Chapter 25
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
The door from the boiler room opened onto another steam tunnel. Nurse Young swept ahead of Oscar in a smooth glide that didn’t involve feet touching the floor. Double doors swung open to one side, more fog spilling out, and Oscar glimpsed the steel drawers of a morgue. Bangs sounded from within, as though someone was desperately trying to get out.
“Go back to sleep.”
Unlike the whip-crack tone she’d turned on Oscar, this command was gentle, almost tender. A mother tucking a child back into bed after a nightmare.
The banging fell silent, and the fog dissipated. He could still feel the eyes of the dead as they passed by, but the spirits either respected or feared the former head nurse enough to retreat.
“What the fuck,” Zeek muttered—none of the others could see or sense everything Oscar could. Chris had their camera up and rolling; maybe it was less frightening to view everything at one remove.
The hall with the morgue on it let onto another steam tunnel. A sign on the wall had an arrow pointing ahead, along with a single word: Surgery.
This couldn’t be the original surgery—the asylum had been built in a time before electric light. The storage area was directly above; perhaps it had been used for medical treatment before Dr. Wilkes moved everything down here to hide his grotesque procedures.
This was where the doctor lurked—the heart of his power. And Nigel was with him.
Please let Nigel be okay. Please, please don’t let them be too late.
This time, Nurse Young didn’t quietly pass through the doors as she had in the boiler room. Instead, she held up one hand, and they crashed open, hard enough to strike the wall. “Stop!” she boomed.
Oscar rushed after her—and into a scene that nearly froze him in horror.
Nigel lay atop an operating table, its steel surface gone black with corrosion. He didn’t turn his head at the crash of the doors, didn’t even crack open his closed eyes. His skin had gone utterly white, lips tinged cyanotic blue.
The doctor stood over him, the exposed portion of his face crawling with infection. The corruption spread out, with him in the epicenter, tendrils slicking the concrete floor and rotting the storage cabinets. The pile of bandages waiting to be used were stiff with pus and blood, the tools on the surgical tray covered in rust. An autoclave lay on its side on the floor, door torn off, something putrid leaking from within.
He took it all in an instant before the smell hit him. Disease, gangrene, and rot of every kind formed a miasma so thick he gagged. Zeek swore beside him and stretched his shirt up in a futile attempt to cover his nose.
The doctor held a bone saw above Nigel’s chest, its ragged teeth black with old blood. At their entrance, he straightened, swinging the deadly blade toward them instead.
“Nurse Young.” The doctor’s voice gurgled as though forced through a coating of phlegm. “Have you come to assist?”
She swiped at him, and the bone saw flew across the room, clattering against the wall.
“Of course.” The doctor sounded resigned rather than angry. “Your small mind could never understand. I cured the patients everyone else said were hopeless, because only I dared to cut away the diseases of the body that played havoc on their minds.”
While the ghosts were distracted with one another, Oscar ran to Nigel’s side. “Babe?” he whispered, cradling his face.
Nigel’s skin burned like fire against his fingers, and every breath was a labored gasp. His body was utterly limp, not responding to Oscar’s frantic touch.
He needed to get to a hospital right now. Assuming it wasn’t already too late.
To hell with the ghosts, the asylum, his legacy, everything else. Oscar slid his arms under Nigel’s body, intending to carry him out of there.
“I think not,” the doctor said, and the surgery doors slammed shut.
Chris let out a strangled cry, and they and Zeek both threw themselves against the doors. They were swinging doors, there wasn’t even a lock, and yet they remained immobile. Held in place by the implacable will of the dead.
Nurse Young let out a shriek that froze Oscar to his marrow and flung herself at Dr. Wilkes. For an instant, both of them seemed to stutter, like a film whose frames were out of order. Then she was blown back, her form going even more transparent than before.
“Not this time, I think,” the doctor said.
A whirlwind arose in the room, tearing at Oscar’s hair and clothing. To his horror, he saw the rusty surgical instruments rise into the air and join the rest of the debris picked up by the wind.
“Look out!” he yelled, and flung himself on top of Nigel’s body to protect him.
Something struck him, drawing a line of fiery pain across his scalp. A medical tray hit his shoulder, and other voices cried out as the rest were battered as well. Adrienne shrieked, and he spared a glance to see her staring at a scalpel protruding from the back of her hand, before Chris tackled her out of the way of a toppling cabinet.
The doctor rose into the air, the eye of the storm. Nurse Young fought her way toward him through a whirlwind more than just physical. Dr. Wilkes tore aside his surgical mask, revealing a mouth filled with rotting teeth and ringed with bloody sores.
“You’re weak,” he told her contemptuously. “And I am out of patience.”
A ghostly scalpel appeared in his hand, and he brought it down across her throat.
There was no blood—she wasn’t alive, after all—but her head slowly toppled back as though barely connected to the rest of her.
Then she vanished, all of her energy dispersed into the air.
Their best weapon against the doctor, the man she’d killed in life, and now she was gone.
The doctor’s filmy gaze met Oscar’s, and the bone saw reappeared in his hand.
“Now,” he said, “where were we?”
Oscar lay frozen over Nigel’s body, feeling him gasp what might be his last breaths, as the doctor approached.
“I have to thank you for weakening that meddling woman with your trap,” Dr. Wilkes said, his voice like a cold finger digging in Oscar’s ear. “It made defeating her much easier.”
“No,” Zeek moaned from somewhere on the floor.
The doctor smiled, skin splitting like overripe fruit. “Don’t worry—I see your troubled minds. I’m going to make it all better. I just need to cut out the infection.”
As he approached, Oscar frantically cast about for something, anything, to do. His thoughts scattered like leaves, even as the windstorm around the doctor began to die down.
