by Dan Poblocki
Neil felt his face burn. “I fell.” Not a lie. But not exactly the truth.
“I see.” The doctor sat on a small stool with wheels. He scooted forward and examined the scrapes on Neil’s shin. Then he stood and checked out Neil’s nose. The doctor reached for a tissue and handed it over. Neil wiped at his nostrils. Caked blood came away, flecked on the paper. The doctor held a small light up to Neil’s eyes. “Well … the good news is that none of this looks too serious. We’ll clean you up. Bandage your leg.”
“What’s the bad news?”
Dr. Simon smiled. “Andy said he’s heading out to locate Anna and Claire. Knowing how protective those two are, I can assure you that the rest of your night will not be as fun as this.”
Neil’s lungs tightened. “Really? Are they that strict?”
The doctor smiled and opened a nearby cabinet, fetching a small bottle of iodine. “This may sting a little.”
When he’d finished with Neil, Dr. Simon led the way back to the waiting room, where he rejoined Bree, Wesley, and Eric. “So, I suppose you’ll just stay here until your aunts show up.”
“Can I use your phone?” Wesley asked the doctor. “My parents are probably wondering where we are.” Dr. Simon pointed at another door opposite the one he’d come through.
Bree asked Neil, “Everything okay?”
Dr. Simon nodded his head. “He’s fine. Just make sure he changes the bandage tomorrow. Keep it clean. Soap. Water. And a little hydrogen peroxide won’t hurt.” Then the doctor glanced at the brown file folder on the coffee table. He flinched.
Eric noticed Dr. Simon’s reaction and immediately grabbed for the folder. But it was too late. The doctor had seen it. He looked at each of them. Something in his eyes made Neil nervous.
“Where did you get that?” said Dr. Simon, sounding as though he already knew the answer.
“It’s not yours,” said Eric, “if that’s what you were wondering.”
“Eric!” Bree whispered, shocked at his rudeness.
“That’s not what I was wondering actually.” Dr. Simon held out his hand. Eric pressed his lips together, and then he handed the folder to the doctor. Dr. Simon tucked his new prize underneath his arm. He stiffened, suddenly businesslike. “You may wait for Anna and Claire here. But I would suggest that there are places in this town where your presence is not welcome …” He glanced down at Neil’s bandages. “… as the evidence of your adventure today should remind you.”
“You’re not going to tell our aunts, are you?” Neil asked.
Dr. Simon smiled — a surprisingly sad expression — and answered, “I hope I won’t have to.”
THEY TOOK ANDY UP ON HIS OFFER TO DRIVE THEM HOME.
Later, after the Baptiste brothers left, Neil sat with Bree at the kitchen table, dutifully chopping broccoli florets. “I’m not going to lie,” said Claire, standing at the sink, rinsing a colander filled with stringy pasta. “You had us worried sick.” Neil still felt extremely guilty — he hadn’t even tried to take their feelings into account when he’d set off for Graylock. “Next time you want to go for a walk, just leave us a note. We don’t want you to think we’re holding you captive here. But, well, Anna does suffer from a heart murmur. You can’t cause her any trouble.”
Anna stood near the stove, and she leaned far out of her way to bump Claire with her hip. “Leave me and my heart out of this,” she said. Her voice sounded jovial, but Neil could read skepticism in her brow. She definitely hadn’t bought Andy’s story that they’d been surveying the trails behind their house and Neil had tripped on a log.
“We’re sorry,” said Bree, who sat across the table from Neil, peeling carrots. “I don’t know what we were thinking.” She tossed him a blameful look.
“The woods are intriguing,” said Claire matter-of-factly, “if not a little dangerous. I don’t blame you for wanting to explore. We go for long walks sometimes too.”
“True,” said Anna. “But Claire and I manage to stick to the paths. You guys already know how easy it is to get hurt. It’s even easier to get lost.” She glanced over her shoulder, throwing Neil and Bree a look that said she knew exactly what they’d been up to. “Just a warning.”
