Insanity

by Susan Vaught

  My eyes darted to the clock.

  Ten minutes until the start of my shift. Crap! How did that happen? How did time just escape like that?

  “Forest Anderson,” I told Imogene, so that maybe she’d get out of my way faster. “But don’t expect the ‘Anderson’ to be much help. I got it from my first foster family. Whoever abandoned me just scrawled my given name in black marker across the front of my shirt. Happy now? Please move.”

  “Forest.” Imogene held the big book in one hand and slipped the other into her pocket, producing a pen. She put it to the paper but didn’t start writing, and she didn’t move away from the door. “That don’t ring true. Is it your second name—a nickname, maybe?”

  “Actually, it’s Forastera,” I said, my anxiety ratcheting two levels with each tick of the clock above her head. “We Americanized it so I’d fit in better at school.”

  Imogene held her pen and stared at me. Her eyes widened, and her thin lips pulled apart into what might have been a smile. “Forastera. Well, I’ll be.”

  I glanced at Levi. He looked even more surprised.

  “You’ve got my name.” I stepped to the side of Imogene. “So you can research me or look me up or whatever. Now I need to get to work.”

  “Forest,” Levi said. “Please stay. We need to talk.”

  “No.” My nerves twanged, and I hurried to check the clock. Eight minutes to get to the ward. “I don’t have time for any of this.” I lifted my hands again and wiggled my fingers. “Let me go, or we can do this with a lot of blistering.”

  Imogene’s attention fixed on my bracelet. “That wood’s from the other side. And the beads are pure iron. Did it grow up with you?”

  That question startled me into stillness. I’d always thought it was a little weird that my bracelet never got too small, but I loved it. I didn’t want anybody to think I was foolish—I just never mentioned it, really. My left hand wrapped around the smooth wood and iron beads, caressing them, which probably gave away how much it meant to me.

  “It’s all I have from my real parents,” I muttered, saying way more than I meant to, and hearing heavy feelings lace through each word. I had a bracelet that wasn’t normal. I had known that for a long time but hadn’t admitted it to myself. I sure didn’t want to admit it to this woman.

  “You know what your name means?” Imogene asked, her drawl getting more relaxed.

  I couldn’t look at her. I could only stare at the clock. Seven minutes to get to the ward. “It’s a type of white grape grown on the Canary Islands. Someday I’ll be a giant yellow wino.”

  She didn’t laugh. “‘Forastera’ means ‘foreigner.’” With her accent, it came out as “fur-ner.” “Stranger. Whoever put you out didn’t name you, child. They branded you.”

  “Branded me as what?”

  Six minutes to get to the ward.

  Imogene gave me a scary smile. “Snake-bit, like me.” She cocked her head, and fog seemed to rise off her again. “I ain’t seen another in over a hundred and fifty years.”

  A hundred years? Okay, yeah, sure. Snake-bit. That was old Southern for crazy as hell, cursed, full of bad luck—whatever. And this woman was nutty enough to act like she was hundreds of years old or something.

  “I’m leaving now.” My voice sounded low and shaky. “One way or the other.”

  “Maybe you ought to pull off that bracelet,” Imogene said, “so I can get your measure.”

  “No,” Levi said.

  “Boy, don’t you take that tone with me,” Imogene snapped.

  My pulse thundered in my ears, and I clenched my hand around my bracelet, ready to go to war.

  “Don’t touch her bracelet,” Levi said. “And don’t touch her.”

  Imogene stared at him, clearly stunned by his talking back to her. Levi seemed to be radiating a power of his own—only the fog clinging to him was darker than any night I had ever seen.

  “What are you people?” I whispered, but neither one of them paid any attention to me at all.

  For a few long seconds, they faced each other, and I saw how the lines of Imogene’s face matched Levi’s. Grandma, he’d called her. Only she seemed so much older now, like a great-grandmother, or even a great-great. Matching wills with Levi, it was sapping her somehow, and making her sad. Almost making her sick.

  I had to fight a sudden urge to reach out and put my hands on her, to ease the ache I sensed in her knotty joints. Her trembling frown reminded me too much of the patients I took care of, and even with the way she had treated me, I didn’t want her to be in pain.

