Inside the room there were three people. Kent Miller sat up in the hospital bed, looking groggy but awake. Maria Miller, a thin but very ugly woman, sat at the little chair by his side. A man in white I first mistook for a doctor stood in the corner of the room.
He was tall and thin with a gaunt, stretched out face. He didn’t look over thirty, and yet he surely wasn’t under forty. His smooth face belied his age, and his eyes were so dark they looked black. A white lab coat hung from his frame, and underneath it, a white t-shirt and a pair of white Dickies slacks. It didn’t surprise me to see a pair of white sneakers capping off his legs.
When I looked into his eyes, I felt my blood drain.
The primal, gut-wrenching fear had a source. It was staring me in the eyes, and I knew if I didn’t run I was going to die.
Chapter Nine
Fear the Reaper
My foot pivoted—that’s as far as I got. I grabbed the door and tugged as hard as I could. It didn’t budge.
I spun back toward the man-in-white, who stared at me with those coal-black eyes. He didn’t look happy—I half-expected a maniacal grin to spread across his face. Perhaps a soul-sucking evil laugh. He didn’t move though, except to pull his hands from the pockets of his lab coat. They were long and slender and fine—the hands of a piano player or a surgeon. He folded them together and let them fall to his belt-buckle.
“Good evening, little miss,” he said, in a voice like dark chocolate. “Please, sit.”
I looked around the room, adrenaline scouring my veins. I tugged at the door again, but if anything it was stuck harder. I turned back to him, my hand still gripping the door handle with white-knuckled strength.
I looked at Kent Miller and his wife, Maria. Both of them seemed awake, but neither was talking. Or moving. Their eyes drifted lazily across the room, like they were following the path of an errant butterfly.
“Hello,” I said to them. “Please help! Help!”
They didn’t hear me. They kept following that invisible butterfly with marked disinterest.
I turned back to the man-in-white. “What did you do?”
The man-in-white unfolded from his corner. He took a step forward, and I slid my back against the wall, toward Kent. The man-in-white stopped, an apologetic look on his face.
“Please, please, calm down,” he said in the velvet voice. It was hard not to obey. “There is no need for this.”
The fear, both natural and supernatural, was building, despite his words. He’d hurt Kent and Maria, because of me, and he was going to hurt me, too. He’d been following me in that ugly white car of his with the green tinted windows. I knew it without a shred of doubt. I should have checked the parking lot.
“What did you do?” I screamed at him. I couldn’t help it.
“Nothing,” he said, with what sounded like an embarrassed laugh hiding in his words. “I just fascinated them. It doesn’t hurt.”
Fascinated. I didn’t like the way he said that. Like it was…magical. He said it too casually, too business-like. None of this was new to him. It sounded almost mundane.
“Why…why are you following me?”
I glanced around the room. The door was locked. The windows were a possibility, but they were on the other side of Kent’s bed from me. And I’d have to pass within arm’s reach of the man-in-white. I tucked tighter into the corner, my hands digging around me for something to grab. Something harder than my hand, anyway.
The man-in-white took a step forward.
“I knew you’d come here, eventually,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” I said, eyes scrambling for an escape route. “Why’s that?”
He shrugged, “They always come back. To finish their victims, I mean. Though I don’t really understand why you didn’t just do it during the car crash.”
My body went numb. Whether it was the insidious cold or his words, I wasn’t sure.
“He’s not…he’s not my victim. I didn’t—”
“No, you did,” the man-in-white said. “You did. You took from him those things most precious, and you were going to take more tonight.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. That wasn’t the reason I’d come. I’m not a killer. I’m not a monster, I just—I just wanted to go…
For no reason. No reason at all.
“Yes,” he said, but his eyes looked pained. “You came to take away his essence. His memories, his soul. You are a monster, little miss.”
“No, I’m not.”
I backed even tighter into the corner. I felt my legs buckling, their strength leeched away by the frost. The unending frost that told me to eat. To warm myself. To steal life. To take what wasn’t mine.
