by Amy Cross
I pause, before nodding.
“Sure,” I mutter, stepping back over to the counter.
“I need adrenaline,” she explains, as she starts crushing the pills to powder. “Or, if not adrenaline in its purest form, I need something else to make my body react in the same way. It's a slightly crazy idea, but it was the root of a treatment that Musgrave and I abandoned a while back. It clearly had no long-term benefits, but in the short-term it might be exactly what I need.”
“Are you sure you can't just take the cure?”
“I'm going to let you have that one stupid question,” she replies testily, “but any more and you get yelled at. I'm caught between a rock and a zombie place.”
She takes the bottom of the pill bottle and uses it to crush the pills into an even finer powder.
“I just need some more time,” she continues, “to finish a few other parts of my work. Before I die, I want to know whether or not I was right.”
I open my mouth to tell her that there has to be another way, but then I realize that maybe all these questions are just making things worse.
“Is there anything I can do?” I ask again.
“Not really. Just stick around. Your slack-jawed, open-mouthed idiocy has started to seem charming in small doses. Plus, you're that very rare thing, Thomas. You're a good person. You're not smart in any way, in fact you're impressively stupid, but you are good and that's not a quality to be dismissed. It's only recently that I realized good people aren't quite as boring as I used to believe.”
She starts wiping the powder off the counter and into the palm of her hand.
“That was a compliment, by the way,” she adds.
“I figured.” I pause, before furrowing my brow. “I think.”
“So I'm going to mix this powder,” she continues, “with a few other items that have hopefully been left here, altering the way in which my body absorbs the adrenaline substitute. That should buy me more time.”
“How much more time?” I ask.
“A few days.”
“And then you can take more?”
“We'll see. Even if I can find the damn stuff again, there might be limits on how much my heart can handle. It'll be interesting to see the results of this little experiment.”
“But -”
Before I can finish, I suddenly realize that I can hear a sound in the distance. I listen for a few seconds, convinced that I have to be wrong, and then I turn and look at a nearby broken window.
The sound continues.
A persistent ringing, like...
“Doctor Carter,” I say cautiously, “do you hear a telephone?”
“Huh?”
“A phone. Ringing somewhere.”
“Don't be stupid,” she replies, “there's no phone system left, it would be impossible for -”
She stops suddenly, and I turn to see that she too is looking toward the window. From the look on her face, it's clear that she hears the phone too.
“Well,” she says cautiously, “how about that?”
Elizabeth
“It's coming from in here,” I mutter, limping up the steps that lead toward an old hair salon.
Fortunately the glass has been smashed out of the front door, allowing me to look through into the gloomy interior and see several chairs arranged in front of old, dirty mirrors. The place looks like it's been ransacked, but to my surprise I see that an old phone is still on the reception desk, and it's this phone that started ringing about a minute ago.
“How's that possible?” I whisper, before reaching through the broken window and trying to open the door.
When that fails, I start carefully climbing through, while taking care not to catch myself on any of the remaining glass shards.
“Elizabeth!” Thomas calls out. “Where's that sound coming from?”
“In here!” I shout, stepping down onto the floor, and then turning to see him hurrying this way with Polly a little way further back. “I'm going to answer it!”
“Are you sure that's a good idea?” he replies.
“Why wouldn't it be?”
“We don't know who it'll be.”
“Phones aren't even supposed to be working,” I point out. “The whole network went down right at the start of all this. We have to at least find out what's happening. Anyway, it's probably just a malfunction, like it's ringing for no reason, but we have to be sure.”
Turning, I limp over to the reception counter and reach out to answer the phone, although I hesitate for a moment. I'm actually a little scared, in case this turns out to be some kind of trick, maybe even a booby trap, but finally I lift the receiver and hold it to my ear.
“Hello?” I say cautiously. “Who's there?”
