by Susan Vaught
“Forest.” Leslie’s voice sounded calm but urgent. “She’s offering you a piece of her heart. Go on, now. Take it, then give it back to her when she wants it.”
“The bells,” Miss Sally said so that only I could hear her, and this time she almost poked the picture into my eyeball.
With the hand she wasn’t holding on to, I took the photo. It was just an old picture. What was wrong with me? I could be such an idiot.
When I looked down at the picture, the man was so blurred from wear that I couldn’t make out many features. He was wearing a hat and maybe overalls. His head was turned looking toward a shack next to a little cornfield.
I squinted. The picture seemed to get a little clearer. Definitely a hat. Overalls for sure. His hair was cropped close to his head, and he had big ears. Kinda cute. The overalls were dark blue and looked new, and his shirtsleeves were clean, as if he’d gotten all dressed up to come see Miss Sally. The shack was more like a small wooden house. The corn was healthy. I could smell it, sort of a dirty, earthy scent, and I could smell new jeans, too, the cotton fresh and still stiff and itchy.
Do you know who you are? The voice in my head didn’t even scare me, because I knew he would talk like that, all deep and playful. Do you know what you can do?
And then the man in the picture turned to look at me.
The world shook.
Chairs rattled against the ward walls, and the lights went dark with a loud fizz and pop. I dropped the photo like it was made of blue fire, and Miss Sally let go of my bracelet and started wailing.
“Bells!” she shrieked. “Bells!”
The hospital bells were ringing.
My right mind told me it was just the bell clappers jittering like the chairs had done because of the explosions Maintenance was setting off down in the tunnels. My idiot mind told me a picture talked to me, then looked at me and made the bells start ringing.
“You have got to be kidding,” Leslie muttered.
The sound of her sneakers squeaking as she ran to calm scared patients was the only thing that kept me from breaking into shrieks louder than Miss Sally’s. I felt around wildly in the dark, scooting my hands across the floor until I found her picture. I snatched it up and pushed it into her hands.
“Here it is. It’s okay.” God, I didn’t sound calm at all. “It’s okay, Miss Sally.” She kept screaming. My heart thumped in my throat so hard it hurt. “Miss Sally.” I held on to her fingers, closing them gently around the picture. “I hear the bells,” I told her, “but they’re just moving because of that explosion.”
“Don’t walk at night,” she shouted.
The backup generator hummed to life, and the lights came back on. Miss Sally stared at me, but the white film of confusion was closing over her eyes again. She pulled her hands away from mine, glanced at her picture, then smiled and gazed off into the distance like she always did.
Before I could react to or even try to understand what had just happened, the nurse came flying out of the office at the far end of the hall. Arleen looked like a mean pumpkin in her orange scrubs, and I almost groaned at the sight of her fuzzy blond hair. She wasn’t my favorite person. Always loud, never paying attention to the patients—
“Leslie,” she yelled, obviously jacked up about something. “Leslie!”
I heard Leslie’s irritated “What?” from inside a patient’s room to my left.
Arleen bounced up and down on her toes like a little kid. “They found a body in the tunnels!”
I got up slowly, not believing that at all, but Arleen was chattering about the Kentucky State Police coming as fast as they could get here and there being bones—a pile of bones.
Leslie stuck her head out of the patient’s room. Her usually calm face was twisted in complete annoyance. “Say what, woman? We got a situation going on here—”
“A body.” Arleen talked right over her, clapping her hands together once. “There’s a body in the tunnels underneath Lincoln Psychiatric!”
Chapter Two
It was one o’clock in the morning before I got my first break on my overtime shift. Leslie was long gone, and I was on my own as I walked the long corridor between the geriatric ward and the canteen. The hospital basement was quiet, with only a single strip of night lamps glowing along the baseboards.
Flashing blue police lights punched through the windows near the ceiling, keeping a clockwork rhythm on the walls. The Kentucky State Police had been on campus all night so far. Arleen, who was working a long shift, told me they had roped off Administration and the tunnel with the bones.
