New Sight (5 page)

“Hello?” she whispered. “Is anyone there?” Her pale wisp of a voice hardly penetrated the air around her. No answer.

Someone, or something, had just moved between her and the lamp. Lys was certain of it. Or she could be hallucinating again. She didn’t like either option, so she turned to go back to her room. She didn’t want to meet anyone else. It could be Kenny, or one of the other guests. What if this person was about to give into their Need—whatever it might be? What if they hurt someone? Went on a rampage of killing, or whatever. Yeah, she would go back to her room.

But as she started to walk back, she heard a slapping noise, and she stopped in her tracks. It sounded like running feet. The footsteps, if that’s what they were, were headed away from Lys.

She went to take another step, but darkness engulfed her.

Lys tried to blink away the gloom, but nothing happened. Had she passed out? Was this another dream?

A fuzzy light came from
her right, and Lys turned her head to look. A figure, roughly shaped like a woman in a flowing dress, floated forward, driving back the darkness as it came. Lys wondered if she was seeing a ghost.

Lys didn’t move, but her perspective did. Her vision turned and she found herself running away from the anamorphic shape. The hallway looked similar to the one outside her room, but dust covered everything. The linoleum peeled back in places—several chunks were missing, making a “U” shape on the floor—and the handrail hung loosely from the brackets on the wall.

The light began to fade the longer she ran. Or whatever body she was trapped in ran. It could be another dream. She felt like she was watching the scene through someone’s helmet camera.

An open door appeared on her right, and Lys bolted inside. Darkness filled the room, but she could see the light getting brighter in a mirror that hung on the wall. Her perspective looked around, maybe searching for a place to hide. The light continued to get brighter, and just before she turned back, Lys spotted a reflection in the mirror. She didn’t see herself, instead she saw Brady.

The light rose to a blinding level, and Lys saw Brady’s hands go up in front of his eyes. The floating apparition came through the door, fingers like fabric ribbons reaching for Brady. He stumbled back, falling . . .

Lys’s own eyes shot open.
She stood in the hallway outside her room, hand gripping the rail along the wall so hard that her whole arm shook. One thought flashed through her mind. Brady was in trouble. Someone had to help him!

Logic told her that withdrawal caused the hallucination, but something else, a feeling she couldn’t explain, said otherwise. It was real and it was happening right now.

She turned back to the desk where the reading light glowed, illuminating some of the surrounding space. There should be a counselor. Where were they? The bathroom? That could be it. She started to move in the direction of the desk again, but her legs turned to spaghetti and she almost fell flat on her face. Lys managed to stumble over to the desk before she ended up on the floor.

The hallucination had left her weak.
Well, not weak,
she thought as she got her feet under her again,
just feeling strange. Excited and shaking. Maybe a little terrified, too.
Lys couldn’t decide. She glanced down, hoping to find a note there about where the counselor had gone, but found nothing.

How much time had passed since she’d buzzed the desk? Two minutes? Five? Surely if the counselor had been in the bathroom they’d be back by now.

She glanced around. Where else would there be a counselor? Downstairs? She hadn’t seen anyone at the desk down there at all. Upstairs? Where were their rooms?

In order to get downstairs, Lys had to get to the far end of the hall. That didn’t sound fun. Lys turned her head to look at the elevator. She hadn’t noticed before, but the elevator light glowed B.

The basement? That might explain the dust and run-down hall that Lys saw Brady in. He must be down there. She’d go down to the main floor and start yelling. That should wake someone up.

Walking to the elevator almost took more concentration than Lys had in her. Her legs started working again, but they didn’t respond with their normal speed. The trip felt like it took an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. She willed herself to move faster, knowing that whatever was after Brady would surely have him before she got help.

The down arrow lit up as soon as Lys pushed it, and she waited as the lights above the elevator went from “B” to “L” to “2.” The world paused before the doors slid open with a ding, releasing a soft wall of light.

Part of Lys hoped to find a counselor behind the doors, or Brady even, but that didn’t work out. Instead she found only empty air.

Before the doors could shut again, Lys stepped inside. She caught her reflection in the mirrors along the back wall. Her reflection, not Brady’s. She looked as bad as she felt, but Lys couldn’t stop thinking about Brady and the terror in his eyes.

Lys turned around and pressed the button to go down to the lobby. She watched the reading lamp until the doors slid shut. She willed the elevator to hurry. Why was it that when you needed to get somewhere fast, everything seemed to go twice as slow as normal? The ride down one floor shouldn’t take so long. Lys glanced up at the lighted numbers above the door and found that she’d passed the lobby level and was going into the basement.

