Ruled By Fear (20 page)

    
Aaron struggled to stand as Keith talked.  Grant’s punch had done more than give him a black eye.  His vision was blurry at best, and he fought off a wave of panic.  He’d been in enough fights to know that it could take days before he would see clearly again.

    
“Are you all right?” Keith asked when Aaron continued to stumble along the wall.

    
Aaron chuckled lightly.  “I’m the one that should be asking you that.”

    
“Well, I’ve spent the day standing up so far, so other than sore feet, I’m doing okay.”

    
Aaron knew better, but he didn’t want to dampen his brother’s spirits by pressing the matter.  He was feeling sick to his stomach, and wasn’t really sorry that there was no lunch.  Except, of course, for the fact that now everyone else was now starving because of him.  His musings were interrupted as Keith pushed a small piece of cloth into his hand.  Aaron looked up in confusion, and Keith mouthed the word Emily.

     Aaron discreetly opened the tiny bundle.  Inside was a soft mound of powder that looked a great deal like the dust surrounding them.  He figured it must be some kind of medicine—like the kind Emily had managed to get for Keith once before.  He wondered with all the bottles of unlabeled medicines how she would know the difference, but then he remembered that she’d said her father was a doctor.  Taking up one of the cups, he filled it with water and then carefully dumped the powder in.  Bringing it to his nose, he sniffed, but wasn’t able to detect any smell in particular.  He hoped he was doing the right thing with it as he took a deep swallow.  He then passed the cup to his brother, knowing that Keith needed healing as much, if not more, than he did.

    
Moments later, Cody and Doyle joined them.  The two older men sent a withering glare in Aaron’s direction then, without speaking, went straight to work.  Keith and Aaron did as much as they could, but between their abused bodies and Aaron’s bad vision, they accomplished very little.  Emily brought the second bucket of water a short time later, but with other men in the room, she didn’t stay long.  After what seemed like an eternity, their cart was full, and Aaron announced that he and Keith would empty it.  When they arrived at the pit, both of them were about ready to collapse.  Aaron helped Keith down onto the ground as gently as he could, and then dropped limply beside him.  His younger brother turned onto his stomach and stretched out on the ground.

    
“Go ahead and rest,” Aaron told him.  “Just for a few minutes.”

     Aaron jumped at the sound of his name being called, and someone gently shaking him.  As he squinted upward, Emily stood back.

    
“You were asleep,” she said.  “They’ll come looking for you soon.”

    
Aaron wasn’t sure exactly who she meant by they, but he knew that he and Keith needed to get moving.  Reaching over, he gently shook his brother, causing him to jerk awake.

    
“I’m sorry,” Aaron said.  “Did I hurt you?”

    
“I’m okay,” Keith answered groggily, but Aaron knew by the tremble in his voice that he was hurting.

    
He looked again at Emily to thank her, and noticed that he was able to see her clearly.  The pounding in his head and the swelling near his eye were also much better.

    
“Thank you,” he said to the young girl, putting as much meaning into his voice as he could manage.

    
She smiled and nodded her head.  “I have to go.  The Gardener is making supper—I’m supposed to help.”

    
Aaron breathed a sigh of relief over the news.  Besides being worried about the other prisoners, his own appetite was starting to return, and he looked forward to having a meal.  He and Keith worked together to empty the heavy cart and then push it back into the chamber.  Doyle ignored them and kept on working, but Cody stopped for a minute and looked at them.  Aaron caught a glimpse of sadness and, maybe, sympathy in the old man’s eyes before he turned back to his work.  He was surprised when just a short time later, Grant came in announcing that it was time to quit for the day.  He turned to Keith who gave him a lopsided grin.

    
“I guess we slept longer than I thought,” Aaron whispered.

     
Everyone seemed to be dragging, even more than usual that night.  There was rarely much conversation going on, but that night there was only silence, except for the sounds of spoons busy scraping every last drop of stew from bowls that were much too small.  Aaron didn’t so much as glance in Grant’s direction.  He had spent a large portion of the day mulling over the man’s words.  It seemed that Grant was willing to talk—they just needed the right time.  Aaron reached up and gingerly felt his eye.  Timing was something he really needed to work on, if he wanted to stay upright much longer.  Aaron looked across the table at Philip.  The boy hadn’t worked with them that day, and Aaron had assumed that because of his and Keith’s absence, Philip had been assigned to work in a different chamber.  Philip’s shoulders were drooped, and Aaron could see tracks from tears left in the dirt on his cheeks.  He knew he didn’t have the strength to talk to him that night, but the boy looked so forlorn.   Taking a few more bites, Aaron slid his bowl across the table.  Philip looked up, surprised, and Aaron gave him a tired smile.  For just a moment, he saw a faint light come into the boy’s eyes.  But it went out again quickly, and he watched as Philip inhaled the extra food.  A few minutes later, almost as one, the prisoners stood and, after depositing their dishes, headed for the stairs.  Once inside their room, Aaron stayed standing just long enough to make sure Keith got into bed, then collapsed onto his own.  He was so tired that he didn’t even feel his head hit the pillow before sleep claimed him.

