Sirens sounded in the distance, too far to make any difference now.
“My wife picked out this house,” he said, then was silent once more.
“Where is your wife?” I asked.
He stubbed the cigarette out on the sole of his boot, threw it on the ground, and looked back toward the house.
“She’s still inside.”
Day 9: Forever in These Walls – Erin Cole
Lindsey crept behind their turned backs across the tiled hallway, acutely perceptive to their growing numbers. The phantoms were a gang now; she had no doubt of that. They didn’t carry guns, though she wished they did. One could at least try to dodge bullets … but the kiss of death, that was inescapable.
In her efforts to remain unseen, she neglected her path and slinked directly beneath a light bulb. It droned, flickered, and popped with a bright clap. They turned around. They, with pasty, fanged mouths, red eyes, and bone-tipped fingers that gored into spirits like her, holding them still for death’s kiss.
Lindsey began her chant, the morgue, the morgue, the morgue.
* * *
Some have said that she will never leave this place, that where her heart stopped is where her soul will live forever. This idea is difficult for Lindsey to absorb, in addition, to the passing of time. She has been at Riverside Hospital for a stretch now. Months? Years? She can’t tell. Time isn’t fluid anymore. It is segmented into a mosaic of broken images, tendrils of memory that curl around the other like black dye in water. When she thinks of a place, click, and just like that, she is there. By only a thought—
* * *
Lindsey hid in the bottom row of metal vats next to the door. It smelled bad. She listened intently for the scrape of phantom footsteps. The gang hissed with dark want; they would take anything that moved. Even hospitals had dead rats.
A vat door opened above her with a slick whoosh. She heard the desperate snivel of another spirit. It was too late. There was nothing she could do to help. She had watched it happen before, how the phantoms groaned together, circling a humble, lone spirit. One of them reached out, snagged ethereal life, and sealed its mouth over the spirit’s own. What it felt like or what was actually happening to the spirit, Lindsey couldn’t tell, but their expressions had ranged from pain to confusion to hate. Though she was unable to see the spirit’s expression, listening to the carnage had its own horrors.
* * *
Shafts of the summer sun tunneled through a nearby vacant room and brightened Tanya’s desk with God-like radiance. Lindsey stood in front of her like reflected sunlight. Some days, Tanya saw her, other days she didn’t. Tanya was punching pathogen records into a calculator and recording the totals. From the pictures taped to the outer perimeter of her monitor, Lindsey knew she had two boys of her own, an older brother, and a mother. Her younger sister met her ill-fated end five years ago after getting into the wrong car with the wrong person. Lindsey had read about it in her journal one day. Turns out, she wasn’t the only one. Six other women met the same wrong person.
Down the hall, lights began to flicker. Lindsey feared the phantom gang had returned. She fastened a place in her mind and was about to chant to herself, when a young spirit, one she had never seen before, raced through the admissions center. The girl yelled and flailed her arms. A buzzer lit up on Tanya’s desk. By the speed of her movements, and the girl’s urgency, Lindsey gathered that another patient had arrived in the emergency room. Tanya fled the front desk. Lindsey followed her.
The operating table held a man covered in so much blood, it was difficult to tell where, and what the extent of his wounds were. Lindsey believed the medical technicians’ thoughts paralleled her own as they wiped at his skin with oversized cotton balls and searching eyes.
But Tanya was fast. Lindsey had watched her in the operating room on several occasions. She didn’t lose many.
Lindsey looked over at the girl. She was cut up the same as the man, and so distraught, she didn’t take notice of her. She screamed at the ceiling instead. “No! It can’t be like this. Please, God! Please! Don’t do this!” She paced in front of his bed, clutching her head with fisted palms.
The technicians couldn’t hear or see her, but their movements were clumsy, their voices heightened, as though her presence had affected them the same as if they could. Tanya was struggling to get the man’s blood pressure. Her cheeks deepened to dark rose. She wiped sweat from her brow. “I need 3 cc’s of tranexamic acid! Hurry!” She feared she was going to lose this one.
The young girl stormed closer to the man. Her teary eyes brimmed with what looked like rage. She started banging on his chest, only her punches never made contact. “I hate you! I hate you! You were supposed to die in the wreck! Not me!” She reached for a scalpel on the surgical tray, but her palm slipped through it.
Lindsey felt small, as if she were shrinking. The dark story emerging from the girl stunned her with further terror. She had tried to murder the man, but her plan had backfired. Adding to Lindsey’s turmoil, Tanya had stopped helping him. Her gaze stilled on him like ambushed prey. The other doctors noticed her ceased assistance, but continued working on the man. They didn’t have time to ask her what was wrong.
Tanya stepped back, near against Lindsey, and said in a voice that only she and the girl could hear: “It’s him.”
The girl looked to Tanya and Lindsey for the first time. She nodded. “Yes. It’s him. It’s him!” She motioned her thin, cut-up arms to the man on the gurney.
