“Are you sure I’m not?”
“You’re not mad, Captain Hale. You’ve seen too much and done too much for such a young man. You’ve suffered. You still suffer. That’s why you came here. But I fear this place has enough fear, hate, and dread of its own.” She shook her head. “Every person who comes in here adds to the layers accumulated over the years. Even your suffering will add another layer.”
“Why do you stay here?” he asked softly.
She gave a muffled laugh. “Because I like working here. Helping those in need. Its what I’m supposed to do with my life. But that’s beside the point.”
“All old places are like this ... haunted by something.”
“Oh, no. This is worse. It’s a horrible, deep, ugly scar that taints. You don’t know everything about it.”
“Why are you telling me this now? You denied it before.”
“I was afraid.”
He took a chance. “Nurse Dorrenti told me everything about what happened ten years ago. At least the murders. But there is more. What is it?”
She glanced around and continued. “No one understands it, but when this place was built in 1888 everything just went wrong. It took longer than normal to build. Some men were killed during the construction. Over the next twenty years the accumulated hate, fear, and insanity tainted the asylum until it is full of all the death and evil it can hold. There were the bodies buried in the basement. You knew about those, correct?”
Shock held him still a moment. “No.” He relayed all he’d learned from Annabelle. “I sensed she either didn’t know any more about it or didn’t plan to tell me. I saw the names out in the front garden. The names carved in the memorial.”
“It is common knowledge in Simple that Patricia Healy, Superintendent Masterson Healy’s daughter, murdered several women over the years. Masterson covered it up by hiding the bodies in the basement. Lilly Luna, a young woman who was born and lived here all her life discovered the bodies because they haunted her. Lilly married Masterson’s son Morgan and they moved away to Denver.”
“Annabelle told me that part ... that Lilly and Masterson married. She left out the supernatural things, of course.”
He’d never noticed the lines around Nurse Summit's eyes before. He had never taken the time to see how pretty her eyes were, though she wasn’t a young woman anymore. Had she stayed in this place so long that it had affected her, brought her worry day-by-day and night-by-night?
“Annabelle doesn’t believe in hauntings, Captain Hale. That’s why I’m telling you this. I know you’ll look after her if it gets worse around here. Or if anything happens to me.”
“Do you expect anything to happen to you?”
“No. But with this influenza ... there is no way to be certain. For anyone.” The weight of that burden could have made him retreat from it. “Keep Annabelle safe. You’re the only one who can.”
“Wait.”
“Yes?”
“You’re concerned about Ziggy, but that squirrel Antrim looks at her strangely, too.”
She laughed softly, and for a moment he saw youth return to her features. “You’re very perceptive. Antrim likes the ladies, and I warned her about him. It’s Ziggy I’m more concerned with.” With that, she walked back toward the administration offices and left him hanging by a tether.
He pondered for a few seconds but found himself walking toward the basement. If he could make it through a war, he could conquer whatever was in the damned basement, haunted or not.
“Where are you going?” a familiar voice asked him as she came up alongside. Annabelle. God, help me. He’d know that liquid-soft voice anywhere. Memories of her naked flesh under his fingers flooded his mind. That damned mask kept her beautiful face from him, but it enhanced the direct gaze of her vivid blue eyes. He stopped.
He wasn’t certain of his reception. She’d barely talked to him this week. After the other night, he couldn’t entirely say he blamed her. “I have an assignment,” he said. “The men and I are playing soccer today after the noon meal. We need more exercise and fresh air.”
“But the quarantine—”
“The men are bored and so am I. I’ve read and read until my eyes are sore. And doing exercises in my room isn’t keeping me occupied either.”
“You’re playing soccer with masks on?”
“Of course.” She nodded, but he saw the hint of doubt in her eyes. The devil came out in him. “Will you watch us from the sidelines?”
She blinked. “I may be on duty.”
“Too bad. I would like you there.”
“To be a nurse in case anyone is injured?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Maybe I’ll be there.”
