Kissing Midnight

by Rede, Laura Bradley

  “Jesse!” she screams as my grip slips. Her elbow slides out of my grasp, her forearm slipping through my fingers until I’m only holding her hand. I try to focus on the little heart tattooed on the inside of her wrist, the tiny black line that trails from it like a rescue rope. I concentrate on it with all my might. But I’m not going to last much longer. It’s taking everything I have to stay solid enough to hold on.

  Saintly’s desperate gaze meets mine, eyes huge with fear. It’s over, I know. All I can hope for now is that Saintly becomes a ghost like me, that if we are going to be trapped, we will at least be together. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “I love you,” she whispers back.

  I can’t hear the words above the howling of the wind, but I know what she said. I can feel it.

  And it changes something. I don’t know if she means it romantically, or in some bigger, broader sense, but right now it doesn’t even matter. I see my hand grow more solid in hers and feel a rush of warmth and strength fill me. It only lasts a second, but that second is enough. With everything I have, I pull Saintly up, over the edge.

  To anyone standing below, it would look like the impossible is happening: a jumper flying back up, like a film played in reverse. To me, it feels like something even more miraculous is taking place: that, in some way, my own jump is being reversed, too. I know nothing can really undo what I did that day, but right now, as I pull Saintly back up onto the ledge, I feel more alive than I have felt in years. Together we inch our way to the maintenance door and crawl through it, collapsing in the relative safety of the stairwell.

  “Oh my God,” Saintly breathes, “How did you do that?”

  “I don’t know.” I grin at her in relief. All that matters is Saintly is safe—at least for now. Outside, the wind sounds like ghostly voices, howling in frustration, and I know the midnight girls won’t give up easily.

  Saintly knows it, too. “We have to get out of here, before they try to force me out there again.” She struggles to her feet, her legs shaking under her from cold and exertion. She looks unhinged. Her dark hair wet and wild, matted with chunks of ice. Her tan skin is red with the sting of the wind, her trembling lips blue. She wraps her arms around herself, trying desperately to scrub the warmth back into her shoulders as we stumble down the stairs. I wish my touch was warm, so I had an excuse to put my arm around her and pull her close, but I know I might make her colder. “We’ll go somewhere warm,” I promise, “and then we’ll find Delia. We’ll find a way to get her off campus and—”

  We reach the bottom of the stairs and freeze.

  Someone is waiting for us.

  Several some ones, really: A campus security guard and two cops. Standing behind them, the picture of concern, is Dev. A fifth figure is racing toward us across the frozen courtyard, his coat flying out behind him: Saintly’s therapist, Dr. Sterling.

  “Run, Saint, run!” I yell, but there’s no use. She gets about two feet before the larger police officer snags her arm, tugging her back and twisting her arm behind her in the same motion. Saintly cries out.

  “Let her go!” I yell, at the same moment her therapist cries “Gentle!” Saintly thrashes against the officer’s grip, but the ghosts have left her weak and tired, and she’s no match for him. He struggles the cuffs onto her quickly while the doctor tries to soothe her.

  “Mariana, we have no choice. You’re a danger to yourself right now, and we need to take you somewhere where—”

  “I’m not the danger!” Saintly wrenches one arm free and points at Dev. “He’s the danger!”

  Dev stands aside uncomfortably, a look of pity on his handsome face. “I should have seen this coming. She’s been getting worse all week. I made friends with her a few weeks ago because I thought I could help, but she’s convinced herself that there’s something between us—you know, romantically—and when she saw me with someone else…” He shakes his head sadly. “This is all my fault.”

  “It is all your fault!” Saintly’s voice rings out shrilly in the quiet courtyard.

  “Saintly,” I beg her, “you have to calm down. You have to show them you’re not crazy.”

  But the threat of being taken away has put Saintly over an edge, and this time I can’t pull her back. Her eyes are wild, her pupils huge with fear. To my horror, she turns to me. “You can’t let them take me away! We need to warn Delia!”

  “Hallucinating, too, it seems.” Her therapist is talking into his cell phone now.

