by Krista Walsh
“I hope you don’t plan on bringing that young man into this,” Cheryl said.
Daphne’s eyebrows rose. “Emmett? Not at all.” She thought of how she’d dropped him off at the hospital the previous night and prayed he’d been smart enough to leave without going inside. “I don’t expect to see him again.”
Cheryl’s gaze softened. “You sound disappointed about that.”
Daphne sniffed. “I wouldn’t go that far. Just…worried. He reminds me of how I used to be, but my ambition turned me into such an idiot and almost ruined my life. I wish there was something I could do to prevent him from going down the darker roads calling to him.”
Her mother rested her hand over Daphne’s and gave her fingers a squeeze. “You never know what will happen. Sometimes people cross paths for a reason.”
Daphne cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “Regardless, I won’t be dragging him into this mess.”
“So what do you hope to do?” Evelyn asked.
Daphne dropped her chin on her palm. “I was hoping you could tell me. Even if I catch Crispy and do away with him, it doesn’t help the ghosts. And if I go after what remains of the ghost demons, I can’t be sure that hurting them won’t hurt their victims because of that connection.”
“So you need a way to detach the one from the other,” said Cheryl. She brushed her finger over her lips in thought.
“That would probably be the safest way for the ghosts,” Daphne said.
Cheryl and Evelyn exchanged a glance, and Cheryl nodded. “We’ll look into it. I know I said I didn’t like you poking around in this — and I still don’t — but I agree with you. If the spirits are still being threatened by these demons, we need to do something to help them. After everything else they’ve been through, we can’t leave them to be stuck in their own nightmares for the rest of eternity.” She shook her head. “Just when I think I’ve found a place I can settle down and leave all our family drama behind me, my daughter ends up fighting Morgrin demons.”
“While we do that, what’s your next step?” Evelyn asked.
Daphne downed her coffee and set the mug next to her half-finished plate. “Now, I’m going to return to the hospital. The demons are supposed to be extinct, which either means they got really good at hiding or there’s still a piece of the puzzle I’m missing. Maybe the old family home can tell me what that is.”
15
Peony House had lost none of its eerie atmosphere after learning what lurked in its shadows. The moment Daphne pulled her car into the driveway, the hair on her arms rose and her stomach tightened. She’d hoped the sunlight streaming into the lobby would wash out the visions of bygone days, but on the contrary, the shimmering imprints appeared even brighter. On her way to the stairway, a team of surgeons rushed out of the doctor’s lounge behind the reception area and ran through her to get to the operating room, sending waves of cold chills skittering up over her scalp.
The actual ghosts were nowhere to be seen or heard. For the first time since Daphne had visited the hospital, they slept.
The sunlight shining through the windows gave a different look to the abandoned hallways and rooms. The cracks in the pale blue walls were more visible, and the dust was thick enough that even Daphne’s mother would have considered cleaning as a lost cause. Water trickled out from one of the rooms — no doubt from the pipes coming back to life last night. Daphne stepped over the rusty swill and reached the stairs.
She checked room by room for signs of the Morgrin demon, but once again, Crispy was nowhere to be found. Frustration squeezed her lungs. She wished she had some idea of how to find him so she could plan her next step on how to stop him. As it stood, the chances of him sneaking up on her were greater than the other way around.
If she couldn’t find him, she wished she could take the time to speak with the ghosts again, but now that they were sleeping, she couldn’t even do that. She clenched her teeth at the delay. For every step forward, she felt halted by towering brick walls she couldn’t see around or over. How was she supposed to know where to go next when the paths were closed in all directions?
“Caroline Ancowitz was my closest friend,” said a young woman’s voice behind her.
Daphne jumped and found the spirit of Mary Ruth standing in the doorway of an empty room, her hands clasped in front of her. In the light, the details of her figure were even sharper — the soft embroidery of flowering vines stitched into the panels of her nightdress, the intricate lace along the collar.
“We used to tell each other everything. My family wasn’t as rich as hers. Land rich but money poor, they said. So when Caroline invited me to stay at Peony House, it was a dream coming to life.” She cast her gaze downward. “I didn’t know the day my parents left me here would be the last time I saw them.”
Daphne held out her hand, and the young woman brushed the palm with her fingers. Her hand would have passed right through, but she held it aloft, giving the appearance of contact.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Daphne said. “It wasn’t right. I’m also sorry it happened to so many others. I’ve been doing my best to figure out how to stop it. It wasn’t the old caretaker who caused it, I’ve learned that much. He actually did mean to help you. I believe more people would have died if he hadn’t sensed what was happening and tried to interrupt it. He just wasn’t always fast enough.”
Mary Ruth bowed her head. “I’m relieved about that. He seemed kind.”
Her spirit faded and returned, appearing more solid than before. If she came any closer to the divide between worlds, Daphne guessed she’d step right back into the land of the living. Another symptom of the shifting energies in the hospital.
She decided it was time to put her ghost demon theory to the test.
“What I’m going to ask you might sound strange,” she began, “but I have an idea about what might be trapping you in this place, and if I’m right, I should be able to free you.” She paused. “What does being a ghost feel like for you?”
