Chapter 5
The next morning, as Anita was checking her vital signs, Hazel got a little more information.
Administration was blaming “the incident” on hackers getting into the PA system as some sort of juvenile prank, and was livid.
Dan and the other people on the scene didn’t find that explanation particularly convincing, especially when the official line on the gurney did in fact turn out to be magnets, and at least a few of the staff had “already started spreading rumors. Foolishness.”
“You think it was hackers?” Hazel asked.
Anita shrugged. “I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s not ghosts.”
“Is that the rumor?”
“One of them.” She peeled another sensor off Hazel’s torso and set it aside. “Even if I believed in that nonsense, and I don’t, I’ve worked here for ten years and I’ve never seen a ghost. Never even heard of a room that was supposed to be haunted.”
Hazel grinned and wiggled her eyebrows, making a joke of her question the way she’d learned to do. “No mysteeeeeerious deaths lately?”
“Not a lot of deaths in a hospital are mysterious, hon. We haven’t even had any really dramatic ones in the last couple months—except to the people, of course, and their loved ones.
” Anita shook her head. “But, God forgive me for saying so, if every old person who died of heart failure started haunting the place, we’d be knee-deep in ectoplasm. ”
“It’s a weird prank, though. Who’d go to that much trouble?”
“Some people have too much time on their hands,” Anita said severely. “And some people carry grudges. If it’s a, whatsit, disgruntled employee behind last night, I’ll just be glad if that’s the worst they do.”
That made Hazel wince, no otherworldly element required. “Ooof. Yeah.”
“I don’t plan to worry about it. Neither should you.”
“Oh, I was just curious,” Hazel said, but Anita’s gaze was sharp, and Hazel wasn’t sure how convincing she’d been.
There hadn’t been any pranksters. The force behind the previous night had been distinctly ethereal and very serious about its business.
Maybe it hadn’t been related to Hazel’s presence—plenty of people died “peacefully” with unresolved business, from inheritance to abuse—but if Orange River hadn’t been haunted before, the manifestation would be a hell of a coincidence.
Hazel didn’t have any plans to worry about the incident either. She’d started already.
* * *
She was still worrying after breakfast as she used the hospital’s landline to wrangle her way to a supervisor at the local impound lot, where a description of her phone, her car, the repair kit and first aid kit in the trunk, and the pallet of water in the back seat eventually bought her the chance to prove herself by unlocking her phone.
They didn’t have any keys to give her, of course, but that was the next problem.
Hazel had just set the phone down and leaned back when somebody tapped at the door. It didn’t sound like Anita, whose knock was brisk and efficient, but maybe there’d been a shift change. “Come in?” she said and braced herself in case the new arrival was a cop.
The person who entered was tall, with a stylishly highlighted brown bob and a short but immaculate pink manicure.
Their white linen dress and tan sweater made them look like a J.
Crew model, but their expression was tentative, and they stopped short just inside the door.
“Um. Hi. I’m Stephanie Chapman. Lee’s wife,” she said, and paused as though to give Hazel an opportunity to scream and throw her water glass. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, not at all. It’s not like I’m busy here.” Hazel inspected the woman quickly. A good makeup job didn’t really disguise the signs of stress, but her gray eyes had no trace of red in them, and her voice was steady. She hoped that was a good sign. “Is Lee okay?”
“Yeah. Well, physically. And he’s got a good therapist. He’ll be fine. He just…couldn’t come and see you. He’s not great with, um…any of this.”
Hazel wondered if she meant the supernatural, or emotions, or both. “I understand. I’m glad he’s recovering.” She gestured to one of the gray chairs, now fully normal looking. “Have a seat if you’d like.”
“Thanks.” Stephanie perched on the edge of the chair, set her suede purse in her lap, and gave Hazel the look of somebody about to step out onto a very thin bridge.
“How much did Lee tell you?” Hazel asked.
Relief washed over Stephanie’s face with the preliminaries out of the way. “Some, I think? I knew his dad had hired a medium—Lee was complaining about that for a week. Sorry.”
