“You’re very welcome,” she replied.
I turned to look at Basil. “Thanks for the clothes,” I said.
He shrugged. “Sure, man, whatever,” he said. “You should keep them. They look better on you anyway.”
I felt myself blush as both of them laughed. I removed myself from the room, went to the room on the right, let myself in and crashed on the bed, enjoying the feeling of a soft mattress under me.
I fell asleep almost immediately. I was vaguely aware I was dreaming, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was sitting next to Meredith in her SUV, in the passenger seat. There were tears streaming down her face, and she was clutching the wheel very hard, hard enough that her fingers had turned white.
“Are you okay?” I asked, which sounded stupid as soon as I said it. It was clear that she couldn’t hear me. “Meredith. Can you hear me?”
She didn’t move. She didn’t say anything.
She sniffled, and she suddenly stopped crying. Whatever happened, it was worse. She slammed her foot on the break, while at same time she pulled the wheel to the right, all the way, and the SUV started to spin almost immediately. The road was wet from earlier rain, and I could still hear droplets of rain on the ceiling of the car. Other than that, all I heard was the screeching of the tires, especially as she lifted her foot off the brake and slammed it into the accelerator, so that the car would spin faster and faster.
She lost control, or something happened, because the car was then going toward the median. I could feel how Meredith felt, and I didn’t think she was scared.
There was no resignation. It was deeper than that. Acceptance, contentment, even. Then she looked at me and smiled. “It’s okay, Eli,” she said. “You get to move on.”
I woke up in a cold sweat. I didn’t know how long I had slept for, but it felt like it had only been a few minutes. I was exhausted, perhaps even more exhausted than I had been in the castle, when I had shared a locked room with Lily.
I walked over to the bathroom, washed my face, and looked at my tired reflection in the mirror. I felt like I had aged years since I had last seen my face, and I couldn’t help but notice how crinkled Basil’s shirt was.
I looked outside, surprised to see that it had already fallen dark. I saw electric lights flickering outside and then searched for a clock in the room, but it took me a while to finally get to the nightstand and finally notice that the alarm clock was flashing four zeroes.
I immediately went to look for my phone on the nightstand, where I had left it earlier, when I heard a quiet knock on the door.
I walked over to it and peeped through the peephole to see a tired looking Lily standing in front of my door with plastic bags hanging from her arms.
I opened the door. “Hey,” I said.
“Basil fell asleep,” she said. “I went downstairs for some food, then decided I wanted some company. Are you hungry?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m hungry.”
“Good. How do like Puerto Rican food?”
“I like it,” I replied.
“Perfect,” she said. “There should be some napkins where the coffee bar is, so get some. They gave us utensils but I think we’ll both have to eat from the same container. I got ropa vieja and yellow rice, without meat in it, in case you’re a vegetarian.”
“I’m not a vegetarian,” I said.
“Good,” she replied. “That means you’ll have more to choose from.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and I noticed that she was still wearing the same fuzzy socks from earlier. She placed the plastic bags on the quilt as a makeshift tablecloth and then placed the food on it. The food smelled gorgeous, fatty and salty, and I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I was sitting down next to her and grabbing a plastic fork from her, my stomach grumbling.
“Thank you,” I said. “You didn’t have to do this. I could have gotten room service.”
She smiled at me. “Sure, but what’s the fun in that?” she asked.
I stuffed the food in my mouth, caring little about decorum. God, I was so, so hungry, and the food was so perfect. I probably ate far too much, but I didn’t care.
I was happy, and I wanted to eat, and everything felt so completely right at that moment in time. We didn’t really talk, we just ate, neither one of us saying anything to each other.
Once we had finished the entire food container, I felt like collapsing back on the bed. Instead, I took a drink of the diet soda she had brought, feeling its sticky sweetness cover my tongue.
I swallowed and looked at her. “Thank you,” I said. “I mean it. You didn’t have to bring me food.”
“It was an excuse,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you away from Basil, and, you know, thank you.”
“Thank me for what?”
“You know, for believing me,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
I looked at her, cocking my head. “I didn’t really believe you until there was an inexplicable ball of light that wanted to assault both of us.”
“It was trying to help.”
I shook my head. “Didn’t feel like it was trying to help,” I said.
She laughed. “I mean, I get it,” she said. “You were angry, and if I were you, I would’ve been angry too. But you also looked after me and were concerned I had rabies. I appreciate it.”
I bit my lips. “Well, that’s my duty as a physician.”
She nodded. “Sure,” she said. “And I’m guessing that’s all it is.”
“You don’t think that’s all it is?” I asked. I could hear the sarcasm in her voice.
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t want to make assumptions about what you’re doing and what you’re doing it for.”
I sighed. “I dreamt about her.”
“Hm?”
“Meredith. I was in the car with her and it was so strange. It was as if she wanted to die. In fact, no, she definitely did,” I said. “But it was probably just my brain protecting itself.”
