"Worst sanitarium to put him in if he did see ghosts," Tom added.
Swinging my feet over the side of the bed, I met my roommate's curious stare. "What do you mean?"
"Well, like, houses have histories, right? Maddix's looking into the background of the place. Something about the psychic dude overhearing nurses talking or something and that's why he ended up setting himself on fire in the widow's watch. Cause the first owner of the house committed suicide there like the day before some voodoo murder shit went down in the basement," he explained, waving his pen - and I could already tell his attention had jumped back to his work. His gaze drifted.
Standing, I grabbed my coat and shoved on my shoes. "Where's Maddix live?"
"Huh? Oh, uh...no idea?"
And there went my lead. Evaporated the second it was given to me. "Don't you have his number?"
"What? No. Why would I? He's kinda weird," Tom replied.
If Tom didn't, there was a chance Chad did. As much as I wanted to stay as far away from him as possible, I had no choice. Waiting out the weekend to maybe run into Maddix wasn't going to work. We only had the one class together, and I'd never seen him while getting food.
When I reached Chad's room, the door was already open. Most of their hall kept their doors open - the football team bumming around from room to room, and as one of the few on that floor who wasn't on the team, Chad glared at the trio invading his room, devouring pizza rolls on the floor between Chad's bed and Alexander's.
"James!" Alexander cheered, mouth steaming like a pizza dragon. "What's up, man?"
Standing awkwardly in their doorway, I waved as all eyes turned on me - even Chad's glower. "Hey, either of you guys have Maddix's number?"
"No," Chad retorted at the same as Alexander said, "Sure - Chad's got it."
Swallowing, Alexander cocked a brow at his roommate. "But you made that list of everybody's number after the tour."
Eyes narrowing further, Chad scoffed. "Fine. I have it. Why?"
"I need it. Tom said he might have a book I was looking for," I told them.
"What book?"
"Schizophrenia: Cognitive Theory - Beck and somebody," I lied. "So - can I have his number?"
"I thought you were focusing on collective post traumatic stress disorder. High school shootings or whatever," Chad said. His mind was a steel trap for information he could throw back in my face. "Why do you need something on schizophrenia?"
"Different course."
Alexander's gaze jumped between us, but he wasn't the one who spoke up. One of the other guys did, grumbling, "Sheesh, Chad, just give him the number."
Pulling out his phone, Chad clicked away. "I think I'll text Maddix first. Ask him if he has the book."
"Seriously? Your roommate is psycho," the same guy said as he took another pizza roll.
Alexander shrugged, but Chad turned his glower on the player. "So I can give out your number to the whole school. Anybody who wants it - here you go, Blake Martinez's number. What's that Jessica Gould? He's been avoiding you - here's his number."
The guy, Blake, sneered but shrunk in a bit on himself. "Fine, whatever. You're right."
"I'm always right," Chad retorted. "Save yourself the energy spent being wrong and assume that from the beginning." Glancing down at his phone, he smirked. "He's in the library. Probably your midday nap zone," Chad informed me as he grabbed his bag and walked right by me out of the room. Leaning back into the doorway, he cocked a brow. "So? Come on."
Shoving the note in my pocket, I gave Alexander a short wave. "Why are you coming?"
"Cause I know you're lying."
I grimaced. "You always think I'm lying."
"And I'm always right," Chad retorted with a self-satisfied smirk.
Chapter Seventeen
Sitting back in a chair, Maddix glanced between the two of us. His lips tugged down into a dour scowl. Books built walls around him, and he'd dragged one of the armchairs into a corner.
"I get why he's here," Maddix gestured at me. "But why are you?"
Chad crossed his arms. "Curiosity. Sue me."
"Whatever."
Reaching into his backpack, he held out the book in question. "I've already grabbed the quotes I want from it for the project, so just get it back whenever."
"Cool. Mind if I get your number, so I don't have to go through this idiot to get it back to you?" I asked, and Chad huffed, rolling his eyes.
"Sure," Maddix said, holding out his hands for my phone. As he typed in his number, he asked, "There a reason you guys acting so weird? Or is that just Chad?"
"Just Chad," I said as Chad spat, "Forget it!"
