Twisted Screams

by Sheri Lewis Wohl

  Maneuvering around Anna, Sadie was able to jam the rail into the rapidly closing space between the door and the frame. With a wave of relief, she was pleased to see that the bed rail was keeping the door from latching. Take that, you creepy old nurse. We’re not locked in here anymore. Anna stepped aside and rubbed her shoulder.

  “Thanks, babe. I’m not sure how much longer I’d have been able to keep the door from closing and locking.” Anna rubbed her arms and rolled her head. “I don’t know what that bitch is or why she’s so intent on keeping us in here, but I’ve got news for her. She picked the wrong two women to screw with.”

  Once again, they were perfectly synced. As the minutes passed, her determination to not only get out of there but figure out what her great-great-grandmother needed grew stronger. That nurse had an ugly spirit, and she figured into this whole mess in some way. Sadie intended to learn how and why, then send her on a one-way ticket back to hell.

  She looked around the room and in her mind’s eyes went back to the visions she’d experienced earlier. Focusing on the nurse was the logical thing to do in a situation that was illogical, yet it didn’t feel right. Fingers of unease stroked her mind. She was missing something, and then it hit her. “It’s not the nurse so much as it is my grandmother.” As the words left her mouth, they grew in gravity and importance. She was on to something.

  “What do you mean? That lunatic is out to get us.”

  “That’s true. She is one evil force, and I’m convinced she enjoyed hurting people. Just the same, I think we’re mere fun and games for that weirdo. She’s getting off on the control she has over us right now. Let her OD on it because it’s my grandmother who needs something important from us. I’m sure of it. She’s been trying to lead me to what she needs, and so far I’ve done a poor job of understanding. I have to work harder and figure it out.”

  “What could she possibly want?” Anna waved her arms. “Look at this place. It’s nothing but the shell of an old building. A great set for your television show, but that’s about it. There doesn’t seem to be anything around here that could help someone who died decades ago. You can’t do anything important for her now. That bus pulled out of the station a long time ago.”

  Sadie was adamant in her conviction she was here for a reason. There was something more in this hospital, and her grandmother was hell-bent on getting Sadie to find it. Now that Anna was here with her, she felt less alone, less scared, and definitely braver. Anna’s presence helped make her bold and strengthened her resolve not to leave until she figured out why her grandmother had brought her here in the first place. The mystery was intriguing and the sense of responsibility pressing.

  “There’s only one way to know. Let’s get this door open enough to wiggle out of this room, and then we can go find out what she wants. After that, we can call it a night and go home.” It sounded easy when she said it, and Sadie knew deep down it wasn’t going to be even close to easy. It didn’t matter. She had to discover the truth behind her grandmother’s appearance. People like her didn’t have ghosts appearing in their lives out of the blue. Since she couldn’t deny what she was seeing—and hearing—she had to believe there was a really important reason it was happening now. Time to figure it all out.

  Anna ran a hand down her cheek. “You’re crazy, you know? I think we should get out of this hell house and go home, where things are nice and normal. As in no ghosts and definitely no locked rooms. We need to go back to our very great lives together.”

  She loved what Anna said. They were great together, and she’d never felt it more than right at this moment. Sadie kissed her and said, “Soon, my love, soon. Now push, and let’s get this door open once and for all and get the hell out of here.” Together, they put their shoulders against the blocked open door and shoved.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lorna wasn’t entirely convinced she wanted to follow the woman through the door, or anywhere for that matter. Mainly because she wasn’t really a woman, not in the flesh-and-blood sense anyway. She had been once upon a time, but she wasn’t any longer. How good an idea it was to blindly follow a ghost was up for debate.

  Not just the fact that she was a spirit bothered Lorna. She’d seen enough of them by this point to not find them distressing. No, it had more to do with what she was asking them to do. The door she wanted them to follow her through led to a lower level, and at least to her mind, the basement of a building a hundred plus years old didn’t seem like a good place to be. Dark, dank, and empty or maybe not so empty, given this place had the ghost thing going on. Nope, she didn’t want to go there at all. Then again, some little tickle at the back of her mind was urging her forward. She was almost drawn toward that door, as if on the other side something important waited for them. As if there was a hand on her back, right between the shoulder blades, pushing her in the direction of the lower level. Ignoring these feelings or the visions or anything else odd that had happened to her since moving to the house on the ocean hadn’t worked out so well. Regardless of what she felt or what she wanted to do, it all happened anyway. It could be different here. But probably not. She grabbed the door, yanked it open, and started down the stairs after the flowing vision of white who preceded her.

  The smell hit her hard by the second step. It was what? Old clothes, dirt, and mildew came to mind. She wrinkled her nose a little more with each step. The beam of her flashlight played across the steps and the cobwebs that clung to the edges. The undisturbed dust flew up into the air with each step she took. No one had been down these stairs in a long time. The smell was strong and bitter, and she wondered how much had been left here to rot that even after all these years the scent lingered. It was a sobering thought.

  “You okay?” she asked Renee.

