Alex Grecian - Devil's Workshop

“What do you make of this?”

Day came down off the bottom step and stood next to his mentor. There were dark spots in the dirt and they gleamed in the candle’s light. Day squatted and touched one of the spots. It was thick and gummy. He brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed at the black liquid, then stuck out his tongue and tasted it.

“Blood,” he said. “It’s been here for some time, but it hasn’t dried yet.”

“Oh, no,” March said. He stood up straight and reached out his arm so that the candle illuminated a tiny bit more of the dark passage ahead of them.

Day found his flask and took a drink of brandy, swished it around his mouth to get rid of the metallic taste of blood and clay.

“One of the prisoners, perhaps,” he said when he had swallowed the brandy.

“Or an animal,” March said. “I hope it’s an animal. A wild dog or rats fighting each other. That’s possible, isn’t it? Rats fight each other.”

“That’s a lot of blood to have come out of a rat,” Day said. “And there’s a trail running off down there. No way of knowing if it’s human blood, but we should be careful.”

Day drew his Colt Navy and they proceeded down the tunnel.

“How far do we have to go?”

“Not much farther,” March said.

“I’ll take the lead.”

“Not necessary.”

“I’ve got the gun.”

“It could be one of us,” March said. “A Karstphanomen. He wouldn’t know you.”

Day didn’t bother to reply. He held the gun out at his side and led the way down the passage, the clay underfoot muffling his footsteps. He worried that the candlelight might give them away to anyone waiting ahead of them, but there was no getting around that. They couldn’t very well douse the only light sources they had.

The tunnel widened out as they went along, and they passed waterways and narrow branches. Day began to see more of the alcoves along the sides, shallow recesses that had been dug to contain bones. He guessed they were in another section of catacombs, perhaps beneath another church in another parish. He walked carefully, but the blood trail led directly down the center of the tunnel floor.

“Here,” March said. He was close behind Day. “Just up here to your right.”

Day slowed down and stopped when he saw another pile of bones in the passageway. The alcove opposite the bones seemed larger than the others, as if it had been hollowed out and expanded.

“Not this one,” March said. “It’s the last one down here.”

Day stepped past the bones and found another pile of bones, another large alcove, and then a third pile and a third alcove. The tunnel abruptly ended two feet beyond the third alcove. It was the last one. Day crept up to it and shone the candle into it, his gun held up even with his chest, at the ready.

Inside, a man was chained to the wall. The man was wearing a dark blue uniform jacket, much like that worn by the police, and a dirty white pair of trousers decorated with black darts. His leg was badly broken, a splintered fragment of bone jutting from the fabric of his trousers. He raised his head and looked at Day, an expression of horror on his face.

“Behind you,” he said.

Day heard a muffled cry and a thump, and he turned to see March’s body falling. Day swung the gun around and brought the candle up at the same time. A man stood in the darkness beyond March’s silent body. The man was only a dark shape cut out of the tunnel’s air, his eyes black and glittering in the candlelight.

“Welcome,” the man said, “to my home away from home.”

Day pointed his gun and squeezed the trigger just as the man’s arm came up and something lashed across Day’s face. The gun’s report was deafening in the enclosed space of the tunnel, and Day reeled backward. He felt blood running into his eyes and he thought he could hear someone laughing, but he couldn’t be sure because the gun blast was echoing around and out and back at him. Then something struck him in the head and his knees turned to tissue paper and he fell into the darkness. He saw the candle fall next to his face and he saw a boot come down on it, extinguishing its flame. Then he saw nothing at all. The tunnel went quiet and closed in on him and crushed the breath out of him, and he lost consciousness.

Dr Kingsley smiled at Claire Day and then at his daughter, who stood anxiously by the door, wringing her hands. He put the stethoscope back in his bag and took a look around the bedroom. There was a table next to the wall that was being used as a bath, with a basin, towels, a pitcher, and a pail. There was the usual complement of tooth powder and soap and talcum. He set his bag on the table and scooped those small items up and went across the room to the giant wardrobe. The wardrobe was useless for his purposes, and so he opened its doors and tossed the toiletries inside and closed it again. He moved the curtains and took a look out the window. They were on the corner and above the ground floor, and there were no nearby homes with windows that looked out on the Days’ upper floors. He pulled the sash and opened the curtains and cranked open the window to let in some fresh air. The room was stuffy and dark, and he imagined both Claire and Fiona might appreciate a light breeze.

“I would prefer to take you to a hospital,” he said. He turned from the window and scowled at Claire. Her hair was sweaty and plastered to her neck. She sucked in her breath as a contraction hit, then relaxed a bit as it passed. “You’re moving ahead earlier than I’d like.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Claire said.

“No, of course not. Babies come when they’re ready to come, and we have little say in the matter. You’ll have the child right here and it will be fine.”

“Will it, though? Is everything all right? It hurts and there’s blood and I don’t feel very good.”

“No, you don’t feel very good. You’re having a baby. It’s not meant to be a picnic.”

“But is anything wrong?”

“There is only a small amount of blood, and you mustn’t let it alarm you. It’s perfectly normal and I should have told you to expect it. We doctors call it the ‘bloody show,’ and that’s frankly an apt description of the entire process.”

“Father,” Fiona said, “she’s scared.”

Kingsley sighed. Childbirth was always a risky proposition. His record was good, better than that of any other doctor in London. He had helped in the delivery of nearly a hundred babies and had lost only seven of them. Only three of the women had died. He remembered them all and they haunted him still, but he knew the numbers were regarded as acceptable. Years ago, after the first young mother’s death, he had learned to keep them all at arm’s length. He did his work and he did it well, but he did not need to be a friend to these women. He was their doctor, and if they died. . well, people died. He did his best and he hoped they would not die, but he could not control the process as well as he would prefer. There were too many things that could go wrong in an instant.

But Claire Day was already a friend, and there was no way he could maintain his usual formal distance.

“Fiona, would you please go find as many towels and blankets as you can find? And I saw two small occasional tables in the hallway downstairs. Please ask the young man to bring them up here. I need more surfaces.”

Fiona turned to the door. He could see the frustration on her face.

“Wait,” he said. “Take this, will you? It’s ruined. Throw it out.”

He gathered the sticky coverlet from the bed and bundled it up, handed it over to his daughter, and guided her out the door by her elbow. He shut it after her and turned to Claire. She had stood and was pacing restlessly around the room. Her nightgown was spotted with the evidence of her ordeal. Kingsley guided her back to the bed, then dragged a chair over from the corner. He sat next to Claire, where she wouldn’t have to strain to see him, but where he could avert his eyes so as to allow her some modesty at this stage.