Chapter 33
Kendyll
(Present Day)
THUNDER RUMBLED WITH A BOOM as bright lighting danced across the sky.
I jolted with a gasp as though coming out of a deep sleep.
I looked around with blurry eyes, wondering when I’d fallen asleep and where I was.
After fumbling to find my glasses on the bed near my pillow, I realized it was well into the night, and I was in my bed in Ward E.
Xander must’ve brought me up here at some point after I …
what? Fell asleep in the comfort of his lap down in Dr. Roberts’s office floor?
I practically groaned from embarrassment.
A storm raged outside. The wind and rain beat against the windows, and angry clouds obscured any moonlight so that the hospital was exceptionally dark with only the fleeting bursts of lightning to offer any visibility.
I ran a tired hand through my hair and sat up in bed.
Another crack of thunder made me jump, and seconds later, lightning briefly lit up the open, large room.
In that quick flash of light, I saw it—a figure in a white gown with abnormally large black eyes and a gaping mouth peering at me from beyond the foot of my bed.
I gasped and grabbed my blankets as I leapt back against the metal bars of the headboard, but the darkness returned all too soon, taking the figure with it.
I strained my eyes with a scream lodged in my throat, trying to see if the apparition was truly there at the foot of my bed, but it was no use.
I couldn’t make out anything in this darkness, but …
I could feel it. I could feel those eyes on me.
I could feel the blankets subtly shifting as something crawled up from the floor and onto the bed.
Breathing harder, I leapt up from the bed and rolled toward the window where my flashlight rested. Another beam of lightning illuminated the room in quick flashes, allowing me to see the creature on all fours as she growled a low yet piercing sound from right where I’d been sitting on the bed.
The curtain of darkness descended once more.
A push of the button on my flashlight nearly sent my heart hurtling down into my stomach. I frantically clicked it, but the light wouldn’t come on.
And I could hear her crackling garbled sounds drawing closer within the darkness.
I quickly abandoned my flashlight and ran blindly from the ward. This thing wasn’t a normal ghost, and the very embodiment of horror coated it, making me lose all sense. I shouldn’t have been this scared. I shouldn’t have been running away from an otherworldly being.
Yet, here I was, panting as I raced down the flight of stairs while yelling for Xander. I wasn’t sure where the demon had gone, but I panicked in my attempt to flee and find him.
I nearly stumbled as I leapt from the bottom of the stairs of the first floor. The front doors were somewhere within the darkness ahead of me. I wasn’t sure if going outside and into the torrential downpour was smart, but it was better than being trapped in a building with that thing.
Just as I neared where the door should’ve been, lightning lit up the room in a white glow. I barely managed to stop my forward momentum as I let out a disbelieving, “What?”
I smacked my hands against the solid wall where the front door should’ve been, but no matter how I beat the concrete, no give of a door or knob or crack could be found.
“No,” I gasped while moving along the wall in an attempt to find the neighboring window. Yet, that, too, had vanished. “Why—”
I took in a sharp breath and froze with an icy realization.
Silence.
The rain, the wind, the thunder. It had all stopped. It was suddenly so quiet that I could hear my own breathing as I stared wide-eyed at the endless stretch of blank wall.
Whispers broke through the stillness. Slowly, I turned.
My stomach twisted sickeningly. I no longer stood near the front door but at the end of the doctor’s hallway near the elevator.
A single fluorescent white light lit the eerily dark space.
The numerous doors lined the long stretch, and peering out from the crack of each door was a pair of glowing white eyes, all locked on me.
The whispers streamed out from behind those cracks, yet the quickly spoken words were too low for me to make out.
That wasn’t nearly as horrifying as the familiar faces standing in the stretches of space between each door against the wall. Ghosts I recognized from the rooftop lined the hallway, yet they weren’t as they had been then.
The nurse was covered in blood, which dripped down her inner legs and stained her hands. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, and those wide, white eyes peered at the ceiling while she screamed and clawed at her own throat to shred it into flimsy, bloody pieces.
