by Dan Poblocki
Neil found his way to the hall. He knocked on his sister’s door. There was no answer. He turned the knob, pressing his mouth to the crack. “Bree,” he whispered. From inside came a soft groan. Neil pushed the door open and stepped in.
Bree was sprawled across the mattress, her sheets and limbs tangled together. She lifted her head from the pillow. “Neil?” she said, her voice foggy with sleep. “What are you doing?”
Neil felt a chill. His shin suddenly pinched at him. “I just came to see if you were okay.”
“I’m fine. I was sleeping.”
“Sleepwalking you mean?”
Bree propped herself up on her elbows to see him more clearly. She reached over and turned on her lamp. The room filled with a cozy glow. “Sleepwalking? I don’t think so.”
Neil flinched. “You were sitting on the edge of my bed. You were crying so hard the floor was wet.”
“You were dreaming,” said Bree, sounding annoyed.
“I swear I wasn’t,” he answered. “I’d bet my …”
Then he noticed something odd. Bree was wearing a purple T-shirt and gym shorts. Definitely not the white nightgown she’d had on in his bedroom. That chill enveloped him again. He wiped new dampness from his clammy palms onto his pajama pants.
“You’d bet your what?” said Bree.
He was going to say life, and was glad he’d stopped himself. It was a bet he would have lost. Moving toward Bree’s bed, he pointed to a dark spot on her sheets. “What’s this?”
Bree sat up. She touched the stain. “Ew. It’s damp.”
“I found the same thing in my room,” Neil said.
Bree bit her lip. “You swear you’re not screwing with me?”
“No way,” said Neil. “She was here.”
“Who was here?”
Neil had a pretty good idea. But he couldn’t bring himself to say her name out loud, as if that would draw her back again. Instead, he explained exactly what had happened to him when he’d woken from his nightmare.
Bree hopped out of bed and stood next to Neil, as if this new closeness would protect them from their fear. “What do we do?” Bree asked.
“Tell the aunts?”
“And freak them out too?”
“Maybe it was one of them?”
“Claire or Anna snuck into both of our rooms and sat on our beds, soaking wet, crying her eyes out.” Bree shook her head. “You really believe that?”
“No … but what’s the other option?” Neil could think of several, none of which provided him with any comfort. Bree must have felt the same way, because she did not answer.
NEIL HAD HEARD STORIES ABOUT PEOPLE who suffered from insomnia, the inability to fall asleep despite a feeling of extreme exhaustion. The morning after the nightmare, he knew exactly how those people felt: horrible. Sitting at the kitchen table, his eyes burned. His scalp hurt, as if every follicle in his head was angry with him. It was cruel, but knowing that Bree was experiencing the same thing made Neil feel a bit better. She sat across from him, leaning on the table, propping her head on her crossed arms.
The night before, she’d come back to his room with him. They’d kept the light on, lying restlessly on his bed until early morning light spilled through the windows. The aunts found the two of them a couple hours later sprawled half-conscious on the couch downstairs, the television blaring an obnoxious aerobics program.
The incident with the visitor accounted for only part of Neil’s sleep-depriving anxiety; mostly, he was afraid that if he allowed himself to fall fully asleep, he’d return to that padded cell in the dream asylum, where the purple-tongued demoness was waiting to finish her meal.
“So the beds are uncomfortable,” Anna said, placing the carton of orange juice in the center of the table.
“No, no.” Bree shook her head. “They’re really comfortable.”
Claire and Anna glanced at each other. “Then why were you two down here?” Anna asked. The silence that followed was as sharp as a knife.
Why couldn’t he just spit it out? Finally, Neil decided he could. After all, maybe the aunts had answers. “Actually,” he said, “someone came into our rooms last night. It sort of freaked us out.”
Again, a glance between the aunts; this one, however, was of confusion. And it revealed the answer to a question he hadn’t even asked. It wasn’t either of us, it said.
“Someone?” said Claire.
