by Libba Bray
“Kiss us, kiss us!” the ghosts demanded.
“Sorry. I only date one at a time,” Sam said. He grabbed Evie’s hand and pushed Conor through the basement toward the stairs. The ghosts howled with anger.
“This way!” Conor led them into a cramped, unused room with a sweat box.
“How do you know where to go?” Sam panted.
“The lady,” Conor said. “Here.” He pointed to a window with no bars.
“Beautiful!” Sam snugged it open. “Ladies first.”
“Sam?” Evie said, coming around.
“Yeah. You’re gonna hate me for this but…” And with that, Sam pushed her out the window. Sam heard her land with an “Oof!” followed by an angry “Saaam!”
“She’s okay,” Sam said, nodding. “You next.”
Conor slid through the window and made the small drop to the ground. Sam followed. He slid down the muddy hill and nearly plummeted into the churning currents of the Hell Gate.
Evie yanked him to safety by the edge of his shirt, ripping it. “Thanks. You owe me a shirt,” Sam said.
“You owe me twenty dollars.”
Up front in the administration building, an antsy Theta smoked a cigarette and looked out at the rain and fog settling over the island. Memphis and the others had been gone a long time. Shouldn’t they be back by now? And where was Henry? It didn’t help that Isaiah was sullen and focusing all of his hostility on her.
“You wanna play cards?” she asked, a peace offering.
“No, thanks,” Isaiah mumbled as he drew.
“I know you don’t like me,” Theta said finally.
“Never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Isaiah cast a sidelong glance at Theta and went back to his sketching. “Since you been around, Memphis don’t have time to play ball with me or go to the games or nothing. He’d rather be with you.”
“Memphis loves you more than anybody.”
“No, he don’t.”
“Yes, he does.” Theta took a deep breath. “And anyway, I’m about to be around a lot less.”
“How come?”
“I got my reasons.”
“Swell. Now Memphis’ll blame me.”
“No. He won’t.”
“Yes, he will! When you’re a kid, you always get blamed for everything!” Isaiah said.
“You won’t get blamed for this,” Theta said sadly. She took a drag, let it out. “It really bugs you being treated like a kid.”
“And how,” Isaiah said on a sigh.
Theta stubbed out her cigarette. “You’re right. That’s not fair. Come on. Let’s go find the others.”
Isaiah looked wary. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Come on. Let’s ankle.”
Theta wanted this night to be over. Even more than the thought of spending the night in the asylum, she dreaded the conversation with Memphis to come.
It was the lights Theta noticed first as they approached ward A. They were winking on and off. It was disorienting. And very creepy. The doors were shut, but when Theta reached for the knob, they creaked open.
Isaiah stopped short. “I got a bad feeling.”
“Like a regular bad feeling, like your stomach hurts… or a we oughta run bad feeling?”
Isaiah was scared, but he didn’t want her to know it. Hadn’t he said he wanted to be treated like a big kid, like the rest of them? If he looked like a coward, they’d probably never let him come along again. He stepped into the corridor.
“Smoky in here,” Theta said, coughing. “Somebody musta forgot to open a flue or something.” As they made their way down the hall, Theta saw that the doors to the patients’ rooms were open, but many of the patients were missing. Others sat on their beds staring out.
“The Forgotten, the Forgotten, we are the Forgotten,” they whispered as Theta and Isaiah passed by.
Isaiah was truly frightened now. Even more so when he heard screams and deranged laughter coming from somewhere he couldn’t see. There were marks on the clean walls. Bloody handprints. The laughter got stronger.
“Theta,” he said.
“Yeah. I see,” she said. “I think we better turn back.”
They turned around and the doors slammed shut, sealing them inside.
Isaiah’s eyes rolled back in his head. His body shook. “We are the Forgotten, forgotten no more,” he said in a strangled whisper.
“Isaiah! Oh, please don’t do this, please don’t,” Theta begged.
Someone was coming toward them. A doctor moved carefully down the dim hall, pushing a wheelchair in front of him with a nurse seated there. His coat rested on the seat, across the nurse’s lap, and his shirtsleeves had been rolled to the elbows. The doctor’s head swept left and right, looking.