He was right.
“Please,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“I know,” the man-in-white said. “I know, little miss. But I can make it go away, do you understand? I can make it all better.”
The room began to brighten. I looked up to the ceiling, but the long florescent tubes hadn’t changed at all. If anything, they dimmed against the brightness. It took me a moment, but I realized it was him. The man-in-white. A glaring radiance, the white light welling up like water through the holes in his clothes. Through his arms, out from his neck, down in little circles around his shoes.
He smiled, and he was a kind of beautiful. His eyes burned brighter.
“You can go home now, little miss,” he said.
A pulse of light rippled from him, hitting me in the chest. Heat flooded through me and receded just as quickly, a kind of warmth I’d never known. The feeling I’d stolen from Kent was a pale shade of the light burning out of the man-in-white. The shudder of warmth slid across my skin, up my spine, across my face.
Then the ice returned. Colder. Abyssal. The black freeze of nothingness. I heard a long loud tone…then a beep.
Incredibly, my phone was ringing. It was so absurd in the face of the man-in-white’s nova.
I tugged my phone out of my pocket and flipped it over. A text message from an unknown number.
Snap the hell out of it.
You aren’t going to Heaven.
Run your little behind off.
I clutched the phone so tight I thought it would explode into parts. I stared into the screen, and another white pulse washed over me. The death-rime etched lines of agony across my bones. There was no warmth in that light. It was a trick.
I looked up at the man-in-white, squinting to see through the blinding glare. His eyes were two black pits. I reached toward the little bedside table, hoping to use it as a club to bash him. Anything to break his concentration, maybe, or to confuse him—
My hand passed right through the table. An icy wind slid up my hand with the motion. I turned back toward him and a grin spread across my face.
“Sorry, Charlie,” I said, and I saw his face fall in the white light. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I held my breath, closed my eyes, turned around, and jumped toward the wall next to Kent.
If I break my nose trying to run through a wall, I thought suddenly, I am going to be so pissed.
I leaped and landed on my feet. I opened my eyes. The wan moonlight streaked through the window of a darkened hospital room. A door stood half-open on my right, leading back into the hallway. I’d run through the wall. I turned around and saw nothing but a mint-colored wall and a poster about abdominal pain.
Joy reared its stupid head, and I pumped one fist into the air.
On the other side of the wall, a terrifying roar ripped the air. It sounded like death, like a dragon, like the biggest lion ever dreamed of. The wall rippled, and the man-in-white, beaming out that pulsing white light, began to walk through the wall. He didn’t slip through it like it was smoke, like I must have. His passage caused the wall to ripple and buck like it was made of water. No, something thicker, some viscous substance that didn’t want him to pass. Like tar, or super glue. He yanked at it, trying to wade through the ugly, mint-green wall. Black smoke c
urled out of his eyes, which were yanked wide and glowing with rage.
“Come here, little miss,” he roared. “Come here!”
I could do that. Or I could try to French kiss a wood chipper. I turned and ran before his leg could clear.
I threw my arms in front of my face and jumped toward the next wall. I didn’t close my eyes, and I watched the wall fly toward me. I saw the inside, the dry wall, the insulation, the two-by-fours, the electrical conduits. It zipped past me in reverse order as I flew out the other side. I landed on my feet in another empty room and kept running. Whoa, capital W. I wasn’t getting used to that anytime soon. Plus, if I only had the ability to run through objects when I was close to fading away, then I didn’t intend to get used to it. Super-powers aren’t so great when they require imminent death. No thanks. Being solid is five-by-five.
Another roar exploded from the room next door, reminding me about the whole run for your life, stupid thing, and I bent my head and ran.
I didn’t even jump through the next wall. I just flat booked through it, through the next room, and the next. This entire side of the Intensive Care ward looked either empty or semi-permanently shut down. Some of the equipment was covered, and a few of the rooms were completely empty.
