by Adam Dark
“I will.” Ben just didn’t know when that would be, or how much it would piss Peter off when he realized Ben had been lying by omission the whole time.
When his friend disappeared into the hallway, Ben’s head sank completely back into the pillow, and he stared up at the ceiling again. A part of him felt kind of empty, soft, like he’d just popped a bubble that had baked into the top of a loaf of bread. It took him a minute to figure out what it was.
For the first time in eleven years, the pervasive anxiety that had made itself Ben’s constant companion was gone. No gnawing clench around his stomach. No tension bubbling just below the surface, driving him to find something—anything—to distract him from the feeling that something horrible was about to happen. He’d forgotten what peace felt like, and this brief moment of it would have been perfect if it wasn’t for the infuriating itch in his palms.
‘Sorry about the hands, Ben.’ While Ben couldn’t see him, that was definitely Ian’s voice. Hearing it was even stranger than sitting beside his gray-filtered friend in the green wash of the spirit realm.
“Oh, are you?” Ben muttered.
‘I didn’t know it would do that to you.’
Ben lifted one of his arms to glare at the cast around his hand. “Yeah, I think we’re gonna have to lay out some ground rules.”
Just then, a nurse walked past his open door to see him alone in there, talking to himself. She peered about the room to be sure he was actually alone, then glanced back at him with an awkwardly questioning smile. Ben just lifted his cast even higher and gave the woman a gimpy little wave. Her brows drew together, but she was gracious enough to smile before she continued down the hall.
Okay, so he was technically hearing voices again, and he had a feeling he’d be talking back to Ian a lot more than he ever had with any of the others. People were bound to notice at some point.
Screw it.
23
His parents reacted exactly the same way he imagined, only instead of his mom constantly asking if he needed anything, she kept asking, “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Like if only she’d known he was in town, this awful thing—which, as far as she knew, was burning his hands pretty bad in a freak raccoon accident before inexplicably passing out for days—would never have happened. Ben couldn’t wrap his mind around how she might have reacted if he’d tried to tell her the truth. Honestly, he thought she’d smack the side of his head and tell him to, “Cut that out, Benjamin.” Because even after all this time, his parents still didn’t believe anything he’d told them about that night eleven years ago. He might have felt like the whole nightmare was resetting itself in his twenties, but April believed him. She’d been there. And he still had Peter on his side. And Ian in his head.
Finally, just to get her to stop standing from his bedside—she’d actually wrapped her hands around one of his casts as if he could feel it—pacing, gesticulating, then returning to sit beside him again like he was about to breathe his last, Ben told her, “Mom. We were gonna stop by the house afterward, okay. I wanted to surprise you.”
She let out a little moan and tipped her head up toward the ceiling, but when she looked back down, her eyes brimmed with tears, and she just studied him with a smile.
“Surprise,” his dad said. Ben’s mom whirled around to stare at him; he still had his arms crossed and hadn’t moved from the far end of the hospital room. He eyed Ben now from beneath his brow, chin tucked toward his chest, then smirked. Ben cracked up laughing, which got his dad to join him. Ben’s mom just stared at them like they’d been cussing each other out, then her high, nervous giggle joined them.
“We’re just glad you’re okay, bud,” his dad added.
Ben nodded at them. “Me too.”
He couldn’t have been more grateful for the opportunity his dad had given them to laugh about the whole thing, even though it was the first thing his dad had said to him in the last half hour since his parents had come waltzing in to see him awake and his mom wasted no time in starting on her useless worrying after the fact. But it was enough, and his parents seemed to be doing pretty well.
They hadn’t been when he was a kid. He thought his parents had been on the verge of a divorce before his whole world was turned upside-down by that house, the loss of his friends, and his and Peter’s survival. At least, he vividly remembered the conversation he’d had with Nico, whose parents had been divorced already for a while and who seemed a pretty knowledgeable expert on the subject at the time. But the horrors of seeing his friends’ parents mourn their own children’s premature passing, unable to even bury the bodies because they couldn’t be found, had actually seemed to bring Ben’s parents closer together again. So did the struggle of trying to get their son the help he needed, which came in the form of all the doctors and shrinks and pills and counseling and dealing with nightmares and what they called hallucinations. They’d done their best. He knew they had. And now he realized his dad had figured out a way to deal with his mom’s intensity that didn’t include running away from the house and his family for days at a time. Apparently, that was poorly timed jokes of less-than-perfect humor. Go figure.
With the relatively thick shell of his mom’s anxiety finally cracked, his parents came to sit beside him together, and his mom fed him lunch from the cafeteria like he was a baby again. The nurse had said it was good for him to eat after four days of nothing but IV fluids, just not too much too fast. Now that he’d come back into his own body and his own life again, Ben was starving, but his mom didn’t shovel food into his mouth the way he would have. Things were going to be a little interesting until he could get these casts removed.
Because of course he knew they expected to hear his version of things, Ben figured he might as well practice on his parents the story Peter had given him. It was easy enough to spin; he’d had years of experience in the lying department. Who wanted to listen over and over for years to the same outrageous tales of demons and his friends being possessed to kill each other, even if it was actually the truth? He knew now the truth had to be siphoned out drop by drop, and only under the right conditions and only for those he was certain would believe it and could handle it. That didn’t include his parents, and Ben was okay with that now.