“Doctor!” Theta called. “Can you help me? My friend is sick.…”
The doctor’s head whipped in their direction. The faulty light blinked on, off, on, off. But it had been enough to see: Blood spattered the good doctor’s suit. The nurse’s eyes were fixed and a gash marred her pretty throat. The doctor reached under his coat and retrieved the ax hidden there. His gaze drifted ceiling-ward. His lips stretched into a tight smile. His teeth glinted in the blinking light.
“She questioned my authority, the bitch. Can you imagine?” The doctor laughed. It was the laugh Theta had heard earlier, the deranged one.
“Polly Pratchet had a hatchet. Worked it night and day,” the doctor said, grunting as he swung the ax. “Polly Pratchet had a hatchet. Now you’d better pray!”
“They got inside him,” Isaiah said, coming out of his trance. “He belongs to them.”
Theta grabbed Isaiah’s hand and ran, searching for a place to hide. Behind them, the doctor’s voice splintered as if several of him spoke at once: “We are the Forgotten, forgotten no more.”
They came to a stairwell that led down to the second and first floors. Isaiah pulled back on Theta’s hand and shook his head. “We shouldn’t go down there.”
The doctor staggered after them, dragging his ax along the floor behind him, leaving a trail of blood. Theta could just make out the wisps of blue mist coming off him, as if he were made of ice inside.
“We can’t go back that way. This is the only way out.”
Theta knew not to ignore Isaiah’s premonitions. But what choice did they have? She stretched her fingers, as if trying to work heat into them, but no spark would come. Theta peered over the stair railing. The flickering bulb overhead made it hard to see. Down below, it was completely dark. Worse, the staircase wound around; if somebody or something was hiding around a curve, they wouldn’t know until it was too late.
“All right. I’ll go first. Stay behind me, okay?”
Isaiah nodded, and they stepped into the stairwell, away from the madman with the ax screaming behind them. Theta took a few tentative steps. Her legs quivered. She feared they’d give way completely. She’d never been so terrified. The scraping of the ax echoed even in the stairwell’s gloom. She reached the first landing, between the second and third floors. “Okay. It’s safe.”
Isaiah stepped down quietly behind her.
“So far so good,” she said.
But the passage to the second floor was much darker. Theta could barely make out the steps in the gloom. Anything could be down there. The doctor laughed as he clanged the ax against the door. He was inside the stairwell!
“Same plan,” Theta said. “Follow my lead.”
Carefully, she ventured to the second floor, feeling for each step, hoping nothing would grab her as she moved down. She reached the second-floor landing without incident. Isaiah caught up to her.
“Just one more,” she whispered. Isaiah nodded. “You, uh, don’t see anything, do you?”
Isaiah shook his head. “I’m too scared. I can’t tell.”
Theta crept down into the deeper dark. She was nearing the next landing when she nearly missed a step. On instinct, she gripped the railing. It was freezing. And wet.
Her hand came up with something sticky. She dared not move. Her breath came out in white puffs.
“Theta?”
Theta didn’t want to take her eyes off whatever might be lurking in the gloom below. Oh, god. Oh, god, she’d led them right down into it!
“Theta!” Isaiah whispered frantically.
Her mind wanted to slip away. Like with Roy. No, Theta. Stay awake. Stay here. Isaiah. Help Isaiah. She turned to look up at Isaiah on the landing above her. The fog was behind him, creeping closer. “Theta,” he said, terrified. He knew. Of course he knew.
“Isaiah. Isaiah, be very still,” she whispered.
Her heart beat out of control. She thought she might faint. She couldn’t faint. Not with Isaiah in trouble.
“Come to me. No! Don’t turn around.”
She stretched out her hand. It was shaking. Why was there no fire?
“That’s it. One step at a time,” she said.