Because he’d expended too much energy against Nurse Young? But even if he had, what could Oscar do?
The whirlwind had twisted around the reflector arms attached to the old-fashioned surgical light. Oscar’s own face stared back at him from one of the mirrored surfaces. Expression drawn with terror, skin pale, blood slicking his hair on one side where something sharp had hit him.
Why had he ever thought he could come here and release the asylum’s ghosts? His grandmother had been a trained medium, and she had failed: first at Cloven Oak Distillery, then here.
Of course, here she’d been drugged out of her mind. Oscar didn’t even have that excuse.
He’d failed. Let down his mamaw, and her mamaw, and every other medium in his lineage.
They’d succeeded at Cloven Oak, sure. But that wasn’t down to him; it was because he’d had Nigel, Chris, and Tina at his back.
Nigel lay dying, and the other reflectors caught individual faces: Chris, Zeek, Adrienne, Dr. Lawson. All of them huddled against the wall, trapped and afraid and alone.
No, not alone. They were all here together. With him.
Maybe he wasn’t enough by himself.
Maybe he didn’t have to be.
“Salt!” he bellowed. “Hit him with everything you’ve got! Now!”
He’d lost his canister somewhere, but Chris ripped open their backpack, bags and canisters of salt spilling out. Adrienne dove for one canister, tore it open, and started flinging handfuls at Dr. Wilkes.
The grains tore holes in his ghostly form, and he let out a howl of fury that rattled the fillings in Oscar’s teeth. “Stop that right now!”
He flung out a hand, and Adrienne went skidding back. But Zeek took her place, a canister in each hand, hurling streams of salt in every direction. Most of it hit the doctor, and he flinched back with another enraged howl.
“Stop this! I am the doctor here! You’re sick—in need of treatment!”
“I’m a doctor, too,” Lawson said. “Here’s your treatment.”
She hit him square in the face with a handful of salt, sending him reeling back. Chris and Zeek joined her, and a moment later Adrienne was on her feet again. They encircled Wilkes, driving him back against the surgical table. Holes opened in his form, but it wouldn’t take long before he fled to regroup.
Oscar couldn’t let that happen.
“You’re so obsessed with cutting out disease,” he said, grabbing one of the reflector arms. “Then look! Look and see— you’re the true infection here!”
He swung the mirrored surface so the doctor had no choice but to stare straight into his own ruined face. Wilkes flung his arms up, as if to shield himself from the sight. “No! It isn’t me. It can’t be.”
Oscar slid off the operating table as the rest closed ranks behind him. “You’re the rot at the heart of this place,” Oscar said, thrusting the reflector out, driving the doctor back. “You are what needs to be excised.”
Using everything he’d learned, he focused his will on opening a door in the veil. It formed behind the doctor, silvery light spilling out, something only mediums and the dead could see.
“Spirit!” he shouted. “Your time in this world is done. Move on and be healed. Leave this place, and trouble the living no more!”
The last words came with a great rush of breath and force. The doctor cried out, cringing away from Oscar, the salt, and the hated sight of his own corruption. For an instant, he was outlined in white light…then he was through the veil, and the door collapsed on its own accord.
Oscar almost fell as the effort of holding it open suddenly gave way. Chris grabbed his elbow. “Are you okay? Is he gone?”
“He’s gone—but we have to get Nigel to the hospital.” Oscar spun back to the operating table.
Nigel coughed weakly—then harder. Then he rolled onto his side, and ectoplasm poured out of his mouth and nose, spattering the table which was now ordinary, dusty steel.
“Nigel!” Oscar put his arm around Nigel’s narrow shoulders to elevate him. “It’s going to be okay. Just hold on.”
Nigel groaned and wiped greenish ectoplasm from his face. “I feel like shit,” he mumbled. He coughed, then spat more ectoplasm. “But I can breathe again.”
His lips were no longer frighteningly blue, at least. Even so, Oscar scooped him up. The surgery’s doors stood slightly ajar, no longer locked by ghostly will. Nigel squinted up at him, then gasped.
“You’re bleeding!”
Adrienne took off her jacket and wrapped it around her injured hand. “Who isn’t?”
“I don’t think I am,” Zeek offered. A spectacular bruise was forming on his cheek. “But, um, maybe we should all get checked out at the nearest emergency room.”
“Definitely.” Oscar hoisted Nigel higher in his arms. “Let’s get out of here.”
The fact Nigel didn’t protest this treatment told him just how bad his boyfriend felt. Zeek went ahead, holding doors open and clearing the path so Oscar didn’t trip over anything. The fog had vanished, and the tunnels, then the wards, remained silent. Most of the mold was gone, including the human-shaped splotch near the front door.
Montague, Ethan, and Tina were all waiting for them. “I’ll start the van,” Chris said, and ran down the stairs to grab the keys from the tent.
“Are you okay?” Tina asked—and ran to Zeek.
Nigel shifted in Oscar’s arms when they reached the bottom of the steps. “I can walk.”
“We’re almost at the van, so just stay put.” Oscar tightened his hold slightly, and Nigel subsided, head resting on Oscar’s shoulder.
“Ruthie?” Montague’s face was pale, and she looked as though she’d aged a decade since they’d gone inside. “Are you hurt?”
Dr. Lawson stopped in front of her. “Not badly, just some bumps and bruises.”
“Thank god.” Montague blinked rapidly, as though holding back tears. “If I’d lost you…”
“Hey—I’m right here.” Dr. Lawson put a hand to her shoulder—and was pulled into a hug.
“I’m so sorry, Ruthie. I’m so, so sorry.”
The van’s engine roared to life. Oscar carried his love to it, leaving the two women behind.