Authors: Susan Vaught
My knees went a little weak, but Imogene patted by arm. “You’ve known it was coming, and a long time at that. I’m just
like an old battery, running out of juice. I don’t get to choose when my lights go out, and neither do you.”
“No.” It was all I could say. The sadness behind it was too much to stand. She had schooled me to do what I could in her stead, and I’d known she was losing power, but I never thought it would happen so soon.
I couldn’t—she couldn’t—
“Boy, you can either stand here and moon over nature finally taking its course, or you can go fetch your girl and your friends.” Imogene’s smile was the only thing about her that kept its full strength. “I’ll get myself back to my rooms and my books.”
“Will you be there when we get back?” The question came out of me in a little boy’s voice, but I couldn’t help it.
“Mayhap,” she said. “If ’n you hurry.”
Trina and Cain and I wound down three sets of twisting stairs, following a specter into the absolute darkness of the basement.
I had pulled some of my glamour back into place so I wouldn’t make Trina so nervous. Even though she was glad to see her father’s spirit, she still seemed pretty close to a meltdown over Darius. As for me, about Forest, about Imogene—
Couldn’t do it.
I had locked myself down, feeling-wise.
When we reached the first basement hallway, Trina walked into the blackness beside me, quiet as a cemetery headstone. Her eyes tracked her father’s spirit, which was the only tiny bit of hope we had. Her hand stayed in her pocket, and I figured she had hold of her willow charm.
It took me a minute or two to realize we weren’t walking through the basement I usually saw, with its offices and canteen and storage rooms. This basement had a life to it I had never seen
before, yet I didn’t feel any power other than mine. I didn’t smell the mold and cleanser and formaldehyde and mixture of potpourri, carpet freshener, and spritzing mint scent machines that always made me cough.
The walls had become shadows, pressing toward us as we moved. No patients called out or moaned from above. No plumbing whooshed or clanked. The air system failed to rattle. I wasn’t sure I had ever heard the asylum so quiet.
It seemed as if the hospital were watching us again.
Our breathing echoed with the soft slap of our steps, and now and again the sound of dripping water fractured the unnatural silence. We came to a corner and turned. A bit later, we turned again. Minutes passed, then more minutes. The darkness got even darker.
At the next hallway crossroads, the shimmering form of Pastor Martinez hesitated. “I’m not certain,” he said in a whisper as Cain eased to his haunches beside him. “Nothing seems familiar to me.”
Trina hugged herself and sighed.
On instinct, I rested my hand on the stone wall—and jumped. The rock should have been cold, but it was warm, as hot as any human body. A faint, steady rhythm tickled my palm and fingertips, and I yanked my hand away. My muscles tensed even as my mind tried to pitch out what I couldn’t believe.
“What is it?” Trina asked, her voice just a mumble in the quiet.
“Lincoln,” I said, though I didn’t really know what I meant. “It’s ... the asylum. The walls—”
She put her own palm against the wall, and seconds later pulled it back, her eyes going round with fear. “Levi, that’s a heartbeat.”
“Impossible,” said the ghost of the pastor, but he hushed himself before I could say anything. Here we were, a preacher’s spirit leading a witch, a barghest, and a guy who had come back from the dead through halls too dark to be real. “Impossible” had no place here.
I knew the building had weird awareness sometimes. I was the one who had told Forest the hospital was alive, that it had been soaking up crazy for years. But I hadn’t meant it like this.
So, is the old asylum on our side—or not?
My breath came too shallow, and the last thing I wanted to do was put my hand on the warm stones again. I cursed myself for being a chicken, then reminded myself that Forest was worth anything I had to face, even a haunted hospital threatening to come to life.
I set my jaw, lifted my hand, and placed it against the rocks.
They pushed and pulled against my fingers.
Breathing.
Easy now.
My chin lifted, and I stared into the darkness of the stones, directing all my attention at the pulse inside.
“I need your help,” I said to the wall—to Lincoln itself. “We need to go to the other side, and we can’t find a thin spot. Will you lead us?”