“She had long brown hair,” said Neil. “Dressed in what I thought was a white nightgown. But it might have been something else. A uniform maybe.”
“And you both saw her?” Anna asked.
Bree lifted her head. “Well … no. But there was a puddle on my floor.”
Anna scowled. “Neil. Please. Your sister doesn’t need you playing jokes on her like this.”
Neil’s face flushed. “It’s not like that.” He glanced at Bree for help, but she was looking at him as if considering that Anna might be onto something. “We think the woman might have been … well, a ghost.”
Now Anna glared at Claire. “All that talk about Graylock yesterday,” she murmured.
Claire sat down at the table. She reached out and took both of their hands. “You guys,” she said, “I want you to talk to us if you’re feeling upset or … strange about everything that’s been going on back home. Anna and I understand this is a really difficult time for you. For your mom. And your dad.”
Neil grunted. No one seemed to notice. He chewed on the inside of his lip, annoyed. He’d worked up the courage to tell them what was really happening. Why did Claire have to change the subject?
“Thanks,” said Bree. “We know it’s hard for you too. Having us here.”
“But what about the possibility of a ghost?” Neil interrupted. Slowly, everyone turned to look at him. “You told us about what you saw at Graylock Lake, Aunt Claire. The woman in the reeds. What if that was Nurse Janet? What if she followed … I mean, maybe the person we saw last night was her too?”
“Nurse Janet?” said Claire unsurely.
Anna snorted and shook her head. “She’s a boogeywoman. A ghost story someone made up to keep kids in line.”
“I heard she worked at that hospital,” Neil persisted. “They say she still haunts it. That she drowns kids who break into Graylock Hall. She kills them just like she killed her patients when she was still alive.”
“Neil!” Bree said through her teeth.
“If that’s true,” said Anna, squinting at him, “whatever was she doing here last night? According to you, Neil, she comes after kids who break into Graylock, right?”
Claire stood up. “Okay. All right. Enough ghost talk. We don’t want anyone having bad dreams again tonight.”
“It wasn’t a bad dream,” said Neil, right before remembering the extremely bad dream that had woken him up in the first place.
“I don’t care if it was acid indigestion,” said Anna. “The Nurse Janet story is a lie that was started by parents who had good, if not slightly warped, intentions: to keep the doors of that creepy building locked tight. No one should be going in there. Not anymore.”
Neil pressed his lips together. You’ve got to get us out of here, his mother had insisted in the dream from the night before. If learning the truth about Nurse Janet could prove that she had come to him, that he hadn’t imagined it — that he wasn’t taking after his mom — then he didn’t care what building he had to sneak into.
No one would stop him.
AFTER BREAKFAST, BREE DECIDED TO STAY BEHIND and help Anna out in her ceramics studio, which was tucked discreetly inside the ramshackle barn that stood behind the aunts’ house.
Claire insisted that Neil accompany her to the pie shop, where she assured him that she would reveal all of her baking secrets. Neil had no choice but to follow, even though he couldn’t have cared less about the secret of pie. Before they got in the car, he grabbed the satchel from the chair next to his bed, wondering when he’d have the opportunity to hunt for haunts.
> As they pulled out of the driveway, Neil half-expected to see Nurse Janet standing with a wide grin at the side of the road, her thumb extended to hitch a ride. He closed his eyes until they were nearly at the shop, which was already bustling with Claire’s employees.
In the kitchen, Claire introduced Neil to the head pastry chef, Glenn Kelly, a tall and surprisingly skinny man with a big smile who wore a pristine white apron over a white T-shirt and jeans. His assistant was a college-age girl named Melissa Diaz, also thin with wide hips and a chest Neil knew he should not be staring at. She apparently couldn’t be bothered to glance at Neil for more than three seconds. Manning the register in the shop itself was a thick-necked high school boy, Lyle Peters, whose eyes were still puffy with sleep. When Claire approached the shop’s front doors to unbolt the locks, a small crowd swooshed in, money in hand.
