Chapter Forty-Two
Tuesday
I wasn’t sure where Lauren was leading me. A way out, hopefully. Though it didn’t make sense why the ghost of Lauren Hawkins—or whatever this was—would help me. Still, I allowed myself to hope.
“Lauren! Please… I’m sorry. I’m s–so sorry.”
She stopped and pointed to a headstone in the distance.
I turned my phone, casting the light on dozens of other gravestones—the asylum cemetery. Why had she led me here?
There was no sign of Lauren anymore. I was alone again.
Only two percent of my phone’s life was left, and it was my only source of light. I fumbled through the suffocating murk blanketing everything.
A silent scream caught in my throat when the ground fell out from under me with my next step. I tumbled down into the earth, the open grave I’d fallen into swallowing me.
Something broke my fall.
Pills. Countless pills.
Adrenaline and pure distilled terror exploded through my bloodstream as the horrifying realization that I wasn’t alone hit me like a truck.
It wasn’t just the pills that filled the open grave. There was a body in here.
Tentatively, I tapped my phone’s flashlight to use the very last of the battery to cast the carcass in light.
The cadaver was weeks old, with yellowed, decaying flesh and maggots wriggling through her eye sockets. Judging by the stage of decomposition, she’d been dead a while now. So it was strange that her gaping mouth was foaming, as if she’d just passed away from an overdose.
Nausea tore through me, and I unloaded my stomach onto the piles of what I recognized as my preferred brand of hydrocodone.
My phone died just as cold realization settled into my bone marrow.
This was my body.
My corpse.
Lauren had led me to my own grave.
Summoning the last vestiges of my resolve, I clawed my way out of the grave, struggling to gain purchase with the pills shifting beneath me.
My nails dug into the walls of the grave, every muscle in my body screaming for relief that I wasn’t sure would ever come.
A scream clawed up my throat when I finally reached the surface, only to find the other graves were open.
No longer was I alone, although this wasn’t the company I’d been hoping for. Bunny had been right. There were monsters that lived beyond the fog. Not just monsters, mutated bodies that had failed to survive Rook’s Treatment.
It clicked that this wasn’t St. Bart’s primary patient cemetery at all. This cemetery was somewhat smaller and designated for the medical staff.
Nurses, orderlies, even cleaning and lunch staff, roamed around in ratty uniforms. Their eyes glowed green, the illumination bright enough to chase away some of the darkness.
The Treatment had warped each soul uniquely.
Some were nothing more than dried-up husks of flesh and bone, skin and the filthy rags.
Others looked like extras for a zombie film, with fluid-filled boils leeching with Treatment, some with staggered movements.
Some had vicious claws, wings and fangs.
Others were barely more than cancerous-like tumors that had swelled so much they were little more than ample bags of noxious liquids.
But they all had one thing in common—glowing, poison-filled veins.
“You poor people…” I sobbed, my gaze falling to a woman in an old nurse’s uniform, slumped against the backside of the gravestone beside mine.
A scalpel protruded from her throat, making me wonder if she’d met her end by her own hand, or if it had been Rook, frustrated with another botched experimentation.
All of these poor souls provided deeper insight into the Treatment and its effects.
Turns out, Mal wasn’t insane, at least not in the traditional sense.
It was the Treatment splitting his soul in two to create two very different entities in the same body.
His old self, and the demon or “mad thing” inside.
These people’s demons had consumed them entirely.
Mal’s was different.
Mine was too, I could feel it.
All thoughts of Mal were shoved to the sidelines of my mind when a creature moved toward me, groaning and growling with every step.
The thing was tall and spindly, tendrils of glowing drool hanging off its maggot-eaten lips. Its fingers were syringes filled with glowing liquid, its nails sharp needles with drops of the Treatment clinging to their points.
It was going to do more than kill me. It was going to stick me with those needle fingers.
There was no way I’d allow myself to end up like these people.
I turned and took hold of the scalpel sticking out of the demon’s throat, wrenching it free with a sickening squelch. Just as the needle demon was upon me, I sliced my own throat, knowing it would be the quickest death.
I waited for the pain, but darkness took hold of me first as I toppled back into my pill-filled grave.
I came to on a stiff mattress, white light from a flicking fluorescent bulb blinding me.
Every muscle in my body relaxed knowing I was out of the darkness. The ease working through my body was short-lived when it occurred to me where I was.
I was back at St. Bartholomew’s, on a gurney in a hospital gown, strapped down with heavy leather straps by my wrists and ankles.
An orderly wheeled me down a long corridor. Walking alongside my gurney transport was the fuzzy silhouette of Malcolm Rook II.
Fucking great.
“Ah, you’re awake,” Rook beamed. His sunny disposition had my stomach flipping.
I’d known him long enough now to understand he wasn’t happy at all.
The smile in his peppy cadence was fake as fuck.
Meant to disarm me, so whatever he had planned as my punishment for killing him would hurt that much more.
“You were found way out on the outer edges of the property. Gave us quite the scare.”
“I’m sure I did,” I said, spitting sarcasm. As soon as the words had left my mouth, I realized there was something restrictive over my jaw.
Oh, shit.
They’d secured one of those leather muzzles reserved for black file patients onto my face. Just like Mal’s.
“Well, aren’t we lucky, Dr. Beckett. You’ve woken up just in time to meet the other patients.”
“Other patients?”
“Oh yes,” he answered with a slimy drawl, cackling at the unguarded confusion on my face. “We’re having a little welcome ceremony for our newest resident.”
My throat closed at the giddy bend his voice took. I ventured a guess at who this new mystery resident was. “You’re having me committed?”
“Of course. You’re a danger to us all. I like my staff to have a wicked bite, but you can’t be trusted not to bite the hand that feeds you. So, you’re going to be locked up like the mad animal you are.”
I figured he was taking me to the main ward, where general pop was located. What I didn’t expect was the room they wheeled me into. I hadn’t even known this was here.
The chamber was giant, with a sunken floor at the center, surrounded by wooden seats.
My stomach bottomed out as they pushed my gurney into the middle, finding myself the focal point of an operation theater. I should have guessed St. Bart’s had one.
Medical surgery was popularized during the Victorian era, the same era Mal’s grandfather had the building converted into a psychiatric hospital.
People were fascinated by the grim skepticism of it all, and doctors would perform painful and often unnecessary surgeries on asylum patients. Usually without anesthesia.
My lungs squeezed, making me short of breath as the audience came into view.
Packed into every seat were the patients of St. Bartholomew’s.
The smell was awful, and the noise booming as they chatted with one another.
Others simply screamed. Many didn’t seem to understand where they were or what was happening.
Those who did have the wherewithal to know what was going on stared down at me with hunger.
Everyone quieted as the boss came to stand alongside my gurney, raising his hands in silence. His team of orderlies filtered in behind us and stationed themselves in a circle around the operating stage, separating us from the audience. The team of grunts flanked him.
“Everyone, meet your newest cellmate. Patient One Hundred and One.”