     It was dark, much to dark for it to be anywhere near morning, and Aaron wondered why he was suddenly awake.  For some reason his body was tense and he strained to listen.  Then he heard it again, a soft creak, as if someone were opening a door.  He darted his eyes in that direction, but it was shut tight.  Another creak—this time it seemed to be coming from the other side of the room.  Aaron’s heart began to pound in his chest, drowning out all other sounds.

    
Get up you coward.

    
Aaron was just about to sit up, when a pair of thick arms came out of the darkness toward him.  One hand shot out, quickly covering his mouth, while the other held him down effortlessly.  Aaron started to struggle, but a familiar voice stopped him.

    
“Calm down.  I need you to come with me.”

    
Aaron exhaled slowly, but his body remained rigid.  Grant let go of him, and Aaron squinted to see in the darkness.  Grant brought a finger to his lips, then waved for Aaron to follow him.

    
Aaron shook his head.  “I’m not leaving him,” he mouthed, pointing toward his brother’s bed.

    
He could hear Grant sigh softly.  “Suit yourself,” he answered.

    
Aaron watched as Grant turned to leave, then he glanced frantically toward his brother.  He didn’t want to leave him alone, but he needed answers.  Slipping from his bed, he quietly crossed the room, placing a hand on Grant’s shoulder.  The bigger man stopped.

    
“Follow me,” he said.

    
Aaron gave one last look at his brother, sending up a silent prayer, then watched in stunned silence as the wall before him opened up.  The pounding in his chest started again, as Grant stepped inside what appeared to be a passageway.  Forcing himself to breathe calmly, he joined Grant and jumped slightly as the wall closed behind him.

C
 

hapter 18

“Stay close to me,” Grant whispered.  “And don’t make any noise.”

    
Aaron marveled as they made their way through long winding passages.  The more rational part of his mind, at one point, had assumed there were hidden passageways, but injuries and fatigue had made him forget about the idea until now.

    
Most of the time the tunnels were narrow, with only enough room for them to walk single file—other areas opened up wider.  There were small niches and corners, where if someone were very still it would be almost impossible to detect them.  He had an opportunity to test this theory a few minutes later.  Grant startled him as he turned and grabbed hold of Aaron’s arm.  He quickly pushed Aaron into a corner, nearly causing him to cry out as his injured shoulder hit the wall.

    
“Not a sound,” Grant hissed, then turned around, taking a few steps forward.

    
It was then that Aaron saw the dim glow of a lantern approaching.  Sucking in his breath, he flattened himself against the wall.  As the light grew closer, he didn’t know whether the cold rush of air that flew over him was real or imagined, but the hair on the back of his neck stood up, regardless.

    
The sound of an icy voice sent chills through Aaron.  “Out late again, I see?” the voice said.

    
“Just keeping an eye on things,” Grant answered.

    
Aaron shivered as the voice gave a low chuckle.  Grant moved in front of him as the figure started to make his way past.  Aaron could just barely see over Grant’s shoulder and, as the light from the lantern revealed a portion of a man’s face, he gasped slightly.  Aaron pulled his head back even farther as the man turned at the slight noise.

    
“Where are you going,” Grant said quickly, stepping farther in front of Aaron.

    
Aaron did his best to not even breathe as the man raised his lantern a bit, examining Grant closely.  His eyes kept darting to the wall behind Grant.

    
Aaron blinked rapidly as hot sweat fell into his eyes, but he didn’t dare move.  Finally, the man lowered the lantern a little.  His face was horribly scarred and, as he twisted his lips into a smile, Aaron shuddered.

    
“Just . . . keeping an eye on things,” the man repeated Grant’s words, then turned down the corridor, chuckling once again.

