by Brian Harmon
“I’ll do my best. But that state park was full of imps and ogres. Something else, too. Something…giant…”
“I see.” She didn’t sound surprised. By now, she’d accepted the fact that this guy was way beyond what she expected. “Did what I gave you help?”
The dagger. Eric recalled the ogre he stabbed in the belly, the awful popping noise as its guts burst from the wound and plopped into a wet, smoking pile at its feet. The memory gave him a nauseous twist in his own guts and made him cringe. “Yeah. It helped. But I’d still rather have something with more reach. Those ogres have long arms.”
“You’ll do great. I know you will.”
That makes one of us, thought Eric.
“Holly will know how to get to Luscher.”
Eric thanked her and disconnected the call.
According to Holly, Charlotte was only a couple years younger than Delphinium. She was sixteen when she was found squatting in an abandoned factory somewhere north of Chicago and the two had been together for twelve years when the magic man forced them to go their separate ways.
“She knows things,” Holly said.
Eric glanced back at her. “What, like the future? Like Poppy?”
“Not exactly.”
“It’s hard to explain,” said Alicia.
“It is,” agreed Holly. “Sometimes she knows things before they happen, but usually it’s more like she just understands things…if that makes any sense…”
“It doesn’t,” Eric said.
“She can usually find something if it turns up missing,” said Alicia. “She just seems to know where to look for it. Like my necklace one time. It was in the couch cushions.”
“And she always knows if something’s upsetting one of us,” added Holly. “Usually better than we do. She’s a good peacekeeper.”
“Kind of the house counselor,” agreed Alicia.
“She sounds like an awesome big sister,” said Eric.
“She is,” said Holly.
Luscher wasn’t too far out of the way. Eric made his way east. Within twenty minutes, he’d reached Main Street and already located the first helpful blue sign pointing the way to the hospital.
“So she volunteers at hospitals?” Eric asked.
“She uses her gifts to find people who need help,” said Alicia. “She understands what they need. Sometimes it’s as simple as convincing them they need help.”
“Doctors can only do so much,” agreed Holly. “But Charlotte can always tell when someone needs more than just medical attention.”
She sounded remarkable. Eric hoped they weren’t too late.
It wasn’t a very impressive hospital. As he pulled into the parking lot, he saw that it was considerably smaller than the one in Creek Bend. It barely looked big enough to be a clinic. There didn’t even seem to be an Urgent Care. There was only the main doors and an Emergency Room entrance.
But then again, Creek Bend was larger than the entire combined populations of every town he’d been to since arriving in Middle-Of-Nowhere County, Illinois. And it served at least four other surrounding cities. This was probably more than sufficient for the number of actual patients that came through the doors. And for anything serious, they would simply stabilize the patient for transport and shuttle them on to the nearest full-size hospital.
Eric found a parking spot close to the main entrance and killed the engine.
“Okay,” he said. “So what do we do? Go in and ask if she’s here?”
Alicia shrugged.
“She could be anywhere,” Holly told him as she eyed the building.
Eric looked up at them in the rearview mirror. Holly had scratches on her cheeks from her encounter with the imp in the woods. Her ponytail was disheveled and there was a hole in her tank top, just above her left breast.
Alicia’s clothes were dirty. There was a smudge on one of her cheeks and a leaf in her frizzy hair.
He glanced down at himself. He was covered in scratches and little bite marks. His hair looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. He had blood stains on his shorts and lots of holes in his shirt, both courtesy of those nasty imps. Even if they had the time, they couldn’t just wander around the halls. They were bound to draw unwanted attention.
Suddenly, he wished that Jude was here. His talent for moving around unnoticed would’ve come in handy right about now.
There was a sharp knock on the glass next to Eric and he jumped. There, peering in at him was a plump woman with thick, curly brown hair and dark, scowling eyes. They’d been looking the other way, toward the hospital, and none of them had seen the woman approaching.
He cracked open the window.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Eric didn’t have time to either answer or point out that she was being quite rude because Alicia abruptly shouted, “Charlotte!”
“Alicia?” The plump woman peered into the back seat. “And Holly! Thank God!”
Holly pushed open the side door. “Get in! We came to get you.”
“That was uncharacteristically easy,” said Eric as he rolled his window back up.
“What’s going on?” asked Charlotte as she squeezed between them and sat in the rearmost seat. “Who’s the new chauffer?”
Holly spouted the same story she’d told Poppy, Cierra and then Alicia when they’d asked the same question. She was beginning to sound like a recorded message. Delphinium. Spell. Magic man. Only hope. Etcetera. Like the other three, Charlotte listened, nodded and accepted him completely without another word.
It was remarkable the amount of sheer trust each of them had in these two women. If Holly said Delphinium trusted this strange man they’d never seen before, then Delphinium must trust him. And if Delphinium trusted him, then he was as good as family. Period. End of conversation.
“I knew you were coming,” Charlotte told them. “It’s why I was out here in the parking lot. I was walking around, looking for you. But I didn’t know about Eric. He surprised me.”
“My bad,” said Eric. “I surprised Cierra, too. She hit me with a baseball bat.”
