XXVII - Josh
The world was tilting forwards, all angles and
forces, inertia, gravity and vertigo.
Josh, still feeling the after effects of his fever, could feel his gorge
rising even as the floor seemed to. His
vision blurred and then cleared again in an instant. Flesh walls became stained white sheets. Bloodied concrete became worm-eaten
wood. The corridor ahead opened into a
large room and Josh saw men in black leather robes, with grotesque masks like
duck bills, leaning over small beds in which patients coughed and wheezed
through mouths bloated by black swellings.
He wanted to shout out in disgust, “What the fuck
are you doing to those people?”, but he was still stumbling forwards,
caught in a slow-motion drift that felt as if time itself were bending all
around him. He watched, powerless, as
the men stepped between each bed with an eerie and impassionate grace, their
patients crying out in agony the whole time.
One of the men was leaning in close over one of the
beds when suddenly the patient lying there coughed violently and sprayed the
mask and the leather robe with thick, lumpy blood. The man jerked backwards, then ran from the ward in a panic,
pulling off his strange outfit as he did so and throwing it all hurriedly to
the floor, before leaning against the wall opposite Josh and collapsing to the
floor.
He was young, barely older than Josh himself, and he
looked tired, and sick and devastated.
Tears welled up in his young eyes as he stared down at the spatters of
blood on his hands. He screwed his eyes
up tight, held his hands out, shaking, and sobbed as he muttered a hoarse
prayer.
“Almighty God, why do you put us through such misery
and darkness? Why have you placed me
here, at this time to face this pain? I
know you knew suffering, Lord, but – can it ever have been as bad as this? Can it be we actually deserve all this?”
He opened his eyes briefly and gazed ahead of
him. Josh, still falling in slow
motion, thought that, for just an instant, the young man saw him, because his
eyes widened slightly before closing tight once more.
“Forgive me, Lord, for doubting your great
plan. I only fear for myself. I pray, Lord, protect us from this Black
Death and help us to find a cure or...
Please save us in this dark time.
Please save us.”
He opened his eyes once again, stared towards Josh
with a look of fearful puzzlement and then pulled himself up to his feet.
“James!” came a voice from the ward, “where are you
boy?”
“I’m just outside Doctor. I’ll be back through presently.”
He wiped his eyes and returned to the ward, picking up his robe and mask
as he did so and pulling them back on with care.
Josh’s vision blurred again, he felt a rush of air
and then his face collided with cold, dusty linoleum. He let out a yelp of pain, rolled over and found himself staring
at a bright fluorescent strip light.
Sitting up, he rubbed his cheek and took in the change in his
surroundings. He appeared to be in the
same corridor he had fled too, except that this time the lights were on. The door to the stairwell was just behind
him.
What the fuck is going on in this place? Why did I just see that? Where they plague victims? Was I seeing into the past?
All the questions stampeded through his mind until
he forced himself to stop asking them.
It was no good questioning when you didn’t have the means to find the
answers. Still, the image of the boy,
James, crying on the hospital floor as he uttered useless prayers lingered in
his mind. He wondered if Henry knew much
about the city’s history.
Henry. I
should go back to him and… apologise I guess.
No matter how deluded he is, we need to stick together now.
He picked himself up off the floor, turned to the
face the door and pushed his way through into the cool, echoing stairwell
beyond.
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