A/N: Holy cow I'm surprised I got reviews for this! Especially because it's got Turpin he he. Here's the second chapter, as promised. From Nellie's P.O.V.

~Beyond Redemption~

Nellie woke with a man's name on her lips. "Sweeney," she croaked.

She wanted to cry out, but couldn't. Her voice was weak. It had forgotten how to scream.

"Someone," she tried again in the darkness. She tried fumbling with her hands, but they wouldn't move. She tried to swing her legs off the bed. They too, were stuck. Even her neck was stiff. Just like a corpse, Nellie immediately thought.

Now she was trembling. Why would she think such an awful thing?

"Help!" The word sounded strange to her. It didn't sound like her voice at all.

And then she felt it. The pain.

How could she have forgotten about it? The pain made her remember where she was.

It snaked through her limbs, grasped the side of her face like an open flame. Her body began to shudder, and there was no stopping it. She couldn't move an inch but her body was doing it for her. The pain possessed it, and Nellie could only count.

Up to five hundred, and down again, until one wave stopped and another rose and fell. Like the sea. Nellie didn't know why, but she remembered this. The ocean. The sea. The marvellous, marvellous sea.

And then, still in the clutches of pain and darkness, she found herself begging: "Sweeney!"

She was insistent, desperate, shameless – but still, no one came for her.

Had someone told Nellie to lap the sewage in the street, she would have done it. Anything to stop what lurched inside. The burning that consumed her.

I dunno who I am, she suddenly realised. I dunno where I am!

"Help me!" Her lips quivered, but now no sound escaped Nellie's throat.

There was something wrong, but the darkness clouded everything.

She was left with two names: Sweeney, and Nellie.

And the pain.

"Lord 'elp me!" Nellie knew she must be mute. But she could still shriek in her head. I'm dying!

But she wasn't.

Nellie managed to wiggle, inch by inch, to the edge of her bed. It was worse than lying still. As far as she knew, the pain had always been her master.

It took a desperate struggle that seemed to Nellie to take hours, but she finally did it.

She toppled forward. In less than a second, she clattered to the floor.

The sound was thunder in her ears. It must wake someone, Nellie thought desperately. It must! Underneath her, Nellie felt the delicious shock of cold floorboards against her neck. The side of her face also trembled. But the rest of her body remained senseless. It could not feel the cold.

Footsteps echoed somewhere deep in the darkness. Voices awoke. Nellie prayed, and suddenly a candle flooded shadows beneath the door.

She was in a room of some sort, Nellie guessed, doing her best to focus on the light. A room with a bed and cold floorboards...

The door opened, and a petrified woman burst in holding the wondrous candle. "You silly thing!" she shrieked.

An older, greying woman followed behind. They did their best to lift Nellie gently back onto the bed. To Nellie, they might as well have stuck pins in her flesh. Every contact made with her flesh burnt her, as if they'd placed her on a giant bonfire and expected her to sleep there.

"Please," Nellie tried again. Her lips barely mouthed the word.

"It looks like she's in pain ma'am," said the younger woman, seated closest to Nellie.

The grey-haired woman shook her head and began to fiddle with something on Nellie's legs. "Ah child, she's always in pain!"

The younger woman set a small basin of water on Nellie's night table, picked up a washcloth, and wrung it carefully. She dabbed her patient's face, and did her best to smile.

Nellie could not return it. Every time the woman touched her legs Nellie's face contorted and shrunk into spasms of pain. Opening her mouth did nothing: she could not form the words.

"Yes but she really looks it. I think she's tryin' to tell us somethin'. Maybe we should get Mr Turpin?"

Turpin? Who's he? Another mystery Nellie had to solve.

The older woman looked up sharply at her assistant. She gave a good tug and Nellie's body went into another fit. "Child, that won't be helpin' no one, 'specially not this poor woman. She's suffered enough. Don't you think she deserves some rest?"

And with that, they picked up the basin, and left the room.

Nellie watched sadly as the candle disappeared. How could she rest when her body was torturing her? How could she, when her mind was obsessed with a ghost?

A ghost without a face. A ghost named Sweeney.

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