Page 46 of The Devouring Time

I swallow convulsively. “W-why is he kept here?”

“He’s been quite unmanageable, I fear.” Dr. North turns to the male nurse seated at his station just inside the ward. “We’re here to see Caspar Underwood. How has he been today?”

“Ate his breakfast nice and quiet,” the nurse reports. “Not a peep out of him since.”

“Good—it sounds like he’s having a lucid day.” North leads us to the third cell down, and I’m careful not to look through the windows at the other poor souls kept here. Someone at the other end of the hall begins shouting curses at the sound of our footsteps, but both doctor and nurse seem inured to such sounds, not so much as glancing in his direction.

The nurse unlocks the third cell down and swings open the door. I start to follow Dr. North inside, but freeze in the doorway.

Though in reality it’s been a year and a half since I saw Underwood, to my perception it’s been less than a week, and the change wrought in him is shocking. His beard has gone completely gray, and both it and his hair are wild and unkempt. He’s lost weight, cheeks hollowed out and clothes billowing around him. A heavy leather belt encircles his waist, with a chain attached to the back. The chain leads to a sturdy iron ring set in the tiled wall.

He’s seated on the floor; the cell is utterly barren of any furniture. Light spills in through a grate set high in the wall—it must be dark as pitch in here at night. No breath of air makes its way in, and the place stinks of sweat and yet more Lysol.

“Good afternoon, Caspar,” Dr. North says jovially. “You have visitors who’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Adrian clears his throat behind me, and I belatedly step into the room. Underwood looks up at me, and his eyes go wide.

“No!” He scrambles back, pressing against the wall as if he wants to sink through it. “This is all your fault! Get away!”

32

I feel as though a hole has opened up beneath my feet. Did I encounter him again, on my way back out of the marsh after Hart and Myers drugged me? And if so, what the hell had I done to him?

Dr. North tuts. “Now, Caspar, we’ve talked about this.” He turns to me. “Mr. Underwood suffers from paranoid delusions. Don’t take anything he says to heart.”

Are they delusions, though?

“He said he weren’t a sorcerer.” Underwood directs his words at North, though he’s obviously talking about me. “I told him not to go, but he did. And he came back all changed! It weren’t him no more!”

“Another symptom of his delusions, but a most interesting one,” North says, studying Underwood’s frightened face with an air of scientific detachment. “A similar case was recently described in France by Dr. Capgras. He called it the ‘illusion of doubles.’ It’s the belief that the people around one have been replaced by identical imposters. Many of my colleagues think it a form of hysteria and unique to women, but I intend to disprove that theory with a paper on Mr. Underwood here.”

The room seems to be shrinking, walls pressing in on me, even the air growing heavy. Adrian shoots me a concerned glance—but we can’t pass up this chance to speak with Underwood. “Why did you attack the insurance investigator last summer?”

“I couldn’t know what he was, could I?” Underwood’s eyes dart around, an animal backed into a corner, desperate for any avenue of escape. “If he were human or not.”

“Not human?” I repeat faintly.

His terrified eyes fix on me. “You told me they’re coming for us all. You whispered it in my ear, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t run away. You showed me. I’ll be the last real man, surrounded by things like you, things that look and sound like people, but ain’t.” His eyes close. “Please don’t. Please, please, please. Just stop. Leave me alone.”

“You think the investigator wasn’t human?” Adrian asks him.

“I…I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Couldn’t take the chance. Anyone might be replaced any time.” He looks at Adrian. “You might be one of them, too. Or Dr. North. Maybe all of you are, and you’re just doing this to torture me!”

Underwood suddenly hurls himself forward, fingers hooked into claws. The belt catches him short, though, and he stumbles back, eyes wide. “Let me go! Let me out of here!”

His voice rises into a scream and is joined in a chorus from the adjoining cells. “Settle down!” the male nurse barks.

North sighs. “I think we’ve gotten everything from him that we can. Remaining will only excite him further.”

We take our leave of Mr. Underwood, who is still at the length of his chain, shouting and pleading. The nurse slams the door shut behind us, making me jump.

Adrian gives me another look of concern, but there’s nothing to be done. I have to get through this if we’re to find any answers.

Though what answers Underwood might have given us, I don’t know. I must have run into him again, after I was drugged. He realized something was wrong, and his bruised mind came to the conclusion that I was some sort of imposter.

Or it hadn’t been a delusion, but magic. What if it hadn’t been me he spoke to the second time?

None of the actions I’d taken sounded like something I would do. Leaving Forgotten Folios, threatening people with violence, belonging to a cult…