Good. He thought she would refuse. He walked away.
She trotted after him as his long legs ate up the ground. “You didn’t answer my question. Where are you going?”
Exasperated, he turned toward her and came to another halt. “Is this a question designed to trick me into saying the wrong thing? My mother is real good at playing that joke on my father. Only it doesn’t end up being funny.”
She looked down at the floor, masking those eyes he longed to see, to stare into, to watch turn heady with excitement as he had mind-numbing sex with her. But, no. That wasn’t likely to happen now, was it? Cade wanted to rip that mask off, to cover her mouth with his own and kiss her until she lay breathless in his arms. God help me.
“No trick questions. I saw you talking with Nurse Summit. What was so important?”
He smiled. “None of your business.”
“Cade, this isn’t a game. Tell me what she said.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I had a conversation with her when she gave me this mask.” She pointed to the concealing cloth over the lower half of her face. “She warned me that you may have ... she believes that you have a lust for me.”
He made a soft snorting noise. “That should be obvious.”
Lines formed between her eyebrows. “I don’t understand why you would.”
He imagined that she blushed under that mask, and he wanted to rip it off her and see how red her lips were. “Men are base creatures. We eat like monkeys and sometimes we mate like them.”
Her eyes sparked, and damned if that didn’t make him want her even more. “Don’t be crude,” she said.
“That’s me.”
“Are you trying to make me hate you?”
“Thought you already did.”
“No.” Her words came out sharp, but whispered. “I never hated you. You walked in here with a grudge against me a mile wide.”
He took a deep breath and reigned in the mean side of him that had come out since he’d entered the war. “Yeah, I lust for you. As my British friends often say, that doesn’t bloody cover it.”
She stared at him, anger starting in those deep depths. “I told her she was wrong.”
Oh, yeah. He could confirm it and pretend he didn’t want her, but how could he do that now that Nurse Summit had wrung a promise from him? He closed his eyes a moment, then scratched his nose. “She told me that Ziggy is having strange feelings for you.”
“Oh, yes. That.”
“That? Whatever you do, don’t be alone with him. Nurse Summit asked me to watch out for you. To top it off, she also warned me not to hurt you.”
“Would you?”
“If I’d wanted to, don’t you think I would’ve done it by now?”
She nodded, her voice still soft. “Yes. Don’t worry about Ziggy. I can take care of myself.”
“You think because you made it through a war you can’t be harmed?”
“Ziggy is simply confused. Nurse Summit is cautious. I wish she hadn’t told you.”
“I’m glad she did. If I had it my way ..."
One of her eyebrows twitched upward. “What?”
He took a step closer and closed the gap. Barely a few inches separated them. Damn her for smelling so beaut
iful. Whenever he thought of her, he always remembered how fresh and floral she smelled. She was a beautiful spot in this dark place. He wanted to paint her body with his tongue, and kiss her to within an inch of screaming for more. He wanted to impress himself upon her so indelibly she would never want another man. He lowered his voice. “I could pretend. I could tell you I didn’t feel a damned thing when I had my fingers buried in your sweet body. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I want to do it again. And again.”
Shock filled her pretty eyes. “How dare you?”
Her voice ached, and he knew he’d put the pain there. He felt like the bastard he knew he was. “I dare because it’s the truth. I don’t understand why I kissed you any more than you do. But maybe we should make sure it doesn’t happen again.” He inhaled a deep breath. “Nurse Summit wants me to look after you, so I will. End of story.”
“You’re right. It is the end of the story.” Her voice held contempt.
Good. If she continued to think he hated her, maybe he wouldn’t be so damn tempted by her anymore. He waited until she’d turned and stalked away from him—thank God—before he turned to the basement again.