“I believe it,” replied Charlotte. “I’m actually surprised she doesn’t hit people with baseball bats more often.”
“She did seem to enjoy it.”
“I have no doubt.” She looked back at Holly. “So you’ve found Cierra. Who else?”
“Cierra and Poppy are with Del,” Holly informed her. “And then us, of course.”
Charlotte nodded, her expression grim. “So the others are already dead.”
This caught Holly by surprise. “Yeah… I mean, not Marissa. I don’t…I don’t think. We still haven’t picked her up. But the others… Yeah.”
Charlotte nodded again. “Marissa… That’s good. Still time.”
“Still time,” Eric agreed. “But not a lot of it. Delphinium says she can feel something gathering. Morning’s going to be here fast. We need to get the two of you back to the farmhouse so you can help prepare for…well…battle, I guess.”
“I’ve felt it coming,” she said. “For a couple days now.”
Eric shifted the minivan into gear. “Then we’ll only have one left to find. You said her name is Marissa?”
Holly nodded.
“I can’t go yet, though,” said Charlotte.
Eric stared up at her in the rearview. “What?”
“There’s someone here who needs me. I can’t leave right now.”
“We don’t have time. That psychotic wizard or his monsters have turned up everywhere we’ve been tonight. This is the first time we’ve had a chance to get out of here before they show up.”
“I’m sorry. But I can’t. Maybe you can go get Marissa first and then come back for me.”
“And the magic man will walk right into this hospital and kill you and anyone else in his path,” said Eric.
But Charlotte was firm. “I can’t leave yet. There’s a little girl in there who needs me.”
Eric stared at her.
&nb
sp; Why could nothing ever be easy?
Chapter Twenty-Six
The little girl wasn’t all that little. She looked about eleven. But she was clearly miserable. She sat beside the bed, her cheeks wet with tears, her black hair bunched into a messy knot at the back of her head. Even in this sad state, she was very pretty.
The woman lying motionless in the bed was obviously her mother. She had the same small nose, the same rounded chin, the same striking beauty, but she was deathly thin, almost withered. Her eyes were closed. She didn’t respond to the people gathering in the room.
Her daughter clung to her hand as if desperately trying to anchor her to this world.
Charlotte gave the girl’s shoulders a reassuring squeeze. Her name was Siena Lowe. Her mother’s name was Shondra.
Holly and Alicia stood on the other side of the bed, observing the sad scene.
Eric stood in the doorway, feeling like an intruder. He didn’t know what they were supposed to do here. A tragedy was playing out before him, and it was truly heartbreaking, but he didn’t see how they could possibly help. He was sure this same depressing scene was taking place in countless hospitals all over the world. The circle of life, some would say. Everybody died. These women were all very remarkable, but as far as he knew none of them had the ability to change that.
The telephone beside the bed rang. Charlotte answered it. A puzzled expression crossed over her face and she looked at Eric. “It’s for you…”
Eric stood up straight. “Me?”
She gave him a shrug. Don’t ask me, the gesture said. She held the phone out to him.
He took it from her and lifted it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Don’t you feel it?”
“Isabelle?” He reached for the phone in his pocket, confused.
“It’s a hospital,” she said. “You’re not supposed to use cell phones in hospitals.”
“Oh. Right… But how’d…?”
“I called the operator to connect me to the hospital in Luscher and asked for Shondra Lowe’s room. Duh.”
“I see.”
“There were ways to do things before the internet, you know.”
“I know that…” But he felt a little embarrassed, anyway. Isabelle was such a clever girl that sometimes she made him feel quite stupid.
“But seriously, can’t you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Something’s not right in that room.”
Eric looked down at the woman in the bed. Except for the fact that she looked too young to be on her way out, except for the fact that a young girl was losing her mother too soon, he saw nothing he’d call unusual.
“It’s not natural,” Isabelle told him. “She’s not sick. She’s under attack.”
“What?”
“There’s something in that hospital. Something evil.”
“Seriously?” Eric stared at Shondra Lowe’s still body lying before him. Evil? That was quite a word. He wasn’t sure he’d ever encountered anything he’d actually call “evil.” He’d met bad people. They were selfish, opportunistic, egotistic, even murderous, but evil? Even the monsters he’d encountered hadn’t been what he’d call evil. They were mindless, doing the bidding of their masters, or else possessed agendas of their own, none of which seemed to be the enslavement, consumption or corruption of the human race.
Perhaps it was recklessly optimistic of him, but he found it difficult to believe in such a thing as true evil.
“Deadly serious,” Isabelle insisted. “We have to help. And soon. She doesn’t have long.”
The girl didn’t look up from her vigil, but Holly, Alicia and Charlotte were all staring at him. Charlotte had her head cocked in a curious way. She was wondering who he was talking to, of course, but she also looked like she’d half expected this, like she knew something was going to convince him of what she’d already known.
She knows things, Holly had told him.
“I’ll contact Delphinium,” Isabelle promised. “Let her know what’s happened. You need to search that hospital.”
“What am I looking for?”
“You’ll know it when you see it. Or…at least, I will.”
