Ash (70 page)

The problem was, Comraich’s medical unit was in flames.

Exasperated by her clumsy attempts, he took the bloodied swab from the nurse’s hand and brusquely told her to go and find any patient needing help. He dabbed at the cut with the antiseptic-soaked cotton wool, then held his own silk handkerchief to the injury. It wasn’t long before the handkerchief, too, was saturated red.

All around him nurses and porters were helping those patients who could walk or be pushed in wheelchairs towards the stairway doors, which were hanging off their hinges. So far he’d seen no patient on a trolley and guessed his medical staff were only picking out the easier ones to help. Partitioned offices were burning, and flames were beginning to lick at the suspended ceiling panels. Soon, he quickly realized, the whole ceiling would be alight.

He spotted the Indian psychiatrist, a brilliant young man, if sometimes a little arrogant.

‘Dr Singh!’ he called out over the clamour of raised, frightened voices and the occasional screams. ‘Get as many patients as you can up to the lobby, and then outside if necessary.’

Sunil Singh was carefully guiding an old man on two walking sticks towards the wide stairs that led to the upper floor.

‘I will do my best, sir,’ he said, ‘but there are so many patients too sick to move.’

A nurse tugged at Pritchard’s sleeve. ‘Should we use the lift, sir?’

‘No. Only as a last resort. You know the fire drill. Lifts should never be used in a burning building.’ He was leaning close to her ear so that he didn’t have to shout. ‘Do your best with the stairs for the moment.’

Someone shrieked as part of the false ceiling dropped down from its metal framework. The fire was beginning to take hold and other explosions could still be heard.

As Dr Singh brushed by with the almost doubled-up old man, Pritchard stopped him. ‘Dr Singh, you could have saved five more viable patients while you’ve been helping this one. If there are those that can’t be helped, leave them!’

‘But . . .’

‘No. You have to learn that there are those who can be saved and others who are just unlucky. Make your choice for the greater good!’

Even in the panic and confusion, Pritchard managed to make his advice sound like an order.

‘Very well,’ Singh conceded. ‘But will you help?’

‘No. There are others below in greater need. I’m going down to the containment area.’

‘Is that wise? The explosion came from there.’

‘We cannot let the poor devils burn to death just because they’re feeble of mind. Nurse Krantz seems to have gone missing, so you must do your best to help as many patients as you can.’

With that, Dr Vernon Pritchard rushed to the far end of the landing outside and in the quickly fading light made his way down to the sub-basement, where the fire seemed to have burned itself out. Thus encouraged, he continued on his way.

As the fast-moving fire from below drove onwards and upwards it found timbers, tapestries, and paintings to consume. When it arrived at the long, high-ceilinged lobby it joined forces with other conflagrations ignited by Cedric Twigg’s slyly placed incendiaries.

Guests were rushing down the carpeted stairway, panicked into disobeying the strict instructions they had received to remain in their rooms. Both guests and staff were trying to escape the burning building as quickly as possible.

Among the crowd descending the broad stairway was Andrew Derriman, dressed in a smart dinner jacket, the expression on his long face even more anxious than usual. He was almost lost in the crush, but managed to push his way through, determined to bring some order to the chaos. The bust of an ancient nobleman suddenly fragmented inside its niche in the curved wall, shards of marble flying outwards like shrapnel to kill or maim those who were closest. Derriman had to duck as a chunk sailed over his head, but others in the vicinity were not so lucky. One man had his nose sliced off by a particularly sharp fragment while another was knocked over the balustrade onto the marble floor below, breaking his neck in the fall. Others were crushed to death, though few would mourn their passing.

‘Kit! Kit! Where are you?’

Sandra ‘Fluff’ Belling had run down the smoke-filled corridor to Kit Weston’s room. After the frightening and inexplicable attack of millions of tiny flies in the dining room, during which the ex-racing driver had done his best to protect her with his own disfigured body, Sandra and Kit had gone back to his room, where they’d lain on his bed and talked until dawn, baring their souls. It had been Sandra who had done most of the talking, for the hunched-up little man with the thatch of yellow hair that fell over his forehead to hide his ravaged face had only the stub of his tongue left. She had never confessed the full truth of her baby’s death in that Parisian hotel bedroom to anyone at Comraich, and doing so now had formed a bond between them. When Sandra had heard the explosions her first thought had been of Kit.