When he’d finished talking and they’d asked a few more random questions for which he easily provided false answers, his mom said, “I really like April.”
That stunned him into silence for a second. “Yeah.” Ben swallowed. “Me too.”
“Does she know about your… experiences? When you were younger?”
The way his mom tried to skirt around the subject made his palms itch furiously all over again—or maybe it was because he would have wiped them on his pants anyway just for something to do. If he’d even been wearing pants. Ben hadn’t had a chance to get out of the bed yet, but he imagined he’d find himself wrapped in one of those hospital gowns with his bare ass hanging out the back. “We’ve talked about it, Mom,” he said. The sympathetic lift of his mom’s brows and the forced smile she gave him—which seemed to say, I know, honey, but this is good to talk about—made him think it was better to elaborate on his lie just a little more. “That was part of why Pete and I brought her to the house. She wanted to see it.” Okay, so it was barely a lie.
“She was really concerned about you, Ben,” his mom said. “She seemed really upset when she said she had to go back to Boston. Are you two… close?”
His dad scoffed a little beside her, which was about as close to a snicker as he ever got.
Ben’s face grew hot; talking to his mom about girls had never been one of their things. Talking about girls at all wasn’t even on his list of acceptable, comfortable topics that were bound to make him feel better. April, though … Yeah, she was different, all right. “I think so,” he said, cracking a sheepish smile. His dad chuckled, and his mom patted the plaster wrapped around his hand. When was she going to stop doing that?
“I’m glad,” she said. “Next time
you come home to visit, well, tell us first, huh? And invite April to come with you any time she wants. I’d love to make dinner for the four of us and get to know her a little more when things aren’t so… uncertain.”
“Okay.” Ben just nodded. He couldn’t tell them he had no idea if April ever wanted to see him again. The demon part hadn’t seemed to throw her off one bit, and neither did the weird language spouting out of his mouth when Ian had used his body to banish the Guardian. Obviously. She’d kissed him right afterward. But he did think the fact that she’d really been kissing Ian and not Ben at all coupled with no response whatsoever on his part was really what had made her leave the hospital and go home. He hoped he had the chance to explain, maybe even make it up to her if he could, but he had no idea right now how that was even possible.
“Does she know you’re awake?” his dad asked.
Ben shrugged. “I bet Pete called her. I know she has a lot of work to do for her classes.” He didn’t, really, but how would they know?
“How are yours going?” his mom asked, and then they were right back into normal conversation—a brief skimming over the past two years of his life since they’d seen each other and had the opportunity to talk in person—like he’d actually made it to his parents’ house for dinner and they were just a family, minus his sister, catching up over his mom’s lasagna.
* * *
Eventually, when they’d run out of things to talk about, Ben found himself exhausted and wanting nothing more than to hold the button on the side of his hospital bed until it was stretched out flat again and lie back into the cloud-soft pillow for a while. How was that even possible? He’d just spent four days basically sleeping.
The nurse on duty now apparently had an impeccable sense of timing. She came in with a smile, told them she was glad they had some time to together, and said she needed to check Ben’s vitals and make sure he was squared away before the doctor ordered just a few more tests.
His parents seemed relieved to be able to pass their long vigil over him into someone else’s hands. They kissed and hugged him goodbye, which was a little awkward when he felt the casts on his hands thump against his dad’s back, who only chuckled in his ear before standing up again to briefly rest his hand on the top of Ben’s head. With promises of coming back again to check on him tomorrow, maybe even later tonight, they stepped out of his hospital room to go home with far more peace of mind than they’d had when they arrived. Ben smiled to see his dad wrap his arm around his mom’s shoulder before they disappeared around the doorway and down the hall.
Shortly after they left and the nurse finished checking everything there was to check on his IV and the monitor beside the bed, she told him, “Dr. Fillert will be right in to see you.”
Maybe ten minutes later, a tall man with brown hair and a mustache stepped into the room and grinned at Ben before lifting a pair of reading glasses from the chain around his neck and putting them on. “Hey, Ben. I’m Dr. Fillert. Good to see you awake.”
“Hi.”
“I’d shake your hand, but…” The man gave an exaggerated shrug.
Man, everyone was a comic today. “No worries,” Ben said.
“So how’re you feeling?” Dr. Fillert pulled a chart from a pocket in the foot of Ben’s bed and glanced down at it.
“Tired. My hands itch really bad.”
The man smiled. “That means they’re healing. What about your leg?”
For a minute, he had no idea what the guy meant until he remembered Peter telling him they’d grafted skin from his thigh. “Honestly, I can’t feel a thing.”
Dr. Fillert’s eyebrows lifted. “You can’t feel your legs?”
“No.” Ben laughed and had no idea why he thought that was so funny. “No, I mean I can’t even feel where the skin graft part is.”
The doctor sighed out his own little laugh. “Oh. The surgeon performed a full-thickness skin graft from your right thigh for both hands. Do you want to see?”
