Sentinel Event

by Samantha Shelby

  But as Williams and the tech watched, holding their breath, they saw the Passer turn slowly around and walk away from Aidriel, nearly reaching the wall of the Bird Cage before it vanished.

  For several seconds, Chester and the tech silently tried to calm themselves, relieved that nothing had happened. Both were startled out of their wits when the same Passer they had just seen suddenly appeared again, flying up at Camera 4 with a horrifying expression, its eye sockets black as holes, shrieking a spine-chilling scream. With echoing cries of fear, the two men jumped back from the console, and Williams fled in a panic, leaving the poor tech, ashen with terror, to stare at the screen, where the lens on Camera 4 was obscured by three deep nail scratches.

  Whoever had designed the Bird Cage had not seemed concerned with simulating the change of light between night and day, but Aidriel could tell the difference. He’d sit for hours in the chair at the table, sometimes drifting off to sleep with his head on his arm. Vague shadows would begin to backdrop the furniture and the lights above, and he would know night was falling. He observed the changing of time this way after being suddenly awakened by what he, in a state of half-consciousness, thought was a shriek, and he began to become agitated.

  The familiar sense of pain and nausea gripped the pit of his stomach, and he had the desperate urge to run. There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

  The dome began to hum faintly; perhaps the electromagnetic field had been increased. Outside of it, he heard the echo of footsteps, voices, ragged breathing. Rubin was here, and was probably not alone.

  Aidriel got up and walked to the wall near the doors, touching the pane to feel its temperature, peering through it into the gloom. The warmth of the surface began to noticeably drop, and Aidriel was startled to see Rubin suddenly step up close to the glass, though it stayed outside. Its hand came toward him, its long sharp nails scratching noisily on the dome’s exterior.

  Taking several paces back, Aidriel looked around and saw the ghostly silhouettes of dozens of Passers standing just outside the Bird Cage, watching, waiting. Rubin continued to wheeze and scrape at the pane.

  The ringing in Aidriel’s ears changed pitch and he fled from the wall, moving to the middle of the open floor. He didn’t want to be near any of the furniture, even if it was padded. He didn’t want to be smothered. Sitting down Indian-style, he leaned forward as far as he could, wrapping his arms around his head.

  “This won’t keep them out,” he whispered despairingly.

  Rubin’s breathing stopped; he shrieked and the other Passers screamed out as well. Aidriel could hear the television sputter, hiss and explode with a spray of sparks, then the Passers were upon him. Dozens of hands tore at his clothing and hair, nails digging into his flesh and pulling, scratching, gouging. Their screams were deafening, and, folded so tightly against them, Aidriel couldn’t breathe. The pain was unbearable and crushing, but he was too much in shock to cry out.

  One of the Passers grabbed onto a handful of his hair and pulled hard, coming away with a chunk that it flung away in disgust, reaching for more. Hands were seizing and pulling Aidriel from all sides. One overwhelmed the others, dragging him by his shoulder several feet toward the wall before losing its grip. Another kicked him hard in the neck, and for a few seconds he blacked out. He barely had a chance to cough and suck in a breath before another clamped its claws over his face, trying to smother him.

  There had to be dozens of them, swarming like a shapeless cloud of misty wasps all stinging at once. Aidriel’s shoes and socks were yanked off, his feet trampled and punctured. Pieces of his clothing were being cut and ripped away, the exposed flesh falling target to the flying claws. Some of the Passers have paranormal weapons and were stabbing or hitting him. Clifford was there among them, using his scissors to strike with the same hatred and ferocity as Rubin.

  Aidriel was seized and dragged toward the wall again, his hand groping desperately at the carpet before it was stomped and kicked. A female Passer shoved his head back with both hands, tipping him backward and sitting down on his chest, gripping his throat to strangle him. A male was twisting his leg, trying to dislocate it at the knee, and Rubin was striking at his face with both fists.

  Unable to breathe or think, Aidriel instinctively tried to block the blows or fight back, his blotchy vision focused on Rubin. It was at times like these that all memories of his Passer being kind vanished. Aidriel couldn’t recall anything about any other spirits before they chose to hate him, though he was not so young when it began that he could forget.

  Clifford shoved the strangling woman aside and took its place, swinging the scissors down swiftly, striking a different location each time. It seemed to Aidriel that Rubin and Clifford’s heads passed through each other and combined for a moment; his vision was exaggerating the translucent effect of the spirits as his brain was starved of oxygen. He remembered what Clifford had told him—that he was the last one. The burden had been passed and multiplied; never before had he been attacked so viciously or by so many.

  Aidriel was grabbed by his outstretched arm again and jerked swiftly sideways, away from the wall. He slid out from under some of the Passers, though others managed to hang on. Tangible hands were holding him; Williams and two orderlies had arrived and were trying to get him out of the swarming pass of murderous ghosts.

  “Rod, stop it!” Chester yelled at one of the male spirits. Williams began cursing and threw himself over Aidriel’s body, ineffectually endeavoring to block the raging hands. The orderlies continued to drag their limp patient across the floor on his back, their eyes darting around in confusion as to what was happening. The strangling female was splattering blood at them and shrieking in rage, her swipes having no effect. Even Williams appeared untouched by the Passers, but there was no denying the spirits were there.