Off he stormed. Stomping and glowering at everybody between him and the door. Maddix blinked. HIs eyes - wide and round - looked to me. "That was weird."
"To be honest, it's not really his fault. I lied to him 'cause he wouldn't give me your number if I told him I wanted to talk to you alone about Crables," I admitted, sitting down in one of the other chairs.
His brows furrowed. "But you're not doing your project on it."
"No. I'm not."
His gaze weighed on me heavily. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. A smirk - small at first but growing - tugged at his lips. They twitched up on one side.
"It got in your head," he said.
I swallowed. "What?"
Dread pooled in my stomach. Roiling and acidic, it built up in the back of my throat, threatening to pour out of me. What if I wasn't the only one who saw Gray? What if he appeared to others? What if we blended to him? Maybe he didn't feel the same way about me as I did about him. A knot of jealousy tangled around me. If I let it go, it would choke me. Drag me down the same road Simon had gone. The sort of place where want destroyed having, so I stayed silent, waiting for Maddix to respond.
To my relief, he told me, "You felt something in Crables Manor. Everybody joked about it, but I sensed a presence there. Maybe multiple."
"Presences..."
"Ghosts."
"Oh - yeah, kind of. I just feel like if I know the history I could get some sleep. You know, put my mind at ease," I told him, rubbing the back of my head.
Maddix flopped over the side of his chair. He dug through his backpack, pulling out a notebook. Loose papers stuck out here and there. From the mess, he pulled a single sheet. A half-typed, half-written bibliography.
"Here," he said, handing it to me. "They're all online."
Not for the first time, I wanted to slam my head into a hard surface. A wall. A desk. Anything would do just fine. Google could've saved the day. Sure, I hadn't had a computer at home for most of my life, but it wasn't like I was Amish. I had no excuse for not thinking it through.
I believed myself better. Smarter than this. Maybe it was my weird sleep schedule. It was probably my sleep schedule. Or it could legitimately be because ghosts haunted me. Though - to be fair - I wanted to date and possibly marry one of them, so blaming ghosts seemed a bit presumptuous. It wasn't like I wanted Gray to stop haunting me. Poor guy probably didn't realize he was dead.
"Thanks."
Maddix shrugged. "No problem. Just if I get the guts to do a seance there, you'll come, right?"
"Course." Like I was going to let somebody mess around where Gray died without me. "Just text me," I offered, double-checking he'd sent himself a message to get my number. "There's definitely something off about that place."
Chuckling, Maddix gestured at the paper. "You wait. That place is nasty."
Nodding, I folded the paper, sticking it in my pocket. "Thanks again, man."
He waved me off, and I left him alone. Frustration and excitement buzzing around my body as adrenaline built up once more. At this point, I stumbled through between waking and sleep, so any progress deserved some celebration. However, in my hazy return to the dorm, I almost missed the way the world shifted around me. It was strange. Like being caught in an oil painting. A dense fog rolled in, and the color rolled out.
Shadows jump
ed, stretching long and tall. Looming like giants, but I assumed everything was natural. I hadn't fallen asleep. No gaps suggested that, and Gray was the only apparition which showed up outside the manor, so with none of the other markers of a dream, I believed things to be normal. Fog in the midwest in November. Weird. But Boston was right on the ocean. They had fog all the time. Sea - evaporation - all that New England mess.
Shadows - sure. Boston had sunlight, however little that meant. Fog plus sun meant weird shadows. Sure. The day started cloudy. I hadn't seen a speck of sunlight on the way to the library, but if San Francisco's fog could run, why couldn't Boston's?
I made it back to the dorm without an issue. If a shadow followed me in the fog, I hadn't noticed. It wasn't like the ghosts of Crables Manor had been particularly shy, so how was I supposed to realize I'd just led one right back to my bedroom? Gray found me straight away. Everybody else saw me in dreams, so why would it be hard for any of them to show up? Why would one of them have hooked a ride on Maddix? Sticking to him - holding tight and waiting - waiting because it knew eventually it would be led straight back to me, and haunting me wasn't as easy as Gray made it seem.