Isaiah put a foot on the step below. And then another. Theta could tell he wanted to run. Behind him, the fog followed. Theta could make out the ghostly shapes of women wearing ragged dresses from a bygone era. Moth-eaten shawls hung about their shoulders. Rotted bonnets rested atop their pale, skeletal heads. They moved as one, their voices overlapping: “Child. Child. A child. Child. Give us the child. Our children, all lost! All gone! We need the child, the child, the child…”
Isaiah was nearly to her. Theta could almost touch him.
The ghosts howled their displeasure. So many teeth! Theta recoiled, and the murky women wrapped their ghostly arms tightly around Isaiah, pulling him in.
“Theta!” Frantic, Isaiah reached for her.
“No!” Theta grabbed Isaiah and tucked him close.
“The child is ours!” the women hissed, racing around behind her.
“No. He’s. Not.” Theta whirled to face them. Sudden heat flooded her palms as she pushed the ghosts away. They wailed in agony. They could feel pain!
“Come on, Isaiah!” Theta said. She yanked off her coat and wrapped it around her still-hot hand, then looped her arm through Isaiah’s, half dragging him down the stairs at record speed. Down in the dark of the stairwell, the ghosts shrieked and shrieked until their echo sounded like the cry of a dying animal.
In the storm, Henry stood perfectly still, watching in horror as pale, glowing fingers pushed up from the broken ground. The ghosts rose one by one, shaking off the dirt of their graves. The stench of death hung over them. The lights of the asylum glinted against the fog. How far was it? How many graves were there between Henry and the way back?
A little girl turned toward Henry. Decades-old grave dirt stained the pinafore of her old-fashioned dress. Her crepey skin was the color of morning ashes and pitted with pockmarks. Her eyes were cold and fathomless. She cocked her head and sniffed at Henry.
“H-hello,” Henry whispered. She’s just a kid, he told his hammering heart.
“Hungry!” the little girl said. A thin stream of black drool dripped across her cracked bottom lip.
“Hungry,” the others agreed.
On a terrifying hiss, the little girl opened her eel-shine mouth wide as a snake’s. She had a lot of teeth.
“I really hate the t-teeth,” Henry said.
The ghosts’ feet hovered just above the sopping ground. Their voices swirled in the night air. “We are the Forgotten. You have forgotten us. Forgotten us. Forgotten. We are the Forgotten. We will live inside you and you will not forget us again.”
“Wait. Wait!” Henry yelled. “Y-you don’t want to hurt me!”
The ghosts stopped their advance. They seemed to have heard him.
Like a dream, Henry thought. Pretend this is a dream.
“You don’t want to hurt me,” he said again, using the same persuasive voice he’d used in his dream walks to stop a nightmare in its tracks. “You don’t want to hurt me.” He backed carefully toward the asylum.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” they said.
“That’s right.” He lifted his foot carefully over a pallid hand working its way up from the earth, stifling a scream as he did. The lights of the asylum were getting closer. Step by step. It was working.
The ghosts began to follow Henry, like terrifying pets.
“You don’t want to follow me, either,” Henry insisted.
“We are the Forgotten, forgotten no more.”
“Stay,” Henry said. He felt ridiculous, but the ghosts hovered above the broken graves and did not follow. “Good ghosts,” Henry said. “Very good.”
He stepped over the last grave, and every bit of his calm evaporated. With a loud yell, he stumble-ran the rest of the way toward the asylum. His screams were so loud he could barely hear the Forgotten screeching after him: “Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!”
He rounded the corner of the asylum, nearly hitting Evie, Sam, and Conor head-on.
“Henry!” Evie said, embracing him. “Oh, you’re all right.”
“Where’s everybody else?” he gasped.
“Don’t know,” Sam said.
The growling was getting closer.
“No time for a tearful reunion,” Henry gasped. “Just keep running!”
Theta and Isaiah burst out of the stairwell, and Theta dragged a bench in front of the door, as if that would do anything, but it made her feel better. She unwrapped her ruined coat and dropped it to the floor, and the two of them sagged against the opposite wall, gasping for breath.
“You… okay?” She panted out, and a wide-eyed Isaiah nodded.
The door to the stairwell slammed against the bench. The possessed doctor grunted as he pressed his shoulder against the jammed door, and then he swung the ax through the narrow opening, bringing it down on the bench’s back, splintering it.