  Rod and Rubin were frothing at the mouth, digging their claws into Aidriel’s sides and pulling against the orderlies. Clifford swung his scissors at Chester but missed. The ethereal blades struck Aidriel in the side of the head, flooding his mouth and ear with blood. He was finally beginning to lose consciousness from the pain and asphyxiation and could do nothing in his defense. He felt his body leave the floor as the tug-of-war became more intense. The ghost gripping his leg continued to twist it sharply to try to cause the knee to dislocate, but the white hot flashes of pain in Aidriel’s nerves caused a reflexive kick that succeeded in flinging the spirit away.

  Chester’s smartphone exploded in his pocket; he recoiled in surprise, his grip slipping. The Passers wrenched Aidriel away and dragged him all the way over to the wall, striking his head and shoulder against it as if they had forgotten he couldn’t be hauled through. It didn’t stop the hate-filled spirits from continuing their attack, though here and there, they were losing steam and fading away into nothing one at a time.

  Rubin punched Aidriel in the chest as hard as it could but he managed to get a breath in. Williams and the orderlies seized him once more, pulling as hard and swiftly as they could, and freeing him from most of the ghostly hands. The Passers no longer touching him yelled out in disappointment and vanished, but a few hangers-on refused to give up fighting. Clifford got in one more stab then disappeared. Rod was flexing its nails in Aidriel’s shoulder, screaming in a cursing match with Chester. Rubin gripped Aidriel by the throat, choking him senseless, but suddenly released and drifted back away from the struggle as if it had deployed an invisible parachute. As soon as it had given up in the attack, the other Passers did as well; within a moment, all of them were gone.

  With moans of exhaustion, Williams and the orderlies dropped Aidriel to the floor and slumped down beside him. Their patient was unconscious and a bloody, battered mess. One of the orderlies was shaking violently, looking at the blood all over his chest and hands and trying to wipe it off.

  “I need a drink,” muttered the other in a thick Southern accent.

  Chester crawled to Aidriel, leaning over him an
d checking for a pulse.

  “Still breathing,” he panted, crouching back down on his haunches. He fished his phone out of his pocket and dropped it, shaking his hand to ease the sudden burn caused by touching the electronic device. The phone was melted and smoking.

  “Is that from the Bird Cage’s field?” asked the Southern orderly. Williams shook his head.

  Dr. Ana deTarlo was pacing up and down the hallway in the office area, her heels clicking and screeching as she turned on them swiftly. Some half-wit designer had chosen to display large photographs of tropical scenes on the walls between the doors. Not that the psychologist had anything against the tropics, but it seemed so inappropriate for the facility that it came off as tacky.

  The double doors to the medical wing flew open with such force they slammed into the walls on either side. Williams came stalking out, putting on a clean sport jacket, two security guards and an assistant following a step behind him.

  DeTarlo stepped aside and let Chester go by, falling into his procession between him and his security.

  “Do you consider this a failure or a success?” he asked her, throwing open the door to his office and moving over to stand behind his desk.

  “It depends on how you—”

  “A success for you, I suppose,” interrupted Williams sharply. “And a failure for me.”

  “You could say that,” Ana agreed. She remained standing and speaking in a similar tone to stay on a level field with him. “This event has proven that yes, the patient is being harmed by Passers, but that your Bird Cage is completely ineffective. It’s still good for us, though.”

  “How do you figure?” demanded Williams. “If an electromagnetic field as strong as the Bird Cage can’t keep out Passers, there’s no way on earth we can protect our guy.”

  The perplexed look on deTarlo’s face confirmed that she had not been thinking anything of the sort.

  “This would indeed be a waste of time if he died early on,” she muttered softly.

  Chester stopped shuffling through the information on his cluttered desk and looked up in disgust.

  “Wait outside,” he told his security and assistant. His voice was trembling with rage that he managed to hold in until the door was closed.

  “You are unbelievable!” Williams exclaimed. “And I mean literally, more so than the presence of buddy-buddy ghosts.”

  “Chet, calm down,” Ana answered, raising her own voice authoritatively. “Don’t forget the objective of this project. It was clearly for the purpose of verifying the patient’s claims of harassment. Your Bird Cage was simply chosen because it was a controlled environment built for the express purpose of studying Passer activities.”

  “Well throw a party; you got your answer, didn’t you?”

  “It was fortunate the thermal imaging cameras actually caught footage of the Passers since they chose to be invisible on the video. I’ve never seen that on thermal before. Very interesting.”

  “I saw them,” Williams replied. “Rod was there, and Kara, even our own Case 2, Cliff Watts. It’s very interesting alright; an apparent sentinel event.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at your own file,” Chester said, snatching the folder from his desk to toss it at her. “Your patient claimed that Watts warned him that he would inherit the Passers of all the former cases, and it seems he has. He was not being attacked by our Passers or by Watts, and now he is. You could conceivably argue it’s the hospital’s fault.”

