Our worries took leave the instant the last sliver of inn disappeared, urging us to focus on the two dozen stairs to the Doc’s office. There was one window in the stairwell, through which a pale streetlight shone, and were it not for this we’d be blind.
The clops of our feet were answered by wooden sighs from every third step. This exchange continued until we heard soft strains of jazz, scratchy and warm as only a gramophone could perform it, trickling under the Doc’s door.
“Maybe the jazz was good all week,” I said in a hushed voice. “Really good, I mean.”
Muse gave me a withering look.
She knocked twice, three times, then opened the door to reveal a cluttered office poorly illuminated by the last few embers in the fireplace. The doctor sat hunched at his desk and muttered to himself. He ignored us and continued to scribble in his notebook. Muse made her way over to him and reached out to give a friendly embrace.
“Doc, it’s me. We–” but she was cut short.
“Curecurecure-cure-curecure,” he rasped.
He wheeled around to regard her with yellow, sightless eyes, and lunged for her throat. Muse gave a yelp of horror and, almost as if she expected this, caught him squarely under the chin. The Doc landed with a sickening crunch behind his desk, where he began stirring painfully.
“What have you done?” I roared at Muse, backing away from her.
“I-I– I don’t know. It wasn’t me…I swear it wasn’t me,” she sobbed, genuinely shocked as I was.
I cautiously circled the Doc and looked closely at him. He had somehow managed to pick himself up and sat there whimpering, the saddest thing I had ever seen.
“Definitely looks like your handiwork. He’s just like the ones at Transitorio Station,” I observed coldly.
But at that moment Muse collected herself and gave me a desperate, heartbreaking glance. I knew I was in the wrong.
“Please believe me,” she said urgently.
“I do,” I grudgingly admitted. “I believe you. And I’m sorry. We need to figure this out.”
We got the fire going again with no small effort. I looked into the blaze, fervently hoping to find some answers.
“What have you done?” I roared at Muse, backing away from her.
“I-I– I don’t know. It wasn’t me…I swear it wasn’t me,” she sobbed, genuinely shocked as I was.
There, in a pitiful crumple on the floor, lay the Doc in a pool of fresh blood, with most of his body consumed by the Rot. The office was a shambles. But he was still alive.
Two hours ago, we had arrived in the Plains, full of resolve that Doc Caplet would make things right. A short walk later and, just as Muse had described, we strolled into a small town caught in the motions of winding down after a long day. People bustled from door to door, street corner to shop to carriage, defiant against a dusk that was bound to come.
It did come, slowly and then absolutely, and all around town windows lit up in surrender like stars of the firmament. The Modest Rube was particularly bright, its frosted windows tempting passersby with lively silhouettes. Muse and I stepped through the front door to find an animated scene, a warm pastiche of construction workers, pencil pushers, florists, barmaids, and bankers celebrating their break from industry.
“The Doc, is he around?” I shouted to the barkeep.
He crammed some money into the register and turned to me.
“Upstairs, chief. Haven’t seen the fella in a week,” he yelled over the din, leaning on the bar. “Always been a little odd, that one.”
I looked around and found Muse waiting by the door to the Doc’s office. A little jostling and a few pushes later, I made my way to her side.
“The guy says the Doc is here,” I said.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“The Doc, he’s here. Hasn’t left his office in a week!” I cried.
“Something’s wrong,” Muse suddenly warned.
The look on her face was confident, but confident of only sad things. It was always a prelude to something bleak.
“I’m here. I won’t leave you,” I whispered in her ear.
“I know. This should only take a moment,” she said as she turned the knob.
We stepped through the door and started up the steps. All became strangely quiet, as if the pomp outside was a sorry accomplice.
We started moving again, a jarring lurch, then a creaking and groaning of ancient machinery yoked to a palpable sigh of relief, and for an instant I thought we were going backward. It was just a trick of the mind, however, a deficiency of the senses conceived purely to distract.
“So who’s this doctor?” I pressed, wondering how Muse could possibly have so many connections.
“If anyone can cure me,” Muse replied confidently, “it’s this guy.”
“Yeah?”
“We go way back,” she fondly recalled. “He was considered the best physician in all nine boroughs. People–”
“Does he have a name?” I interrupted, peeved and a little jealous.
“I was about to get to that,” she said impatiently. “He had a real name, but one day he invented a small green pill that could cure anything. It made him famous, so much so that people began calling him Doc Caplet.”
“I’ve heard of him. He dropped off the map all of a sudden. Are we getting some of this wonderdrug for you?”
“No,” Muse continued, “because he destroyed every last pill. There was a patient who came to him one morning, and this woman had the Beryl Rot. Those caplets killed her. To this day he still won’t say what happened.”
I shot her a skeptical look.
“Are you sure we can trust this guy? He doesn’t sound all that useful.”
“Wrong. He was brilliant. He’s still brilliant,” she shot back. “More importantly, he’s the only one who knows about my condition.”
“If this is the only way,” I conceded, “then it’s the only way. How do we find him?”
“There’s a hamlet in the Plains. We need to go to an inn there, ‘The Modest Rube.’ His office is upstairs.”