“How do you know what it is?”
“It’s one of those things I picked up in my travels. It’s not good. And it won’t stop when it’s done with her. If you don’t stop it, not only will that woman die…so will the girl.”
Eric felt his stomach clench. He looked down at Siena. She didn’t give any indication that she even knew there were others in the room. “Okay…” was all there was to say.
“Charlotte should have an idea of where to start looking.”
Eric nodded and hung up the phone.
Charlotte didn’t ask who was on the phone. Instead, she asked, “Do you understand now?”
“I do. But we don’t have much time. The magic man’s followed us everywhere tonight. This place will be swarming with imps and ogres and maybe worse things in no time.” At this, Siena finally looked up, her red eyes regarding him as if he’d just announced to the world that…well…that imps and ogres were coming… But he didn’t have time to convince anyone he wasn’t crazy. “The longer we stay, the more danger everyone here is in.”
“And Del and the others are in trouble,” Holly reminded them. “The longer we take, the closer they are to confronting the magic man. And she’s already told us we have to face him together or we’ll all…” her eyes dropped briefly to Siena, “…you know…”
Eric nodded. “Right.” And according to Isabelle, Shondra Lowe didn’t have much time, either. They were all running out of time. He fixed his eyes on Charlotte. “Isabelle said you’d have an idea where to start looking.”
“Maybe,” she replied. She didn’t waste time asking who Isabelle was or how she knew such things. “But I’m not sure what I’m looking for.”
“Something’s attacking this woman. Something evil. And it’s in the hospital.”
She considered this. It was clear she’d spent the past twelve years living with witches, because she didn’t question for a moment that an evil presence was killing Shondra Lowe. “If there’s something here, it’ll probably be in the north wing basement. That area flooded a while back and it’s pretty well been emptied out. If anything’s living in this building unseen, that’s where it’ll probably be.”
“Let’s get going.”
Charlotte nodded. Looking at Holly and Alicia, she said, “You two stay with Siena. Keep her safe. In case he shows up.”
They promised her they would watch the girl and then Charlotte led Eric out the door and down the empty hallway.
It was strange leaving Holly behind. He’d grown accustomed to having her with him on each of these bizarre stops. He’d learned to trust her. But she didn’t know anything about this hospital or the thing that had apparently ensnared Shondra Lowe.
“So what do you know about this thing?” he asked.
Charlotte glanced at him. He had the distinct feeling that she felt the same about him as he did about her. He was a stranger, after all, an outsider. But Holly told her she could trust him and so she was willing. “Only what my gifts tell me. Which isn’t much, I’m afraid.”
“They told me a little about your gifts while we were driving here. They said you know things.”
She nodded. “I came here to help people. It’s what I do. It’s how I use what God gave me.”
“Admirable.”
She shrugged. “I would’ve died if Del hadn’t found me. I know that. I have to give back where I can. And I do help people. My gifts tell me things. Like you said, I know things. I don’t always know why or how, but I do. I know if the little girl with the broken arm is being sexually abused by her father. I know that the old woman with the broken hip was trying to kill herself. I know when the nurses are being neglectful. I know when the doctors have made a misdiagnosis. I can fix these things. I can make it better. Usually. But this time… As soon as I first laid eyes on Siena and he
r mother, I knew something was terribly wrong. I knew it wasn’t natural. Something evil was at work.”
Eric nodded. It was precisely the same thing Isabelle had said. She’d felt something in that room, something that shouldn’t have been there, something wrong.
“For the first time, I didn’t know what to do. Del forbid me from using magic, but I was tempted. I almost used a spell anyway, just to ask what I should do.”
“But you didn’t?”
“I was going to. Honestly. I just didn’t know what else to do. But that was just a couple days ago. While I was boiling the water, I realized that something was happening out there. I knew Del was going to be coming for me. So I just…waited. I thought she’d come herself…”
“She has to stay at the farmhouse. She’s maintaining the blanket.”
Charlotte nodded. “Yeah. I should’ve known that.”
“How long ago did you meet Siena?”
“About a week and a half ago now. Her mother came in with pneumonia. Everything looked normal, but then she just lapsed into a coma. They don’t have much money. They don’t have insurance. They don’t even have any family. They can’t afford specialists to tell them what’s wrong. So they’ve pretty much just given up on her. Not that it matters. I’m pretty sure that if they took her out of the hospital, she’d die.”
It made sense. Isabelle said the source of the illness was inside the building. Eric doubted it would move with her.
Charlotte led him down a set of stairs and through a pair of doors marked “No Entry.” Beyond here, it was clear that the janitors didn’t waste their time. The entire corridor was filthy. A damp, moldy stench hung in the air.
“They’re supposed to be having this entire wing remodeled next year, so they’ve let it go. No reason to spend any money on it, I guess. Kind of creepy isn’t it?”
Eric looked around. “I’ve been in worse.” And he had. Just last month, he’d explored quite a few abandoned structures in worse shape than this. One of them was even on a hospital campus. It’d sat much longer than these hallways, and it had once been an asylum, which automatically made it even creepier than a hospital for some reason.