by Alexie Aaron
“Are you expecting the cavalry?” he asked.
Mia opened her hand, and inside was a black feather. “They are already here.”
She turned her attention to the Other. “Can we stop this now? It won’t be a profitable venture if you lose more men.”
“A contract is a contract,” the Other said.
Murphy tossed Mia in the air. She was caught by the arms of Nicholai. She pointed her knives downward, and as he strafed the squad of killers behind them, she dragged her knives through the crowd. Angelo dropped down and turned and attacked the group from the back. Nicholai landed and cleared three of them off their feet with his mighty wings. Mia picked up a fallen dagger from one of the killers and ran over to help Murphy with the Others.
He was battling the fresh Other while the tall one prepared himself to call for more reinforcements. She had to stop him. There was only one way to stop the SOS. She had to kill the contract-holding Other.
“Hey, stretch, you want me dead? Well, come and get me!” Mia called.
The tall Other had had it with this brat. She was costing him money. He drew his sword and swung it several times. Each time, he was surprised by her blocking the swipe. He backed up and walked around, looking for the best way to fight the diminutive human. He smiled. He drew a second sword and brought one sword down, which Mia caught with hers. He then thrust the other forward.
Mia read his moves as if it were Dr. Seuss. She stepped aside, letting the weight of the Other propel him forward onto the ground.
He was quick and rolled over, but Mia was quicker. She landed with her knee to the creature’s throat. She reached inside his coat, drew out the contract, set it on his chest, and drove the dagger into his heart. “Contract canceled!” she called out.
And as the Other’s blood soaked into the paper, the fighting stopped. Mia got up, her legs wobbly. “You can collect your dead, but the contract’s canceled right?” she asked the new Other.
“Yes. Well played, Mia Cooper.”
“Mia!” Orion called.
Mia looked around her. “Where is he?”
“On the other side of the wall tending to your fallen comrade,” Nicholai said.
“Ted?” Mia asked.
Nicholai nodded.
Mia ran full out, vaulted the wall, and landed just shy of where Orion was administering to what was left of Theodore Martin. Orion shook his head before Mia could ask if he could be saved.
She knelt, putting her face close to the teen’s. “Hang on, Teddy Bear. Angelo can take you to the aerie.”
Angelo prepared himself to do exactly that when Orion shook his head again. “He won’t make it. Make your peace now.”
“Mia, I didn’t see them coming. They tossed me around like a dog’s chew toy. I was holding a bomb at the time. I blew them and myself up,” he confessed.
“We wouldn’t have survived the first onslaught if it wasn’t for you. You’re my superhero,” Mia said, stroking his face.
“I’m Batman,” Ted said in a hoarse whisper. “You go and find Burt. You find him, and I live again. If you don’t, you’ll have to marry Mike. He said he had dibs.”
“No, you stay with me. Orion, please…” Mia begged.
Ted coughed hard. Whatever had kept him alive this long faded away and with it Ted.
Mia’s world went red. She got up and stumbled away, tears and snot running down her face. Angelo reached out to comfort her, and she growled and drew her knives and hissed, “Stay away from me!”
“Mia!” Murphy shouted, knocking the knives out of her hands.
Mia looked at her hands and then at Angelo. “I’m sorry, I’m not myself.”
“It’s understandable,” he said.
Murphy turned her around and took her blood-streaked face in his hands. “Mia, we have to find Burt. He may not listen to Mike. These guys will take care of making sure the Others don’t send any more assassins. It’s Orion, Angelo, and Nicholai, you trust them in the future. Trust them now to get you out of this.”
Mia turned and looked down at Ted. There was nothing left but a broken shell.
“Mia, we should leave soon,” Orion said. “Ted’s explosions may have attracted attention. We are witnesses to the canceling of the contract. We’ll do our best to stop this from happening again, but you still have a chance to set everything right.”
“You’re right. I have to at least try,” Mia said. “Murphy…” Mia asked.
“I’m coming,” he said. He watched her recall her knives, pick up Ted’s backpack, and walk towards the hospital. He turned to Orion. “If she doesn’t complete this task, she’s going to embrace her demon side, collect forty legions of demons owed to her, and go on a rampage. I’m afraid she’ll not listen to me. She’s losing her humanity. Ted was her last hope that somehow she could get it all back.”
“We’ll be back,” Orion promised.
Murphy picked up his axe and followed Mia.
Nicholai watched the battle-weary little girl walk away before addressing Orion, “I don’t like her odds in there. Maybe I should stay behind.”
“Did you see her fight?” Orion said proudly. “That was some of the best fighting I’d ever seen.”
“I’ve seen it before,” Angelo said and patted Nicholai on the back. “It is almost as if she had you for a teacher.”
~
Mia opened the door and slid inside. She looked around her and tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
On the open-arms staircase, there were dozens of ghosts standing in their bedclothes with bedpans held up as shields. Each had a weapon made of a piece of silverware tied to a broom handle. They snapped to attention as someone entered the lobby. Mia turned to see a willowy man in a long coat. He wore his collar high, but Mia could tell that he’d faced death at the end of a rope.
She slowly let the pack slip off her back.