Daphne had never asked that question before. In her previous dealings with the dead, she’d never cared. Her only goal had been to gain power. Now she was trying to let that power go free.
Old Daphne would have seen it as a waste.
Mary Ruth tilted her head. “You’d think with the amount of time I’ve had to linger in this place, I would have an easy answer for you, but I don’t. Often, I feel weightless. As though space and time mean nothing. There have been times when years have passed by in this house and I’ve only noticed it as seconds. Then there are other times…”
She trailed off and her image faded. The atmosphere around her became charged with a fear that Daphne tasted on her tongue — like the smoky acidity after a lightning strike. She was hesitant to push the subject, but after a moment Mary Ruth returned on her own.
“I’m not the only one who feels it. Every once in a while there’s…a pressure in the air. It pulls at us, like it’s trying to break us apart. It’s like being in a terrible dream where I’m overwhelmed by darkness and screams. There’s fear. A promise of eternal agony.”
Daphne swallowed hard, her skin breaking out in goosebumps.
“Have you sensed this since the hospital closed? Has it happened lately?” she asked.
Mary Ruth nodded. “Without any real sense of time, I can’t say how often or when, but those moments have felt closer together for the last little while. After the hospital went quiet, it stayed quiet for a long time, but then we started feeling it again, that heavy weight pressing us down. More and more often. It happened again the first time you came here. That’s why we were so frightened of you.”
The answer turned Daphne’s stomach. If her theory was correct, the ghost demons had grown stronger after Jack’s death. Based on Mary Ruth’s answer, this wasn’t the first time the ghosts had felt the ghost demons rise — which meant there had been more deaths at Peony House since the hospital closed. Deaths that had gone undetected and unsolved. She heave
d a breath to fight off the nausea at the thought.
“We all sense it,” Mary Ruth continued, “and we’re all afraid. Some feel it’s you who caused the change, but I don’t believe it. You don’t feel like this other power does.” She fell silent and wrung her hands. “At times some of us feel we’re in two places at once. Our awareness is both inside and outside the hospital. We’re torn, and it’s driving us mad. Can the dead go mad?”
Mary Ruth turned out of the room and walked down the hallway, appearing and disappearing depending on the angle of the sunlight. Daphne followed her, any smugness that she had been right crushed down by the weight of reality. She now had the answer — all she needed was for her mother and grandmother to help her come up with a solution.
“I know it’s scary,” she said, “but that sensation of being in multiple places at once is because the demon that killed you is nearby.”
Mary Ruth turned. “What do you mean?”
Daphne hesitated. She didn’t know if Mary Ruth wanted to know the details of how she died, but maybe knowing her curse was almost over would help put her at ease. “You were killed by a demon that devoured part of your soul. You remember saying that all of your worst memories were dragged out of you? Those memories created emotions, and those emotions were consumed. Pieces of your soul are trapped in the demon that took them. Like you, the demon got trapped in this place after it died, so you sense it. I can help you get the pieces of your soul back, but I need your help.”
The spirit bowed her head. “I’m very tired. It takes effort to come to you, and the more this pressure weighs on me, the less I have the strength to do it.”
Daphne reached out for her again, but this time Mary Ruth kept her hands tucked in front of her.
“I’ve spoken with spirits before,” said Daphne, dropping her hand by her side. “Spirits on the brink of crossing over. They see light. They feel warmth. Promises of joy and peace. That’s what is waiting for you when this is over. We’re going to end this. It won’t be much longer, but you need to stay strong. We will figure this out.”
A couple of spirits appeared in the doorways as though drawn to her description of their possible future. Mary Ruth started walking again, this time to the other end of the hallway, and Daphne trailed behind her, up the stairs to the TB ward.
More ghosts came into view, their voices rising and falling. Daphne picked up a note of warning and a chill skittered down her spine, pooling in the small of her back until the hair rose on her arms. She reached for her magic, and it responded to her call, but for the time being she let it lie still. Mary Ruth seemed calm, so she followed her lead.
“I find my thoughts drifting back to my time at Peony House more often these days,” said Mary Ruth. “I think they were the happiest days of my life. Running through the summer gardens, each bed full of the most beautiful blossoms. Smells of sweet grass and rich earth. When it rained, we’d sit on the back porch and watch the storms come in. There were no worries, no cares.”
The sadness in her voice closed Daphne’s throat.
Nothing on Mary Ruth’s face moved, but the atmosphere around her twisted and shifted with discomfort, growing murky. Four more ghosts appeared beside them, their expressions downcast. The sunshine dimmed, and Daphne hugged her arms around her torso to fend off the rising draft.
“That all changed the day Caroline’s brother, Arthur, returned from school. He was an odd boy. I never liked him. He used to trip me and then look up my dress.”
She smoothed the layers of her nightdress against her thighs, the indignity clearly still bothering her. The other ghostly figures gathered together in the hallway, watching them in silence.
“I didn’t want him there, ruining my summer, but he never left me alone. He was two years older, but acted much younger. While we ran through the garden, he would sit in the flower beds digging for worms and eating them. Caroline told me he was simple, but I didn’t like the way he looked at me.”