  “Has she taken anything?” the campus security officer asks Dev. “Drugs? Alcohol? Is she on medications?”

  “I don’t think she has. I don’t know.” Dev wrings his hand, every bit the worried friend. “She was on meds, I think, but she went off them recently…”

  “She had been handling it well.” The therapist is off his phone now and frowning with concern. “They’ll run a full tox screen at Westgate.”

  “No!” Saintly thrashes in panic, straining against the cuffs. “I can’t go back to Westgate! I need to stay here!” In the nearest dorm, lights are clicking on. Bored, curious students stick their heads out of windows, looking for the source of the screams.

  “I really think it’s for the best,” the therapist says gently. “I’ll speak with your mother, but I’m sure she’ll agree. We’re scared for you, Mariana.”

  “Worry about Delia!”

  “Do you think that was a threat?” one officer asks the other.

  “Put him in handcuffs,” Saintly nods helplessly towards Dev. “He’s the one trying to kill Delia with a kiss.”

  Dev looks sheepish. “I’m dating her roommate. Mariana walked in on us kissing, and I’m afraid it upset her.”

  “He’s lying.” Saintly is trying to get herself under control, but she can’t. And would it even help if she did? They saw her try to jump off the clock tower. “He isn’t what he looks like. He’s immortal. He kills girls to keep himself alive. He’s a murderer!”

  In a good-cop move meant to calm her down, the shorter cop plays along. “How many has he murdered?”

  “Hundreds! We saw them! There’s a box in his room. It’s a door to a castle! Jesse,” she turns to me, desperate, “You tell them, please!”

  “Mariana,” the therapist says calmly, “the door is from your dream, remember? It was only a dream.”

  “Please,” Saintly begs them, “please, just look in the box. You’ll see.”

  “Here’s the car.” A police car is bumping toward us, off-roading over the frozen ground, its flashing lights reflecting off the ice. Its siren lets out a few whoops as it pulls up near us. A few of the gawkers are now standing in the doorways of their dorms. A boy raises his cell phone to take a picture as a female officer steps out of the driver’s side of the car. She’s carrying a heavy wool emergency blanket that she tosses over Saintly, pulling it up over her face to shield her from the curious eyes.

  “Suicide attempt?” she asks.

  The officer holding Saintly nods, and I can’t help wondering if this is what would have happened to me if I had walked down from the tower that day. Would they have called my parents? Taken me to the hospital in the back of a squad car? Would someone have looked at me with pity and concern, like they’re looking at Saintly now?

  But there’s no time to think about that. They are pressing Saintly into the back seat of the car. She doesn’t fight them. In fact, she has gone very still, and I can tell by the look on her face that she has lost it in some deeper way now. Her tears have stopped flowing, and her face is still and frozen as the faces of the dead girls hanging in the dark castle. She sits in the back of the squad car facing straight ahead, the blanket pulled over her head like a cowl, eerily calm after all her struggling.

  “Saintly?” I say softly. “Can you hear me?”

  “I’ll follow you,” the therapist says to the officer. “I need to be there when she’s admitted.”

  Behind us, Dev is giving a statement to the campus security officer, who is busy taking notes, one h
and shielding his notepad from the cold drizzle still falling from the sky. The cop car starts, the siren coming back on with a loud whoop, the lights flashing blue and red on the snow.

  And here it is, the moment I have to decide: Do I stay here and try to warn Delia? I don’t know how, considering the fact that she can’t even see me. Or do I get in the car with Saint? Just thinking about it makes my insides melt with fear. Getting in this car means crossing the border, leaving campus. The memory of the horrible unraveling feeling makes me sick.

  But how can I let Saintly leave alone? She looks so small and scared, huddled under her blanket. You made yourself go up the clock tower, I remind myself. You made yourself solid enough to catch her. You can do this, too.

  Reaching through the closed door, I grab hold of Saintly’s hand. Gripping her tight, I trot alongside the cop car as it bumps over the snowy ground. Then, just as it reaches the curb, I throw myself inside.

