by Angie Fox
I could have kissed her. “You did it!” I said to Joan.
But as I spoke, the ghost of Crazy Charlie shimmered into existence at the bottom of the stairs. His lip curled, and he held up his knife.
“Remember me?” I implored him.
He raised the knife.
“He’s going to stab us!” Joan shrieked.
“You can see him?” I demanded as she took off and ran down the passageway to our left. Of all the times for her to actually see a ghost. “Joan!” I called after her. She couldn’t go running off with a killer on the loose just because another killer appeared in front of us. Not when the killer in front of us was a ghost. He couldn’t even stab her. But he could kill me, so I tried to smile at him. I raised both my hands.
“Charlie, you’ve got to remember me,” I pleaded, ignoring the way he pointed directly at me and hollered something angry, something I couldn’t understand.
“You’re upset!” I said, trying to sound calm. “I get it.”
I was in big trouble here.
“Let’s all just relax,” I said as I heard a foot grind on the gravel behind me. I turned to look, and everything went black.
20
I woke up under a bright light that stung my eyes and made them water. Above me shone a round examination light with so many bulbs inside it looked like a bug’s eye. I squinted through the glare and detected skeleton-like broken filaments and a rusted metal frame.
I struggled to sit up, but I couldn’t move. Thick canvas straps secured my wrists to the bed rails. I was tied just like Joan had been. And Tom, before he’d been electrocuted.
Do not panic.
My fingers scrabbled against the rusted metal bed of a very real hospital gurney. I lay prone, helpless.
I turned away to get relief from the brightness, and the back of my head seared with pain. Someone had bashed me from behind. It had to be Brett or Cash. Probably both of them.
“Okay, guys,” I called, fighting to keep my voice even and my head on straight. “I don’t know what your game is…”
Or how I could get out of this.
Maybe I could appeal to Brett’s intellect. Or Cash’s fear for his scholarship. They had their whole futures ahead of them, and murder would look terrible on anyone’s permanent record.
Except they’d already killed Barbara. And Tom.
And they knew I knew the truth.
“Guys?” I worked to keep a friendly tone as I searched for any sign of them beyond the blinding light. “What’s going on?” I croaked.
I tested the straps on my arms again. Tight. My legs had been bound as well.
I’d figure out a way to talk them out of this. It was the only thing I could do.
But they didn’t respond.
Had they left me alone?
As my eyes adjusted, I saw the shadow of a woman in a white uniform. Oh, thank goodness. “Nurse Claymore,” I called, and hoped against hope it would be her. We’d bonded somewhat in that last examination room, and while I didn’t think Nurse Claymore was ever the type to be warm and fuzzy with me—or even tell me her first name—she did seem to have a soft spot for people who needed help. And I sure could use a hand here. “Nurse?” I called again.
This was her chance to make a difference. She might not be able to untie me, but she could at least alert Frankie, who could tell Ellis.
Through the app that the ghost hunters controlled. It wasn’t like I had a choice. No plan was perfect.
“Frankie!” I hollered.
“Shhh…” Nurse Claymore glided to my side, worry creasing her brow. If I’d been untied, I’d have reached out and hugged her. “You’re all right, Verity,” she assured me.
Actually, I wasn’t, but I would be soon.
“Oh, yes. I love you,” I said in a rush as she directed the light out of my eyes. “You’ve got to get me out of here.”
She seemed taken aback by my enthusiasm. “You’re just fine,” she instructed as if she could make me that way by will alone.
“I’m actually quite terrible,” I pointed out, “but I appreciate the thought.” Her manner was kind of mechanical, and not all that comforting, but she’d tried. And I liked that I had a stable, logical woman with me because she was going to have to do the impossible. She would have to figure out how to untie me when she couldn’t even touch the straps binding me down. “Okay,” I said, swallowing hard, “listen. We’re going to work through this, but I need your help.”
“You have it,” she assured me. She pulled up a medical cart next to the bed, full of sharp pointy tweezers and shots and, oh—a pair of scissors.
That was great. The ghost scissors wouldn’t do me much good, but I saw a rusted pair of real ones underneath. If she could just lean the tray to where I could grab them, I might be able to cut my way out.
“This could be tricky,” I said as she selected an instrument from the tray. “You don’t want to drop anything or we’ll really be sunk.”
“Don’t worry.” She turned to me. “I have it all under control.” Then she stabbed my arm with a monster of a needle.
What? “Oww!” My arm screamed like it was on fire. “Wha-what did you do?” This was nuts.
“I caught our killer,” she said simply.
She couldn’t possibly think… No. “Stop. Listen! The killers are the ghost hunters,” I said, talking fast because my head had started to go woozy. My arm felt numb. “They’re downstairs right now trying to escape. You heard them,” I said, my voice going wonky because my lips felt like they were detached from my body, and I couldn’t quite think straight.
But my words had hit home. I saw it in the set of her jaw.
She’d listened to the ghost hunters plotting when my radio had gone off.
Thank heaven my radio had blurted all our plans.
She knew the truth.
I flumped my head back on the pillow, sending waves of pain through my skull.
She knew. She had to know. So why was she doing this?