After dinner, at Neil’s request, the four sat down to watch Ghostly Investigators. The aunts had never seen the show before. Tonight’s episode was about an abandoned amusement park on the coast of Rhode Island. During the show, Neil described the crew who was involved, how the investigators worked, the tools they used. EMF detectors read fluctuations in electromagnetism — its flashing lights indicated a field change and the possibility of a spirit. Digital recorders captured voices that could not be heard by human ears. Heat-sensitive cameras traced hot and cold spots, another hint that spectral visitors were nearby. The aunts listened skeptically, but seemed to enjoy the episode. At the end, Alexi and Mark remarked that they’d gathered enough evidence to conclude that the park was indeed a haunted place.
“Even after all that,” said Anna, “I still can’t quite believe. Ghosts? I’m a doubter at heart.”
“That’s just because you’ve never seen one,” said Claire.
“Have you?” Neil asked Claire. His injured leg was propped up on the couch, at his aunt’s insistence.
Claire bunched up her face and shrugged. “I’ve seen things. Nothing I can be sure of. But that’s how it works, doesn’t it? You get a fleeting glimpse of whatever it is you can’t explain.”
“Yes,” Anna added, “but the difference between us is that if I catch a glimpse of something odd, I find a reason for it. You tend to harp on it until you’ve convinced yourself: boogeyman.” She chuckled, then sighed. “Claire and your mother both put more faith in their imaginations than I do.”
At the mention of his mother, Neil flinched. Like parent, like child.
“But what exactly have you seen, Aunt Claire?” Bree asked.
Claire sat silently, looking like she was unsure whether or not to tell the story. Anna crossed her arms and cleared her throat. Claire ignored her and leaned forward. “Have you heard the legend of Graylock? It’s the hospital that used to be back in the woods here.”
“Yeah,” said Neil hesitantly. He avoided Bree’s glare. “We’ve heard stories.”
“On our walks in the woods,” Claire went on, “I sometimes get the feeling I’m being watched.”
“See?” said Anna, throwing up her hands. “Would you call that ghostly?”
“That’s not all,” said Claire. She turned to Anna, her face growing stern. “I never told you this, but once, a couple years ago, when we were near that lake, I swear I saw someone standing at the water’s edge. Among the reeds. Just standing there. Looking at us.”
“What did the person look like?” asked Neil, trying to contain the sick giddiness that was gathering in his chest.
“She was tall. Long brown hair, I think. Dressed in white.”
“Nurse Janet,” Neil whispered to himself.
“Who?” Anna asked.
“Uh,” he answered, his cheeks turning pink. “I was just thinking out loud.”
Anna squinted at him, looking as if she never wanted him to say that name again. But the expression only lasted for a couple of seconds before softening, “Your leg all right?” she asked. “How about some more pillows?”
When the aunts said good night, Neil brought his borrowed satchel upstairs to his room. He tossed it at a chair beside the bed where it landed with a thunk. The dead flashlight and camera were still inside, along with the other items he’d packed that afternoon. He lay down, his leg stinging, his nose puffy.
Someone knocked at his door. A moment later, Bree peered in at him.
“What’s up?” said Neil, even though he knew that the answer was “Plenty.”
“Just checking on you.”
“I’m fine.”
Bree nodded slowly and entered anyway. She sat on the edge of his bed, glancing at his leg, looking as if she needed to tell him something but couldn’t speak.
Finally, she managed, “I was really scared today, Neil.”
He’d felt the same way, but refused to admit it.
“And I’m not just talking about you getting hurt either,” she continued. “There was something inside that place … something I can’t explain.”
Neil felt his stomach clench. And though he didn’t want to bring it up, there was one question he had to ask. “Why did you go into room 13?” he whispered. He remembered his sister’s blank expression when she’d turned to face him.
Bree stared at the ceiling. “That’s the thing … I don’t know. I walked down that hallway, into the dark. I noticed the door was open a crack. I felt like I had to go inside — like it had been my destination all along. And as soon as I did, I felt strange. Like something was trying to talk to me. Something without a mouth … without a voice. I felt like I couldn’t leave until I heard what it had to say. Then you showed up. And everything went … weird.”