The teen boy I’d briefly met in the children’s ward stood across from her in his knee-length hospital gown, but unlike before, an oronasal mask now covered his face.
The long tube hung and disappeared into the ground, and he twitched violently in place as he panicked in an effort to get the device off with arms that wouldn’t move.
More ghosts just like them lined the length of hallway, screaming and thrashing as they mutilated themselves or endured some terrible invisible torture. I wanted to run to them and offer some sort of freedom from whatever was happening, but before I could start toward them, a new panic filled me.
The director’s door at the end of the hall slowly opened. An invisible force had rooted me to the spot so that all I could do was watch in horror as the door opened wide, revealing nothing but darkness within. I strained to see past that black doorway, to fight to see what lurked in those depths.
I heard it before I saw anything.
Laughter.
Bone-chilling male laughter straight from my most horrid nightmares. A hand slowly emerged from the darkness and offered itself to me, palm up. A disembodied voice that carried the sound of malicious mirth echoed from that space.
“Come here, Princess.”
I wanted to scream along with the phantoms stationed in the hall. I wanted to run in the opposite direction, but it was like I’d lost control of my body. Every limb was locked in place while my voice was held captive within my throat.
New sounds filtered out of that shadowy doorway, sounds that made me want to cover my ears and claw at them so they’d never hear anything ever again. I fought against the invisible hold on me, now thrashing wildly, savagely, on the inside.
The ghosts abruptly stopped their screaming and violent movements.
Their heads whipped in my direction so that all of their undead eyes locked right on me.
A low ding rang out behind me, and the sound quieted all others.
The thump of the elevator docking behind me wasn’t one of rejoice with an offer of escaping this scene.
The arrival of the elevator made ice roll down my back and a tremor start up in my limbs.
The doors rolled open behind me, and from within the elevator, I could feel someone staring at me. I could feel the presence of something wicked licking at my heels like shadows slowly wrapping around my feet. I fully expected to be yanked backward and dragged into the elevator.
But seconds ticked by.
Silent, still, agonizing seconds where I wanted to look to see what stood behind me but couldn’t.
Seconds where my gaze was forced to stare ahead at that still open, dark doorway.
A bony white hand abruptly wrapped around the bottom of the director’s open doorway. That face with its too wide stare and lips pulled up to reach the corners of its eyes poked out from around the side. Our gazes locked for a beat.
All at once, it leapt out of the dark. It darted toward me on hands and feet that were warped, elbows and knees bent at odd angles. A guttural screech pierced the air from her cracked lips as she raced in my direction.
Adrenaline surged, and somehow, I managed to scream while my eyes slammed closed.
A force hit me in my chest, sending me smacking backward into the elevator.
I crumbled onto my stomach as my head spun from the impact, and my glasses fell somewhere near me.
Hands grabbed at my arms as though to help me up.
I instinctively tried to flinch away, but when I looked up, I found Maria kneeling beside me with a worried frown.
“Saved you,” she fretted with a relieved sigh. “Call for him. Hurry.”
I stared at her troubled expression, which kept glancing between my face and the elevator we were sprawled in. She knew something about what was happening, and while I wanted to ask her, I also didn’t want to be here alone.
“X-Xander!” I cried out hoarsely.
Within the next instant, the demon appeared in nothing more than sweatpants.
His golden eyes were wide, and his face was abnormally pale.
When he caught sight of me, his knees buckled, and he collapsed next to me before yanking me into his tight embrace with one clawed hand holding the back of my head and the other secured around my waist.
“Fuck! I couldn’t find you,” he shuddered. His hold tightened. “I coudn’t fucking find you.”
I didn’t hesitate to wrap my arms around him, burying my face in his neck. “I don’t know what happened.”
Maria gasped. I barely turned in time to catch sight of her face contorting in pain before she was yanked by some unseen force through the elevator floor.
“Maria!” I shouted. I looked around while clinging to Xander. “What just happened?”