Mary Ruth stopped her slow stroll across the floor, and Daphne halted beside her, caught up in the story. As the spirit spoke, images projected into Daphne’s mind, and she felt more like she was watching a horror film than listening to someone share her worst memories.
“It got worse as the days passed,” she continued, turning toward Daphne with a crease between her eyebrows. “He knew things about me. He’d hint at things that happened to me long ago that no one else was supposed to know about. Like the time my father beat me with his belt or how I felt the day my sister was trampled by horses. He made me feel bad. And the more upset I got, the happier he seemed to be. I stopped sleeping. I was so tired, but whenever I fell asleep I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to play anymore, and Caroline made fun of me for being ill, which made me even more upset. On the fourth day, I finally fell asleep. I couldn’t stay awake anymore. I never woke up. My body never did, at least.”
Daphne grabbed on to the wall to steady herself, thoughts whirling through her mind and stealing her breath. Around her, the spirits shifted. Some covered their ears to block out the story, and Daphne wondered if Mary Ruth’s tale reminded them too much of their own experiences. Others squeezed their hands at their sides and stared at her with ghostly fire in their eyes, an expression Daphne recognized as vengeful.
“Mary Ruth, did you never wake up when it happened? You told me once that you felt a weight on your chest.”
The woman frowned. “You’re right. I don’t know why I forgot that. My mind is so full of noise these days. There was a heavy weight, like someone pushing me down or bracing their knees on my stomach. There was darkness, and then…I was awake again, but standing outside my own body.” She stared at Daphne. “I remember thinking I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. Then that old man was standing over me, cutting through the stickiness on my mouth. Allowing me to speak.” She dropped her gaze back to her hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything more than that.”
Daphne pushed off from the wall, her shoulder passing through a blurred spirit standing close beside her. The hallway was now full of spirits, wavering in the soft afternoon light. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Mary Ruth. Nothing at all. I think I just got my answer.”
As Daphne’s last words fell from her lips, Mary Ruth’s eyes flew wide. She whirled around to face the empty corridor and released a scream that turned Daphne’s blood to ice.
Her magic leapt up and poured through her veins, rising through her pores to coat her skin in a soft golden glow. Her blood pulsed in her ears and her vision sharpened. She spun in a circle, but the hallway was empty except for her and Mary Ruth. The other ghosts had vanished.
“I’m there,” Mary Ruth cried, tearing her ghostly hands through her hair. “I’m there, and I’m here, and I don’t know who I am anymore. Make it stop, Arthur. I want it to go away!”
She crouched down and disappeared.
Daphne’s mouth went dry as she fought the urge to run down the stairs and out the front door. She had come here to help Mary Ruth and the others, and she wouldn’t turn her back on them now. Her hair fluttered in a breeze that shouldn’t have existed, and the sense of someone watching her sent a cascade of chills from the base of her skull down her back.
She spun in another circle, but the hallway was still empty.
Her magic warmed her blood and chased away the cold. She closed her eyes and focused on the heat in her veins, using the pulse of her power as a guide for her breath, slowing it down so she could concentrate.
Fear had chased her thoughts away, but she coaxed them back.
With a deep breath, she shifted part of her mind to the plane between the spirits’ world and hers, revealing a layer of the hallway that remained invisible to anyone who hadn’t trained themselves to see. In this plane, her own spirit shimmered and she saw all of the ghosts who had vanished from sight — they cowered in the doorways, gaping down the hallway at a man who stood in front of the window at the end. She heard their whimpers of terror, and her own fear
nearly pulled her out of her trance. Her shaking breath sped up and grew shallow, and she struggled to keep it slow.
To distract herself from trembling, she concentrated on the man. At first, he appeared as nothing more than a silhouette, but then he stepped toward her, blocking the glare of the window. She took in everything, from the intricate paisley design on his waistcoat and the even stitching on his jacket to the thick silver chain of his pocket watch dangling over his stomach. He appeared to be around forty years old, his dark hair striped with gray and oiled back on the sides. He stood with his hands behind his back.
So calm, so unobtrusive. Nothing scary about him at all.
And yet Daphne’s heart rate sped up again and her palms went clammy. His presence reeked of otherness, of something more than human. She expected to sense evil, but instead, he appeared confused, just as lost as the others.
“Help me,” he said, taking another step forward. He stretched his hands out toward her in supplication. His voice was layered — a human baritone on the surface, with a grating rasp underneath that grew louder the more he spoke. “I’m so hungry. I need to eat.”
He broke into a run, and Daphne’s mind went numb. Unable to think of a better spell, she shot a ball of pure magic from her hands. The power hit him square in the chest and he evaporated, ribbons of smoke leaching out from where he’d been.
Her heart slammed in her chest and her breath came in gulps. She whirled in a slow circle, braced for him to reappear at any moment. His energy remained in the air — not defeated, just broken apart. It wouldn’t take him long to put himself back together.
But she wasn’t ready to fight him yet. Not when beating him carried the possibility of hurting the souls he’d stolen. She refused to let his victims suffer any more for his crimes. He wasn’t some spirit who needed help crossing over — he was what remained of a Morgrin demon, and she was the one who needed help.