COMING SOON
Days 109 to 116
(Mass Extinction Event book 8)
ALREADY AVAILABLE
1. Days 1 to 4
2. Days 5 to 8
3. Days 9 to 16
4. Days 46 to 53
5. Days 54 to 61
6. Day 100
7. Days 101 to 108
OTHER BOOKS
BY AMY CROSS INCLUDE
Horror
Stephen
The Farm
The Haunting of Hardstone Jail
Asylum (The Asylum Trilogy book 1)
Meds (The Asylum Trilogy book 2)
The Madness of Annie Radford (The Asylum Trilogy book 3)
The Devil, the Witch and the Whore (The Deal book 1)
Like Stones on a Crow's Back (The Deal book 2)
The Devil's Blade
Haunted
Devil's Briar
The Night Girl
Last Wrong Turn
Friend From the Internet
The Haunting of Caldgrave House
The Haunting of Blackwych Grange
The Bride of Ashbyrn House
The Ghosts of Hexley Airport
The Curse of Wetherley House
The Haunting of Marshall Heights
The Ghosts of Lakeforth Hotel
The Body at Auercliff
The Soul Auction
The Border
Eli's Town
Laura
Annie's Room
The Priest Hole (Nykolas Freeman book 1)
Battlefield (Nykolas Freeman book 2)
Perfect Little Monsters and Other Stories
The Ghost of Longthorn Manor and Other Stories
Room 9 and Other Stories
Fantasy / Horror
Grave Girl
Raven Revivals (Grave Girl book 2)
The Gravest Girl of All (Grave Girl book 3)
The Library
Beautiful Familiar
Dark Season (book 1, 2 & 3)
The Hollow Church
The Vampires of Tor Cliff Asylum
Dead Souls (book 1 to 13)
Lupine Howl (books 1 to 6)
Dystopian / Apocalypse
Ward Z (The Ward Z Series book 1)
Terror at Camp Everbee (The Ward Z Series book 2)
The Dog
Also by Amy Cross
THE FARM
No-one ever remembers what happens to them when they go into the barn at Bondalen farm. Some never come out again, and the rest... Something about them is different.
In 1979, the farm is home to three young girls. As winter fades to spring, Elizabeth, Kari and Sara each come to face the secrets of the barn, and they each emerge with their own injuries. But someone else is lurking nearby, a man who claims to be Death incarnate, and for these three girls the spring of 1979 is set to end in tragedy.
In the modern day, meanwhile, Bondalen farm has finally been sold to a new family. Dragged from London by her widowed father, Paula Ridley hates the idea of rural life. Soon, however, she starts to realize that her new home retains hints of its horrific past, while the darkness of the barn still awaits anyone who dares venture inside.
Set over the course of several decades, The Farm is a horror novel about pe
ople who live with no idea of the terror in their midst, and about a girl who finally has a chance to confront a source of great evil that has been feeding on the farm for generations.
Also by Amy Cross
ALICE ISN'T WELL
(DEATH HERSELF BOOK 1)
“There are lots of demons in the sky above London. The problem is, this one came crashing down to earth.”
Ten years ago, Alice Warner was attacked and disfigured by an attacker in her own home. She remembers nothing of the attack, and she has been in a psychiatric hospital ever since. When she's finally released, however, she starts working as a security guard at an abandoned shopping mall. And that's when she starts to realize that something is haunting her, keeping just one step out of sight at all times...
Meanwhile, seventy years earlier, a little girl named Wendy is left orphaned after a World War 2 fighter plane crashes onto her house. Taken to a monastery, Wendy is quickly singled out by the nuns for special attention. They say she has been possessed by a demon, and that there's only one way to save her soul. Fortunately for Wendy, however, there's someone else who seems to know far more about the situation.
What is the shocking connection between Alice and Wendy, reaching out across the years? Does a demon really lurk in the girl's soul? And who is Hannah, the mysterious figure who tries to help Wendy, and who seventy years later begins to make her influence felt in Alice's life too?
Alice Isn't Well is the first book in the Death Herself series, about a dark figure who arrives in the night, promising to help deal with the forces of evil whenever they appear.
Also by Amy Cross
MEDS
(THE ASYLUM TRILOGY BOOK 2)
“Welcome to the Overflow. And remember, all roads lead back to Lakehurst.”
At the edge of a ruined town, a burned-out hospital houses one final, functional ward. There, a small group of doctors and nurses tend to patients who have been consigned to the Overflow. Unloved, forgotten by the people who knew them, these are the patients who will never receive visitors. If something happens to them, no-one will ask questions.
When she starts work at Middleford Cross, Nurse Elly Blackstock thinks she's getting a second chance. She soon discovers, however, that this particular hospital is unlike any other. In one of the beds, an old man grapples with the horrors of his past, while in another there's a woman condemned to a life of darkness and silence. Ghosts stalk the corridors, and more ghosts are on the way. And watching over all of this is the hospital's administrator, Nurse Kirsten Winter, a woman who is desperately searching for someone named Annie Radford...
Asylum: Meds is a dark horror novel about the lengths one woman will go to as she searches for the truth about the voices in her head.