  After what seemed like forever, she nodded once, and the battle between her and her grandson seemed to ebb.

  “Imogene’s a granny-woman,” Levi said, shifting his eyes from his grandmother to me. “That means she can do some healing on the living, and spot folks with Madoc in them, and cross spirits to the other side when they have trouble going on their own. Since I got ... well, something bad happened to me, and since then I’ve been helping her.”

  “Doing your job?” I asked, my voice sizzling with sarcasm. “Scaring poor spirits to death with dogs and birds so they freak out and run away from you?”

  “I upset Forest,” Levi said to his grandmother, almost like an apology. “She needs a little time to get used to how things are, that’s all.”

  Imogene rubbed the sides of her face, like she was tired and getting a headache. “I guess that ain’t unreasonable.”

  Levi let out a breath. “Okay, then. She needs to go to work.”

  Imogene moved aside without another word. She didn’t so much as spare me a second glance.

  I didn’t stop to tell her off or thank Levi or punch him in the nose or anything.

  I just ran.

  Chapter Six

  “She’s been that way all day,” Leslie told me as we stood in the doorway of Miss Sally’s room. “Talking to herself and smiling and singing when she’s awake like now—but her breathing’s bad and her pressure’s up and down.”

  Leslie had on black Halloween scrubs dotted with smiling white ghosts. Her sneakers were white, too, and she had fixed her hair in dozens of skinny braids, each tipped with a happy little ghost barrette. Just seeing her, standing next to her, I felt more normal.

  She walked into the room and lifted the sheet so I could see Miss Sally’s swollen feet. “All that puffiness, it’s one of the signs. And touch her.”

  When I rested my fingers on Miss Sally’s toes, they were cold.

  “Decker,” Miss Sally murmured as I took my hand away. She smiled, then squeezed her vacant eyes shut and seemed to fall straight asleep again, her breath whistling in and out like she was snoring, but the rattle sounded deeper.

  It sounded bad.

  I fidgeted with the sleeve of my dirty blue blouse, thinking how frail Miss Sally looked in the bed. Her skin had gone ashy, and her hands twitched like she was working hard in her dreams. Her picture slipped from between her fingers, but I caught it before it hit the floor and tucked it between her arm and the bed.

  “Is she sick?” I asked Leslie as I walked into the hall.

  Leslie snorted. “That’s what that idiot in there’s gonna call it.” She gestured toward the nurse’s station. Arleen was working again to night, and the door was closed. She hadn’t said a word to me, but I had found the two yellow write-up slips waiting in my box, with a warning that the next slip would be pink.

  “Arleen won’t want to do the extra care and paperwork,” Leslie said. “She’ll be trying to pack Miss Sally off to the medical hospital. Then they’ll be sticking my poor baby with needles and poking tubes down her throat, trying to stop what can’t be stopped. Seen it time and again at this place—it’s a crime, if you ask me.”

  I glanced into Miss Sally’s room again. “But what’s wrong with her?”

  “Honey, ain’t nothing wrong.” Leslie caught my right hand in hers and patted the back of it as though she could ease the sadness of what she was telling me. “She’s passing. Nobo
dy don’t get in her way, she’ll be gone by morning, and probably peaceful in her sleep, in this place that’s been home to her for longer than she remembers.” She let go of my fingers, then narrowed her warm eyes at me. “And you ... you don’t look much better. Get yourself to a bathroom and wash your face.”

  Before I could move, she reached up and ran her thumbs under my eyes, then gave me a frown so full of worry that it almost made me cry. “Them’s some deep circles. You not sleeping?”

  “I—” Oh, I wanted to cry so bad. I wanted to throw myself into Leslie’s grandmotherly arms and let her hug me, and I wanted to tell her every crazy, impossible thing I had seen in the last day or so.

  “I didn’t sleep at all last night.” I barely kept my chin from shaking as I spoke. “The double shift. And then—um, no. Didn’t sleep this morning, either.”

  “Not sleeping, not changing your clothes, not taking care of yourself. That’s how it starts, getting sick like these folks.” She gave my cheek a loving pinch. “You watch that, you hear?”