“What?” she asked herself, pressing the lobby button again. The “B” above the door lit up, and the elevator settled to a stop. Lys didn’t want to go to the basement. The doors opened, but Lys kept pressing the lobby button. Then the double arrows to close the doors. Neither button worked. The light coming from the elevator only penetrated a few feet past the door.

Lys glared into the dark. She backed up against the far wall of the elevator, her fingers gripping the rail. After a moment, details started to stand out.

Dust covered the floor, Lys could see that. She could also see several sets of new footprints. One of them walked by the door and the other stepped right out of the elevator. One set had to be Brady’s. The apparition following Brady didn’t have feet, at least not that Lys had seen, so the other set must belong to someone else. A counselor? Maybe they followed him down here in the elevator. Would she be in trouble for being out of bed?

The thought seemed absurd. All she wanted to do was help Brady. He had looked terrified. Who in their right mind wouldn’t go after him? All of this flew through her mind, but Lys didn’t move to get off the elevator. She waited for the doors to slide shut, but it never happened. Go out? Lys didn’t want to do that.

A moan floated through the darkness, and Lys jumped. Was that Brady? Her own fear was overcome by worry—worry that something was down here chasing him. Lys stepped forward once, twice, and then out of the elevator into the dark hallway.

“Brady?” she said. It felt like yelling would loose the ghosts of fifty years, so she kept her voice down.

A scraping came from her left, and Lys turned that way and started to walk. Her hands shook, and a chill crawled up her spine. The sound of her heart beating had to be audible to everyone in the building. She took a dozen steps before the light from the elevator started to retreat, the dark replacing it.

“No!” She turned in time to see the doors sliding shut. Lys tried to run back, but her legs still refused to be rushed. She thrust her hand out, trying to get it into the gap, but the sliver of light disappeared just before she got there.

Darkness descended. Her shaking hands rubbed along the wall, trying to find the up arrow button. The hard surface gave way to the round indent. She pressed it again and again, but it wouldn’t light up. Another moan floated through the dusty air. Lys twirled around, keeping her back against the wall. Brady was down here. Something else was down here. Now she was down here, and she was trapped.

Chapter 6

The stairs.
Where were the stairs from there? They had to come all the way to the basement. Weren’t there fire codes or something? There had to be a way out. Heart pounding, and hands still shaking, Lys pushed off and started down the hall. One trembling finger kept contact with the wall, and in order to distract herself from the dark closing in around her, Lys imagined the trail it would leave in the dust.

After a dozen or so steps, the surface stopped, leaving nothing but air. She groped ahead until she found the next corner. The opening was too small to be a hallway, so she kept going. The stairs had to be this way.

The dark pressed in on Lys, making it hard to breathe. Even though there were no eyes down here, at least none that she could see, the Need stirred inside of her. She imagined veterans walking these halls, their eyes wild, their memories haunted with things that Lys didn’t even want to think about. Stale air filled her nostrils—she could taste the old around her.

A whimper poked through the air, reminding Lys of the reason she came down here in the first place. Brady. Her eye must have been getting used to the dark because she could make out the gaping black hole that was the next doorway ahead of her.

Another step caused something to crunch beneath her feet. It felt like gravel or dirt. She stopped, flicking her foot like a cat. More crunching. But she hadn’t moved. Someone else was close. The sound stopped.

If she could barely see down here, no one else could either. Who would be sneaking around in the basement? Why would anyone be here in the middle of the night?

“Brady?” she whispered. She hadn’t meant to; it just came out. Fear pulsed through her body faster than her blood.

A dark figure emerged from the gaping hole to her right, heading straight for her. Lys took a step back.

She drew in a breath to scream, hoping that someone would hear her. Before she got it out, a flashlight flipped on, illuminating the shadowy world around her.

Her scream came out as a strangled cry. The light split the dark, much like it had in her dreams. But instead of a shimmering ghost, a dark figure with shinning eyes stood before her.

“Kamau?” she asked, placing a hand over her fluttering heart.

“Lys?” he said, taking a small step back. “What are you doing down here?”

“I—” she stopped, dropping her gaze. What was she supposed to say?
I thought I had a vision of Brady down here running from a ghost?
Yeah, that would go over well. So she countered. “What are you doing down here?”

Kamau glanced around. “I was looking for Brady. He is not in his room.”

The two of them started at one another. Kamau’s gaze shot through her, and Lys felt the Need stir. She shifted her eyes to the ground.

“You should go back upstairs.” Kamau said.

Lys swallowed. “I’m fine.” Her voice held an edge that scared her. Her memory turned to Kenny and his swirling eyes. What was Kamau’s need? His guarded expression told Lys that Kamau was wondering the same thing about her.

The two of them stood there, the gloom pressing in around them, trying to penetrate the small pocket of light they resided in.

“We should go upstairs,” Kamau said after a few breaths of oppressive tension. He lifted a hand as if to gesture her back down the hall.