  Behind her Renee said, “I’m all right if you don’t count gagging on enough dust to take down even the wimpiest asthmatic. Smells like this place has been closed up tight for decades. You’d think somebody would come through once in a while and air it out. I doubt there’s any mice. They’d choke to death on dust and the putrid odor.”

  “Probably has been locked up for a few decades. Besides, who in their right mind would want to come down here? And if it was cleaned out when they closed this place down, there’s probably no reason for anyone to journey into the bowels. There’d be nothing down here to look at.”

  “You hit that nail on the head, and I don’t think either of us is in our right mind to come down here now. I’m getting a really bad feeling about this, and it’s not just because of the smell.”

  “Lorna!”

  Her head snapped upward at the sound of Katie’s voice coming from the door, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Behind her lids, stars sparked. When they stopped, she shaded her eyes with her hand and opened them again. Lorna and Renee were ablaze in the glow of Katie’s mega flashlight. She gestured toward the dark abyss below. “Hey, Katie, we gotta see what’s down here. The force is pulling me this way, if you catch my drift.”

  Katie did not sound impressed. In fact, she sounded downright irritated. “You need to wait for me, force or no force. You can’t go barging into dark basements without me.”

  “I know you’re a big, bad cop and all, but trust me. I’m pretty sure what we’re dealing with here requires my special brand of force. I don’t think your gun’s gonna do jack.” It was understandable that the cop in the room would want to run point. It’s what she did for living. Lorna didn’t think this was a situation that called for a cop. It wasn’t her area of expertise. Not that Lorna considered herself an expert by any stretch. She hadn’t been doing this long enough to be one.

  Katie caught up with them on the stairs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and you don’t go barging into dark rooms by yourself. Are you trying to get yourself in trouble?”

  Like Lorna, Renee had a hand at her forehead to keep Katie’s big light from blinding her. “Just watch her work,” Renee said. “She has a way with the preternatural beings. It’s the gh
osts and goblins that need to be wary. She’ll kick their butts.”

  The irritation in Katie’s voice didn’t lighten up at all. “I don’t care. I’m trained for this kind of thing, and you two aren’t. This is not the time to be stupid.”

  Lorna shook her head and continued down the stairs. She didn’t take offense at Katie’s words. They weren’t personal and she got that. Katie was operating in cop mode just as she was operating in psychic mode. Thing was, she was pretty sure psychic mode trumped. “So the police academy has a course in Ghosts 101?”

  “Not funny, Lorna.” She lowered the light so it wasn’t blinding them any longer.

  “Not trying to be.” And she wasn’t. Even after what they’d experienced together finding the victims of the serial killer, who just happened to be one of Katie’s fellow officers, she still didn’t totally get it. She’d seen what Lorna could do firsthand and yet continued to try to explain it in rational terms. What Lorna could do wasn’t exactly what she’d describe as rational. There was no real-world explanation. She’d come to understand it because she had no choice. It wasn’t going away and in fact was growing stronger. She was what she was, and she could do what she could do. That was the only explanation needed. Right now, Lorna had a hunch that whatever was at the bottom of these stairs just might be the catalyst it was going to take for Katie to truly understand at last. She turned and continued down the stairs.

  “Damn it, Lorna,” Katie muttered from directly behind her, having gone around Renee to catch up with her. “Just wait the hell up.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. “Keep up, girlfriend.”

  Katie stopped as suddenly as she’d raced down the stairs to catch Lorna. “What on earth?”

  Lorna kept going. Truth was, she wasn’t too surprised by what she saw. “You see her, don’t you?”

  “Is that…?” A whisper of awe was in Katie’s voice.

  “You got it.”

  “The ghost is real?”

  That was a tricky one. The vision in front of her looked solid and real enough, yet she wasn’t. At least not in the sense of belonging in their world. Her time had come and gone, and the vision before them was a temporary visitor.

  “As real as a ghost gets,” she shot back.

  “It smells awful,” Katie said as she put a hand over her nose. “Is it her?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We should probably go upstairs and wait for backup.”

  “No.” It wasn’t up for discussion. Despite the horrid smell, they had to go down.

  “It could be dangerous. Who knows what the fumes are.”

  Lorna glanced back at her. “We’re not going down these stairs for our health.”

  “Why can I see her?” The awe in Katie’s voice was hard to miss. Katie had obviously given up on the practical arguments and turned her attention back to the apparition.

  “I don’t know.” And she didn’t. Until now she’d believed the vision thing was hers alone. More change, just what she needed to deal with. Well, if she’d learned anything over the last few months, it was to be adaptable.

  “First one for me too,” Renee said. “Apparently we’re all in on this one. Lorna doesn’t get to have visions all to herself this time around.”

  Oddly, it was comforting to have them in on this, especially Renee. For a change she wasn’t heading into the unknown by herself. Lorna had just put her foot on the floor at the bottom of the stairs when the slam of the door at the top of the stairs made her whirl. The click of the lock was like a gunshot going off in a cavern. Talk about the unexpected. She’d thought the only danger waiting for them was at the bottom of the stairs.