  “That is ridiculous!” deTarlo replied angrily, glancing down at the information in her hands. “The patient was already considered a sentinel event case when he was brought back from a suicide effort. He was released from the hospital only days before he made the attempt on his own life. It was being investigated.”

  “Well it sounds like you have the whole FBI on this one case,” Williams stated scornfully. “I don’t want to nitpick about details. We don’t have the time.”

  “The patient is stable.”

  “He’s not staying here,” Chester informed her, finally sitting down in his chair. “The only way to keep ahead of the Passers seems to be moving him from place to place.”

  “He claims to be attacked when he travels.”

  “Listen, Ana,” Chester said wearily. “I am not running a private Passer defense organization here. Rod and the other Passers were not themselves around him, and now that they know that, how much control do you think I’ll have?”

  “You never had control,” deTarlo replied stingingly, still standing. “You have had to call in a few favors, alright, but where real people are concerned, you have done very little.”

  Chester fixed his muddy-ice eyes on her face while he kept his temper in check. He wanted very much to list all the ways he would have made it to where he was now on his own if she had not interfered in his life when he was younger. They’d had the argument repeatedly, yet every time he had conceded to her demands and done some inconvenient favor for her.

  But he was gifted long before he met her. He was only months old when the Sentience Awakening began, and many a time, older opponents had claimed he wasn’t around to see the beginning.

  “How old must one be to witness history?” he’d often said. “I was around when the first of the Passers stepped from the shadows to form an unbreakable bond with mankind. It is my goal to strengthen that bond.”

  “How inspiring,” deTarlo had said with a false smile, years ago after his first of many public speeches as she embraced him to passive aggressively claim his success as her own. He could still vividly recall the near-genuine conviction in her eyes.

  “Do not speak only of what you will do,” she had advised sagely, “but also of what you can do. You are one of the few who can always see them.”

  It was true. Chester was one of the few people in the world who could see all Passers at all times. Even when they did not wish to be seen, he could pick up the faint silhouette or shadow of mist that betrayed their presence. It was not always a good thing. Seeing ghosts at all hours had a way of ruining private conversations and intimate situations.

  Williams and deTarlo looked to the door as Rod and the ghost of the golden-haired young woman stepped through and stood by quietly. Rod briefly clasped the forearm of the other Passer as if to offer moral support.

  “I asked you to stay away,” Chester muttered. Rod appeared apologetic and fidgeted with what appeared to be a loosened tie around its neck.

  “We’re drawn here,” it said. “It’s like that annoying ache in the back of your brain when you desperately want something, but you don’t know what.”

  DeTarlo’s Passer nodded its appealing young face, wearing the same expression of regret. It shifted self-consciously from one bare foot to the other.

  Williams angrily thumped his elbow on his desk and rested his head in his hand.

  “Get out,” deTarlo spoke for him. Both of the spirits looked to her face as if they didn’t believe her.

  “Kara,” the shrink said slowly. “I’ve seen nothing of you for days. Get out; we’ll speak later.”

  The psychologist’s Passer looked resistant, and had the option of refusing to leave, but elected to obey. Rod waited for a few moments to see if Chester would speak before it too departed.

  “Your patient isn’t staying here,” Williams stated again, firmly. “It’s your fault he’s our responsibility, and now it’s going to cost us a fortune to figure out what to do with him.”

  “Why can’t we simply release him?” Ana asked. “Let him fend for himself?”

  “Then how would you publish your paper? Finish it with, ‘Subject was released and killed on the street out front by the waiting Passers’?”

  The doctor’s face didn’t betray any thoughts as she gazed at him over her glasses. He shuffled through his paperwork until he came out with what he was looking for.

  “This,” he said, tossing a
packet toward her, “is a ‘dead zone’ in Iowa. It’s supposed to be an area where Passers have never been seen, even when traveling with people who go there. They go out of their way to pass around it. We’ve haven’t tested it enough to be sure that it’s airtight.”

  “Iowa?” repeated deTarlo. “That’s over eight hundred miles away.”

  “Let’s hear your better idea.”

  “I think we should continue the study.”

  “Until what? The Passers kill him?”

  DeTarlo shrugged and put the file and papers back on his desk. Without speaking to her, Williams picked up the phone and pressed a button.

  “Transport office and hold,” he said, putting the receiver back in its cradle and rising to his feet.

  “Leave my office,” he ordered Dr. deTarlo. “This case is no longer a study of psychiatric health. Push me the wrong way, and I’ll kick you out of this entirely. It’s not going to be another Study of the Psychological Limits of Vasovagel Syncope.”

  “You don’t have the authority to kick me out,” Ana replied calmly, turning toward the door. “The patient signed my consent forms too, not yours only.”

  Williams ignored her and put his phone to his ear.

  CHAPTER 6

  Aidriel began to float toward the edge of consciousness to the sound of the steady drone of an engine. He was vaguely aware of constant vibration, and could hear and sense people around him.

  “Type AB positive,” a man was saying.

  “Universal recipient,” commented a woman. “Probably saved his life a couple of times.”

  He could hear the watery sound of a bag of liquid being handled. Someone was sniffing and sighing.

  “Why are you crying?” asked the man.