11. Horror Hospital #2
Then the black comes alive, a spider revealing itself, scuttling down the wall.
It’s enormous, fast, and runs out of sight behind a branch that’s broken straight through the wall, aged and cracked brick around it.
I follow the curve of the wood down to the base, where its roots grow thick and pierce holes in the flat stone slabs that make the floor.
More spiders scurry there, big and small, all tarantulas, crawling over one another, venting into the hospital from the darkness below.
I shudder. I can’t help it. Archer glances back, and his hand strokes over mine, still wrapped around his waist. “We’re going to be okay. They can’t hurt you.”
Just then, a branch whips back over his shoulder. He didn’t see it because he was looking at me. He didn’t see it, but his shoulder caught it, and then it snapped back, etching a scratch into my cheek.
Faster than the pain comes the realisation that sinks my stomach.
That branch can hurt me.
This place can hurt me.
These spiders…
Both his hands tighten on mine, the only thing grounding me as my heart hammers overtime, as I feel a trickle of blood run down my cheek.
He stops, regardless of the spiders, regardless of this place. He stares long down the hall, then he sends me spiralling with the words, “I’m going to need you to close your eyes.”
“What? Why?” But too late. By instinct, I’ve looked ahead, over his shoulder, and I see exactly what he’s seeing. There’s a crowd—an enormous crowd of people—waiting at the end of the hall.
Are they ghosts? Are they undead? Because they look wrong. They’re all kinds of wrong in a way I can’t put my finger on, just standing there, swaying slightly, staring at us.
Some look almost normal—whole bodies intact but pale. Ghastly pale. But others have wounds, gaping, bleeding. Some have limbs torn off, blood dripping down but never landing on the floor. Some are covered in the red and weeping sores of horrifying diseases.
Fear kicks my feet into gear, and I try to move away. I don’t care what’s back there—that skeletal thing, more of those spiders—I’ll sit in the emergency room and I’ll wait this out. I can’t go on. I can’t.
But Archer’s grip on my hand turns to iron. He drags me forward.
“Stop!” I hiss at him.
“No. We have to go through here. It’s the only way out.”
“Then we won’t go out,” I whisper in a panic, trying to fight the determined strength of his relentless motion forward. “We’ll stay. Stay and wait. Let me go!”
“You can’t stay here,” he replies matter-of-factly. “It will only get worse.”
“Worse? How can it—”
“Please close your eyes, Liam.”
“No.” The sound is soft but desperate.
He pauses, eyes dead ahead. “Then put your head against my back and focus on the floor. Try not to look at them. I promise I’ll get you out of here. We’re almost there.”
Maybe it’s the way his hand squeezes mine.
His rock-solid grip on me. His rock-solid body that, hallucination or not, feels like the only real thing in all the world—comforting at a time there should be no comfort.
But he must be right. I know it logically.
Even if I can’t explain why he’s seeing the same things I’m seeing, I know this can’t really be happening.
It is a hallucination, and I have to trust him to get me out of here.
So I do press my head into his back and stare down at our shoes as they start moving again. Sink into the warmth of him. The movement of his breath. His fingers stroking over my hand, reassuring me.
On and on, for what feels like a lifetime, we shuffle up the hallway, and I don’t lift my head once.
Not for anything. Just like he said. I know they’re close.
I can feel them gathering around us, feel the dank of the air, smell the scent of musty rooms underground, like the thousand crypts beneath the thousand churches every British person is dragged through during their holidays.
“They can’t hurt you,” Archer repeats softly. And I’m not sure if he’s saying it to me or to himself. “Just keep walking, and don’t look up. They can’t hurt you.”
I wonder how he knows that. Or why he thinks it. Why is Archer Gravely, of all people, leading me out of here like he knows what’s going on?
The question is in my throat. Maybe the answer will give me greater hope of survival. Or maybe it will settle this queasy feeling.
Suddenly, a hand sinks into my shoulder, strong and real—just as real as Archer’s.
But it’s not Archer.
The breath dies on my lips.
The fingers close, they wrench me back, and the culmination of five years of nightmares and daydreams all smashed together at once hit me head on as I come face to face with him.
With Jem.
With my brother, who went missing five years ago.
He says nothing. Not a word. His lips look so cold. Blue and pale. And they don’t even move.
He stares at me, and he knows me. I can tell by the look in his eyes that he recognises me. He knows who I am, and he looks so… so sad.
I feel that devastation like a knife in my gut before I register any of the rest of him. The pallor of his skin, the blood on his cheek. The…
What looks like a bullet hole freshly stamped into the top left side of his skull.
It’s half a second. One horrifying heartbeat.
Archer’s hand slips around my waist.
No!
He’s turning me, wrenching me away from him.
“Stop!”
I hear the electric doors of the hospital slide open, feel a harsh and frigid wind on my face, the sting in my eyes of sharp and sudden light all around me.
He’s gone. It’s all gone. The vision, the vines, the people, the spiders. The whole thing gone and lost.
It’s night, and I’m standing on the concrete outside the hospital, people walking around like it’s any other night. When I look back, it’s a normal hospital hallway on the other side of those glass doors. As if none of it ever happened at all.
Except for Archer. Except for that look on his face that shows he’s every bit as scared as me.
That shows it was real. Every last horrifying thing I just saw.
Including Jem.
Jem. Dead. Staring at me like that.
The horror of it piles on top of me, overwhelms me, and I burst into tears. Horrible, loud, catastrophic tears that rip out of me, that soak into Archer’s coat when he pulls me against his chest, that make my fingers dig deep into his back as he holds me tight.