“Thank you,” replied Sadie, approaching the door. She watched the guard walk off. With the swipe of key and badge, the heavy door at hall's end gave way and he sauntered back out to the front, hands in his pockets.
Alone now in the hall, with only the stirrings from nearby rooms to break up the silence, Sadie put her hand on the knob and prepared to enter the room. The pane of glass in the door, installed at eye-level, gave a limited view of the space beyond. Shadow prevailed in this room; probably the blinds had been drawn and the lights put out.
Well, this is my good deed for the day. Here goes... She knocked, then turned the knob. The door fell open with a click and Sadie stepped softly into the room.
Something strange happened as she crossed the threshold, however—something with no overt cause. No sooner did the door fall closed behind her did her pulse begin a steady and forceful climb. Her stomach fluttered, her frame jittered nervously. Outside, in the hall, she hadn't been accosted by these markers of anxiety. Now, having just stepped through the door, it was like she'd entered a different world—a different reality.
No one had dragged her here; she'd come of her own volition. And yet, having only just set foot in this room, she wanted suddenly to flee it.
9
Sadie found the patient sitting up in bed, studying the window.
The pleasant afternoon she and August had navigated on their way in to the hospital was gone now, and in the ten or twenty minutes since she'd entered the building the outdoors had been transformed by a wall of grey-black clouds and an explosion of pounding rain. The sun wasn't in sight now and the north-facing hospital room was plunged into a gloom more befitting dusk. Summer storms sometimes came on suddenly, but the stark change in the outer scenery unsettled her profoundly just the same.
The visitor was some time in finding her voice. Sadie took a cautious step into the room, toward a wooden folding chair. If Ophelia had noticed her entrance, she'd given no indication whatsoever; the girl's eyes remained fixed on the rain-streaked window and her face was stained with the same stormy palette.
“Hello, Ophelia.” Sadie sank quietly into the chair, hands balled between her knees.
With a faint twitch, as though jarred from a daydream, the girl inhaled sharply and turned to meet her guest. Even in the daylight hours shadow can warp the appearance of the commonplace, and in this case, as she looked away from the window into the murky interior of the room, shadow emigrated into every nook and hollow of her vacant expression till the eyes appeared as two sunken chasms and the cheekbones stood out cadaverously. Ophelia swallowed with evident difficulty, then raked her tongue over peeling lips. “Who are you?”
Rocking back and forth in the chair, Sadie proffered a wan smile, the full awkwardness of this little visit hitting her like a bus. “I don't know if you remember me, but I used to live next door to you and your mother. My name is Sadie—Sadie Young.” She pawed at her knees while staring into that blank, unexpressive face.
“Sadie...” Ophelia's lips moved very little in echoing the name and her tongue clacked around against her teeth as though she were tasting it—seeking to nudge the fibers of it from between her molars. “I remember you,” she finally said, the bandages on her arms crinkling as she reached up and scratched at her tousled hair. “But why are you here?”
Sadie was asking herself precisely that. I'm here because your mother thinks I can chase the devil out of you, would have been the honest reply, but seeking to build a little rapport, she said, “Just recently I was thinking about the old days—back in the neighborhood. I heard you were in the hospital and thought you might enjoy some company, so here I am.” She chuckled. “I know it's been awhile—years—but... how have you been, Ophelia?”
The girl laughed at this—a churlish laugh that set her whole body into a momentary convulsion. “How have I been?” Ophelia took a moment to scan the four rude walls, then seemed to stare down at her wounded wrists as though that were answer enough. “I'm chipper,” she sighed, turning back to the window. Something in the girl's delivery—her entire manner—was out of step with what one might expect from a sixteen year old girl, though Sadie couldn't put her finger on precisely what.
The better part of a decade had passed since the two of them had last met. Owing to the difference in years, their prior acquaintance—as neighbors and playmates—had been superficial at best. In her urgings, Rosie had insisted that her daughter had changed, had stopped acting like herself, but what frame of reference did Sadie have to work off of when the girl before her was practically a stranger now? Someone close to her might well notice such changes in personality, but how could Sadie hope to parse normal adolescent snark or moodiness from the recent, sinister strain of behavior Rosie had noted?
Her initial volley having fallen flat, Sadie switched gears. “This hospital is pretty boring, huh? I don't know if I ever told you, but when I was about your age I actually spent some time here myself—though, I was in the ICU. I got pretty sick. It was just before I moved in with my grandparents and met you and your mom.”
Whether the girl had actually absorbed this information was impossible to say. Like a mannequin leaned against a wall, she remained stock-still, watching the rainfall with a doll-like intensity.
“Do you and your mom still live in the same house? How is the old neighborhood these days? I haven't been by there in years—not since my grandparents passed.” Sadie crossed her legs, crossed her arms in her lap, struck whatever pose she could think of to inspire comfort under the circumstances. Each successive attempt struck her as more crude than the last, and the motions she went through served only to usher in the opposite effect. Even without the girl's eyes on her, Sadie felt watched; studied. She was an insect under glass.