The stones rose and fell under my palm once, then twice. The third time felt more like a sigh than a breath, and somewhere far to our left, a light flickered and came on.
“Is this assistance, or is it a trick?” Pastor Martinez asked as he stared at the light.
“It is what it is,” I said. “Which is more than we had a minute ago.”
“This isn’t okay.” Trina’s voice shook as she spoke, causing her father’s spirit to turn to her and reach for her arm.
His fingers passed through her elbow and she shuddered—but then she smiled. She sounded so much younger when she said, “Daddy.”
“Come on,” I told them. “Let’s get a move on.”
I whistled for Cain and walked toward the lit-up hallway without waiting to see whether they’d try to argue. After a minute, I heard them following along.
When I got to the cages full of gurneys and wheelchairs, I felt a surge of heat in my chest. It was right here that I had lost Forest once before, when she slipped into the other side for years, trying to kill the shade of a murderous little boy. Was the asylum helping me, or trying to keep me off-balance?
Maybe it wasn’t good to trust something I didn’t understand. I turned and walked back toward Trina and the pastor, intending to go back the way we had come, but a rattling in the drain behind me brought me up short.
Cain growled as I turned to stare at the circular metal drain cover, which was about as wide across as a softball. The light over the drain got brighter, and it rattled again. The screws on either side loosened, and Trina and the pastor backed away.
I pulled my knife as the cover bucked, then clattered off to the side. A tongue flicked out, then disappeared. I gripped my
knife tighter as Cain crouched beside me. A large, blunt snout thrust itself out of the drain, red as flame, and attached to a wide, triangle-shaped head.
The snake oozed upward, heaving itself inch by inch, foot by foot, into the hall. It was orange and red, with a diamond pattern so bright it glowed.
“Kill it,” the pastor said, his tone full of disgust.
I was just about to stab at it when Trina said, “It’s just a corn snake. Not poisonous. It eats rats and mice. All that slithers isn’t always evil.”
No doubt Forest would argue for the snake’s life just like that.
The corn snake made a wet slithering squelch as it stretched itself between the drain and the edge of the hall door. Another snake followed, and another, and another, and another, each redder than the last, until they formed a scaly, writhing blockade between where I stood and the direction I had been attempting to take.
Cain backed out of his crouch and whined.
“For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you,” Pastor Martinez offered.
“Your Bible’s so cheerful,” I shot back.
The pastor actually chuckled. “A little fear is good for the soul.”
“Says you,” Trina muttered. “Levi, I’m thinking we’re not supposed to go that way, unless you want to hack up a bunch of reptiles that don’t have any quarrel with you.”
The light in the hallway switched off, hiding the snakes. I swept my knife toward my feet but didn’t feel any scaly bodies.
The tip of the blade tapped the stone floor, and as though I had summoned it, a light in the hallway behind me switched back on, showing me that the snakes hadn’t moved.
My breathing was a bit too loud for my pride. I slowly raised my knife as if to salute the ceiling. The walls expanded slightly, then contracted, and in the far distance, the
thump-thump-thump
of its eerie pulse made me swallow hard.
I sheathed my bone knife and turned away from the snakes, leading our group in the direction Lincoln Psychiatric seemed to want us to go. We passed into the lighted hallway, and as we reached the end, the light flickered once and went dark. The long fluorescent ceiling bulb in the next hallway flared to life instead.
We were definitely being led.
The only question was, where?
And what would be waiting for us when we got there?
“This is the place,” Pastor Martinez said as the ever-changing lighting led us into a long hallway that I recognized. He pointed down the long stretch of tile that ran past the canteen where I first saw Forest to a room used to store clothes for Lincoln’s patients.
My chest ached from the memory of Forest’s voice.
Stop! You with the dogs. Knock it off! Hey! Guy in the duster. I’m talking to you!
She had caught me completely off guard and made me tell her my name. She had thought I was a patient. Not the most epic or romantic beginning, but it was something.
“Levi?” Trina’s voice came to me from far away, and I realized I was standing in the dark with my hand on the clothing room sign.
