Rottenrow

Agnes watched impatiently as the young woman screamed, her pale blue gown stained blood and waters. Two other nurses tried to subdue her but the girl was hysterical. Doctor McAllister held the bloody lump in his hand and shook his head. “Stillborn” was the only word he uttered, with a sigh.

The young woman screamed again, sobbing and wailing for her lost infant. For a moment Agnes felt her pain but the sympathy was fleeting, the young woman was, after all, insane. What self respecting woman would fornicate outside of marriage? She'd have to be mad.

“Agnes, take Miss Brennan back to the ward please.” McAllister stated in his most dispassionate monotone.

Agnes nodded and grabbed the girl by the arm. “This way,” she ordered.

Miss Brennan was having none of it and dropped to her knees. “Ma wean!”

“Your child is dead. Now hush and come on,” Agnes demanded, already considering the woman a burden. She had no dignity, no breeding, an alley cat was better behaved than this. Miss Brennan started rolling on the ground and tearing clumps of her wild black hair out.

Agnes gave Doctor McAllister a glance and he nodded. He placed the dead infant on the table next to him. Agnes could see it's tiny bloody face but she'd seen so many that it no longer stabbed at her heart. McAllister produced the large gleaming syringe which he used to draw up some morphine. Agnes and the two staff nurses forced Miss Brennan onto the ground. She writhed underneath them but they still managed to bring forward her arm for the Doctor. McAllister stabbed in the needle causing a yelp from Miss Brennan but a few seconds later she began to giggle before going limp and then drifting into sleep. It was for the best.

“Now, if you please, Matron,” McAllister insisted. Agnes nodded and took the girl back to ward C.

Ward C of Rottenrow was Agnes's domain, she was the Matron there and even the Doctors would acquiesce to her demands in that place. Agnes knew that they all thought of her as a bitter shrew, a dried up spinster who'd never found love. They were wrong. Agnes found love before she was old enough to know what love was. Her love was not the sordid animalistic lusts of women like Miss Brennan, hers was a pure spiritual perfect love, an immaculate love. Agnes had given her heart, her body and soul to her Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

The other nurses laughed at her behind her back, she knew that and she did not care. They were no better than filthy sluts like Miss Brennan. Many of them would end up in her care here in Ward C of Rottenrow. She'd seen it before, far too often. They were little more than whores who gave their purity and chastity away to the first rogue with a cheeky smile. Many of them ended up drunks or dead but most ended up in Lochburn, the local Magdalene Laundry. They were fallen women, fallen like the Angel Lucifer, driven mad by their own pride and arrogance. The Good Lord, in his mercy, may forgive them but she could not.

Miss Brennan was strapped to the bed, a pillow pushed behind her head to prevent her from drowning in her own saliva. Satisfied that the unconscious girl was now manageable, Agnes went to write up the notes of another terminal labour. There had been a lot recently. All those little unnamed souls flying directly off to Heaven, pure and innocent without being sullied by the filth and deprivation of man. As she walked away the girl asked in a slurred half-conscious whisper. “Wis it a boy or a lassie?”

That was a good question. McAllister had not mentioned the child's sex which Agnes needed to know for the certificate. The one thing they could not accuse Agnes of was being lazy and so she immediately marched out of the ward like a furious drill sergeant, to find out.

The delivery room was empty so she walked down the corridor listening to the echoing metronomic rhythm of her heavy black shoes upon the floor. She arrived at Doctor McAllister's door and knocked on it. The door swung open slightly as she heard McAllister give an exasperated sigh and say. “Take it to the Kings.” followed by “Come in!”

A man she recognised as a janitor from another part of the hospital walked out holding a bloody bundle of towels. An ugly man, his face half covered by a large scarf, supposedly to hide bad scarring he ended up with after the war. She barely gave him a glance as she stepped in.

“Matron, Miss Brennan settled now?” Mc Allister asked.

“Aye quite settled now thank you. I came to ask what the sex of her child was.” Agnes said.

“A girl.” McAllister nodded, he was reading something, only half paying attention. She tried to see what it was but couldn’t.

“It's for the certificate, I...” Agnes said, just to say something.

“I said it was a girl. Was there anything else?” McAllister asked. He looked up from his book and slammed it shut, impatiently.

That startled her. “No, Doctor McAllister, thank you.”

“Thank you, Matron,” McAllister said curtly making a shooing gesture with his left hand.

As she stepped away Doctor McAllister sighed and said. “Apologies Agnes. A stressful morning for all of us, aye?”

“It's fine, Doctor. But yes it’s always a sadness.” Agnes said.