Something, a faint change in the rhythm of the rain, maybe, incited Ophelia to respond. “I remember you,” she said throatily, and shifting away from the window her face was again dressed in shadow. “You were cool. All of us kids on the street thought you were cool. You were the oldest of us, of course. What do you do now?”
Thankful to have broken the ice, Sadie replied—and with perhaps more cheerfulness than the occasion merited—“I'm a librarian in town, actually! I've been there about a year. It's great.” The response to this latest question prompted only a contemptuous look from beneath hooded lids and Sadie cleared her throat, once more seeking to advance the conversation. “And what about you? What've you been up to? You're almost done with high school; I'll bet that's exciting.”
“Exciting?” asked Ophelia. The frown that appeared across her lips as she grappled with this word was at once weary and disdainful. “You know how it is out there, in our old neighborhood. We have to make our own fun. It's the same; nothing's changed.” Thunder rumbled in the churning clouds outside. “You, Sadie... you were an odd duck, weren't you?” The earlier frown was replaced by a long-toothed grin which, either for the lighting of the scene or want of it, was even more unnerving in effect than its predecessor had been. “I remember... you used to tell the wildest stories.”
The harsh and unwelcoming tone of this latest statement had caught Sadie by surprise, and she would have asked for clarification then if not for what happened next.
The girl's beady gaze, hitherto riveted to Sadie, suddenly sprang across the room as if following in the wake of something moving toward the door. And at that same moment—though it may have simply been a gut reaction to Ophelia's sudden turn of the eye—Sadie felt a swift displacement of the air to her back, as of some unseen occupant suddenly spurred into movement. She turned so quickly she nearly fell out of the chair, fists balled, but nothing awaited her but the girl's throaty laugh.
The low murmur of thunder made a reprise and a strong wind buffeted the side of the building. A sky in which light was already scarce grew only darker. Seeking to compose herself, Sadie took a deep breath and sought out the call button on the wall. Before letting her into the room, the security guard had advised her to hit the button if s
he needed anything. She wasn't going to bail just yet, but knowing where it was brought her a little peace.
The girl coughed and leaned forward in bed. “Sadie... you're taking me back. Way back. Once, when I was little, you and I went out for ice cream. Not a mile from our street there was that soft serve place. Do you remember it?” The barest blush of childish delight played across her face as she reminisced.
“I do,” was Sadie's reply. She smoothed out her dress. “It was great. Everyone in the neighborhood used to hoof it out there in the summer.”
“Yes, and that afternoon it was just the two of us. My mother had given us money and we'd gone walking down the street. But I wonder... do you remember what you said to me?” The girl's features narrowed in anticipation.
Sadie was at a loss. “No, I don't.”
“You told me about the dreams you'd had. Dreams about... your mother.” Ophelia smacked her lips and eased her legs over the side of the bed, leaving them to dangle. “Have you seen your mother lately?”
Thunder crashed and a gust of wind howled past the window. So intense was the discomfort aroused by that question that Sadie couldn't help but wrap her arms around her stomach. Spying the mischievous widening of the girl's eyes, it was clear the question had been engineered to garner exactly that sort of reaction. Averting her gaze, Sadie eventually mumbled, “My mother is dead; I never knew her. Those dreams... are a thing of the past. Just nightmares.”
Sadie's gaze remained glued to the floor. She could feel eyes on her—the weight of the attention heaped on her just then seemed enough to split her in two. When finally she looked up to meet the girl however, she found Ophelia staring elsewhere, past her.
If it wasn't the girl scrutinizing her, then who—
Sadie whipped around, rose to her feet, and found herself standing before a blank wall.
From behind, in a lower, colder voice than before, Ophelia chuckled mockingly. “I think you'll be seeing her again. Soon.”
Certain now that something was amiss in her surroundings, Sadie remained standing. Still alarmed—her face was flushed and her heart had momentarily gone haywire—she shook her head with child-like fervor. “That's enough about me,” she blurted. “I came to talk about you, Ophelia—about what you've been up to.” Without meaning to, her eyes lingered on the girl's bandaged wrists. “I heard that you went somewhere recently with your friends...”
Ophelia's legs ceased their idle swinging and she looked up at her visitor with a knowing smirk.
“You went out to Beacon Hill. At least, that's what I heard.” With a firm grip on the back of the chair, Sadie leaned forward. “I've never been there. What's it like in that dark, old house?”
The girl sighed, blew a tendril of hair out of her face, and seemed to fight back a laugh. “Why don't you go and see for yourself?” she finally replied. In the sparse light, her face looked like a mass of flesh-colored putty; holes had been clawed out for eyes and a crude slash meant to answer for a mouth had been made, but beneath the wiry tangles of hair no other features registered except when she turned to face the window. It was a curious effect, as if the figure on the bed was in fact two people, one face bared in the light and the other, singularly warped, only surfacing in shadow.
“They used to tell stories about that house, didn't they?” asked Sadie. She stood to her full—if unimpressive—height in an effort to assert herself. This is a teenaged girl you're dealing with, remember that. Don't let her under your skin. “There were all kinds of scary stories, if I remember correctly. Is that why you and your friends went out there? To have a good scare?” Affecting coolness, she took a few paces away from the chair, till she stood on the wall directly opposite the bed. She had a clear view of the window now—and of the torrential scene outside. “What did you see while you were in there?”