Bones.
I didn’t want to go there. I had never been so aware that Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital was five miles from anything, smack in the middle of six hundred acres owned by the state, surrounded by a big stone fence. The patients sensed how nervous we were, and they knew the blue lights didn’t mean anything good. We’d had to climb on chairs and hang sheets over the ward windows so they would stop crying and screaming and settle in for bed.
My footsteps banged too loud against the stone floor, and my breathing seemed to echo. The hallways weren’t heated in non-patient areas, so every time I blew out air, fog trailed across my vision. When I rubbed my palms against my blue sleeves, the flashing police lights made me look dead and alive, dead and alive.
The picture. Miss Sally talking in sentences. The Tower Cottage bells ringing. The picture. What had I really seen? I rubbed my arms harder, trying to ignore the freaky blue lights. I wasn’t—well, I didn’t like to use the word “crazy,” because it seemed disrespectful now that I worked at Lincoln. I didn’t have a mental illness. At least, I didn’t think I did. Okay, so I got a little jumpy sometimes, but I was trying to eat and pay rent and save for college. I had a right to be jumpy.
Forest.
The whisper came from behind me.
I stumbled, then stopped and turned quick to look.
The hallway behind me was totally empty. Nothing but closed office doors, blue lights strobing against the dark walls, and at the very, very far end of the hall, the clothing room where we kept donations for the patients. That door was shut, too, and locked, like it was every night from end of day shift to the start of the next.
As I stared at it, it seemed to move out, then in, like the room was breathing.
Pain stabbed into my chest, right where my heart throbbed.
This isn’t happening.
I sucked in a breath and let it out. Fog swirled around my face. The air smelled like ... pine? Cleanser, maybe. But it seemed fresh and not as strong as the stuff Housekeeping used to scrub the bathrooms.
“Nothing,” I said out loud, and almost screamed at the sound of my own voice.
The door at the end of the hallway stayed still, like doors are supposed to do.
I was creeping myself out. I spun back toward the canteen and started walking faster. I tried not to think about the door or imagine something in the hall behind me, walking quietly, ghosting my steps, moving forward, moving faster, faster—
I hit the canteen door with both palms and shoved it open as I ran inside. I didn’t even give it time to swing shut, slamming it myself and holding on. I even thought about using my keys to turn the lock.
Nothing pushed against the door.
Of course it didn’t.
I hadn’t just heard a whisper in the hallway, and Miss Sally’s picture did not look at me and talk to me.
So why was I shaking?
Because I was cold.
Time to jam my quarters into the vintage beverage dispenser, get my hot chocolate, and take my meal break. Except I couldn’t make myself stop holding the canteen door shut.
Oh, jeez. What if there were people in here watching me act like an idiot?
I turned to my left and glanced down the long, semidark room. Tables lined the right-hand side, built into the walls with booth seats, all secured so they couldn’t be knocked over or picked up and thrown. More vending machines were on the left. Nobody w
as watching, thank God.
Seconds passed. I made myself breathe, then finally took my hands off the canteen door. It was hard to walk away without first dragging something over to block the door, but it’s not like I actually could—even the trash bins were bolted to the floor.
I walked slowly, quietly, listening for extra noise each time I took a step. I didn’t hear anything, though my heartbeat was loud enough to drum for a metal band. The hot-beverage machine was at the end of the row, and as I passed the first soft-drink machine, lights flashed and gears whirred, and I almost died right there.
“Crap!” I banged my hand against the machine’s plastic picture of a soft drink, and the motion woke up the dispenser next to it, and then the next one, on down the line. “Crap, crap!” I hit the machine again, even though I knew all these contraptions “slept” like computers with their lids closed until they sensed somebody walking by, and then popped to life with moving parts and glowing pictures of icy drinks or potato chips. Energy saving. Economically efficient. Whatever. It was a stupid thing to have in a psychiatric hospital.