Hazel waved a hand. “It’s a pretty normal reaction.” The irritation she’d felt when she’d first talked to Lee seemed far away and small now.
“He was waiting in the living room for you to be done, he says, and then he heard noises. Screaming, crashing, and he thought you might be—sorry—”
“It’s okay,” said Hazel, sparing her the awkwardness of saying that Lee had thought she was assaulting the old man.
“—so he ran over to Clarence’s room. He said he heard something roar on the way, like a bull or a lion, but not. Then he opened the door and his dad’s room was somewhere else, with a floor made of blood, and you were fighting monsters.”
“Do you believe that?” Hazel asked cautiously. “Because if not, my explanation’s not going to make a lot of sense to you.”
Stephanie’s shoulders barely moved as she shrugged.
“Lee’s really hard to convince. Either what he saw was real, he had a psychotic break, or, I don’t know, there was a sinkhole full of hallucinogenic gas under the house and it happened to cave in at the exact moment you were having a séance. Would you say what he saw was right?”
“Basically, yes.”
“Then you saw the same things, which would be weird if we were talking about gas or psychosis, or you’re playing along and you’re willing to put yourself in the hospital over it.
I guess that’s not completely out of the question, but…
” Stephanie spread her hands, copper bangles jingling on one wrist. “I at least want to hear your side of the story.”
“That’s pretty impressive logic.”
“I had a lot of time to think last night.”
The hospital loudspeaker chimed: “Dr. Kendall, please report to room 513. Dr. Kendall, 513 please.” People passed Hazel’s door, talking softly, far calmer than anybody had been the night before.
“First of all,” said Hazel, “Lee was sort of right about Clarence’s room being somewhere else. Most paranormal activity happens in the ethereal world. That’s…okay, so picture a slice of layer cake.”
“Okay,” said Stephanie, blinking.
“The normal world is the bottom. Heaven, hell, other dimensions, they’re all the top. The ethereal’s the jam in between. It’s between us and the places beyond. It kind of soaks into both, and both get crumbs into it.”
Stephanie’s lips twitched. “That’s quite a metaphor.”
“I’ve been eating hospital food for a day.
It also doesn’t completely work for manifestations, so I have to switch to radio waves.
People like me can kind of tune in the ethereal nearest to us with rituals, and there are places where it’s strong enough that just about everybody starts hearing songs through their fillings, so to speak.
Sometimes you don’t even need to have fillings.
” She wasn’t sure if that was true for radio or not, but the point remained, and Stephanie didn’t look too confused.
“I think I’ve heard the term before. Maybe in a book when I was in college.” Stephanie flushed. “A couple friends were into spirits and crystals and all that non—stuff. No offense.”
“None taken. Most of the pop culture takes are nonsense, and that’s a good thing.”
“Is all, um, magic dangerous?” Stephanie blushed as she said the word.
“Herbs and crystals and sending people healing energy, no, at least not as far as I’ve ever heard of.
Summoning spirits or ghosts, or otherwise dealing directly with the ethereal?
That’s a whole different can of worms. Sometimes literally.
” Hazel shuddered at a few memories. “Ghosts that stay there instead of moving on can be really nasty, the place has its own native predators, and beings can enter the ether from the worlds on the other side.”
Stephanie leaned forward, round-eyed, resembling a kid around a campfire much more than the well-to-do suburbanite who’d walked in. “Those creatures were in Clarence’s room?”
“I don’t know what category one of them fell into, but the other was from beyond. A demon.”
“Those are real?”
“They fit the basic description. Otherworldly, dangerous, fond of suffering. Many go after that straightforwardly, but some of the real powers among them make deals when they can.” Hazel fixed her gaze on Stephanie’s, keeping her own expression as calm as possible.
She hadn’t exactly been here before, but she’d handled similar situations, and they hadn’t always gone well.
“And I’m afraid your father-in-law probably did that. ”
“What?” Stephanie drew back, blinking. “Why would you think so?”
Hazel scanned her face: shock, yes, and disbelief, but not offense.
She probably wasn’t violating any precious memories.