Neil lounged in one of the booths, wishing he could leave, but Claire had told him she didn’t want him wandering off alone, glancing at his bandaged leg as she said it. The longer he sat there by himself, the easier it was for his parents to creep back inside his head. As strange as it sounded, he’d rather be visited by the weeping woman from the night before than to dream of his mother in the padded cell ever again.
“Hey, Neil,” a voice called from the back of the shop. Melissa stood in the kitchen doorway. “We need some help with this crust. Get off your butt.”
Neil wasn’t sure whether to smile or scowl. Claire stood behind the cash register, pointedly ignoring him. He followed Melissa as she turned away, unsure of what he was getting himself into.
A couple hours later, Neil was covered with flour and proud of it. He’d rolled out at least twenty crusts and pinched them into single pie plates. Glenn had complimented him on his technique, and eventually Melissa had to admit that, at the very least, he was a fast learner.
“What happened to your leg?” Melissa asked him when Glenn was out of earshot. “Looks serious.”
“Oh, this?” Neil glanced at his bandage. “I was out at …” Whoops. He’d almost just told this girl what had actually happened. He had to be careful. Her appearance was distracting.
“You were out at, what?”
“The woods. I tripped over a log.”
Melissa laughed, then covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. A log?” She became mock-serious. “Are you a klutz? Should I be worried about having you here in the kitchen?”
“No. I’m not a klutz.” Neil could feel his face turning red. “I just didn’t see it there.”
“So what you’re saying is: The log attacked you.”
Neil pressed his lips together. He knew she was just teasing him. Still … “Actually, I fell through the floor out at Graylock Hall,” he blurted out.
“Graylock?” Melissa flinched. Instead of being mock-serious, she now looked truly serious. Maybe even a little frightened.
“I went yesterday with my sister and some friends.” And now for the clincher. “We snuck in through a window.”
“What were you thinking? And who are these friends? I thought you weren’t from here.”
“Wesley and Eric Baptiste.” He regretted saying their names immediately. What if Melissa told on them?
“Really?” Melissa softened. “Eric went with you?”
“You know him?”
Melissa nodded. “He’s in my little brother’s band. We actually went out a couple years ago. I was a senior. He was a sophomore. He’s pretty cute.”
Neil didn’t know what to say. The best he could think of was: “I’m pretty sure my sister would agree with you.”
“Well, tell your sister to stay away from him if she values her sanity,” said Melissa, turning back to the pie crusts.
Oh, Neil thought, she does. We both do.
“Trust me,” Melissa added. “Cute does not always mean sweet.”
“I think Bree figured that out already.”
“Neil!” Claire popped her head through the doorway and called out through the din, “You’ve got a visitor.”
Neil leaned close to Melissa. “Don’t tell anyone what I told you. You know, about Graylock?”
Melissa raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Please?”
Melissa smiled. “You know the best way to keep a secret?” Neil shook his head. “Never tell anyone. Period.”
Carrying his satchel, Neil wandered out to the café section of the shop. He found Wesley standing just inside the front door, sweating through his bright orange tie-dyed T-shirt. Claire had given him a cup of water. Outside, Neil saw Wesley’s bike propped against the café’s large front window.
The events of the previous day careened back into Neil’s brain, and he realized that the pie shop had so consumed him, he hadn’t even thought about the nighttime visitor since Melissa had asked him to help with the crusts.
“Hey there!” said Wesley. “I called your house. Your sister told me you were here.”
“Cool,” said Neil. “I’m glad you came.”
“She said you had something to tell me.” Wesley clasped the water cup tightly, looking as if he expected to hear a mind-blowing story.
“I sure do.” Neil called out to his aunt, who was behind the counter chatting with Lyle. “Aunt Claire, can I take a break?”
“Hmm,” Claire said, glancing up. When she saw Wesley, she smiled. “You’re going together, right?”
“Just to the playground,” said Wesley. “Over on Bennett Street.”
“Don’t be too long.”
