by Lee Dignam
“I don’t know,” she said, “But if we want to catch it and destroy it, we need to go after it right now.”
“We can’t destroy it… you don’t know this one like I do.” Alice winced and cradled her arm. Blood was slipping out of four deep slices in her leather jacket. “Fuck,” she said.
“Damn… it really got you,” Cora said. “Can you move it?”
With great effort Alice forced her fingers to flex, turning her hand into a fist. Supernaturally inflicted pain coursed through her system, pain so insidious not even adrenaline could silence it. Alice had to grit her teeth and groan to make the fist with her hand, but she managed. This was good. The surgeon’s scalpel fingers hadn’t cut too deeply into her arm.
“Hold still, okay?” Cora said, “I’m going to do something.”
“What are you going to do?” Alice asked.
Cora didn’t reply. Instead she grabbed Alice’s arm by the wrist and the elbow and closed her eyes. A moment later, Cora’s palms were glowing with soft, blue light and the pain in Alice’s system was starting to fade. It didn’t leave entirely—the discomfort and the difficulty moving her fingers remained—but she was no longer paralyzed by the pain.
Alice stared in wonderment at her own arm, and then looked up at Cora. “How did you do that?” she asked.
“I’ll teach you,” Cora said, and when she opened her eyes they were glowing softly again.
Cora stood up, extended her hand, and Alice took it with her good arm, rising to her feet in the same motion. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me; just tell me you’ll get rid of this thing.”
“Why didn’t it keep attacking?” Cora asked.
“It must have known there were two of us and fled. Which means it won’t stay in the hospital for long, if it’s still here at all.”
“Then we’d better get moving and find it.”
“I think I have an idea. Stay with me, I’ve only done this once.”
Alice reached out with her mind, removing the cloak of shadows she had put up around herself to prevent her light from shining and searched with her invisible senses for the energies of the spirits still haunting the hospital. Her mind took her to the corridor with the gurneys, which now lay toppled and discarded on the floor, and she sensed the spirits wandering aimlessly along that hall. All at once she wrapped her psychic tendrils around each and every one of them, and when she had their essences under her control she uttered the same word she had used back at the graveyard those many months ago.
“Awaken.”
And Hell’s Toilet woke up.
CHAPTER 8
The Surgeon
Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster, the crumbling old City General Hospital was alive again. With her eyes closed, Alice’s other senses started to work overdrive. In the distance she could hear the sounds of coughing patients, the wails of the dying, and the angry rants of those still in denial of their situation. The heady smell of disinfectant filled the air and assaulted Alice’s nostrils, though it was considerably better than what she had smelled since she came into this place. Then suddenly, the air became charged with static, causing Alice’s hackles to rise.
“What are you doing?” Cora asked. “What did you do to the spirits?”
“They’re going to help us,” Alice said, and she sent—through her psychic connection—a single command to all of the spirits under her influence. Find the surgeon, don’t let him leave.
A cold breeze whooshed through Alice’s already excited body causing her to shudder all over. Cora felt it too because she let out a small sigh. The halls were still dark and, for the most part, as quiet as they had ever been, but something had changed. The shadows were different. Once they danced away from the flashlight’s beam, but now they seemed to cross in front of it, casting macabre, humanoid marionettes on the walls. Whispers floated at the edge of sound.
Alice opened her eyes and exhaled slowly. She turned to look at Cora and gestured down the hall with a nod of her head. Cora walked, and Alice walked beside her. The spirits were like curious fish; they would approach from one direction, circle the pair of Half-Liches, and depart quickly in another direction. Alice swore she could almost hear them as they approached, but mostly registered their presence as a prickling of the skin.
Cora suddenly stuck her hand out in front of Alice. Far away, but directly ahead, some loud, angry thing cried out in frustration. Its horrible voice cascaded down the hall to reach Alice’s ears and she almost froze again, but she didn’t. Instead she put her hand around Trapper, ensured the camera was set to MAT, and readied her finger against the button.