Neil shivered. “That’s totally not what I thought you were going to say. You’ve always been more like Anna. You don’t believe in this stuff.”
Bree shrugged. “But you felt it too. Didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what I felt,” said Neil. “It was so strange. We both got confused.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “And you’re sure you didn’t shut the door on us?”
“I think I’d remember doing that.”
Neil wasn’t satisfied, but he kept his mouth shut. Could it really have been a ghost? And if not … was the alternative even scarier?
Bree looked at the satchel on the chair beside the bed. “Maybe we can track down some new batteries for the camera tomorrow. Those pictures might show us something we can’t remember … or didn’t see.”
“Oh my gosh,” Neil said, sitting up on his bed.
Bree stepped away, as if he might explode. “What’s wrong?”
“The flashlight. The camera. When we were in room 13, the batteries died almost instantaneously.”
“And?”
“According to Alexi and Mark, that’s a sign that something is trying to manifest.”
“Manifest?”
“Appear. Make itself known. A spirit doesn’t have its own energy, so it needs to take energy from other places in order to do stuff.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Like what happened in room 13.” Despite himself, Neil smiled a bit. This was good. He and his sister might not be taking after Mom and Dad after all.
“So you’re saying that thing we saw was a ghost?” said Bree, crossing her arms. “And that this ghost somehow drained the batteries from the flashlight and the camera? To do what?”
“Show herself to us.” Neil nodded. Bree simply stood there, her chest heaving. He knew that she was freaking out — especially since she wasn’t talking about freaking out.
“That’s an interesting theory,” Bree said. Exactly. Totally freaked, Neil thought. “I-I’m tired. I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll replace those batteries. See what we can find.”
Bree closed his door, leaving Neil alone. He slipped under his covers and stared at the ceiling. He briefly wondered how his mother was doing at that moment, down in New Jersey. Then he closed his eyes and tried to shake her face out of his head. Instead, he thought of the ghost: his wonderfully disturbing new distraction. Why would Nurse Janet want to show herself to him? Why had she appeared to Aunt Claire down by the water’s edge? And most important, he wondered, had his camera picked up her image before she’d sucked the batteries dry?
Neil turned off the lamp next to his bed. The suburban street lights back home always seeped through his curtains, providing a calming sense of the world outside. Here, the room disappeared into the dead blackness of the countryside night. After a few seconds, his vision adjusted and he made out small details: knobby wooden posts at the end of his bed; the outline of the tall, thin windows; his own skinny hand in front of his face.
Closing his eyes again, sinking into the soft down pillow, Neil’s brain buzzed to see the contents of the camera’s memory, but when he imagined what — besides Nurse Janet — might be represented there, a strange sensation teased him, as if Graylock’s shadows had followed him home, nipping at his heels.
Just before sleep took him away, new questions arose in his mind. Would the asylum in the woods be a salvation, a new kind of hideaway from his troubles? Or was it a trap, pinning him to the darkness of his shadow self?
What was it worth to learn the answer?
THAT NIGHT, NEIL DREAMED OF THE HOSPITAL.
He was in the back of a van. He couldn’t move. Glancing down at his body, he realized he was strapped to a wheelchair. When the vehicle abruptly stopped, someone opened the door, and someone else guided the chair down a wooden ramp to a paved road in the middle of a dense wood. He tried to turn his head, to look around, but his spine was locked down too, tied tightly to a high metallic spindle. Forced to face forward, he saw the road led straight toward a familiar island.
The chain-link fence was gone. The concrete bridge was in perfect shape. Crossing the water, he noticed that the surface was clear of green scum. The healthy reeds grew with an almost cultivated appearance trim, straight, clean.
Ahead, Graylock Hall waited with a blank expression. If places were capable of thought, this building cared about nothing. It knew it would have him eventually. The boy in the chair was simply another meal, one more soul to sit in a waiting room that would never be full.
He was inside. Tiled walls rushed by. Fast, then faster, until the journey was indistinguishable from a roller-coaster ride. Space Mountain. Star Wars. Light speed. Neil wanted to scream, but he realized that his mouth had been clamped shut; leather straps wrapped his skull from crown to jaw.