“You don’t think there’s a chance it was her sending you a message?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I mean, I guess anything is possible,” I said. “But it didn’t feel like a message. It felt like my brain trying to make me feel better.”
She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I get that. We’re leaving in half an hour or so, by the way, if you want to get ready.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks again for the food.”
“Sure, no worries,” she said.
She stood up and started to walk away, but I caught her wrist before she had walked too far. “Wait,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said as I let go of her wrist, her gaze darting between my gaze and my hand.
I looked at her face, and though I felt my cheeks blushing, I needed an answer. “Why did you kiss me?”
She laughed quietly. “I don’t know,” she said, chewing on her lower lip. “Because I wanted to, I guess.”
“But why?” I said.
She was standing in front of me, facing me, looking down at me. Her hair fell over her shoulders. “What do you mean, why?”
“I just thought you didn’t like me,” I said.
“I didn’t,” she replied, smiling at me. “Then I changed my mind.”
“But why?”
“Because I could feel it, you know? That deep down you’re not an arrogant dick, but a nice man whose beliefs were being called into question in a huge way,” she said. “That has to be scary.”
She stared at me, and I stared back at her, unsure of what I was supposed to say to that.
Though I didn’t want to say anything.
I didn’t have to say anything.
My body moved before I could process what I was doing, my hands grabbing her waist as she leaned down and pressed her lips into mine. The kiss was slow at first and it took both of us by surprise, but then she closed her eyes and closed the space between us, pressing her body into mine.
&nb
sp; I wrapped my arms around her waist and held her close while she kissed me, tilting my head up so our lips could continue meeting as she kissed me hungry, desperately. Her body was warm and soft under me and I could feel the heat coming from her skin even through the fabric of her clothes.
When she pushed down on my shoulder, I went on the bed as she climbed on top of me. She looked so beautiful on top of me, her legs placed on each side of my body.
“Do you want to do this?” she asked. “I don’t want to push you into anything you’re not ready for.”
“I want to do this,” I said, grabbing her waist as she leaned down to kiss me again, her chest pressing into my body as she kissed me again, her hands slowly going south toward the zipper of my jeans. I could hear her breathing heavily, and she opened her mouth and was about to say something, when there was a knock on the door.
She jumped off me immediately, trying to straighten her clothes.
“Who is it?” I said.
“Sorry to interrupt, I know you guys are eating,” Basil’s voice said from the other side of the door. “I think I might have just figured it out.”
I looked at Lily, who was clearing her throat.
“You take this,” I said, smiling at her. “I’ll go to the bathroom and clean myself up, huh?”
She laughed. “Yeah. Sure.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LILY
2019
We were in the car. Elias was driving while I was looking at Basil in the backseat. His laptop was on his legs and he was pointing it toward me.
“Just repeat it for me,” I said. “Very slowly. I still haven’t woken up yet.”
“Okay, so,” he said. “You know the history of the place, all that fun stuff, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“But there is this one death,” he said. “This one death that doesn’t seem to be connected to anything. It happened in the early thirties, so after the place had been converted from a hospital to an asylum.”
“Right,” I said again.
“There are lots of deaths then,” he said. “Really tragic deaths from the conditions of the place, you know, consumption—”
“Tuberculosis,” Elias piped up.
“Right, that,” Basil said. “And a lot of the causes are still undetermined. But there is one death that was announced in the paper and seemed to be kind of a big deal.”
“The nurse, right?”
“Holly Stone,” he said. “She was forty-one when she died in 1927.”
“She didn’t also have consumption?”
“No, cancer,” he said. “Really advanced liver cancer. She fainted and never made it home on time. She stayed in Thornbridge for the remainder of her life, which was only around a week. The person taking care of her was another nurse, a Miss Anna Durst. She was big into journaling but the last known entry is from the day Holly Stone died.”
“It’s public?” Elias asked from the front.
“Yes,” Basil replied. “It’s part of public records, though I expect the original is in a museum somewhere. Also, weirdly, she was a flapper for a bit. I think she was sorta semi famous before she became a nurse…”
“That is weird,” I said.
“Right. It says that she wasn’t taking any food or drink at the end… that every time she tried to drink something, she would just vomit it, so ultimately, she might have died of thirst or hunger.”
“I mean, that used to be pretty common,” Elias said. “Nowadays, we’d put an IV on her, but…”
I closed my eyes. I tried to picture this poor woman, see if I could feel her plight, but I couldn’t feel anything. I was coming up completely blank. “I’m not getting anything,” I said.
“Wait until we get to the castle,” he replied. “Maybe you’ll get something then.”
I nodded. I saw Elias glance at me through the rearview mirror. “Does it hurt, Lily?”
“What?”
“When they contact you,” he asked. “Does it physically hurt?”