Ben shook his head. “I think I’m good right now. Do you know when I can take these off?” He raised his hands and waved the casts around a little.
“I think we’ll be able to take those off in a few days. Maybe even tomorrow. You’ll still have to keep them completely dry for a few weeks after that, but you might be able to pick your nose.”
Ben smirked. What a weirdo.
“We did run a full blood panel, just to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
“Like what?” Ben really would love to know what these people would try to say was the cause of him being unconscious for so long.
Dr. Fillert looked up at him again and raised his brows with what could have been nonchalance but looked a little bit like a warning. “Well, it didn’t show us anything unusual, so I’m not sure. Burn trauma to the hands doesn’t usually result in a loss of consciousness for four days.” He paused. “Anything you’d like to tell me that might help me know what to look for? Have you taken any illicit drugs in the last two weeks? Consumed marijuana, large amounts of alcohol, new foods you’ve never tried before?”
‘Just a childhood friend’s disembodied spirit,’ Ian replied.
“Not now,” Ben muttered. This was so not the time.
“I’m sorry?”
He looked up at Dr. Fillert and shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
“College offers a lot of opportunities for experimentation. I understand the appeal of trying so many new things. If you did take something, Ben, this would really help us narrow down the cause.”
“I don’t even drink,” Ben replied flatly. He’d actually let himself think things would be different this time, that people would believe the adult version of him. But apparently, not even most of the truth was satisfying enough.
Dr. Fillert pressed his lips together and gave a consenting nod. “Okay. If you think of anything, just let one of the nurses know.”
“Sure.”
The man studied the chart a little longer, then put it back in the pocket and removed his glasses to let them fall against his chest again at the end of the chain. “We received your medical and psychiatric records from your other doctors before you went off to school,” he said. “Lots of medications traditionally prescribed for diagnosed schizophrenia. You still taking any of those?”
It took everything Ben had not to roll his eyes. This again? “No, I dropped those in high school. I feel a lot more normal without them.”
“And no more voices?”
Ben’s racing heart dropped into his gut, but then he realized that, yes, hearing voices was one of the things that had gotten him that schizophrenia diagnosis in the first place. “Nope.”
Dr. Fillert nodded. “Okay. Well, we have an in-house psychiatrist I’d like to come see you for a little bit tomorrow. Because of your history and the fact that you were out for so long, I think it’s best we cover all the bases. Just to be safe.”
Great. Ben had acted perfectly normal from the minute he’d woken up here—he was perfectly normal, mostly—and even that didn’t get him a pass from the shrinks. Was he ever going to get out from under the giant ‘Crazy Person’ sign they’d stuck to his forehead the first time? “Sure,” he said.
“Good. After that, we’ll take a look at getting those casts off.” The man smiled, then added, “The Oakwood Police left a message saying they wanted to speak with you as well about what happened the other night at that house. Just so you have a heads up.”
“Yeah, my friend told me they’d probably stop by.”
Dr. Fillert nodded, glanced briefly back at the doorway to make sure no one was there, then leaned over the foot of Ben’s bed. “If you ask me,” he said in a lowered voice, “I don’t think anybody’s too upset about that place burning down. I stepped up onto that porch a few times when I was a kid. Scared the bajeezus out of me.” Then he grinned and tipped his head at Ben, like they shared some hidden secret nobody else could even guess.
“Yeah,” Ben replied, knowing the guy was really trying
with the bedside manners but still wanting to thump his casted hand against the man’s head and scream that he didn’t even know the half of it. “I know what you mean.”
The doctor straightened again and nodded. “All right. Well, that’s all covered, then. One of the nurses will be back to check on you later this afternoon, then we’ll send you up a gourmet meal from our five-star restaurant downstairs”—he winked—“and you can sit back and enjoy the presidential suite.”
Ben forced a smile. “Sounds great.” They both knew otherwise.
24
The worst thing about not being able to use his hands was that the one tiny bit of control he might have had over his boredom levels existed in the ability to operate the TV’s remote. Which he couldn’t do.
After dinner, he’d asked the nurse to turn on the TV—it wasn’t like he could grab a book and turn the pages himself, either—then felt awful for the way she so diligently stood there, flipping through the channels when he kept saying no to the last thing she’d put on. He finally settled on some nature documentary, and that seemed to do it for a while. But then he really was incredibly tired, and the TV only kept him awake. Calling the nurse again to come turn off the channel she’d spent ten minutes finding for him was humiliating, to say the least, and he didn’t try to zone out on the Television again after that.
Peter had come to see him between Dr. Fillert stepping out and a different nurse coming to write down all his vitals again on the chart at the foot of his bed. Ben said his parents seemed to take their story pretty well, so he felt better about giving it to the police. His friend looked so much more exhausted than normal, and Ben had told him to take his car and go home.
“When they let me out,” he’d said with a smirk, “you can come pick me up and be my nurse until I can use my hands all the way again.”
Peter had eyed the stumpy casts with a wary frown, like he tried to consider just what that might entail. “I’m drawing the line at the bathroom and after you go to bed.”