Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(61)

Any deterioration is mine. I’d rather believe that I’m the weak link than believe whatever guidance I receive has begun to falter. If that’s the case, then all this toil really has been for nothing.

I won’t accept that. The ghosts of those who’ve died at my hands . . . they won’t accept it, either.

? ? ?

I came to a realization this morning, when I struggled with the little lines on the slate, and on a table—they’d spilled over to the other surface, but I’d not shifted my writing implement. So whatever I’d written on the polished wood was lost to me. Not with all the squinting in the world could I force it to appear.

I needed help. A protégé. An assistant. A confidant.

And I remembered Gaspera Lorino, waiting out his days at the hospital downtown—not even two miles from where I sat despairing at my desk. My hands so dry and pale, my knuckles outlined in white chalk dust.

I’d heard about him before. His sister had spoken to the papers, after I’d hit him with my axe and nearly killed him. He wasn’t my primary mission, but he stood in its way. That was all. I bore him no ill will, no more than I ever bore anyone I was charged with killing. It was only a happenstance of timing and location.

His sister told the newspaper that he was alert and conscious, but changed. She said he had frenzied thoughts and wild outbursts, that his mind was not what it once was—that although he still seemed like himself in most of the usual ways, his interests had changed, and his reading habits had changed. He’d taken up an interest in astronomy.

Something had connected with him.

Not merely the blade of the axe, but it must have been the tendril of darkness that clung to his wife’s ankles when she walked. It might have found its way inside the wound. Or something else did, I don’t know.

It occurred to me that he might actually be the closest thing I had on earth to a kindred spirit.

I looked to the slate again, and saw only the soup of numbers, bubbling as if they floated in a cauldron. I didn’t know what they meant. I didn’t understand what they were trying to say, not today. Maybe not anymore, at all. It was hard to guess, just like everything else.

But given all this uncertainty, perhaps Mr. Lorino could grant me some kind of direction or guidance. Does that sound awful? Trite? I guess it might. That’s what they do in the old stories, isn’t it—they seek out someone who’s crippled or maimed, as if some weird magic has found its way in through the cracks in their bodies or their souls. Nonsense, of course . . . except in this case, perhaps not. His was no ordinary injury, after all. It’s one I created. I cracked him open, and something came inside him. I am responsible for him, whether I like it or not.

I thought about calling for a ride, but decided instead that the air was fresh, the day was warm, and the fewer witnesses to my visit, the better. The distance to the hospital wasn’t great, and I was in the mood to think. Walking aids thinking. Doesn’t it?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Mostly the thoughts I had were dark, unpleasant ones, regarding the likelihood that this was a terrible idea, a terrible mistake in the making. A thin sheen of guilt covered everything. I wondered if that wasn’t a mistake, too—if this was only some quest for forgiveness, and a selfish one at that.

But it was only a small amount of guilt, overshadowed easily by my curiosity and sense of desperate aimlessness. If this was a selfish quest, it was a selfish quest of an entirely other sort.

? ? ?

I reached the hospital and strolled inside.

I gave no thought as to how I might gain entry to Mr. Lorino’s quarters, and it may sound strange to relate, but no one asked me any questions. No one stopped me when I approached the nurse’s desk where the nun kept her paperwork and answered the solitary telephone. No one intervened when I reached for the sheet that logged visitors, and no one questioned my actions when I ran my finger down the columns, hoping to spy his name—yes, there it was, Gaspera Lorino, room 14B, and he’d received two visitors as of late. No one so much as blinked when I placed the clipboard back onto its proper spot, and left it there.

I turned to regard the room, and no one in the room regarded me back.

One large orderly exited a set of double doors, removing his smock at the end of his shift—replacing it with a gray sweater. He bade the nun a good morning and left the lobby. Another orderly arrived, signed himself in, and disappeared down the corridor through those same doors. Three young women sat in the waiting area, waiting for God knew what. A doctor came and went, his gleaming brown shoes tap-tap-tapping on the bright white and shiny black squares of the linoleum floor; the seats were seafoam green with bright metal armrests and the windows were frosted glass, threaded through with chicken wire to make them strong against thrown bricks or other forms of escape.

This was a hospital, wasn’t it? Certainly, but it was a prison, too, with doors that locked and windows with bars both big and small.

This was a destination.

This was a lobby. This was a man, standing in the midst of it, and no one saw him. Me. No one saw me, and I stood in the midst of it, right before everyone, and I might as well have been made of the low black fog that no one ever spotted except for me.

I took it as a sign. Not from God, because I didn’t really think God was speaking anymore (or not to me, probably not to anyone), but a sign from whatever pattern had sustained me this far, this long. Something was still working with me, coaching me forward, urging me to continue this awful path—and assisting me when necessary.