“It’s down there,” Cora said.
“There’s no point being subtle about this,” Alice said.
Cora nodded, and then sprang into a run. Alice followed with one hand on her camera and another gripping the flashlight. The corridor jumped and wobbled around her, but her stride was true and she was able to keep a good pace despite the debris. More cries of frustration filled the hall, this time louder, closer, and Alice’s heart jumped into her throat again. The surgeon was near. It was trying to find a way out, but it couldn’t. The spirits weren’t letting him. But they wouldn’t be able to hold him if he decided to start hacking his way out.
“There,” Alice said, trailing her flashlight on a closed double door at the end of the hall. “The sound is coming from back there.”
Cora stopped when she reached the door and pushed it hard, but the door wouldn’t open. Alice joined in too, adding her strength to the effort. Nothing. It was either locked or rusted shut.
“Dammit,” Alice said. “Look around for something to pry it open.”
“No time,” Cora said. She took a few steps back and readied herself. Alice, noticing what Cora was about to do, readied her shoulder.
“On three,” Alice said.
“One, two…”
Alice and Cora took a stride each and impacted the door with their shoulders. Its rusted, metal joints screamed, and the door gave an inch. Another hard shove caused the door to budge even further and scream even louder, a sound that rose above the surgeon’s frustrated cries and caused Alice’s insides to go cold.
This time Alice took a deep breath, backed up four paces, and readied herself. Cora grabbed the left door handle and said, pointing at a spot on the door, “Here. Hit it here.”
“This would be a lot easier with magic,” Alice said.
“Neither of us has magic that can help with this. Now hit it!”
Alice didn’t argue. She put her head down, took three hard strides, and hit the door with her shoulder. She had no choice—it was smash the door down or find another way around, and with the hospital’s labyrinthine halls, that would not be an easy feat.
Something snapped when she hit the door, and a metallic whine ripped through the corridor causing Alice’s teeth to rattle, but the door gave way with the force of her momentum to reveal an even darker, wetter hall than the one she had been in. Before Alice saw the gaping hole in the ground and the ruins of rotten metal beams and crushed tiles beneath, it was too late.
Cora reached out to grab Alice’s jacket, but her fingers slipped off the leather and Alice fell through the collapsed floor and into the level below. For a moment she hung, weightless in the air. Her stomach lifted as her body fell, creating a cold, nauseating sensation that rushed through her in that moment of suspension. With only a moment to act, Alice turned to her side, hugged Trapper to her chest, and allowed the inevitable to happen.
She struck the ground hard, and the shockwave rang out along each and every one of her bones. Her shoulder, the point of impact, shrieked with pain like white fire and then immediately numbed. Something had cracked. She had heard it. Maybe her shoulder had dislocated, or maybe she had fractured it. At least she hadn’t hit any of the stray pipes and sharp lumps she had seen jutting out of the collapsed floor going down.
Although, if she had, she wouldn’t know it given the current state s
he was in. Alice had fallen hard on her side and could do nothing but lie there, thinking about what kind of damage she had or hadn’t suffered, and listening to the steady drip drop of water into a nearby puddle. At least Trapper was safe.
“Alice!” Cora said, but her voice was muffled, as if they had both been submerged in a tank of water.
Alice groaned and shifted her weight from her hurt shoulder to her other side. This arm was also injured—the surgeon had seen to that—but the pain she was feeling was muted on this side, and moving in this way helped. It allowed Alice a moment to think, to collect her mind, to understand that she had fallen—ten feet maybe—although it had felt like miles.
“Are you okay?” Cora asked.
“I think so,” Alice said, “I’ve hurt my arm, but I think I’m okay.”
“Wait there, okay? I’m going to come down.”
“I wasn’t planning on moving.”
Cora disappeared from view and Alice heard her pattering away, presumably to find a staircase. Alice had fallen pretty hard. If Cora had tried to jump down the hole and managed to hurt herself too, they would have a hard time getting back out of this place—let alone trying to take on the surgeon.