“Welcome to my kingdom,” the lab-coated, self-proclaimed king said to the blood-soaked little girl.
Mia curtsied and thrust her hand inside the pack. She grabbed the necklace Ted had made for her. She put it over her head. “Please excuse my appearance, sire,” she said. “You see, I had to fight my way in here.”
Murphy arrived.
“May I present my knight, Sir Stephen.”
Murphy opened his mouth to say something but chose to play along with Mia. He took a knee.
The crazy king, Mia suspected was the maniacal last doctor of the place, said, “You may rise, Sir Stephen.”
“I’m Mia, and I’m looking for lost members of my court. Another knight, a boy, and my lady in waiting.”
The king lifted an eyebrow. “I may have seen them. What are you doing here?”
“We’ve been looking for my consort. A tall fellow, brown hair, and brown eyes.”
One of the insane soldiers whispered something in the king’s ear. He nodded in understanding. “I think I can help you out. Your court are my prisoners, but your consort is a prisoner of his own making. He has barricaded himself in a cell.
“Can we sit and discuss the release of my court?” Mia asked sweetly.
“Who’s to say you’re not my prisoner right now?”
“I do,” Murphy said, raising his axe.
The king looked down at them with his dead eyes. “There are more of us than you.”
“But I have reapers at my beck and call,” Mia bluffed. “They are anxious to locate spirits who interfere with the living. Have you ever battled a reaper before?”
The king looked blank.
“No? Well, they are these giant black hands. They scoop you up and crush you into the Dark World,” Mia said as she demonstrated with her own hands. “There, you will walk forever in the darkness without a companion.”
The crazy king could see the truth in her words. He didn’t like the idea of being alone for an eternity.
Mia continued, “But why is that necessary when you have this nice setup here?” she asked. “Let my court go. Let me retrieve my consort, and we’ll le
ave and never come back.”
“Very well, I’ll take you to your court, but I must warn you that I will put up with no interference from you and yours regarding my kingdom.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Mia said.
“Come,” the king said. “Afterwards, we could speak of my theory about pain?”
“I imagine you have extensive knowledge of the subject,” Mia said.
They followed the king into the lower halls. They moved into the darkness. Mia could see the monarch because he continuously drew power from his subjects as he passed them. She glanced back and saw the drained ghosts gray out and float away in the spectral breeze that moved throughout the building. She worried about Murphy. Could this parasite pull her friend and protector’s energy away? Was there any way to stop it?
The king and his small contingent of insane soldiers stopped at an old pair of swinging doors where a solid piece of wood had been slipped through the handles of the twin doors. The chicken-wire glass windows were too dirty to see inside.
“Your court is inside. I will leave you to become reacquainted,” he said and motioned for the bar to be removed.
“May I find you in your throne room?” Mia asked.
The ghost shifted, slightly confused.
“Your office?” she asked quickly, realizing that the insanity that had the doctor seeing the hospital as his kingdom wasn’t a consistent delusion.
“Yes, little girl, I would appreciate the visit. I’ll clear my calendar.”
Mia picked up the piece of wood and carried it inside what turned out to be an old recreational room for the less dangerous patients.
“Mike? Glenda? Cid?” she called into what appeared to be an empty room.
“Mia?” Cid asked, running out from his hiding space. He stopped when he spotted the condition of her clothes. “What happened? Where is Ted?”
Mia’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Cid, he’s gone.”
Cid pulled his glasses off and looked at the floor.
“He died a hero,” Murphy said. “He saved us.”
Mia took the boy’s hands in hers and squeezed them. “We will have him back once we find Burt,” she promised, not fully believing at this point it was possible. “Have you seen any trace of him?”
“They were waiting for us. We didn’t get any further than the front hall. Glenda managed to get a few shots off before we were surrounded.”
“Where are the Duprees? I was told they were in here,” Mia said.
Murphy did a quick circle and shook his head.
“Last I saw, they were being marched in the opposite direction. They didn’t think I was much of a threat, so I was tossed in here,” Cid said. “I was working on cutting through the chicken wire of the windows over there to get out,” he said, leading them over to the outside wall.
Mia looked out the windows and down at the drop that awaited Cid if he were successful. “I don’t understand, isn’t this the ground level?”
“This building is cut into the side of the hill. There are several floors under this one,” Cid said pointing. “You can just see the other wing if you squish your face up here.”
Mia did so and noticed that most of the windows were either barred or bricked up. There was one that looked odd, but she couldn’t quite make out why from her perspective. “Well, let’s get out of here and find the others.”
“We stick together,” Murphy insisted.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I have a feeling about that window over there,” Mia said. “The one with the plastic bag over it. Murph, go out and see if you can get in.”
Murph took off. He came back immediately. “Can’t.”
“Why? Are there iron bars?” she asked.
“No, salt.”
“That’s where Burt is!” Mia said excited. “The head ghost said that he was barricaded in his cell.”
Mia dropped her pack and outfitted Cid with a few surprises if the ghosts outside turned on them. “Ted certainly put together a lot of clever deterrents,” Mia approved. “Come on, guys, it’s time to press restart!”
