Meds

by Amy Cross

  She paused, before slipping the phone back into her pocket. Even though she knew it was a little weird to have those fake conversations with her dead mother, she couldn't deny that they made her feel better.

  “Won't be a bus any time soon,” the man nearby said suddenly.

  She turned to him.

  “Been a big wreck about two blocks from here,” he continued. “Traffic's all backed up.”

  “Oh.” She looked along the dark street and saw that there were very few cars around. “I guess I'll walk.”

  Grabbing her shopping bags, she smiled at the man and then turned, making her way along the dark sidewalk. There was a faint hint of sunlight in the distance, and she told herself that the walk would actually make a pleasant change. Part of her was worried about how Nurse Winter would react if she quit her job so soon, but at the same time she felt she wasn't the most popular employee at the hospital so she was sure everything would be okay. In fact, she figured they'd barely even notice she was gone. Taking a right turn, she made her way along a narrow side-road, and there was a spring in her step as she realized that for some reason, Jonathan Carmichael had obviously meant every word he'd said the other night. He truly believed in her, and she wanted to find him and thank him.

  Other than that, Middleford Cross felt so far away, it almost seemed to exist in another world. She knew she'd have to at least finish a few more shifts, but after that she'd be able to leave and -

  Suddenly an ambulance slammed into her from behind, knocking her to one side and sending her shopping bags flying. Landing hard on the ground, she let out a cry of pain as she felt her wrist crunch under her weight. She rolled onto her side and saw that the ambulance had stopped a few feet away.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Hey, what -”

  Before she could get another word out, the ambulance began to reverse toward her. She called out for it to stop, but she was too late as the vehicle crunched straight over her legs, and her agonized scream filled the air.

  ***

  “Hey there, stranger,” a familiar voice whispered. “Are you coming around now? Elly? Can you hear me?”

  Opening her eyes slowly, Elly had to blink a couple of times to clear her blurred vision. Finally, she saw Sharon leaning toward her with a broad, cautious smile.

  “That's better, Elly. Come on, now, let's hear a few words. Are you in pain? Do you want me to increase the dose?”

  Still not quite awake, Elly turned and looked toward the dark window. All she could see was the reflection of the hospital room's lights, so she turned back to Sharon. The last thing she remembered was being in a grocery store, and thinking about the upcoming job interview, and then... There had been someone at the bus stop, and she'd started walking, but everything after that was blank. When she tried to sit up, she felt a sharp pain in her hips and had to lean back, letting out a faint gasp in the process. Looking down, she saw that there were thick bandages and supports all around the lower parts of her legs.

  “How much do you remember of the accident?” Sharon asked.

  “Accident?” she whispered, turning to her. “What accident?”

  “Okay,” Sharon continued with a faint smile, “we'll get to that later. For now -”

  “What accident?”

  “You had a little accident, honey. Hit and run. You're okay, though. You're here, and the damage isn't even as bad as it seemed. You'll be absolutely fine after a little while.”

  “What accident?” Elly said again, sitting up and ignoring the pain as she looked at her legs again. She could feel a sense of panic in her chest, but she still didn't understand quite what had happened. Turning, she looked toward the door. “Middleford Cross,” she whispered, before turning back to Sharon. “Am I at Middleford Cross?”

  “You were taken to one of the bigger hospitals at first,” Sharon explained, “but... Well, you know how it is.”

  “No,” Elly replied, trying and failing to move her legs, “I don't know how it is. I want to get out of here.” She was finally able to get her left leg toward the edge of the bed, but the effort was intense and she already felt tired. “I have an interview.”

  “Elly -”

  “I have an interview!” she said firmly. “I shouldn't be here!”

  “Honey, it's already been a week since the accident.”

  Elly turned to her.

  “You were sedated for a while, and your memory hasn't been great thanks to that bump on your head. This is actually the second time we've had this conversation so -”

  “No,” Elly replied.

  “No?”

  “It can't be, I...” She reached down and used her hands to start moving her right leg. “I can't feel it,” she whispered. “Why can't I feel it?”

  “You will,” Sharon told her. “You're lucky you're not paralyzed, it's a miracle the hit and run driver hit you in exactly the right way to break a few bones but not cause any other damage.” Putting a hand on Elly's shoulder, she tried to push her gently back down against the bed. “Come on, don't make me sedate you again, there's no need for you to start panicking and making a fuss.”

  “I have a job interview,” Elly replied, still trying to get up even though she was starting to feel distinctly hot. “I have to get out of here.”

  “You probably missed that interview, honey.”

  “Where's my phone?”

  Sighing, Sharon reached into one of the cupboards and pulled out a small, clear plastic bag. Before she could say another word, Elly snatched the bag and pulled the phone out.

  “It's off,” she muttered, hitting the button on the side and waiting for the phone to power up. The screen was cracked and one of the edges had been badly scuffed, but after a moment the welcome screen appeared, complete with notifications for several missed calls and messages. “They've been trying to call me,” she continued, feeling a sense of panic rising through her chest as she frantically looked through the messages. “They gave the job to someone else!” She turned to Sharon. “They thought I wasn't interested!”