She couldn’t help it; Lys took a step away from him.

Kamau froze. “I am not going to hurt you.”

He meant it. At least it felt like he meant it. Lys didn’t get the impression that he was about to break into crazy. However, Kamau kept shifting his weight back and forth on his feet and glancing around, as if he expected someone else to be close by.

“Sorry,” she said, willing herself to stop moving. “I, uh—”

A cry filled the hallway. This one started out as a sob, and then escalated into a full-blown, blood-curdling scream. Lys’s heart turned to ice in her chest.

“Is that Brady?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“I hope not,” Kamau whispered. He stepped closer, and this time Lys didn’t step away. She would risk him wanting to braid her intestines together just so she could have someone real standing next to her. Unless he turned out to be a hallucination.

“Maybe we should go back upstairs,” he said.

“No.” Lys shook her head. “We have to help him.” The words came unbidden. She would much rather run to the end of the hall and up the stairs than go after the apparition in the basement. But she couldn’t get the image of Brady’s terrified face out of her mind.

Another scream came, this one louder than the first. If any of Lys’s blood still flowed, it froze in that instant. However, a warmth came from inside of her. From depths she hadn’t accessed in years.

She’d always had a protective streak in her. She never got busted for ditching class or writing on the bathroom walls. No, she got in trouble for being overprotective. Back in junior high, a kid in her gym class had pushed down one of the overweight girls. He and his buddies kept shoving her and laughing as the girl struggled to get back up. Lys had become so mad that she began to shake all over. Her vision blurred and she screamed at the boys to leave the girl alone. She still didn’t remember what happened after that. She must have attacked the boys, because the gym teacher had to come over and pull Lys off the leader of the pack.

She hadn’t considered it before, but the knee jerk reaction to help her friends rivaled the insistence of the Need. Not as frightening, but just as persistent.

“You saw Brady come down here?” she asked Kamau.

He hesitated. “I did not see him, but I heard him leave and followed him down the stairs.”

“Come on,” she said, grabbing Kamau by the arm. “Let’s go get him.” It was stupid. Bordering on insane really, but she didn’t see any other course of action. She had to find Brady. Kamau had the flashlight, so she was determined to drag him along, too. Besides, she didn’t want to go alone. And a tiny part of her didn’t want him lurking in the dark behind her.

“Go get him?” Kamau asked.

Now that she had backup, Lys felt better about being loud. “Brady!” she cried. “Where are you?”

Her voice drove through the air, bouncing off the walls and shooting down the hallway.

A moan answered her. It came from their left.

“Lys, maybe we should . . .” Kamau started.

Lys ignored him. She kept a hold of his arm and took them down the next hall toward the sound of what she hoped was Brady.

The beam from Kamau’s flashlight bobbed up and down as they moved, almost at a run now.

The same gray haze as she’d experienced upstairs blurred her vision, and Lys gripped Kamau’s arm tighter for support. She could see herself out of the corner of her eye, like she was looking from Kamau’s vantage point.

She shook her head, tossing the strange vision away, and kept running. They got to the corner and turned. She saw the “U” shape of missing linoleum on the floor.

“Come on,” she said, leading them to the doorway. “He’s in here.”

And she was right. Brady crouched on his hands and knees, shaking.

“Brady!” she said, rushing forward.

“Wait.” Kamau’s hand shot out, holding her back.

“But—”

“Look at him,” he said.

The flashlight beam cut through the settling dust. Lys got the reflection of it right in her eye as Kamau shined it across the mirror behind Brady. A crack ran the length of the glass, and a spread of shards lay on the floor. Blood trailed from the mirror to Brady’s hands. Lys followed the spot of light as it moved up to Brady’s head. Sweat dripped from his hair, and his whole body shook.

“Brady?” Kamau said, gently pushing past Lys and into the room.

Brady flinched at the sound of his name, moving away like a frightened dog.

“Brady,” Kamau repeated. “Can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying?” He stepped forward, holding his hand out behind him to keep Lys from coming any closer.

Lys couldn’t see around Kamau, but she heard Brady whimper as well as the scraping of glass shards on the linoleum floor.

The light around her faded, once again replaced by the gray haze. She could see the hallway, and her perspective followed the footprints in the dust with its eyes. Up ahead a glow came from one of the rooms.

She shook her head. Hallucinating again? Is this what happened to the others when Kenny freaked out? Seeing things that weren’t there, remembering things that hadn’t happened?

“Brady,” Kamau said again, moving closer to Brady and squatting down next to him. “Can you hear me?”

“Get away,” Brady said, pleading in his tone. Lys knew that tone, she knew those words.

“Get back,” she said, going after Kamau and pulling him up.

He turned on her, a questioning look in his eyes.