Nurse Claymore withdrew the needle from my arm and held it up next to her, observing me.
“Help me,” I said on my last good breath, “please.”
“I am,” she said coldly, clinically. “I’m helping you take the blame for what happened tonight.” She placed the syringe back on the tray. “It’s not like you’re the type to go quietly.”
“Wha—?” If my head could just stop hurting for a second, I could think straight. She wasn’t making sense.
A grin tickled the corner of her lip. “You don’t really think those two puny ghost hunters killed Barbara, do you?”
I stared at her. If not them, who else?
Then it dawned on me, and her smile widened at my recognition. “As a medical professional, I shouldn’t enjoy death, but I have to admit that Barbara woman had it coming.”
No. Oh, no, no, no.
Frankie had always said a powerful enough ghost could kill the living. I’d suspected ghosts in crimes before. And we’d seen massive energy inside this asylum tonight.
But Frankie always said the dead wouldn’t bother to kill the living because it took so much energy, and they didn’t care enough about us to flat out kill one of us.
So what was Nurse Claymore thinking? She had to be out of her mind to want to kill Barbara and me, and, oh my word, who else?
Nurse Claymore placed her syringe back on the cart beside the bed. “Don’t worry. You won’t feel a thing. I will see that you are treated humanely.”
“You…” I forced the words out. I couldn’t feel my face or my tongue. “You can’t just go around killing people.”
But she could, and she had.
“I didn’t do anything,” I slurred. Barbara had offended her. Tom wanted to turn her asylum into a resort.
But all I wanted to do was help the people here. Tell their stories.
Set them free.
A ragged moan sounded from the hallway.
The ghostly door lay closed, but the one in the morta
l realm had long since fallen from its hinges. Through the transparent, gray wood, I could see the outline of a man.
“Glory be,” Claymore tsked as if the lost soul were a nuisance. “Mr. Rink is wandering again.”
He was the one who’d cut himself from stress, the man who lived on the third floor, the one Juliet had tried to protect. I’d thought Nurse Claymore had been concerned for his well-being, too. But maybe she was just trying to eliminate disruptions.
She opened the door to the hallway as Mr. Rink stumbled by, his dirty hospital gown slipping away from one bony shoulder.
Poor soul.
“Help!” I called, and he stopped. “Get help!” I hollered, my throat raw with the effort.
He stared at me with glassy eyes. Then he turned and continued down the hallway once more.
“You really expect an idiot like that to save you?” Nurse Claymore hissed.
“He’s not—” Sweet heaven. I slumped back onto the gurney.
“He’s out of his mind,” she said. “They all are.”
Mr. Rink couldn’t do anything to save me. He couldn’t even save himself.
“I’m not allowed to be a doctor. I’m not allowed to work on real patients. I have to work here,” she said, returning to me.
“Dr. Anderson gave you a chance.” My breath came in pants. “He trusts you.” And it seemed he’d been far too trusting. Did she get off on torture? On pain? “What are you doing to me?” I demanded, my voice slurred, my head pounding.
“Same thing I did to Mr. Rink,” she said, letting the door swing closed. “It’s a simple procedure. You’ll be pleased to know I learned it in medical school,” she added as if mocking my earlier belief in her. “Once I sever the neural connections of the frontal lobe, you’ll become as docile as that lamb.”
“You don’t—” I struggled for a breath “—need to do anything to me,” I said on an exhale.
She stood over me and looked down as if I were some sort of science experiment.
“You asked too many questions,” she said simply. “I can’t let you endanger my life here. I have to keep the ghosts in this place under control. I have to keep them from speaking with the doctor.” She turned back to her cart and retrieved another syringe. “I need to up your dose. You should be unconscious already.”
She really didn’t. “Please.”
She tested the syringe. “First this Barbara came and started looking for ghosts, trying to sell our stories, making the patients into monsters.” She shrugged. “That was fine. They are beasts. But I’m not.”
Barbara was going to portray her as the psychotic nurse.
How right Barbara had been.
“She made me so…angry.” Her mouth formed a tight line. “I acted without thinking. Then I had to lock you all in and try to figure out which one of you would take the blame for the killing.” She sighed. “I would have let you out afterward, but you had to go and tell Dr. Anderson about the murder before I could. You upset him, and he took control of everything.”
Nurse Claymore selected a small glass container of gray ghostly liquid.
Would it even work on me? I supposed it already had.
She inserted the needle and drew the liquid up into the syringe. “Then the Burowskis began prying into every corner, biding their time before they could bring more and more people into these rooms.” Her voice hardened. “Meanwhile, you started investigating…everything. Do you ever stop?” she asked sharply. “Did you realize how much I wanted to open the doors and shove you all out? I can’t keep control under these conditions. And if I can’t keep control, then Dr. Anderson…”
She was hiding something from the doctor. “You did something, something horrible, to someone,” I whispered. “That’s it, isn’t it? And you don’t want him to find out.”
She tilted her head as if conceding the point. “It was an accident,” she said, all logic, in control, as she measured the medicine into the syringe. “But then Mary discovered what happened,” she added, her expression darkening. “That nurse always had a troublesome conscience. It was a tragedy when she slipped into the tub.”
