Kissing Midnight (30 page)

Saintly gasps and tries to bury my face in her shoulder, which doesn’t work because her face goes right through it. I want to hide my face, too—or to disappear completely. All I can think is for twenty years all I wanted was to see another ghost, and now I never want to see one again.

But I do see them. In fact, I see five more ghosts, just in the time it takes to walk from the intake desk to Saintly’s room: A woman tethered to a bed with rope bangs a hairless baby doll against the wall. Another cocooned in a straightjacket rocks in the hallway, staring blankly. A man in an antique wheelchair struggles furiously against his restraints while a ghostly doctor draws up an injection, and a young woman with lank red hair nearly bowls us over, flinging herself at us as we pass. “I won’t do it anymore,” she sobs. “I just want to see my children. Please! I just want to go home!”

I feel like screaming the same thing.
I want to go home!
It’s not just the apparitions, horrible though they are; it’s the feel of the place, a dark despair that seems to seep into you, weighing you down. Saintly and I need to get out of here, and fast. But we’re just as stuck as the ghost in the wheelchair, gnawing at his leather straps with his teeth while the doctor sinks the needle into his arm.

“Why are there so many of them?” I whisper to Saintly.

She answers a minute later by nodding to a bronze plaque mounted on the wall.
Westgate Asylum,
it reads.
Established 1849.

I understand. Before it was a modern psychiatric hospital, Westgate was a Victorian-era insane asylum. I remember hearing a lecture on them in one of the million history classes I sat in on at the college—how people were tied up and experimented on and strapped to their beds for days. Hundreds of people died in asylums like this and were buried in numbered graves right there on the grounds.

Evidently, some of them never left.

I feel a surge of compassion for the ghosts. And to think I felt sorry for myself being trapped at a college!

But my sympathy doesn’t last. However innocent these people may have been in life, there’s no denying there’s something malicious about them now. Saintly is working hard to keep herself from staring at them, trying not to draw their attention, but some of them clearly remember her. They watch her with hungry eyes as we pass.

The nurse and the cops are, of course, oblivious, and it’s almost a relief to reach Saintly’s assigned room and be caught up in the bustle of living hospital workers. The intake worker comes with paperwork for the police officers. A nurse comes and gets Saintly into hospital clothes and checks her for hypothermia and sends her to pee into a cup for the tox screen. Dr. Sterling arrives and signs things on clipboards and holds hushed conversations with the doctor on duty. Hours pass as everyone works hard to get Saintly signed in.

Meanwhile, Saintly and I are just trying to figure out how we’re going to get out.

Before Dev kills Delia.

Before something in here kills us.

At long last, Dr. Sterling says he will check back in later, “when you’re calmer,” and steps out into the hall. We are momentarily left alone in the tiny, whitewashed room.

Finally, we can talk. “Just nod your head or shake it,” I whisper, “I don’t want them to hear you talking to me.”

She nods her head almost imperceptibly.

“It wasn’t the people at Westgate that scared you, was it. It was the ghosts.”

She nods again and looks away as her eyes fill with tears.

“And I’m sure it doesn’t help to know they’re real. However hard it was for you to believe you were insane, it must be even harder to know all this exists.”

She looks up at me, surprised, and shakes her head once, emphatically,
no.

“No?” I’m sure I misunderstood her. She has to regret finding out the truth, right?

But her eyes hold mine and she raises one finger, as inconspicuously as possible, and points at me.

And, without her even saying it, I know what she means. It’s worth having all the horrors be real, if whatever we have is real, too.

But what do we have? A million yes-or-no questions cross my mind:
Did you mean it romantically when you said you loved me? Are you still in love with Deveraux? I mean, I know you can’t love me because we only just met, but if I were alive, would we… Could we…

I do my best to press the thoughts out of my mind. We have enough to deal with right now without making it all more complicated. For now, I will have to settle for knowing Saintly and I are here together, knowing nothing can force us apart.

But as soon as the thought crosses my mind, I know I’m wrong. A nurse bustles in with a tray. In the center is a cup of water and another of bright red pills. From the alarmed look on Saintly’s face, I can guess the truth.