  Behind Katie and Renee was nothing but blackness. Someone, or something, had just locked them in. This locked-door thing was starting to get really annoying. A slight cold breeze whispered across the back of her neck as she gazed upward. “Uh-oh, ladies. I don’t think we’re alone anymore.”

  *

  The Watcher stood looking down at the young man, grateful beyond words he had taken heed back at the hospital in the city where he’d been sleeping at the bedside of his beloved and followed the lead he had tried to impart. His powers were limited beyond the touch he had been able to place on his shoulder. He had come out of his slumber and, thank the heavens, seemed to instinctively understand what was needed of him. This one, while not as sensitive as his sister, still had the ability to tap into a world beyond his own.

  Standing on these steps and staring into the sensitive eyes of someone who by rights should never be able to see him was a miracle. That he was across the mountains and far from the sands that had held him captive for centuries was yet another. It spoke to the gravity of the deeds that had occurred within the walls of this place and of the work that awaited them inside.

  He was most grateful for the man’s sensitivity, for he knew they would need it before this night was out. The woman who had never left this place had grown incredibly strong over the years. The evil that had lived in her heart during her mortal years had bloomed in the time since she had crossed over into the shadow realm. Her touch upon the world had not diminished in any way, and she tried now to do harm to those who attempted to set things right. Her heart was as black as her deeds.

  His prayers had been answered, and for the first time since his fall, he felt the hand of God upon his own shoulder. It released his feet and freed his soul. Did it mean redemption was finally within his grasp? He did not know the answer and he did not care. His entire focus and his whole reason for coming to this place was to help her. Something evil walked these halls, and it was well past time for it to be sent to hell. He had to protect her above all else.

  If it was the last thing he ever did, he would help. This was an important mission, though the reason for it was not yet clear to him. He sensed deep in his heart that he needed to be here and he needed to join whatever power he had to hers. Combined with her brother and the one with the light around her body, they could and would defeat the evil one. By doing so, the secret that was held deep within the walls of the building would once more be brought into the light of day.

  It was the only thing that mattered.

  He stared into the stunned eyes of the young man, who was clearly trying to make sense of the giant who stood above him. How long had it been since any mortal had gazed upon him? Once those gaping looks of astonishment had amused him. Now, sadness filled his heart. Though it was a futile wish, he longed to experience such feelings again and again. His kind had been wiped from the earth, and no one even remembered a time when the Watchers and their towering height were a common sight.

  No more. Now they were simply legends buried within the pages of a holy book, their very existence a debate amongst scholars. Some said their mention was but a fictional reference intended as a warning. Others, few others, argued that the Watchers were a race of fallen angels long since vanished from the planet.

  The latter thinkers were almost correct. He and his kind did exist, and they were most certainly fallen angels. But they had not, as those scholars declared, vanished. Or rather, he had not vanished. As one by one the Watchers had fallen to time, despair, and banishment, he had felt each and every loss until no more remained to fall. Grief had brought tears to his eyes and a bend to his shoulders on the day he knew he was alone. He was the last of his kind, and every single day, he prayed to return home.

  At this moment, it no longer mattered that he was the last or if he ever earned his way back to heaven. He finally understood his purpose, and the fact that he was here only proved it. For the first time in his very long existence, he was released from the chains that had kept him bound to the sands on the edge of the great ocean. He was here for one reason only, to protect her from the evil that sought to destroy her.

  And he would fulfill his destiny.

  *

  The rush of relief that washed over Anna the second their feet hit the hallway was swept away by the sight that greeted them. Would a simple
break be too much to ask for? By the looks of things, the answer would be yes.

  “What on earth…” she mumbled.

  “Oh, damn it.” Sadie grabbed her hand. “Here we go again.”

  “I don’t get it.” She didn’t either. They should have been able to jet down the hallway and out the front door the same way she’d come in not that long ago. But oh no, it couldn’t be that easy.

  “She makes it happen.”

  It took her a second to figure out who she was, and then it hit her. “You mean the nurse?”

  Sadie waved a hand toward the top of the stairway. “That would be my theory. You know I’ve worked on a lot of shows, and some of them were of the paranormal variety. There have been ghosts and vampires and all sorts of things I thought couldn’t possibly exist. It was all fun and games until I ended up here. I’ve reached the conclusion that perhaps some, if not all, of those stories had a basis in truth.”

  “Are you saying you think this is paranormal?”

  With everything Anna had seen since this craziness had started, it surprised Sadie that she would even ask the question. It did seem about as obvious as a powered-up neon sign. Except it was just incredibly hard to wrap her head around it. It was so outside the norm. She turned her face so they were looking at each other, eye to eye. Sadie’s face was serious without so much as a hint of doubt. “I don’t think. I know,” Sadie told her.

  Anna turned and stared at the end of the hallway. Her brain might be saying no way, but her heart and her eyes were saying hell yes. The orderlies standing guard at the top of the staircase blocked any avenue of escape. They weren’t real, yet they were as solid as Anna and Sadie. It was a crap shoot whether they’d be able to get past them. Paranormal was the only explanation, and that was pretty damned bizarre.