“Polly Pratchet had a hatchet, worked it night and day!”
“Not you again,” Theta said on a ragged breath.
“Theta!” Memphis called from the other end of the hallway. Ling was with him. There were running footsteps and more shouts—“Memphis?” “Ling!” Henry’s voice. And Evie’s. They were with Sam, and for just a second, Theta was so relieved to see all of her friends that she forgot about the doctor with the ax. The door to the stairwell flew open with superhuman strength, sending the bench skittering across the floor toward Theta and Isaiah.
The doctor lunged at them, ax held high. He brought it down again, and Theta and Isaiah jumped forward, narrowly missing its sharp blade as it sliced into the wall. The doctor laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world. With a grunt, he freed the ax. “That’ll leave a mark. I always wanted to leave a mark. But people were always questioning me. Let’s see what sort of mark I can leave on you!”
He came at them, grimly determined, eyes shining but dead. There was no time to think. A scream tore out of Theta’s throat as the heat roared through her. Blue-orange flames raced from her fingertips to her shoulders. Her arms were like the brilliant wings of a firebird.
“Stay back,” she warned.
“We are the Forgotten,” the doctor said in a splintered voice. “We will not be forgotten. He has promised. The child. The child. The child.”
He charged for Isaiah.
Theta grabbed hold of the doctor’s arm. The ghosts inside screeched as the fire burned through the sleeve to his skin. Theta was transfixed by the spectacle. There was something both brutal and beautiful in it. The doctor stared at his own burning flesh, smiling as it spread up his arm. She could see that he wanted to resist, but he was too mesmerized by the flames overtaking him. And then he fell to his knees, screaming in pain as the Forgotten left his burning body.
“Theta! Watch out!” Sam cried.
The Forgotten rushed her. Startled, she threw out her hands. The ghosts writhed in agony as the flames engulfed them. Horrified, Theta stumbled back. She put her still-burning hand against the wall to steady herself. The flame caught on the drapery and spread quickly. It licked up the walls, bubbling the plaster into scorched blisters.
Like Kansas, she thought. Oh, god. Just like Kansas!
But this time, it wasn’t just Roy. There were so many people here.
Isaiah jumped up and rang the fire alarm. “Fire! Fire!” he shouted.
The Forgotten were in retreat. They folded into the fog and slipped out around the windows. The sealed doors opened. Choking black smoke filled the hallway.
“Get them out!” Theta yelled.
Attendants and nurses were running in from the other floors, helping to evacuate the patients and doing their best to smother the fire.
“Theta?” Memphis was looking at her strangely.
Flame still scalloped the tips of her fingers.
Now he knew. They all knew.
The fire had been put out. Now the staff were busy seeing to the patients and trying to understand why one of their own had once again committed an act of violence. In the ensuing chaos, Evie and the others had managed to sneak Luther and Conor with them to the administration building, where they were now crowded in the visiting room again.
Theta wrapped a blanket around a shivering Henry as he told the others first about his ghostly encounter in the graveyard and then, when he felt braver, about life with his mother and her illness.
“Gee, that’s rough. I didn’t know about your ma. I’m sorry, Henry,” Sam said, chagrined. “You know what? Take a punch. Right here.” Sam tapped his jaw.
Henry held up his elegant, piano-playing fingers. “I’m not chancing my bread and butter on your mug, Sam. It’s jake.”
“I’m an ass.”
“Well. That’s true.”
“Why you gotta be so agreeable?” Sam said.
“Depressive,” Evie said, testing the word on her tongue. “I didn’t know there was a name for that feeling. Like there’s a rain cloud in your soul.” She knew that feeling well. Sometimes she was the life of the party. But other times she was lonely, bleak, and sick with disgust at herself, and certain that the people who said they loved her were only pretending. She called these times the “too muches”: too much feeling, like opening a door and seeing, really seeing, into some deep, existential loneliness underlying everything. When the “too muches” arrived, Evie feared that whatever hope lived inside her would drown from the storm of her own aching sadness.