I furrowed my brow. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess. Sometimes.”
“Why?” I asked when I saw how upset he looked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just wish there was an easier way.”
Basil looked at me and ‘awed’ under his breath. I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help but feel warm. It was nice to know that Elias cared about me after our shaky start together.
“So what, you think this… ghost,” Elias said slowly, “is trying to kill people the way she was killed?”
“It might be that she doesn’t know,” Basil said. “That her grief and pain from dying suddenly and in such horrible conditions are manifesting themselves in the world of the living.”
Elias thought this over for a minute. “That’d be unfortunate.”
“It would definitely be unfortunate,” I said. “But it might be what’s happening.”
“So if that’s the case, what can be done?”
I thought about it for a second before I answered. “We can try and make the spirit rest,” I said. “There’s every chance the spirit is not evil. Instead, it’s probably just confused.”
“So how can you clarify things for it?” Elias asked.
Basil and I exchanged a look.
“It’s hard,” I said.
“Basically an exorcism,” Basil replied at the same time.
“Thanks a lot,” I mouthed at him.
He shrugged his shoulders. “What? It’s the truth.”
Elias thought about this for a few seconds. “I can’t put other-worldly accounts of diseases in my report,” he said. “But I was thinking about something. According to Basil, everyone in the castle seems to have had some sort of supernatural occurrence at one point, right?”
“Do you mean everyone who got sick?” Basil asked.
“Yes,” Elias said. He was pulling into the castle’s parking lot, which was illuminated only by starlight. It looked more imposing like this, in the dark, and now that I had a better idea of what I was fighting, I was more afraid that I had been before. I could feel the fear building up in the pit of my stomach as I thought about what needed to happen.
These kinds of confrontations were never fun.
“Do you have an account of what happened with every person?” Elias asked as we got close to the castle. He parked next to the handicap spot.
“No,” I said. “There is no account, they just had an experience. I think that’s why Dr. Overstreet called us specifically.”
“But she didn’t tell me about it,” Elias said, more to himself than to us.
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think she thought you’d believe her.”
He nodded. “I mean, to be completely real, I definitely wouldn’t have,” he said.
“Exactly,” I replied. He turned the key in the ignition and the car turned off. He turned to look at me, his face covered by darkness. “Are you ready for this?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess,” I said, then smiled when I saw the concern on his face. “Don’t worry. I’m always as enthusiastic about this.”
“She is,” Basil said. “Always.”
“It’s never fun,” I said. “But it’s always interesting.”
I got out of the car and walked toward the castle, vaguely aware that both Elijah and Basil were lagging behind me. I could hear their footsteps, but I didn’t look back. I just needed to gather my courage, go into the castle, and do the work I had been hired to do.
Once I managed to do that, everything would be okay, and people would stop falling sick.
I opened the large door by pushing it open. It creaked when I did, as if we had been away for a while.
“Upstairs,” I told Basil as he passed me.
“What can I do?”
“Don’t drink the water,” I said.
He laughed. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You can just stay with us while you type up your report,” I said. “Nothing is going t
o happen, probably, but… I don’t want you on the other side of the castle. Did you get in touch with someone from the humane society?”
“Yes,” I said. “I did it while you were getting your rabies shot.”
“Nice. What did they say?”
“They’re busy,” he replied. “But they’ll be here in a day or two, provided we can look after the cat for that long. Can we look after the cat for that long?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Sure. I don’t see why not,” I said.
After we had gone to check on the cat, who seemed content to be in the breakroom, all three of us went upstairs to the room on the third floor. Basil set up a small workstation on the bed, Elias’ laptop was still in the room and he used the small working desk provided on the other side of the room, and I sat down on the bed and tried to breathe.
Being relaxed and receptive was the easiest way to communicate with whatever wanted to communicate with me, but it didn’t always work.
“She’s not available for the next hour or so,” Basil said. I could hear the laughter in his voice, but I wasn’t worried about him. I wasn’t worried about anything.
I needed to speak to Holly Stone so I could release this place from her grip, but mostly, so I could release her from this place. She was clearly suffering too.
She was probably suffering much worse than anyone else involved in this entire thing.
“Basil?” I said.
“Yes, boss?”
“Don’t pull me out,” I said. “Unless something terrible happens.”
“Something terrible like what?” I heard Elias ask.
“You know, a nosebleed, or a seizure,” I said.
“Wait, what?” Elias asked.
“Shh,” Basil said. “Let her work. You need to be quiet.”
“But—”
“You’ll have to leave if you don’t, man,” Basil said.
He quieted down. I put my hands on my legs and tried to breath deeply again. I cleared my mind of any thoughts, and tried to think only of the way my body felt on the bed. I could feel the tight fabric of the jeans clinging to the skin of my legs, the way my socks felt on my feet, and the quilt under my body on top of the firm mattress.
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