The corridor was packed with milling guests, all unsure what to do. She could see the ceiling was filling with rolling smoke and pushed and shoved her way down the corridor to Kit’s quarters, keeping an eye out for him as she went. The fire bell sounded, briefly adding its clamour to the noisy confusion before suddenly falling silent.

She’d looked back to see the landing at the far end of the corridor was now aflame. And as she’d reached Kit’s room she’d seen the orange glow of fire at the opposite end of the corridor. If it really took hold – and it looked like it had – they’d be trapped.

Her hammering on Kit’s door having produced no response, Sandra barged her way in.

‘Kit!’ she cried again, for she could not see him. Something was wrong with the lights. They’d been flickering all evening, but by now they just glowed dully, hardly giving out enough light to see by.

‘
Kit, please! Where are you?
’ she shouted in terrified frustration. Then she heard what sounded like a moan coming from the floor on the other side of the bed. She raced round the end and saw him hunched into a ball in the far corner of the room.

Kneeling, she touched his shoulder and tried to pull him round to face her. Like a recalcitrant child, he pulled away and bunched himself even tighter, his hands round his ankles.

‘
Kit, it’s me! It’s Sandra
,’ she pleaded.

The only response was another moan and a small shifting of his body.

‘It’s Sandra, Kit. Don’t you remember? We talked and talked.’ She tried to keep her voice steady so as not to frighten him further. ‘We have to get out. The castle’s on fire!’

‘
’Ire!
’ he cried, and suddenly she understood. Kit had smelt the smoke, heard the screams and explosions. He was reliving the nightmare of his final crash.

‘We have to leave, Kit.’ She tugged at his body, and once again he flinched. Smoke was entering through the open door as if chasing Sandra. She thought she saw hideous figures contained in the billowing blackness, unclear shapes twisting and writhing, shapes that were a sickening parody of the human form, creating faces that grinned at them. Somewhere, she thought she heard a tiny baby crying. The baby she had allowed to die.

‘
No!
’ she shouted defiantly. ‘
You can’t do this to me! I’ve paid the price too long and now I know it can never be repaid in full. But I won’t let you take him as well!
’ She put her arms round the cowering Kit and pulled him to his feet. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, taking his ravaged face in both hands. ‘The building’s on fire . . .’ she’d tried to say it calmly but firmly, and yet still he shrank away from the word, ready to sink back into the corner. She hauled him back up. ‘Not this time, Kit,’ she said. ‘This time you’ve got me, and this time nothing –
nothing!
– is going to take you away.’ Sandra hugged him as if he were her dead child.

Two days ago she would, like Kit, have given herself to the flames, even welcomed the pain as punishment for what she had done; but now she had a person’s life in her hands, a chance to redeem herself.

She led Kit around the bed, ignoring the spiteful fumes billowing about them, but when she saw heavier smoke gushing through the open doorway with a flickering orange glow behind it, she came to a stop.

‘Wait, Kit,’ she warned, kicking the door shut while propping him up. ‘Kit, the corridor is on fire. We can’t risk getting out that way. If I open the door again, the flames will be drawn in. We have to try a window.’

Kit Weston looked at her with those cornflower blue eyes for which he’d been so famous. The fear in those once smiling eyes was shocking.

She led him back across the room, which was quickly filling with smoke, causing them to cough uncontrollably. Sandra got him over to one of the room’s two small-paned sash windows and attempted to open it, though she knew the windows in all guest suites were fixed shut to prevent suicide (
escape?
) attempts. To her surprise, Kit tried to help her, though his strength was even less than hers and they soon gave up.

‘We’ll have to smash it!’ she shouted to him over the rumbling noise of the fire. They clutched each other even tighter as yet another explosion shook the castle.

Sandra fought her way through the floating phantoms in the smoke-filled room, picked up a straight-backed chair and, warning Kit to move away, hurled it at the window. The glass broke easily enough, but the wooden framework was left intact, the openings too small to climb through. She went to swing the chair again.

‘Let m-me try,’ she heard him say in his strange mumble that few could interpret. He hefted the solid piece of furniture, then proceeded to attack the wooden frame. It took several attempts until one vertical bar splintered, then broke. After that, the rest of the framework was comparatively easy to pull out, albeit at the expense of several lacerations from the glass fragments that remained lodged in the woodwork.