  The car slides out into the dark street, the alarm chirping. I turn and look out the back window and see Dev, standing on the curb. He smiles as he watches the car pull away. It’s a sly, gloating smile. He thinks he’s gotten rid of us. He thinks he has won.

  And maybe he has. Saintly is silent beside me. Ahead of me, Xenon Street threatens.

  To take my mind off it, I decide to listen in on the officers talking in the front seat. I thrust my head and shoulders through the plexiglass partition between us so I can hear them better.

  “— that big clock tower?” The female officer is saying.

  “Well, it’s been done before. Campus security guy said somebody jumped years ago.”

  The other cop shakes her head. “They’re, what? Eighteen, nineteen years old? They’ve got their whole lives to look forward to. Why wouldn’t you want to live?”

  I do, I think, I do want to live. Ahead of us, the stoplight at Xenon glows red in the darkness. For all I know, there’s nothing for me beyond that line. As the car pulls to a stop, I hear the bells of the clock tower chime in the distance.

  Twelve o’clock.

  Twenty-four hours until New Year’s Eve.

  The cop shakes her head. “What is it about midnight that brings out the crazies?”

  But I barely hear her. All my attention is on the light above us as I watch it shift to green.

  Chapter 25

  Jesse

  Saintly looks up and realizes where we are. I see the look of horror dawn on her face. She knows I can’t leave campus. “Get out!” she hisses. “You have to get out!”

  I want to. I want to just throw myself through the door and hit the sidewalk running. Fear wrings out my heart as the cop car pulls forward.

  “Please,” Saintly begs, “I can’t lose you, too.”

  It’s the desperation in her voice that makes me stay. She needs me, and that thought is enough to make me grip her hand like an anchor.

  The green light flashes by above us as we pull through the intersection, and for a second I feel the familiar horror of dissolution. My body is suddenly too light, spread too thin, the molecules rising like bubbles around a drowning girl. My windpipe closes in panic, and it’s all I can do to keep myself from clawing at the door.

  Then Saintly squeezes my hand and it’s as if her solidity is flowing into me, filling me with warmth, weighting me to the spot. She shuts her eyes. The desperation is still in her voice, but now she’s not begging me to run—it’s too late for that. Now she’s begging me to stay.

  One of the cops glances back in the rearview mirror. “She’s talking to herself again.”

  “No,” I say, “she’s talking to me.” I know the guy can’t hear me, but Saintly can. She can hear me, and she can see me, and she can hold me here, the way I held her as she hung from the clock tower, and pull me back over the ledge.

  She opens her eyes and smiles at me in surprise. “We did it!”

  I can see the Xenon Street sign in the rearview mirror. The feeling of dissolving has passed. If anything, I feel more solid, more present, than I usual. “Maybe you were wrong,” Saintly says quietly. “Maybe you could have left all along.”

  I nod. “Maybe.” Or maybe something has changed. I thought I was tied to the school because that’s where I died, but maybe it was because that’s where I lived—where I felt something real and intense. Back then, it was fear and pain, but now…now it’s something else.

  Or maybe school was just the only home I had. Maybe my home has become a person, not a place.

  For the long, silent ride, I feel almost happy, in spite of everything. Happy just to exist and know that she still exists, too. Happy to watch a world I haven’t seen in twenty years flash by in the night. The sleet has stopped and the trees are coated with a sparkling layer of ice. For a little while, that’s all that matters.

  Then the tall wrought iron gates of Westgate loom out of the darkness and Saintly clenches my hand so hard it actually hurts. Because this is the place she fears most of all, and we only have twenty-four hours to get out of here and back to school before Delia becomes Dev’s next victim.

  “Breathe,” I remind us both. From the outside, Westgate doesn’t look so bad. Old, certainly, and big, but classic with its dark stone walls and pillared front porch. The high black fence that surrounds the place is intimidating, but the grounds themselves are nice: sloping lawns with little benches tucked beneath the thick-trunked elms. The sort of place you might go to relax.

