North: Chapter 2

Acold coming they had of it, through hard travelling and a blizzard which bit into their cheeks and stung their eyes, the snow made violent by the more violent winds.

The two Finders came slowly up the side of the mountain, their tread weary and leaving deep dark prints in the white canvas for only moments before being covered again. Their wide hats were pulled low to protect their faces as best they could, their long coats drawn tight to their bodies. They travelled with the stiff-backed determination of men who have never been so cold.

For the most part, their journeying had been in silence, all of it in darkness, but now the smaller and slighter of them spoke, his voice raised to make himself heard above the screaming of the wind.

“I hate the North,” said Flynn and he brushed gathered snow and ice from his moustache with a gloved hand. “I hate it in so many ways I’ve never had time to count them all.”

Beside him, Lucas grunted agreement.

Flynn continued: “And on our way back, I do hope we run into that hostler who sold us his two finest terminally-ill horses. That’d be nice.”

They moved on, higher up the side of the mountain at the same slow determined pace. Long minutes and many steps brought them eventually to what they were looking for: a high stone wall, nearly nine feet tall, looming out of the blackness between the squalls of snow.

They stopped and Flynn looked up at the top of the wall.
“Marvellous,” he said. “Well, you can get over it but I’ll have to find the gate.”
“We should stay together,” said Lucas firmly.
Flynn considered the other man for a moment.
“Did they bring you this far up?”
“No.” Lucas was also looking at the top of the wall. “My cage was further down. In the lowlands.”
Another silence fell between them, filled with wind and snow.

“That’s it,” Flynn said. “After this, no more jobs in the North. It just gives you the fear.”
He rubbed his chin.
“Okay, we find the gate, go in, show the paperwork, retrieve the mark and the three of us get out of here.”
Lucas nodded.

So they followed the wall, hugging it even though it gave them almost no protection, and before long encountered two pillars holding up a pair of tall iron gates, closed shut. A sign, decorated with an old and rich filigree of ice, read:

“BETHLEHEM INSTITUTE”

and below that:

“KINGDOM OF THE NORTH”.

Through the gaps in the railings and through the raging blizzard, a large building could be seen almost at the top of the mountain.

It was wider than it was tall, and it was very tall, built of red brick most likely imported from the West. At the front and in the centre a wide stone staircase led up to a pair of heavy twin-doors. The windows, empty and unlit like lifeless eyes, were too numerous to count and seemed to regard Lucas and Flynn with expectation.

“Why are there no lights on?” Lucas said.
“What time is it?” asked Flynn. “I can’t get any sense up here of what time it is.”
Lucas pulled back his sleeve and looked at his wrist.
“Gone two in the afternoon.”
“Ah. Right. That’s bad. If it were two in the morning, I’d be hearing myself say ‘Lucas, it’s the middle of the night – all the nurses and all the crazy people are in their beds’.”

Flynn trudged across to the gates and worked with lock and handle for a few moments. He turned back to Lucas and called through the storm:
“It’s unlocked.”
“Was it unlocked before or was that you?”
“It was already unlocked.”
“You’re sure?”
Flynn nodded. Lucas said:
“This is all wrong. We should be careful.”
He reached down to his hip, under his coat, and produced a heavy black pistol. Flynn did the same, then with his free hand pushed hard against the rightmost gate, forcing it with difficulty through a foot-deep of snow until there was enough of a gap to for them to walk through.

Flynn and Lucas walked through, and into the grounds.

There was little cover, only a few low bushes unevenly cast across the landscape that lay within the wall’s circumference. The snow tore through the dark air and across the open ground, mixing up the darkness with brief squalls of white. Flynn and Lucas did not even attempt concealment. They trudged up what they guessed to be the driveway, making for the twin front-doors.

They went up the few stone steps and stood by the entrance, taking advantage of the porch’s shelter. This time Lucas tried the doors, found them locked. They looked at one another, then Flynn said:
“This is definitely all wrong.”
“Yes,” said Lucas, his voice just audible above the wind.
“You want to forget this?”
Lucas shook his head.
“Our reputation,” Flynn agreed. He thought for a moment:
“You head left, I’ll go right, we’ll circle the place and see if we can find another way in. Every good sanatorium has to have a fire escape.”

They went down the steps and set off in opposite directions, back into the blizzard, guns drawn and ready.

Flynn skirted the building, hugging the wall. Whenever he came to an unshuttered window, he would glance through the bars to what lay inside. But all of Bethlehem was in darkness and he could discern little detail of the interior. Furniture mostly, the occasional trolley or gurney abandoned, no people, no movement.

He went from the front, around the side, to the rear of the building. The blizzard was more violent here, the wind’s shrieks high and threatening. Swarms of snowflakes stung his face and eyes and ears and made it difficult to see. Nevertheless, Flynn pressed on, following the wall. And then, in the near-distance, almost invisible in the whirling snow, he saw a black shape ahead of him. Flynn made ready his gun and squinted through the storm.