McAllister nodded and scowled, he obviously had something on his mind. “How long have you worked here now, Agnes?”

“Since before the turn of the century, April 1895.” Agnes answered.

“A long time. Do you know how it became known as Rottenrow?”

“The name of the street surely?”

“Yes, but do you know how the street got its name?”

“I do not, no.”

“Nor did I. I suddenly became curious about it a few months ago. It was a strange name to give an area, so I inquired further. It turned out that it’s a common name for such a slum, one which is rotten, filled with rats. Rattanraw, in old Scots, I believe.”

“Is that so?” She replied, bamboozled as to why he would be telling her this.

McAllister smiled. “Perhaps. Though there are those who think it means the exact opposite? That it comes from the older, Gaelic phrase, Rat-an-righ.”

“I don’t speak Gaelic.” Agnes said, surprised that McAllister would even discuss such a thing with her.

“Nor I, not really. It means the Road of the Kings, Agnes.” He added. “Road of the Kings.” He reiterated, with some emphasis, as if he was hinting at something.

“I see. What does this have to do with anything?” Agnes replied, genuinely bewildered by the Doctor's words.

McAllister frowned, his big bushy eyebrows fusing into one. “You've been here a long time, I just wondered if you were involved too, if you knew. Turns out I was wrong. You may go.”

Agnes turned and walked out feeling slightly diminished, slightly insulted which put her in a foul mood that was taken out on both the nurses and patients. She spent the day pondering what he meant by her being ‘involved’. She thought she knew as much as anyone about the goings on in the hospital, but suspected he was implying something else, something more. What that could be she had no idea, and that bothered her. She would have to find out.

She did not have to wait long. A week or so later, she was working the late-shift and after sorting all her paper-work it was after midnight when she finally relieved herself from duty. By this point most of the lights had been dimmed and almost all the public had left, which changed the atmosphere of the long halls and stairwells, to one of peace, bereft of inane chatter. Agnes always enjoyed walking those dark hollow corridors, especially the sound her heavy shoes made as she clumped down them. It was always so quiet that her footsteps seemed like the only noise in the world. Except…

That was odd. She thought to herself and stopped. In between steps she fancied she’d heard something else, a stray wisp of echo, not her footsteps but several voices speaking… no, praying. She’d imagined it surely? Agnes strained to listen; echoes of distant footsteps; some coughing; a wraithlike groan of pipework; a far-off door slamming and then there it was. Beneath it all, without a shred of doubt, praying, whispered praying.

She had to find the source of it. It was coming from beneath her which was enough to get her descending the next staircase, and then the next. She was on the ground floor, at the corridor that led to the exit, to home. Agnes knew she should just go home, it was late enough without her engaging in any more of this nonsense. Seeing reason, she turned right and headed towards home.

A door slammed behind her and she heard several voices. Agnes looked round behind her to see four of the janitorial staff come out from one of the rooms at the end of the corridor. They didn’t notice her, were talking to each other as they headed down another corridor and out of sight. The door then opened again and out walked another two janitors, a nurse from another department and Doctor McAllister, his white coat was smeared with blood. He’d supposedly gone home hours before.

This was all rather strange. Agnes continued towards the exit and left the building. After standing in the cold night air for a few moments -enough time to let the others disperse- she turned round and walked towards the door of the room everyone had come out of, one she had always thought an equipment cupboard, given the word “equipment” was painted on it. She looked around to make sure no one would see her and pushed open the door. Indeed it was full of equipment, mops, buckets, shelves filled with bleach and carbolic soap, rags and tool kits.

However, behind all of that, was another door. This one was painted the same colour as the walls, so as to disguise it somewhat. Agnes was not fooled and navigated slowly past a toppling tower of iron pails toward it. Thankfully it was not locked. She opened it and looked down a steep stairway which until that moment, she had never known existed. She had thought she knew the hospital like the back of her hand. How had this managed to stay beneath her notice and more importantly, where did it lead?

She began to step down the stairs and then the praying began again, this time quite loud, two or three floors below still. Agnes wondered how deep the hospital actually went but the praying set her on edge and she scurried back up the stairs and out the room, down the corridor and out past the exit. She would investigate further when she wasn’t acting like a foolish little girl.

The following day was another routine of contempt and misery. Miss Brennan had hanged herself with bedsheets just before dawn and Agnes had to deal with two more still births. There seemed to be quite a spate of them of late and so she checked her records. For the previous month there had been seventeen in all; eight the previous month; four the month before that. There had been three in the last two days and four the previous week. All of these were for her ward alone. She wondered what was going on and decided to speak to Matron Allison, in the next ward, to see if she had noticed anything.