“They’ll keep you from seeing me, won’t they?” I say.

We’re about to be apart after all.

Saintly

I stare at the little red pills in the cup. God, what a relief they used to be! I couldn’t take them fast enough, and I’d beg for more the second they started to wear off. Of course, that was back when I thought all this was just an illusion, before I knew the ghosts existed even when I couldn’t see them.

Now it’s all I can do to keep myself from slapping the little cup right out of the nurse’s hand. I certainly wouldn’t be the first person to do it. People resist meds all the time.

But they don’t get away with it. The nurses are experts at telling if you swallowed.
Think, Saintly, think. Or at least stall.

“I’m feeling much more stable now,” I say in what I hope is a very together voice. “I don’t think I’ll be needing those after all.” I try for a friendly smile.

She stares at me, unimpressed. “I don’t order the meds, hon. I just bring them. This is what the doctor ordered.”

“Yes.” I pull myself up straight. “I understand, but I’m feeling much better now. If I could just talk to the doctor…”

“Dr. Hollis is off duty. He’ll be back on tonight. Dr. Press will make rounds at noon.” She holds out the little white paper cup, the red pills gleaming like poison berries.

I raise my voice as much as I dare. “I’m telling you, I don’t need them. I haven’t taken them for weeks.”

“And tonight you…” she reads off the chart notes on the clip board by my bed “attempted suicide by jumping off a three-story tower?”

That wasn’t my fault!
I want to scream.
The ghosts possessed me!
But saying the voices in your head made you jump off a tower probably won’t get you out of a mental hospital.

What
will
is cooperation. Playing along. Playing sane. At least, that’s what got me out of here the first time. But playing along takes time, and time is what we don’t have. I look out the darkened window. There are no clocks in the hospital rooms—one of the subtle tortures of being on the ward—and no windows in this room, but I know it must be morning by now. How much time do we have? What if the medication makes me sleep all day? What if I sleep through New Year’s Eve? The thought of it—of waking up to realize my best friend is dead and Dev is long gone—is enough to make my stomach flip. I can’t risk it.

The nurse is getting impatient. “Would you like it in some other form? I could request a suppository, or an injection…” She speaks with chipper professionalism, but I know it’s a subtle threat meant to call my bluff.

“They’ll make you take it one way or another,” Jesse says, “and you should probably sleep anyhow. You must be exhausted.”

The nurse reaches for the call button beside the bed. She wants backup, just in case.

“How long does the medicine last?” I ask hurriedly.

I see her resisting the urge to smile. “Do you need to be somewhere?”

I narrow my eyes. “How long?”

She proffers the pill cup again. “You’ll be due for another dose in eight hours.”

Eight hours of lost time. Eight hours when Jesse and I can’t even confer on a plan.

“I’ll figure something out,” Jesse says with forced confidence. “You sleep, just for a little bit, and I’ll wake you, I promise.”

I cast a worried glance at the bed. I never thought a stiff hospital bed would be a temptation, but it is. Even without the medication, my body feels heavy with fatigue. My shoulder muscles have been stretched to the breaking point and my hands are still red and raw, burning with the memory of gripping the icy glass of the clock. It would be such a relief to give over to the medication and rest, to forget about everything for just a little while.

But I can’t stand the thought of not seeing Jesse. Without her, I’ll feel so alone.

“I’ll stay until you fall asleep,” she says. “Even if you can’t see me, I’ll stay.”

I nod just a little, so the nurse can’t see. Jesse looks tired, too. Looking into her serious gray eyes, I have the urge to pull her over to the bed with me, to wrap myself around her so I know she’s there and sleep curled up together. But of course I can’t. Would she even let me? I feel my face go hot at the thought.

Quickly, I accept the little cup of pills and the matching cup of water.

Jesse lays a hand on my shoulder as I swallow them and stands vigil by my bed as I crawl in under the starched white sheets. “I’m still here,” she tells me. “I’m still here.” And it helps, it really does. But as the pills start to take effect and I watch Jesse fade from view, all I can think is
you’re still here, but so are they.

I may not be able to see the ghosts, but I know they can see me.

