Chapter 53
I thought mental institutions would be full of undiscovered sensitivities. Most patients I spoke to were genuinely ill. Only one ever made it onto my team.
Zoey monitors the audio feed. Nico is still on the phone with us, but is saying nothing as we wait.
Five minutes go by.
“Zo, update?” Nico says.
“Wish I had one,” Zoey says.
My heart climbs higher into my throat with every second that passes without hearing from Griffin and DJ. Benji bites on his thumbnail.
Griffin’s voice bursts through the speaker.
“Got eyes on him,” Griffin barks. “On the lower level.”
I watch Zoey’s screen like it’s going to show me something other than audio levels spiking in jagged green lines.
“Copy that,” Zoey says into the mic.
“Subject on the move,” DJ’s voice crackles through. “I’m—”
A boom echoes through the speakers so loud I flinch.
“Daisy?” Zoey grips the mic and pulls it close to her mouth. “Griffin? What was that?”
Static hisses like someone’s crumpling aluminum foil into the microphone.
“Daisy Jane, do you copy?” Zoey tries again.
The audio levels flatline.
Zoey plugs and unplugs devices and does a bunch of technical things on her computer that I don’t understand, but judging by the way her jaw keeps getting tighter, nothing’s working. “Griffin? Daisy?”
It feels like someone’s wrapped steel bands around my ribs and is cranking them tighter with every second that passes. My mind cycles through images. Griffin unconscious on the floor. DJ on the pole. Morrow standing over both of them with that same empty smile he gave me.
“Benji, we have to go in,” I say.
Bob jumps off my lap, spinning around to look at me, awaiting instruction.
“No fucking way are you going anywhere,” Nico says over the speaker.
“I could sense where he is and find him,” I say.
“Then what?” Nico asks. “You’re going to lead an extraction?”
“I can lead it,” Benji pipes up. “I know it’s my first time, but if DJ and Griffin need me, I can do it.”
“All I’m going to do is listen,” I say.
“Eden,” Nico pleads, and suddenly it feels like it’s only him and me in the car.
“DJ and Griffin could be in trouble,” I say.
“What are you even doing there?” Nico says. “You should be at home, resting.”
“You’d prefer Benji go in alone?” I ask.
“We don’t know yet how your ability works,” he says. “You’ve had barely any experience. No real practice.”
“At least Benji wouldn’t go in blind,” I say, glancing over at Benji, who gulps. “If you were here, I’d say you should go in, but you’re not, and this is better than him going alone. We go in teams of two for a reason. Please. Let me try.”
I hear Nico exhale, long and shaky. “Benj?”
Benji straightens like Nico just appeared in front of him. “Yes?”
“You keep her safe for me,” Nico says. “If anything, and I mean anything, feels more wrong than usual, you get out of there. Understood?”
The way he says for me squashes that uneasy voice in my head. Zoey eyes me. I feel stripped bare, but I don’t care one bit.
I didn’t ruin everything.
“Understood,” Benji says.
“And Benj?” Nico says. “You can do this. You’re ready.”
“I won’t let you down,” Benji says.
Benji climbs into the back, suiting up and packing his own bag before passing me a pair of goggles and the salt water. I know I won’t be able to hear Nico through my earpiece, but at least he can hear me, and even that connection is enough to stabilize my heart.
Bob stays sitting on my seat as Benji helps me into my wheelchair, and we leave the van behind.
Griffin and DJ left the door open, and when we cross the threshold, the temperature drops. It might be the middle of winter, but it’s preternaturally cold in here.
This is the same door that Nico and I got stuck at, and the one Benji and Griffin entered with their body cams. I grip the wheelchair armrest so hard my knuckles ache.
I can almost feel the cold metal of the door under my palms, can hear our ragged breathing echoing off the walls as the Game Master’s footsteps came up the stairs…
My eyes snag on the doorway to the bathroom, cloaked in shadow. Nico covered in blood. Nico collapsing. Me not knowing if he was even alive.
I force myself to look away before the panic can take root and drag me under.
It’s so dark in here that I can barely see. The street lamps I’d been so grateful to see during our escape attempt now cast everything in a sickly yellow green through my goggles, creating shadows that seem to move when they shouldn’t.
“Eden, can I tell you something?” Benji whispers, and I nod.
“There’s a reason I haven’t done a lot of field work.
I… I have schizophrenia. It’s how Donny found me.
He thought I was seeing entities and was misdiagnosed, but when I got here, the episodes didn’t stop; they just became about other things.