A sliver of light shone from beneath the door, the only break in the absolute black of the hallway, and the meaning was clear enough.
Go inside.
It only took a few seconds to disrupt the essence of the wooden door, let Cain in, and pull Trina in behind me. The ghost of Pastor Martinez followed easily.
I don’t know what I expected—a blinking neon sign screaming thin spot, or some kind of spirit that could make one—but what we found was clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. Stacks of T-shirts, socks, sweatshirts, bras, underwear, dresses, and suits. Cain nosed at a rack in the center of the room that held a few nicer dresses and suits. The room smelled like perfume and laundry detergent.
My heart sank.
I looked around, and so did Trina and the pastor. I even ran my fingers along the thick cream-colored paint covering the cinder-block wall at the back of the room.
Nothing.
Not even the breathing and heartbeat of the stone walls at the front.
Forest grabbed Decker right here in this doorway. She caught him by the ankles and dragged him back into the hallway. Then she burned me with that bracelet.
The confusion of that moment—and the high of seeing her full-on for the first time ...
Forest
...
My fingers curled. I wanted to smash my fists through the cinder blocks and beat my way to the other side. On impulse, I drew my knife, walked to the back of the clothing room, and stabbed at the wall. Nothing happened save for the noise of the
blow and mumbling from Trina and the pastor. The impact sent shocks up my wrists, all the way through my shoulders.
“Levi,” Trina called, still from far away, but I just stabbed the back wall again. This time, I poured a little power into the blade, and the knife dug straight into the cinder blocks. Chunks of solid mortar struck the floor, sending up clouds of dust.
A chill passed through me, and Pastor Martinez inserted his ghostly form between me and the wall. He had his hands raised, but I was already swinging the knife down a third time. The tip of it swiped him from shoulder to hip, and he stared, wide-eyed, as he came apart like a punctured balloon.
“Daddy!” Trina screamed. “Oh God!”
She rushed forward and shoved me aside, grabbing for the mist that was her father. I staggered and caught myself against the wall. Cain didn’t rush to help me. The barghest was backing away, his round eyes staring at the preacher’s fading form.
Trina came away empty-handed, but she didn’t stop trying. She just kept grabbing and started to weep. “Don’t leave me again. Don’t you leave me like this! Daddy!”
Xavier Martinez gazed at his daughter and tried to patch himself up by tugging the mist this way and that. He knew he was losing the fight, though, and soon enough he held out his arms for Trina.
She rushed into them and passed straight through, staggering into the wall I’d been tearing up with my knife. When she turned around, she looked so sad and angry I felt like the biggest ass in the universe.
“I’m sorry, honey,” the pastor said. “I had intended—I wanted
so much to—but it wasn’t meant to be. Don’t cry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
His voice grew more faint with each sentence.
“Do something!” Trina yelled at me. “Stop this!”
I gaped at her for a second, then tried to help as she had asked. I sent my black mist toward the specter, willing it to heal. The pastor kept right on breaking into bits and fading away. He was nothing but shoulders, arms, neck, and head now. The rest of him was vapor, blowing to nothing each time we let out breaths.
I shed my glamour and reached out with my hands, but I couldn’t touch him. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t mean any harm. I’m sorry, sir. Please stay with us.”
Trina tore the knife out of my grip and stared at it. The second she touched the blade, the mist of my power fell away from it. She threw it down and turned back to her father.
His face was still there, his eyes fixed on her. “I love you,” he said to Trina. “You are an amazing young woman.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
And he was gone.
Sparkles lingered in the air for a few moments, then winked out of existence. Trina lowered her head, shaking all over.
Guilt sank into every bone in my body. What could I do? I couldn’t think of a single word to say. When I did, the best I could come up with was a lame, “I had no idea, Trina. I didn’t—”
“Shut up!” she roared, clamping her hands over her ears until I stopped talking.
She had her back to me when she dropped her hands to her
sides and started moving, so I didn’t realize she was pulling out her last few potions and her willow charm. I didn’t even process that she was picking up my knife again until she already had it, until she held everything in her hands at once.