  I nodded.

  And then I went to the bathroom and washed my face like she told me to do.

  And then I went to work.

  I changed sheets and bedpans. I made beds and gave baths and trimmed nails. I washed and combed and braided hair, and with every minute that passed the way it should, the world seemed calmer and more real. This was what I needed. This was what I had to have. I didn’t even take a break, because if I didn’t leave the ward, there was no chance I wouldn’t get back on time.

  Between each task, I checked on Miss Sally, and I whispered to her that Decker was close by and waiting for her, and that he loved her. This seemed to ease her mind a little bit when she woke and got worked up.

  Getting on toward the last hour of my shift, the facility’s general practitioner came on the ward. She was older than Leslie, and looked enough like her to maybe be an aunt or a big sister. The two of them spoke in hushed tones, occasionally checking to be sure the nursing-station door was still closed. The doctor pulled an order sheet off her clipboard, scribbled a bunch of stuff on it, and then left as Leslie carried the orders to the station.

  “This will help Miss Sally be comfortable,” she told me as she passed Miss Sally’s door, waving the orders. “Ought to piss Arleen right off, too, because Doc wouldn’t sign off on the transfer to medical. Makes my night.”

  I realized Arleen would be bustling my way to do whatever Doc had ordered, so I slipped out of Miss Sally’s room to check on the patient who slept in the room nearest the exit door. As I pulled up his sheet to cover his shoulders and keep him from getting chilled, I heard a muffled but unmistakable howling.

  All the hairs on my arms and neck stood up at the same time, and my stomach flipped.

  Levi.

  Levi was in Lincoln’s hallways again, and he was hunting.

  But he wasn’t hunting me.

  I don’t know how I knew that, but I had no question that the dogs weren’t coming in my direction. But if Levi wasn’t after me, then who—

  My Sally’s hours are counting down. Decker Greenway’s words from the night before ran through my mind. That’s why I risked coming out of the tunnels to see her.

  “The haint knows I’m here,” I muttered aloud in imitation of Decker’s deep drawl, and slapped my hand against my forehead.

  Miss Sally was dying. She was dying right now, and Decker intended to come here to meet her spirit.

  Levi didn’t understand that. He would do his “job,” helping his grandmother or the granny-woman or whatever she was, and chase Decker to the other side, leaving Miss Sally all alone, with nobody to meet her.

  “No, no, no!” I ran out of the patient’s room and headed straight for the ward door.

  “Forest?” Leslie’s worried voice trailed after me, but I didn’t stop—just yelled something about needing to get a soft drink and go to the bathroom.

  This couldn’t happen. It would be a tragedy. I wouldn’t allow it—not without doing everything I could to make Levi see the higher right and wrong in Decker Greenway’s situation.

  I ran up the stairs to the main basement level and pounded down the long, long hall that led to the building with the canteen and clothing room. The tile seemed to stretch forever ahead of me. I doubled my speed, but I didn’t seem to be going anywhere. The hallway just got longer, and the air got thick and heavy.

  It smelled like pine.

  Decker started screaming.

  “Levi!” I yelled. “Stop it! You have to stop!”

  I held out my right arm, leading with my bracelet as I ran, and the hallway around me shivered and shimmered. My muscles burned from pushing against the air, but I only shoved harder, hunting the hunter, tracking the dogs. My bracelet burned against my skin, each iron bead like a tiny poker, branding me with heat.

  I kept pushing and running, running and pushing. It felt like the hospital itself was trying to keep me from getting to Levi—but I was moving. The hall shimmered again, and then the air barrier gave way with a soft pop. I slammed directly into the double doors separating me from the clothing room. Pain ricocheted up my arms and lodged in my elbows and shoulders, but I shoved it out of my mind.

  As I finally burst into the hallway, stardust walls and floors and ceilings tied my senses in knots. Shadows of geese streamed around and around the silvery surfaces, screeching and honking and flapping blurry wings. Hounds crashed into my legs, snapping and snarling, but I kicked them away and staggered forward, yelling Levi’s name until my side ached and I couldn’t yell anymore. I saw him standing in front of the open clothing room door, radiating dark fog and holding Decker Greenway in a headlock and dragging him toward what looked like a black hole torn directly into the real world.