I’m on anti-psychotic medication but still get panic attacks, mostly during periods of high stress, which are more likely to occur when I’m in the field.
I know I said I’m ready, but I’m really scared.
” He pauses, breath stuttering like he’s struggling to pull in enough air after speaking.
I twist in my chair to look at him, and can see the sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. DJ once mentioned Benji was the youngest on the team. His intelligence always made him seem super capable and as comfortable as the others, but I’ve never seen him look so young.
“Griffin and Nico know you can do this,” I say. “I think you can, too.”
“I know,” Benji says. “I just needed you to know that I’m scared.”
I give him a reassuring smile. “Then let’s do it scared.”
I turn back so I’m facing forward, eyeing a camera with the blinking red light attached in the corner. Nico wasn’t wrong when he guessed there were cameras all over this place.
I close my eyes, trying to quiet the panic screaming through my nervous system. It’s true, I haven’t had any real practice. I don’t know how to control it, or even what I can do, but I can recognize the sound of ectoplasm when I hear it.
Benji’s breathing is loud. The wheelchair squeaks as he pushes me deeper into the building, each rotation of the wheels echoing off the high ceiling.
“Do you hear anything?” Benji whispers.
“Not yet,” I reply. “Keep going.”
The wheels catch on something, and the chair jolts to a stop before Benji pushes me over it. My bandaged hand throbs with each bump and jostle, but I compartmentalize the pain and focus all my attention outward, reaching for that sense I don’t quite understand.
A couple of minutes have gone by when I hear it. The scratching sound.
“Stop,” I say.
Benji freezes mid-push. I tilt my head to follow the sound. My ears have gotten better at picking it up, like tuning a radio until the static clears and you can hear the song underneath.
I open my eyes and point down a narrow hallway. It’s dark, out of reach from the dim moonlight filtering in through the windows.
This hallway is as dilapidated as the rest of the place. Water drops hit the tiled floor in rapid succession, the patters too loud in the quiet.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The scratching grows more insistent, turning into a constant white noise like someone’s scraping their nails together next to my ear.
“Did you know the human brain is hardwired to fear the dark because our ancestors were prey animals?” Benji whispers.
A foot scuffs down the hallway. Benji stops the chair.
I don’t think either of us is breathing because all I hear is dripping water. A shadow passes through a beam of moonlight.
Drip.
Drip.
My heart thumps in my ears as Benji steps away from the chair. He unscrews the lid from the containment jar with a high-pitched scrape and plugs the mini ghost vac into the base.
The footsteps stop.
“Eden?” a voice calls out.
Wait.
“Griffin?” I yell back.
A flashlight beam cuts through the dark. I raise my elbow to cover my eyes, and Griffin thunders over to us. DJ’s right behind him.
“The hell are you guys doing in here?” Griffin demands, lowering his shotgun.
“The comms went out—we thought—” I struggle for words. “What happened?”
“We were on the lower level,” DJ says, breathing hard. “Chasing Morrow—he disappeared—we must’ve lost signal.”
I fumble for my earpiece, pressing the button. “Zoey? Can you hear me?”
No answer.
“We had him cornered, but he lost us,” Griffin says. “Went through a door that locked behind him.”
DJ steps past us, wagging her flashlight at Griffin. “We have to catch him before he gets to his car and flees.”
The scratching sound gets louder and I wince, plugging one ear with my finger. I turn in the direction of the noise. An oily smear of ectoplasm drips down the door frame behind Benji like a slug trail.
The hairs on my arms stand up. “Guys?”
A pair of eyes glints in the shadows, right behind Benji.
“Benji, look out!”
Benji reaches into his pocket and spins around, flinging out a handful of salt.
It hits David Henley square in the face.
Henley screams and staggers backward, hands flying up to scrub at his eyes, but his skin doesn’t smoke. Then he just stands there, blinking and sputtering like Benji accidentally filled his pockets with sand instead of salt.
“What the hell?” Henley shouts. “What the hell?”
Griffin lowers his shotgun. DJ openly stares.
“He’s not possessed?” The words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them.
Henley’s eyes land on me. He backs up so fast he stumbles over his own feet and goes down hard on his ass. I want to tell him it’s okay, but my brain is moving so quickly that it’s almost tripping over itself.
Why would Morrow abandon his host when he’d already lost Griffin and DJ? Why wouldn’t he get in his car and flee?
He’s not trying to escape.
He’s up to something else.
I glance up at the cameras. Maybe he wanted to get to the control room without being followed so that he could plan his next move.