It was all I could do to get my hot chocolate, sit at a table, and drink it. The hot liquid burned my mouth, and it felt good. I held the cup so tight I almost squashed it, letting the heat seep into my fingers. The iron beads on my rowan bracelet seemed to absorb the warmth, tingling against my wrist until I started to think straight again. Rowan was supposed to be enchanted wood, protecting against everything from getting lost to getting stolen by evil fairies. The trees grew mostly in Britain and Europe. One of my high school biology teachers figured out what my bracelet was made of and asked me where I got it. No idea. I just knew it was the only thing I had from my real family, whoever they were. It made me feel better.
In half an hour or so, I’d have to go back into that long, dark hallway where I did not, did not, did not hear something whisper my name or see a door breathing. I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose.
Just my luck, to work my first night shift after Maintenance finds a pile of bones in a tunnel. In orientation, we learned that the tunnels were built during the Civil War so patients and staff could move around campus without getting shot by soldiers battling in nearby fields. Those bones could have been there a hundred and fifty years.
Or just a few months.
Was there a killer wandering through the tunnels under Lincoln Psychiatric?
The smell of fresh pine wafted through the canteen, and wild geese started honking in the distance.
My eyes popped open.
Geese?
But it was the middle of the night, and way past migration time.
Honk, honk, honk...
I stood up so fast I knocked over my cup, spraying leftover drops of hot chocolate across the table.
Dogs started howling, sudden and so loud they had to be right next to me. I backed against the table, looking everywhere but seeing nothing except drink machines still whirring and blinking.
The police brought dogs. Yeah. That was probably it. Right? Blood blasted in my ears, but not loud enough to blot out the dogs and birds—and the bells. The bells were ringing.
Don’t walk at night! my mind screamed in Miss Sally’s voice.
“Decker!” a guy hollered from the hallway outside the canteen. I heard each syllable and letter in my brain, in my clenched teeth, in my toenails. I smelled them, too.
They smelled like pine.
Chills ripped across my skin, and all my hair stood up like I’d been hit by lightning.
Another guy yelled—only it was more like a scream.
Sweat broke across my forehead and neck.
Patient, my thoughts managed to sputter. Patient in trouble.
The dogs barked. The geese honked. The Tower Cottage bells rang and the lights blinked and went out and there were bones in a tunnel, and I ran through the pitch black for the canteen door like a nightmare dancer, staggering and jerking and not really sure what I was doing. I yanked the door open so hard I nearly fell when it swung, then lunged into the hall in time to see a silvery glow explode through the whole space, turning the limestone walls to polished stardust. Everything looked sparkly and new and unreal.
A guy ran past me. Jeans. Dark skin. Screaming. He wasn’t anybody I knew from the wards.
Dogs charged after him, yelping like they were chasing a fox, and goose shadows slid along the ceiling where the lights should have been.
And behind the dogs—
Who was that?
My hands curled into fists as he came toward me. I opened my mouth to yell, but no sound came out.
He was six feet tall, maybe taller. Thin. Black jeans, black shirt, black coat dusting the floor. His hair was black, too, and longer than mine. Massive winglike shadows arced into the nothingness behind him.
He was glowing. He was both the light and the darkness, and he had teardrops etched under his right eye—so, so red and terrifying, and I knew in my guts they weren’t made with ink. They were some kind of blood tattoos.
The hounds cornered the first guy at the clothing room door, and the dark-light guy passed me by as if I didn’t exist.
“It’s time to go, Decker,” he said to the guy cowering from the hounds.
“No!” the man he called Decker yelled, and I figured he was a patient, even if I couldn’t remember him. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even walk.
The dark-light guy got to the dogs and waded through them. He grabbed Decker with one hand, and with the other he ripped open the clothing room door.
“Leave me be!” Decker yelled. He beat against the dark-light guy, and I tried to clear my thoughts, because at Lincoln Psychiatric we didn’t lay hands on patients except to provide care, and whoever this jerk with the coat and dogs might be, I couldn’t let him hurt some helpless sick person.