Every time I rethink it, my brain comes up with a thousand excuses. Reasons why it wasn't my fault. How I couldn't possibly have noticed. Gray occupied my thoughts. But that wouldn't change what had happened, or how the struggles of my conscious mind against the drain of sleep and stress would get so, so much worse.
Chapter Eighteen
Exhaustion weighed on me, and with the fog and rain, sleep called to me. I kicked off my shoes, and I dove face first into bed. Not even bothering to push back the covers or change. Just a diving leap -
- and I was running. Like falling through a hole, I swung in a strange flip, rotating all around to be standing again, but my legs moved - slamming against the floor before I could think. All around me - the air hung heavy and thick. Each breath left a strange, dull ache, leaving my head spinning. All the lights glowed - glass capped lanterns. Beneath my feet, carpet covered the floors, but the shag wasn't exactly the old moldy half-torn mess it usually was when it wasn't the pristine dark wood.
Slowing to a jog, I glanced around. My head pulsed with every beat of my heart, but nothing seemed out of place. Different - sure. No cobwebs. Instead, black stained the upper corners. Long strokes of charring. Gaps in the ceiling sizzled, but I couldn't smell smoke. Just the dull, thick oily air. Running a hand through my hair, I turned around, and like ripples in a puddle, the air reverberated as a blur of black and white barreled toward me.
The phantom screamed. Twisting and curling in and around itself. A beast with knotted black hair covering whatever undead face lay beneath, but its legs - long and clothed in white scrubs - gave way to blackened feet. Skin bubbled and peeling.
Stumbling, I took off. My hands hit walls which hadn't been there before as the manor stretched, growing around me. Through the newly formed labyrinth, the spirit chased me. It smashed into walls, leaving ash and blood smeared in its wake. More than once, I glanced back to see it fall, worming its way across the ground to crawl up a wall - never pausing in its screaming. No matter how fast I ran, it never fell behind.
A crack sounded. I fell forward, twisting around as my foot sunk through the carpet and the broken floorboards hidden beneath. The hole swallowed my foot and leg right up to the knee.
"Shit!"
I twisted, tugging as I shuffled backward. The creature zagged, thudding against the walls of the hall as it drew closer and closer. It seemed to realize I was caught, so the spirit slowed. Its screaming waned as it dragged the shadows - the blood and fire clinging to it - closer and closer. The phantom shuffled across the carpet. Blood oozing from its blackened toes. Cracks like sparks shot up its heels as it tilted its head, contorting the closer it loomed.
Kicking my leg, I tugged, but my caught leg wouldn't budge. The floorboards shifted. More of the carpet sunk into the gap. Stuck, I clawed. Suddenly, all those animals who had gnawed off their own legs to escape traps seemed sensible. Handfuls of brown shag broke off in my hands.
The spirit closed in - barely five feet away. It had no arms. Just a white misshapen torso. Feathers and beads decorated its hair. Braids started and ended. Chunks of burned - singed ends curling, splitting apart crowned its head. From behind the curtain of dark tangled hair, two eyes stared at me. Wide whites surrounded black spots.
Each tug dragged the wood splintering into my leg. A lump swelled in my throat. The faster my heart drummed, the slower the world seemed to go. If I wrenched it up, my leg would be mangled, but if I didn't, the spirit would get me, and there was no telling what it would do, so with a scream of my own, I tugged it free. Fractured wood dug into my flesh, tearing my jeans and tearing down my leg, but none of that mattered. I was free.
Spinning, I crawled, fumbling into a run. With a roar, the spirit pursued. The faster I ran, the faster it came after me, but somehow, the manor collapsed inward. Stairs appeared where they hadn't existed moments ago, and I half-ran half-fell down them. The spirit did nothing in halves. Head over feet, it rolled down the stairs, slamming into the wall at the bottom while I continued going. Gray's room stood open. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw markings - geometric shapes and runes carved there. Somebody had upended the bed, but the spirit climbed back to its feet - taking longer this time than before - but quickly enough I couldn't delay.