The shape called something but the sounds were unclear, ripped away by the wind. But Flynn moved forward more easily now and found Lucas standing beside a narrow iron staircase which ran up the side of the building to a narrow iron landing and a narrow iron door set into the wall.

Flynn went first, closely followed by Lucas, both of them carrying their guns expectantly. When they reached the door, Flynn tried the handle and pulled the door slowly ajar.
“I love being lucky,” he said, grinning to himself. Then, all business again, he glanced inside. “Can’t see a damn thing in there. It’s pitch black.”
“I’ll be all right,” said Lucas. “I’ll go first.”
Flynn nodded and they changed positions.

Lucas opened the door wider and went inside and Flynn followed him, pulling the door closed behind him and shutting out the wind.

They were in a corridor, long and low and narrow. All was silence. Flynn could just make out Lucas ahead of him, his black shape more solid than the rest of the darkness around them. Lucas was moving forward, cautious but unperturbed by the lightlessness. Flynn edged along behind him, blind, one hand feeling his way along the wall.

And then Lucas’ foot struck something on the floor. It rolled sideways a short distance.
Lucas pulled up short. He was silent for a moment, then murmured something inaudible.
“What?” whispered Flynn from just behind him.
“It’s a head,” said Lucas.
“What’s ahead?”
“No. It’s a ****in’ head.”
Neither spoke or moved for several moments, then Flynn said:
“That’s upsetting.” There was another long silence. “As much as I don’t want to know the answer to this: Where’s its former owner?”
“Hard to tell.”
“You see, I knew you were going to say something like that.”
“There are enough bits and pieces lying around here to make up about thirty people. I can’t work out which belongs to which.”
Lucas drew a second gun from his hip.
“This is very bad,” he said in a low voice.
“Well, it’s definitely not good.”

They stood silent in the darkness for a short age, then Flynn said:
“Let’s see. This is what we know.” He paused as if doing arithmetic in his head. Then: “We’ve come to an out-of-the-way asylum where crazy rich people come to drool, to collect our mark. The building’s locked down and everyone seems to be have been…wiped out. Have I missed anything?”
Lucas said: “The power’s been killed.”
“Been killed?” repeated Flynn and in the darkness his quick hands checked that his gun was fully loaded. “After this, it’s time for another one of those conversations about appropriate vocabulary for tense situations.”

He fell silent again, this time for much longer. Eventually he spoke and his voice was sure:
“There’s only one of them. He’s here for the same reason we are, and he’s still here. He knows we’re here and, very shortly, he’s going to try to kill us.”
“You’re sure?”
“Not sure, but it’s the most probable scenario.”
“You think one person did all this?”
“Probably.”
“Human?”
“Not entirely. But then neither are we.”
“Our moves?”
“Our moves: we find him, we **** him up. But first, we need to get away from confined spaces.”
“There’s a door about two hundred yards ahea- in front of us.”
“We should make for that. Any idea what’s on the other side?”
“Can’t say for sure. My guess, judging from the outside of this place, would be a large room.”
“Okay, I’ll need you to guide me. I don’t want to, y’know, step on anything.”

Lucas took Flynn’s hand and placed it on the shoulder of his coat, damp where the snow had melted. They walked together, slowly and with hesitation, Lucas occasionally telling Flynn to step to the left or to the right. When they came to the door, Lucas reached out, turned the handle and pulled the door open.

It was brighter here and faint light seeped into the corridor they were in. Flynn was careful not to look behind him. Lucas stepped through the doorway and Flynn followed.

They were on a carpeted landing. It ringed a huge, high-ceilinged vestibule from the roof of which hung an ancient atomic chandelier, now unlit and redundant. The landing ran around the walls of the vestibule and two staircases led down to the ground floor, one close to them, the other on the far side. A massive window, crossed with lattice-work, looked out across the snow and down the mountainside they had recently climbed. Below it, the twin-doors which Lucas and Flynn recognised as being the entrance to Bethlehem.

Through the window, they could see that the blizzard had died down and only the fewest snowflakes weakly stirred outside.

“Bloody typical,” murmured Flynn.

The wind, though, still had its strength and it pushed the clouds across the sky, past the moon, and away, until the whole vestibule was bathed in pale light. The place was deserted, except for more of what Flynn had seen through the windows: derelict gurneys and wheelchairs left in a random pattern across the ground floor.

There they stood, the two Finders, acclimatising to the moonlight: Lucas, tall and broad-shouldered, his wolfen face all feral eyes and long grey-black hair, Flynn small and slight with finer features and a small blonde moustache and beard.

And then all the lights came on.

Flynn screamed.