  “Come on, calm down -”

  “I have to call them back!” She brought up Doctor Ford's number, only to find that she suddenly had no signal. “Take me outside,” she said, turning to Sharon. “I need to call them!”

  “There'll be plenty of time for that,” Sharon replied, taking the phone from her and setting it on the table. “Right now, you need to rest and build up your strength slowly. The relief doctor will be back in a few hours and he'll be able to tell you a lot more about your recovery program. I'll go and get you something to eat, though. You must be starving.”

  “This is wrong!” Elly shouted. “It can't be happening!”

  “Relax,” Sharon said, stopping at the door and glancing back at her. “You'll be fine here, Elly, you know that. Just try to calm down. Oh...” She smiled. “And welcome back to the Overflow.”

  Part Six

  Sobolton

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “This is humiliating,” Thomas Lacy muttered as he sat naked on the bench, waiting while he was sponged down. “Why can't I have a male nurse for this?”

  “Oh, don't mind me,” Sharon replied with a smile as she dipped the sponge into warm water and wiped the old man's belly. “I've seen it all before.”

  “I can do this myself,” he told her.

  “Come on, just -”

  “Get out of here!” he snapped, snatching the sponge from her and placing it over his crotch, in an attempt to preserve at least a little dignity. “Wait outside! I'll call you back in when I'm done!”

  “Mr. Lacy -”

  “I will not be washed like this!” he continued. “I'm not some frail old man who can't do anything for himself!”

  “You suffered a very serious stroke,” she pointed out, “and you physically can't reach all the parts you need to wash.” She sighed. “Come on, Mr. Lacy, you know I'm a professional. Just let me do my job and then I can get you dressed and back to your room.” She waited, before rolli
ng her eyes and heading to the door. “I'll be right out in the corridor,” she continued. “Call me when you need me. I might pop to the office for a moment, but I'll be back soon. Call out when you're ready, and try not to be so stubborn.”

  “I won't need you,” he replied, waiting until she was out of the room before raising the lukewarm sponge to his chest and trying to wipe himself clean. His hand was trembling and he already felt exhausted, but he told himself there was no way he was going to let that goddamn woman win. As he wiped himself a little more, he let out a few muttered curses and expletives, before finally dropping the sponge as it slipped from his hand. Cursing again, he reached down to pick it up from the bathroom floor, only to find that he couldn't quite manage.

  He took a deep breath, before shifting his position again and reaching down a little further. This time, he felt a sudden, sharp pain in his back, and he waited a moment.

  “Damn thing,” he whispered, trying to summon a little more strength.

  Determined not to give in, he reached down yet again, this time getting his fingertips to the sponge. Still, he wasn't quite able to grab it, not quite...

  And then he heard the whistling sound.

  Somewhere in the distance, someone was whistling her song, the same song he remembered from all those years ago. He told himself he was imagining it, that some stroke-damaged part of his brain was firing off a long-buried memory, but after a moment he realized the sound was real. Slowly, he turned and looked toward the door, and he realized the whistle was coming from the corridor, coming closer.

  He waited, still bent over with his hand reaching for the sponge.

  The whistling was right outside now.

  A moment later, the door creaked as it began to open.

  Holding his breath, Mr. Lacy saw that there was no-one out in the corridor. The door continued to swing open before finally stopping and then, just as slowly, swinging shut again.

  The whistling continued, except now it was in the room with him, echoing against the bathroom's tiled walls.

  “No,” Mr. Lacy whispered. “You're not here. You can't be.”

  He looked back down at the sponge, and at his trembling hand that had almost but not quite managed to reach far enough. Fully aware that the whistling sound was even closer now, he felt too scared to look up. He waited, hoping against hope that the whistling would stop, telling himself that the whole thing was just in his head.

  And then, slowly, a female hand reached down, picked up the sponge, and held it out for him.

  “Is it you?” he whispered.

  He waited, staring at the hand, and then slowly he took the sponge.

  “It isn't you,” he said after a moment, as the whistling continued right next to him. “It can't be.”

  Turning his head slightly, he realized he could see a pair of feet nearby, wearing a familiar pair of plain black shoes. He froze, telling himself that there had to be some kind of mistake, even though he knew he recognized the feet. Even after so many years, the details of the shoes – the buckle, the capped toe-line, even the scuff mark on the right heel – were unmistakeable.

  And the whistle. That song, the one she always loved so much.

  “What do you want?” he whispered, before turning to look up at her. “What do you -”

  He blinked and she was gone. Blinking again, he looked around, but there was no-one else in the bathroom now and the whistling had suddenly stopped. His heart was pounding as he waited for her to come back. Finally, he turned to the door.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Get in here! I'm done!”

  The door opened and Sharon leaned through with a smile. “Are you sure you don't need a little more help?”

  “Get me back to my goddamn room,” he muttered, tossing the sponge toward her. “What are you waiting for, woman! Move!”