“Shit,” Alice said, and she willed her body to rise. Her muscles ached, but she made them work enough to allow her to sit up. The flashlight had gone spilling out of her hand and shut itself off; now she couldn’t see her own fingers in front of her face. “Cora?” she said into the darkness, but there was no reply. Looking up at the hole in the ceiling she tried again. “Cora? Are you there?” Nothing.
Only, the corridor wasn’t entirely silent. The whispers remained, as did the constant charge hanging in the air. But there was something else, too; a distant, drawn out shriek of metal scraping on metal, and it was getting closer. Alice’s heart continued to hammer inside her chest and her breathing began to quicken. This was the sound she had heard only moments ago, a sound that signaled not only the surgeon’s advance, but also his intent.
“Get up,” she said to herself, shifting her weight around. “Get the fuck up.”
She rotated the shoulder she had landed on. It throbbed and groaned through the general numbness she was feeling, but she hadn’t dislocated it. The joint wasn’t the problem. She felt around with her good hand, hoping she hadn’t landed on something that had embedded itself into her. No, that wasn’t it either, but the arm still refused to cooperate.
Alice planted her less injured hand on the floor and put her weight onto it. Her forearm pulsed with shots of pain from where she had been cut earlier, but she was able to get to her feet, which was something. She wasn’t aware of it until now, but her chest was starting to feel tight and her stomach was beginning to float. Am I about to faint?
Distantly she became aware of a vibration on her leg. Her phone was ringing. It seemed absurd to her that in this moment which was much like something out of a horror movie, something as simple—as mundane—as a phone ringing could be happening. But she was thankful for it because it took her out of the moment, and pushed her fear deeper into the back of her own mind.
Alice reached into her pocket and pulled the vibrating phone out, managing to catch it on every single fold of her jeans. Isaac’s handsome, smiling face looked up at her from the phone’s locked screen.
She heard the scraping again, and when she looked up she could have sworn she saw sparks flickering down the dark hall like the tiny flashes of distant gunfire. The surgeon was coming. It was closer now, and it was taunting her. It may have been trying to escape before, but it had seen an opportunity. Alice was alone, and any ideas it had about leaving had disappeared. Any moment now it would be on her, and with only one working hand, Alice had a choice to make.
A metallic scream erupted through the hall as if the thing advancing along the dark corridor had sensed Alice’s internal hesitation. She swiped to the right with her thumb, answering the call, but then stuffed the phone in her pocket and scrambled to grab Trapper. But she had hurt her right arm during the fall and Trapper’s button was on the right hand side of the camera.
Think like a mage, Isaac’s voice said in the back of her mind, but the surgeon was coming, Alice’s heart was beating like a wild animal thrashing against a flimsy wooden door, desperate to get out—or in—and she couldn’t concentrate. Her hands, both of them, began to glow with soft blue light, enough for her to see a little better than she had been able to see until now; enough to catch the glimmer of razor tipped fingers as they came darting toward her from the dark.
Alice threw herself on her back and the razor fingers sliced strands of her hair as she fell. When she hit the ground, her backpack softening the fall, she clenched her jaw, grabbed Trapper with both hands despite the pain, and pressed the button. Alice’s energy filtered through the camera in an instant and the hall suddenly lit up with a bright blue flash that seemed to explode out of the little camera’s body. There was another metallic screech that vibrated in Alice’s chest, only this time it sounded pained instead of frustrated.
The surgeon retreated, staggering and slamming into a nearby wall. Alice drew Trapper up again, working through the pain in her right arm, and fired off another bright flash of light that shot out of the camera with a whumph. But in the instant of brightness she saw only the surgeon’s arm as it retreated into the darkness. She had missed this time. Her hands were trembling, her heart was wedged into her throat and beating so hard she thought it would constrict her ability to breathe, and she could feel the pinch of panic in her throat.