Jesse

I wait with Saintly until her eyes close and I think she must be asleep. The nurse must think so, too, because she bustles off on her rounds, but as soon as we’re alone, Saintly opens her eyes again. It clearly takes effort and I can tell by the unfocused way she looks at me that she probably can’t see me anymore, but her whisper is still full of urgency.

“I forgot…” her voice is slurred with sedative.

“Shhh…” I say, unsure if she can even hear me. “Tell me when you wake up.”

“There’s a beast, a monster…”

“I know. I saw them as we came in. I’ll be careful.”

She shakes her head groggily. “No, on the third floor. Bigger. Stronger. It can…”

“What?” I say. “What can it do?”

“Move… stuff. And the lights…”

Is this a nightmare, or the truth? Is there a difference anymore? “Move what? Physical things?”

She nods, her cheek brushing the white pillow case. “It… breaks things.”

Breaks things. I feel a strange envy for the monster, whatever it is. I wish I could break things. I can go through walls, but Saintly can’t, and we’re never going to get out of here without breaking through something. “Could I talk to it? Would it help us?”

She manages to open her eyes again and I can see the alarm in them. “No! You can’t.”

“Why?” I ask. “What would it do?”

But the medication is too strong for her. Her eyes are starting to close again. “Promise,” she whispers. “Promise you won’t go.”

“It’s okay,” I soothe, but I don’t promise. I try to pull the sheet up over her shoulder, but my hands can’t grasp it. I’m too tired. So I lean down and let my lips brush the top of her head. I am not solid enough for the kiss to connect, and I doubt she could feel it if I were, considering how asleep she is now, but I can feel her—the warmth that is slowly returning to her body, the floral scent of shampoo still clinging to her damp hair. It makes me wish I could stay here with her, but instead I’m about to do the one thing she just told me not to do.

I’m going to look for the monster.

Because, dangerous though it might be, there’s a chance I could talk it into helping us bust out of here.

And because I don’t have any other plan.

“I’ll be back,” I whisper to her sleeping form, and I slip out through the cool metal door.

It isn’t hard finding the monster, now that she told me where to look for it. It’s just a matter of climbing to the third floor, then playing a game of “hot or cold,” the way I used to as a kid, when my dad would say “you’re getting warmer” as I got closer to the thing I was looking for. Except now, instead of trying to find the warm, I’m trying to find the cold—that eerie, shivery feeling that goes along with ghosts, like stepping into a draft when there’s no draft there. And not only cold, a sort of despair, too. A pit-of-the-stomach feeling, a heaviness, as if the air itself has weight. Of course, that feeling is everywhere in Westgate, but certain pockets of it are particularly deep and strong. I follow them like currents, moving on instinct down the narrow halls to a darkened room where the damp, cool air feels saturated with hopelessness.

It doesn’t make me want to go inside.

I think of the inscription on the door of Deveraux’s castle.
Bold, be bold, but not too bold…
Am I being too bold? Stupid? But what exactly am I afraid of? I’m already dead, right?

I take a deep breath and force myself through the door.

And immediately want to take a step back out. I guessed the monster was in there, but nothing can prepare me for the actual sight of it. For one thing, it’s huge. Its dark bulk fills half of the small room. I had expected it to stand upright, like the human it must have been, but instead it squats, more like a giant toad. Its face is big and broad, all flared nostrils and wide mouth. I can see its jagged teeth, yellow in the half light, and the sharp glint of its huge yellow eyes, but the rest of it blends into the darkness, like it’s made of melted black wax.

Or maybe still-melting wax—its folds seem to undulate even as the creature sits still. There’s an oily sheen to its skin and, although it looks quite solid on top, the bottom of its body ends in black tendrils of dirty smoke that curl like tentacles. I feel nauseated just watching it.

“Hello?” I whisper. Can it speak human language? Was it human once? It seems strange that I haven’t changed at all—not my hair, not my clothes, not anything—while the ghosts of Westgate have become… something else. Something inhuman. They’ve been warped by their anger and pain—they’ve become it—and I feel suddenly grateful for the fact that I can’t change. “Can you understand me?”