Lindsey knew whom they were both talking about—the wrong man. The girl was an eerie resemblance to Tanya’s younger sister. And, he was about to escape penalty once again. His eyes opened. He tried to speak to the nurses, but his lips, minced from shattered glass, flapped languidly, and so no one could properly understand him.
The girl tried for the scalpel again. It was of no use. Lindsey could pick it up, but the girl didn’t know that. Above the man’s head, a large heart-rate monitor was bolted to the wall. The girl’s eyes traced the path of Lindsey’s.
“Rise,” Lindsey told her.
The girl pursed her lips together, crumpled her brow, and began to ascend toward Lindsey.
Lindsey’s fingers contacted the monitor. It was like touching the surface of water. The girl’s hands fell through it. “You’re thinking about it too much. Let the object come to you.”
She tried again and smiled in success.
The man looked at both of the girls now. He had one foot in their world and one in his own. He jabbed a finger at the monitor above his head, but the technicians strapped his arm down. They didn’t realize what was about to happen. Tanya watched on in disbelief, hands splayed over mouth.
Lindsey and the girl pulled on the monitor with resolute force. The young girl was a fast learner, and the monitor tilted forward. The man shook his head back and forth. The doctors must have thought he was going into a seizure. They reached for electrode paddles next to the bed.
The monitor bent away from the wall. The bolts loosened from the studs. The doctors looked up, but the monitor was already in the arms of gravity, toppling onto the right person. The nurses and doctors shouted with maddening energy as they lifted the monitor from his head. His arms twitched, and then they fell limp to the table. An indigo shell of him lifted from his body. Wrath behind his eyes fixed on Lindsey and the girl.
Oh, no. Lindsey grabbed the girl’s hand. Cafeteria. Cafeteria. Cafeteria.
Click.
Like dye in water, she and the girl traveled through the walls. The phantoms would follow—they had an eternity to do so.
Author Biographies
Amber Taitague lives a life of organized chaos and feels anything that veers towards normalcy is unsettling. She's been writing since childhood and has always ventured down th
e darker paths. Her writing is a reflection of what goes on in her head and any distortion is entirely her fault. You can read more of her stories at her blog:
https://feedingindecision.blogspot.com/
Richard Godwin is the author of Apostle Rising and is a widely published crime and horror writer. His second novel Mr. Glamour is out now and is available online and at all good retailers. It is about a glamorous world with a predator in its midst and is already attracting great reviews.
His Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are interviews he has conducted with writers and can be found at the blog on his website where you
can also find a full list of his works:
https://www.richardgodwin.net/blog
Jodi MacArthur hides in dark, deep places with feather pillows and boas. The scratch, scratch scratch of her pen can be heard on silent nights when madness has retreated back into its cocoon. Read more of her works at: https://www.jodimacarthur.blogspot.com/
Benjamin Sobieck is the author of the crime thriller novel, "Cleansing Eden - The Celebrity Murders," the Maynard Soloman crime humor series and numerous short stories. His favorite authors are Elmore Leonard and Hunter S. Thompson. Visit his website at https://www.crimefictionbook.com.
Marissa Giambelluca graduated from Emerson College with a double B.A in Writing, Literature & Publishing and Theatre Studies: Management. Though she grew up in New York, she currently resides in the wonderfully upscale Allston, Massachusetts. She spends her time reading whatever she can get her hands on, experimenting with her writing, and eating way too much frozen fruit.
RS Bohn has perfected staring into space for indefinite amounts of time, a crucial quality for a writer. Her heart belongs to the fantastic, the Bradbury and Bradbury-esqe, and you can find more of her work at https://rsbohn.blogspot.com Look especially for her in the upcoming volume of Cast Macabre's best from season one, with new work on the horizon, including a book, to be finished in the next half decade. Approximately.
S.K. Adams writes short stories from the darker side of imagination. He has three short stories published at Separate Worlds E-zine. His work has also been published online at Thrillers Killers’N’ Chillers, Short 'N'Scary stories and Short Story Nation. He says there is a monster in his head, waiting in the dark, if he invites him out with his shiny new pen, he will be in your head too.
Christopher Grant is a writer of crime and noir and of bizarro/experimental fiction. He is also the editor/publisher of:
A Twist Of Noir ( https://a-twist-of-noir.blogspot.com/)
Eaten Alive ( https://eatenalive1.blogspot.com/)
Alternate Endings (https://alternatendings.blogspot.com/)
Laurita Miller sits in the dark, spies on the neighbours, and writes what she thinks she sees. Her stories are scattered across the web and jotted on scraps of paper. She has trapped some of them on her blog Calling Shotgun (www.ringkeeper.blogspot.com)
Erin Cole. While she’s currently building a plank out of rejection emails, Erin’s work has been published in various online and print publications such as the Boston Literary Review, 5x5 Fiction, Trembles Horror Magazine, and MicroHorror, and she has work forthcoming in Aiofe’s Kiss and The Fabulist. Last year, her paranormal short story, "The Wall of Never Doubt," placed 10th in the Writer's Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition, Genre Short Story Category.
9 Days of Madness: Things Unsettled Page 4