She never saw its face, only its arm and the vague impression of a tall, lanky body.
“Fuck… fuck—fuck,” she said.
Her body was telling her to rest, begging her to lay her head back and take a moment to breathe, but she remained as taut as a bowstring, her core cocked and ready to move at a moment’s notice, but her blood was running hot, her nerves were shot, and the moment came before she was ready for it. The surgeon barreled out of the darkness, its scalpel fingers catching the blue light from Alice’s hands and gleaming wickedly. The thing screeched, and its jaw unhinged to reveal a dark O—darker than night—from which no light could escape.
Alice’s mind flashed to the operating room where she was tortured. She remembered the excruciating pain she was in, the whistling, and how powerless she was. The surgeon had her in its scalpels and it would only let her go when it wanted to. A part of Alice had, back then, wished for death, had hoped for the sweet, swift release that would see her free of those vile creatures. But death hadn’t come. The surgeon wouldn’t allow it. Nyx wouldn’t allow it.
More than two years had passed since that day, but for the first time in as long, the part of Alice that wished for death spoke up again, and she found herself unable to press the button that would send the surgeon screaming into the darkness again. Alice cried out as the scalpels came, but they didn’t touch her fragile human skin. She felt a familiar vibration electrify her body, heard the surgeon groan—a sound not dissimilar to the sound its scalpel fingers made as they dragged along metal—and when she looked up she saw it making a hasty retreat down the dark hallway.
There was light in the corridor, too. When Alice looked up and turned around, she saw Cora rushing down the hall. Her eyes were ablaze with blue fire, her hands glowed like Alice’s, and streaks of energy were flying out of them toward the surgeon. It batted the energy away as it fled, and with every pulse of light the surgeon got smaller and smaller until it turned a corner and disappeared entirely. When it was gone and the shrieking died down, Alice allowed herself to breathe.
Cora approached, stuck a hand out, and helped Alice to her feet. “Can you move your arm?”
“I can, but I think it’s broken.”
“We should get you to a—”
“No… no more hospitals. I’ll be fine, I’ve just gotta get home. I’ve got a friend who can help out.”
“Think the surgeon will get out?”
“It’s gone. I can’t fee
l it anymore”
“We should get out of here then. Exit’s this way.”
Alice nodded and followed Cora down the hall. Her hands were still glowing, but by the time they arrived at the reception area, where not even ambient light could penetrate, they didn’t need to see by the glow anymore. They headed straight for the broken window, and without looking back, climbed through it.
CHAPTER 9
Mirror, Mirror
Isaac’s eyes were wide with alarm. A kind of paralyzing terror had filled him when he first heard the awful, muffled sounds on the other end of the line, and he couldn’t move. Alice was shouting or groaning as the sounds of a battle raged on, and then a painful screeching sound rang out. Isaac yelled down the phone for Alice to answer him, to tell him what was happening, but it was all in vain. She couldn’t hear him.
When the sounds died down, and Isaac’s wits returned, there was only one thing he could think to do. Alice needed his help more than the mages did right now.
He released his hold on the green, warehouse door and it slid shut with a clang. He then closed his eyes, reached out with his mind to that furious, brutal place where magic comes from, and summoned the Good Doctor. The smell of honey and rotting flesh mixed with that of the salt spray, and when Isaac opened his eyes the Good Doctor was standing next to him, tall and indomitable, its eyes hidden behind the full plague doctor’s mask covering its face.
“I need to go to Alice,” Isaac said. “I think she’s in trouble.”
“Magic is yours,” said the Good Doctor.
Isaac nodded and stepped away from the warehouse door. He walked along the ledge where the lot dropped off sharply into the ocean, and stared into the distance. A storm is coming, he thought as he watched distant sparks of light dance behind the clouds. The ghost of a bell was tinkling somewhere, a buoy perhaps, swaying with the rapidly changing current and steadily increasing winds.