    
Once the light had faded completely, Grant stepped back and motioned for Aaron to walk in front of him.  Grant guided him from behind as they continued on.  Aaron could feel the passage floor sloping downward, and several times, they walked down a short flight of stairs.  Finally, they turned down a corridor that ended in front of a door.  Aaron looked to Grant who nodded, and then pushed the door open.  He quickly stepped inside, and Grant closed the door behind them. Where ever they were, it was too dark to see, but Aaron could hear Grant shuffling around behind him.  He turned as he heard a match strike, and Grant handed him a candle.  Aaron turned again, moving his candle around the room, then turned to Grant in surprise.

    
“We’re in the infirmary?” he asked.

    
Grant nodded and moved farther into the room.

    
“Who was that man?” Aaron asked, following him.

    
Grant hesitated before answering.  “Someone out of a nightmare.”

    
“Well, that fits I suppose,” Aaron answered.  “This whole place is a nightmare. Why did you bring me here?”

    
“Because this is the only place where we can talk safely,” Grant answered.  “None of them ever come in here.”

    
Despite the man’s words, Aaron noticed he was continuing to keep his voice low.

    
“You have questions?” Grant asked, turning toward him.

    
Aaron had to fight not to laugh out loud, angered at Grant’s matter of fact tone.   But this is what he’d been longing for and, suddenly his anger changed to desperation.

    
“Yes,” he answered.  “What is this place? Who’s holding us here?  How do we get out?”

    
“What if I told you there is no way out?” Grant asked.

    
“I’d say you were lying,” Aaron answered quickly.  “When my brother and I were in town, he met someone that said a prisoner had escaped from here.”

    
Grant nodded, rubbing the back of his hand over his forehead.  “That was over five years ago,” he said.

    
“Five years?”  Aaron could feel the despair starting to creep in.

    
“And the man wasn’t a prisoner . . . he was a patient.”

    
“A patient?”  Aaron repeated.

    
His mind was whirling, trying to pull all the fractured pieces of information together.  He looked up in confusion, his eyes circling the room filled with cots and medical equipment and, suddenly, things started making sense.

    
“This is a mental institution?”

    
“It was,” Grant answered.  “Now . . . now it’s a prison.”

    
“What happened?” Aaron asked.

    
Grant sighed heavily and dropped onto one of the cots.  “Too many people thought that they could play God, and ended up unleashing the devil.”

    
Aaron lowered himself onto the cot opposite Grant, and waited quietly for him to continue.

    
“Seven years ago, I got a job working at an asylum.  I’m sure you can guess by my size what my job was.”

    
Aaron had no doubt that the man’s size and strength would have been a considerable asset in such a place, but he had also seen another side of Grant—one that was firm but patient—Strong yet capable of gentle compassion.

    
“There were two men in charge of that facility,” Grant continued.  “One of them—his name was Gordon Cullman—he had all kinds of ideas about the patients.  He seemed to think that with the right treatments and care, a lot of the patients could learn to function outside of the asylum.  He was given permission to take a group of patients to a new facility, which he had funded, to try out his treatments.”

    
“That sounds admirable,” Aaron said.

    
Grant snorted.  “It wasn’t for them,” he nearly spat.  “The patients I mean.  He considered himself a genius, and he wanted the credit.”  Taking a deep breath, Grant continued.  “We took thirty patients and trekked them out here to the middle of nowhere.  Things went all right, at first.  The problem was Gordon didn’t take just any patients.  He took the ones that were smart, the ones he thought would be most able to learn.  That’s what made them so dangerous.  Yes, they were smart, too smart and we found out later, impossible to control.”

    
Aaron watched as the huge man’s shoulders sagged.  After a moment, he looked up at Aaron and, in his eyes, Aaron could see all the years of torment this man had endured.

    
“When we came out here there were twenty of us—doctors, nurses, orderlies.  Now . . . there are three.”

    
“Three?” Aaron screwed up his face in puzzlement.

    
Grant nodded.   “Cody and Doyle,” he said.  “There were five of us, but you know what happened to the other two.”

    
Aaron thought back to the cave in that had killed Grant’s two comrades and Tom.

    
“What happened to all the others?”