I’d seen Mary’s ghost. Hers wasn’t the image of a woman who’d had a minor accident. “You pushed her. You held her down.” I could see it in her now, the ruthlessness. The utter lack of humanity.
She shot me a cold look as she replaced the medicine container exactly where she’d found it. “That Loretta girl saw. At first, I didn’t think it would be an issue. She was pathologically paranoid, after all. But then she started talking. She told anyone who would listen.” She checked the syringe. “Thankfully, Juliet and Dr. Anderson never believed her, but Mr. Rink, well, I found a way to silence him without killing again.” Satisfied, she approached me, syringe in hand. “And now I will silence you the same way.”
A knock sounded at the door. “Nurse?” Dr. Anderson asked, poking his head in the door.
Oh, thank goodness. I was saved.
“In here!” I called. “She’s going to tell you I’m a killer, but I’m not. She—”
Claymore jammed the needle into my arm. I felt it like fire in my veins.
“I’m innocent. She killed Barbara. She’s trying to…cover it…up.” The pain left my head and I felt like I was floating.
“She’s in denial,” Claymore insisted. “A classic case of dissociative personality disorder. I’ve done the full write-up.” She handed the doctor the chart at the bottom of my gurney.
I opened my mouth to object, but nothing came out.
He took my chart with a nod and began to read. And while he did, Nurse Claymore placed the used syringe back on the tray, in perfect order.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak.
“I never would have imagined,” the doctor murmured, scanning the pages. “I don’t know how I missed the pathology in this one.”
Nurse Claymore cast her eyes to the floor in humble servitude. “You only met her once. And you can’t prevent every bad thing in the world.” She turned to face me, the corner of her mouth ticking up. “Verity followed the woman, Barbara, downstairs to the boiler room,” she said as if it were fact. As if it were real. “Verity hit Barbara in the back of the head and murdered her. I saw it myself. That’s why I ordered the lockdown.”
I tried to tell the doctor it wasn’t true. My face was numb, but I forced my mouth to work up a stark denial. Only it came out like “Gnnnh,” and then she was talking again.
“This case is clear,” she said to the doctor. “This one has a savior complex. She has been trying to find a way to force your patients out of the asylum.” She treated me to a long cold look. “She feels she is freeing them,” she added as if the entire idea were preposterous. “She killed the woman because she felt her exploitation of the dead was cruel and killed the man because she heard of his plans to renovate this property.”
I tried again to tell him no, that everything she said was a lie, but I made no noise at all.
Claymore folded her hands in front of her and glanced toward the doctor. “You know that those driven by what they consider a righteous purpose and no moral safeguard of conscience can be the most dangerous cases.”
He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Terrible, but true.”
No. Actually, in my case, one hundred percent false. I had to talk to him. I had to make him understand. I struggled against the straps holding me down, but I could only manage to curl my fingers and feel the rough canvas of my restraints.
Ohmygod. I was completely immobilized.
I tried to scream, tried to yell, but all I could manage was a wide-eyed gurgle that horrified me down to my toes and only made Dr. Anderson shake his head sadly.
“So much pain. So much death,” he lamented.
He gave me one last pitiful glance before he signed the chart. “We can’t change what you did, young Verity,” he said, “but we can save you from yourself.”
What? No. He had to save me from Nurse Claymore. He was the only hop
e I had left!
He reached out to touch my head, then thought better of it. “You’re safe now,” he coaxed. “You won’t hurt anybody else.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit.
I thrashed as hard as I could, but my body remained motionless, my wrists and ankles numb against the ties.
“She’s a fighter,” Claymore said as if I were a caught fish or a bug under glass.
The doctor turned away. “You can take it from here,” he said, moving to the sink to wash his hands.
“It would be my pleasure. You’re already so busy,” Nurse Claymore assured him, and there—I saw it—a wicked gleam in her eye. “I’ll make sure it’s done right.”
She was enjoying this.
The doctor gave a sharp nod. “Good work,” he said, leaving us—leaving me—the ghostly door snicking closed behind him.
21
Nurse Claymore treated me to a predatory smile.
She had me, and we both knew it.
No. No, she didn’t. This would not happen. It was wrong. It was inconceivable. This was—
Nurse Claymore swabbed my head with a ghostly cold gauze pad that chilled me to the bones. Her touch, combined with the alcohol smell, made my stomach turn.
“All I ever did was my job,” she said, turning the pad over and swabbing again. “You wanted to make me look like a monster.”
Hardly. I’d been on her side. I’d—well, I’d wanted to find a way out for the people trapped here. Apparently, she’d viewed that as threatening, even if I didn’t mean it that way.
She disposed of the pad in a small canister on the lower shelf of the cart. “I never had the choices you do. I was ahead of my time. I had to work to survive.”
And I admired Nurse Claymore’s trailblazing spirit but not the destination it had led her to. Somewhere along the line, she’d twisted it. Made her ambition into something ugly.
“I had to pretend to be a nurse, working on subhuman, incurable people,” she sneered.
She was sick, twisted beyond belief.