Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James Read Free Book Online Page B

shift.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œMatron’s orders. She told me after supper. She said that since we’ve had no one on night shift since Maisey left, I will have to do it.”
    â€œThat’s ridiculous,” I interjected. “You’ve been working since six o’clock this morning!”
    Martha bit the edge of her thumbnail. “I’ll be tired, for certain, but I can make it through.”
    â€œWhat do they need one of us on night shift for, anyway?” Perhaps I was exhausted, but for some reason, this injustice—Martha having to work twenty-four hours straight—made me angry. “Don’t they just lock the men in their rooms and be done with it?”
    Nina gave me the
you’re stupid, aren’t you?
look that I was beginning to recognize. “Of course we don’t lock them in. We’re not allowed.”
    â€œThey’re madmen. This is a madhouse. Why in the world not?”
    â€œObviously you haven’t seen what a man can do to himself in a locked room, have you?”
    I thought of the rule against belts, against straight razors, and said nothing.
    â€œThe bathrooms, too,” Nina said. “The inside bolts are taken off, and we aren’t given keys. So that means someone has to work the night shift and check in on them. We get nightmares, sleepwalking, insomniacs. Some of them want to harm each other over some petty argument, or get deluded into thinking they can walk out the front door and go home.”
    â€œIt isn’t so bad,” Martha said gently. “There’s an orderly on duty all night, though he sleeps in his chair most of the time. Matron has us count linens. It’s usually quiet, except when someone starts screaming.”
    â€œOh, God.” I rubbed a hand over my forehead. “I need a cigarette.”
    â€œLook what you’ve done,” Martha accused Nina. “You don’t have to be so harsh. Now she’ll run off and leave us, just like the last girl.”
    Nina turned to me darkly. “If you do, and I have to do double work again, I’ll find you and skin you myself. Do you hear me? Besides,” she added, “you shouldn’t smoke. I hear it isn’t healthful.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    I t was hours before I slept that night. I lay endlessly on the lumpy, narrow bed, shivering in my thin nightgown under the single regulation blanket, staring at the far-off beams of the ceiling. The coal fire we’d laid in the nursery fireplace burned low and hissed in the damp, and feverish wisps of clammy air passed over me in drafts. The house made distant noises as it settled and groaned in the gloom. Nina snored, oblivious.
    I listened for screams, but heard none. I wondered where Martha was, whether she was counting linens. I wondered whether Ally would ever find out about the deception I’d used to get here, and what she would think of me if she did.
    Perhaps she’d be angry, or perhaps just disappointed in me. Most people were, sooner or later.
    I tried rolling onto my side, but it was no warmer that way. It was the beginning of summer, but the nights were still chilled, especially this far north out on the marshes by the sea.
    Who were the Gersbachs and why had they built a house here? I wondered where they’d gone. I saw my brother Syd’s bedroom, the bed so neatly made up, the coverlet folded down precisely, the way it had looked on the morning he left for war without saying good-bye.
Shut up, Kitty, and go to sleep.
    I pressed my eyes shut. My nerves were waiting for the screaming, waiting, waiting.
He gets afraid,
Martha had said of Captain Mabry.
He thinks he sees something.
    Cold sweat trickled down my body. Creeton’s hand on me, the blunt intrusion of his fingers through the fabric of my skirts. Captain Mabry’s blood, his stillness on my lap. Someone moving behind me, though I never saw who. I dozed, part of me still