  ***

  “Doesn't it feel good to get outside again?” Sharon asked a short while later as she wheeled Elly through the door and out into the night air. “Breathe that in, girl. Aren't you tired of the stuffy hospital?”

  “It's not long since I was bringing Mr. Lacy out like this,” Elly replied. “Now I'm the one in the chair.”

  “But you're not a grumpy old man,” Sharon pointed out, wheeling her around the corner and past the entrance to the yard. “You'll be out of this chair soon enough, it's just while your ankle heals. Come on, don't fall into the stereotype of being a nurse who turns out to be a bad patient. You're gonna be up and out of here in no time.”

  “That's what I told Thomas Lacy.”

  “Yeah, but you were just trying to make him feel better. It was a kind lie. With you, it's true.”

  Stopping at the edge of what had once been a garden, but which was now just a patch of bare land, Sharon reached into her pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes.

  “You don't mind if I light up, do you?” she asked.

  “Go ahead,” Elly replied. “I just -”

  Hearing a shuffling sound nearby, she looked across the dark patch of land. She'd been so certain that she'd heard footsteps, but there was no-one around. Further off, beyond the edge of the hospital's property, there was a line of trees, and beyond that there were some ruined houses that had been left behind when part of the suburbs had gone to ruin.

  “You heard that too, huh?” Sharon muttered after a moment. “Must've been the wind.”

  “It sounded like someone was there,” Elly replied.

  “Yeah, well... There ain't, so that's that!”

  A few feet away, unseen by either of them, a woman was shuffling forward. Most of her skin was missing, and her skeletal face was staring forward, while in her arms she was cradling a dead baby. It was the same woman who had been waiting for so long in an abandoned shack many hundreds of miles away, the woman who had been disturbed by Rachel Brown; since then, the woman had embarked upon a kind of pilgrimage, making her way on foot, never stopping, never slowing, with one destination in mind. As she made her way slowly past Elly and Sharon, the woman gave no indication that she'd noticed them, and they in turn continued to talk, having not seen the ghostly form that was limping toward the hospital's main building.

  There were others, too.

  Unseen by the living, hundreds of shadowy figures were approaching the hospital from all directions. All were women, all had risen from their final resting places and made their own pilgrimages to Middleford Cross, and now finally they were arriving together, their dead faces staring up at the building and at one window in particular.

  ***

  Hundreds of miles away, Agent Robert Cole of the FBI hurried along the corridor and burst into his supervisor's office. He was a little out of breath, having run up from the second floor.

  “Hey, Rob,” Director Peyhan said, barely even looking up from his paperwork. “You okay?”

  “I found him,” Cole replied, placing a single printout on the desk. “Look! I found him!”

  “Found who?” Peyhan asked, taking the paper and seeing what appeared to be a set of blood analysis results.

  “You know all those women who were murdered in the Sobolton area?” Cole continued. “The ones that were linked to a single DNA profile, but we never knew who'd killed them? Some of them died in the 50s, some as recently as five years ago. Come on, you know the case, it's like an urban legend in the office.”

  “What am I looking at here?”

  “A blood analysis lab in Lafayette received a sample from a hospital called Middleford Cross,” Cole explained. “Just some routine work for a patient there, but the sample was automatically run against one of our databases. We've got him, Sir. After all these years, we've finally got the Sobolton serial killer, he's just dropped into our lap.” He pointed at a line on the printout. “That's him. His name's Thomas Clay Lacy, and he's a patient at Middleford Cross.”

  ***

  Fumbling with the lock on the front of his case, Mr. Lacy muttered a few more curses as he finally got the damn thing open. After looking over at the doo
r and checking one more time that he was alone, he lifted the case's lid and looked down at the hundreds of photos.

  Some were framed.

  Some were loose.

  Some were black-and-white.

  Some were color.

  Some were torn.

  All of them showed women, most of them looking at the camera and most of them smiling.

  With his trembling right hand, he reached into the case and began to sort through the photos. He was looking for one in particular, and after a few seconds he found it. The photo was old and creased, and it showed a woman's smiling face. She was wearing a nurse's uniform.

  “What do you want?” the old man whispered. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  He paused, before realizing he could hear footsteps approaching the bed. Although he felt fear gripping his belly, he knew that this time he had to see her face, so he turned.

  “Hello, honeybunch,” she said calmly, leaning toward him with a smile. “I've been waiting for you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Fifty-one years ago

  “I'm going on my break now!” Priscilla Parsons called out as she made her way past the office door. “Back soon!”

  “Going to meet your mystery man, are you?” Carol replied with a smile.

  “He might be there,” Priscilla admitted, unable to keep from blushing slightly. “I can't help it if he likes to come and visit me.”

  Heading through to the stairwell, she began to whistle as she made her way down to the ground floor. She had a song stuck in her head, a show-tune from a movie she'd seen a few weeks earlier, and it was starting to drive her crazy. Still, as she reached the bottom of the stairwell and unlocked the door, she couldn't shake a sense of excitement in the pit of her stomach as she stepped out into the warm night air and saw her man waiting for her over on the other side of the yard. Just like he'd promised the last time he was in town.