Chapter Nineteen
Mia and Cid ran behind Murphy as they headed towards the area where the plastic-covered window had been spotted. Murphy didn’t know which floor, so he stopped at the stairs and suggested, “You go upstairs. That’s where the offices are. If you’re stopped, tell them you’re looking for the doctor. We’ll continue on down here. I think, four rooms beyond the stairs, but I can’t be certain.”
Mia nodded and charged up the stairs. She poked her head in the offices as she passed them. They were pretty much destroyed. Books were torn from the shelves and various medical implements were scattered around. She moved deeper into the next wing. She saw a dark shadow that ducked into an office. Mia strode over and pushed in the door.
“MIA, STOP!” Mike shouted.
Mia backed up and stared into the room. The room had no floor in the middle. Mike was strapped to a gurney directly opposite the open maw. One of the casters was dangling over the empty space.
Mia inched around the edges of the room and pulled the gurney backwards away from danger. She unstrapped Mike. “Where’s your mother?”
“She’s in the next office. I hear her cussing through the wall. They took Cid.”
“Cid’s with Murphy. We found him first.”
“Where’s Ted?”
“Dead,” Mia said and raised her hand before Mike could say more. Mia’s hold on sanity was hanging by a thread.
There was a crash below them.
“Oh my god,” Cid said.
Mia dropped to her stomach and tried to look over the edge. “Cid, what’s wrong?”
Cid forced himself to look up at her. “We found Burt.”
Mia didn’t wait until another word was said. She inched her way back around the room and ran down the hall and down the stairs. She arrived at the cell. Murphy tried to stop her from entering but stepped aside when she growled at him.
Burt lay on his back. His sightless eyes stared upward. His lower torso was open, and someone had filled it with dirt. In the bloody dirt was planted deadly webcap mushrooms. Mia rushed over to Burt and knelt beside him. She was not willing to believe this was the outcome of her quest.
Cid had found the tape recorder and rewound the tape. He pressed play.
Burt’s voice filled the room.
“I hear explosions. My door has opened. Maybe the vibrations jiggled something loose. I’m going to make a run for it…”
Cid plugged in the earphones he found and listened. He took out the tape and put another tape in. He shook his head and took it out. He spied the Tupperware and the cassette inside. He saw it was for Mia, but he put it in the recorder anyway.
Mia felt Burt’s face and shook her head. “He’s not been dead long. How the hell did this happen?” She reached over and carefully picked up a mushroom. “It’s not even growing.”
“Of course not. It takes time for fungi to take hold,” a reedy voice said from the dark corner of the room.
Mia looked over at the ghost. She didn’t see a crazy old man; she saw a murderer.
“Did you do this?” she asked, getting up, her hands closing into fists.
“I didn’t kill him, but I did take advantage of the fresh corpse.”
“GET OUT OF HERE!” she shouted.
“I was here first,” the old man said stubbornly.
Murphy was on him in a minute. He pushed him to the ceiling using the head of his axe. “Who killed him?” Murphy asked.
“That insane doctor!” Glenda called down from the room above. “He was just crowing to me that you just had to have patience to get patients.”
“I did this,” Mia cried. “It was our explosions, our noise. We should have called the cops when we suspected Burt was here. But no, I had to be the one to find him. Oh my god, Burt. I’m so sorry,” Mia said, shutting his eyes.
“Mia, Ma’s hurt. I’m going to get her out of here and call the police,” Mi
ke said from above her.
“Take Cid with you. I’ll stay with Burt, and Murphy will watch over Ted,” Mia said slowly.
Cid got up and stopped. “No, I’ll go out and stay with Ted. You two stay with Burt. Mia, this isn’t your fault. He pulled out the earphone cord so the others could hear what he heard.
“As I sit here, I wonder why this investigation seemed more important than, let’s say, finding a way to subvert the Cynosura in this time or maybe even rescue you from the world of hurt you’re living through. But all I could think of was getting here. Was it my selfishness or something else? Why was this investigation so important? Did the ghosts from this wretched place call to me across time and space? I really wish I had stayed on course and ended up at Mike’s house.”
Cid stopped the tape. “There’s more. It had a label to get this to you in Illinois,” Cid explained.
“Wait,” Mia said. “He wished he had gone to Mike’s house… He wished…” Mia looked at Cid. “Did you find the candle?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to wish us back in time, aren’t you?” Mia said.
“Yes.”
“You’re going to wish us back to the moment we met in the school,” Mia confirmed.
“Am I so transparent?” Cid asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
“No, I think we think alike. Maybe this is why we understand each other from the start,” Mia said.
Cid handed Mia the candle.
“No. You’re going to make that wish. Because if I make it, you won’t know why we are meeting. Murphy and I will remember anyway. It may take a moment for that old fart, but I’ll know right away.”
Cid pulled out a lighter.
“WAIT!” Mia shouted and then explained, “The caveat of the candle is that all in this room will be affected and ghosts will remember. That includes him.” Mia pointed to the ghost Murphy still held at bay.
Mia rose and scooped the mushrooms out of Burt’s body with the Tupperware container. She put the lid on and handed it to the ghost. “Take these and return to your remains. They won’t grow in this body because it’s going to disappear.”