Dead of Winter - James Goss [8]
That’s what Dr Smith is like – his whole face is soft and kind, but he says the sharpest things, his eyes darting around like a madman’s.
I shrugged. ‘It is what you saw, M. le Docteur. I do not understand it. I don’t want to speak about it, as no one will believe it. I want to tell Mother. Maybe then she’ll bring me home.’
Dr Smith folded his hands. ‘I think you should tell her,’ his voice was grave. ‘This is no place for a child.’
So I am telling you, Mother. There is something NASTY on the beach, and it makes me feel strange. Nice Dr Smith says you should bring me home. Please oh please oh please, can I come home?
Your ever loving
Maria
What Amy Remembered
I woke up to hear Dr Smith and my husband shouting.
‘Boys!’ I groaned. ‘I’ve still got a pounding headache. You are not helping. Invent paracetamol or shut up.’
‘Right,’ said Dr Smith and slouched off to the window.
My bloke perched on the edge of the bed. ‘This place is a bit wrong,’ said the light of my life.
‘It’s a leper colony,’ said Dr Smith.
I sat up in bed right then.
‘Well, kind of,’ he added. ‘Most of the people here have tuberculosis. A nasty disease – completely fatal. Of course, by our time it’s still serious, but it’s treatable.’
My husband (trained medic, thank you) piped up. ‘It’s not even called TB yet is it? Just consumption.’
‘What?’ I nearly laughed. ‘The thing poets die of on sofas?’
‘Exactly.’ Dr Smith was grim. ‘A dreadful, slow wasting disease. For centuries, people mistook it for vampirism. You know…’ He waved his arms in the air. ‘As thin and pale as a model, red eyes, blood around the lips… Not a great fan of sunlight… Plus, if you got it, your family shunned you. At best, they thought it was just a dreadful plague they’d catch from you. If they weren’t quite so enlightened, they figured you drank their blood at night.’
‘Nice,’ I said.
My husband nodded. ‘But this is just about the time that doctors were sending people to the seaside for treatment, isn’t it?’
‘Well…’ Dr Smith tipped a hand back and forth – in a gesture that said ‘more-or-less’. ‘This place is ahead of its time. About a hundred years ahead of its time. You’ve got to wait for Queen Victoria until someone sets up a proper sanatorium for TB.’
‘Wait a second!’ I said. ‘That means… well, either this place is a bit special…’
I swung my legs down, about to get out of bed, but my husband stopped me.
‘Or it’s wrong,’ he agreed grimly.
‘Exactly,’ I said, in my excitement shaking him off and wobbling on my own two feet. ‘This is just the kind of thing we love. It’s what we live for.’ I stepped towards Dr Smith on my shaking pins. ‘This is what we do. Isn’t it?’
Dr Smith turned around and looked at me, his soft face worried. ‘Are you sure? It’s just… I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t remember what it is that we do…’
‘Or how we got here,’ sighed my bloke.
‘Or… much about who we are,’ Dr Smith echoed again, slumping down on the edge of the bed. ‘Although I’m getting the weirdest feeling that we travel in time.’
This was quite a lot of news to take in.
I put my hands on my hips and leaned back against the wall to steady myself.
‘What are you saying?’ I asked.
The men in my life looked at each other and then back at me.
Eventually my husband spoke, gently. ‘Amy… we’re in a spot of bother,’ he said.
Dr Bloom’s Journal
5th December 1783
I knew it! Those strangers are trouble.
Perdita told me she met Mr Pond on the beach. He was standing by the patients, watching them sleep.
‘Can I aid you, monsieur?’ she asked politely.
‘No, no.’ He was most rude. ‘I was waiting for the show.’
‘There is no show.’ She was rightly crisp. ‘These are very ill people receiving treatment.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ said the scoundrel. He gestured around him at the beach and The Sea. ‘Apparently extraordinary things happen here.’
Perdita laughed politely. ‘I am afraid there are no miracles here, monsieur. We simply let them fill their lungs with clean fresh