body recognized before her brain.

"Watch out!" she called, crouching and throwing her arms up to cover her head. And then there was nothing but the roar of violent collapse and the taste of violent earth in her mouth.