For a moment she was mesmerized by his dark, deep eyes. They’d seen things she never had. Why couldn’t she see them, too?

Another scream from Brady brought her out of it. The sound cut through the silent room, severing Lys from herself for a moment.

“We need to find a counselor,” Kamau said.

“Help me,” Brady whimpered, gasping for air after screaming. He writhed on the floor, curling up into a ball. “Please.”

“What’s that?” Kamau asked, looking behind Lys.

She whipped her head around. Behind her, at the end of another hallway, floated the sneering, glowing head of a wolf as big as a table. It snapped its jaws and slowly came toward them.

“We have to get out of here!” she said, going to Brady and trying to pull him to his feet.

Kamau stood transfixed, watching the light come toward him.

“Help me!” Lys said. All of the ghost hunting shows she’d ever watched late at night were coming back to her. They’d never seen anything like this!

Kamau finally turned and came to help her. Brady twitched and moaned, but it didn’t sound like pain. Lys’s thoughts turned back to the Need, and how she felt after she took the eyes from the frog. Pure ecstasy.

She almost dropped Brady and ran for it, but Kamau grabbed his other arm—the one with a deep gash in it from the mirror—and hauled the smaller boy to his feet.

“This way,” Kamau said, pulling them both out the door and away from the advancing wolf head.

“Is there an exit down here?” Lys asked, glancing back over her shoulder. The glowing apparition glided at them.

“There’s an exit sign,” Kamau said, pointing his flashlight ahead.

Sure enough, a steel door stood at the end of the hall, and above it, an exit sign.

“Uh, that door is locked,” Lys said, noticing the security bar and stout lock.

“I can open it,” Brady said in a hoarse voice. Lys barely recognized it as human.

The light behind them grew brighter as they moved. Lys and Kamau dragged Brady between them. He couldn’t get his feet under him. How did he plan to open the door?

Unfortunately, they had no other direction to choose from. Everything else along the corridor led into rooms. She couldn’t see any other hallways or turns to take. It was either the exit door or go back and face the apparition behind them.

Kamau brought them to a halt. He studied the lock, like maybe he could pick it, but before he could do anything, Brady let go of Lys and flung himself at the door, hands first.

The door crumpled like newspaper, caving in around his hands and folding almost in half. Brady shook his arms, like he was trying to get his sleeves down, and the door flew outside into the night. He fell to his knees, looking at his hands in wonder.

Lys glanced back. The light around the approaching head grew steadily brighter.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, stepping forward, not taking her eye off the thing behind them.

Brady nodded and stumbled to his feet. They followed him out the door. Three concrete steps led up. Lys misjudged the first one and tripped, hitting her elbow and scraping both hands.

“Come on,” Kamau said, practically picking her up and setting her back on her feet. Once they reached the top, Brady went to the left. Kamau flipped off the flashlight.

“No!” she said quickly. “Go this way.” She pointed. Not far from their position she could see the path that went around the hospital.“Why?” Brady asked, shaking his head as if trying to clear it.

“The path is right over here,” Lys said, pushing past him.

“Lys,” Kamau said, reaching out and taking her hand to stop her. “How can you tell?”

She looked back. He looked concerned.

“I can see it,” she said, tugging him along. “We can get back to the front doors if we follow it.”

“You can see it?” Brady slurred, sounding drunk.

“Yes,” Lys said. They had to get back inside and tell Mr. Mason what had happened.

The two boys followed Lys. Kamau kept a hold of her hand—Lys didn’t mind.

Twigs dotted the path, and Lys wished again that she had put her shoes on. Come to think of it, why did the boys think to put shoes on?

Her thoughts hurtled ahead, and Lys couldn’t clear her mind of insane questions. How had Brady just ripped through a metal door?

“Guys,” Brady said, “I don’t feel so good.”

“Here,” she said, reaching out with her other hand for Brady’s. “Just follow me.”

Where Kamau’s hand felt warm in hers, Brady’s was ice cold. The moment their fingers touched Lys felt a shock, and she jumped back.

Kamau must have felt it, too, because he pulled her away from Brady, placing her behind him.

Her hand remained cold where Brady’s fingers had brushed it. The chill began to spread up her hand and wrist toward her shoulder. She shook her arm, trying to get the tingling sensation to go away.

“What was that?” she asked Brady.

He didn’t answer; instead he looked intently at his hands. Turning them face down, his fingers began to twitch like they were moving across an imaginary keyboard. “This is so weird.”

“I think we should get around to the front of the hospital,” Kamau said.

Lys wholeheartedly agreed. “Yeah, come on.” She looked back toward the crumpled door. There was no light coming after them—no ghostly form. Had she been hallucinating? What about Kamau? He obviously saw something that scared him enough to run.