She pitched her explanation carefully, anyhow—she’d been wrong before.
“Because they were physical enough to hurt me. Usually, I go in, I cast my circle, and I talk to the spirits. I banish them if they won’t go willingly, and that can be tough, but it hits my energy and my thinking.
In this world, ethereal beings can mostly create light and sound effects.
The really powerful ones can throw glasses around or float a chair if it’s not too heavy. That’s it.”
“Unless one of us…calls them through.”
“Mostly. All the exceptions involve very specific places and times, and none of that applied. I check before I conduct any rites. If it had been a new moon and Clarence’s house had been built on the site of a gallows, for example, I wouldn’t have gone in alone—or at all, if I could help it.”
Stephanie nodded slowly, still clearly taken aback but not, as far as Hazel could tell, about to jump out of her chair and run away screaming.
“But—why? Clarence wasn’t a great guy, even Lee was never close to him, we stopped bringing the kids over pretty early, but he was dying.
What would he get out of summoning demons? ”
“Favor on their part of the other side, maybe. Or worse.” Hazel had to gather her nerve for a moment before she spoke the words, but she couldn’t evade it.
She’d had some time to think. “There was a reason he wanted me there—if he’d just been after a human sacrifice, he could have thrown his nurse to them.
With a medium, he could have hoped to cheat death. ”
“Does that happen?”
“Probably. I’m afraid nobody’s really got a Wikipedia about the ethereal. Not even a really good textbook, most of the time. What I do opens a door from this side. Once I do that, coming and going is probably a lot easier.”
Stephanie sat still, taking that in, and Hazel let her. The noises of the hospital went on around them, the business of life and death made pedestrian. Eventually, the other woman framed a careful question. “How did you—did you close that door?”
“As far as I know,” Hazel said just as carefully, “yes. I wasn’t able to do it ritually, but since I crossed the threshold of the room and then the house alive, the connection should have shut behind me. I think the reverberations from that made the house collapse. Sorry about that.”
“Clarence had insurance, and I doubt Lee would’ve wanted anything he owned.
” Stephanie’s bracelets jingled again as she waved away the unscheduled demolition.
She hesitated before going on. “Um. I don’t want to insult your skills, I’m sure you’re very good, but we have kids. When you say you’re pretty sure…”
“Whatever happens, I don’t think you or your family would be in danger. Clarence didn’t ask Lee to attend the séance, did he?”
“He didn’t even ask Lee to come visit.”
“Happy families are all alike,” Hazel muttered, and cleared her throat before Stephanie could ask.
“That’s a good sign for you. If Clarence had been trying to use bloodline connections, he’d have tried to lure Lee in too.
But I can come take a look. They’ll discharge me this afternoon, and then I have to get my phone and my car back and get back to my regular job—”
“You mean talking to the dead doesn’t come with a salary?” Stephanie asked, her mouth tilting slightly upward at the corners.
Hazel chuckled. “And you can forget a dental plan. Is there a number where I can reach you?”
Stephanie took a pen and a purple notepad out of her purse. “Here’s mine,” she said, writing quickly but neatly in dark blue ink. “I have the phone on Do Not Disturb except for Lee and the kids and my mom, but if you leave your number, I’ll call you back.”
“Give me a day or two.” Hazel tore the paper neatly in half and used the hospital’s scratchy ballpoint to write down her phone number and email. “God willing, I should be able to answer both of these by tomorrow at the latest. Let me know if Lee or the kids—or you—have strange experiences.”
“Strange?”
“Hearing or seeing anything unusual, odd dreams, feeling cold and not being able to explain it, objects moving on their own, mysterious lights—basically anything that strikes you as out of the ordinary. It’s better to know than not.”
Folding the paper, Stephanie slipped it into her wallet. “Thank you. And how are you doing?” She flushed a little. “I just realized I came into a hospital and asked a lot of questions without ever getting to that one. I’m sorry.”
“You were worried. I’d do the same. And I’ll be all right, thanks.” Hazel ran a hand through her hair. “With any luck, the worst I have coming up is a lot of bureaucracy.”