He didn’t think he could contain the heat pouring through his blood and demanding he take her in his arms, hold her tight, and whisper hot desires into her ear and make them come true. Entangled and competing emotions bombarded him. He wanted to keep Annabelle safe, but how could he without staying near her and creating additional problems for them? Without his groin being on fire with sexual needs the entire time? Yes, he could control lust, but this felt different than desire. More potent. More demanding. He walked faster as he tried to escape the ridiculousness of his needs and desires. Wanting her was irrational, and the last thing he needed was to add another problem to his already full box of troubles.
He drew in a deep breath, two as he stopped several feet from the basement door. The damned door was open. Wide open again. Doctor Prever and Superintendent Antrim said the area shouldn’t be hidden anymore from the patients who were allowed to roam the grounds. Cade couldn’t agree. Malignancy hid down there, and it writhed and moaned and ached for a new audience for its evil.
He shivered hard, standing only ten feet from the black maw. Cade knew the doctor wouldn’t agree that supernatural elements lingered in a place like this. No use telling Prever a damn thing.
What am I doing here? The answer came easily. Trying to conquer fear. If he couldn’t face down a supernatural threat, then perhaps the war had taken everything from him. Perhaps it had truly broken him into worthless pieces.
“No.” He refused to believe it, and took another step toward the open mouth.
* * *
Annabelle knew she shouldn’t do it. She hadn’t been in the ward with the soldiers more than a few minutes when an overwhelming urge to locate Cade struck her. Why, she didn’t know. After all, he’d gone into the basement to find a soccer ball. Ziggy had told all the men that everyone would play soccer after the noon meal, a few minutes from now.
After a while, when he hadn’t returned, she'd grown concerned. So here she was, heading toward that basement door that Dr. Prever and the superintendent said would remain open. They had nothing to hide. No secrets like ten years ago. Ten years sounded like a long time, but it wasn’t.
The door was open, but the light was out. Primal instincts rose inside her, thick and desperate. Her body protested the idea of stepping forward into the inky blackness. Don’t be stupid. What if Cade needs you? Whatever her belief about a relationship with him, to turn away now would prove cowardice—that she would leave a patient in peril for personal reasons. No. She’d never done that and wouldn’t start now.
One step closer to the door. Another. Images of bodies broken, ravaged, and destroyed rose up inside her. Not the bodies discovered ten years ago, but months ago. The men who had been injured in war haunted her mind, their hands reaching out to her, their voices wailing and pleading. Blood-splattered sheets, missing limbs, and missing faces on the dead. Her breathing sped up, her heart reacting as she recalled the nightmare of the field hospital with stunning clarity.
No. No. She couldn’t and wouldn’t fall to this. A patient proved far more important than the bloody reminders running loose in her imagination. Her integrity demanded it, but her feelings also required it. At the top of the dark stairs, she flipped on the light switch. “Captain Hale? Are you there? Silence greeted her. “Are you there?”
Forcing herself down the steps, she took them quickly. She reached the bottom and stared down the hallway. One light at the end of the hallway flickered and went out, leaving part of the hallway more shadowed. Irrational fear rose.
“No.” She refused the fear and demanded compliance. She would do her duty. “Captain Hale? Everyone is waiting to play soccer? Why are you down here in the dark?” Even as she said the words, she strongly felt he wasn’t down here. Somehow she knew. But she had to check. Her senses had failed her before at this asylum. She’d believed more than once that someone was beside her, that someone had whispered in her ear, and she’d turned to discover no one there.
Rather than call his name again, she walked down the hall and looked in each cell. No reason for him to be in one of those, of course, but she checked. At the end of the hall, she gazed across the large expanse where the concrete floor looked so new. Indeed it was ten years old and had been redone. Glad for that—she would have hated a pockmarked floor with a reminder of death—she walked among the boxes and paraphernalia. Unreliable lighting threw shadows across the room. One of the cell doors creaked behind her, and she turned swiftly and drew a startled breath. If Cade was playing hide and seek with her ...
A few boxes were piled high enough that she supposed it was possible. Someone needed to clean this mess. Perhaps she could petition the superintendent to allow her to clean it. A clean area wouldn't harbor shapes and the shadows wouldn’t seem to move on their own. The mind could no longer play tricks on the vulnerable and superstitious. She was neither and wouldn’t give into it. She repeated a mantra in her head. You made it through a war. You can make it through a dusty basement.