Sandra moved her mouth close to his ear so that she didn’t have to shout, then said calmly, ‘Kit, we are going to have to jump. We’re on the second floor, but there’s a soft lawn, and I’m going to make us a landing pad.’ She quickly gathered up all the bedclothes and pillows and dropped the soft bundle out of the window. Kit soon got the idea and almost disappeared in the swirling smoke as he grabbed the cushions from the sofa and armchair, then more pillows and thicker blankets from the linen cupboard, taking all that he could carry back to Sandra so that she could add them to the pile. Fresh sea air came to them through the broken window and they swallowed it greedily.

It was time to jump.

‘You go first,’ she told Kit.

He shook his head determinedly and pointed at her. ‘You,’ was all he said.

She saw that determination had replaced fear in his blue eyes and decided it would be folly to refuse. ‘Okay,’ she replied. ‘But you follow immediately,’ and she waited until he nodded his head. Meanwhile, the smoke had become a churning fog all around, and it was as if spectral hands were reaching for them, trying to detain them until the flames licked into the room; but the vaporous spirits had no substance and no apparent strength. She sat on the window ledge, said a silent prayer and pushed herself into the void.

Sandra screamed as she fell, landing heavily but uninjured on the pile of soft furnishings and bedding. Quickly rolling off, she looked up to see Kit hanging on to the window ledge by the tips of his fingers before letting go. He landed with a loud cry, clearly shaken but otherwise apparently unharmed.

Within a moment, Sandra was by Kit’s side, quickly checking on him to make sure no bones were broken. When their eyes met in the bright moonlight, they both grinned. Then they turned as one and staggered away, supporting each other while more explosions shook the castle behind them.

In the containment area Dr Pritchard could see no sign of fire itself, only the evidence of its passage. The walls were blackened and powdery dust floated in the air, creating a yellowish fog that raked his throat. He squinted into the gloom, his bifocals lost somehow in the mayhem of the medical unit, but still nothing would come into sharp focus. Were those figures he could see in that mist of powder and dust? He didn’t really register their lurching presence until he’d cautiously wandered down the blast-blown corridor and found himself among them. His intention had been to open any cell doors that were still locked and lead the occupants to safety, for Dr Pritchard had always taken the Hippocratic oath he had sworn as a trainee very seriously indeed, despite his generally insouciant manner. He knew his duty, and had always performed it to the best of his ability. The right thing to do in the circumstances was obvious. However, down in this darkened pit for lunatics, his intentions were far from clear to the scramble-minded tenants, whose psychological state had been made even more egregious by the shock of the explosion.

Dr Pritchard imagined that many would have been deafened by the blast, the unnatural silence confusing them further. Although most of the cell doors had been blown open, some remained crouched in their cells, afraid to venture out, though many had been emboldened by the fact that freedom was at last at hand.

What Dr Pritchard could not know was that the sudden heightened functioning of their flawed minds had left them more easily accessible to beings no longer of this world, spirits that had not yet found their place of peace in the beyond. The mentally ill patients of Comraich were even more susceptible, more exposed to malign influences that had travelled from the darkest regions of another dimension as if responding to the clarion call of evil itself. The liberated feeble-minded ‘patients’ had by now become vessels for malicious spectres drawn to Comraich by the allure of one mad woman who had welcomed them in, endowing them with power on the physical plane.

Dr Pritchard had decided to make a swift exit, Hippocratic oath or not, but before he could move backwards and away from the mist wherein the shadowy figures stirred, he was confronted by a huge figure that had come forward from the crowd. A strong, thick-fingered hand suddenly encircled the doctor’s throat, squeezing tightly, blocking his ability to breathe, foul and clogged though the air was. Pritchard tried to speak, tried to reason with the patient, but the hand only compressed his throat further. He felt other hands scratching at him, and he half recognized some of the perpetrators, for he’d spoken with them often over the years, but now those same faces, always insane, had become somehow . . . altered. Their countenances had become subtly demonic, the features slightly exaggerated, noses too long, teeth too pointed, brows jutting so that their maniacal eyes peered out from deep caverns.