  But Saintly is anything but relaxed. As the cop car crawls past the guard house at the gate, I can feel her whole body begin to shake, and by the time the officers open her door she is doubled over in fear. I half expect her to try to bolt, but there’s no opportunity for that; the officers flank her tightly, the male officer gripping her handcuffs, leaving me to trail helplessly behind. What did they do to you here? I want to ask, but I’m afraid to speak to Saintly in case she forgets and says something back to me. Frankly, she already looks crazy enough. Her dark hair is stiff with ice, her clothes soaked through with sleet. She hunches under the rough wool blanket.

  The nurse behind the front desk looks up, startled, as we come in. “Mariana! I got word that you were bringing someone in, but I hadn’t heard it was her.”

  “Her therapist is just behind us,” the female cop says. “He’ll have the information to sign her in.”

  “Oh, we know Mariana,” the nurse says brusquely. “She was with us for quite a while. Only left us a few months ago, really.” She shakes her head. “I had hoped she was doing better than this. Well, let’s get her to a room. Come on.”

  But Saintly won’t budge. She’s staring, wide-eyed—not at the nurse, but past her. I look, and suddenly I understand why she doesn’t want to be here.

  Behind the nurse is the strangest-looking ghost I have ever seen. He’s unnaturally tall and thin, his skin so pale it is almost translucent. His black hair has been shaved in patches and his hospital gown hangs loose on his skeletal frame. The gown might have been white once, but now it’s almost completely soaked with blood, and soon I see why: The ghost’s wrists are a pulp of cuts, too ragged for knife wounds. He gives me a slow, proud smile. His teeth are filed to shark-like points and brilliant pink with blood.

  Saintly gasps and tries to bury my face in her shoulder, which doesn’t work because her face goes right through it. I want to hide my face, too—or to disappear completely. All I can think is for twenty years all I wanted was to see another ghost, and now I never want to see one again.

  But I do see them. In fact, I see five more ghosts, just in the time it takes to walk from the intake desk to Saintly’s room: A woman tethered to a bed with rope bangs a hairless baby doll against the wall. Another cocooned in a straightjacket rocks in the hallway, staring blankly. A man in an antique wheelchair struggles furiously against his restraints while a ghostly doctor draws up an injection, and a young woman with lank red hair nearly bowls us over, flinging herself at us as we pass. “I won’t do it anymore,” she sobs. “I just want to see my children. Plea
se! I just want to go home!”

  I feel like screaming the same thing. I want to go home! It’s not just the apparitions, horrible though they are; it’s the feel of the place, a dark despair that seems to seep into you, weighing you down. Saintly and I need to get out of here, and fast. But we’re just as stuck as the ghost in the wheelchair, gnawing at his leather straps with his teeth while the doctor sinks the needle into his arm.

  “Why are there so many of them?” I whisper to Saintly.

  She answers a minute later by nodding to a bronze plaque mounted on the wall. Westgate Asylum, it reads. Established 1849.

  I understand. Before it was a modern psychiatric hospital, Westgate was a Victorian-era insane asylum. I remember hearing a lecture on them in one of the million history classes I sat in on at the college—how people were tied up and experimented on and strapped to their beds for days. Hundreds of people died in asylums like this and were buried in numbered graves right there on the grounds.

  Evidently, some of them never left.

  I feel a surge of compassion for the ghosts. And to think I felt sorry for myself being trapped at a college!

  But my sympathy doesn’t last. However innocent these people may have been in life, there’s no denying there’s something malicious about them now. Saintly is working hard to keep herself from staring at them, trying not to draw their attention, but some of them clearly remember her. They watch her with hungry eyes as we pass.

  The nurse and the cops are, of course, oblivious, and it’s almost a relief to reach Saintly’s assigned room and be caught up in the bustle of living hospital workers. The intake worker comes with paperwork for the police officers. A nurse comes and gets Saintly into hospital clothes and checks her for hypothermia and sends her to pee into a cup for the tox screen. Dr. Sterling arrives and signs things on clipboards and holds hushed conversations with the doctor on duty. Hours pass as everyone works hard to get Saintly signed in.