No sign of Cade. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or annoyed. “Right, Annabelle. There are no ghosts in here.” As soon as she said the words, she regretted them.
A dark shape formed. It wasn’t a shape so much as an absence of light along the back wall beyond the boxes. A shadow, but not a shadow. It was a blackness that swallowed all light. She peered into this absence of light and curiosity hit. She walked toward the boxes, wondering if someone hid behind there. Cade? No. He wouldn’t. That would be insane. Yet didn’t he say he was insane? What was insane in this time of war and disease? Sometimes she couldn’t be certain. “Is anyone there?”
The darkness drew her, a bee to honey. Though she couldn’t understand, she found rationalization in every step. It could be a patient cowering behind those boxes, their shadow falling on the wall. She wouldn’t leave a patient behind. She frowned, disconcerted by every methodical and deliberate step she took. A pull drew her foot forward. The next and then the next. She couldn’t hold back, though her mind raced. Nausea roiled upward and her body went cold. Her breath showed in front of her, and the startling realization made her struggle. Ice cold. The place had turned into a meat locker. She didn’t want to go. She wouldn’t—
“Annabelle!”
Chapter 12
Cade’s loud demand jerked Annabelle away as his arms encircled her and turned her toward him. He stared down at her, his face tight and grim, his gaze darting behind her, then back to her. “Come away from there.”
Feeling dazed, Annabelle did as he requested. He moved her away from the boxes and the shadow, and when she glanced back, the shadow had disappeared. If it had ever been there.
“I was looking for you,” she said, still shaking as she tried to understand what had just happened. “Where did you go?”
“I found a football instead of a soccer ball. I went upstairs
to let the men know we need to lay out the football field and we can start. One of the nurses said you’d come down here to find me.”
She shivered, and he drew her against the stalwart wall of his chest. Hot, hard and warm, the shelter of his arms instantly replaced the icebox that had taken her seconds ago. Her breath puffed out, but it was no longer cold. How had her breath formed outside the mask in the first place?
He glanced toward the area where she’d slowly been walking. “Why were you walking toward the shadow?”
She gulped. “What shadow?”
He clasped her shoulders and squeezed lightly, his gaze hard and implacable. “Damn it, Annabelle. Are you going to lie to me? I saw the shadow and you saw it. You were walking toward it. If it covers you, if you walk into it and it surrounds you, you may never come out.”
Everything she’d known up until this point relied on facts and medical knowledge. She couldn’t wrap her mind around supernatural happenings in the asylum.
Involuntarily she snuggled deeper into his arms. “What is it? What is it?”
Cade tightened his arms around her, his hands caressing over her back and hair. “I don’t know. I’ve never encountered anything similar before.”
“Let’s leave. I want to get out of here.”
As Cade led her upstairs, she wondered how to acknowledge the reality of evil, of the thing that had drawn her toward an uncertain fate.
* * *
Cade observed Annabelle watching him for a few seconds as he tossed the football toward a receiver. They’d elected him to be the quarterback, but he didn’t know why. He’d never been a great football player. His teammates yelled in triumph as the soldier acting as receiver made a touchdown.
The crisp day warmed, the sun peeking in and out of the clouds. Winter had retreated for the time being. Leftover snow became muddy slush under everyone’s feet. Their boots splashed and they slid across the field. All one hundred yards of it. They’d found a wide enough spot between the auditorium and the tree line. In the distance, the cemetery invaded with its cold stone effigies. He shoved the gravestones and the entity in the basement to the back of his mind. Peace settled over him. He took this moment to forget where he was and enjoy the game. He drew in the clean air, his lungs working well, his heart pounding a bit with the exertion, his mind clear. When had he ever felt more alive? Never. Not when he knew how much there was to lose.
Shadows Rise Page 14