“We won’t,” said Neil, already reaching for the doorknob.
AS THEY WALKED SEVERAL BLOCKS TOWARD BENNETT STREET — passing quiet houses and overgrown gardens, ramshackle fences and cars in gravel driveways that looked as if they’d been abandoned — Neil told Wesley what had happened the night before.
Wesley nearly fell down with excitement. “Nurse Janet totally followed you home!”
“I’m not sure that’s something to cheer about,” said Neil. “Doesn’t the legend say that she looks for new victims to drown?”
Wesley grew somber. “Oh yeah. I forgot about that part.”
At Bennett, they took a left and encountered a large field. The playground stood at the crest of a nearby hill. Once they’d reached the blanket of green grass, they began to climb.
“Shoot,” said Neil. “I still don’t have camera batteries. I wanted to check out the pictures from yesterday.”
“What kind of batteries do you need?” asked Wesley, racing toward the empty swing set at the top of the slope.
“Not sure,” said Neil, trying to keep up. “Double A?”
When they reached the playground, Wesley leapt into the seat of a swing. His momentum carried him swiftly backward and up. Grasping a chain with one hand, he reached into his pocket with the other. When he swung back toward Neil, he showed him what he’d brought — two small cylinders marked AA. “Will these work?”
Neil smiled and then jumped back so that Wesley wouldn’t kick him in the chest. “Those will totally work.”
“You can thank Bree. She was the one who reminded me. I pulled them out of our TV remote. Should still have some juice left. Here. Catch.”
Neil sat on the still swing beside Wesley and carefully opened the slot in the side of the camera. After replacing the old batteries with the newish ones, Neil took a deep breath and then pressed the power button. A second later, the lens whirred open as the view screen blinked on. “Yes!” said Neil. “Thank you, Wesley!”
Wesley dropped his feet to the worn-out ground and skidded to a stop. “So … what’d you get?”
Neil hit the REVIEW button, and an image popped up on the screen: a brightly lit doorknob. This was the last picture. Room 13. “Wait,” he said. “Let’s start from the beginning.” He selected the slide show function, and suddenly the two boys were watching a recap of the previous day’s misadventure, filmstrip style.
The first few pictures showed the front of the hospita
l — the circular drive, the ivy, the solid main-entrance doors. The sky was blue. The light was golden. The shots revealed nothing about the secrets locked inside. In fact, the place looked almost pretty.
Next, the camera showed the gymnasium — the warped floorboards, the decaying ceiling. This was more like it. Still, Neil saw nothing that might be paranormal. No mists. No floating orbs. No shadows filled with faces. The only faces that appeared were in the group shot of Wesley, Bree, and Eric huddled together underneath one of the basketball hoops.
They journeyed up the dark stairs to the labyrinth of hallways. Chipped tiles. Dusty gurneys. Toppled wheelchairs. There was one particularly disturbing picture of a large black spider, but no ghosts. Not yet.
The youth ward appeared with its giant, sunlit windows. There were pictures of the cake table, the rack of stuffed animals. In one shot of the stairwell, a small bulb of light hovered near the top of the screen, but Neil could not be certain whether or not it was merely a speck of dust. That was the problem with orbs — according to Alexi and Mark, they were very inconsistent phenomena.
Then the camera showed them the doorknob picture again, shiny, bluish-white. Overexposed. They’d reached the end. Neil felt faint with annoyance.
“That’s it?” said Wesley, standing. “No ghosts. Are you sure you guys didn’t just imagine seeing something in the room with you?” He began to pace in front of the swing set.
“I thought I was sure,” said Neil. “But maybe we were wrong.”
A light flickered at his hand. Neil glanced back at the camera. The slide show had progressed. On the screen, a new image stared up at them: a taxidermic deer head hanging on a wood panel wall, wide antlers reaching toward a soot-stained ceiling. “What the heck?” said Neil. He didn’t remember taking this picture.
Wesley stared at him from the far swing, looking concerned.