And it was getting colder. When I looked down, my legs were almost entirely see-through. I held my hands out in front of me. They were beginning to disappear. I could see the tile right through them.
“Oh God,” I said.
I turned in time to see the wall behind me ripple. A shaft of light blasted through the wall and hit me in the side. It seared into my body, and I screamed as it lifted me and threw me across the room. I went through the wall and crashed to the ground in the hallway. The landing didn’t hurt—it was like crashing onto pillows or a mattress, even though I landed on pure tile over concrete.
I shook my head, jumped to my feet, and ran toward the end of the hallway.
I flew through it, ran through a row of hedges, and came out in the parking lot.
When I looked down, my feet were gone. My legs faded into nothingness right around my calves. I still felt them, though only as good as I could feel anything in the cold. I was going to disappear soon. I knew that without any mysterious phone calls or helpful/murderous men-in-white.
It made me think of the text message as I booked it across the parking lot. “You aren’t going to Heaven.” Was that true? Was there no white light for me?
I felt terror I’d never known before. An immortal terror, a permanent horror.
I wouldn’t let him catch me. I wouldn’t let him take me.
I wasn’t going to just fade away, dammit.
I ran towards the Emergency Room. I didn’t have a good idea, but I had an idea. Which would be a fitting quote on my tombstone. I ran through another row of hedges and right through a concrete wall.
I came out in a brightly lit hallway filled with doors. I looked at my hands. Gone, faded away at the elbows. I looked away, trying to quell an animal panic. No no no. Stop. Stop.
I had to get warm. Right away. The man-in-white wouldn’t have to do his job if I did it for him.
The hallway was empty, and so I jogged down it. I didn’t notice as a door opened right in front of me. I turned in time to scream and throw my hands up. But I ran right through it and skidded to a stop. I looked for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. When I turned, I saw that the door was being pushed open by an older blond doctor who was staring right at me.
I stood up straight, trying to think of some excuse for not having a lower body. He saw me pass right through the gurney, right through the door.
A black, middle-aged doctor came out of the door behind the blond one and shook his head.
“I’m sorry” he said.
“Yeah,” the blond guy said, looking back into the room.
They weren’t looking at me. His eyes passed right over me. I was almost too terrified to look down, but when I did, my breath caught. I was completely gone. The sense of looking down at the nothing where my body used to be gave me a tilting sense of vertigo. The urge to vomit bubbled up inside of me. Vomit what? From where?
I wasn’t anything anymore. When I looked up again, color dripped down the walls, fading, dying. The taupe walls turned grey, the doctor’s straw-colored hair bleached out, and the other doctor’s skin turned the color of ash.
They both glowed with warmth. I had to take them. I had to live.
I ran toward the blond doctor, but just a foot from him, I skidded to stop.
Heat blasted out of the room they had just exited, a blistering furnace-full. I walked into the room. An old man, frail, broken, lay on the hospital bed. Specks of blood spattered his lips, and his eyes were wide open.
He was dead. I’d never been so sure of anything my whole life. And his soul was gone. I knew the body to be just a husk, just a casing. But the room baked. Warmth bounced off the walls, and here the color hadn’t faded from the world yet.
I wasn’t sure how to do it.
I took a deep breath, and the heat hit my lungs like a gunshot. It blasted through my body, filling me with images and feelings and words I couldn’t decipher. The heat melted every last shard of ice and poured strength back into me. I stumbled back, managing to catch myself on a handicap-assist bar on the wall.
The bar was cold. The bar was solid.
“Oh God,” I whispered. “I’m alive.”
I closed my eyes, basking in the glow. It wasn’t until I opened them again that my smile faded. The dead man stared up at the ceiling he would never see again. I walked toward him, hesitantly at first, but the closer I got the more familiar he seemed. I felt like I knew him, like I knew everything about him. I just couldn’t decipher any of his memories, I couldn’t separate the images.
