Page 47 of Stay Buried

Uncle Thomas nodded grimly. “I would like you to rest, Benjamin. I’d like to give you something to help with the pain, to knock you out for a bit.”

“Like hell,” Benjamin said. “I’m going back out there. I’ve got to find my wife.”

“She’s only in her nightgown!” Pearl cried, her voice so high, so frantic I hardly recognized it. “She has no coat or boots.”

“You’re in no shape to be out there,” Uncle Thomas told Benjamin.“We’ll round up a search party. Get some of the men from town to go look. It’s nearly dawn. It’ll be easier to track her in the light.”

Benjamin sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed to the floor. “I’m going, Tom. I’m going to find my wife and bring her home.”

“I’ll go with you, then,” Uncle Thomas said, relenting. “Frankie and I both. Without shoes or a coat, she can’t have gone far.”

“Same with Emile,” Pearl added, her voice higher still, the words spoken in a great rush. “Wasn’t he barefoot as well?”

“Also without a coat or even a shirt, as far as I can tell,” Uncle Thomas said.

“Emile?” Benjamin winced as he stood. “I heard he was unconscious… I thought…”

“Apparently he woke up,” I said.

“Like Clarice.” Benjamin sounded far away now.

“But he didn’t attack anyone,” I added.

“No,” Uncle Thomas said. “But we weren’t in the room with him, were we? We didn’t try to stop him from leaving.”

“Pearl.” Benjamin was rubbing his arm where his bite had been bandaged. “Go get my gun and hunting bag.”

Pearl immediately went off down the hall and I fought the urge to follow, to tell the men I’d go help her to gather supplies. But I felt Benjamin’s one good eye watching me. I stayed right where I was.

Benjamin turned to Uncle Thomas, his clawed-up, bandaged face looking grave. “I’m next.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“This… sickness. If it’s passed on through bites and scratches—”

“We don’t know…” Thomas wanted to comfort him, but trailed off.

I looked at my uncle, said nothing. We both knew Benjamin was right.

“If it is,” Benjamin continued, “the victim develops a fever, cough, and jaundice within the next twelve hours, correct?”

Uncle Thomas nodded.

“They become sicker and sicker, begin hallucinating, become irritable, drifting in and out, losing consciousness and coming close to death,” Benjamin went on. “Then, hours later, they appear better. They can get up, speak, walk. But they aren’t the same. They are a person capable of doing terrible things. A person sick with madness.”

“Now, Benjamin, two or three cases isn’t enough to come to any real conclusions,” Uncle Thomas countered, and I knew he was doing his best to hold on to what was rational, to hold on to science. But the science and medicine he had been taught had not prepared him for anything like this.

Benjamin’s shadow on the wall seemed to grow larger and I watched it, wondering what the sickness inside him was doing to him right now, what he might become in a matter of hours.

“It’s enough for me,” Benjamin said. He reached out and took Uncle Thomas’s hand, and as he reached, the shadow on the wall showed long, sharp claws and his head seemed to lengthen until it was clearly the outline of a horse’s head, mouth open, teeth bared. I blinked hard. The sickness, the lack of sleep, the dark room and smell of blood were all too much.

“Tom,” Benjamin said, “when I get sick, I want you to bind me to this bed. I want you to use ropes, whatever it takes to hold me here.”

Uncle Thomas grimaced.

“If you don’t, I might lash out and hurt someone. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you, Doctor?”

Uncle Thomas said nothing.