Matron Allison was a talk woman with middle class pretensions let down by her voice and attitude, which were that of a fishwife. Nevertheless she was thorough and dedicated to her ward. Matron Allison had noted that in the last three months the number of still-births had decreased. From twenty four in march, to eight in April and five in May. So far, for the two weeks in June, there had been none, thankfully.

Matron Caldwell, who had been in ward D with Matron Allison at the time also noted that over the new year her ward had thirty between Christmas and the end of January, dwindling down to two in March. All three women thought this odd. Only Agnes saw a pattern.

“Take it to the Kings.” rang in her head. That’s what McAllister had said to the janitor before giving her his little history lesson on the name of the Hospital. A road of Rats, a road of Kings. It was most strange. She decided to find out more. To investigate the room and the stairway she’d discovered the previous night. In the cold light of day she felt more like herself, confident, in charge. She would go down there, find out what was going on and report it, if indeed there was something going on.

She headed down to the room, just in time to see the Janitor that McAllister had given Miss Brennan’s baby enter. She moved quickly to follow, to catch him in the act. She’d get to the bottom of this, of that she was determined.

She entered the room to find him gone. Agnes opened the disguised door and saw him descend. She must have made a noise, because he turned looked right at her and sped off downwards into the dark and out of sight. She set off in pursuit, shouting “You! Janitor!”

After reaching the stairwell she leaned over to see the Janitor scurrying down further. “You! Stop!” she barked again. The Janitor looked up, scowled and again quickened his pace. Agnes was furious at his disobedience and scampered down the stairs as fast as her stubby old legs could carry her.

She reached the basement corridor in time to see the doors on the left swinging back and forth. Agnes stormed through the doors her fury building. She was going to send this disobedient bugger to the poor-house.

The corridor was longer than she thought possible and the janitor had put quite the distance between them but Agnes was like a terrier and would not let him go. Eventually she saw him turn a corner and descend another set of stairs. She thought little of it as she climbed down them after him noticing only that it was getting darker. The pungent stink of disinfectant was beginning to be suffocated by a stench of damp, and foul rot. Down another three flights, she went and again out into a dark corridor with a swinging door. This time she barged through them with her tubby shoulder thumping against the heavy wood.

The door must have swung back quickly because she felt it slam into the back of her head. The thump was followed by a burst of agony and the world exploded into a million floating pin prick stars.

It was the scrabbling noise that woke her, not the muttering voices. Her head throbbed like her brain had swapped places with her heart and when she rubbed it a sharp stabbing pain seared through her and her fingers were wet and sticky.

“You shouldnae a come here ya auld coo.” said a voice. She looked up to see the Janitor standing over her, the imbecile was grinning, holding a wrench which was still stained with her blood and hair.

“Who the hell do you think you are?!” she exclaimed, utterly furious.

“Shut yer trap, bitch.” He threatened, immediately making good on the threat with his boot crunching down onto her nose. “Bow yer heid. Yer in the presence of oor lord, the King of Kings.”

Agnes realised she was dealing with a madman. Had he escaped, fooled Doctor McAllister and everyone else? Remembering McAllister's name she decided to threaten the madman with it. “Doctor McAllister will hear about this.”

The madman laughed. “Gies peace, he already knows aw aboot this. Everyone does.”

While this conversation was taking place Agnes could still hear the wet scrabbling noise that woke her. It was coming from behind her head. She sat up and turned to get a better look and instantly knew she'd made the worst decision of her life.

“God preserve me!” she gasped as she took in the enormity of the horror.

Everywhere tiny bones were strewn, some still had scraps of meat attached. Behind this carnage was a giant, writhing, hairy lump about the same size as a cow. It's centre was a tangle of pink tendrils, knotted and fused together. It had dozens of heads sprouting out from the slick, grey, lumpy body, each the head of a giant rodent, each bigger than a dog's head, each gnawing on small bloody clumps of meat; meat with the faces of dead babies. So many dark eyes stared hungrily at her.

“Aye, he will.” Said the madman. “Looks like he's gonny preserve you 'til last. You should keep him goin' aw week. Jist think o' the weans yer savin'”

Agnes could not speak, could not move, she felt a warm trickle between her legs as she pissed herself. “God save me!” was the last thought that screamed in her mind as The King of Kings moved from it's nest of bones towards her. Several long spindly inhuman arms grabbed her.

And with several dozen sharp teeth from several bloody muzzles granted her benediction. Agnes gave her heart, body and her soul to the god, one mouthful at a time.