I touched my fingertips to the back of his hand.
“Thank you,” I said, and my voice broke. “Thank you so much.”
I reached up and closed his eyes.
With the ice banished, I felt whole in more ways than one. I felt alive—I felt like a person again.
The two doctors were nowhere in sight, and the hallway was empty. I slid down the hallway in the opposite direction from where I’d entered.
None of the man-in-white’s fear washed over me, which I took as a good sign. Somehow I was able to sense his presence, that primal fear I’d felt from that creepy white car and now in Kent Miller’s room, and I felt none of it at that moment. Still, he'd been further away in the parking lot at the grocery store when I felt the fear, and much closer back in the hospital room. Could he dim himself, when he needed to? He could still be standing outside, watching everything from the parking lot. And maybe he could sniff me out like I could sniff him out.
Could I dim myself in response?
Stop second guessing. I passed through the foyer, and the nurse at the desk, who didn’t look very different from the nurse at the other desk, gave me the hairy eyeball but said nothing. I looked down at my badge, flicked it, and snickered softly.
The nurse gave me another eye. What the hell. I turned and stuck my tongue out at her as I backed through the front doors into the cool night.
My bravado evaporated. As soon as I passed the doors I hunkered down next to a line of hedges and stared across the parking lot. Just little spots of yellow light and old cars.
I checked my gut. Nothing. No animal-panic, no sense of urgency. I stayed low, trying to work my way over to where I thought I’d stashed my bike. I stayed behind hedges, next to cars. If I had a machine gun and a whole lot of camo, I could have passed for Special Forces. You know, in the Barbie Dream Army.
I was still wearing pink sneakers. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity.
Behind one hedge, I tugged out my phone and set it to vibrate. There was no way in heck some random phone call by Morgan or Daphne was going to be responsible for my ultimate doom. I’d seen too many horror movies, or maybe just enough, because there was no way I was being so lame. I would have turned t
he phone off completely, but the last two text messages had saved my life, and I didn’t want to cut off the pipeline to my mysterious stranger/savior just yet.
I saw the handlebars to my bike sticking out of a hedge, next to a Ford Ranger just across the way. I’d have to pass over a large open patch of ground to get it, though.
Ah hell with it.
I flew across the blacktop on my pink sneakers, abandoning all attempts at stealth. There were only two noises as I sprinted with everything I had—my shoes scraping asphalt, and my breath coming fast and sharp.
Halfway across the stretch, another sound joined it. An engine roaring to life. The engine of a white Lincoln Town Car with green tinted windows, as a matter of fact. It pulled out of a parking spot at the end of the row and whipped toward me. The headlights came to life, bathing me in their yellowed glow. I didn’t deer-it—I never stopped running.
I leaped across the last hedge, tripped, and rolled across the asphalt on the other side. I felt my hand, my back, and my shoulder scrape hard against the ground. My hand shot into the bushes and I yanked the bike out as hard as I could. Twigs snapped, and I had to throw my whole body weight to pull the rest of it out. I collapsed back on the ground again, but got the bike up within seconds.
The Lincoln squealed and long peels of smoke scooted out from its tires. The fear hit me, filled my mouth with saliva and bubbles and screams, but I jumped onto the bike and raced across the parking lot. I pulled myself up and rode between a little blue sedan and a black van just as the Lincoln roared past behind me. I heard its brakes shriek, but by then I was on the other side of the lane.
I shot between two more cars into another lane, then another, cutting across the parking lot in a way no car could compete with. I could hear the Lincoln far behind me on the other side of the lot, trying to navigate the twisting lanes at speed while at the same time trying to figure out which lane I was in.
I cut across the rest of the parking lot and rode down the driveway. The handlebars jumped in my hand as I came off the curb, and the front wheel tried to twist and buck me. I yanked one way, then the other, just barely maintaining my balance and only just preserving my skull from a high-speed fracture.
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