“Stop!” I shouted, stumbling away from the canteen door. “You with the dogs. Knock it off!”
The dark-light guy was in the clothing room now, dragging Decker after him. The dogs streamed inside along with the goose shadows, and the bells kept ringing and ringing.
“Hey! Guy in the duster. I’m talking to you!” I picked up speed and reached the clothing room just as Decker’s feet went sliding across the threshold.
I pitched myself forward and got a grip on his ankles. I expected to get pulled inside and eaten by a thousand dog teeth, but Decker stopped sliding like he’d hit a solid wall.
From inside the clothing room came the sound of a body hitting the floor and noises of surprise—dog and goose and human, too. I didn’t stop to think about it. I kept my stranglehold on Decker’s ankles, struggled to my knees, then leaned back and used my body weight to haul him out of the clothing room. He came without fighting, eyes wide, mouth hanging open in shock.
Dark-light guy came with him, still holding Decker’s arms until he saw me and turned loose.
I’d had hours of training on separating patients who were fighting, so I risked letting go of Decker long enough to scramble past his legs and shoulders until I could force my body between the two people. As they stood I straightened up with them, straddling the entrance to the clothing room. My left hand rested on Decker’s chest, and my right stretched toward dark-light guy.
Dizziness made me blink, and my head swam like I’d been punched—but at least the bells stopped ringing. Lights flickered back to life. The dogs and the goose shadows vanished, and the walls weren’t made of stardust anymore. Dark-light guy looked like an escapee from a vampire-movie casting call, and he really was wearing black jeans and a black shirt with long sleeves, but he didn’t have any wings.
Man, did he look pissed.
He stepped forward, his chest meeting my palm with force. Lightning shocks made my arm jerk as he bounced backward from the contact. Rainbows shot through my vision, and I winced at the sharp scent of mothballs and dusty old clothes. The room felt cold and weird and ... wrong, and it didn’t help when dark-light guy growled like one of his dogs. I wi
dened my stance, ready for him to come at me again, but he reeled back like I’d hit him with a cattle prod.
“Don’t let him out of that room,” Decker whispered. “Please!”
My breath echoed in my ears, but this was getting easier. A pissed guy, a scared guy—but no dogs, no geese, no bells, no glowing crap. Things were making more sense, and I knew what to do. “Mr. Decker, which ward are you from?”
Decker gazed at me, slack-jawed. He had dark, curly hair trimmed close to his head, flawless skin, and an attractive face, but his eyes were wide and scared like a lot of the psychotic patients I’d worked with before. I figured he was about thirty, maybe older. His jeans and white T-shirt were filthy. Who let him out after hours—and who on earth hadn’t given the man a shower and helped him put on clean clothes?
He didn’t answer me about the ward. Maybe he didn’t know.
As for the guy in the clothing room, I needed to figure out where he belonged, too. I glanced in his direction. “What’s your name?”
He was younger than Decker, maybe not much older than me, and wickedly handsome. He didn’t seem psychotic, but he had his hand pressed against the spot on his chest where he’d made contact with my palm, and he acted like he was in pain.
“Levi,” he said, as though my question tore the word right out of him. Southern accent, but he so didn’t look like a Never farm boy.
He blinked in surprise, as if he hadn’t meant to answer me. Then his eyes narrowed, and he seemed to be cataloging everything about me, from my curly hair to my shaking hands to my rowan bracelet.
I knew enough to treat patients with respect, and I recognized fear when I saw it, even when it was painted over to look like anger. “I usually work on the geriatric ward, mostly second shift. That’s why you don’t know me. I promise I’ll take good care of both of you.”
“Sure you will,” Levi murmured, fixated on my face with an intensity that made me nervous.
“I need to get you back to your wards,” I told them both. “It’s late, and there’s a lot going on tonight. You need some rest, up where it’s safe.”