The chair finally came to a stop in front of a closed door. Green paint flecked off its metal surface. From inside the room, he could hear someone crying. Weeping. Emitting great, gasping sighs. He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see who was in there. But even through his eyelids, he watched the door swing slowly open. Someone pushed the chair into the room, then slammed the door closed with a whoom!
Through a high window, clouded daylight fell, illuminating the center of the small room but leaving its corners in shadow. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor were all dingy, puffy, and padded, once white. Flicking his eyes back and forth, Neil noticed long scrapes in the old pads where patients had clawed at the walls, trying to escape. Dark brown streaks painted the edges of the gouged fabric. He imagined broken fingernails, dried blood that no one had ever bothered to clean up. Then, from a shadowed corner, something moved. A voice cried out. No words. A sigh of frustration. A sob of misery. Hopelessness.
The light shifted. Someone was sitting there in the darkness, as if in her own mess, huddled, head down. Dressed in white. A coat with abnormally long sleeves pinned the person’s arms to her torso. Stringy, long hair covered her face, draped almost to the floor. Her shoulders shuddered.
Neil grunted, and the person froze, as if suddenly aware of his presence. The figure raised her head, peering at him from behind the wild tangle of hair. She gasped, leaned back against the padded wall, struggled to stand. Then she stumbled forward, barefoot, step step step step, all the way to his wheelchair, threatening to fall face-first into Neil’s chest. He pressed himself into his seat, unable to move, unable to cry out.
The person froze, examined him closely, sniffing at his face, his restraints. With the figure directly before him, Neil expected to smell rot, filth, stale breath. Instead, he experienced a recognizable aroma, not unpleasant: roses.
His mother’s perfume.
A lightning bolt of nausea melted his muscles.
The woman shook her hair from her face. Though the eyes that peered at him were puffy and red from weeping, they were instantly recognizable, even this desperate and wildly ecstatic.
“Honey,” whispered his mother. “Neil, baby. You’ve got to get us out of here.”
But how? he thought.
As if to answer him, she opened her mouth. A purple tongue lolled out, dripping noxious black liquid. This was no longer his mother’s face.
She leaned in, as if to kiss him, but at the last second, her cracked lips parted, showing him black gums and several clusters of long, sharp teeth. The brightest white in the darkness.
Neil awoke with a start, and when he did not recognize the room, he cried out quietly.
A moment later, his brain clicked everything into place again. He was at his aunts’ house. He’d had a nightmare. A bad one. He let it slip away, but several pieces stuck. The padded room. The figure in the corner. His mother’s plea. The horrible face. He took a deep breath, wishing for the glass of water he always remembered to keep next to his bed back home.
He froze, suddenly aware that he wasn’t alone.
Someone was crying. Here in his room. The faint sound seemed to have followed him out from the dream. But he wasn’t dreaming. In the darkness, he could make out a slumped figure sitting at the end of the bed. She wore a white nightgown. Long brown hair trailed down her back. Her hands were at her face, muffling her soft sobs.
“Bree,” Neil said. “What’s the matter?”
She flinched at the sound of his voice, then turned to look at him. Her face was in shadow, but he felt her piercing stare, as if she couldn’t believe he could actually see her here in the darkness.
“Did you have a bad dream too?” He leaned forward to touch her shoulder, but she stood. Watching him, she backed toward the bedroom door, where she paused before slipping away. She was gone before Neil even had a chance to think of turning on the bedside lamp.
He threw back his sheets and slowly edged toward the door. Near the end of the bed, his bare feet slid on a slick patch of floor. The wood there was wet. “What the …?” He imagined a pool of tears. Had his sister been crying so hard for so long? Was that even possible? Neil bent down. His fingers tingled as the cold moisture clung to his skin. Definitely water. Clutching the mattress to pull himself back up, he realized that his bed was also damp. Had Bree just taken a bath or something? It felt like the middle of the night, but he couldn’t say for sure — the clock at his bedside had apparently run out of batteries.