    
“Like I said, things started out well enough.  Gordon had two excellent doctors and, at first, the medicines they were trying seemed to be working.  We kept the patients busy by giving them jobs to do.  When Gordon bought this land and had men start building, they noticed an old abandoned mine.  Of course, there was never anything in it.  We used it to give the patients something to do and to teach them some mining techniques.  We also taught them gardening, and had them doing chores around the place—like laundry and cooking.  Everything was going great and then, one day, it all changed.  Several of the patients woke up screaming.  They were having hallucinations, and were in terrible pain; by the end of that first night, two of them had died and the rest were starting to show the same symptoms.  The doctors were frantic, figuring it must have been caused by the medicines as they built up in their systems.   We immediately stopped giving the medicines to them, but things got worse.  The patients were addicted, and ended up dying faster from withdrawals than they were from taking the medicine.  Eventually, we found that by lowering the doses it kept the patients alive, but we couldn’t get rid of the hallucinations.”

    
Aaron, listening quietly, could hear the agony in Grant’s voice as he continued.

    
“You can’t imagine what it was like,” he said.  “Hearing their tortured screams as every demon they’d ever feared came out to haunt them.  In their fear they grew out of control and we had to start locking them in their rooms.  Gordon had passageways built leading to just about every room in the facility.  He said they were so that we would always have access to the patients, but I think . . . well, he had his own personal set of fears—turns out they were well-founded.  The patients knew about the passages and it didn’t take them long to figure out how to access them.  They kept escaping.  The first group that managed to get out the front gate . . .”

    
Grant stopped again, and Aaron noticed him clenching and unclenching his fists.  This story was hard on him, and Aaron sensed that it went deeper than just feeling bad for his patients.  For some reason, this was also personal.

    
“They . . .” Grant continued.  “They came across a family, travelling through the canyon.  You have to understand—they weren’t seeing things clearly—by the time we caught up with them . . . the family was dead—the patients were still there, ripping things apart—they had literally become like animals.  They came at us, and we had no choice but to shoot them.  When we got back, with the bodies slung over our horses, it started a panic among the other patients . . . six of the people working with me were killed that night.  The patients, through the nightmares they were living, turned us into the enemy.  Most of them escaped into the mine.  We didn’t know what to do.  Gordon came up with the plan to . . . to blow up the mine.

    
Grant looked up at Aaron’s gasp.

    
“I was against it,” Grant said, looking down again.  “So were Cody and Doyle, and the two other men that were always with me.  We didn’t know that one of the patients had been listening—he went back to the others and told them what he’d heard.  That night, they came in through the passageways and killed everyone, except the five of us that had spoken up for them.  They kept us alive, but turned us into the prisoners they imagined themselves being.  The one that heard us talking that night, he sort of rose up and took control of all the others.  You’ve met him—his name is Daniel.”

    
Aaron felt his gut twist inside him at the mention of the name, and he struggled to push his own emotions aside so that he could continue to listen.

    
“A few of the patients managed to wean themselves off the medicine and Daniel sent me into town with them.  With their hallucinations under control, they were able to stay there.”  Aaron thought back to the people he and Keith had met in the town; he had a pretty good idea which of them were patients.  The man from the livery being one.

    
Grant continued.  “There was a man that used to deliver the supplies.  I’ve been paying him from the stash of money Gordon left, but . . .”

    
Aaron nodded, remembering the night the driver had been killed.

    
“Daniel distributes the medicine to the other patients—he uses it to control them.  If they don’t do what he tells them, he holds it back and, eventually, their hallucinations become too much for them to bear.”

    
“What about the cougar?” Aaron asked.  “Where did it come from?”

    
Grant sighed and looked down at his hands.  Aaron’s own gaze fell to where the man’s missing fingers should have been.

    
“That was another mistake of mine,” Grant said after a moment.  “I’d ducked into the mine one day, to get out of the pouring rain, and heard this pitiful mewing.  Turned out to be a half-drowned little thing that was trying to stay dry, just like I was.  I kept it hidden in the mine, and brought it food.  I always planned to let it go when it was old enough to take care of itself, but Daniel came across us one day when I was feeding it and took it.  The next time I saw it was the night this happened.”

    
Grant rubbed at his hand, and Aaron flinched in sympathy.  Suddenly, Grant jumped up, grabbing Aaron’s candle and blowing it out.

    
“Don’t move,” Grant whispered.

    
Aaron’s eyes darted around the room, looking for what could have caused Grant’s reaction.  That’s when he saw a faint light shining in from under the passageway door.  His heart began to thud.  He’d thought Grant had said they would be safe in here.  His body froze as someone turned the handle of the door and it creaked open.  Someone held a lantern up high, moving it slowly across the room.  Aaron and Grant both dropped soundlessly to the ground, rolling underneath the cots.