For some reason, this question stuck in the girl's craw. She seized up as if about to answer it, then fell silent, merely staring at her guest with furious, bloodshot eyes. Her jaw tensed like she was holding back an answer with every ounce of her strength, like it was on the tip of her tongue, and then, after a moment, her shoulders grew slack and she put on a sedate smile.
Sadie crossed her arms, ignored the girl's combative gaze and looked straight out the window. “Ophelia, I don't expect you to open up to me. It's been a long time since we were neighbors. But the way you've been acting recently is worrisome, and there are people—your friends, your mother—who are scared. They think that maybe you saw something in that house that spooked you. Is that what happened? Did you see someone—or something—you couldn't explain?” She leaned against the wall, squared Ophelia in her gaze. “Listen, I don't know what happened in that house, but there are people who can talk you through it. Whatever it was, there's certain to be a rational explanation for it. I'm willing to listen. Your mother, or the doctor, too. We're all here for you. We just want you to get better.”
Lightning flashed outside. The burst of brightness took liberties with the contents of the tiny sickroom, casting grotesque shadows across the walls and floor.
“And I want you to know something,” Sadie continued. “When we were kids, I said a lot of stuff—made up a lot of stories. I had my own problems when I was your age, and my talk of ghosts gave me a weird reputation, it's true. I'll own up to that. But... none of it was real. Ghosts, things of that kind... they just don't exist, Ophelia.” She rummaged up a kind smile.
Ophelia remained stationed on the edge of her bed, face low and completely still. Despite the flow of air from a nearby vent, the disordered hairs on her head hardly shifted. Lightning ripped through the clouds outside like the flash on a camera and once again the room was flooded with an abundance of strange, misshapen shadows.
In that instant, something nagged at Sadie's periphery. There remained between her and the corner of the room some few feet of bare wall, and upon this stretch she sensed a flurry of sudden movement, as of something loosed by the lightning itself. A mass of undulating shadow had been heaped there, to her immediate right, in a quantity befitting a person of rather large proportion—though neither of the room's acknowledged occupants had so much as stirred. This shadow presently scurried up the height of the wall, as if headed for the porous drop ceiling, the way a many-legged insect might sprint in search for cover. But the size and wild movement of this thing in the corner of her eye was surely too great to be a mere bug.
Before she turned her head to look, Sadie froze. From just above, a little to her right where the shadow had taken root on the wall, there drifted a low growl into her ear. Dry, foul airs as those that circulate in a long-sealed mausoleum washed over her from unseen lips.
A bolt of lightning lasts only for half a second, but even in this fraction of time Sadie saw much. The sky erupted in brightness for an instant, and in the window's dappled reflection, Sadie spied—or thought she spied—something clinging to the wall beside her. A black, vaguely membranous shape boasting four stunted limbs clung to the wall like a giant bat, and a lengthy neck was craned in an unnatural downward arc so that a face as white as pus floated at her ear. A black tendril escaped its gaping mouth—a tongue, she fancied—and strained as if to lave her lobe.
Before the breath had caught in her throat—before she'd even managed to startle—the phantasmagoric vision was gone from the reflection and only Sadie's own, white face stared back at her. And in that time, too, Ophelia had looked up at her again, a suggestive smile setting her dark eyes twinkling.
Sadie staggered along the wall a few paces and looked to the right, but the wall was utterly bare and no trace—save for the tremors its appearance had incited in her—remained whatsoever. Even the earthy, rarified air it had brought with it had been chased out, replaced by the stuffier atmosphere expected of such a little room. She had trouble remaining upright and sagged against the wall till she regained her nerve.
“What's the matter?” asked the girl with a faux pout. Then, smirking cruelly, she added, “Why, Sadie, you look as
though you've just seen a...” She trailed off into another of her churlish laughs.
With purse in hand, Sadie backed away toward the door. “I-I've gotta go.” Her hand found the handle and gave it a solid turn. “Rest up, Ophelia. I'll see you around.”
Sadie wasted no time in barreling out of the room, and without even meaning to, slammed the door shut behind her. As she'd passed back over the threshold, she'd heard the girl mutter something in reply. Her chapped lips had hardly moved as she'd said, “I expect you will.”
Rushing down the hall toward the locked door of the Crisis Management ward, Sadie felt almost like a patient there herself; manic and out of breath, she flagged down a passing nurse and begged her to be let out. The nurse unlocked the door and led her as far as the nurse's station, where the guard and secretary still sat. Beyond their post, August and Rosie were chatting over styrofoam cups of coffee.
Sadie left the psych unit; knees weak and face pale, she steadied herself against the wall and wove her way across the lobby to meet the pair. All that while, she licked her lips compulsively and sought to say something. Even a mere “hello” was beyond her power, however.
Rosie stood up and met her. One look was all she needed. “You see now?” She leaned close to Sadie, took hold of her shoulders, which actively trembled. “You understand what's happening. It's true, isn't it?” Her eyes narrowed. “Something is wrong with her—but it isn't mental, is it?”
The Haunting of Beacon Hill Page 8
