Page 68 of Stay Buried

“To be a gifted healer, you need to trust the part of yourself that knows things you cannot possibly know.”

I gave her a puzzled look.

“You always were an intuitive girl,” she said. “Tell me, dear, do you still have nightmares?”

I nodded again, feeling a bit uneasy. “Let’s go speak with my uncle, shall we?”

And with that I led Charlotte down the hall, through the waiting room, and into the office, where Uncle Thomas was sitting at his desk, head cradled in one hand, the other hand furiously taking notes.

“Mrs. Albone.” Uncle Thomas’s voice rose an octave; he didn’t even bother to hide the surprise in his voice. He rose from his chair.

With all the lanterns blazing in the exam room, I got a good look at Charlotte. She appeared years older than when I had run into her at the general store last week. Her eyes were yellow and sunken, the lines around her mouth deeper.

“You’re ill,” I said before I could think.

“I am.” She sounded tired, yet not the least distressed.

“How did it happen?” Uncle Thomas asked. “Were you attacked? Bitten?”

She nodded. “Like you, I’ve been tending to the sick and injured.” She showed us a cloth bandage on her arm. “I’ve been helping the ones who won’t come to see you.”

Uncle Thomas clenched his jaw.

“Did you know there’s talk, Doctor, that you’re partly to blame for this sickness?”

“Excuse me?” My uncle looked angry, but also truly perplexed.

“But that’s absurd!” I blurted out. “He’s been working himself to the bone, helping people. Our dining room is full of patients right now! He is—we are—doing everything we can to help them.”

“I know, child, and I agree,” she said. “Of course I agree. I’m just telling you the gossip. They’re saying there’s more the doctor could have done, should have done, to stop this from happening in the first place. They say… he should have put a bullet in the knackerman’shead when he first showed up and wasn’t himself.”

“Mrs. Albone.” Uncle Thomas’s voice was calm and level. “Is that what you would have done? Put a bullet through a man’s head? A man sick and suffering with fever, who needed your help?”

She did not answer, simply shook her head once, dismissing the very notion. She looked into my uncle’s eyes. “Is it true? That the man died and came back?”

“It appeared that way, but—”

“Is it true, Frankie?” she asked, looking at me.

I nodded.

She fished around in her pocket, pulled out two little bags on long loops of string, and held them up. “Please, I brought these for you.”

Uncle Thomas accepted one of the sachets from her bony hands, sniffed it. “Healing charms?”

“I can’t heal this sickness. But these herbs of protection will keep the evil out of you.”

I took the other bag, smelled the pungent, bitter herbs inside, and slipped the string around my neck, tucking the bag under my shirt. Uncle Thomas set his on the exam table, careful, I thought, to treat the object with respect—at least in front of our guest.

“Not much of an offering, I know,” Charlotte said apologetically. “But then again, I don’t imagine there’s much you have to offer me, am I right?”

He nervously cleared his throat.

“You have no idea what this is, do you?” she asked.

“That’s correct. What about you, Mrs. Albone? Have you ever seen anything like it?”

She sighed, sat herself down on the stool Uncle Thomas usually used. “No. I have not. But, Tom—may I call you Tom? Your wife always refers to you as Tom, so I must admit that’s how I’ve come to think of you.”