Almost there. Almost there. Sliding down the rail to the first floor, the air thinned around me. A fragrance tickled my nose. Some sort of soup - a bubbling broth, and safety struck my mind. An instinctive certainty overtook my desire to try to leave the house, and as the spirit rolled down the stairs into the more open first floor front hall, I fled to the back, shoving open the kitchen door.
And the all thickness left the air as if vacuumed out. At the stove, the cook hummed, stirring before she slid to the side to cut up some carrots. The growing panic - pitched by the constant hum buzzing through my bones - vanished. My adrenaline waned, and my leg throbbed. Swearing, I fell back into a seat.
"Language," she scolded, but her eyes widened when she turned. "What have you been doing?"
"Running for my life."
The cook blinked, setting her hands on her hips. "Well, I suppose I'll have to fix you up."
"This is a dream. My leg'll be fine when I wake up," I argued, but she put down her knife and dug through her cabinets, pulling out a tin kit filled with gauze.
"I'd have you remove those trousers if they weren't tattered enough for me to see the mess you made here. Luckily, it's not too deep. No stitches needed," she assured, and from one blink to the next, my leg was bandaged, and the cook returned to her work. "Now, who were you running from?"
"I don't know. Some mad -"
"This - is very - inconvenient," a man complained as he skidded into the kitchen on his back. His black hair fanned out behind his angular face. Piercings lined his ears, and his dark brown eyes glared at the ceiling. "I'm a bloody turtle. This is - ridiculous."
"- a straitjacket."
The spirit glared at me. "Yeah - we don't all get to pick what we spend our afterlife wearing, Mr. Still-Gotta-Pulse."
Somehow, seeing his arms wriggling against the bindings made him far less intimidating. Or maybe that was the fact that he was struggling to roll over and stand up, but he kept slipping. His feet - blood and painful looking - left red marks on the floor, making matters worse as he skidded and slid every time he tried to move from knees to his feet.
"Are you going to stare? Or are you going to help?" The cook asked, not even bothering to turn from her work.
Scoffing, I grumbled, "He was chasing me. Why would I help?"
"Chasing you? Ha! Herding you from an early grave. Saving your life," the straitjacketed man hissed, finally managing to stand with a triumphant exclamation. "The doctors might've left you alone before, but now that you're not just making goo-goo eyes at Gray, they're causing trouble."
"Trouble?" Mrs.
Hayward brushed off her apron, leaning against the counter as she crossed her arms. "That pair intends to isolate that poor boy until they can use him. This is their last chance after all."
"Yeah, after this go-around, this place'll be torn down. Stupid, freaking, jacket," the man growled, twisting as he tried to break free. He failed, only making himself sweat. His dark eyes sparked as they fell on me, pinning me in place. "I tried. Before you. I tried to save him. Could've done it too. Stupid limbo burns off pen. Got all these marks, but they've got to scar- "
"Or tattoos," the cook added.
"Yeah, but who's tattooing a guy in rehab?" The ghost spat. "Nobody! I didn't really have options."
Running her hands soothingly over his face, she sighed, brushing his hair back. "You did what you could. You gave your life trying, Rory. Nobody could ask more."
He leaned into her touch like an attention-starved puppy. Exhaustion ringed his eyes in purple cradles which vanished when she stepped away, and his focus returned to me.
"So. How're you gonna do it?"
I glanced at Mrs. Hayward, but she had her back to me. "Do what?"
"Save him! Mrs. Hayward and the Governess have enough on their plates keeping Dr. Ose and Dr. Carreau from Gray. Not like I'm much help like this," he informed me, struggling once more in his straitjacket. "But I know what they told me, so we can do this. Plan it out. Make your attempt work."
"Why would I trust you? The Governess killed Gray. If you're working with her -"
He slammed his head into mine, growling, "Lies! I can see him. He's already in your head. Spinning things around. She saved him! Pulled Gray into limbo before they could use him."
I shoved him away from me. Rubbing my forehead, I gritted my teeth. "Why should I believe any of that?"
"Because it is the truth," Mrs. Hayward intoned. "While Florence might not be the kindest of people, she would never harm Gray. She sees him as her son. She's already lost one child, young man, so she isn't about to let some greedy head shrink get their hands on him now."
All That We Say or Seem Page 9