  “Levi, wait!” I shrieked as the hounds swarmed me again, growling and biting and tearing at my ankles. They took me down like a graceless deer, and I hit the stardust floor so hard my head bounced with a crack. I saw flashing lights. Then all I could see was fur and teeth and blazing red eyes.

  I beat at the crazed hounds, smashing my rowan bracelet into jowls and ears and clawing paws. Fur caught fire. Some of the dogs yelped. Blood streamed from my wrists, my arms, my cheeks, my legs, but I kept fighting. It felt like the hounds were three times the size they had been, and shredding the life right out of me. Somebody was screaming again. This time it was me.

  All of a sudden the biting stopped, and the biggest dog I’d ever seen was standing over me. Its huge black head dipped until I had to stare into its blazing red eyes, and its fangs gnashed as drool dripped across my face.

  I started to shake.

  This thing had come to tear out my throat.

  “Off!” Levi bellowed. “Cain. Off now!”

  The black monster snapped its jaws at my face one more time, then, glaring and growling, it leaped away from me.

  The next thing I knew, I was moving, up away from the monster dog and the rest of the howling hounds. Electricity ripped through me as Levi held me to his chest and carried me out of his pack of hunting dogs, squeezing me close, pressing me tighter against him until his clothes caught fire and his skin started to burn.

  “Easy now,” he said in a low chant. “Easy. You be easy.” Each time he spoke, my pain lessened—but his had to be awful.

  “Put me down,” I said, slurring, barely audible. “I’m killing you. Put me down!”

  “I’m sorry, Forest,” he whispered as he eased me to the floor, propping my back against a stardust wall. “I’m so sorry.”

  Goose shadows flickered past in a migrating V-shape, honking softly. Levi sat down beside me, tore off some of his black shirt, and wiped blood off my cheeks until the fabric got too hot to handle.

  “Easy,” he kept saying, and sometimes he closed his eyes. Black fog drifted from his arms and fingertips, and my pain went away one bite at a time, one inch at a time. He was healing me.

  Burned skin showed on his chest, raw and blistering, and I wished he would work
some of that healing on himself. If I could have helped him, I would have.

  A few dozen feet away from us, Levi’s dogs circled around Decker Greenway, who was huddled against the now closed clothing room door. I got here in time. I grabbed Levi’s forearms, then jerked my hands away when he winced from the shock I gave him.

  “Don’t take him now,” I said, my voice nothing but a rasp in the now-quiet hallway. “Not yet. Just wait a few minutes. His Sally is coming.”

  Levi’s handsome face went from worried to sad, and the blood-tattoo teardrop in the corner of his eye seemed all too real. “You almost got yourself killed for that?”

  “They have to be together,” I told him, my voice stronger now that I could breathe and wasn’t being tortured by a thousand dog bites. I wanted to hold Levi and put my head on his shoulder and beg for Miss Sally and Decker, but I was poison to him. My touch brought Levi nothing but blisters and misery.

  “It won’t matter,” he told me, his voice heavy with the same sadness I saw on his face. “When they cross over, they’ll forget or they won’t. Being together won’t make any difference.”

  I held his gaze. “It’ll make a difference to them.”

  Seconds passed. Then more seconds.

  “Grant him asylum,” I said, thinking about the irony of where we were and what I was asking Levi to consider. “Don’t make him cross over until Sally finds him.”

  Levi closed his eyes, then opened them. “This really means so much to you?”

  “It does.”

  “Enough to make a deal with me?”

  “Don’t do it,” Decker shouted from next to the door. “That’s a bargain with the devil, girl!”

  Hounds growled and snapped, and Decker fell silent as Levi’s dark eyes captured mine. He was sitting so close to me I almost couldn’t stand it. “I won’t hurt you. Can you trust me that much?”

  I thought about it, then let out a slow breath. “Yes.”

  “Then here’s my bargain. Decker stays and waits, and I help him cross over with Sally. You can watch to be sure I’m true to my word.” Levi paused, gazing at me so intently that I wanted to look away, but also never wanted to look away. Could he mesmerize people and steal their will?